(no subject)
scheherazade. sulli/krystal (some jongkey). for goyangi
“I love you,” she says, but she’s lying. There is blood smudged under her cheekbones, blood in the beds of her nails. Her voice crackles like radio static - just as quiet, just as empty. “Stay with me tonight.”
Sulli isn’t sure that her hands aren’t shaking; she hides them in the younger girl’s hair. Twists compulsively like she’s braiding. Too many evenings spent curled up on the couch. “Okay,” Sulli sighs, more breath than sound.
Raids in the east, a fresh plague from the north. They could be dead by morning.
She hums against Krystal’s jaw. “Okay.”
Thursday brings a boy called Kibum, toting a nasty limp and a neck littered with bruises. He explains the limp through a story of a gang in Busan; the kiss marks explain themselves through the boy’s ever-smirking companion.
“Jonghyun,” is how he introduces himself. He scratches idly behind an ear. Slips his fingers between Kibum’s, and a gun is visible underneath the material of his t-shirt.
Krystal takes to him immediately.
Rust drips from their stronghold’s metal siding as it rains, rains, rains - the weather’s all been screwed to hell, the ozone’s thinning, climates shifting like tectonic plates, an earthquake of monsoons and shattering stars. Sulli keeps an eye on the sliver of light at the foot of the door, muscles tense, always ready. She hates storms like these, because it’s impossible to hear. Thieves love the rain. Amber had called them ‘water snakes’, and Sulli could only agree.
No one else appears concerned, though. Kibum rests a heavy head on the sharp jut of Jonghyun’s shoulder, Krystal lying on the pavement by their legs, her dark eyes wide, studying. She’s barely sixteen, but her bones creak when she moves.
“Tell me your story.”
Jonghyun barks out a laugh while Kibum’s eyelids flutter closed, and Sulli can tell he’s going to lie by the sudden twitch of his hands. “Why not,” he begins. Grinning like a sinner, acting as a saint. “Why not,” he says. “Okay.”
They’ve made it as far as Seoul when an infection sets in.
Kibum doesn’t have very long, and his calf keeps bleeding, and Jonghyun won’t stop crying although he doesn’t make a sound. A simple minded reverence slopes down the curve of his cheek while he cards his fingers through Kibum’s dyed hair. Krystal stares with her knees drawn up to her chest, half-drawing patterns in the dust on the floor.
It wouldn’t be their first death since the dawn of the end, spawn of the end, when the planet surrendered to the footprint of man - they’d been five when they started, each one of them strong. Society collapsed inward. Never underestimate a human’s will to survive. So many morals go gray when there’s no God to turn to; Sulli had buried her Bible with Luna, speaking psalms when she kissed her eyes.
As Jonghyun’s breathing becomes desperate, she takes Krystal by the wrist and leads her outside.
“We should leave them alone,” she whispers, her fingernails chipping at dried mud on her shirt.
Krystal only stares at the door. “When I die, I don’t want you to be there.” Her voice has no inflection, but Sulli’s chest stares to seize. Krystal still doesn’t look her way. She pushes her hair behind an ear, all that black so hopelessly tangled. Sulli itches to brush it the way that she used to, what seems like years ago. “You have to go. When it happens.” A sob echoes from inside. “Okay?”
And then it’s quiet, just the wind, and Krystal still won’t meet her gaze. Sighing, Sulli takes her hand.
“Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”