Work Text:
They’d kissed only twice.
The first time came with the taste of hatred on the tongue, when Jisung slammed Minho against the crumbling stone wall of an abandoned church, his fangs, unnaturally white in the moonlight, hovered over the hunter’s pounding pulse, struggling not to sink into that stubborn, beautiful neck.
And Minho – foolish, furious Minho – had curled his fingers into the expensive, antique shirt and pulled Jisung in, crashing his mouth against the cold one. The vampire’s lips quickly warmed with the rage they had both carried too long, igniting in sharp, desperate movements – like tangled spiders. Their bodies shook from the aftermath of the fight, and that trembling carried into their clashing teeth, rattling against each other.
The second time smelled of rain and despair.
Jisung moved carefully, dodging the sharp swings of the silver blade. They had collided again in a graveyard under night’s veil, and there – finally – Minho collapsed near a tombstone, clutching a bleeding side with one palm, as if it could somehow stop the blood from spilling onto flattened grass, trickling into the soil with the rain.
When Jisung knelt beside him, towering like a threat, Minho exhaled defiantly, looked into the starved red vampire’s eyes, and muttered with a careless smirk:
“Go ahead, sink your fangs in. It’s what you’re best at, isn’t it?”
But instead, Jisung leaned in and kissed him – a silent apology.
His tongue slid to the hunter’s collarbones, where sharp nails had left angry welts — not exactly planned, honestly — and then to the still-bleeding waist. Minho would learn that very night about the healing properties of vampire saliva, watching with wide eyes as torn skin sealed into nothing but a faint scar.
A few nights after they met again at the ruins of that same old church. The familiarity seemed to comfort them both in its cold, predictable steadiness.
It was a dance of shadows and glinting metal with no leads, no dazzling moves.
“You’ve gotten slower,” Minho hissed before charging again, blade arcing toward Jisung.
“And you get distracted too often,” came the dry reply as Jisung’s eyes flicked briefly to the thin scar on Minho’s jaw — one he himself had left in the past. A scar he never meant to give. A scar he now couldn’t stop longing to kiss from the hunter’s sharp features.
The next strike came swiftly — Jisung knocked Minho off his feet in one fluid move, forcing him to his knees. Vampire speed was enough to disarm him, blade now resting at Minho’s opened throat. One hand tangled in the hunter’s hair, holding him not at the edge of the blade, but of death itself.
“You know,” Jisung murmured, his voice a low purr that fell into the silence of the church, “you’d look best dead.”
Minho’s face twisted — for a flash — in pain. It hit like a slap. And his whole expression asked in disbelief, “You didn’t mean that.. did you ?”
But Jisung vanished without a word, leaving Minho staring into empty space, something unbearably heavy settling on his chest.
***
They caught Minho three days later.
He had been mid-hunt, chasing one of the monsters, when he stumbled into a pack of three.
It hadn’t been a fair fight — he knew that before the blow came from behind, and the world collapsed into pitch-dark nothing.
He woke sluggishly, limbs heavy, the dead weight of chains binding his wrists behind his back rendering him almost motionless.
The world was smeared at the edges. It took time for Minho to understand: he was behind a glass.
A narrow cell, more tank than room, and beyond the glass, they were already waiting.
Crimson eyes, hollow and watching, stripped him down with quiet, gloating hunger.
But that had only been the beginning.
The true horror had unfolded when cold water began to spill into the chamber. There had been nowhere to run.
At first, there had been no fear.
His head throbbed dully and Minho had fought to control his breath before slamming his shoulder into the glass.
By the time the water reached his knees and there wasn’t a single crack on the wall, Minho understood: this wasn’t a prison.
It was a tomb.
The realization bloomed slowly, like rot in the lungs, until it filled his chest with molten terror.
And still, on the very edge of clarity, where thoughts bled into noise, he hoped.
Jisung would come.
Even as the water curled around his ribs.
Even as each breath grew shorter.
Even as hope itself receded with the air.
He let go of that hope before the water reached his lips. Before it seeped into his mouth, choking him in earnest.
Everything finally fell into place.
You’d look best dead.
Minho’s lungs were burning. His chest spasmed from memory alone, as truth sharpened into clarity and his heart fractured clean in two.
Like a gravestone dropped on the soul, the realization throbbed in his skull: what he’d seen in Jisung, what he’d believed — with every look, every restrained blow, every kiss he had thought sacred — had only ever been part of a cruel, deliberate game.
