i sing the body electric
title: i sing the body electric
pairing: wufan/yixing (lu han/sehun)
length: 5.3k
genre: romance, angst
rating: pg-13
summary: wu fan wants him.
(this is part two of the blacklight series. it can be read as a stand-alone story. here is part one)
i sing the body electric
No one wanted to remember China.
The files were deleted and all physical records were burnt, burning like the rest of the country did. No one wanted to hear about the deaths, the mutations, the cancers. The chain of China’s nuclear power plant accidents filled the rest of the country’s vast lands full of malignant waste. The only sustainable place left in China was Beijing, all thanks to the Second Wall of China. No one bothered with the rest of the country anymore, the chemical wasteland. Separated from the rest of the country, the capitalist metropolis continued its everyday machinery. The children of Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the only remaining feasible cities, were shipped away to nearby countries. Thousands upon thousands were rescued this way. The rich fled to Beijing. Adults and older children from the poorer districts were left for dead. This was something that later China would consider a dark stain of their history, something to speak in hushed voices about, something everyone would rather forget.
No one, and I mean no one, wanted to remember China.
But Zhang Yixing was not fortunate enough to be in any position to whisper and overlook these horrors, because he was living them. He was 13 when the first accident happened. It was close to his hometown. One day, he came home to his mother and father waiting for him in the living room. “We’re moving to the basement,” they told him, simply, and Yixing, distressed by the desperate manner his mother tried to smile, didn’t ask any questions. It soon turned out that he didn’t need to. His father had to go out and work, had to put food on the table, as always. He spent every day in the basement with his mother, who kept telling him how nice it was, to spend some time together, don’t you think, sweetie? As much as Yixing wanted to believe her, there was always a nervous, desperate twist to everything she said, a fundamental wrongness of the situation that even a child picked up on. The television had stopped working, and eventually, the electricity conked out as well. Yixing watched his father’s skin started chipping off, and his mother’s hair falling out. On his 14th birthday, his father explained that his mother’s crying was caused by happiness, and not devastation.
He heard their hushed whispering, every night, “How long do we have left?” or “How long does he have?”, always the same questions. The latter was normally followed by a burst of broken sobs from his mother, and so Yixing closed his eyes and thought of his father’s old Jay Chou songs, hummed them under his breath. Sometimes his humming drowned by his father’s frantic muttering. There’s no use, Mei. I can’t keep feeding you radioactive greens. Everything is dying. And his mother’s quiet question, one night: “What do we do?”
At this moment, Yixing felt a vast ache in his heart. There was something in his mother’s tone; such absolute defeat. His mother was the strongest woman he had ever known. This was the voice of a woman who had lost everything, all hope.
The next day, he woke up all by his self. He sat in the darkness, singing Jay Chou, munched on an uncooked noodle packet while he waited. He fell asleep waiting, and the next time he woke up, he wasn’t alone. A man with a shark-like face and blindingly white teeth had shaken him awake.
“Where are my parents?” Yixing mumbled. The Shark Man’s grin only grew wider.
“Come with me. You’ll meet your parents soon, I promise.”
Later, he found out that they’d sold their bodies, their meat, to the people who still believed that their city could be salvaged. Of course, they were wrong. But as long as they lived, they followed their pure human instinct; to survive, at any cost. When your choice is to eat or get eaten, you eat. Anyhow, they died with the false knowledge that Yixing would be sent to Singapore to live with relatives. This was far from what in reality happened to their son after their hopeless souls left the earth.
The Shark Man escorted him out of the basement, then the house itself, the town entirely. They rushed to the coast in a big, bulky truck. Along the way, Yixing discovered that the Shark Man’s name was Zhou Mi. It was engraved in silver at the collar of a long, black coat he fetches from the back of the van. Yixing chooses to keep mentally referring to him as the Shark Man, because if he did, it made the whole thing seem more like a fairytale. Like none of what had happened, the weeks spent in the basement, his parents’ arguments, that none it was real.
He parted with the Shark Man at the coast, where he was left entirely alone to wait for “a luxury cruise to transport you precious little lad to the land of kimbap, yeah,” according to the Shark Man. One thing was for sure; there was no cruise he was destined to be on. Instead, it was a boat in poor condition. A large amount of other young boys were stuffed into it. Apart from a water bottle that got passed around once every day, there was no sort of nourishment stowed on the boat. For five days, Yixing ate nothing, consumed no fluids apart from a couple chugs of water.
Still, he closed his eyes, hummed Jay Chou songs. He thought of his mother before her teeth started falling out, his father before his hair turned grey. The taste of Beijing fried rice felt almost tangible. Once, when he was falling asleep, it was almost as if he felt his mother’s lips press softly against his forehead.
As long as I get off this boat.
As long as I get off this boat.
When he did, he was met by yet another intimidating, strange man. This one was shorter than Zhou mi, but the glimmer in his eyes felt far more dangerous.
“Where are my parents?” Yixing asked, because the question had been churning around in his head ever since that morning he woke up alone. The strange man had frowned at him for a few seconds, before maniacal laughter bubbled out of him.
“Silly boy,” he’d snickered in heavily accented Mandarin, patting Yixing’s acne ridden cheek. He was a plastic man with a plastic smile. The man followed him to a narrow street, which reeked of sickness and dirt. For a few weeks, Leeteuk, the boss, forces him watch, teaches him.
Then he starts working.
Yixing learns to grow accustomed to strange men’s touches, as the years pass. He learns to moan, to sigh, to touch, to please. They’re rarely gentle, but the beginning was the worst. But even then, Leeteuk didn’t allow him to be too damaged after. His pale skin and young, innocent looks were precious, he told Yixing. Don’t wanna damage something that desirable.
Years pass like this. At night he thinks of his mother’s smile, her skin, as it greyed. He has no photographs; he has nothing but the memories in his own head.
(And sometimes - just sometimes, he shatters at the wrists.)
*
*
*
In Seoul, if you’re a Noble, you have every right in the world to live, to consume, to take up as much space as you want, and to wallow in wealth. You never feel a second of doubt that this is what’s right. In school, they teach you about the Underground. The sick part of the city, with sick people, poverty, and no morals. They learn that the Downworlders are a lower sort of human. They were thrown out of the cultured, advanced society of the Nobles, to rot in the slums, a long time ago. That’s why they don’t have normal rights; no healthcare, for example, no laws, no order. They’re unmarked, the Downworlders. No one keeps track of how many there are, and no one really cares. It’s not like the structured system the Nobles have. As a child, a white chip is inserted into your right earlobe. You can’t see it from the outside, but press it, and you’ll feel it.
