body in the weeds
body in the weeds
kai/sulli, chanyeol/sulli, kai/krystal, pg-13
post-apocolypse au/drama, 2173w
They come at night.
The group turns sharply in their spots in the midst of their dinner - a privilege that rarely comes across in the new world. The residents who once inhabited their current refuge site had a stockpile underneath the house. They had spent the day rummaging through junk and soil, hoping that would be the last of their worries for the day. Canned beets and beans had to wait.
Chanyeol roars bloody murder from his post outside, letting a shot fire from his rifle. He calls for them, and Jongin is the first to surrender his plastic cutlery.
Jinri feels around her waist for her knives. The utility belt has not left her hips since Amber had been taken from them. The departure of their boyish ally hardened Jinri - it was when and how she inherited her strength.
Her comrades shuffle around the first floor. Mere murmurs pierce the air. They do not admit their fear every time they are invaded. But it would not hurt to hear it, to know that they are on the same page.
“I’ll cover the back,” Krystal says in a breathy tone. She swings an aluminum baseball bat over her shoulder and leans down as Jinri quickly does up the laces on her shoes. Her eyes leave her friend’s face as Jongin barges out of their tight bungalow, capturing her attention and worry once again.
Jinri touches Krystal’s elbow in reassurance before she takes off before her.
“You slept with that extraterrestrial, didn’t you?”
It comes off accusingly. Jinri lifts her head and draws in a breath. Krystal had found her rinsing her hair from a thin stream behind the tiny cottage they found a month prior.
“I didn’t know repopulating the earth was number one on your to-do list,” she says, clicking her tongue once.
Jinri runs her fingers through her damp hair, just as it meets above her belly button. She lingers there and tries to repel a shiver. Not from the icy, morning water, but from a tender touch Krystal evokes.
It disappoints her that they both cannot be content, despite their rocky living conditions.
“Worry about yourself. Okay?”
From what Jinri can gather from the information Chanyeol and Minho are shouting from outside, the walkers had broken their line of defense set out in the front yard. Their white picket fence has met its match, even with the extra steel bar they attempted to drill against it for support. Not that Jinri didn’t expect it to hold them off. The property was old. The only upside to the situation is the fact the fence wounded around the premises, giving them more security than they are accustomed to.
All she inhales is gun powder, sweat, and the blood of the risen dead as she steps out into the thick, summer evening. More shots are fired and her ears are sent into a frenzy considering they have not had to initiate an attack in a while.
“Jinri!”
The smoggy air engulfs her, but her movements do not falter. She has no use turning to Yoona to know how to operate. She ducks, swoops under the walker’s possessive hands, and rams her machete through the back of its skull. She lets out a frustrated grunt and brings her foot up to kick the lifeless corpse forward, drawing her weapon back.
Jongin swings by, short of breath. “Where’s Krystal?!”
“The back!” She swipes her throwing knife from her leg and launches it hard towards a middle aged man pinning Kyungsoo against the soil. He pushes himself away with a groan, only gracing a thank you with his signature deer-in-headlights stare.
Jongin takes off and the charade continues. Chanyeol fires into the night. Minho is throwing every ounce of himself towards the beasts to save the little ammunition they have left. And all Jinri can see is fatigue and anger.
When was the last time someone took a watchful eye over them?
The group of walkers diminish slowly before their eyes. Jinri stays on the front lawn, keeping tabs on everyone even though Chanyeol insists she take his pocket gun and watch over Kyungsoo’s shoulder. She wants to tell him to use his whistle or one day she may or may not dig out his vocal chords.
They argue enough. Jinri avoids repeating herself to him what a bad shot she is. But she is completely welcome to giving his toes a trip down memory lane.
An hour ticks by and they clear the lot. It is darker than before, but they can still make out the sun dropping behind the horizon. Jinri makes out Yoona collapsing on the front step, Kyungsoo dragging himself into the house, and Chanyeol finally putting his war toy down.
“We’ll eliminate the bodies tomorrow,” Minho mutters, but they collect the order clearly. He scratches his neck. “It’s too risky to go out and gather water from the stream. I’ll fetch some in the morning.”
Jinri gets up and frowns. The group suddenly feels small. She pockets her knives and carries herself to the side of the house, the parched grass crunching beneath her feet.
