"There are a lot of things I've done that I hope someday I can be forgiven for. If there are any gods left, watching life play out on the shambles of this ruined earth, maybe they'll be kind whenever I pass into their realm. It's the least they owe us, right? For sitting on the sidelines all this time. Don't make that face, Namjoon-ah. Ghosts haunt all of us in different forms. I have my regrets, and then the things I wouldn't change for all the money and status in the world. Helping you has always fallen into the second category. Please make sure it never switches over to the first."

- Excerpt from a letter by Kim Seokjin to his cousin, Kim Namjoon

_ _

He takes Park Jimin home, a silent gulf hovering between them in the car and then the elevator ride up to his floor. He stares first out the window and then at the ticking numbers and tries to organize everything in his head—lay a timeline down that will give Jimin a coherent picture without straying too far into the painful, shadowed parts. Though, maybe, that's exactly where he needs to go. Just dig up the fucking roots and get it over with. Does he trust Park Jimin that much? Does he trust anyone that much?

The elevator dings—a cheerful sound he's always loathed—and Jimin punches in the code to the front door, which Seokjin doesn't remember ever teaching him. As soon as the door closes behind them, Jimin is reaching for his collar. Seokjin watches as Jimin practically tears the strip of leather from his neck and hurls it onto the couch. He doesn't stop there, though. Next go the sparkly earrings, then the fancy shoes, then he reaches up with the sleeve of his white shirt and frantically wipes the makeup from his face, ruining the pristine fabric in the process.

Seokjin doesn't know what to say and can't look at the bruising on Jimin's neck for too long without wanting to throw up, so he stumbles into the guest bathroom and retrieves a bunch of wet wipes from a drawer. Jimin blinks at him when he returns to hand them over.

"For your face," he says, since Jimin's makeup has smeared down his cheeks and under his eyes.

Jimin nods and takes the wipes with a shaky hand. Seokjin leaves him again—scrubbing roughly at the remnants of makeup—to see what alcohol he can excavate from his cupboards and fridge. No law says he has to be sober for this conversation. His phone buzzes as he's pulling out a bottle of whiskey. It's Sohyun, asking why he left the party, saying that she was hoping to speak with him. He reads beneath the innocuous words to the demand underneath: come back.

Come back.

With hands shaking nearly as bad as Jimin's, he unscrews the cap on the bottle and takes a large gulp of the whiskey, swallowing through the aching burn of it in his throat.

Give me a few hours, he texts back. Dealing with my companion.

It's not even really a lie. He almost starts laughing at that, but he doesn't think it would sound very sane at the moment, so he settles for another mouthful of whiskey. No law says he has to be sober to deal with Sohyun, either, or what she's inevitably going to request of him tonight.

Ha. Might as well break all the way, right? What the hell.

"You should share the alcohol," Jimin rasps, suddenly on the opposite side of Seokjin's little breakfast counter. He startles, but dutifully hands over the bottle and watches Jimin swallow down even more than he did.

Jimin sets the bottle down between them when he's done, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

"I don't know where to start," Seokjin admits and feels more vulnerable than he has all night.

"At the beginning?" Jimin suggests. His silver hair has come free from it's rigid styling, flopping onto his forehead. It makes him look younger.

A punch of laughter finally breaks free from Seokjin's mouth, knocking against his teeth and hitting the air in a staccato burst.

"Yeah," he says and reaches for the bottle again. "I guess so."

When he looks back through his life, he often sees it not as one continuous film but a series of moments. Like a flickering, Old World zoetrope that he read about in a dusty history book during his college days.

Those, he supposes, he can let Park Jimin see.

_ _

Flicker.

_ _

Fourteen.

A funeral with empty caskets because there is no room in the city to bury the dead. Now, elite or Marked, everyone burns at the end. Seokjin's suit is perfectly tailored and steadily choking him—the collar so starched he feels like he can barely turn his neck. The urge to tug on it buzzes insistently in the back of his mind, but he keeps his hands rigid at his sides, aware of his grandmother's continuous glances in his direction. He's not sure what she's looking for. Proper composure? Tears?

He keeps expecting those to come. Two of those coffins belong to his parents. The other two are Namjoon's parents and next to Seokjin, he's crying softly—head bent and a hand over his eyes, but shoulders hitching, giving him away. Seokjin just feels hollow, like everything vital was long-ago scooped out of him and only this shell remains.

He realizes, with detachment, that he doesn't know if he loved his parents or they loved him. Maybe, none of them are really capable of love. Even Namjoon, in his grief, is only crying because he knows he's supposed to. It's unseemingly not to display human emotion, even if you're not feeling it.

But Seokjin can't make tears come like Namjoon so he stares at the fake flowers filling the open caskets, thinking that there must be a metaphor in there somewhere. The emptiness inside of him howls like wind over the barren land beyond the city walls, echoing and endless and unsatisfied.

_ _

Flicker.

_ _

Sixteen.

A party his cousin wasn't supposed to bring him to. Everyone is adorned in beautiful clothes and beautiful skin and the drugs he took have turned the tacky wallpaper of this apartment into a whirling mass of color. He feels buoyant and weightless—his thoughts formless, inconsequential things that flutter away on moth's wings when he tries to grasp them.

