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The Hunting Night regurgitated Hongjoong by the bus stop in a ditch once, under the bushes and covered in blood like roadkill. A child amongst bones, halfway still to a hungry frenzy.
When he crawled out from the thorny thicket, he'd found another boy sitting on the bench, kicking his feet in the dust.
The boy looked up.
“Hey,” he said, “where are your clothes?”
This is how Kim Hongjoong met Jeong Yunho. Huddled under Yunho’s uniform blazer as the wind began to blow, he followed him back to a farmhouse down a dirt road, let himself be snuck through a hole in the chain-link fence behind the chicken coop and hosed down just like that, reddish muck crawling off his body and into the dry grass.
The hens watched him warily from a distance. Hongjoong hissed at them and they scattered, a cloud of dusty feathers and offended clucking, and Yunho laughed so hard he doubled over, wheezy and high and pretty, pretty, pretty.
˚
So.
˚
Hongjoong wakes up by the river in the dark, the waves lapping ribbons of blood off his skin and into the water. Thin fog crawls into the crevice and tongues down the hillside through the dry grass. There is blood crusted into the whorls of his skin and bones lie scattered around the riverbank, bitten-clean treasures of collagen and calcium phosphate.
“Good morning,” Hongjoong croaks to the woods. His voice is muffled into the thick undergrowth.
The exhaustion of the Hunting Night keeps him tethered there for a while. When he gathers enough of himself to curl upright, the sky is already grey with dawn and the fog has settled over the grass like a ghost, the mud under Hongjoong’s feet cold, late October frost crusting the edges with a latticework of white. Hongjoong’s belly is full but he feels empty still, somehow. Half-lost.
It will come. Person-Hongjoong. The Hongjoong that wakes up after the Hunting Night is a halfway-house: a shack in which two dark things collide, then blend back into life like fog runs into water, a silvery veil into nothing. An exchange of hostages in the cage of one body.
Home, he thinks. Let’s go home.
There is a house on a hill at the end of a dirt road. It’s all shared property between a human boy and the creature of the Hunting Night: the mirror shard memory of a chicken coop in the back and the concrete steps that lead up to the porch and the smell of disinfectant and the angle of a smile, soft, soft, soft. If Hongjoong was in his right mind—more in his right mind—he might think about the genres of hunger that clamour for control inside his body as he gathers himself, crouching in the dirt. Like this, halfway between the un-memory of the night and the shadow of his human life, he feels only a yearning.
Safety, safety.
Hongjoong stands up. His blurry reflection in the water shows a hunched-up, blood-soaked little creature.
The tugging in his belly wants him to go east, so Hongjoong wades through the shallows and follows the trail of it like a beacon: home.
˚
“Hyung,” Yunho says when he opens the door. “You’re back.”
A century passes between Hongjoon reaching out and his fingers catching on Yunho’s shirt. It’s threadbare, blue—Yunho had it since high school, already an old thing by the time their last school summer rolled around. The summer Hongjoong kissed him. Nineteen, hungry, ashamed of the blood that crusted under his fingernails. Ages ago.
The house is the same. The sound of the dripping tap is the same. Yunho is the same, too, his unhesitant hands coming up to cup Hongjoong’s mud-smeared skull gently like he’s touching something fragile. Hairline cracks on ceramic glaze.
“Don’t you want to bathe first?” Yunho asks. His mouth under Hongjoong’s is soft, giving.
Hongjoong makes a muffled noise and lets Yunho laugh at him as he pulls him closer, through the threshold and into the house.
Hongjoong finds himself suddenly grateful for the time that passed since that summer. That the embarrassment that crept into Hongjoong as he recovered his humanity under Yunho’s mother’s garden hose was shaved away slowly over the years, that he can allow the halfway-thing inside his ribcage to take over and claw under Yunho’s shirt and lay his palms against the softness of his belly without shame. Yunho makes a hoarse little noise. Hongjoong bites his bottom lip and shoves his hands up to palm his chest.
