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I was as pure as a river
But now I think I'm possessed
You put a fever inside me
And I've been cold since you left
“Have you ever been to the faerie realm?”
Jihoon smiled with his eyes, clear as glass, and twirled a garland of mountain laurel between his fingers as the human; wide eyed and innocent, shook his head vigorously and took an eager step towards him.
Jihoon’s lips twitched wider, showing the sharp points of his teeth.
“I can take you. If you’d like?”
Seungcheol waits by the lake, amongst the moss and pebbles, while Jihoon draws his newest play thing in. A naiad he knew from upstream is dancing in the shallows, her hair a tangled mess as black as pitch, glistening with algae. Her green skin a touch darker than his own glimmers as she dunks herself under the surface.
He watches her splash and sing her joy and wonders if he will ever see that kind of carefree happiness in Jihoon again.
It’s as he’s having this thought that Jihoon appears by his side. No warning, just a shimmer in the air to his right and a quiet pop to announce his arrival.
He’s hand in hand with a tall boy, brown eyes, a mop of brown hair and a hundred watt smile.
Same as all the others.
Jihoon has a type.
The pretty naiad he’d been watching lets out a gasp when she sees his friend and cries a muffled “The Prince-” before diving into deeper waters and making her getaway. Seungcheol doesn’t blame her.
But even still, he stands at attention and salutes. Jihoon gives him a cheshire grin.
The boy beside them is looking around in awe. His eyes flickering past Seungcheol to where the naiad had vanished leaving ripples in her wake, to the unnaturally violet sky, back to Jihoon, and over the moss covered glades at lightning speed.
He takes gulping breaths and clutches at Jihoon tighter still “We’re here?”
Jihoon chuckles and Seungcheol wonders if the boy can hear the darkness in it.
“Yes, we’re here.”
The boy wobbles slightly giving Jihoon the perfect segue for what comes next.
“You must be hungry? Tired? Come with me and we can feast!” a light wind ruffles Jihoon’s now pink locks and he tucks the garland of mountain laurel behind his pointy ears in a bit more securely.
If Seungcheol didn’t know better he’d be the picture of innocence.
The boy takes one last fleeting look around, drinking everything in. This time his eyes catch properly on Seungcheol and they widen in alarm.
He’s not as appealing to the eye as Jihoon is, not as slight or bright, the green tinge to his skin more menacing than beautiful. The corded muscle under his armour is more frightening than tempting. The boys shock hardly surprises him.
“What’s that!” the boy shouts and points at him. Seungcheol might be offended if he didn’t pity him so much.
Jihoon is disgruntled and rolls his eyes with a sneer at the back of the boy's head.
“A Spriggan. My guard.”
He waves his hand in disinterest and begins tugging the boy down towards the tree line, chattering about all the fun they’d have together in his kingdom.
There was a time Jihoon would have smiled, slid his arm in Seungcheol’s and said “My friend!” but those days were long gone.
Seungcheol trudges after them and hides his hurt beneath the steel covering his chest and the hard set of his jaw.
Jihoon brings them in over the year’s, one after the other.
Each roughly the same build.
Roughly the same height.
The same look in their eyes.
Each one as weak willed as the last.
And without fail each one dines on the food they’re offered.
He watches them feast. Eat every last slice of fruit, every crumb of bread, drink every last droplet of nectar and wine. Greedy, gluttonous, humans.
Each enchanted and trapped now, never to leave this place, for as long as they’re allowed to live.
The fair folk live for so long. Their pain can last lifetimes.
Seungcheol brings his concerns up while they sit in a field and scout for new prey.
“Why do you care for them? They’re just humans!” Jihoon frowns, pauses, and points at Seungcheol viciously “You do the same thing!”
Seungcheol fights the urge to groan at his prince. He wouldn’t take it as kindly as he would have once.
“Of course I do! But I go for something different every time. Jihoon, yours are practically identical.”
Anger flares in Jihoon’s eyes and Seungcheol thinks maybe he’s taken it too far this time. Maybe he’ll be punished.
Jihoon grinds his teeth and bites out “Why do you care?!”
It takes everything Seungcheol has not to hide the truth.
“It’s not them I care about.”
Jihoon blinks a few times, the response a surprise. He lets out a tired breath and gives Seungcheol a searching look. Three hundred long years of life staring at him through dull exhausted eyes.
Jihoon deflates a little, his anger seeping out of him into the grass beneath his feet, staining everything yellow.
Seungcheol ever the optimistic, thinks maybe the worst is over.
He whispers, just loud enough for Jihoon to hear. “It’ll be ninety six years next spring.”
Jihoon snarls at him, his golden hair darkening to raven black, the Oleander he’d been braiding into a necklace bursting into flames.
