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The sun just barely set, when for the first time in years someone rings the bell of the mansion on top of the hill.
Na Jaemin – to the townspeople better known as the hermit, opens the door expecting nothing, only to come face to face with the barrel of a gun.
There’s a moment of peaceful silence in which the last rays of the sun disappear behind the mountains, then a voice, high pitched and unbearably obnoxious, screams ”Trick or Treat!”, and Jaemin feels a vein pulse near his temple.
The gun is thrusted forwards, a tiny hand shaking it as the shrill voice repeats, ”Trick or Treat, Mister! Are you deaf?”
Wow, Jaemin thinks. And then, How many years have passed for people to get this brave with me?
In front of him stands a small boy, dressed in the most ridiculous clothes Jaemin has ever seen, with an ugly hat on his head and a drawn on mustache on his face, big eyes looking up at him.
Jaemin isn’t impressed.
“What,” he says, but his voice is so dry from disuse that it sounds like a hoarse whisper, “Are you?”
“You blind, too, Mister?” the kid asks, and he sounds genuinely surprised, as if he truly can’t believe that there’s really someone in the world that doesn’t get what he is, even as he thrusts out his gun again and proudly proclaims, “I’m a space cowboy!”
Are those a thing now, Jaemin ponders for a second, unsure, since the last time he checked in with the supernatural world was a while ago.
“Guess it’s trick, huh?” the kid's ugly voice pulls him out of his thoughts. “But you gotta be sure, Mister! Are you sure? Because my trick’s really mean!”
Jaemin stares at the kid, wondering if he should just…well… get rid of him, but again feeling too unsure with what exactly he’s dealing, and if space cowboys are a legitimate thing or not.
It’s also a kid that's annoying him, and even though there is only a small difference between monsters and monsters, Jaemin doesn’t fancy belonging to the latter kind.
What year is it?, he wonders. How many years since the end of Choseon?
“Honestly, I’d choose treat,” the kid goes on, and the dumb thing lowers his gun to wipe the back of his hand over his mouth, smearing the drawn-on mustache across his face.
Jaemin stares at a constellation of black dots on the kid’s left cheek and wonders for a second if they’re moles or just accidental paint disasters, too.
“Child,” he whispers, somewhat sure that space pirate or not, this dumb kid can’t be much of a threat if he draws on body-hair he’s yet too young to sprout naturally. “You dare come here and disturb my sacred seclutio–”
“Man, it’s really trick then, huh…” the kid sighs, not even listening, “The others said I shouldn’t come here, but I thought rich people wouldn’t be so stingy… Hands Up!”
He screams the last two words so abruptly with his shrill voice that Jaemin almost jumps out of his skin, the vein on his temple pulsing aggressively again, his temper flaring, blood lust slamming into him so hard that he has to grit his teeth, hands balling to fists.
Not that kind of monster! he reminds himself, but he sounds more angry than convinced even to himself.
The boy stares at him expectantly, but Jaemin, still busy with keeping himself from lunging at the kid, doesn’t raise his hands.
There’s another moment of silence, as peaceful as when the sun set behind the mountains, then the boy huffs, raises his gun with both hands and—
Jaemin yelps, and actually does jump out of his skin after all, when cold and sticky and bloody red liquid shoots out of the gun right into his face with such force that the impact splatters all over him, his clothes getting doused with whatever it is that the kid loaded his gun with.
He literally sees red when he blinks his eyes open, but he doesn’t know if it’s the disgustingly sticky stuff that clings to his lashes, or if his eyes naturally tinted into their unmasked red as rage starts to consume him.
In front of him the little boy cheers, a grin splitting his face so wide that Jaemin feels his fangs and nails extend and sharpen in a sudden urge to rip them through the kid’s face. And yeah, maybe that’s a little extreme, but then no human ever dared to disrespect him like this before, not even children.
“Told you to choose treat!” the kid laughs. “You’re red all over, Mister. It’s fake blood. You look like a vampire.”