“Fine. No bath, then.”
“Want you,” Hongjoong says into the humid space in the crook of Yunho’s neck. Tall, tall. He’s so tall. The dregs of the Hunting Night want Yunho under him, spread out and pliant and soft. Human-Hongjoong wants to crawl into bed with Yuho as his blanket and forget, forget, forget.
“Sweet hyung,” Yunho whispers, ghostly in the grey morning, into Hongjoong’s hair.
They barely make it to bed. Yunho wrestles Hongjoong down until he’s on his back—it feels good, the strength with which Yunho grips his neck and shoves him into the mattress in sharp contrast to his gentle smile, the softness with which he kisses Hongjoong’s jaw, his shoulder, his chest. Hongjoong revels in the sense-memory of tearing flesh and whines when Yunho reaches for the lube, the ordinary, chemical smell of it a jarring interruption.
“Be good,” Yunho says. Hongjoong bristles and tries to squirm away, away from the hand that snakes between his thighs and finds his soft dick and tugs.
“Want you,” Hongjoong pants, frantic.
Yunho puts two fingers in his mouth and Hongjoong clamps down on them gratefully. The halfway-oddness of the morning is slipping—it’s almost always like this, a Hunting Night and Yunho the day after, the not-human thing inside of Hongjoong seeking his warmth and his strength like night creatures seek shadow from the sun. Home, Hongjoong thinks, whimpering as Yunho’s no-nonsense hand makes him hard. Yunho presses his forehead to Hongjoong’s. His mouth is slack when he lets go of Hongjoong’s dick and reaches behind himself.
“Want you,” Hongjoong tells him, and hopes Yunho hears what he means, the tangled-up picture in his in-between mind: the house, the scent of pine, the sound of water hitting dirt. Yunho, Yunho, Yunho.
Yunho sits on Hongjoong’s dick and folds his body over him, warm, warm. This is the closest Hongjoong will ever get to crawling inside him for shelter.
˚
The second time Hongjoong wakes up is staggeringly normal in comparison.
He’s in the bath. The bath is warm, and it feels like heaven to his sore body—the memory of frost lives under his skin still, and the ordinary pleasure of sitting in a bath frothy with Yunho’s favourite soap is a gentle welcome back to the world.
Yunho sits on the closed toilet lid with a book.
“Oh,” he says when he glances up and finds Hongjoong present, “you’re awake.”
Hongjoong swallows around the knot in his throat and sinks down so the water covers him up to the nose.
Yunho snorts. “What? Embarrassed about the feral animal you brought home today?”
“Shut up,” Hongjoong croaks.
Yunho snickers, folds the corner of the page he’s on and puts the book down on top of the hamper before sitting down on the stool beside the tub. He reaches over to cup Hongjoong’s cheek.
“Feeling better?” he asks.
Hongjoong nods.
“Do you want breakfast?”
Hongjoong nods again.
“Want me to come in and cuddle you first?”
Hongjoong sinks all the way down, warm water rushing in his ears, white noise. His heart beats heavily in his chest.
When he surfaces again, gasping for breath, Yunho is laughing at him. He’s naked. His clothes are piled on the floor under the towel rack and there are bruises on his hips, ten perfect fingerprints in dusky blue.
“Move,” he says, nudging Hongjoong’s shoulder with his foot.
Hungjoong curls up and lets Yunho settle, lets him pull at his shoulders and fuss until Hongjoong is nestled with his back against Yunho’s chest.
“Welcome back,” Yunho says, lips warm on top of Hongjoong’s head.
Then he reaches over for the shampoo, works a generous glob in his palms until it’s frothy, and rubs it into Hongjoong’s hair just like that, an even rhythm. The shampoo smells like him, greenish and familiar. Yunho’s fingers are firm as they work it through his tangles.
Hongjoong curls into him like a squirrel in a hollow tree, closes his eyes and lets himself float.