His cousin smiles at him, all brilliant white teeth, and hands him a glass of something alcoholic that he drinks without question. Someone else approaches—a tinkling laugh heralding their arrival. He vaguely recognizes one of his cousin's university friends, who is just as tall and handsome as his cousin is. His smile is blinding, too, and it takes Seokjin a moment to register the leash he has in his hand and the person on the other end of it. He's seen many companions in Sector 1, but never this close. Never with his cousin whispering in his ear that they have a treat for him, laughter tinging the words.

Seokjin stares, wide-eyed and from somewhere on the ceiling, as the companion kneels in front him. He can't make out her face through the blur of the drugs and drink, but he thinks she must be pretty and her hands are practiced when she unbuttons his pants. A tiny, faded voice hisses urgently at him to stop this, but he bats it away. He's floating and he feels good and this is what companions are for, isn't it? So he lets her pull him out of his underwear, lets her get him hard with practiced strokes of her hand, then lets her swallow him down—all wet, perfect heat.

He groans, tipping his head back to the ceiling, and his cousin laughs and laughs and laughs. He wishes he knew what the joke was.

_ _

Flicker.

_ _

Seventeen.

The study of his parent's apartment, which feels too quiet now that his father isn't here to occupy it, and Namjoon's terrified face. It's just the two of them now, after Namjoon said he needed to speak privately and Seokjin dismissed the staff. He hates having them around, anyway. Doesn't know how to talk to them or handle the pitying glances that they aim at his back when he thinks he isn't looking. The poor orphaned rich boy. He wonders what they tell their families about him.

"Why would you tell me this?" he asks Namjoon now, feeling almost hysterical. They don't really have any kind of relationship, even though they're close in age and bonded by the simultaneous death of their parents. Seokjin doesn't know how to be close to anyone, these days, even his younger cousin who is also pretty much alone.

(Who has been keeping a terrible secret that's turned Seokjin's world on its head.)

"Why?"

Namjoon swallows, fidgets in the armchair. He looks ready to cry again. "I-I don't know. I don't have anyone else," he hiccups.

"You shouldn't have told anyone," Seokjin snaps and Namjoon flinches. His eyes are huge and watery in his too-pale face.

Seokjin feels a pang of unwanted sympathy and ignores it in favor of trying to wrap his head around the enormity of what Namjoon's just told him.

His cousin has the mutation— the mutation—and instead of killing him as a baby, his parents chose to let him live and buried the medical records. Except for the single copy that sits on the desk between them. Seokjin's hands twitch with the urge to tear it to pieces so they can pretend this never happened.

"Who else knows?" he asks. Demands.

Namjoon shakes his head. "Um ... I think just you. My parents n-never told anyone else in the family."

And yet Namjoon's chosen to bring him into this. To make him bear the burden of it because he was too weak and scared to carry it alone. Seokjin wishes he could hate him, but Namjoon looks far too young and pitiful for that strong of an emotion. Instead he takes a deep, calming breath and hands the medical report back to Namjoon.

"Hide this. I never saw it. We never spoke about this."

"H-hyung," Namjoon stammers, looking like Seokjin smacked him.

"Never, do you understand me?" Seokjin snaps and Namjoon nods quickly, pocketing the cursed medical report. "And don't ever bring it up again. I won't either. This stays hidden, you never should have brought it to me in the first place. Got it?"

"Yes," Namjoon whispers.

"Good," Seokjin says and sinks back into his father's old chair. "Get out."

Namjoon hiccups on a sob and flees the room, slamming the door to the study shut behind him. Seokjin listens to him leave the apartment all together and tells himself that this is for the best. Namjoon needs to harden, needs to bury all those soft and fragile parts of him beneath several layers of steel, or he's never going to survive.

The hollowness in Seokjin still aches. He thinks that if he examined it long enough, that ache might turn into guilt, so he grinds it down beneath a mental heel and raids his father's liquor cabinet.

Maybe if he drinks enough, he'll forget Namjoon coming to him entirely.

_ _

Flicker.

_ _

Eighteen.

A boarding house and a dingy room with stained carpet and a double-bed that's all worn mattress and creaking springs. A single floor lamp and a flickering neon sign outside the window that tints the room in strange shades of gold and red. He stares at the sobbing woman on the bed and wishes he knew what to do.

Nothing is off limits, the proprietor told him with a smile and a gesture to the array of horrifying tools in the cabinet on the wall above the bed.

Have fun, his cousin said and slapped him on the back. Happy Birthday.

He steps closer to the woman and watches her flinch away from him with a terrified whimper. Her arms and wrists are bound to the metal posters of the bed with lengths of rope and her lank hair fans across the pillow. She's young, perhaps around Seokjin's age, and bruising patterns already litter her arms and bare thighs. Someone whipped her across the stomach and breasts recently—the lashes still red—and when she opens her mouth to cry again, he notices that several of her teeth are missing.

The sheets of the bed are red, but he thinks he can still make out the faded dark of old blood on the cheap silk.

He can't look at the tools on the wall—whips and saws and knives and other devices he doesn't recognize—or her face, twisted into a grotesque mask of fear. Instead he stares at her trembling hands, the deep furrows from the rope around her wrists. Several of her fingernails are missing, too—clearly torn off—and oh god he's going to vomit.

