Chapter Text
1. Jaejoong walks into their territory at eighteen, eyes still not adjusted to the world of spindly towers looming, all glass and shining spires into the limitless sky. He has a battered guitar, slung over his back like a life-raft. It’s a present from his sisters. Play in the event of an emergency.
They descend on him like a storm, a faceless mass of shifting power and hidden agendas.
“Come, we’ll make you a god,” they whisper. Their voices spark and undulate, both an irresistible promise and unspoken threat.
Jaejoong says, “Just let me see my family one last time.”
They take him anyway.
2. Jaejoong meets Yunho as the latter is stealing a T-shirt from the middle of a laundry line slung high across a dirty alleyway that reeks of the sickly smell of alcohol, spilling from overturned crates.
In the colour of the silvery moon shining behind them, everything about the alleyway and the boy within it seems otherwordly. Yunho moves like a cat, dancing along the wires with a snap of muscle and liquid turn of the head. When he jumps and lands onto the roof of the building opposite to where Jaejoong is standing, he doesn’t make a sound.
He doesn’t turn back, so their gazes don’t meet; there is no red thread connecting the two or any whisper of a prophetic meeting, but Yunho’s profile is proud, fierce and beautiful in the silver light, and it’s something Jaejoong never forgets.
3. The city of theirs is a city of monsters, filled with battered buildings and people being swallowed up by the gaping jaws of anonymity lurking in the dark alleyways. It's lit in the day by dull, grey light and the movements of grim-faced adults barely clinging onto survival in the misty streets, after-hours.
They promised they’d make Jaejoong a god, but if they have, it hardly seems to matter as he is gifted with bruises and words spat through jeering mouths of the steely-eyed youths who run rampant through the streets, howling anarchy to the overcast skies. Theirs is a life filled with the sandy, grimy film of dirt clinging to the creases of their clothes like armour; quick-seeing eyes and sharp minds attuned only to the blood-tipped need for survival. Nothing moves to clockwork. The monsters are real - reptilian and furred beasts with leery smiles leave tar-like substances seeping from cracks in the walls; cowed by daylight into the sewers and the cold bite of sharpened steel that guard each run-down home. Steel, wood and stone, now that bullets are too expensive to be used by anyone in these parts. As night settles around the misty streets, people disappear, and they don’t come back.
4. It's the end for sure this time. Jaejoong is weak and cornered, trying to make himself as small as possible in the small brick alcove, his guitar clutched in his shaking hands, the old knife he carries for protection lying uselessly several meters away where he had dropped it in the struggle. The stench of the monster stings at his nose and eyes - it's a big one, a dangerous one - mixing with the tears of regret stinging at the corners of his eyes; if only he had not done that extra delivery, if only...
Jaejoong can feel every infinitesimal shift of muscle, tendon and bone in his hand as the strings dig into his palm, leaving indents deep enough to bruise.
If the stench gets stronger, he’ll be close enough to swing out with his left arm; throw the shield or smash it against where he imagines the monster's face is. It may splinter in the monster’s face. It may give him a split second to survive.
It’s his guitar.
“Junsu!” someone yells.
The night is rent apart with sound and movement.
The next moments are blurry, the sound flickering in and out of Jaejoong’s ears like he’s underwater and breaking the surface in desperate gasps of air and reality. He’s dimly aware of breaking from his alcove, the action as difficult as pushing through an oppressive summer heatwave, stumbling on the rough stone floor, his muscles screaming run, the sickening, heartbreaking crack of his guitar and, above him, shadows dancing and connecting with the impact of bullets. Impact upon impact.
The monster screams.
When Jaejoong opens his eyes, he’s covered in blood, metallic and sticky and reeking of death. If he had managed to fool himself in thinking he had been granted immortality, he’s certain it’s gone now. He’s just cold, weak and mortal, and probably has been all along.
Backlit by the moonlight, the group of boys before Jaejoong stand like heroes. The tallest of the group bends down and offers a bandaged hand. The end of the bandage is unravelling. Jaejoong is suddenly reminded of the moon, laundry lines and dancing; the smells of wet dirt and rain breaking through the sky gradually cuts through the blood.
“Are you okay?” the boy asks. Jaejoong hesitates.
