Super Junior AU; Shihanchul; 收复生活 (Retreiving Life)

[dokutoku_ai]

Title: 收复生活 (Retreiving Life)
Fandom: Super Junior AU (Dystopia)
Pairing: Siwon/Hankyung/Heechul, implied Kangin/Eeteuk, Kyuhyun/Zhou Mi/Sungmin, past Siwon/Heechul, Eunhyuk/Junsu
Word count: 10,760
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Rating not for explicit smut but for adult themes such as murder.
Summary: Red is blood and passion; the two lie side by side in the world that Hankyung inhabits.
A/N: Who said I couldn’t write dystopia oh wait I did, never mind. This has been in production since February, but only written recently. To begin with, it was weird Heechul-and-Siwon-pick-up-Hankyung-and-keep-him-as-a-sex-slave (IDEK), which then became simple smut, and then became this. I’m hoping to make this a series, which won’t be in any order at all. I doubt any of the others will as long as this. I hope none of the others will be as long as this XD

Any similarities to other fics that have dealt with this sort of thing before is probably just my mind going “WOW FANTASTIC FIC!” and storing it away, so I apologise beforehand. Also, originally present tense -> past tense halfway through, so there could be inconsistancies.



Seoul was not the haven that it once was - the city had fallen as a result of endless wars and attacks. It was the same the world over. The ones who aimed for an empire gained it, but did not want it truly, and so the lands that had been taken over were left to themselves, decrepit, and soon the only way to earn a living in these places was through crime. The men who lived in the big houses on the outskirts were still there, protected by fences and dogs and cameras, and they took advantage of the general state of neglect that had hit Korea. They pretended that they had a right to rule the city, and they probably did, when no one seemed to contradict them publically. The normal people struggled through their life, and those who lived on Hankyung’s side of town had succumbed to the temptation of taking what they needed. On the other side of town, families lived and tried to survive, but there was no sign of that on this side.

Many of the women left where he lived had turned to prostitution, and that was what Hankyung was looking for, as he walked down crumbling streets and past countless women who attempted to catch his attention. They were not what Hankyung was looking for - not that he knew what he was looking for, beyond pleasure and a quick fix. That woman was too thin, that one too made up. He had never done this before, did not know where to stop, what to do, but this was the only entertainment to be found in a lost city. He walked past a man standing on the street who eyed him up and down and smiled; he was not certain whether that was what he wanted, but he walked on anyway. Loitering could encourage him.

Hankyung had lived in Seoul for so long that he had begun to forget the name that he was born with, begun to forget the feeling of Mandarin on his tongue and Chinese in his mind. He thought in Korean, spoke in Korean; he lived in Korea now, and he was forgetting what it was to be Chinese. It didn’t matter anyway now, because China was gone. The land mass remained, but the people were gone, wiped out by the bombs dropped ten years earlier during the first wave of the war, a war that was over in just over a year. Hankyung had been in Korea then, on a holiday with his high school, and then there was nothing to go back to; his family and his other friends and his home, all gone. So now he lived in Korea. His friends are dead too.

He had never done this before, but he was surrounded by decay and death and emptiness, and for once he needed to feel alive. He hasn’t felt alive since the news came through of the attack on China, since it became necessary for him to learn a language that he hates, difficult and he was unable still to rid himself of the accent that paints him out as a foreigner and which brings hatred down on him. It doesn’t matter to the locals where he was from originally, all that matters was that he wasn’t from there, and it was the fault of anyone who wasn’t from there that their country was decrepit and broken. Hankyung barely spoke anymore, because his voice put his life in danger.

He spotted a woman standing, literally, on a street corner, leaning back against a crumble of a wall, legs stretched out in front of her, stilettos surrounded by dust from the wall and from the dry road, but perfectly clean, ruby red and flashing in the low sunlight like blood on the fangs of a lion. Her red dress was loose at the top, gathered at the waist by a thick, black leather belt, the skirt coming down to mid-thigh. She was looking at her nails, painted red to match her shoes and dress, as if she was bored. Her hair was orange and her lips were red too, her eyes rimmed with black eyeliner, smudged artfully - she stood out against the backdrop of corrosion and ruin brilliantly, tainting the air around her with colour, and Hankyung was drawn towards her.

She looked up as he neared, alerted to his presence by the sound of his shoes clacking on the otherwise deserted street, and she smirked at him, and her eyes were hooded and they made him shiver as she looked him up and down, and tipped her head to the side. She didn’t say anything.

“How much?” asked Hankyung softly, and her smirk grew wider as he confirmed for her why he was here. She still didn’t say anything, just stood up and walked off to the door of the small block of flats behind her, abandoned and boarded up. Hankyung stared after her, at the way her hips swayed as she walked, body hidden by her dress. She paused at the doorway and looked back at him, and then motioned with her finger for him to follow her. Her wrists were thin.

He followed her up a flight of stairs to flat 2B, and the floor was dusty in the foyer but when they stepped through into the flat, it was clean, and there was light streaming through the window, murky from twilight, not from dirty windows. There was a single double bed in the room, covered by cheap cotton covers, and a lamp on a bedside table that threatened to collapse at any moment. Three doors lead off from the room, two on one wall and another on the opposite, but they were shut, and the girl didn’t make any move to show him what was through them. She sat on the bed and looked at him with a carefully blank expression.

“How much?” he repeated. He wanted to know how much it would set him back before he bought anything.

“For you? Free,” was the reply, and those lips curled into a smirk at the inevitable shock that covered Hankyung’s face at the sound of that voice.

“You’re not a-” he tried, but he couldn’t get the words out, stuck in the back of his throat along with his Mandarin.

“A girl? No.” The man’s smirk grew wider as Hankyung stared. “It never ceases to amuse me at how many people are taken in by it.”

Hankyung was about to leave, about to get out of there and look for someone else for his cheap pleasure, when the man reclined against the bed and the bottom of the dress fell back and revealed a pale inside of a thigh, and his arms stretched above his head, inviting and encouraging, and Hankyung couldn’t bring himself to care that it wasn’t a girl.

“For free?” he asked, throat dry.

“I reckon so,” said the man, and he rolled his head to the side, the side of his neck soft. Hankyung barely noticed the creaking of a door opening. “What do you think, Siwon?”