His face twists with fury, lines and cracks in his flesh appearing where there never have been before. Seungcheol knows he should be afraid, probably is somewhere deep down, but it’s been so long and he’s so tired of this cycle that he can’t bring himself to care anymore.
Jihoon must see this in him. He wilts. The darkness dripping from his hair and flesh, washing him out to a dull grey.
He glances at Seungcheol again, exhaustion dragging down his bones until he’s lying in the yellowed grass, watching the clouds drift by.
Jihoon’s knife like ears twitch, his jagged teeth catching on the edge of his lips as they turn up in a wicked mockery of a smile.
He beckons the boy to come forward.
“I can give you everything you’ve ever wanted.”
Today Jihoon’s hair is the colour of ripe peaches. It matches his tangerine lips and sugar dusted skin.
There is a gold circlet clinging to his temples and golden tear drops hanging from his ears. His robes adorned with golden ivy hang heavy off his shoulders and droop along his chest and back. The corners of his eyes are smudged with kohl and flakes of more gold spatter from the turned down edges and down his cheekbones.
He’s the very image of fey royalty.
He is so incredibly beautiful.
Jihoon stands still on the precipice. His nose buried in an angels trumpet the colour of sunrise, and is breathing in deeply and sighing whilst looking out over the cavern below.
Seungcheol doesn’t want to be here.
He hates this place.
“I don’t think I’ll bring the next one here.” Jihoon sniffs and drops the large flower into the pit “I think I’ll drown him in the lake.”
Seungcheol doesn’t respond. He stands tall and strong behind his prince, his friend, the only one he has ever had eyes for, and pretends the words don’t make his blood run cold.
“Oh but maybe the naiads and river folk wouldn’t like that? They take their own there hmm.”
It’s revenge. Pure and simple. Revenge on the one boy that refused him.
Seungcheol closes his eyes and pretends he isn’t watching the one he cares for rot from the inside out.
Seungcheol wonders sometimes, if he was there that first time, if he had stopped it before it had ever began. Would things be different?
There is a wreath of belladonna on Jihoon’s head, petals flutter around his ears as he spins, adding to his enticing, ethereal appearance. But the wreath remains full, the flowers never lessen, and the dance continues.
“Any food you could ever desire. Unimaginable beauty at every turn.” Jihoon waves a sprig of Daphne under the boy’s nose and twirls it enticingly “will you join me?”
Seungcheol watches the display from behind an oak tree, what would have once caused him mild irritation now makes his stomach turn. The boys pupils are blown wide, his mouth hung slightly ajar, his expression awe and trust. Just like the rest of them.
“Is it far?”
He’s so innocent.
“Not at all.”
Jihoon twirls away and glances back over his shoulder at the tall boy, questioning him.
“It’s just over this hill.”
Faeries never lie.
“I can have you back by nightfall.”
But they do bend and twist the truth.
Jihoon reaches out for the boy’s hand and Seungcheol knows he can’t let this happen. Not again.
It takes all the willpower and strength he has to defy Jihoon, the man he has spent his life protecting. He steps out of the shadows into the dappled light of the clearing and takes two large strides until he is between them.
He puts all the power and conviction he has into his voice and demands the boy.
“Don’t go with him.”
The tall boy blinks down at him, a slight crease between his eyes, but is otherwise unaffected.
Seungcheol’s powers do not lie in glamours and charm as Jihoon’s do, he’s no match for his abilities and something inside him shatters as hope is lost.
Jihoon growls his name. His angelic face twisting in anger, his beauty marred with fury as he steps around Seungcheol and thrusts his arm out towards the boy once again.
"Mingyu! Come with me!"
Seungcheol cringes away at the use of the name as Jihoon stalls in realisation. His hands drop to his side and he looks up at Seungcheol in horror.
It will be ninety six years next spring, Seungcheol thinks. It was only a matter of time.
The belladonna behind Jihoons ears begin to wilt.
"Mingyu?" The tall boy asks, shaking his head as if coming out of a dream "Who's Mingyu?"
The tall boy has dark brown hair and puppy dog eyes but that is where the resemblance to Mingyu ends.
Mingyu, Jihoon's Mingyu, he was a vision on his own. His skin was golden in the sunlight, his lips perpetually curved upwards, his jaw chiseled and strong, and his eyes, his eyes were bright and always full of mischief and life.
This boy's eyes were vapid and empty, his chin weak and wobbly. He was no Mingyu, but to Jihoon, he would have sufficed.
The colour fades from Jihoon’s hair, the pastel pink he favours changing into a stark bone white. The now dead and brittle belladonna dropping to his shoulders in a mockery of snow. His pale lips pull back over deadly points as he struggles for words.
Seungcheol can only watch.