“You’re one of those,” another speaks from the group. He has solemn eyes, half hidden by the hood draped over his head. The knives in his hands slide out of his belt like quicksilver. “They promised they’d make you a god.”
Jaejoong swallows, unable to keep the bitterness from seeping into his hoarse reply. "Promised. Yeah.”
The boy hands him a knife, blade first, unsmiling. It’s still cold with murder. “Are you?”
“Junsu-” someone says hesitatingly.
Jaejoong thinks about the splintered pieces of wood on the ground and fights back a wave of nausea. “A-Am I what?”
A line between the eyes of the boy known as Junsu appears as he raises an eyebrow and Jaejoong knows what he's asking.
It feels like it takes an eternity for Jaejoong to grasp the knife - cold metal that his fingers curl around. Nothing happens. The knife remains a knife – sharp and expectant in Jaejoong’s hands. For all he had prided himself on his street smarts; his ability to slip, unnoticed, through a busy throng of people, and the catalogue of false identities he had given suspicious shopkeepers, to hostile bosses, to enraged gangs who had torn through his neighbourhood demanding money, Jaejoong feels young, new, and humiliated.
The crooked half-grin that appears on Junsu's face as he takes the knife back doesn’t suit him. “Okay, you’re good. Come with us.”
5. “Why did you ask me that?” Jaejoong asks Junsu when it’s all over.
Junsu’s eyes betray the fact he’s almost forgotten about those times. Their early days have been razed through by so many years of immortality.
“Maybe because you looked like you still believed,” he says eventually, “that you were a god.”
6. The only way to get to their apartment is to climb up the rusty fire escapes and enter through the window because front of the building pretty much consists of empty space where the stairs had once been. It’s small, cramped and smells like sweat, blood and dirty clothes. Jaejoong spends several weeks sleeping on top of a stack of old shirts and the remnants of curtains that they've dug up, until he's saved up enough money to buy himself an old sleeping bag. There are six of them – Junsu, Yunho, Youngwoon, Heechul, Sungmin and Hyukjae.
Jaejoong still doesn’t dare speak to most of them; just steer around them with respectful silence.
There are others living downstairs – Jaejoong catches glimpses of people he only knows theoretically and is unable to match names to faces – Jungsoo, Donghae, Kibum, Jongwoon, and then some girls he’s glimpsed vaguely from apartments in adjourning neighbourhoods - Sica, Hyoyeon and Sulli.
Yunho doesn’t speak much to Jaejoong at first, but he’s teaches Jaejoong how to fight. It's hard, gruesome work but it results in late afternoons, honeyed with golden sunlight, sitting side by side on the rusty platform of the fire escape, their legs dangling in the open. It results in conversations that Jaejoong realises he treasures more and more - just the two of them, sweaty, exhausted and aching and thoughtful words being passed between them like the battered old water flask that Yunho carries.
“Everyone here is busy but no one knows where they're going,” Yunho says, a few months later when Jaejoong can recognise a temper on Youngwoon's face, when he knows that Hyukjae misses his sister fiercely but will never admit it, and when he knows that Yunho never looks at people in the eye when he lies. Yunho is not lying now. Practising to stay alive is a given but some of them work for money, some wander the city looking for treasures, others focus on stealing to get ahead. Jaejoong asks why they don’t just leave – back to Jaejoong’s old town (one that he realises he’s already thinking about in past tense), or Yunho’s old city. Yunho’s eyes flicker at this. He indicates the roof. “Come with me.”
Standing on the roof of their building, the city spreads out like a map under them, glinting in corners, endless masses of brown bricks and crumbling spaces that are even more depressing to look at, in context. Yunho raises an arm and points at the skyscraper in the smoggy distance, lording over the maze of dilapidated alleyways and patchwork blanket streets that is their world.
“The people in that tower come for us,” Yunho says softly, almost reverently. Jaejoong isn’t sure he likes that tone. “They say that they’re the ones who really make us gods.”
And so we wait, Jaejoong thinks, with a sudden feeling of clarity and, with it, despair. Those of us still foolish enough, determined enough, to believe we’re worth something more.