Anyhow - there’s only crime and death and desperation in the Underground, or, at least, this is what Noble children are taught, as soon as they start school. And what you learn as a child, usually sticks.
This is why no Noble questions this, and if a Downworlder does, well… no one wants to hear it.
*
*
*
Wu Fan always wonders why he’s never allowed to go outside. Growing up, his mother kisses him at night and his father ruffles his hair before leaving for work every day. But never once, they call him their son. Our Wu Fan, his mother called him. Our dearest Wu Fan, dearest.
It’s for your best, they tell him.
Wu Fan’s hatred starts to develop when he’s about 11. One day, he does something he has never dared to do before; when his tutor leaves him for a moment, he bolts out the room. His heart beats fast with excitement. The humans he passes are all tall, beautiful, and pale, just like his parents. They appear so stoic, so cold, and so elite, they don’t even spare him a glance. The end of the street is where his adventure ends. A tight, cold grip wraps around his arm and pulls him back harshly. His tutor’s eyes are wild, her hair having fallen out of its otherwise perfectly smooth up-do. Her mouth is pressed into a tight, angry line, and she is unkind and harsh as she drags him up the street. Still, no passer-by bats an eyelash.
“Who did you speak to? Who saw you?” she questions calmly, as her nails dig into Wu Fan’s thin wrists.
“No one. No one saw me,” he sniffles pathetically.
“Liar,” she spits. Her hand is hard and cold against his cheek. The burning sensation it leaves reminds Wu Fan of that one time when he was experimenting with what would happen if he held his hand under ice cold water for a certain length of time. The result was a slow sort of pain, like burning, but far deeper.
It was this day, that the ugly, black flower that is hatred, started blossoming inside of him. As the years passed, the veins of the plant grew thicker, and it grew into a tree. Buds started blossoming along his spine, while twigs crept up his throat. In the end, it’s pressing on the inside of Wu Fan’s skin, thorn for thorn, it pierced through, slashing him open from the inside out.
With snippets from the secrets hidden in his tutor’s malicious words and threats, he starts piecing thing together. He learns that at 6, he was adopted from a wealthy Chinese family. They had connections, and knew of the disaster that was coming. The people he knew as is mother and father, are really his distant aunt and uncle. Wu Fan guesses that the billions of won stored in his bank account were what drew them to adopt Wu Fan. Why can’t I remember them? Why can’t I remember any fucking thing? He asks himself, over, and over again. When you’re 6, your brain is fairly developed, right? How could it be that he still didn’t remember them, how could he be so flawed? The thought of how little he resembled his parents never quite hit him, but he begins to stop and stare when passing by mirrors. His sharp jawline, his small, plump lips, his high cheekbones - where do all these features come from? Maybe he has his mother’s eyes, perhaps his father’s height. But when he tries to imagine them, a blank image appears.
The only thing he has left is his slight, slight accent. It proves you’re a Chinaman, his tutor tells him. You’re a dirty leech, polluting the country, dirtying our race. You belong in the Underground.
As he turns 15, and his tutor finds him increasingly hard to deal with, he is enrolled at a private boy’s school. The freedom he receives is startling. He breaks hearts and bones (sometimes his own, sometimes other’s), and eventually he gets thrown out. He returns home, and hopes, hopes, hopes that his mother and father will greet him as somewhat of a son. With open arms, as if he was still 8 and his parents were still his parents and his mother blowing on his wounds would make them disappear, and, and, and all of the things that never will be again, and never really were.
Soon, he realizes that he no longer has a home among the Nobles. His looks are well enough suited. He’s tall, slim, and he knows he appears naturally aloof and cold. But like many others, he finds his place in the Underground. Among the rejects, the lawless, the outcasts of society, he seeks comfort. The Underground is a scattered, messy society, and there is no definite center. The club scene is vast, dirty, and filled with birds of all feathers. Even someone like Wu Fan, might even fit in. The drugs, the drinking, the lights and people, it takes him away. In fact, it takes away everything; both the things that don’t matter, and the ones that do.
Victoria is a stripper with golden locks and an accent, just like him. She works at Chanel Business Club. He finds a friend in her, because she doesn’t ask, doesn’t pry. When she’s not working, her face is naturally sweet, and her hair is golden and cascades down her back elegantly. Despite her profession, she carries herself with rare grace. When Wu Fan crashes at her place after a night of hard partying, there’s always a cold cup of coffee waiting for him in the morning. She genuinely cares about him, Wu Fan realizes one night. It hits him when he’s halfway asleep, with Victoria’s soft fingers threading themselves through his carefully styled hair. It reminds him too much of all the things that hurt. The soft press of lips on his forehead, sometime in his sleep, is what does it, what makes his decision final. He leaves her place the next morning. There are no questions answered, no explanations. The key to her apartment gets thrown in the dirty Han River. He never steps a foot in Chanel again.
Life goes on, and Wu Fan knows that he’s a fake. He’s a fake Noble, fakes it with every Korean word that comes out of his mouth, fakes being a Downworlder, with every breath he makes of the polluted air and every step he takes along the dirty streets. When he wakes up in the morning and his ears are ringing, he’s not thinking, shit shit shit, what if I’ve fucked up my hearing for good, because he’s not a Downworlder. He doesn’t simply have to make do with the body he was born with. He could walk into a Noble clinic any day, and he’d be as good as new.
And so, Wu Fan kills himself.
*
It's not a wrist-cutting, pill-popping, both barrels of a shotgun in your mouth suicide. Wu Fan finds he doesn't have to die to kill himself.
Instead; he takes a new name, creates a new life for himself. More drugs, more drinks, more sex, bit by bit, the person he used to be disappears. He considers having his I.D cut out, but at the back of his mind, the possibility of returning to his old life remains, even if just barely. Humans rarely let go of things entirely.
*
Yixing is a hurricane, and when he enters Wu Fan’s life, he throws everything off balance. Hurricanes aren’t gentle, and Yixing isn’t either. At first, Wu Fan likes it, likes the way he never knows when the flood will drag him down once more. It’s nothing he can hold on to, though.
It is at Happy Place, that he finds Yixing.
Wu Fan downs his first drink. It burns. His gaze drifts lazily across the crowd of dancers, as he feels the poison slowly getting pumped around in his body, easing him. One person in particular catches his attention. The way he moves his body is so controlled, so perfectly calculated. It's blatantly that he knows exactly what he's doing, how to tempt, what exactly he has to do to turn heads, to make people's mouth water. Yet, there's an air of restriction around him, a sense of, you can look, but you can't touch. The young man turns to grind his backside against a tall, handsome man. The boy’s hair is as black as the night, and stands in stark contrast to his white skin. Wu Fan’s breath hitches at the rich expanse of bare chest exposed by the boy’s wifebeater.