A soft chuckle attracted Hankyung’s attention, and he shot around to stare at the tall man who walked into the room, long legs clad in leather and a white t-shirt over muscles that are rare in the current climate. He eyed Hankyung up and down and grinned; he had dimples and long black hair and Hankyung’s mouth managed to become even drier.

“What the fuck is going on?” he asked angrily, hand reaching back for the door handle.

“I reckon you’re right, Heechul,” said the newcomer softly.

The one who had been named as Heechul lifted up off the bed slowly, pushing his stomach up and then his chest and finally his head in a long, seductive arch, and he stood, all red lips and long legs and attitude, and he sauntered up to Hankyung, who’s hand was around the handle but wouldn’t follow his request for it to open the door, frozen as Heechul pressed himself up against him and rubbed in way that sent shockwaves down Hankyung’s body and caused the heady heat of arousal to build suddenly in his stomach. “I work as a duo,” whispered Heechul into his ear, and his tongue darted out and curled around the lobe of his ear, and Hankyung moaned. It had been too long for him to deny himself this time.

“I’d ask if you minded,” said Heechul, “but you won’t.”

His hands trailed down Hankyung’s body and pushed into the waistband of Hankyung’s jeans, faded at the knees and crotch through years of use, and pulled him forward, so that he let go of the door handle, his fingers slipping from the cold metal only a little reluctantly, his one chance of safety leaving him as easily as the lipstick left Heechul’s lips when he kissed him firmly, the cheap red rubbing along Hankyung’s bottom lip and across his throat as Heechul’s mouth trailed down, staining his neck boldly.

Heechul’s hands made quick work of his t-shirt, and his fingers drifted over his chest, cool as they brushed over his stomach and his palm pressed against his lower stomach, and Hankyung had been without touch and heat and that feeling of being alive for so long, for so many years, that he made a keening noise in his throat and reached out to pull him back when Heechul stepped out of his arms and to the side.

Siwon stopped him by pulling him into his arms, and the whole situation was so bizarre, so surreal, as Siwon kissed him with clashing teeth and rough fingers pushed through his hair. It was only when Siwon pulled away slightly that Hankyung realised what Heechul was doing; he was stood by the side of the bed and when he knew that Hankyung’s eyes were on him, he pulled the dress up and over his head slowly, stretching his arms out above his head to drop the clothing on the floor next to him. He caught Hankyung’s eye. He lay down on the bed, legs stretched out in front of him, and as if on a cue that Hankyung had missed, Siwon’s fingers slid along the bare skin of Hankyung’s waist and pushed him forward, so that he stumbled, and Heechul caught his arms and pulled him down on top of him. Heechul was blood and fire; Siwon was oil and earth.

He left them later that night; they didn’t make him pay. He couldn’t quite meet their eyes as he got dressed, pulling on his jeans at the side of the bed as Heechul reclined against Siwon, gloriously naked as Siwon pulled the covers over his own hips. He pulled his t-shirt on with nervous hands, and looked at the two with something like shame. This was not the night that he had planned for. He knew their names; they are real to him.

“Thank you,” he mumbled.

“Come again,” said Heechul, and looked him up and down with such intensity in his eyes that Hankyung shuddered and quickly got out of there. He had no plans of ever returning - doing so would be too dangerous.

He was back there three days later, finding his way to the flat by searching through his memory for the route that he took that night. He wanted to pay them. There was something in the back of his mind, and he couldn’t stop thinking about Heechul’s legs around his waist, Siwon’s fingers at the back of his thighs - he hoped that by paying for their services that night, he could rid himself of his guilt and stop thinking about what happened. He felt guilty and he wasn’t too sure as to how much of that was because he still had unused money burning in his pocket.

There was also something tugging at the back of his mind, a memory that he couldn’t quite catch hold of, which seemed to suggest something to him and then which floated away when he tried to think about it. It started that night. He had a vague hope that going back would let him know.

It was still early afternoon when he climbed those stairs, and he was not surprised to find that the two of them were in the flat. There was nothing to do in the city, so it made sense to just stay at home. He knocked, feeling slightly stupid as he did so, like he had a right to be there. There was silence from inside, and then the careful click of various locks, and Siwon opened the door; Hankyung jumped back at the knife he held in one hand.

“Oh,” said Siwon, and lowered the weapon, holding it casually in his hand, as if he knew exactly how to use it. He looked surprised, and Hankyung felt himself turn slightly red. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”

“I wanted to - pay you,” said Hankyung, jerking his words out because he was aware of how ridiculous he sounded. Siwon’s eyebrows rose up. “For your services,” continued Hankyung, and his voice was soft.

Siwon just stared at him. Heechul came out of one of the doorways, dressed in a bathrobe that hung open at the top, revealing the sharpness of his collarbone, and he leant against the door frame, arms folded, and looked Hankyung up and down with amusement on his face. His hair was wet. “It’s a bit early to be looking for pleasure, isn’t it?” he asked, and Hankyung avoided looking at him, because what he said was true.

“He wants to pay us,” said Siwon faintly.

Now Heechul looked shocked. “Pay us?” he repeated, incredulous in his tone.

“For that night,” said Hankyung softly.

Siwon looked over his shoulder at Heechul, who smirked and nodded, and Siwon reached forward and took hold of Hankyung’s collar and pulled him into the room, and, pressing Hankyung against the door frame, pulled the front door shut and locked it again. He looked down at Hankyung with a smile, and then walked away, and Heechul came forward, robe falling open with each step to reveal a brief flash of skin with each step. “Most people,” he said quietly, “don’t want to pay us. They’re happy to take what we give them and leave.”

“I felt guilty,” said Hankyung. The look in Heechul’s eyes was terrifying, and there were too many locks for him to open without one of the two stopping him. He had never been so fucking scared in his entire life; the horror of his country’s destruction was nothing compared to the sudden picture of Siwon with a knife still held loosely in his hand. This was in front of his eyes; this was here and now. He didn’t know whether he preferred terror or numbness.

“You’re not from around here, are you, Hankyung?” asked Heechul and his fingers ran down Hankyung’s front, dragging over the buttons. His other hand rested on Hankyung’s thigh.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Hankyung, stuttering a little. Siwon left the room and he heard the clatter of the knife falling onto some surface.