7. In between working odd jobs to keep themselves alive, the group fights for a living. Fighting monsters gets you attention and the best pay of all - sometimes they are giant abominations who lurk under the sewers that the city police have no desire to fight themselves or a mutant feral cat terrorising the kitchen of a cafe that requires someone more expendable than the cooks. More often than not, the monsters are not monsters but gangs of wild-eyed boys, with greedy eyes fixed on their house or the sack of rice someone is carrying home.
Jaejoong is allowed to fight on three occasions. One of them is a noisy street brawl in the middle of the day, full of fists and scuffed knees, and the second is a silent affair in the dead of the night (‘returning a debt’, Heechul says simply as they leave).
Their opponent of the third fight is armed and, even though Jaejoong does tolerably well in the scuffle, he still comes away with a bruised left arm and cuts in places he hadn’t been good enough to dodge. They win after Junsu throws a knife at the enemy leader, who was taking aim with a battered crossbow, dug up from some antique shop. He had been almost half a metre away, but somehow the knife had found its mark and buried itself in the leader’s shoulder with enough force to make the boy drop the bow, reeling back and howling. It’s the first time Jaejoong has noticed the frightening quality in Junsu’s strength as he had readied the knife, something like a spark that jumped through his bones and muscles, adding something more to his attacks.
Yunho is the one who cleans Jaejoong’s injuries, the two of them sitting outside on the fire escape in the cool night. Everyone else has collapsed, asleep, right after getting back from the fight. Heechul is going to be pissed off that Youngwoon has left blood all over the sheets - more likely than not, Jaejoong is the one who will be washing it though.
“They were one of the strongest gangs in this city,” Yunho says as he finishes dabbing the blood off a smarting cut on Jaejoong’s elbow and unwinds a bandage, his long fingers moving with practised ease. “If we manage to find another monster and defeat it, I’m sure the people in the tower will take notice of us.”
“Will we find another monster?”
Yunho hesitates a moment before he smiles and says, “Heechul’s theory is that they go after the ones who have the potential to become immortal.”
He looks at Jaejoong and they’re sitting so close that Jaejoong can almost see himself reflected in Yunho’s eyes. “You were being chased by a monster, weren’t you?”
“I bet you were too.”
Yunho blinks and then laughs, embarrassed. “Yeah, I guess so.”
A sudden gust of wind hits them just as the bandage touches Jaejoong’s wound and he draws his arm back with a shiver.
“Sorry,” Yunho says softly, voice gentle. Jaejoong shakes his head, giving his arm back to Yunho. Yunho’s fingers ghost over the purple and yellow bruise on Jaejoong’s bare shoulder and Jaejoong resists the urge to shiver again – though not from the cold. They’re eye to eye.
“Are you hurt anywhere?” Jaejoong breathes, hardly daring to exhale, sensitive to each shallow exhalation that Yunho makes. Yunho looks the same – no cuts, no bruises, not even dirt on his face or in his hair.
Yunho blinks - the moment is lost - but smiles. Shakes his head. “The battles become easier when you figure out how to dodge.”
Seeing Yunho fight is like seeing Junsu throw. There is something more about the way he moves.
Jaejoong doesn’t believe (much) in immortality anymore, but he can see how people like Junsu and Yunho make it possible to believe it can happen.
8. Heechul disappears for two days without a message or a word, and returns during the middle of a rainstorm with a stranger at his side. They’re both drenched and soaked to the skin, but it’s the first time Jaejoong has seen Heechul take care of someone and the novelty of the concept is enough to prompt Jaejoong to obligingly help sit the stranger against the wall and dry him off.
The boy is so thin that Jaejoong is afraid his shoulders will snap with the weight of the towel; he looks up at Jaejoong with large, hollow eyes filled with a bewildering combination of earnest thanks and weariness. Rain drips off the ends of his hair.
“What’s your name?” Yunho asks gently, sitting down so that he and the stranger are eye to eye.
The boy looks at Yunho and speaks with soft, halting syllables, rising and falling in the odd places that tells Jaejoong this is not his first language. “My name is Han Geng,” he says.
“Han Geng,” Heechul repeats the name so gently Jaejoong feels like he may have whispered it into cupped hands in the cool light of the early morning. He feels like he should look away, like they're all intruding on a private moment.