"Hey, Minseok, who's that?" Wu Fan asks.
"Lay?" the bartender replies, his back to Wu Fan. His black silk west stretches snugly over his lean back. It reflects some of the light, giving it a sometimes blue, sometimes red, green, yellow sheen.
"Lay," Wu Fan breathes. The foreign-sounding name leaves a strange taste in his mouth, but maybe he could get used to it. He searches the crowd for the boy, but he’s lost in the crowd. Wu Fan gets up, maybe to find him, maybe just to find someone, anyone, but a strong grip holds him back. Wu Fan glances down at his forearm, then up again. Minseok is surprisingly muscled, Wu Fan realizes; he’s got the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to his elbows, and what Wu Fan can see of his forearm, is thick with muscle and lines in protruding veins.
“Kris,” he says. The bartender has never touched him before. In fact, he has never even seemed remotely interested in Wu Fan. He’s always smiling, laughing. But now, strangely, there's an unmistakable look of concern on his face, frowning, lips pressed together.
"Don't,” he warns. His tone is perfectly neutral, and the concerned look on his face is quickly replaced with his usual friendly grin. But instead of the playful sparkle in his eyes, the dark brown, almost black orbs are dead serious. For a moment, it chills Wu Fan’s bones a little bit, but then it’s over. He pulls his arm back sharply and saunters towards the crowd.
It’s like he’s got an innate sense of the boy, Lay, because as soon as he enters the mass, he knows where to go. There’s a pull in his stomach, urging him, pushing him in the right direction.
He’s beautiful, Wu Fan thinks. His mouth feels dry, and his heartbeat is suddenly louder than the beat of the loud music. He bathes in the light. It paints the pale pallor of his skin blue, then yellow, then red, then blue again. He’s like this small, angelic creature, and Wu Fan wonders how he ended up in a place like this.
They dance. At one point, Lay traces his hands along Wu Fan’s sides, and pulls him in for a kiss. Pathetically, Wu Fan’s heart jumps. He has to have him. It proves not to be a hard task to bring him home.
For the first time in a long time, Wu Fan feels something. It’s not just sex, not just a cause of his drunken recklessness. Not just stars exploding beneath his closed eyelids, but something actually real. Yet there’s something strange about it, how surprised Lay seems at his gentleness, though Wu Fan can tell he hides it well. Wu Fan wants nothing more than to peel away whatever walls Lay has put around himself, to tear down whatever stands between them.
Wu Fan feels genuinely happy, but exhausted, when he’s about to drift off to sleep, his arms around Lay’s small form. He almost lets out a pathetic, happy sigh. It’s almost unbelievable, he thinks, that he has this kind of boy with him, right now. There’s something about Lay. He’s not just a mindless fuck to Wu Fan. It’s only been a few hours, and already, he’s somehow rooted in Wu Fan’s heart.
Wu Fan is in that special place between reality and dreams, when suddenly, the light is on and Lay is shaking his elbow, his eyes staring blankly into Wu Fan’s.
“100 000 won,” he says. Wu Fan blinks. His eyes are still getting used to the sharp lighting. In the back of his mind, he wonders why Lay is suddenly fully dressed.
“Not used to paying that much?” Lay questions. “Look, I’m the company’s golden boy, so, the price is slightly exaggerated. just how it works,” he explains. “Or, maybe you’re simply inexperienced with this? Ah, yes, I can see that,” he says, and lets out a desperate chuckle. Wu Fan still can’t wrap his mind around what exactly is going on. Lay grabs his hand, and in the blink of an eye, his face turns from blank and businesslike, to a worried expression. He blinks cutely, but there’s something wrong with it, it’s fake, exaggerated to the point where it looks almost comical.
“Mr. Kim will be very unhappy with me. He might even hit me,” Lay explains, pouting. Then he laughs, almost maniacally. Wu Fan doesn’t understand.
Then it hits him.
Lay is a whore.
*
Wu Fan wants him. Perhaps it’s because he can’t truly have him, that’s he becomes so thoroughly obsessed with Lay. His eyes are filled with soft ash, and his smile a miserable thing. He’s Chinese, too, he can tell from the accent. Hearing him speak is like pressing on a bruise, but thrilling, at the same time.
Like a fly to a piece of rotting flesh, Wu Fan is drawn to him. It's an obsession, not love, yet. He's a compulsive, unreasonable concept, and all his actions, every single little thing about him, clung to his mind, like chewing gum stuck to a boot sole. Lay is like a disease to Wu Fan, one he's defenseless against. So all Wu Fan can do, is to lie back and let the fever rise. He fills his heart, and empties his pockets.
“Call me Wu Fan,” Wu Fan tells him. Lay never stays the night, but Wu Fan treasures these few, precious moments, where Lay allows him to dream a little. Allows him to imagine how things would be, if they were to be born different people, in a different world. Lay lets Wu Fan press kisses to his forehead, to hold him, though never for long.
“Why don’t you stay?” Wu Fan murmurs, once, half asleep. He knows the answer, of course. This is Lay’s job. Distantly, Wu Fan hears Yixing laugh.
“It ruins the dream, of course. You go to sleep with Lay by your side, and wake up with someone normal, someone like me, with morning breath and messy hair.”
There’s something about the way he says it, the way the lack of professionalism, the lack of carefully thought out precision in his words, which startles Wu Fan. He opens his eyes, but the room is as black as the back of his eyelids.
“Call me Yixing.”
*
What a couple they’d make, Wu Fan thinks to himself, as he wakes up one morning, and feels empty inside. What a couple they’d make, really, he thinks, again, as he hunts for something to eat. It turns out he’s always Maybe breakfast just isn’t meant to happen that day. Maybe he and Lay just aren’t meant to happen, either.
Wu Fan is still a fake, after all. His name, his skimpy apartment, Downworlder lifestyle, it doesn’t truly make a difference. Not with the chip in his ear and the He's never real. He's garbage, unnecessary, a pest to the streets, even here.
Yixing, on the other hand, is dead inside. With his vacant eyes and pasty skin, he looks beautiful, but soulless. Really, what a couple they’d make.
(But maybe, maybe, if a fake can fall in love with a whore, maybe it’s possible that the whore might start loving him back.)