“Is that so,” Jaemin grits, lips so tensely pressed shut that he feels his fangs digging into the inside of his cheeks.
The boy takes a step back, gun raised combatively in his little hands as he pouts. “Hey, no taking revenge or anything! I’m a minor!”
For that sentence alone, Jaemin wants to end him.
Sticky fake blood drips down his lashes and from his chin, curves down the column of his neck and pools between his collar bones. Jaemin feels so disgusted that he misses the kid telling him that adults getting angry over a Halloween trick are losers.
“Mom says adults that get angry at kids are horrible people.”
“Get lost!” Jaemin snaps, but the kid only huffs, gun still raised. Jaemin feels the last of his patience frizzle and die.
“Get lost before I take revenge,” he says, and he means it, his sharpened fingertips digging deep into the flesh of his own hands which he keeps balled into fists to stop himself from reaching for the kid.
“I’m a minor!” the kid reminds him, affronted.
“You aren’t a minor forever,” Jaemin growls, but the kid only huffs again.
“I am for eight more years!” But he turns to leave, intimidated because Jaemin let darkness and shadows bleed into his voice when he growled at him.
The kid struts off his property, not without sticking out his tongue at Jaemin, though, before he disappears from sight.
Closing the entrance door of the mansion with fake blood still dripping down his face, Jaemin finally loosens his hands, real blood falling onto the marble floor before the puncture wounds in his palms heal and close abruptly.
“Eight years,” Jaemin mutters as he steps on his own blood. “Well, I can wait.”
-
The child, Lee Donghyuck, Jaemin learns because the town is small and noisy, never comes again to bother him.
He suspects that his parents had a talk or two with him, about Jaemin and the mansion on top of the hill, about the rumours surrounding this place and the owner residing in it.
Of course in the year of the lord 2012 no one believes in the supernatural anymore, but some of the very old townspeople are still alive and remember - enough to teach the rest to stay clear of the haunted mansion and its mysterious owner.
“They probably don’t call you mysterious,” Mark says on his first visit after decades.
He looks offended that Jaemin only remembered to call for him after so many years, but then the bastard has no room to talk, Jaemin thinks, with how often Mark himself disappears mysteriously.
“Yeah, prolly more like weird,” Jeno agrees, and Jaemin sighs, socially overwhelmed with both of them in his personal space, but of course where Mark goes Jeno follows, he should have known.
“I find you very mysterious, Jaemin,” Renjun, the newest addition to their coven, says, and Jaemin stares at his angelic face and wonders how someone so pretty and decent ended up bonding with Mark and Jeno. Maybe they took him hostage or something and never let him go.
“That’s because you don’t know him the way we do,” Mark yawns. He’s lounging on Jaemin’s bed, curled into Jeno’s side, unbothered as always while he makes himself feel at home in Jaemin’s bedroom.
“Yeah he’s just a grumpy old man,” Jeno laughs.
“Ah,” Renjun says, sounding unconvinced, the little angel.
“You’re older than me?” Jaemin reminds them, but only Renjun listens.
“Anyways,” Mark sighs. “I can’t believe that a kid got you upset enough to contact us after… how many years again?”
“Forty,” Jeno answers, earning himself a kiss from Mark.
“Ugh,” Jaemin mutters, disgusted, but also affronted, because he didn’t get a kiss from anyone yet and it’s been forty years apparently.
“Forty,” Mark repeats, “After forty years. And for what? You don’t really expect us to help you plot revenge against a twelve year old, yeah? That’s jobless behavior.”
“We’re all literally jobless,” Jaemin points out, annoyed, ignoring the equally annoyed look Mark throws at him.
“Please, I don’t want to be brothers with a loser,” Jeno groans.
“Technically–”
“Yeah yeah,” Jeno interrupts. “Technically we were all strangers to each other once. Whatever.”
Jaemin scowls, but when Renjun turns to smile at him he feels a little soothed.
“How about you forget the kid?” he suggests, “It was just a Halloween trick. Turn that negativity into something positive before it eats you up!”