“A foreigner,” muttered Heechul into his ear, and Hankyung’s blood, racing through his head and burning hot at the spot that Heechul’s fingers press against, suddenly turned to ice.

“I’m not a foreigner,” he said desperately, and he pressed himself against the door and fumbled behind him for the locks to get out of the room before Heechul said you’re lying and attacked him.

“Our silence will cost you,” said Heechul, and he smirked, and Hankyung let his hands fall to his side as Siwon came back into the room, shirtless, and his belt unfastened, button and zip undone on his trousers. He stretched up and took hold of the door frame, and his muscles moved under his skin; the last time Hankyung saw that, it was in totally different circumstances.

“How much?” he asked, voice hoarse.

Heechul grinned at him, hooked his fingers in his belt hoops and then sank to his knees. His price was more than reasonable.

It was when Siwon was fucking him that it happened; Hankyung clutched at his back, fingernails digging into the skin there, and suddenly the memory was there, and suddenly he was cursing in Chinese, spitting out fuck over and over again, as his language returned to him in a stream of tones and symbols. Siwon shuddered against him and moved faster, harder, seemingly stimulated into action by the filth that fell from Hankyung’s lips quicker than he could think of it.

“Yes, yes, yes,” moaned Siwon in Mandarin, and that was enough to tip Hankyung over the edge, coming with a strangled cry of Chinese that made no sense, and Siwon bit down on his shoulder when he came himself and drew a red line of blood.

Heechul didn’t let him leave that time, pulling him back down onto the bed when he sat up and burying his face in his neck. Hankyung froze for a second until Siwon put his hand on his thigh and murmured something that he couldn’t hear, and lay down next to him, body pressed close to his side. It took Hankyung a while to relax enough to sleep, the sheer strangeness of it weighing heavy on his mind, but he did so eventually.

He woke that next morning and ate breakfast with them. It was stale, dry toast and cheap coffee, but it was hardly better than what he had each day on his salary working part time at the only shop still open in his part of the town - he could only work part time because the owner couldn’t afford to pay him for any more hours. His landlord died years ago; he owned his flat now. He was lucky in that respect. He didn’t think that Heechul and Siwon would pay rent on the run down apartment that they lived in, but he also didn’t think that they would be able to afford any better food, not if they insisted on giving out free rides.

He tried to pay again on his way out the door. Heechul groaned at him and pushed for him to leave, as Siwon laughed in the background.

“Would you get out of here?” asked Heechul. “We don’t want your money. We get paid through a third party, so stop worrying.”

“But-” Hankyung looked a little helplessly at him, and then at Siwon.

“If you want to do something useful with that money,” said Heechul, smirking a little, “then go out and buy some new clothes. Yours are so old that they’re practically falling to pieces.”

Hankyung thought about this later at home, and realised with a shock that Heechul was right. He had never really looked at himself, not for many years, not since the numbness started in and the loss of his language. He had grown thin, but so had many people, unable to survive on the pitiful amount that they were able to grab in this life. His thinness was different, though. His thinness had become shabby, clothes worn endlessly, cleaned regularly but never replaced. They hung off him. He sat on his bed, mattress worn thin, and plucked shamefully at the tattered ends of his jeans with the tips of his fingers. He went out and bought two new pairs, three new t-shirts and a pair of trainers. He used up all the money that he had set aside for that night.

He knew that he couldn’t afford it, that if they expected him to pay for this time, that he wouldn’t be able to, but he still found himself climbing the stairs to the flat two nights later, when the way up was lit only by a bare bulb that swung in the wind whistling through the wooden boards at the windows that were empty of glass. The door was open and the room inside dark, and when he stepped in the doorway, he was greeted by the sight of Heechul and Siwon kissing, Siwon holding Heechul up against the wall and Heechul’s legs wrapped around his waist. Hankyung smiled a little, knocked and then walked in.

He froze still. He thought they were alone. They weren’t; there was a client lying on the bed, and it was hard to see in the darkness of the room, but he could tell that the man was still fully clothed. That was strange. He glanced back to the other two to apologize for interrupting, when he met Heechul’s eyes; they were wide and terrified, in a strange way, and he began struggling against Siwon, who didn’t appear to have noticed that Hankyung had come in the doorway. Hankyung stared a little, and then glanced back at the man on the bed, and noticed something that he missed the first time.

The man was dead, horrifically dead, throat cut in a smooth line, blood spilt over his expensive looking clothes, and through the light that came out from behind the clouds outside and streamed through the window, Hankyung could see the expression of shock on the man’s face. His arms and legs were spread-eagled. Hankyung gagged a little and tasted, suddenly, the tang of blood on his tongue; it was nowhere near his mouth but he felt like he was drowning, unable to clear himself of that image, the smell of death surrounding him and tainting him. Heechul was saying something in the background, and it took Hankyung a few seconds to work out what it was; “No,” he was saying. “No, no, no,” over and over again, loudly and desperately, and Hankyung ran.

He was halfway down the stairs to the ground floor before Siwon caught up to him and tried to pull him back. Hankyung struck out blindly at him, but Siwon dodged it with the movements who was trained in this sort of thing and tried to take hold of him. Hankyung stuck out again - he had training too, before he came to Korea, and this time he got Siwon in the jaw. He cursed, raised a fist, and then it went black.

He was dragged through the murky waters of unconsciousness to find that his entire body hurt and, a second later that he had been tied to a chair. It hurt possibly because he fell down the remainder of the stairs when Siwon knocked him out, which reminded him of why he was running in the first place. He raised his head up with a groan and looked around the room, but it was not the main room, and neither was it the kitchen or bathroom. It must be the third room, the one with the door by itself, that he had never been in. It had bare walls and floor, much like the rest of the flat, and there was a camp bed in the corner and a small, rickety table and chair near the wall. Other than that it was empty. His wrists began to chafe, but strangely, there was no panic, just numbness.

The door swung open with a creak, and Heechul came in, dressed in old, faded jeans that are held around his slim waist by a leather belt - Hankyung thought that they had probably belonged to Siwon at some point - and he stopped. “Oh,” he said, in a bored way, but Hankyung thought that the more bored Heechul sounded, the more he was actually bothered by what was happening. “You’re awake.”