*
"I don't want your money," Yixing declares, one day. Wu Fan snaps his head around to look at him. Yixing almost smiles, as he flips through the small bundle of money.
"What?" he asks, frowning.
"I said, I don't want your money," he repeats. He enunciates every word precisely, slowly, staring into Wu Fan's dark, confused eyes, making sure he's paying attention.
*
They're both children of the Underground, of cigarette smoke, as well as the burns they leave when you press the embers to your vulnerable skin. What Wu Fan learns, is that the pain is never just his. It's a reflection of someone else's pain. With every scar his fingertips trace over Yixing's skin, he feels like he can't breathe, like he's getting strangled, like his head is getting bashed in, his throat gets slashed open, ear to ear, a thousand razor blades cutting him, acid engulfing him and melting off his skin. Wu Fan spits out his words, each one more hateful than the last. His raps are offensive, distasteful and incompetently written, full of blasphemy, racism, sexual deviancy, what-have-you. The words love and fuck are used interchangeably. It is grand, and it is loud, so loud, some mornings his ears will feel like they've been stuffed with cotton for days afterwards. He improvises half of the time, and he doesn't care, because the lights are on him. This drug is his best one yet.
“Maybe a musician, maybe a dancer. But it’ll never happen, anyway, right?” he laughs. He’s right, of course; no one wants to hear the voice of a Downworlder, no matter how beautiful the tune.
“Yeah, you’re right. I was just asking,” Wu Fan says. The urge to say more is imminent in his mind, but an impenetrable fog has entered it, clouded his thoughts. Instead, he breathes in more of Yixing’s scent. It’s a bit like tobacco, a bit like sadness, but still the closest Wu Fan has to home.
*
*
*
Initially, Yixing is frighteningly attracted to Wu Fan, so much, and so suddenly, scares him. He’s uncomfortable, yet he can’t stop seeing him. It's not that he likes Wu Fan, not that he feels love, but it's like he's addicted. One night, when they’re (he almost gags, just thinking the word) cuddling, Wu Fan’s hair falls into his mouth. For weeks after, he has nightmares of gobs of hair getting stuck in his throat.
Yixing can't dance in front of him. Up on the stage, surrounded by hundreds of intoxicated individual, everything’s perfectly fine. In front of middle-aged businessmen, almost salivating at the sight of him, that's bearable, too. If he can make it into a performance, there's no problem. But in front of Wu Fan, all the barriers he has created between himself and others, are torn down as easily as that. Like a child blowing on a castle of cards, his shields have been torn down. It has left him vulnerable, with no protection.
Wu Fan, too, is like glass. A little push and he’ll break. Yixing can feel it in the way when he looks into Wu Fan’s eyes, he’s not really there. His skin might be ice cold, pale marble beneath his fingertips, and his eyes might be two diamonds, harsh and unkind, but he’s brittle. For years, his exterior has built itself up. It’s hard and rigid, but with little tensile strength. He’ll shatter on the ground and cut anyone who steps their feet on where he lays. Pain is never a gift, he has learnt.
They’re both bound to go to pieces, someday.
That someday arrives faster than he thought.
*
The sun filters through the window. Yixing holds his hand up, watching the patterns the light make on his skin.
"What did you think the first time you saw me?" he inquires. Silence.
"What do you think I thought the first time I saw you?" Wu Fan asks quietly. Yixing is brought back to that night, how Wu Fan came up to him, and with all the men and women of all ages, all sizes, all sorts of shapes and looks, the range from beautiful to ugly to strange to unreal, Yixing was so sure that nothing could ever phase him again. Nothing could shock him, dazzle him, frighten him. But Wu Fan was so magnetic, so unique, Yixing found himself getting caught off guard.
He can't do this.
Silently, he starts getting dressed. He picks up his clothing, his few items from the room.
"What are you doing?" Wu Fan asks. Yixing slings the bag over his shoulder and heads for the door.
"Yixing, I thought you were beautiful. Of all the people there, in that club that night, there was only you, I only saw you," Wu Fan says, the words spilling out of him.
"No, Wu Fan. You thought, you thought, "wow, I bet his hair would feel nice, balled up in my fist as I take him from behind."" He pushes him away, hard enough to Wu Fan to stumble a bit.
He slams the door behind him, hard.
"Yixing. Yixing, are you still there?" Wu Fan asks. The sound of his voice is muffled by the door between them.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. He can’t do this.
Yixing leans against the door, regulating his breathing so that Wu Fan won't know he's there.
"You were beautiful."
It's the wrong answer.
*
Wu Fan downs his… 4th, 5th, shot? He doesn’t keep count anymore. The alcohol numbs his limbs, mellows him out, and right now, he’s in need of some mellowing. Right now, he’s just another wounded young man. He remembers Minseok’s warning, and wants to laugh. Laughs because Minseok knew exactly what would happen. Wu Fan has miscalculated everything, it seems; Yixing wasn’t falling in love with him. Wu Fan doesn't know if it's because he can't, all he knows, is that his heart hurts far too much to think about it.
Something catches his attention, at the far end of his peripheral vision. It’s Yixing. But no, it’s not just Yixing, it’s Yixing staring him full in the eye, playful grin on his face. Then he turns back to the man whose lap he’s sitting on, thighs spread, rutting against him, and Wu Fan, Wu fan this close to hurling the contents of his stomach everywhere. So he gets the fuck out of there. He’s jogging home, thinks of maybe take a duck in the Han River, but the polluted water would melt away his skin. It’s not death he fears, it’s the pain. A coward, he is, still.
This is not some angsty romcom or teen drama series. When Wu Fan walks into his tiny condo and heads straight for the bathroom, he does not enter the shower fully clothed, he does not fall to his knees, he does not weep. He undresses silently, peeling off each layer of clothing, smelling like tobacco and sweat and sex. Then he steps into the shower. No tears mix with the downpour. Instead, he closes his eyes and lets the water wash over him, drown him. It’s inevitable when he eventually inhales some water. He crouches over, coughing until his throat is raw, because it’s rejecting it, rejecting death. He drags himself out of the shower, still coughing, laughing, crying, he doesn’t know, now, doesn’t know if there’s even a difference between them. His limbs ache, perhaps from heartbreak, or maybe just exhaustion, maybe both. The walls of the bathroom are covered with mirrors, and four different versions of himself are staring back at him. His eyes are bloodshot and his lips look abused, bright red and swollen.
And it feels so terrible, so good, to be alive.
a/n: ahh ; _ ; the title is taken from a poem by walt whitman.
