Work Text:
“You don’t know what I’ve done.”
The metropolitan air is rancid beneath his tongue. Blue and pink and red, like police sirens, like the neon lights waylaid along the highway, gravestone markers on the path to heaven. Hanbin’s never really liked the city, but it’s where he finds himself remaining. He’s just waiting, he always tells himself. Biding his time. Staking out his hunting grounds. Avoiding the countryside, where there will always be a place for you, like Hao said. He stays away.
Matthew would call him soft. Would tell him that he’s a bleeding heart, that he treats marks as strays far too easily. But Matthew’s not in the city, where sex and sin bloats the undercarriage of high society, nothing left for the urban runaways but scraps and dust. Hanbin is. Like now, where he dabs blood from his latest stray’s upper lip, staring straight into increasingly wary brown eyes.
Gyuvin’s about as intimidating as a baby doe. Hanbin would tell him that, but when he first got to the city, too many people told him he didn’t belong. That he—all fresh-faced and pretty-boy—should just go back to where he came from. That he should know his place. He’s tired of being told to know his place, and he refuses to do the same to Gyuvin.
“You don’t know—” Gyuvin starts protesting, and Hanbin shushes him instantly.
“I’ve seen a lot worse.”
I’ve done a lot worse, he almost wants to say. He doesn’t. Just continues dabbing at Gyuvin’s lower lip even though all the blood’s long gone, the byproduct of Hanbin finding him hunched next to the dumpster outside his apartment when he’d gone to throw away the trash. It had been such a ridiculous sight that Hanbin’s first instinct had been to laugh. He regrets that now. Gyuvin’s been suspicious of him ever since, and even though Matthew would mock him for the thought, Hanbin likes his runaways to trust him.
“If you don’t have anywhere else to go,” Hanbin says, gesturing at the expanse of his apartment—barely big enough for one but obviously intended to be for more, with the mattresses spread across the floor, the spare food in the pantry, Taerae’s stuff still set up in the corner. It’s been almost six months since Taerae left but some part of Hanbin still holds out hope. “You can stay here—” He usually gives his runaways a time limit. A week or a month, depending on what condition they’re in. Gyuvin’s fit enough that Hanbin would usually give him two days at most. But for some reason, he kind of likes this one. He didn’t give Taerae a time limit and he can’t see himself giving Gyuvin one either. “—as long as you’d like.”
“Hyung—” He’s still respectful despite the distrust in his gaze, and some part of Hanbin almost wants to tell him to go home. To get out of the underbelly of the city and head to a better place. The rest of him knows Gyuvin doesn’t have a home to go back to anymore. “I’m serious, you don’t know what I’ve done. I’m dangerous.”
This time, Hanbin manages to hold back his chuckle. “Okay, what did you do?”
“I killed my dad.” Gyuvin’s eyes are wide, haunted, rimmed in black. The blood on the hoodie he was wearing when Hanbin found him wasn’t his own. He doesn’t give a reason, but Hanbin saw the bruises mottled blue and purple over his back when he cleaned him up. He can make his own guesses. “I’m a murderer, hyung.”
Judging by how he’s still shaking, it was probably an impulse kill. Just like Hanbin’s first. After that, they got more calculated. Premeditated. Marching to the law of the jungle. He smiles for the first time. Drinks in the way Gyuvin’s eyes widen when he sees his teeth. “Takes one to know one, I guess.”
Gyuvin is silent for a moment. Hanbin waits with bated breath, searching for his next move. If he runs, he will become a mark once more no matter how pretty he is.
He doesn’t. Instead, he just looks up at Hanbin with eyes a touch less wary and asks, “Will you bite me?”
Hanbin shrugs. “Only if you want me to.”
Gyuvin fiddles with his hands. Like he isn’t quite sure what to do with all his limbs now that he’s here, clean and dry and in the home of something far deadlier than he himself ever could be. Hanbin was like that, once, before he left for the city and everything went to shit. “What’s the catch?”
“There’s no catch.” He stares out the window. The sun will rise soon. “Just think of it as help from one stray to another.”