“He is?” Siwon appeared at the doorway. There was a towel around his neck, and his hair was wet, but Hankyung could still see the blood on his clothes. He gagged again, the sight of the dead man in his eyes. Siwon’s own eyes were wide as he pushed past Heechul and came closer into the room and fell to his knees in front of Hankyung. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Really, I didn’t mean for you to get hurt, I just couldn’t think of any other way to stop you leaving.”

He tried to take hold of Hankyung’s head to look at the bruise where he hit him, but Hankyung wrenched himself out of his grasp; the motion made him dizzy, but he tried not to show it. “What the fuck was that?” he rasped, and realised for the first time how thirsty he was, how hungry he was; he wondered how long he had been out.

“We didn’t mean for you to see it,” said Siwon softly.

“What the fuck was it?” asked Hankyung forcefully, needing an answer.

“It’s obvious what it was,” snapped Heechul. “We killed him. Slit his throat and let him drown in his own blood. Are you happy now?”

There was a pause of terrible silence, as Siwon looked at Heechul with something like reproach in his eyes. “Why?” asked Hankyung after he could take no longer of the stillness. It was the only thing that he could think of to say.

“It’s our job,” said Siwon quietly. “Contract killers, of a sort.”

Heechul snorted. “Of a sort,” he agreed, a faint hint of irony in his voice.

“That night,” said Hankyung slowly. “When I - were you going to kill me then?”

“No,” said Heechul with a laugh. “That’s what I meant when I said it was free. We were waiting for someone else. We got in some trouble for missing him, but we got him a couple of nights later.”

Hankyung felt a little faint. Siwon looked at him closely. “We can’t let you go now,” he said. “I’m sorry.” And he said it in Mandarin, and it was that which made Hankyung’s blood run ice cold and for the panic to set in. He became almost hysterical almost immediately, pulling at his restraints and screaming for them to let him go - he didn’t even know what he was shouting really, more Chinese than Korean, and Siwon stood up and backed away slightly and turned to look helplessly at Heechul.

“Do it,” said Heechul in a bored tone again, and Siwon turned back around with a strange expression on his face, and then there was a sharp pain in his head and he blacked out again.

This time his head hurt, but that mad sense. He was no longer tied down, but someone had laid him out on the bed carefully; the door was closed, probably locked, and there were no windows and he had no way of knowing how long he had been out or what time it was. This time there was no lack of feeling; he began to panic almost immediately, hands shaking and chest heaving as he tried to pull himself to his feet, but his body felt heavy and sore, like there was something on his chest, and it was as much as he could do to pull himself into a seating position, resting his back against the wall.

He was just beginning to look around the room again when the door swung open and Siwon stepped through with a tray in one hand. “Oh,” he said, with some shock, and smiled a little sheepishly. “Hello.”

Hankyung ignored him as he put the tray down on the table - his silence changed slightly when he noticed the knife in Siwon’s back pocket. It became slightly strained and tense, because he knew that Siwon knew that he has seen the weapon, although he gave nothing away to suggest this; Hankyung was just aware of it.

“I’m sorry about this, Hankyung,” said Siwon softly. He turned to look at Hankyung, but Hankyung avoided his eyes by staring resolutely at the wall. “It’s not just us. There are others that we have to think of. Our group - we have to protect ourselves.”

“It’s not just you?” asked Hankyung. His voice croaked from disuse and a dry throat, but Siwon didn’t seem to notice. He seemed more happy that Hankyung was talking at all. Hankyung was just trying to distract him from using the weapon that he feared could be put to use any moment now.

“No,” said Siwon slowly. “We - Heechul and I, we’re merely a small part of operations. I would - I want to be able to tell you more, but until we decide what we’re going to do with you, I can’t.”

“Are you going to kill me?” asked Hankyung, voice hoarse through fear now. Siwon looked at him a little sadly.

“I hope not,” he said, and closed and locked the door after him.

It was Heechul who came through the door next, and he was so casual about it that Hankyung was in no doubt that he was armed to the neck. “Hi,” he said, and picked up the empty tray. Hankyung had managed to pull himself over to the table to eat, after the pain and tiredness had worn off, and he had found that he had been so hungry that he had been able to overlook the cheap quality to the actual food; stale bread, hard cheese. The fact that he was so hungry made him wonder as to how long he had actually been out, and so he asked Heechul. He wished he could be angry and full of hatred, but instead he felt numb again, with a faint hint of fear. It was how he had felt for the majority of his adult life.

“Two days,” answered Heechul, and paused on his way to the door, and laughed a little, though it was more at Hankyung’s expense than anything else. “We began to worry that you wouldn’t wake up.” He looked Hankyung in the eye and then away again, and muttered, “That would have solved a lot of problems.”

“What do you mean?” Hankyung looked at him sharply and Heechul just raised an eyebrow at him.

“We can’t let you tell anyone about what you saw,” he said. “If we let you go, there’d be more people dragged into it than just Siwon and I.”

“I won’t say anything,” said Hankyung. He was beginning to think that begging was the only way that he was going to get out of this room, that he was already going crazy in. “You can let me go.”

“We can’t take any chances,” said Heechul, and he too locked the door after him.

Hankyung didn’t know how long after that he spent in the room. Time ceased to exist other than by the degrees of his hunger. He was given meals and water and was escorted to the bathroom - the window was boarded up in there, he had already tried to escape through it - and in the brief space of time that he was in the main room he was able to tell whether it was night or day but nothing else.

At one point - and he thought that it was probably night time - he heard movements in the room opposite; different from the usual movements of the two. There was a low moaning, the sound of the bed creaking, and then a short yell of terror that was cut off quickly. He flinched. He heard Siwon’s low murmuring and Heechul’s derisive laughter, and then there was nothing for a very long time. Perhaps he simply fell asleep.

He didn’t think it had been very long. He slept when he was tired and ate when he was hungry, but he didn’t think that he had been in the room for very long - a week at the most, and he thought that that may be pushing it. In any case, they brought some people to see him, but at the time he didn’t know who they were. He was lying on his bed staring at the ceiling when the door opened. He didn’t sit up until he realised that the voices were not just the voices of Heechul and Siwon.

“I can’t believe you’d be so sloppy,” said one man, tall and well built with a shaved head, in a teasing tone.

“Shut the fuck up, Kangin,” snapped Heechul. “Just because you’re sleeping with the boss doesn’t mean anything here.”