(the blacklight concept of things usually unseen in normal lighting that stand out when examined carefully)
pairing: wufan/yixing (lu han/sehun)
length: 5.3k
genre: romance, angst
rating: pg-13
summary: wu fan wants him.
(this is part two of the blacklight series. it can be read as a stand-alone story. here is part one)
i sing the body electric
No one wanted to remember China.
The files were deleted and all physical records were burnt, burning like the rest of the country did. No one wanted to hear about the deaths, the mutations, the cancers. The chain of China’s nuclear power plant accidents filled the rest of the country’s vast lands full of malignant waste. The only sustainable place left in China was Beijing, all thanks to the Second Wall of China. No one bothered with the rest of the country anymore, the chemical wasteland. Separated from the rest of the country, the capitalist metropolis continued its everyday machinery. The children of Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the only remaining feasible cities, were shipped away to nearby countries. Thousands upon thousands were rescued this way. The rich fled to Beijing. Adults and older children from the poorer districts were left for dead. This was something that later China would consider a dark stain of their history, something to speak in hushed voices about, something everyone would rather forget.
No one, and I mean no one, wanted to remember China.
But Zhang Yixing was not fortunate enough to be in any position to whisper and overlook these horrors, because he was living them. He was 13 when the first accident happened. It was close to his hometown. One day, he came home to his mother and father waiting for him in the living room. “We’re moving to the basement,” they told him, simply, and Yixing, distressed by the desperate manner his mother tried to smile, didn’t ask any questions. It soon turned out that he didn’t need to. His father had to go out and work, had to put food on the table, as always. He spent every day in the basement with his mother, who kept telling him how nice it was, to spend some time together, don’t you think, sweetie? As much as Yixing wanted to believe her, there was always a nervous, desperate twist to everything she said, a fundamental wrongness of the situation that even a child picked up on. The television had stopped working, and eventually, the electricity conked out as well. Yixing watched his father’s skin started chipping off, and his mother’s hair falling out. On his 14th birthday, his father explained that his mother’s crying was caused by happiness, and not devastation.
He heard their hushed whispering, every night, “How long do we have left?” or “How long does he have?”, always the same questions. The latter was normally followed by a burst of broken sobs from his mother, and so Yixing closed his eyes and thought of his father’s old Jay Chou songs, hummed them under his breath. Sometimes his humming drowned by his father’s frantic muttering. There’s no use, Mei. I can’t keep feeding you radioactive greens. Everything is dying. And his mother’s quiet question, one night: “What do we do?”
At this moment, Yixing felt a vast ache in his heart. There was something in his mother’s tone; such absolute defeat. His mother was the strongest woman he had ever known. This was the voice of a woman who had lost everything, all hope.
The next day, he woke up all by his self. He sat in the darkness, singing Jay Chou, munched on an uncooked noodle packet while he waited. He fell asleep waiting, and the next time he woke up, he wasn’t alone. A man with a shark-like face and blindingly white teeth had shaken him awake.
“Where are my parents?” Yixing mumbled. The Shark Man’s grin only grew wider.
“Come with me. You’ll meet your parents soon, I promise.”
Later, he found out that they’d sold their bodies, their meat, to the people who still believed that their city could be salvaged. Of course, they were wrong. But as long as they lived, they followed their pure human instinct; to survive, at any cost. When your choice is to eat or get eaten, you eat. Anyhow, they died with the false knowledge that Yixing would be sent to Singapore to live with relatives. This was far from what in reality happened to their son after their hopeless souls left the earth.
The Shark Man escorted him out of the basement, then the house itself, the town entirely. They rushed to the coast in a big, bulky truck. Along the way, Yixing discovered that the Shark Man’s name was Zhou Mi. It was engraved in silver at the collar of a long, black coat he fetches from the back of the van. Yixing chooses to keep mentally referring to him as the Shark Man, because if he did, it made the whole thing seem more like a fairytale. Like none of what had happened, the weeks spent in the basement, his parents’ arguments, that none it was real.
He parted with the Shark Man at the coast, where he was left entirely alone to wait for “a luxury cruise to transport you precious little lad to the land of kimbap, yeah,” according to the Shark Man. One thing was for sure; there was no cruise he was destined to be on. Instead, it was a boat in poor condition. A large amount of other young boys were stuffed into it. Apart from a water bottle that got passed around once every day, there was no sort of nourishment stowed on the boat. For five days, Yixing ate nothing, consumed no fluids apart from a couple chugs of water.
Still, he closed his eyes, hummed Jay Chou songs. He thought of his mother before her teeth started falling out, his father before his hair turned grey. The taste of Beijing fried rice felt almost tangible. Once, when he was falling asleep, it was almost as if he felt his mother’s lips press softly against his forehead.
As long as I get off this boat.
As long as I get off this boat.
When he did, he was met by yet another intimidating, strange man. This one was shorter than Zhou mi, but the glimmer in his eyes felt far more dangerous.
“Where are my parents?” Yixing asked, because the question had been churning around in his head ever since that morning he woke up alone. The strange man had frowned at him for a few seconds, before maniacal laughter bubbled out of him.
“Silly boy,” he’d snickered in heavily accented Mandarin, patting Yixing’s acne ridden cheek. He was a plastic man with a plastic smile. The man followed him to a narrow street, which reeked of sickness and dirt. For a few weeks, Leeteuk, the boss, forces him watch, teaches him.
Then he starts working.
Yixing learns to grow accustomed to strange men’s touches, as the years pass. He learns to moan, to sigh, to touch, to please. They’re rarely gentle, but the beginning was the worst. But even then, Leeteuk didn’t allow him to be too damaged after. His pale skin and young, innocent looks were precious, he told Yixing. Don’t wanna damage something that desirable.
Years pass like this. At night he thinks of his mother’s smile, her skin, as it greyed. He has no photographs; he has nothing but the memories in his own head.
(And sometimes - just sometimes, he shatters at the wrists.)
*
*
*
In Seoul, if you’re a Noble, you have every right in the world to live, to consume, to take up as much space as you want, and to wallow in wealth. You never feel a second of doubt that this is what’s right. In school, they teach you about the Underground. The sick part of the city, with sick people, poverty, and no morals. They learn that the Downworlders are a lower sort of human. They were thrown out of the cultured, advanced society of the Nobles, to rot in the slums, a long time ago. That’s why they don’t have normal rights; no healthcare, for example, no laws, no order. They’re unmarked, the Downworlders. No one keeps track of how many there are, and no one really cares. It’s not like the structured system the Nobles have. As a child, a white chip is inserted into your right earlobe. You can’t see it from the outside, but press it, and you’ll feel it.