“Eat, huh…” Jaemin mutters, but it takes a moment for the word to really settle in his brain. When it does, though, his mouth drops open before his lips pull into a smile. “Thanks, Renjun. That’s exactly what I’ll do.”
-
The thing is: Jaemin has morals. Eating children is a big nono. But eating asshole children once they grow up into their asshole adult selves? Excellent, efficient, genius.
Of course no one agrees.
Mark says that it’s unethical to eat someone you knew as a child, but then Mark also says that kissing Jaemin before he resocializes is a pass, so Jaemin doesn’t know how trustworthy Mark’s opinions are if he refuses to kiss a face as handsome as his just because he doesn’t know what year they’re in.
Unfortunately, Jeno and Renjun agree with Mark, and while the former’s opinion is like whatever, the latter’s comes from a place of reason so Jaemin reconsiders.
Ultimately, it’s for the sake of getting Mark to kiss him finally (and having Jeno join in, that prude) that he let’s go of his grudge and spends the next ten years resocializing.
He gets to kiss Renjun, too, as a reward for good behavior, and for the longest time it’s just the four of them together, Mark occasionally disappearing to do god knows what as always, but all in all everything forgotten — until in the fall break of 2021 Lee Donghyuck returns home and crosses paths with Jaemin by accident.
“How coincidentally convenient,” Mark remarks dryly when he watches Jaemin getting ready for a Halloween party a week later. “You sure he’s gonna be there?”
“Yeah,” Jaemin just grunts, fingers pulling on the ridiculous bowtie that’s part of his costume. He throws the fake fangs that came with it across the room to where Mark lounges with Jeno and Renjun on his bed, glad that he doesn’t need them.
“Don’t eat him,” Mark sighs when Jaemin turns to leave. “Remember it’s unethical.”
“No promises, hyung.”
“Only losers take revenge on children!” Jeno calls after him, resurfacing from where he had his face buried in Renjun’s neck.
Jaemin doesn’t care. Lee Donghyuck is not a child anymore, and Jaemin… Jaemin doesn’t exactly plan on eating him, not with how prettily he grew up.
He really grew up well, he thinks later at the party as he watches Donghyuck from the shadows and waits for him to leave for fresh air. It's almost a shame to see those pink cheeks go.
But he melts into the shadows and walks through them, materializing in the deepest darkness of a small alley where Donghyuck leans with his eyes closed against a brick wall, all pretty for Jaemin, not that he knows.
There’s something different about the kid, though, but Jaemin can’t really put into words what exactly it is. He has a weird kind of pull to him that calls to Jaemin, oddly familiar but entirely foreign at the same time.
It does nothing but draw him closer until he stands in front of Donghyuck and waits, seconds ticking by without the boy opening his eyes. Jaemin leans down, still as quiet as the shadows surrounding him, and whispers, “Trick or Treat.”
Donghyuck’s eyes snap open and he jolts, but Jaemin predicted as much and cages the boy in with his broader form, arms bracketing his head on one side and his torso on the other.
“Wow,” Donghyuck breathes, and Jaemin startles at the way his voice still sounds so unusually high pitched. “Did I just get kabedoned on my first night out?”
Jaemin has no clue what he’s talking about, but maybe that’s just how it’s gonna be with the two of them, since none of Donghyuck’s words as a child made sense to him either. At least he’s not wearing a space cowboy costume tonight, so there’s already improvement in their relationship.
“Do you have any idea how long I waited for this?”
As expected, Donghyuck looks confused at that, confidence bleeding out of him as if Jaemin already took a bite of him.
He laughs awkwardly. “Dude, that’s a bit…”
“Hmn?” Jaemin smiles, all teeth, fangs on display, but because it’s Halloween and because he’s wearing a stupid vampire costume, Donghyuck doesn’t look scared in the slightest. Just increasingly uncomfortable, but Jaemin can work with that.
“Uhm, listen- as handsome as you are, this is–”
“What?” Jaemin purrs, leaning in closer, aware that it isn't proper. “Wanna shoot fake-blood at me again?”