He didn’t fight it anymore.
He let the water take him.
And when the need to breathe became overwhelming, Minho obeyed it.
His body convulsed on instinct. But the effort to cough only opened him wider, let the flood claim him faster.
The last thing he saw was Jisung’s face from the night he had sworn peace would come soon.
***
Jisung caught the scent of blood within moments — he could recognize Minho’s from miles away.
He followed the trail, stumbling through the trees, until it led him to a familiar castle. Even Jisung never dared to step foot here — a den of ancient vampires whose mercy had been erased by centuries on this cruel earth.
Something inside him twisted into a tight spring. After breaking past the gates he didn’t even register how violently he tore through several dead hearts before reaching the locked basement door. The closer he got, the more the dread sank into his bones.
His instincts screamed in his temples, reflecting in trembling fingertips.
Jisung opened the door.
And froze.
A tall glass tank filled with water loomed in the room – a memory of cruel experiments. And inside, limp and floating like a puppet, was him.
“Minho—”
Jisung didn’t remember summoning such strength. Crashing through reinforced glass, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the blue lips and the nearly translucent skin. Nor from the hair drifting like wet silk in the water.
He didn’t feel his own hands turning into shredded meat against the shards.
All he saw was the echo of a life extinguished, as he pulled what used to be a warm body — now cold, like his own — into his arms. Minho’s head lolled back, arms hanging uselessly, and it seemed the heart within this puppet had never been there.
“No”
Jisung hunched over him, a fragile shield, cradling him like a precious thing that might shatter with a careless movement.
“No.. No, Minho, please —”
Jisung’s hands flew to his still chest — one, two, three, four.
Faster. Harder. On the edge of desperation, as if he could force the heart to remember its purpose.
“Minho, wake up. Please, wake up. You can’t do this to me!”
He leaned down, pressed his lips to Minho’s and breathed into them, remembering how he used to be alive himself. A long forgotten past.
“Come on,” His fingers brushed away wet strands from a face that didn’t flinch at the touch. “Min, come on! ”
He breathed out again, refusing to let the hope die.
“You don’t get to do this to me, asshole,” he choked out between frantic attempts to pump Minho’s heart back to life.
“You can’t go without saying goodbye. You hear me? Breathe–”
Jisung felt like choking — for the first time feeling absurdly, unbearably alive.
“You’re stronger than this. You always were. I’m begging you, Min, just–
..breathe ”
He listened for a pulse on the neck, laid his ear to the chest only to be met with a silence comparable to a graveyard’s.
“I’ll trade you my heart if you need it. Just—.. give me something.”
A quiet laugh — bitter, mad with disbelief — echoed off the walls.
This was so, so
..stupid.
Jisung’s hands gripped the soaked fabric of Minho’s shirt.
“I take it back. What I said... About you looking best dead.”
His eyes roamed over the smooth forehead, the lashes no longer trembling, the unnaturally calm face.
“I didn’t mean it. I’ve never meant.”
He pressed his forehead to Minho’s.
“You look terrible, okay? Hideous.”
The tip of his nose brushed over Minho’s.
“You look like a world that’s lost all its color.”
His grip tightened.
“So, come back. Just to prove me wrong. Come back and punch me. Spit in my face. Come back and—
..whatever.
Just come back.”
The room seemed to weep with him — its walls heavy with grief.
And finally, something in Jisung broke. Shattered like glass underfoot. His mouth quivered as he curled over Minho, pulling him into his chest, tracing invisible shapes across pale skin.
“I can’t… ” His voice cracked. “I can’t do this without you. You dumb, beautiful bastard. You were mine. Even if I never said it. Even if you didn’t want it.”
He leaned reverently in and kissed his temple. Then his forehead. Then the little mole on his nose. Each kiss soft and broken, like a prayer.
“I was going to tell you. After one more fight. Or another. I thought we had more time.”
Water trickled from his hair, mixing with the hot silent tears falling onto Minho’s motionless face.
“I can’t live without you.”
And then—
Minho’s fingers twitched first — barely. Then his chest jerked, spine arching violently as water splashed from his mouth. His body fought like it was learning from the very beginning how to breathe. His hands flew in the air. To Jisung.
The vampire froze, eyes wide in disbelief.
“Minho…?”
Minho took a few more ragged breaths, eyes slowly fluttering open, foggy at first, then clearer.
Jisung exhaled in what felt like almost a sob.