“Geng,” Youngwoon says, as a peal of thunder tears through the sky. He exchanges a look with Sungmin and Junsu - doubtful. The boy is too thin, Youngwoon's eyes telegraph and Jaejoong knows him well enough by now to read it. More importantly, he's weak.
“He was being chased,” Heechul says, glaring a challenge at Youngwoon, "by a monster from the sewers.”
9. Jaejoong dreams of the sky. Of the feeling of air currents pressing against his skin, and the feeling, forms and textures of the spaces around him, forever shifting and changing.
When he wakes up, there is always a tingling numbness throughout his body – miniscule prickles of heat promising something.
“Just stop sleeping in such weird positions,” Youngwoon says irritably when Jaejoong mentions it for the fourth time.
Junsu just looks at Jaejoong, eyes troubled. Yunho swallows, eyes downcast at the table. Later, he tells Jaejoong, “I’ve been getting the numbness too.”
10. Han Geng takes to their new lifestyle in a quiet, steady way. He smiles a lot more than he did, he’s helpful in the absent-minded way of someone who’s always been neat and has had to take care of himself. He’s invaluable in helping Jaejoong cook (because someone has to. Jaejoong had eight sisters who taught him how, and Hankyung makes fried rice that, frankly, tastes amazing given how little ingredients they have), and they teach each other words in their respective languages as Jaejoong tries to kick life into the old gas stovetop and Hankyung washes the vegetables.
Jaejoong teaches Hankyung how to say ‘too expensive’. Hankyung laughs and teaches Jaejoong the word for ‘cheaper’. Jaejoong counters with ‘stingy’. Then Hankyung reaches over, tracing a line down Jaejoong’s elbow, ending at his wrist.
“Shén,” Hankyung says.
“Shén?” Jaejoong repeats, looking down at the veins. “Blood?”
Hankyung shakes his head. Frowns, his eyes faraway for a moment before they focus back on Jaejoong. He traces the line again. “Inside Jaejoong. Shén. God.”
11. Full moon is the only holiday they get: there are no monsters out on full moon, only alley cats looking down from the high wires with shining eyes. Full moon is the time when allied gangs gather around a bonfire, and the air is full with laughing, conversation, crackling music from a second-hand stereo and the few bottles of weak alcohol that someone had managed to steal, borrow or buy. Yunho, Hyukjae and Junsu are leading a dance-off in front of the bonfire with Hyoyeon, Sooyoung, Jungsoo, and a bunch of other boys that Jaejoong doesn’t recognise.
“Come and dance!” Yunho approaches Heechul, Geng and Jaejoong, laughing. It’s the first time Jaejoong has seen him look so unburdened, the usual lines of worry softed by the firelight. Hyoyeon and Youngwoon are laughing at Hyukjae in the background, and Donghae drapes a shoulder over Yunho, a smile breaking on his face.
Jaejoong has been around Geng enough to see the enthusiasm in his eyes, tempered by his nervousness and fear. Heechul gives him a little shove on the small of his back. “Go on.”
Han Geng stands up, follows Yunho to the centre of the bonfire and Jaejoong’s breath catches as Geng closes his eyes, relaxes his shoulders, opens his eyes and begins to dance. Because he’s good – moving with a silky grace that’s sharp at corners with the right amount of power. As good as Hyukjae or Junsu or Yunho. There’s a small beat of silence, then Hyoyeon cheers enthusiastically, everyone joins her, begins dancing, and the night is swallowed by sound and movement.
Sometime as the moon is waning, Jaejoong finds himself sitting next to Junsu, who’s humming along to the radio. It’s the first time Jaejoong hears him sing, and Junsu’s voice is beautiful.
“You played the guitar, didn’t you?” Junsu asks. Jaejoong winces at the past tense. “Do you sing?”
“A little,” Jaejoong says. He recognises the song playing on the radio.
“Sing with me then,” Junsu says, and sings out loud, voice pure and loud, somehow cutting through all the chatter and the roar of the bonfire flames. Jaejoong joins in after only a moment of hesitation and even Heechul falls silent because somehow, miraculously, Jaejoong’s voice is almost as strong as Junsu’s, and they harmonise well.
12. Jaejoong dreams of total darkness and empty voids greedily sucking in air and space. The dreams are filled with the sound of thunder.