He ends up back in the hallway, leaning against the tacky wallpaper with a hand over his chest as he struggles to breathe and his vision tunnels. He hasn't felt this awake since before his parents died and he wishes desperately for drugs or alcohol or anything to bring the hollow, comforting emptiness back.

This is what companions are for.

He remembers the woman knelt between his legs at a distant party and has to swallow back a fresh rush of bile. He can still hear the woman crying. Not once has she begged him for mercy, already resigned to her horrific fate.

"Is there a problem, sir?" a voice asks and he jerks his head up to see the proprietor frowning at him, accenting the wrinkles around her mouth and in the corners of her eyes. "Is she not satisfactory? We have others you can choose from, if—"

"I'd like to buy her," Seokjin blurts.

The proprietor blinks. "I'm sorry?"

"I'd like to buy her," he repeats and pushes himself off the wall, reaching for confidence somewhere within his trembling heart and contorting it into a mask he can fit over his face. "This place is filthy, I'd much rather ... play in the comfort of my own home."

The proprietor looks vaguely offended by the slight to her establishment, which is almost hilarious considering Seokjin can see a dirty smudge on his suit from the wallpaper and the carpet doesn't look like it's been cleaned in the last several decades. Are all boarding houses this seedy or does his cousin just like the horror aesthetic?

"Name your price," he says and the offense vanishes at the promise of more money. Predictable.

The proprietor rattles off a number far too high for someone in the woman's condition, but Seokjin agrees without hesitation—desperate to get away from here and the faint screams he can hear from behind closed doors down the hall, accompanied by the woman's continued, endless sobs within the room he just vacated.

"Excellent, sir," the proprietor says with a bow and a polite smile. "Let me get the contract." She begins tapping on the tablet Seokjin didn't even realize she was holding. "Do you want us to arrange delivery?"

"I'll take her with me tonight," Seokjin says and signs with his finger at the bottom of the contract that the proprietor has pulled up on her tablet. The brightness of the screen hurts his eyes in this dim hallway and his signature is wobbly from his trembling hands, but if the proprietor notices, she doesn't comment on it.

"Excellent, sir," she says and waits while Seokjin transfers over the money with a few taps to the screen of his phone.

Just like that, he's purchased a human being. He watches, numb, as the proprietor pulls out her own phone and texts, one-handed and rapid, what looks like a series of instructions to what must be one of the employees in the building. The woman is to be untied and dressed and moved to Seokjin's car immediately.

The mysterious employee answers back with a confirmation.

"I'll wait by the car," Seokjin says, unable to bear the idea of waiting here surrounded by so much misery. "Please pass my apologies on to my cousin and inform him I've left."

He's with a different sanctioned right now and Seokjin cannot contemplate what horrors he might be committing without the danger of throwing up presenting itself again. He thinks of the bright, cheerful smile his cousin almost always wears and shudders, knowing that he'll never be able to look at it the same after tonight.

Perhaps nothing will be the same, because the woman cries nearly the whole ride to Seokjin's apartment, curled up in the corner of the seat in an impossibly tiny ball and regarding him like a monster. His skin crawls. He wants a drink so badly he aches with the desire. For the first time in a long time he feels hopelessly young and out of his depth, and he doesn't know how to remedy it. There is no one he can call for advice, and his parents never owned companions. He has no history to fall back on.

So he puts the woman in the guest bedroom.

"You can sleep in here," he tells her as he sets a glass of water by the bedside table, trying to make his voice as kind and soothing as possible. He thinks it only sounds stern, judging from her flinch and the way she presses her body down against the white bed covers, trying to make herself even smaller.

"I won't hurt you," he promises and knows she doesn't believe him. "Please get some rest."

She won't meet his eyes, so he retreats to the master suite that has become his after his parents died. God, he doesn't even know her name. Is she hungry? Probably. He has no idea how to cook, though, and he's not about to summon his family's old chef in the middle of the night to feed his companion. She's finally stopped crying, at least. Maybe she'll fall asleep soon and they can deal with this in the morning. He'll get her clothes and food and figure out what the hell he's going to do with her. The thought of touching her is actually horrifying but the staff will ask questions if he just ... keeps her locked up in his guest bedroom.

Maybe there's a way to free her?

He scrubs a hand over his face and shakes his head. His head is pounding and he still feels vaguely queasy—this can all wait until the morning. He'll (hopefully) be able to think more clearly then.

Not even bothering to take off his clothes, he falls asleep on top of the covers within only a few minutes, emotional exhaustion pulling him swiftly under.

But when he wakes early the next morning, the apartment is too silent. He can't hear any kind of movement from the guest bedroom as he emerges into the main living area, not even a rustle of sheets. A weird sort of dread settling heavy in his bones, he creeps down the short hallway to the door and pushes it open...

And finds her. On the bed. His brain always stutters here, refusing to remember things clearly—piece it all together. Instead there are only a series of disconnected images that seared themselves in with vivid, terrible clarity: the red splatters all over the bed, like someone flung paint around; the white, lifeless pallor of her skin; the dark fan of her hair against the pillows, just like in the boarding house; the piece of glass clutched in her limp hand and the shards scattered across the floor—he didn't even hear her break it, slept right through her—

His legs give out and he ends up on his knees in the doorway, hand clapped over his mouth. He watches blood drip to the floor from where one of her arms hangs off the bed and feels his eyes well with tears for the first time since he was a child.