Anyhow - there’s only crime and death and desperation in the Underground, or, at least, this is what Noble children are taught, as soon as they start school. And what you learn as a child, usually sticks.
This is why no Noble questions this, and if a Downworlder does, well… no one wants to hear it.
*
*
*
Wu Fan always wonders why he’s never allowed to go outside. Growing up, his mother kisses him at night and his father ruffles his hair before leaving for work every day. But never once, they call him their son. Our Wu Fan, his mother called him. Our dearest Wu Fan, dearest.
It’s for your best, they tell him.
Wu Fan’s hatred starts to develop when he’s about 11. One day, he does something he has never dared to do before; when his tutor leaves him for a moment, he bolts out the room. His heart beats fast with excitement. The humans he passes are all tall, beautiful, and pale, just like his parents. They appear so stoic, so cold, and so elite, they don’t even spare him a glance. The end of the street is where his adventure ends. A tight, cold grip wraps around his arm and pulls him back harshly. His tutor’s eyes are wild, her hair having fallen out of its otherwise perfectly smooth up-do. Her mouth is pressed into a tight, angry line, and she is unkind and harsh as she drags him up the street. Still, no passer-by bats an eyelash.
“Who did you speak to? Who saw you?” she questions calmly, as her nails dig into Wu Fan’s thin wrists.
“No one. No one saw me,” he sniffles pathetically.
“Liar,” she spits. Her hand is hard and cold against his cheek. The burning sensation it leaves reminds Wu Fan of that one time when he was experimenting with what would happen if he held his hand under ice cold water for a certain length of time. The result was a slow sort of pain, like burning, but far deeper.
It was this day, that the ugly, black flower that is hatred, started blossoming inside of him. As the years passed, the veins of the plant grew thicker, and it grew into a tree. Buds started blossoming along his spine, while twigs crept up his throat. In the end, it’s pressing on the inside of Wu Fan’s skin, thorn for thorn, it pierced through, slashing him open from the inside out.
With snippets from the secrets hidden in his tutor’s malicious words and threats, he starts piecing thing together. He learns that at 6, he was adopted from a wealthy Chinese family. They had connections, and knew of the disaster that was coming. The people he knew as is mother and father, are really his distant aunt and uncle. Wu Fan guesses that the billions of won stored in his bank account were what drew them to adopt Wu Fan. Why can’t I remember them? Why can’t I remember any fucking thing? He asks himself, over, and over again. When you’re 6, your brain is fairly developed, right? How could it be that he still didn’t remember them, how could he be so flawed? The thought of how little he resembled his parents never quite hit him, but he begins to stop and stare when passing by mirrors. His sharp jawline, his small, plump lips, his high cheekbones - where do all these features come from? Maybe he has his mother’s eyes, perhaps his father’s height. But when he tries to imagine them, a blank image appears.
The only thing he has left is his slight, slight accent. It proves you’re a Chinaman, his tutor tells him. You’re a dirty leech, polluting the country, dirtying our race. You belong in the Underground.
As he turns 15, and his tutor finds him increasingly hard to deal with, he is enrolled at a private boy’s school. The freedom he receives is startling. He breaks hearts and bones (sometimes his own, sometimes other’s), and eventually he gets thrown out. He returns home, and hopes, hopes, hopes that his mother and father will greet him as somewhat of a son. With open arms, as if he was still 8 and his parents were still his parents and his mother blowing on his wounds would make them disappear, and, and, and all of the things that never will be again, and never really were.
Soon, he realizes that he no longer has a home among the Nobles. His looks are well enough suited. He’s tall, slim, and he knows he appears naturally aloof and cold. But like many others, he finds his place in the Underground. Among the rejects, the lawless, the outcasts of society, he seeks comfort. The Underground is a scattered, messy society, and there is no definite center. The club scene is vast, dirty, and filled with birds of all feathers. Even someone like Wu Fan, might even fit in. The drugs, the drinking, the lights and people, it takes him away. In fact, it takes away everything; both the things that don’t matter, and the ones that do.
Victoria is a stripper with golden locks and an accent, just like him. She works at Chanel Business Club. He finds a friend in her, because she doesn’t ask, doesn’t pry. When she’s not working, her face is naturally sweet, and her hair is golden and cascades down her back elegantly. Despite her profession, she carries herself with rare grace. When Wu Fan crashes at her place after a night of hard partying, there’s always a cold cup of coffee waiting for him in the morning. She genuinely cares about him, Wu Fan realizes one night. It hits him when he’s halfway asleep, with Victoria’s soft fingers threading themselves through his carefully styled hair. It reminds him too much of all the things that hurt. The soft press of lips on his forehead, sometime in his sleep, is what does it, what makes his decision final. He leaves her place the next morning. There are no questions answered, no explanations. The key to her apartment gets thrown in the dirty Han River. He never steps a foot in Chanel again.
Life goes on, and Wu Fan knows that he’s a fake. He’s a fake Noble, fakes it with every Korean word that comes out of his mouth, fakes being a Downworlder, with every breath he makes of the polluted air and every step he takes along the dirty streets. When he wakes up in the morning and his ears are ringing, he’s not thinking, shit shit shit, what if I’ve fucked up my hearing for good, because he’s not a Downworlder. He doesn’t simply have to make do with the body he was born with. He could walk into a Noble clinic any day, and he’d be as good as new.
And so, Wu Fan kills himself.
*
It's not a wrist-cutting, pill-popping, both barrels of a shotgun in your mouth suicide. Wu Fan finds he doesn't have to die to kill himself.
Instead; he takes a new name, creates a new life for himself. More drugs, more drinks, more sex, bit by bit, the person he used to be disappears. He considers having his I.D cut out, but at the back of his mind, the possibility of returning to his old life remains, even if just barely. Humans rarely let go of things entirely.
*
Yixing is a hurricane, and when he enters Wu Fan’s life, he throws everything off balance. Hurricanes aren’t gentle, and Yixing isn’t either. At first, Wu Fan likes it, likes the way he never knows when the flood will drag him down once more. It’s nothing he can hold on to, though.
It is at Happy Place, that he finds Yixing.
Wu Fan downs his first drink. It burns. His gaze drifts lazily across the crowd of dancers, as he feels the poison slowly getting pumped around in his body, easing him. One person in particular catches his attention. The way he moves his body is so controlled, so perfectly calculated. It's blatantly that he knows exactly what he's doing, how to tempt, what exactly he has to do to turn heads, to make people's mouth water. Yet, there's an air of restriction around him, a sense of, you can look, but you can't touch. The young man turns to grind his backside against a tall, handsome man. The boy’s hair is as black as the night, and stands in stark contrast to his white skin. Wu Fan’s breath hitches at the rich expanse of bare chest exposed by the boy’s wifebeater.