13. He wakes up the next day in the middle of an earthquake. Their apartment is trembling and there’s a crushing weight on his shoulders and the feeling of the sky pressing against his heart and he knows, somehow, this is immortality – immortality that is burning fresh and white-hot through his spine, through his veins, reaching with greedy incinerating hands. He can’t find his voice to scream.
What stops the burning is the hand that reaches out and covers his to the ground. Solid, firm, certain. Yunho. The earth stops shaking as though it’s welcoming them home.
Yunho stills. He releases his grip on Jaejoong’s hand, raises his own and moves it slowly across the floor. There is an ominous rumble from below them, moving wherever Yunho's hand moves.
Yunho stares at Jaejoong. Both of them see a mixture of horror and wonder trapped for a desperate, gasping second in the others’ eyes before theirs become the eyes of gods.
14. Junsu’s small pile of belongings have become a pile of ashes. For a second, before he sees the flames circling Junsu like a ring, Jaejoong thinks Junsu’s turned into the black smoke that’s hissing languidly through the air. The god of smoke. The god of fire. Junsu is now immortal, Jaejoong wants to say, as though stating the obvious will make things less frightening, but he doesn’t.
Hyukjae and Sungmin are backed against the railing of the fire escape. The walls are too hot. They look at Junsu as though they're seeing him for the first time.
Junsu looks up. Meets Yunho’s gaze.
“I’m sorry,” he says. There are no words to pinpoint the emotion trembling beneath his words. “I’m sorry.”
Hyukjae attempts a smile.
15. It doesn’t take Yunho long to find Changmin.
The earth hears everything, Yunho claims, and people are already whispering about the boy who can flood the streets.
“Stop being dramatic,” Youngwoon rolls his eyes and punches Yunho on the shoulder. The earth lurches, and Youngwoon is suddenly on his knees. Heechul laughs, and drags Geng away from the two of them, stumbling a little as the earth settles.
Yunho winces, his eyes serious. “I’m sorry,” he says, bending down and helping Youngwoon up like he’s made of glass.
Jaejoong hasn't counted the number of times Yunho’s apologised over the past four days but he knows it's too many for something that is not Yunho's fault.
16. Changmin wanders solo through the streets, gangly and deer-like with wary eyes.
“He’s lonely,” Yunho says.
“He wants nothing to do with us,” Junsu argues.
Jaejoong wants to say no, Changmin just has no idea what he’s doing, but he remains silent. The crushing pressure against his lungs and throat has not faded over the long weeks as Junsu and Yunho gradually became used to their powers. It hurts to try to speak.
They finally meet him across opposite fire escapes. Changmin’s hand is on an exposed water pipe on the side of the building. Jaejoong knows instinctively that a jet of water could be blasted from the pipe, right at them, as soon as Changmin willed it to do so. It feels like he’s pointing a loaded gun at them, with the safety already off. He asks, “What do you want?”
“We’d like you to join us,” Yunho says.
“We have powers too,” Junsu adds.
Changmin’s gaze meets Jaejoong’s, challenging and defensive. Jaejoong sucks a painful breath into his lungs.
“We have no idea what we’re doing either,” he says, willing his voice to not waver. He looks at Changmin's face; at Changmin's eyes where anger is hiding the panic of being alone. "If you come with us, you’ll eat good food. You'll have friends, you'll have...you'll have a family.”
Changmin blinks. His hand leaves the water pipe by degrees, eyes never leaving Jaejoong’s face. Finally, he asks, “Where do you live?”
17. Two months later, Changmin still gathers food to himself at the table, instinctively curling into himself as he wolfs it all down in a flash, before Yunho scolds him about it. He only flinches slightly at loud sounds and Jaejoong notices that the defensive, wary glare in his eyes has softened slightly, though they still dart around everywhere they enter, assessing and locking down escape routes. But once he starts trying to become part of their group, he’s an enormous help. Changmin can tell which parts of the city that monsters have drunk from, where they have built their nests in the underground sewers and if he concentrates hard enough on overcast days, he can even make it drizzle enough for a bucket of clean water. With his help, the area around their home is free from monsters for the first time.