“Do you think she misses me?”
She sees the glossy look over Krystal’s eyes as they let their vision wander above them. The stars are clear, but even they appear sad.
Jinri knows what thoughts come to Krystal’s mind, and she has no need to tell her that Jessica will always miss her. She chooses not to hear certain details, so Jinri chooses not to answer certain questions.
“He would miss you,” she whispers over Krystal’s tears.
She halts, pressing her back to the brick wall. Her heart slams against her chest at the audible sounds of a boy trying to muffle his sobs. She knows it is Jongin, but all she hears is a fragile, little boy.
Her lower lip shakes uncontrollably and she shuts her eyes. The last of her previous group has fallen and she wasn’t there for her. She takes a glimpse from the corner of the bungalow with shaky hands grasping the structure.
She sees Krystal, the missing flesh between her neck and shoulder, and more blood. Jongin has her propped poorly against his unstable frame while pressing his hand down on the injury. His forehead pressed gently against hers.
Jinris snaps herself back to the house and tilts her head back too fast. She cups her mouth and whimpers at the idea of any of them trying to save her, and she shakes at the image of Jongin holding on to someone who won’t make the morning.
“Krystal.” Her name comes out of Jongin’s mouth offensively, tainted with desperation. Jinri can only envision her giving him one last crooked smile before drifting off.
“Krys, please.”
Even the air is silenced.
Jinri’s face becomes hot with tears as Jongin shakes their departed companion in his arms. She brings her fists to her forehead and sits there with her heart still drumming at a burning tempo. Her throat closes and every word regurgitates in a choked manner. And she can’t muster help, because Krystal was the one she went to.
Chanyeol finds her, seeking to ask her if she wants another shooting lesson. She blubbers to herself with her eyes still shut, unaware that he’s there. He crouches down and tries to free her hands from the fists she won’t part with. She refuses to buckle into his embrace.
He straightens himself out when she shoves him away. He takes his eyes off her for a second to gaze over at Jongin and Krystal, but Jinri suddenly emerges with new found strength. She snatches the pocket gun from the back of his jeans and storms ahead.
“Move, Jongin.”
He mouth is open as he stares up at her, baffled. As if he would ever let Krystal part from him again. He swallows. “This is my fault.”
“I don’t care!” She hiccups and now the gun is on Jongin. It stuns her when he doesn’t flinch. “She’s going to turn whether you want her to or not.”
Chanyeol is in her ear, not threatening, but not welcoming, or encouraging. His jaw is clenched. “Put it down, Jinri. Please.”
“I let you mourn during her last moment,” she whispers. “Let me put her down.”
Her hands are clammy when the deed is done. She cries again, but everyone hears her. She recollects Minho slipping the weapon out of her grip and the image of Jongin with his face in his soiled hands before being carried away by Chanyeol.
“Can you tell him things are better this way?”
Jinri wakes up with a damp cloth against her forehead. A rusted pot of water is set on the tarnished coffee table in front of her. Minho must have made his first water run already.
Someone had shut the door, stirring her out of her brief dream. Krystal was present. She was smiling - free of harm and of the planet she always wanted to escape.
Jinri’s head continues to pound, miming her heart from the night before. The trauma still remains fresh in every fragment of her being. She cannot stop the sun from penetrating through the windows as it strains her vision. But the room light up, and the early draft is so foreign and restoring, and it cools the spot where the towel rested on her face.
That split second of enchantment vanishes when she comes to terms that her best friend is no longer among the living. Her chest goes heavy again.
The world is shy of voices, but she hears bodies being dragged and a soft thud against the dry dirt. It’s familiar to Jinri. The last time she heard that gritty pitch was when Baekhyun had passed away.
“No,” she croaks and forces her body off the scratchy sofa. She almost tips over, but her determination drives her out the door.
She squints, facing off with the sun again. It overcomes her to see the environment after the massacre. But she hears the clanging again and groans, storming towards the backyard, prepared to give hell.
Jinri does not let Jongin continue digging for her to snap at him. “You don’t get to do this!”
He retracts, dropping the shovel after she chucks a musty rock at him. His face is distressed and exhausted, eyes swollen and lined red.