"Hey, Minseok, who's that?" Wu Fan asks.
"Lay?" the bartender replies, his back to Wu Fan. His black silk west stretches snugly over his lean back. It reflects some of the light, giving it a sometimes blue, sometimes red, green, yellow sheen.
"Lay," Wu Fan breathes. The foreign-sounding name leaves a strange taste in his mouth, but maybe he could get used to it. He searches the crowd for the boy, but he’s lost in the crowd. Wu Fan gets up, maybe to find him, maybe just to find someone, anyone, but a strong grip holds him back. Wu Fan glances down at his forearm, then up again. Minseok is surprisingly muscled, Wu Fan realizes; he’s got the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to his elbows, and what Wu Fan can see of his forearm, is thick with muscle and lines in protruding veins.
“Kris,” he says. The bartender has never touched him before. In fact, he has never even seemed remotely interested in Wu Fan. He’s always smiling, laughing. But now, strangely, there's an unmistakable look of concern on his face, frowning, lips pressed together.
"Don't,” he warns. His tone is perfectly neutral, and the concerned look on his face is quickly replaced with his usual friendly grin. But instead of the playful sparkle in his eyes, the dark brown, almost black orbs are dead serious. For a moment, it chills Wu Fan’s bones a little bit, but then it’s over. He pulls his arm back sharply and saunters towards the crowd.
It’s like he’s got an innate sense of the boy, Lay, because as soon as he enters the mass, he knows where to go. There’s a pull in his stomach, urging him, pushing him in the right direction.
He’s beautiful, Wu Fan thinks. His mouth feels dry, and his heartbeat is suddenly louder than the beat of the loud music. He bathes in the light. It paints the pale pallor of his skin blue, then yellow, then red, then blue again. He’s like this small, angelic creature, and Wu Fan wonders how he ended up in a place like this.
They dance. At one point, Lay traces his hands along Wu Fan’s sides, and pulls him in for a kiss. Pathetically, Wu Fan’s heart jumps. He has to have him. It proves not to be a hard task to bring him home.
For the first time in a long time, Wu Fan feels something. It’s not just sex, not just a cause of his drunken recklessness. Not just stars exploding beneath his closed eyelids, but something actually real. Yet there’s something strange about it, how surprised Lay seems at his gentleness, though Wu Fan can tell he hides it well. Wu Fan wants nothing more than to peel away whatever walls Lay has put around himself, to tear down whatever stands between them.
Wu Fan feels genuinely happy, but exhausted, when he’s about to drift off to sleep, his arms around Lay’s small form. He almost lets out a pathetic, happy sigh. It’s almost unbelievable, he thinks, that he has this kind of boy with him, right now. There’s something about Lay. He’s not just a mindless fuck to Wu Fan. It’s only been a few hours, and already, he’s somehow rooted in Wu Fan’s heart.
Wu Fan is in that special place between reality and dreams, when suddenly, the light is on and Lay is shaking his elbow, his eyes staring blankly into Wu Fan’s.
“100 000 won,” he says. Wu Fan blinks. His eyes are still getting used to the sharp lighting. In the back of his mind, he wonders why Lay is suddenly fully dressed.
“Not used to paying that much?” Lay questions. “Look, I’m the company’s golden boy, so, the price is slightly exaggerated. just how it works,” he explains. “Or, maybe you’re simply inexperienced with this? Ah, yes, I can see that,” he says, and lets out a desperate chuckle. Wu Fan still can’t wrap his mind around what exactly is going on. Lay grabs his hand, and in the blink of an eye, his face turns from blank and businesslike, to a worried expression. He blinks cutely, but there’s something wrong with it, it’s fake, exaggerated to the point where it looks almost comical.
“Mr. Kim will be very unhappy with me. He might even hit me,” Lay explains, pouting. Then he laughs, almost maniacally. Wu Fan doesn’t understand.
Then it hits him.
Lay is a whore.
*
Wu Fan wants him. Perhaps it’s because he can’t truly have him, that’s he becomes so thoroughly obsessed with Lay. His eyes are filled with soft ash, and his smile a miserable thing. He’s Chinese, too, he can tell from the accent. Hearing him speak is like pressing on a bruise, but thrilling, at the same time.
Like a fly to a piece of rotting flesh, Wu Fan is drawn to him. It's an obsession, not love, yet. He's a compulsive, unreasonable concept, and all his actions, every single little thing about him, clung to his mind, like chewing gum stuck to a boot sole. Lay is like a disease to Wu Fan, one he's defenseless against. So all Wu Fan can do, is to lie back and let the fever rise. He fills his heart, and empties his pockets.
“Call me Wu Fan,” Wu Fan tells him. Lay never stays the night, but Wu Fan treasures these few, precious moments, where Lay allows him to dream a little. Allows him to imagine how things would be, if they were to be born different people, in a different world. Lay lets Wu Fan press kisses to his forehead, to hold him, though never for long.
“Why don’t you stay?” Wu Fan murmurs, once, half asleep. He knows the answer, of course. This is Lay’s job. Distantly, Wu Fan hears Yixing laugh.
“It ruins the dream, of course. You go to sleep with Lay by your side, and wake up with someone normal, someone like me, with morning breath and messy hair.”
There’s something about the way he says it, the way the lack of professionalism, the lack of carefully thought out precision in his words, which startles Wu Fan. He opens his eyes, but the room is as black as the back of his eyelids.
“Call me Yixing.”
*
What a couple they’d make, Wu Fan thinks to himself, as he wakes up one morning, and feels empty inside. What a couple they’d make, really, he thinks, again, as he hunts for something to eat. It turns out he’s always Maybe breakfast just isn’t meant to happen that day. Maybe he and Lay just aren’t meant to happen, either.
Wu Fan is still a fake, after all. His name, his skimpy apartment, Downworlder lifestyle, it doesn’t truly make a difference. Not with the chip in his ear and the He's never real. He's garbage, unnecessary, a pest to the streets, even here.
Yixing, on the other hand, is dead inside. With his vacant eyes and pasty skin, he looks beautiful, but soulless. Really, what a couple they’d make.
(But maybe, maybe, if a fake can fall in love with a whore, maybe it’s possible that the whore might start loving him back.)