The boy is now quickly realising something is wrong, that maybe he isn’t as safe as he thought. He stumbles back, shaking, eyes flitting from Jihoon to Seungcheol and back again. Grasping at branches, and tree roots blinking the glamour from his eyes the boy croaks out a “No, no I won’t go with you.”
Jihoon does not take rejection kindly.
He lunges for the boy, long bony fingers reaching and clawing for him, a snarl ripping from his maw.
Seungcheol lifts him easily, plucks him from the air and gathers him close, giving the terrified boy a chance to escape.
Jihoon screeches, kicks and pounds against Seungcheol’s armour. His furious flailing denting the precious metal. He cries bloody murder and the surrounding plants blacken and crumble with every harsh word that escapes his lips.
It’s a long time before he calms and goes limp in Seungcheol’s arms.
His breathing is heavy and coming in sharp gasps. Seungcheol takes him home.
Seungcheol sits by the lake awaiting his punishment and remembers what it had been like when Mingyu was around.
He had hated him at first.
This pure human, completely immune to Jihoon’s glamour but enamoured by him anyway. Knew exactly what they were but was never afraid. Who dyed his hair the colour of ocean waves to match Jihoon’s ever changing looks. He was young, vibrant, and handsome. He was filled with childlike glee and happiness. He was everything that was good for Jihoon.
And Seungcheol had hated it.
They had made promises and declarations of love. Jihoon had come to the human world every day, with or without Seungcheol to guard him. He lived every moment in bliss.
But Jihoon was young then. Jihoon was a prince. Jihoon was used to getting his own way.
He had Autumn Crocus sewn into his clothes that day.
Seungcheol remembers because Jihoon was dazzling in the spring air and he had envied the way Mingyu had casually plucked one out of the fabric and worn it in his hair.
They were grinning at each other, love struck and glowing when Jihoon pulled out a handful of berries and offered them to Mingyu.
“If you eat these you’ll never grow old. You can stay with me.”
Faerie food gives the fair folk power over all who consume it. Mingyu was no fool, he knew. He knew what he’d be giving up the moment Jihoon had suggested it.
“But I’ll never be able to come back here? I’ll never be able to come home?”
“Your home will be with me.”
Seungcheol remembers the way Jihoon’s face fell and hardened when Mingyu left. How his skin had turned paper thin and all the blood vessels and veins had stood out red and blue as he howled and wailed until his throat was raw and the forest was silent.
Jihoon had never gone back to that place.
His kidnapping of tall kind boys with big brown eyes and a smile like sunshine started not long after.
Seungcheol couldn’t hate Mingyu after that.
Jihoon finds him at dusk.
Seungcheol expects him to arrive with an armed guard to take him away. He expects to be left to rot in the cavern with many other of Jihoon’s toys.
But it doesn’t happen.
Jihoon is alone.
He sits by his side and curls up close to him in a way he hasn’t done in almost a hundred years. He smells like lilies and there are dewdrops flecking his skin and hair.
He looks to the sky and speaks softly directing it to the water and trees rather than Seungcheol, as though he is ashamed.
“I was young when I loved him.”
Seungcheol keeps his mouth closed and holds his breathe. Jihoon has never brought him up on his own, never alluded to even remembering his name.
“I think he made me bitter. Made me cruel.”
Seungcheol’s heart aches at the weakness in Jihoon’s voice.
“It’s in our nature to be cruel, Jihoon.” Seungcheol says softly, in an attempt to comfort.
“Mmm maybe. I shouldn’t have been to you though.”
It sounds like an apology. Seungcheol would accept it even if it weren’t.
They sit in silence for a while and watch twilight set in, the deep blue darkness settling around them like a blanket. The edge of Jihoon’s butterfly wings patter against his side as he nuzzles his forehead against the meat of his shoulder. Seungcheol dares himself to hope.
The silence is comfortable and Seungcheol feels that if they stay like this for the rest of time then he could be happy. Jihoon breaks it with a question “He’d be dead by now wouldn’t he? Humans don’t live as long as us.”
Seungcheol hesitates but wraps his arm around Jihoon’s middle and hums in assent.
“I’m sure he lived a full life. A happy life.”
Jihoon shudders in his arms.
“He loved you.” Seungcheol says it because it’s true, because even though it hurts him, it will help Jihoon to hear it.
Glancing up at him through thick glossy lashes, his eyes dry, no tears in sight, Jihoon asks.
“Like you love me?”
Seungcheol isn’t surprised that Jihoon knows this. They’ve been together for three hundred years after all.
“Like I love you.”
“You never left.”
“I’ll never leave.”
Jihoon’s hair brightens to a deep pink and Seungcheol lets himself believe that maybe this could be a new beginning.
Cause I've done some things that I can't speak
And I've tried to wash you away but you just won't leave
So won't you take a breath and dive in deep
'Cause I came here so you'd come for me