Even the hollows of his cheeks don’t soften Jinri’s rage. “You..You don’t-”
“I don’t whatt?” He almost lurches at her, but sneers instead. “I don’t get to dig the grave she deserves? You want her to burn with the rest?”
“You have no right to mourn the loss of her alone,” she says with clenched fists in front of her again. The tremors from the previous night return.
Her cracked voice makes Jongin wince. He picks up the shovel again and stabs the Earth, angry. His words are clipped and hoarse. “If I - had turned around - sooner-”
“There’s nothing,” she begins, shaking her head, “nothing that would have altered the circumstances for the better.”
“You don’t know that.”
Jinri exhales, aggravated and dejected all over again. She lets him go at it again with the shovel for a good ten minutes before saying, “You could’ve woken me up. I could’ve.. helped you.”
Dirt flies. His breathing quickens.
“Jongin.”
He breaks. His face is stained with tears, and she realizes it’s the first time he has let it out since she forced him to step away from Krystal’s remains.
“It’s not your fault.”
Chanyeol joins her on the front porch in the afternoon. The others drive back and forth, picking up the remaining corpses, and burning them in a further location from the bungalow in case of another ambush.
Jongin’s still in the yard where Jinri left him. He stopped prodding at the dirt. Instead he lies on the grass, trying to remember the last time misery did not consume him.
“She was so much worse before we ran into you guys,” she tells Chanyeol, raking her hands through her cropped hair. They both see the smoke rising from a distance.
“Maybe you should tell him that.”
She shakes her head and reminds herself that Jongin will not be ready for a while. She did not want to make the situation about her, but she had to tell him that while he may have lost his lover, she lost her soulmate.
That is when he finally set the shovel down.
“If anything, Jongin made her better,” she murmurs.
Chanyeol shrugs. Nonchalance laces his voice and with some knowledge of Krystal’s sister’s suicide, he says, “But you kept her sane.”
He looks out at the smoke again and clears his throat.
Her gaze is tentative on him. She can hear him pleading again to put the handgun down, his tone reflecting Jongin’s when he begged Krystal to stay conscience.
And she finally feels comforted.
She shifts her bottom, moving her figure slightly by him. Her palms are cool as she runs her left hand over his knuckles.
Maybe you keep me sane, too.
kai/sulli, chanyeol/sulli, kai/krystal, pg-13
post-apocolypse au/drama, 2173w
They come at night.
The group turns sharply in their spots in the midst of their dinner - a privilege that rarely comes across in the new world. The residents who once inhabited their current refuge site had a stockpile underneath the house. They had spent the day rummaging through junk and soil, hoping that would be the last of their worries for the day. Canned beets and beans had to wait.
Chanyeol roars bloody murder from his post outside, letting a shot fire from his rifle. He calls for them, and Jongin is the first to surrender his plastic cutlery.
Jinri feels around her waist for her knives. The utility belt has not left her hips since Amber had been taken from them. The departure of their boyish ally hardened Jinri - it was when and how she inherited her strength.
Her comrades shuffle around the first floor. Mere murmurs pierce the air. They do not admit their fear every time they are invaded. But it would not hurt to hear it, to know that they are on the same page.
“I’ll cover the back,” Krystal says in a breathy tone. She swings an aluminum baseball bat over her shoulder and leans down as Jinri quickly does up the laces on her shoes. Her eyes leave her friend’s face as Jongin barges out of their tight bungalow, capturing her attention and worry once again.
Jinri touches Krystal’s elbow in reassurance before she takes off before her.
“You slept with that extraterrestrial, didn’t you?”
It comes off accusingly. Jinri lifts her head and draws in a breath. Krystal had found her rinsing her hair from a thin stream behind the tiny cottage they found a month prior.
“I didn’t know repopulating the earth was number one on your to-do list,” she says, clicking her tongue once.
Jinri runs her fingers through her damp hair, just as it meets above her belly button. She lingers there and tries to repel a shiver. Not from the icy, morning water, but from a tender touch Krystal evokes.
It disappoints her that they both cannot be content, despite their rocky living conditions.
“Worry about yourself. Okay?”
From what Jinri can gather from the information Chanyeol and Minho are shouting from outside, the walkers had broken their line of defense set out in the front yard. Their white picket fence has met its match, even with the extra steel bar they attempted to drill against it for support. Not that Jinri didn’t expect it to hold them off. The property was old. The only upside to the situation is the fact the fence wounded around the premises, giving them more security than they are accustomed to.