“Hey,” he whispered and leaned in to kiss him again — not as goodbye, but to share what warmth he had left. “You idiot. Why would you scare me like this?.”
Minho looked at him for a long time, eyes narrowing slowly. His gaze gradually regained focusб then sank into that tired emptiness that comes only after a string of losses too important to name.
Jisung became instantly remote.
Unreachable.
A phrase throbbed in his head like a wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding:
You'd look best dead.
Like a mantra. Like a prayer. Like doctrine.
Without a word, Minho exhaled shakily, forced himself to raise a hand, and pushed Jisung away before turning with effort and slumping messily to the floor, coughing out what was left of the water from his lungs.
A bitter taste of decay clung to his tongue.
“Minho?” came the voice from behind, but he didn’t answer, only dragged himself to his knees, and then to his feet.
He was unsteady, swaying, and just as his body threatened to fall again, arms — distant, but still familiar — caught him and held him close to something solid and unbearably cold.
“Where are you going? You need a hospital. Please, wait, let me—..”
When Minho shoved him away again, Jisung snapped. He grabbed Minho’s shoulder, gripping the soaked shirt with trembling hands.
“Say something. Please.”
Jisung looked like he meant it. Like this wasn’t just another game, another ancient trick. His expression was unraveling, as if his own world had just caved in.
“Leave me alone,” Minho finally muttered, defeated, taking a step back only to meet more resistance.
“You almost died,” Jisung insisted, his voice rising in disbelief like he was the only one seeing the insanity in Minho’s request. “This place is still crawling with creatures. I’m not leaving you alone. I won’t.”
His eyes scanned Minho’s face like it held the answer to every unspoken fear.
Minho just watched him — detached, unimpressed.
“I thought that was the idea. Isn’t that what you wanted?” His head tilted slightly, words dipped in tired sarcasm and his lips curled in a bitter, exhausted smile.
“What are you talking about?” Jisung’s brows furrowed. His fingers clenched tighter.
Minho never got the chance to explain. Footsteps thundered beyond the wall and in an instant Jisung whisked them away, with nothing but a flicker of thought.
The church, distant from the castle by a good stretch of land, became an unplanned witness.
“I thought I lost you,” Jisung said softly, and it was the first time his voice sounded bare. Like something had split open. He still clung to Minho’s sleeves, like if he let go, Minho might vanish.
Minho felt like throwing up.
Still recovering from the lack of oxygen, he blamed the spinning room on the near-drowning.
“Stop,” he gasped, clutching Jisung’s wrists. “Just— shut up,” he whispered, backing away until cold stone met his spine. “I’ve had enough.” The words hit sharper this time and when he looked up, he couldn’t even make out Jisung’s face through the haze of stinging tears.
Embarrassed, Minho wiped them away with the back of his hand and exhaled shakily.
“Minho, I don’t understand,” Jisung said. His voice smaller now, lost somewhere between the church pews.
“I know it was you,” Minho said bitterly. “Very sweet of you to warn me ahead of time, really. But you should’ve just left me in that graveyard. At least then I wouldn’t feel like such a fucking idiot.”
It hit Jisung instantly. Minho saw it in the way his face fell — like he had burned Jisung with silver.
They stared at each other in silence, broken only by the flutter of a bird’s wings outside, nudging time forward again.
“You’re wrong,” Jisung said, heavy and slow. “That phrase was just a stupid threat. And I got my lesson in full.”
Under the weight of his gaze, Minho suddenly wanted to collapse into nothing.
“I regret saying that. I regret not being there when you needed me most.” Jisung’s shoulders slumped and after a pause he stepped closer. “But don’t blame me for something I didn’t do.”
Minho didn’t even realize how close he’d let him get. They were barely an arm’s length apart. His pulse fluttered under Jisung’s pitch-black eyes, locked on him with quiet finality.
“I should’ve told you this sooner,” Jisung murmured, reaching up to brush a wet lock of hair from Minho’s face, fingers barely grazing skin. “But I’ll say it now, because I won’t keep pretending it isn’t true: You are the most important thing I have, Minho. And I’m done hiding that.”
Minho’s breath caught. His lips parted like he might say something, but nothing came out.
Instead, Jisung’s lips were on his.
A kiss. Unlike the first. Unlike the second one.
Like nothing Minho had ever known.
So full it ached. So light it lifted.
He stood frozen for a few more seconds, staring at Jisung from an impossible closeness, then finally closed his eyes and kissed back, soft and unsure.