“I’m higher in position than you even without Eeteuk,” said Kangin with a grin. Heechul huffed. Hankyung regarded them thoughtfully. They weren’t paying attention to him anyway.

“It was pretty sloppy,” said one of the other men quietly, a baseball cap on his head. “You should have at least shut the door.”

“It’s never been a problem before,” said Siwon. “He was a strange - one.” He was going to say client, thought Hankyung, and was glad that he didn’t, because that brought up concepts that Hankyung didn’t want to think about.

“Anyway, you can hardly talk to anyone about sloppy,” said the one with black hair and a loose t-shirt with rips in the sleeves, and the one in the baseball cap grinned cheekily at him.

“How much does he know?” asked Kangin.

“Not much,” said Siwon. “We haven’t told him that much.” This was a lie. Hankyung probably knew a lot more than he should have, and he got a strange feeling that Heechul and Siwon were covering for him, to try to make the situation work in his favour.

“Name?” asked Kangin.

“Hankyung,” said Heechul.

“I am here, you know,” said Hankyung. They stared at him with some shock. “I know I’m a prisoner or whatever,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean that I’m just going to sit back while you talk about me.”

“Accent,” said Kangin thoughtfully.

“Shut up,” Heechul told Hankyung, but he grinned as he did so, so Hankyung could tell that he quite enjoyed the brief flash of anger in him. Now he just felt numb again.

“Where are you from?” asked the one with black hair.

“China,” said Hankyung.

“That was - destroyed,” said the one with the baseball cap slowly.

“I know,” said Hankyung fiercely.

“Oh,” said the one in the baseball cap. “Oh, I feel so sorry for him now, we can’t kill him.”

“Thanks,” said Hankyung sarcastically. The one in the baseball cap didn’t take any notice of him.

“Eeteuk doesn’t want us to kill him anyway,” said Kangin. “You mentioned that you thought he’d had training? Was that true?” The last question was directed towards Hankyung.

“Yes,” he said. “Some martial arts training when I was a teenager, before - before I came to Korea.”

“Good,” said Kangin. “Eeteuk wants you to train him up to help you in your line of work. He keeps saying that you’re too good to keep wasting on what you do.”

“How do you know this stuff?” asked Heechul, exasperated. “What, was Eeteuk talking to you through a telephone so small that we can’t even see it?”

“I’m guessing on what he wants,” said Kangin with a grin. “Anyway, it’s what I want, and I’ll just persuade Eeteuk. Train Hankyung. Hopefully he’ll be able to work with Henry one day, when his training was completed, if he proves talented enough.” Hankyung stared at him and then was shocked when Kangin went on to say; “We can never have enough assassins.”

“Don’t I know it,” muttered the one in the baseball cap.

Hankyung didn’t find out the names of the two other men until much later, and they left without talking directly to him. Heechul and Siwon seemed happy by the result of the conversation, and Hankyung got the feeling that he should be happy too, but he was unable to drag up any sort of feeling whatsoever. The conversation caused him to feel dead inside, the word assassin bouncing around his skull until he fell asleep due to sheer exhaustion.

He woke to find that his wrists had been tied together again, and his first thought was not again, without him even being aware that he was thinking it, and he pulled and realised that, actually, he was still lying down on his bed and his hands had been fastened to the bed posts. He heard whispering, but the quieter the Korean the harder it was for Hankyung to understand, and so he was still in the darkness, until the light flipped on and he blinked from the suddenness.

“Hankyung,” said Heechul’s voice, low and husky.

Hankyung raised his head to look at him and to demand why he had been tied up again; the question died in his throat at the sight of Heechul pressed against the wall, Siwon’s hands on his hips and mouth attacking his neck. Hankyung swallowed, and willed for his head to fall back down but he was unable to do it while Heechul held eye contact, smirking with lips that are open a small amount. It hurt his neck but he couldn’t look away as Siwon sank to his knees and pulled at Heechul’s loose jeans with experienced fingers.

Before long Heechul was moaning Siwon’s name, head tipped back and eyes closed, biting his bottom lip, as Hankyung writhed on the bed and begged for them to untie his wrists. It was when Heechul came with a cry of Hankyung’s name that Hankyung became truly desperate, unable to do anything other than say please, please over and over again in Mandarin, aware of a spark of life in his chest that only grew when Siwon’s mouth was hot and wet around him and Heechul was slumped against the wall, a bundle of limps that watched with wide, exhilarated eyes.

When he woke that next morning, it was to wrists that had bled from chafing and the door open in a silent invitation. He stumbled into the room where the double bed had new sheets, and contemplated leaving, but he was hungry and had no shoes or coat, and so instead he went into the kitchen, where Siwon was cooking and Heechul was eating.

Neither said a word as he collapsed into a chair and accepted the eggs put down in front of him silently. He ate quickly, because he had things he needed to know. When he put down his fork, Siwon went still, and Heechul glanced at him from over his paperback novel.

“Explain,” he said simply, and they did.

As they went on, his thoughts became more and more jumbled, but the one that remained constant was how did I not know about this? and he asked this when they are finished.

“It’s a secret rebellion group, Hankyung,” said Siwon with a grin. “We’re hardly going to go around shouting who we are from the rooftops. Besides we tend to work on the other side of town.”

“And you two,” said Hankyung. “You’re?”

“We said contract killers,” said Heechul. “And it’s true, in a way. Some of the men up in the big houses, they get a little too comfortable, begin to - they pull their weight and begin to make the lives of those down here even more difficult than they already are. We put a stop to it.”

“You kill them,” said Hankyung.

“We do,” said Heechul. “The men who are guilty of lust, we pick them up and bring them back here and deal with them. A couple of the others prefer the more direct approach, and some of us are simple assassins, picking them off as they relax in their fancy villas. Siwon and I used to be more direct until we realised how efficient doing it this way would be.”

“Because you-” Hankyung wasn’t sure how to put it without causing offence to Heechul, or whether it will even cause offence anyway.

“I can look like a girl, yes,” said Heechul in a casual tone. “I mean, mostly we don’t kill. Siwon and I mostly deal with the pimps who get a little out of hand. Lock them in that room that you were in, knock them around a bit. They know who really rules the streets.”