Youngwoon tells Yunho irritably that they’ll all end up taking three jobs at the rate Changmin’s consuming all their stores of food, but he does so while ruffling Changmin’s hair so the effect is completely lost.
18. And then there are the powers to deal with. It takes awhile for Junsu to stop setting things on fire (though with Changmin on board, it's not too hard to put out though everyone is getting tired of never-quite-dry floors). It takes Yunho a few weeks of extreme concentration to stop causing earthquakes as soon as he starts having bad dreams but, in one way or another, they get used to it. They get used to Jaejoong's silence too.
“Aren’t you complete?” Heechul asks, one day. “Fire, earth, water. You could rule the world.”
“Jaejoongie’s immortal too,” Yunho says quietly.
“Yeah, but what can he do?” Heechul counters. He’s not looking at Jaejoong – his eyes are turned to the sky and he is thinking in the absolutely focused Heechul way; the kind that blocks people out not because he’s ignoring them, but because he’s not thinking about anything else except the problem. “He can’t fight and he doesn’t even speak anymore.”
Jaejoong winces, because he loves Heechul and Heechul cares for him, but it hurts. Geng meets Jaejoong’s gaze, apologising for Heechul because he’s Geng and he just gets it – gets Heechul.
To his surprise, Jaejoong feels Changmin touch his arm. The latter smells like rain.
“Jaejoong-hyung’s one of us,” Changmin says firmly, and a small piece of the weight on Jaejoong’s back falls off at the conviction in Changmin’s voice.
19. Yoochun joins them a few days later, as graceful and mysterious as the winds he brings with him. Yoochun comes and Junsu welcomes him into the fold immediately. Many nights, they stay up on the roof of the apartment together instead of sleeping. Jaejoong stays awake too, listening to the howl of wind outside that is Yoochun trying to master his powers under Junsu's guidance and watching the glow of Junsu's flames grow bright, illuminating Yunho and Changmin’s sleeping forms by the window.
Hyukjae is jealous in a quiet, resigned sort of way. Yoochun looks at Jaejoong sometimes with great sadness in his eyes and Jaejoong realises that Yoochun knows, Yoochun understands his silence, but Yoochun doesn’t know how to help him.
20. The five of them are guarding the apartment in the dusky evening – Yunho, Changmin, Jaejoong, Yoochun and Junsu - when there are cries down below, the discordant clatter of iron, broken wood and yells, the sound of running feet, and the unmistakeable chorus of feral shrieking.
Yunho is first on his feet and out the door, with Yoochun not far behind. Changmin and Junsu follow, and Jaejoong does too. He’s almost knocked over by Sungmin, who’s scrambling up the stairs with Jungsoo who has a bloody cut on his forehead, yelling that they need to barricade all the windows.
Youngwoon is fighting off a grotesque monster at the foot of the fire escape, his knife faltering with exhaustion. The concrete gives a great heave below the monster’s feet – it springs aside, hissing, as Yunho leaps down from the stairs, a long carving knife obtained from the butcher’s drawn. Yoochun hauls Youngwoon up by the arm, pushing him further up the fire escape. Jaejoong helps him up, Jungsoo pulls him into their apartment, and another panicked yell makes Jaejoong turn back. Heechul, Donghae and Geng are running towards the stairs, with Hyukjae bringing up the rear, and being chased by a pulsating swarm of small monsters, a mass of hooked beaks, claws and teeth.
Junsu yells Hyukjae’s name – a ripple of flame pulses through the ground and there is a keening cry from the mass of creatures scattering from the heat. Heechul takes the chance to drag Geng, Hyukjae and Donghae up he fire escape, just as Changmin unlooses a jet of water from a pipe with a high pitched screeching of metal – it blasts the monster away from Yunho who scrambles to pick up his knife… the monster stumbles away, shrieking. The swarm ripples, forming a circle around them, hissing and spitting.
Yoochun grabs Junsu as he tries to chase after the swarm, and yells for Changmin and Jaejoong to come down from the stairs. Yunho leaps back from the monster, grabbing onto Changmin for support. They stand shoulder to shoulder – Junsu, Yoochun, Changmin, Yunho. And, behind them, Jaejoong. Gasping through the searing weight in his lungs. Trying not to crumble under the crushing feeling suddenly lining his shoulders, pulling him into a stoop. Still not sure if he’s part of the four immortal beings in front of him.