He's awfully, painfully awake and he knows he'll never be able to go to sleep again. Something vital in him has shifted and roared to life with an earth-shattering scream he thinks might always be lodged in the back of his throat from this moment on.

I killed her, he'll tell his cousin later, when he calls to ask about disposing of her body (he still doesn't know her name, not even her name). Got a little too carried away.

His cousin will laugh and call him a "sick bastard" like it's a joke and the scream will build, even louder than before. Until all he'll be able to hear is the ringing echo of it in his ears.

_ _

Flicker.

_ _

Nineteen.

A new apartment, because he couldn't stand to be in his parents' anymore, after the bloodstains wouldn't wash out of the sheets in the guest bedroom. It's a smaller place, and he refuses to hire any staff, much to his grandmother's disapproval. Instead, he learns how to cook his own meals and gets down on his knees to scrub his own floors, sometimes until his hands are chapped and raw from the bleach.

I want to be a doctor, he told his grandmother and she called it a ridiculous idea but let him enroll in medical school because she loved Seokjin's father more than she'll ever love him and his death created a convenient soft spot that might not have otherwise existed.

He still has no idea what to do about the scream, but his thoughts keep circling back to Namjoon, whom he's barely spoken to in the past year. Namjoon, who could have been in that boarding house if not for an accident of birth and an act of parental compassion. Namjoon, who is seventeen now and still terribly alone after Seokjin pushed him away.

Perhaps, this is where he can start.

He never deleted Namjoon's contact information from his phone, so he sends off a text, inviting him for dinner and gets an acceptance back faster than he was anticipating. Looks like maybe he still has some bridges he hasn't completely burned.

But Namjoon is wide-eyed and hesitant when he arrives for dinner the next night, hovering in the doorway like he isn't sure if Seokjin is actually going to grant him entry. He's gotten taller in the last two years and now he's all long limbs and ill-fitting clothes—a boy struggling to shape himself into a man. He's dyed his hair a platinum blond that Seokjin thinks makes his features a little too harsh, but he was the one who thought Namjoon should strengthen the protective shell around his heart so he doesn't comment on it, just steps aside to let Namjoon in.

"I wasn't sure if I'm supposed to bring anything," Namjoon says awkwardly and hands over a bottle of soju. Seokjin blinks, surprised that Namjoon is drinking. Legal age is sixteen, but...

"Thank you," he says, hating this awkwardness as he sets the soju on the table and gestures for Namjoon to sit. He tried to cook as much as possible, even procuring beef in spite of the astronomical prices, and his afternoon spent toiling in the kitchen is suddenly paid off by the shocked and elated expression that crosses Namjoon's face.

"You cooked all this yourself, hyung?" he says in awe as Seokjin gestures for him to sit.

"Yes, I've been practicing."

Namjoon nods and the awkwardness lingers all the way through serving the food and the drink and taking their first bites. He could have cooked the noodles longer, he realizes immediately, but Namjoon doesn't seem to mind, eating without any complaint. Seokjin knows that this is his rift to mend, in spite of how much he'd prefer to ignore the problem until it curls up and slinks away.

"I'm sorry, Namjoon-ah," he ends up blurting out when Namjoon's in the middle of drinking.

Namjoon coughs, soju spilling down his chin. He hastily wipes it away with a napkin, shaking his head. "No, it was my fault—you were right, I shouldn't have—"

"No," Seokjin insists, cutting him off. "No, you trusted me and I reacted badly." He takes a deep breath. "We're family and we need to stick together." There are sharks in the water, he doesn't say. He suspects Namjoon already knows. "I'll keep this secret, Namjoon-ah. And any others you want to tell me. I'm your hyung and you can ... you can always come to me. I mean that."

He tries to leave his face open, sincere—keep himself from closing off like he so desperately wants to. He's not good at this, he thinks. This vulnerability. Exposing all these squishy, tender parts of him when he knows how easily they can be wounded, can be taken to use against him. But, judging by the watery sheen to Namjoon eyes, he doesn't think he's in danger of that right now.

"Thank you," Namjoon says, sounding a little strangled. He fidgets, like he wants to reach out but isn't sure if he should. In the end, he settles for putting his hands on the table, fingers laced together. When he smiles up at Seokjin it's a weak, trembling thing but it feels like a beginning.

Seokjin returns the smile, uncertain of what to call the feeling gradually unfurling in his chest, pushing up against his lungs.

He thinks it might be love. Or as close to it as he's ever come.

_ _

Flicker.

_ _

Twenty.

A course-load that's drowning him slowly and Namjoon sobbing over the phone in the middle of the night, fresh from a boarding house. Seokjin's barely slept in a week, but it's easy to say come over, Namjoon-ah, as his chest constricts at the sounds of Namjoon's terrified distress. He hasn't spoken to the cousin that took him two years ago, but he suddenly wants to call him up and scream at him for doing this to Namjoon . Namjoon, who is soft in ways Seokjin has never been and feels so much. Namjoon, who has always known that such horrors could easily have befallen him, in another life.

But that will only arouse suspicion he doesn't need so he settles on making tea while he waits for Namjoon to come over, trying to figure out how he's going to navigate this. He pulls up comforting words in his head: that will never happen to you, you're safe, it's horrible but it's over and you never have to go there again.

All of them feel too trite. Too dismissive of the nameless woman who died in his guest bedroom.