“We’re not trying to rule,” said Siwon softly. “We’re trying to rebuild. We’re trying to create something, anything, safe. We’re trying to get rid of the corrupt ones who lord over us and build our world back up.”

“What am I for?” asked Hankyung, and he felt that this was the real question, the important question.

“Eeteuk - he’s our leader - wants us to teach you how to do what we do.”

“You mean kill.”

“Yes,” said Siwon. “I’m sorry Hankyung, but you either join us, or we are forced to kill you. And we can’t give you time to think about it.”

Hankyung remembered his landlord, a thin old man who died in the winter that killed off hundreds because there was not enough money to light their fires. He remembered the woman who owned the shop on the corner of his street, which stood in ruins now after she was forced out when the rent was put up by the people who lived in the nice part of the town, who didn’t understand the lives of the poor. He remembered sitting in his bare flat and not hearing anything outside - no cars, no children playing. Just the wind whistling. He didn’t need to think about it.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

His training started the next day and he spent that night in the bed with Heechul and Siwon. There were a few precarious moments where it looked like Heechul was going to fall out and take Hankyung with him, but eventually they managed to get themselves into a position that worked, Heechul in between them to stop him from moving around too much. Although Hankyung woke the next morning knowing what was to be expected of him, the knowledge didn’t weigh heavy on his mind. He had a vague feeling of having something in his life worth doing, and when Siwon woke him with a murmuring of Chinese in his ear, there was warmth in his chest that lasted until midday.

He found that Heechul was slightly blade happy and preferred to get up close and personal when he killed. Siwon, on the other hand, did his early training as a rooftop assassin, and so he preferred guns, but he was just as comfortable with knives and blades, and slightly more comfortable with his fists.

“To be honest,” said Siwon when he was pulling the different types of blades out of one of the kitchen drawers, “I’m only here in case things go wrong for Heechul. If the client gets away, or manages to injure him in some way and makes a break for it.”

“I don’t even need you,” said Heechul. “You’re only here because I insisted on some eye candy.”

“You’re the only one who ever managed to make a run for it,” said Siwon. “It wasn’t under the usual circumstances, mind. Still, it was nice to actually be able to do something for once.”

“He’s useless really,” said Heechul, and stood up and wandered over to where Siwon was standing, looking as though he was just putting his plate in the sink, but then, faster than Hankyung could see, he swiped a blade from the unit and had it pressed against Siwon’s neck; what was even more surprising was that at the exact same time Siwon turned and pressed a different blade against Heechul’s stomach.

Hankyung blinked at the speed of it, but Heechul just laughed low in his throat and flicked the small pen-knife that he had picked up away with a careful twist of the wrist and kissed Siwon hungrily. Siwon held his own small dagger in his hand still, but turned the blade away so that it couldn’t cause any damage. “Not so useless,” he said when they broke apart.

Heechul agreed with a murmur and left the room. Hankyung just stared, and then stared even harder as Siwon looked down at the weapons lay out in front of him and then stuck his head out of the door. “Hey,” he said loudly. “Give me the Fairbairn-Sykes back, because I am not going to Kangin and telling him we need to get another one of those. It took three months to convince him to give us that one.”

Heechul came back in and handed Siwon a double sided dagger that he had somehow managed to conceal in his dressing gown. Watching them act so casual over such sharp weapons made Hankyung feel a little nervous.

They began by showing him each other different knives that they could use, and they refused to move on until he was able to name each one by sight. He found that Siwon was patient and didn’t mind if he got it wrong at this stage, whereas Heechul got annoyed when he got it wrong. However, on the next stage, when it came to actual fighting, he preferred Heechul, because he wasn’t afraid to be a little dangerous, to actually test Hankyung. He gained a fair few wounds at that stage.

It took two months until Hankyung was able to disable Siwon. He would never have said that he was better at it than them, because Siwon still beat him more times than he was beaten, and it took another four months until he was able to disable Heechul. At this stage Siwon was training him in gun use, and Heechul had decided to test him to see how much he could remember of fighting with knives; apparently it was a lot, and then some, because somehow he had Heechul on the floor, blade pressed to his neck. Heechul took one look at him and rubbed himself along Hankyung’s thigh and called out for Siwon to come join them.

Hankyung was faster than anyone had expected him to be, and quieter too, able to move making barely any noise at all, alerting no one to his presence. According to Siwon that made him perfect for an assassin, because they had very few people like him in the group.

“Not all of us are assassins,” he said. “Kangin, you saw him, he’s not. He’s Eeteuk’s right hand man and liaison. You may not have heard of us before, but the men in the houses, they’ve heard of us before. Kangin, Ryeowook and Kibum try to talk things through with them to try to make them see it our way. If that doesn’t work, then the others step in to sort it out.”

“There are other groups,” put in Heechul. “But we’re the biggest and best. We cover the most ground, both figuratively and literally.”

“Heechul’s a little biased,” said Siwon with a grin. “He’s considered one of the best close quarter killers in the business. That’s why Eeteuk thinks he’s wasting him on making the streets safe for the prostitutes, so to speak.”

“We work sometimes with the other groups,” said Heechul. “Our methods can be considered soft sometimes, but talking through has managed to save quite a few lives in the past. The more obviously violent groups get taken out pretty early on.” There was a hint of sadness in his voice that he tried to cover by announcing that he was taking a shower.

“Heechul and Kangin came from a high school gang,” explained Siwon later on when Hankyung asked. “They and these two other guys, they used shivs and other things like that in order to rule their school. They ruled through fear but they did it so they could do what they could to improve their school. Kangin and Heechul joined with Eeteuk to create this group, but their two friends joined another group, Dong Bang Shin Ki. They were a lot more violent than we are. We only kill as a last resort, and so did they, but they vandalized and fought to get their point across. Still, all of us, we were all friends with them - Eunhyuk was even in a relationship with one of their members. Around three years ago, a mafia was formed by the men in the houses and all of Dong Bang Shin Ki was killed in a carefully set up trap.”

Hankyung found that Heechul didn’t like to talk about the old group, and Hankyung didn’t ask him about it, because Heechul didn’t ask him about China. Siwon liked to ask him about it, and he always used Mandarin, no matter how much Hankyung tried to tell him that there was no point, because there was no one else to speak it. He’d been to China, Siwon told him happily, when he was very young, and he’d loved the country. In the war, it was the loss of China that had affected him most of all, more than losing the parents who had never really cared for him in the first place. He had been taken in by Eeteuk and raised as a killer, and he didn’t know any other way of life. Talking about China brought up memories that Hankyung had, at one point, wanted to keep buried, but with each one the warmth in his chest grew stronger; Siwon liked to call him Geng.