Donghyuck startles, but he doesn’t get it, probably because it was so long ago and so unimportant in the grand scheme of his life — so different from Jaemin, who never forgot.
“I admire how in-character you are, but—” Donghyuck says, and his hands come up to push Jaemin away, eyes widening when he can’t.
“But then you don’t have a gun with you tonight, do you?” Jaemin goes on, undeterred, smile widening with every second that Donghyuck understands less.
“Gun? What–”
“I guess it’s true that taking revenge on a minor is tasteless. But you’re not a kid anymore, hmn? And I bet you taste delicious.”
That’s it, the last straw, because Donghyuck pushes from the wall he’s pressed against to crash into Jaemin with all his might, expecting to break free, but all that happens is that he almost knocks himself out as he connects with Jaemin’s body, Jaemin’s arm wrapping around him immediately.
“I waited ten years and you want to leave already?” he purrs, face pressing against the curve of Donghyuck’s neck, ignoring the shout the boy lets out. “Time for a little revenge trick. How does spending eternity stuck to the vampire you doused in fake blood sound to you?”
Honestly, there have been dumber reasons to turn someone, like when Mark found Jaemin and decided he liked his face, or when Jaemin found Jeno and decided he liked his ass. Apparently Renjun had asked for it, but not everyone is as lucky, and Lee Donghyuck’s gonna turn simply because he pissed off Jaemin once but looks too pretty to eat now.
“Say bye to your human life,” Jaemin coos as he tilts the boy’s head to the side, making his veins press up against his skin. But when he sinks his fangs in and takes a mouthful, something is missing.
In his arms, Lee Donghyuck goes absolutely still.
Jaemin pulls back, eyes wide, blood-smeared mouth dropping open to stare at the boy in utter confusion.
“Where’s your pulse?”
Donghyuck scoffs, and this time when he nudges him off, Jaemin lets go of him.
“Gone,” he says, as simple as that.
”Gone?” Jaemin gasps, eyes widening, and then he whirls around when another voice repeats, “Gone.”
Mark.
Mark fucking Lee, Jaemin should have known.
“What the fu–”
“Hey heyyy,” Mark sighs. “I wasn’t convinced that you wouldn’t eat him, so I turned him a few years ago. Remember when I left for a while?”
Jaemin stares, head blank, but Mark just nods at Donghyuck, who looks kind of bored, leaning against the wall and inspecting his fingernails.
“That’s when I turned him and stayed with him until he was in control.”
“You–” Jaemin starts, but Mark just nods and Yeahs, no remorse whatsoever.
“I waited ten years for this!”
Donghyuck snorts, and when Jaemin turns he watches the kid push himself off the wall and slowly, gracefully, approach him with an unholy smile on his pretty face.
Somehow the fact that Mark spent at least few years alone with him suddenly bothers Jaemin more than the fact that Mark turned him before he could.
“Jaemin,” Donghyuck purrs with that cute voice of his, and Jaemin hates how much he likes the sound of it. “Just look at the whole thing from a different perspective, yeah? He may have interfered with your plans, but that means that you get to take revenge on me without having to wait until I grow out of the blood-crazy-phase.”
He rolls his hips a little too suggestively when he mentions Jaemin’s revenge, and dear god— those hips, they look illegal, now that Jaemin notices them.
“You could take me home and this time invite me in? Show me your bedroom? Take your revenge as long and as much as you want?”
He sounds so innocent and sweet, smile so coy, but that glint in his dark eyes, it’s a promise — and Jaemin feels his throat dry as he watches Donghyuck turn and walk next to Mark, light body curving sensually along the older vampire’s side until his chin hooks over Mark’s shoulder, head tilting as he stares at Jaemin and raises his eyebrows suggestively.
“Y…yeah. I’m— yeah,” Jaemin says weakly, legs stumbling to follow, deeper into the alley where the darkest shadows wait for them to step through and disappear into the night.