In the end, they're pointless, because Namjoon collapses into his arms as soon as Seokjin opens the door. Seokjin staggers back a step from his weight, socked feet slipping on the tile, but manages to right himself quickly and hold on.

"Hyung," Namjoon hiccups, shaking. He seems so young right now and Seokjin experiences an unfamiliar surge of protectiveness. Pulls him closer.

"It's horrific," he says quietly. "Isn't it?"

"They told me ... nothing was off limits," Namjoon whispers. " Nothing."

Seokjin cups the back of his head, fingers tangled in strands of blond hair. "It's unforgivable." He's known that for a long time, even as he's tried to bury his head in the sand. The scream is back, raging through the apartment, rattling the windows, clawing at the back of his throat. "Do you want to do something about it?"

Namjoon pulls back to stare at him with stunned, red-rimmed eyes. "What?"

A giddy, almost hysterical laugh is bubbling in his throat. "Let's do something about it, Namjoon-ah," he says. "Let's change the world."

And as he says it, he realizes that he's serious. The scream is shifting focus, direction.

Tear it down, it roars. Tear it all down.

Namjoon's face hardens into determination, in spite of the remnants of tears streaked down his cheeks. "Yeah, hyung," he says and sounds just as serious as Seokjin feels. "Let's change the world."

_ _

Flicker.

_ _

Twenty-two.

A bedroom in a penthouse apartment and Kang Sohyun's fingers in his hair. He thinks sometimes that in a different world and as different people, he could have loved her. She's beautiful, witty, smart—everything he could want in a partner. Except for the knife-sharp cruelty that lurks beneath her constructed facade. He's stayed with her because it keeps his grandmother happy, which keeps her from examining his life too closely, or the plans he's started to make with Namjoon.

It's not a terrible price to pay, he thinks, considering everything in this world is a game or a business transaction or somewhere between the two. Sacrifice is just as necessary as ruthlessness, if you want to stay alive.

"We should have some fun," Sohyun says tonight, a wicked smile curling in the corner of her mouth.

That tone is always foreboding. Last time, it meant she wanted to tie him up and blindfold him. He hadn't liked the tightness of the ropes around his wrists or the helplessness of being deprived of sight for so long or the spiky, painful toy she used on the inside of his thighs and his cock, but she'd at least let him come at the end of it.

He braces himself for whatever she might suggest now and arches an eyebrow. "What do you have in mind?"

She winks at him, even more foreboding, and tells him to get undressed as she leaves the room. He starts unbuttoning his shirt, trying not to chew on his bottom lip and let any visible signs of nervousness slip through. She'll just pounce on that like a lion smelling blood. He doesn't mind most of the things they do in bed together, he reminds himself, as he steps out of his pants and folds them over the chair in the corner of her spacious room. They're even fun, usually, though he'd prefer some softness to go along with the rougher kink she favors.

He has his fingers hooked into the band of his underwear when she returns, guiding a young man on a leash—one of her male companions, that he's seen at parties before but always carefully avoided. A chill washes over him and he fights hard to keep it off his face.

"Noona," he says, playful. "I told you I'm not into sharing companions."

It's been the one thing she's respected so far, but he was foolish, thinking that would last.

"Come on," she says now. "What's wrong with a little fun?" She instructs the companion over to the bed.

Seokjin notices he's barely wearing anything—dressed in only a skimpy pair of shorts—and his body's been waxed of any hair. He's young, too, perhaps around Namjoon's age and his eyes have the familiar glaze of drugs over them, though not enough to make him completely unaware. Seokjin's so focused on the companion that he doesn't notice Sohyun crossing the room and has to fight down a flinch when her hands find his hips and slide down, knocking his own away from his underwear so she can play with the band, stretching it down to reveal more skin.

"I want him to fuck you," she whispers into the back of his shoulder. "And then I'm going to, while you fuck him."

No, Seokjin thinks, but he can't force the word out past the block in his throat, past the knowledge that he can't refuse this. She would ask questions and then his grandmother would ask questions and then...

He laughs, tilting his head to the side to accept the graze of Sohyun's teeth on his neck. "Okay," he says, letting anxiety translate into breathy anticipation. "Why the hell not, he's pretty."

"Isn't he?" Sohyun says. "I thought you'd like him."

His stomach churns at the idea of having a preference, but it doesn't matter. He tells himself that as he lays down on the bed and spreads his legs for Sohyun. As he stares at the ceiling and breathes through the intrusion of her fingers and then the companion's cock. As he forces his own hips to move and his mouth to moan and his hand to find the companion's hair and pull, a reminder of who's in charge, in spite of their positions.

He wishes he'd taken pills for this. He wishes he didn't have to hear the hitch of the companion's breathing or the filth Sohyun's whispering in his ear. Didn't have to feel trembling beneath his palm as he pushes the companion onto the bed after, as Sohyun says don't bother getting him ready and he obeys her and the companion sobs into the pillows, which only makes Sohyun laugh and—

_ _

Flicker, flicker, flicker, flicker —

_ _

"Seokjin," Park Jimin says in horror and he hiccups, foggy with alcohol and memory. Fuck, he hadn't meant to ... he was going to skip over...

"I know," he croaks and wonders if he has more liquor stashed somewhere, the whiskey bottle's empty. "I'm a monster. Do you want a knife yet or should I keep going?"