Henry turned out to be a young boy of perhaps eighteen who greeted Hankyung the first time he met him by pointing a gun at his chest across the room and telling him to dodge. Luckily, it was a large room, and at this point, Hankyung had had the training to be able to do this and, dodging two more bullets sent his way, he managed to get close enough to kick the gun out of Henry’s hands, who had then produced a knife and tried to stab him with it. Hankyung had, however, managed to get his own dagger against Henry’s spine before he could actually stab him, and Henry laughed and dropped his weapon.

“I can see you two are going to be good friends,” said a voice, and Hankyung turned to see a young man, who looked younger than him, who had hair that was shaved on one side, and bleached blonde and fell over his eyes on the other side. “Sungmin,” he said as a greeting. “I’ve been helping Henry train. I can see that Heechul and Siwon have taught you well.”

“Yeah,” said Hankyung and lowered his own weapon so that Henry could relax.

“You’re really good,” said Henry in Mandarin.

“Chinese?” asked Hankyung cautiously.

“Canadian, with Chinese parents,” said Henry. Hankyung winced. One of the countries he had ancestry with had been cleared of all its people; the other had been invaded in one, incredibly bloody month. Compared to Henry, Hankyung felt almost lucky.

“This was just a meeting,” said Sungmin, cutting through the Chinese that he clearly didn’t understand. “Just to see if you would be able to work together at some point. From what I’ve heard, Hankyung will be working with Siwon and Heechul for the foreseeable future anyway.”

Hankyung looked at him with some shock, and Sungmin grinned at him. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They haven’t been told yet anyway, so it’s not that they’re keeping it from you.”

“Oh,” said Hankyung, completely confused.

“Would you hurry up, Sungmin?” called a voice from outside angrily. “Zhou Mi’s threatening to start singing and my ears will bleed!”

“Shut the fuck up!” shrieked another voice in Chinese. “I have a fantastic singing voice!”

“Like hell you do,” retorted the first man in Korean. Hankyung’s head swam.

“Leave Mimi alone, Kyuhyun,” shouted Sungmin, and then said to Henry, “Come on then, we’d better go before they either kill each other or start having sex in the car.”

Henry shuddered and bent down to pick his knife and gun from where they had clattered onto the floor. “See you, gege,” he said to Hankyung with a jaunty wave, and followed Sungmin out of the room. Hankyung just had a chance to see Sungmin push a man with bleach blonde hair on the shoulder and hit a taller man with black hair over the head before the door shut after them.

“Well,” said Heechul, coming out of hiding from the bathroom. He and Siwon had been told to get out of the flat for the meeting, and Siwon had done just that, but he had been unable to convince Heechul to leave. “We’re to be working together, are we? I wonder what that means.”

Eeteuk, apparently, had changed his mind. “He says that he’s hoping to get you three back on the streets at some point,” said Kangin on the telephone. “Patrolling and stuff. In the meantime, you’re to continue doing what you’re already doing. Use Hankyung if the usual methods don’t work. You know, where you would have used Siwon. Kibum’s going to bring down the stats on the next target down tomorrow. Also, Sungmin said that Hankyung needed a haircut?”

“Am I ever going to meet Eeteuk?” Hankyung asked Siwon that night, when Heechul looked him over and tried to work out what to do with his hair. Siwon looked a little surprised at the question.

“Normally you already would have,” he said. “Actually, I never thought about it. Normally he would have called you to see him already.”

“He’s busy,” said Heechul. “There’s some sort of civil war going on with the guys down at the TRAX, Rose is threatening to leave, according to Jay. Eeteuk is trying to stop it affecting the people who live in that area.” As Hankyung was trying to work out what any of that had meant, and Siwon nodded along like he understood, Heechul snapped his fingers. “Blonde,” he said. “Definitely blonde. We never have enough blondes, I’ve always thought.”

That was how Hankyung found himself the next day bent over the bath as Heechul rubbed enough hair dye into his head to turn his black hair a platinum blonde that was more white than anything. Hankyung never actually knew whether it was hair dye or simply bleach; it stung like bleach, but then that could have just been the fact that Heechul was very heavy handed. Whatever it was, when it was finished Hankyung looked at himself in the mirror and almost didn’t recognise himself.

It wasn’t just the hair, there was something else, something in his eyes, about his mouth, in the way he held himself now. Now he thought with a mixture of Korean and Chinese, spoke both languages. He waited with Siwon in the kitchen while Heechul dealt with their clients, and even the yells and screams that came from the other room no longer affected him. He was versed in the ways of torture, though it hadn’t been Siwon or Heechul who taught him that, but a man named Yehsung who had cross earrings in a parody of faith. He even had new clothes, expensive black jeans that hid blood well, a silk shirt and a black leather jacket. He had his old boots, faded black leather that had threatened to fall to pieces for years but never had. They were comfortable, they were safe, and they had slackened enough at the top for him to hide a blade there. There was a gun in his inside pocket and another short dagger in his jean pocket. In a year, he had been transformed.

Heechul slung his arms over his shoulders and looked at him in the mirror. “You look happy,” he said into his ear. Ah thought Hankyung, and recognised that the strange feeling in his chest was happiness.

Hankyung had been quite surprised, to begin with, at how easy it was to entice their target for the night into the flat, but Heechul explained that most of the time their targets were nothing more than lowly workers who probably wouldn’t even be missed. Even so, they rarely got anything to do anyway, Heechul venturing out in his get up perhaps once or twice a month. Siwon had been right when they said that they mostly dealt with the men of the street and pimps, but even that rarely happened. Heechul was so bored that he even considered patrolling the streets to break up any street violence better than sitting at home.

“I used to be in the thick of things,” said Heechul, with some pride in his voice. “Part of the hit squad, I suppose you could call it. But - after what happened to Dong Bang Shin Ki, I went out looking for revenge. I managed to kill two high standing members of the mob before anyone managed to catch up to me.” He didn’t sound shameful - if anything the amount of pride had increased. “I guess you could say I was demoted. I worked with Siwon back then too, so he volunteered to do this job with me too.” He smirked a little. “He’s too loyal for his own good.”