All she inhales is gun powder, sweat, and the blood of the risen dead as she steps out into the thick, summer evening. More shots are fired and her ears are sent into a frenzy considering they have not had to initiate an attack in a while.
“Jinri!”
The smoggy air engulfs her, but her movements do not falter. She has no use turning to Yoona to know how to operate. She ducks, swoops under the walker’s possessive hands, and rams her machete through the back of its skull. She lets out a frustrated grunt and brings her foot up to kick the lifeless corpse forward, drawing her weapon back.
Jongin swings by, short of breath. “Where’s Krystal?!”
“The back!” She swipes her throwing knife from her leg and launches it hard towards a middle aged man pinning Kyungsoo against the soil. He pushes himself away with a groan, only gracing a thank you with his signature deer-in-headlights stare.
Jongin takes off and the charade continues. Chanyeol fires into the night. Minho is throwing every ounce of himself towards the beasts to save the little ammunition they have left. And all Jinri can see is fatigue and anger.
When was the last time someone took a watchful eye over them?
The group of walkers diminish slowly before their eyes. Jinri stays on the front lawn, keeping tabs on everyone even though Chanyeol insists she take his pocket gun and watch over Kyungsoo’s shoulder. She wants to tell him to use his whistle or one day she may or may not dig out his vocal chords.
They argue enough. Jinri avoids repeating herself to him what a bad shot she is. But she is completely welcome to giving his toes a trip down memory lane.
An hour ticks by and they clear the lot. It is darker than before, but they can still make out the sun dropping behind the horizon. Jinri makes out Yoona collapsing on the front step, Kyungsoo dragging himself into the house, and Chanyeol finally putting his war toy down.
“We’ll eliminate the bodies tomorrow,” Minho mutters, but they collect the order clearly. He scratches his neck. “It’s too risky to go out and gather water from the stream. I’ll fetch some in the morning.”
Jinri gets up and frowns. The group suddenly feels small. She pockets her knives and carries herself to the side of the house, the parched grass crunching beneath her feet.
“Do you think she misses me?”
She sees the glossy look over Krystal’s eyes as they let their vision wander above them. The stars are clear, but even they appear sad.
Jinri knows what thoughts come to Krystal’s mind, and she has no need to tell her that Jessica will always miss her. She chooses not to hear certain details, so Jinri chooses not to answer certain questions.
“He would miss you,” she whispers over Krystal’s tears.
She halts, pressing her back to the brick wall. Her heart slams against her chest at the audible sounds of a boy trying to muffle his sobs. She knows it is Jongin, but all she hears is a fragile, little boy.
Her lower lip shakes uncontrollably and she shuts her eyes. The last of her previous group has fallen and she wasn’t there for her. She takes a glimpse from the corner of the bungalow with shaky hands grasping the structure.
She sees Krystal, the missing flesh between her neck and shoulder, and more blood. Jongin has her propped poorly against his unstable frame while pressing his hand down on the injury. His forehead pressed gently against hers.
Jinris snaps herself back to the house and tilts her head back too fast. She cups her mouth and whimpers at the idea of any of them trying to save her, and she shakes at the image of Jongin holding on to someone who won’t make the morning.
“Krystal.” Her name comes out of Jongin’s mouth offensively, tainted with desperation. Jinri can only envision her giving him one last crooked smile before drifting off.
“Krys, please.”
Even the air is silenced.
Jinri’s face becomes hot with tears as Jongin shakes their departed companion in his arms. She brings her fists to her forehead and sits there with her heart still drumming at a burning tempo. Her throat closes and every word regurgitates in a choked manner. And she can’t muster help, because Krystal was the one she went to.
Chanyeol finds her, seeking to ask her if she wants another shooting lesson. She blubbers to herself with her eyes still shut, unaware that he’s there. He crouches down and tries to free her hands from the fists she won’t part with. She refuses to buckle into his embrace.
He straightens himself out when she shoves him away. He takes his eyes off her for a second to gaze over at Jongin and Krystal, but Jinri suddenly emerges with new found strength. She snatches the pocket gun from the back of his jeans and storms ahead.
“Move, Jongin.”