"Seokjin," Jimin repeats and he doesn't look angry, when Seokjin finally works up the courage to glance in his direction. He's perched on the edge of the sofa, hands fisted against the tops of his thighs, but his bruised face is full of raw sympathy instead of rage. "Seokjin, she—she raped you."

Seokjin blinks, thrown. Of all the reactions he was expecting, this wasn't even close to being on the list. He chokes on a breath that's trapped somewhere between a laugh and a sob and wobbles to his feet in search of another drink. He's still too fucking sober for this or for the insistent buzz of his phone in his pocket.

"Haven't you heard, Jimin-ah," he asks as he locates a bottle of wine in the fridge, "that word doesn't exist here."

Jimin makes a furious, frustrated sound. "It does, it—"

"It doesn't matter." Seokjin drinks straight from the bottle, uncaring when red drips down his chin to stain his shirt.

"Seokjin—"

"No," he turns to frown at Jimin, who has risen to his feet. "It can't matter. I can't let it matter. Surely you have things like that too."

He's always gotten the sense that Park Jimin was forged by an existence of blood and grit, surely he has ghosts he can't look at—that he refuses to lend power to. Seokjin can see it on his face, even before he shakes his head in resignation.

"People have tried," he says quietly, staring down at his hands. "I'm small and pretty, I guess. Of course they—but I'm good at fighting. No one ever managed to ...." He takes a shaky breath and Seokjin wonders why he's sharing this when he's not the one who promised to cut himself open. Wounds for wounds, perhaps? It doesn't feel like something Seokjin deserves, but he's grateful.

"The first time," Jimin continues, "it wasn't me. It was Taehyung. Someone tried to hurt Taehyung ... when we were kids, in the orphanage. I heard him crying and I ...."

"What did you do?" Seokjin asks, crossing back into the living room to hand Jimin the half-empty bottle of wine. Jimin takes it but doesn't drink—eyes focused somewhere far away.

"I killed him," Jimin says and a chill runs down Seokjin's spine, followed by a vicious satisfaction that takes him off guard. "I didn't really mean to but ... he hurt Taehyung." Jimin's gaze snaps back into focus, blazing. "I made him pay and I don't regret it. Even if it got us kicked out of the orphanage. We were better on our own, anyway."

"Good," Seokjin says. "You shouldn't regret it." He sinks back onto the couch. "I do."

Jimin's face twists. "Seokjin...."

"I'm not done yet."

He can't keep dwelling on that room and Sohyun and the companion that curled up in a miserable ball when Seokjin was finished with him, eyes squeezed shut and dark hair falling over his face. Who trembled when Seokjin curled fingers around his neck under Sohyun's instructions—holding him down until Sohyun was finished, as well—and then thanked them both in a watery voice, for using him.

Seokjin quietly threw up in the bathroom that night while Sohyun slept and then stood in a boiling shower until his skin was red before cranking it to freezing because it was the only immediate punishment he could give himself.

Never again, he thought back then. Never, ever again.

"I'm not done," he repeats, looking back up at Jimin. "Do you want to hear the rest?"

"Yes, tell me." And to his surprise, Jimin comes over to sit down next to him and takes his hand. Something is shifting between them, Seokjin can feel it and he wants to ... but those are his initials on Jimin's arm, stark black against the pale of Jimin's skin where he's rolled his dirty sleeves up. Slightly horrified at himself, Seokjin locks the burgeoning desire away and takes another drink.

_ _

Flicker.

_ _

Twenty-three.

A coarse rug beneath his knees as he kneels in his grandmother's living room, hunching himself down small. She watches him from the armchair that might as well be a throne, cold and impervious as always.

"Please," Seokjin says into the frigid stillness, "leave him alone. He's never harmed anyone in this family."

"He's an abomination," his grandmother says, and her voice is calm—like she's merely stating a fact. "My son was foolish to allow him to live. I'm going to correct that mistake."

Seokjin grits his teeth. He doesn't know how she found out about Namjoon's mutation, but he's thankful that one of his idiot cousins blabbed about her plans to "take him out," as the cousin so eloquently put it. And he can't let that happen—not to the only person in this world he's ever loved. He doesn't care what he has to lay at his grandmother's feet.

There is one thing he knows she might accept, the biggest card he can play.

"Spare him," he says, looking up at her, "and I'll give up my position as heir."

He's taken her by surprise, he can tell, even if she manages to keep most of the reaction from showing.

"You've never liked me, halmeoni," he continues. "We both know that. This way, you can appoint whoever you want. I'll step aside without any fuss, as long as you spare Namjoon."

She's quiet for a long moment, contemplating. "And you'll give up medical school. You'll go to whatever backwater job I decide to appoint you to and you'll stay out of our family's affairs."

He figured she'd demand this too. She's never forgiven him for breaking up with Sohyun and now she's going to take the opportunity to dig the knife in as deep as possible, vindictive person that she is. He takes a deep breath and crushes his preemptive grief. Namjoon's life is more important than a profession, than a dream, than anything else.

"Yes," he promises. He's only a few months away from graduating but it doesn't matter, doesn't matter, doesn't matter —"you have my word."

"Then I suppose I can spare him," his grandmother concedes, and Seokjin bows again in thanks. "But if he causes any trouble, our deal is void."