“Loyalty is important in this job,” said Hankyung. “It’s strange,” he went on. “I’ve never even met Eeteuk, but I still feel loyal to him. Like I’d do anything he asked me to.”

“Men with similar aims in life can be like that,” said Heechul. “I think you wanted to make a difference, even before you were aware of it. Eeteuk is helping you to do that.”

Hankyung did meet Eeteuk shortly after that and was amazed to find that the one who lead them was an effeminate man with yellow hair and a high pitched laugh. He seemed cheerful and seemed always to be smiling, revealed dimples, and dressed in black constantly, baggy against his slim frame. He had been in the flat for an hour, and after welcoming Hankyung - who felt that he was being taken note of, his essential details noted down in Eeteuk’s head, he had settled down to talk to Heechul and Siwon, mixing business with gossip about the rest of the group, who Hankyung met gradually. By the time Eeteuk left, Hankyung felt like he had known him his entire life, and he felt the loyalty in him stronger than ever before.

‘Not working by the usual methods’ was code for men who didn’t have a taste for feminine curves. Apparently Siwon had always been the one who had gone out in that case, but he didn’t have the flair for flirting that Heechul had, wasn’t always able to keep up the façade, and so they had often lost the men before they had even managed to pull them in. Heechul refused to go out for those clients because he claimed that that was nothing more than slave labour and he wasn’t get paid enough to have to do Siwon’s job as well (he wasn’t getting paid at all). Now that Hankyung was there, they wanted him to try it.

Shindong brought the stats of their first kill of that month down to the flat, and he loitered for a bit in order to talk to Hankyung. “Ryeowook wants to know if you’ll help him with his Chinese,” he said. “Henry’s taught him a bit but he doesn’t know the characters, and Henry says that all Zhou Mi taught Ryeowook was how to say was things like ‘I want to suck you off’.”

“I don’t know why you’re all so determined to learn Chinese,” said Hankyung - Donghae had been to see him with a similar request a week beforehand. “It’s a dead language, no one else speaks it. You’re all better off learning English from Kibum and Henry.”

“A dead language is perfect for us,” said Shindong with a grin. “A language that no one else can understand, we’d be able to speak in an unbreakable code.”

“Tell him yes, then,” said Hankyung with a sigh, and Shindong put the file on the table and left. Siwon picked it up and flicked through it.

“What’s the guy done?” asked Heechul.

“He’s the ring leader of a small group that’s rising in power,” read Siwon. “His group has mostly been harmless, but its rise in power has seen them taking young workers from the streets and training them to be their own unpaid prostitutes.”

“Read sex slaves,” said Heechul, looking disgusted.

“Taking out the ring leader should show them that we will not accept this at all,” continued Siwon. “We start high with this one in order to nip it in the bud straight away.”

“How are we supposed to lure him out if he’s already got people at his beck and call?” asked Heechul, looking a little disgruntled.

“They search the streets at night to find people already working that they think would be perfect for the job, apparently,” said Siwon, putting the file down with a disgusted expression. “Try them out and then take them soon after. The ring leader prefers the male whores, so that’s what we’ve got to aim for.”

“Me, then,” said Hankyung, and Siwon nodded. Strangely, Hankyung didn’t feel any fear over what he was set to do that night; he actually felt a weird emotion, something similar to excitement. Was this how Heechul felt? Hankyung remembered the way Heechul had always seemed particularly sarcastic before he was set to go out, the way his eyes always watched Hankyung and Siwon as they moved around the room, the way he always seemed to seek one of them out before he left to kiss them roughly. Perhaps that was Heechul’s way of showing his excitement, or, Hankyung thought with a wry smile, perhaps killing just turned him on. He was inclined to believe the second.

With his usual jeans exchanged for tight black leather, and his usual shirt unfastened to half way down his chest, he passed quite comfortably for one of the male prostitutes who littered the street corners of the city, and he wasn’t sure whether to be happy about this when Heechul pointed it out. Heechul came with him into the city to help him find his target, dressed up in his dress so that they just looked like two prostitutes who had ganged together for protection - many had. Their instructions had been to leave the body where it would be found easily, so that the message got across easily.

“To your left,” said Heechul quietly. “In the alleyway, that’s him.”

“Right,” said Hankyung. “Wish me luck,” and Heechul just smirked at him and carried on walking down the street. Hankyung turned down the alley, where he leant his shoulder against the wall and put a hand on his hip.

“Hey,” he said, and a year and a half earlier he would have felt stupid and obvious doing this sort of thing; now, after his training, luring people in felt as natural as breathing. “Looking for some company?”

The man looked him up and down; he was about the same height as Hankyung, wearing an expensive suit and impeccably clean shoes. “You’re a bit older than I usually go for,” he said.

I’ll bet I am thought Hankyung, but he just shrugged and said, “You find that the older we are, the more experienced we are. The younger ones don’t know the tricks of the trade.” He smiled slowly and moved so that his shirt fell down over his shoulder. “We know how to give you your money’s worth.”

“Foreign,” said the man, and looked Hankyung over again. “Never had a - yes, I wonder. How much?”

“That depends on what you want,” said Hankyung. “How about we get the pleasure over with and get down to business afterwards?”

“I can do that,” said the man gleefully. He clearly expected to be able to get away without paying. Hankyung stepped close to him, kissed him and pushed him against the wall; the man moaned into his mouth as Hankyung deftly undid his belt with one hand, and then gave a muffled cry as Hankyung pushed the knife that he had hidden in his pocket into his side with the other hand.

He died with shock on his face, and Hankyung looked down at him with a blank expression and no feeling other than a strange fierce joy that someone like that was no longer still alive. He reached down and tucked the note that had been with the file, outlining why the man had died, into his top pocket, where it would be found quickly. Then he turned around and walked out of the darkness of the alley and straight into Heechul, who had been watching at the entrance, so silent that it had taken Hankyung up until the man had noticed that he was foreign before he realised.

“You’re a bloody natural,” said Heechul hoarsely, and kissed him roughly, fingers suddenly everywhere, and Hankyung just grinned against his lips, red smudging off and staining his neck, just like the first time.