*
"I don't want your money," Yixing declares, one day. Wu Fan snaps his head around to look at him. Yixing almost smiles, as he flips through the small bundle of money.
"What?" he asks, frowning.
"I said, I don't want your money," he repeats. He enunciates every word precisely, slowly, staring into Wu Fan's dark, confused eyes, making sure he's paying attention.
*
They're both children of the Underground, of cigarette smoke, as well as the burns they leave when you press the embers to your vulnerable skin. What Wu Fan learns, is that the pain is never just his. It's a reflection of someone else's pain. With every scar his fingertips trace over Yixing's skin, he feels like he can't breathe, like he's getting strangled, like his head is getting bashed in, his throat gets slashed open, ear to ear, a thousand razor blades cutting him, acid engulfing him and melting off his skin. Wu Fan spits out his words, each one more hateful than the last. His raps are offensive, distasteful and incompetently written, full of blasphemy, racism, sexual deviancy, what-have-you. The words love and fuck are used interchangeably. It is grand, and it is loud, so loud, some mornings his ears will feel like they've been stuffed with cotton for days afterwards. He improvises half of the time, and he doesn't care, because the lights are on him. This drug is his best one yet.
“Maybe a musician, maybe a dancer. But it’ll never happen, anyway, right?” he laughs. He’s right, of course; no one wants to hear the voice of a Downworlder, no matter how beautiful the tune.
“Yeah, you’re right. I was just asking,” Wu Fan says. The urge to say more is imminent in his mind, but an impenetrable fog has entered it, clouded his thoughts. Instead, he breathes in more of Yixing’s scent. It’s a bit like tobacco, a bit like sadness, but still the closest Wu Fan has to home.
*
*
*
Initially, Yixing is frighteningly attracted to Wu Fan, so much, and so suddenly, scares him. He’s uncomfortable, yet he can’t stop seeing him. It's not that he likes Wu Fan, not that he feels love, but it's like he's addicted. One night, when they’re (he almost gags, just thinking the word) cuddling, Wu Fan’s hair falls into his mouth. For weeks after, he has nightmares of gobs of hair getting stuck in his throat.
Yixing can't dance in front of him. Up on the stage, surrounded by hundreds of intoxicated individual, everything’s perfectly fine. In front of middle-aged businessmen, almost salivating at the sight of him, that's bearable, too. If he can make it into a performance, there's no problem. But in front of Wu Fan, all the barriers he has created between himself and others, are torn down as easily as that. Like a child blowing on a castle of cards, his shields have been torn down. It has left him vulnerable, with no protection.
Wu Fan, too, is like glass. A little push and he’ll break. Yixing can feel it in the way when he looks into Wu Fan’s eyes, he’s not really there. His skin might be ice cold, pale marble beneath his fingertips, and his eyes might be two diamonds, harsh and unkind, but he’s brittle. For years, his exterior has built itself up. It’s hard and rigid, but with little tensile strength. He’ll shatter on the ground and cut anyone who steps their feet on where he lays. Pain is never a gift, he has learnt.
They’re both bound to go to pieces, someday.
That someday arrives faster than he thought.
*
The sun filters through the window. Yixing holds his hand up, watching the patterns the light make on his skin.
"What did you think the first time you saw me?" he inquires. Silence.
"What do you think I thought the first time I saw you?" Wu Fan asks quietly. Yixing is brought back to that night, how Wu Fan came up to him, and with all the men and women of all ages, all sizes, all sorts of shapes and looks, the range from beautiful to ugly to strange to unreal, Yixing was so sure that nothing could ever phase him again. Nothing could shock him, dazzle him, frighten him. But Wu Fan was so magnetic, so unique, Yixing found himself getting caught off guard.
He can't do this.
Silently, he starts getting dressed. He picks up his clothing, his few items from the room.
"What are you doing?" Wu Fan asks. Yixing slings the bag over his shoulder and heads for the door.
"Yixing, I thought you were beautiful. Of all the people there, in that club that night, there was only you, I only saw you," Wu Fan says, the words spilling out of him.
"No, Wu Fan. You thought, you thought, "wow, I bet his hair would feel nice, balled up in my fist as I take him from behind."" He pushes him away, hard enough to Wu Fan to stumble a bit.
He slams the door behind him, hard.
"Yixing. Yixing, are you still there?" Wu Fan asks. The sound of his voice is muffled by the door between them.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. He can’t do this.
Yixing leans against the door, regulating his breathing so that Wu Fan won't know he's there.
"You were beautiful."
It's the wrong answer.
*
Wu Fan downs his… 4th, 5th, shot? He doesn’t keep count anymore. The alcohol numbs his limbs, mellows him out, and right now, he’s in need of some mellowing. Right now, he’s just another wounded young man. He remembers Minseok’s warning, and wants to laugh. Laughs because Minseok knew exactly what would happen. Wu Fan has miscalculated everything, it seems; Yixing wasn’t falling in love with him. Wu Fan doesn't know if it's because he can't, all he knows, is that his heart hurts far too much to think about it.
Something catches his attention, at the far end of his peripheral vision. It’s Yixing. But no, it’s not just Yixing, it’s Yixing staring him full in the eye, playful grin on his face. Then he turns back to the man whose lap he’s sitting on, thighs spread, rutting against him, and Wu Fan, Wu fan this close to hurling the contents of his stomach everywhere. So he gets the fuck out of there. He’s jogging home, thinks of maybe take a duck in the Han River, but the polluted water would melt away his skin. It’s not death he fears, it’s the pain. A coward, he is, still.
This is not some angsty romcom or teen drama series. When Wu Fan walks into his tiny condo and heads straight for the bathroom, he does not enter the shower fully clothed, he does not fall to his knees, he does not weep. He undresses silently, peeling off each layer of clothing, smelling like tobacco and sweat and sex. Then he steps into the shower. No tears mix with the downpour. Instead, he closes his eyes and lets the water wash over him, drown him. It’s inevitable when he eventually inhales some water. He crouches over, coughing until his throat is raw, because it’s rejecting it, rejecting death. He drags himself out of the shower, still coughing, laughing, crying, he doesn’t know, now, doesn’t know if there’s even a difference between them. His limbs ache, perhaps from heartbreak, or maybe just exhaustion, maybe both. The walls of the bathroom are covered with mirrors, and four different versions of himself are staring back at him. His eyes are bloodshot and his lips look abused, bright red and swollen.
And it feels so terrible, so good, to be alive.
a/n: ahh ; _ ; the title is taken from a poem by walt whitman.
(the blacklight concept of things usually unseen in normal lighting that stand out when examined carefully)