"I understand." He climbs to his feet, pauses on his way to the door. "And, halmeoni, if you ever go back on our deal and try to harm him, I promise that everyone in this city will know that your grandson had the mutation, and you murdered him in cold blood. You have my word on that too."

It would easily destroy her reputation, such gossip—even if murder is common in Sector 1, no one shines a glaring spotlight on it.

He leaves before she can respond to him, uncaring of whatever her answer might be. For now, Namjoon is safe, and he succeeded. The reminder of that victory is what helps him through withdrawing from his final courses, citing family issues to his instructors and university administration—and if he gets spectacularly drunk alone in his apartment the night after the final paperwork goes through and his grandmother sends him a notice for a boring office job in Sector 2, no one will ever know.

Not even Namjoon, who comes to him a few days later, buzzing with shocked outrage.

"You dropped out? Why?"

Seokjin's already resolved never to tell him—he doesn't need the guilt it might cause. "You know grandmother's always hated me," he says with a tired smile and a shrug. "She finally decided on revenge for Sohyun."

Rage twists Namjoon's face. He's always hated Sohyun. "By forcing you to give up med school? That's ... let me talk to her, I can—"

"No," Seokjin snaps, grabbing Namjoon's shoulder as he turns to the door. "She likes you even less, remember? It's fine, Namjoon-ah. Hyung's fine, okay? It's not the end of the world."

Namjoon doesn't believe him, that's obvious, but he also knows not to push.

"Besides," Seokjin continues in response to his silence, "we have bigger things to worry about, right?"

Some of the anger clears from Namjoon's face, replaced by growing excitement. "Oh, hyung, that's what I wanted to talk to you about, before I heard ... I think I've found us a forger."

Another victory, and one a long time coming. Seokjin grasps it with both hands and holds on tight. "Someone you trust?"

Namjoon nods. "He's a classmate and he's good. He'll help us." He reaches up and places his big hands on Seokjin's shoulders. "Let's change the world, hyung."

"Yeah, Namjoon-ah," Seokjin whispers, chest tight. "Let's."

_ _

Flicker.

The years blink forward.

He puts a former companion on a train in the middle of the night—the first of what will hopefully be many. She grasps his hands on the platform and whispers thank you over and over until it's time for her to board. It does nothing to soothe the emptiness or settle the scream, but he breathes in slow relief on the car ride back home.

Flicker.

Namjoon graduates college and then accepts a job in the same dusty office where Seokjin occupies a tiny corner desk.

You're better than this, Seokjin says to him in dismay.

So are you, Namjoon says with a shrug and accepts a stack of paperwork from their perpetually-grumpy boss—a second uncle who's never liked either of them.

Flicker.

I hear you've developed some interesting tastes, Sohyun says at a party, smiling in delight.

All thanks to you, really, he teases back and pretends the lie doesn't sear his tongue.

Flicker.

Jungkook curls up small and scared in his bathtub, wounded back on display, and he sees another companion on a distant bed, trying to hide in the same way. Feels then and now collapsing into a single blade point buried in his gut.

Flicker.

Yoongi looks at him from across Namjoon's coffee table and one glance feels enough to take him apart. This is a leader, he thinks, so evident in the way Yoongi holds himself, in spite of the seals and the tattoos and the weariness on his face. This is a revolutionary, and perhaps if anyone is most suited to the throne, it's him. Not Seokjin, with all his shadows, trying so desperately to be kind to appease the endless bleed of his heart.

All he can give is a promise, empty words, and it's never enough, the scream just keeps building and building and—

Flicker flicker flicker flicker...

_ _

His voice is hoarse from talking so much and his phone won't stop buzzing as the hours tick by and Sohyun grows impatient. He's dug it all up, every sharp-edge piece that no longer fits, every rotting root—no one has ever seen this much of him, he thinks, and it's terrifying. He stares up at the ceiling instead of looking at Jimin and waits for judgment.

"Thank you," is all Jimin says. "For telling me. For ... you're a good person, Seokjin. You'll make a good king."

He laughs. "Do you really believe that?"

Fingers find his jaw and turn his head. For a moment, he gets lost in the dark of Jimin's eyes—almost misses Jimin saying, "yes, I really do."

And then Jimin kisses him, hand cupping his cheek and body arched up over his. Seokjin gasps against Jimin's mouth—his own hands instinctively moving up to grip Jimin's sides. The warmth of Jimin's lips is perfect, so easy to lose himself in as Jimin settles on top of him. He wants to stay here forever, cocooned like this—wants to open his mouth for Jimin's tongue and his body for Jimin's hands, but ...

"Jimin-ah," he murmurs, shifting his head away. He's not sure what protest he wants to give voice to—don't do this because you pity me, because you think you have to, because you want to forget, because my initials are on your arm and the bruises I made are on your neck—so they all end up dying on his tongue.

Maybe Jimin can still read them in his face, though. He pushes Seokjin's hair off his forehead, wearing a soft expression that Seokjin's never seen. "When was the last time someone kissed you and you wanted them to?"

"Besides just now?" A tiny smile, and Jimin nods. "I ... can't remember."

"Me either," Jimin whispers, like a confession. He shifts down enough to press his cheek to the top of Seokjin's head. "I want this," he continues. "I'm consenting. These marks on my arm don't mean anything, okay? Not here, not to me. And..." He takes a shuddering breath. "I can't think about ... about Yoongi—everything's breaking , so I just ... we can have this, right? Just for tonight, if that's all we get. Just, please, one night."