“We’ll blast them all at once,” Yunho gasps, struggling to catch his breath. His knuckles, gripping his knife, are white and bloody. "Changmin, blast in the opposite direction of Junsu so the water doesn't evaporate."
"I will aim with Junsu," Yoochun says firmly. He turns to Jaejoong, and pulls Jaejoong between him and Changmin. Something in Jaejoong settles into place.
"Jaejoongie, if it gets too much, you need to take everyone and run,” Yunho says through gritted teeth. He has an arm flung out as far as he can in front of Changmin, holding them back as the swarm ripples, draws closer.
Jaejoong closes his eyes. Thinks suddenly of his guitar. Takes a deep breath.
The swarm rears - and Junsu yells, a stream of fire bursting forth from midair, searing the small creatures at the front, a harsh gale blowing the flames onwards. The ground under the main mass of creatures rumbles, buckles, just as a jet of water blasts skyward from the ground. Jaejoong screams, grabbing Changmin and Yoochun's hands. He can’t hear his own voice, but he can feel the space around him expanding, the pressure on his lungs lifting as he yells. And he can feel the strength of the water increasing, the harsh winds blowing hot air in their faces. He can feel the space above them contract, ripple…boom.
There is a plaintive howl from the swarm, the heavy sound of flesh slapping on the concrete ground and, suddenly, the small monsters are just like alley cats, scrambling to escape in the opposite direction, howling and hissing.
Eventually...silence. Jaejoong swallows. “Everything’s okay.” His voice is raspy with disuse.
Yunho’s eyes meet Jaejoong’s, shocked but lit with relief and endless joy.
“Lightning,” Changmin says, voice hoarse.
Junsu coughs out a laugh. When he looks at Jaejoong, there is a genuine smile of incredulity on his face. “Was that you?”
There is a rumble of thunder from the sky as though in response, and Jaejoong closes his eyes as rain begins to fall.
21. The message comes, ridiculously, embossed in gold and smelling of luxuries and far off dreams, wedged into a crack between their broken door and crumbling wall. We welcome you to join us at the great tower, the invitation says, the golden words inside sprinkled with just the right amount of politeness, allure and enthusiasm as the president’s signature curls just so at the bottom of the letter. The tower in the distance, the tower lording over their city. Your new home, the letter says. Your new family.
None of them are quite ready to believe there’s something more powerful than they are, willing to protect them or offer them something more. Any other situation would have easy enough to refuse, even if they would have had to do some more convincing to get Yoochun on board (Yoochun is the perpetual dreamer, terrified of losing good opportunities and not afraid to let everyone know), but the five of them all pick up the silent threat woven into the blank spaces between the letters, like a thoughtfully quirked eyebrow, daring them to refuse.
The others remain oblivious, and when Jaejoong overhears Junsu trying to explain to Hyukjae why they have to go, it’s the first time the discomfort that has dropped little by little in his stomach coalesces into dread. They are gods, they are marked, they are different, and Jaejoong isn’t sure this is a good thing.
22. Heechul tells Yunho fiercely that they need to come back if anything – anything – goes wrong. Donghae simply hugs them all wordlessly, burying his face in Yunho’s neck in his determination not to cry. Youngwoon sees them off with a hearty, forced cheerfulness at first, but when he envelopes them all into wordless bear hugs, that’s when Jaejoong knows he really means it.
Junsu, Sungmin and Hyukjae disappear together somewhere, and they come back with three sets of teary eyes. Junsu is smiling though, in spite of his tears, and Jaejoong takes it for what it’s worth.
Eventually, Jaejoong finds himself leaning against the wall, looking at the proceedings, shoulder to shoulder with Geng.
“I’ll miss you,” Geng says quietly, simply.
Something in Jaejoong’s throat closes up. He wants to say something like you’ll join us soon, don’t worry. I didn’t want this to happen. We’ll come back.
He struggles as much as Geng does to speak. “I’m sorry you have to cook for so many of them by yourself.”
Han Geng lowers his head. His hand finds Jaejoong’s and squeezes warmth into Jaejoong’s cold hands. Not completely understanding why, but understanding Jaejoong doesn’t know either.