He mouth is open as he stares up at her, baffled. As if he would ever let Krystal part from him again. He swallows. “This is my fault.”
“I don’t care!” She hiccups and now the gun is on Jongin. It stuns her when he doesn’t flinch. “She’s going to turn whether you want her to or not.”
Chanyeol is in her ear, not threatening, but not welcoming, or encouraging. His jaw is clenched. “Put it down, Jinri. Please.”
“I let you mourn during her last moment,” she whispers. “Let me put her down.”
Her hands are clammy when the deed is done. She cries again, but everyone hears her. She recollects Minho slipping the weapon out of her grip and the image of Jongin with his face in his soiled hands before being carried away by Chanyeol.
“Can you tell him things are better this way?”
Jinri wakes up with a damp cloth against her forehead. A rusted pot of water is set on the tarnished coffee table in front of her. Minho must have made his first water run already.
Someone had shut the door, stirring her out of her brief dream. Krystal was present. She was smiling - free of harm and of the planet she always wanted to escape.
Jinri’s head continues to pound, miming her heart from the night before. The trauma still remains fresh in every fragment of her being. She cannot stop the sun from penetrating through the windows as it strains her vision. But the room light up, and the early draft is so foreign and restoring, and it cools the spot where the towel rested on her face.
That split second of enchantment vanishes when she comes to terms that her best friend is no longer among the living. Her chest goes heavy again.
The world is shy of voices, but she hears bodies being dragged and a soft thud against the dry dirt. It’s familiar to Jinri. The last time she heard that gritty pitch was when Baekhyun had passed away.
“No,” she croaks and forces her body off the scratchy sofa. She almost tips over, but her determination drives her out the door.
She squints, facing off with the sun again. It overcomes her to see the environment after the massacre. But she hears the clanging again and groans, storming towards the backyard, prepared to give hell.
Jinri does not let Jongin continue digging for her to snap at him. “You don’t get to do this!”
He retracts, dropping the shovel after she chucks a musty rock at him. His face is distressed and exhausted, eyes swollen and lined red.
Even the hollows of his cheeks don’t soften Jinri’s rage. “You..You don’t-”
“I don’t whatt?” He almost lurches at her, but sneers instead. “I don’t get to dig the grave she deserves? You want her to burn with the rest?”
“You have no right to mourn the loss of her alone,” she says with clenched fists in front of her again. The tremors from the previous night return.
Her cracked voice makes Jongin wince. He picks up the shovel again and stabs the Earth, angry. His words are clipped and hoarse. “If I - had turned around - sooner-”
“There’s nothing,” she begins, shaking her head, “nothing that would have altered the circumstances for the better.”
“You don’t know that.”
Jinri exhales, aggravated and dejected all over again. She lets him go at it again with the shovel for a good ten minutes before saying, “You could’ve woken me up. I could’ve.. helped you.”
Dirt flies. His breathing quickens.
“Jongin.”
He breaks. His face is stained with tears, and she realizes it’s the first time he has let it out since she forced him to step away from Krystal’s remains.
“It’s not your fault.”
Chanyeol joins her on the front porch in the afternoon. The others drive back and forth, picking up the remaining corpses, and burning them in a further location from the bungalow in case of another ambush.
Jongin’s still in the yard where Jinri left him. He stopped prodding at the dirt. Instead he lies on the grass, trying to remember the last time misery did not consume him.
“She was so much worse before we ran into you guys,” she tells Chanyeol, raking her hands through her cropped hair. They both see the smoke rising from a distance.
“Maybe you should tell him that.”
She shakes her head and reminds herself that Jongin will not be ready for a while. She did not want to make the situation about her, but she had to tell him that while he may have lost his lover, she lost her soulmate.
That is when he finally set the shovel down.
“If anything, Jongin made her better,” she murmurs.
Chanyeol shrugs. Nonchalance laces his voice and with some knowledge of Krystal’s sister’s suicide, he says, “But you kept her sane.”
He looks out at the smoke again and clears his throat.
Her gaze is tentative on him. She can hear him pleading again to put the handgun down, his tone reflecting Jongin’s when he begged Krystal to stay conscience.
And she finally feels comforted.
She shifts her bottom, moving her figure slightly by him. Her palms are cool as she runs her left hand over his knuckles.
Maybe you keep me sane, too.