He leans back to meet Seokjin's eyes. "One night, hyung," he whispers and Seokjin's chest contracts at the honorific—the last of the distance between them crumbling.

He can't think about Yoongi, either. And there is a sharp prick of guilt—that he is reaching for pleasure, for a way to soothe the shattering inside of him when Yoongi ... but Jimin is moving closer again and Seokjin is weak, weak, weak.

"One night," he echoes back, and thinks that he might want far more than that. In another life, another world. A better one.

His phone buzzes again, but he ignores it. Sohyun can wait until tomorrow. He'll make it up to her then—pay the price she wants to be let into her schemes.

For now...

Jimin kisses him a second time, deeper and with more intent, and Seokjin allows his hands to wander—down Jimin's back and over the tops of his thighs and up into his hair, careful to keep from pulling too hard. He avoids Jimin's arms, where the tattoos and seals sit like mines, but it's easy to pull Jimin into him, to rock up as Jimin grinds down and everything sparks with heat.

Jimin is gentler than he expected, considering his capacity for violence. He isn't Sohyun—always pushy and demanding and in control—and Seokjin enjoys the focus with which he moves as he shifts to kiss down Seokjin's neck, intensity without too much roughness.

"You can," Seokjin rasps when Jimin hovers in silent question, then shivers as he feels Jimin suck a mark against his skin. He'll explain that away later, too, somehow.

Jimin's fingers fumble with the buttons on his shirt and he pauses to help get them undone, leaning forward so Jimin can push it off his shoulders. There isn't much room on the couch, but Seokjin isn't sure he could bear to do this on a bed. He likes the golden light of the living room and the way it gives Jimin's silver hair an ethereal glow. Likes the feel of Jimin above him, caging him in, and when Jimin slips his hands under Seokjin's undershirt to touch bare skin, he has to bite his lip to keep a moan locked inside.

He truly can't remember how long it's been since he wanted this from someone.

"Here," he says, reaching for Jimin's shirt. "Here, let me."

He unbuttons it, then sits back to let Jimin shrug it off so he doesn't accidentally touch the seals. It joins Seokjin's on the floor and Seokjin runs his palms over Jimin's shoulders, feeling wiry muscle beneath his fingertips. Jimin's small, yes, but anyone who thinks he's delicate is a fool.

Seokjin's undershirt comes off next and he shivers at the slight chill in the air, but then Jimin is pressing against him, all glorious skin, and all he can focus on is the drag of Jimin's mouth across his collarbones, the touch of Jimin's tongue to his nipple that makes his hips jerk up. Jimin keeps going, kissing a searing line down his chest to his stomach and lower still, until Jimin is kneeling on the floor between his legs.

"No," Seokjin rasps, memory lancing through him. He can't bear Jimin in that position, not right now. "No, please come back up here."

Jimin obeys, a question in his eyes. "I want to," he says and smooths Seokjin's hair back again, mussing it. "It's okay."

"I don't," Seokjin says. "Just stay here." He reaches down with hesitant fingers and undoes the buttons on Jimin's pants, then his own. "Stay here with me, okay?"

Understanding replaces curiosity, followed by a surprising tenderness that takes all the air out of Seokjin's lungs. "Okay," he murmurs, cupping Seokjin's face to kiss him again. "Okay, hyung."

Seokjin lifts his hips up to help Jimin tug his pants down, then does the same for Jimin, and suddenly all that separates them is two thin layers of underwear. Seokjin reaches past it to touch where Jimin is hard and hot, fingers curling around Jimin's cock and eyes focused on Jimin's face to watch his mouth drop open in pleasure.

"Fuck," Jimin gasps as Seokjin begins to stroke, a little uncertain at first but quickly finding a rythmn that has Jimin rocking into his hand. He feels incredible, he's so fucking beatiful with his head tilted back and his eyes closed, exposing the long line of his neck, and Seokjin doesn't know when he's going to be able to breathe again but he doesn't care.

For now, he lets himself take, lets Jimin touch him in return, and if he can feel his heart expanding to fit another person inside of its tattered chambers, then that's another thing he'll deal with later.

For now, he has one night to feel alive and loved and he isn't going to look further than Jimin moving above him and with him, both of them approaching a cliff together. Jimin's fingers dig into his hips and he smoothes careful fingers down Jimin's spine and their next kiss is mostly gasping into each other's mouths. When Jimin finally comes, spilling between them with a sharp cry, Seokjin thinks it might be the best thing he's ever seen, and he swiftly tucks it away for tomorrow and the next day, when this little cocoon they've built bursts.

"You now," Jimin murmurs to him, reaching down to stroke him again, and Seokjin gives himself up to the build and the fall, gasping into the sweaty skin of Jimin's neck and clutching tight to Jimin's back.

Jimin collapses onto his chest after Seokjin's come down from his orgasm, seemingly uncaring of the sticky mess across their stomachs, and Seokjin holds him close, stroking gentle fingers through his hair.

"I won't regret this," Jimin says to him, fierce.

Seokjin closes his eyes, presses a lingering kiss to Jimin's temple. "Me neither," he confesses. "Never."

They stay like that for a long time: tangled up together, skin to skin.