Chapter Text
“…and Romance.”
Abby watched the man struggle to contain his giddiness. He was shivering so hard that Abby could practically see his atoms separate.
Not that Abby felt any less…but his was more satisfaction.
Confirmation, maybe?
Hell, Pinkie had kept life-size posters of him to beat up as she pleased. Back when they were enemies, though on some days, she still reverted back to finding them loathsome. It was taking her longer to accept the demons as human, but granted, the hunters had been conditioned to hate demons for the threat they posed.
Abby could understand her difficulty separating who they’d been—a rival band of agents of Gwi-ma, and cheeky little shits.
He’d had a freaking crisis the other day, after Mystery had shows him a theory thread for the Saja Boys disappearance and their sudden overdue hiatus announcement.
Overdue? Sorry if dying and then saving the world caused some roadblocks?!
Abby played with the carpet fibers, allowing himself to miss performing.
Which sucked because he’d never performed as himself, just the illusion Jinu had throught best suited their image.
So did he miss it?
Or was it a sensation haunting him like a ghost? One that his numb-self had stamped onto his soul?
You know, taking a hiatus wasn’t a bad thing.
Just annoying.
Cooping them up in the tower while Bobby tied up loose ends. Abby had to hide his good-looking jawline under a mask if he went out.
Jinu had limited fan interaction (unless…well…souls), and Abby wanted to try it! Connect with people! Vibe!
Even if they were only fans because of looks. Abby smirked. Which we Saja Boys have an abundance of.
If he boiled it down, that Baby asshole was cute—no matter how he protested—Jinu was handsome, Mystery had pretty features, and Romance…
That yanked Abby out of his reverie.
Romance was fetching.
Old-fashioned lingo, sure, but he couldn’t be categorized as one attractive. The guy was crazy and flirtatious, but also very guarded.
The one Saja Boy Abby found he couldn’t read.
Unless it came to her.
But she’d been softening, likely because Romance refused to let up.
She was impenetrable.
“Hey, muscles-for-brains,” Pinkie, waving a hand in front of her face. Blue and violet tiger stripes decorated her nails. Abby made note to try it on his, later. He blinked.
“Welcome back to the land of the living.”
“Hey, he drawled, slightly taken aback.
How long was I musing?
Based on Baby’s impatient scowl and Romance’s antsy fidgeting…too long.
“I’m gonna kiss you now,” she announced tonelessly, and reached forward to—
He caught he her hand. Flashed a smirk. Folded the spike of nausea into a pretty origami crane to decorate the shelf of things he wouldn’t think anymore.
The other ghosts that haunted him.
The ones that came from before his demonic blood had numbed his mind.
“Nope,” Abby said, and batted her hand away. If looks could kill…but he’d rather be dead than let anyone touch him first.
Trigger the fight or flight of who he’d once been.
The nameless boy he would avoid reconfronting at all costs.
He didn’t want to relive, but redefine.
Now was now.
His to reclaim.
Memories that were 400-years-old wouldn’t serve him, no matter how traumatic.
He ran a tongue across the ridges of his teeth, feeling for fangs. They rarely showed up, but truth be told, he didn’t mind their occasional reappearance. He’d probably always have a sliver of demon embedded in his soul. It’d been his choice after all.
“Correction,” he leaned forward, eyebrow raised. “I’m kissing you.”
Fangs of not. Memories, or not.
This is just a game.
Pinkie’s dark eyes narrowed. “That defeats the purpose of the dare, dude.”
He wasn’t exactly going to tell her that the game logic didn’t make sense anyway, because it was her dare, not his. He didn’t have to comply.
See, that seemed like a good excuse, but he’d get pummeled for talking back to her.
And c’mon he’d already trauma-candy-dumped. Enough was enough.
“Then why’d you pick me if you’re going to be difficult?”
Coals blazed in her irises. “I’m being difficult? You literally—”
“Mira,” Jinu spoke up, leaning forward to give her a pointed look. “Just let him have this.”
“I don’t remember asking you,” she said, but the steel in her voice melted as an indecipherable look crossed her face, like the shadowed blur of an animal in a dark wood. An idea she wanted to believe was right, but that her mind hadn’t accepted quite yet.
She turned to look at Abby. Really look.
He saw her eyes flicker to the bowl of candy, his skin where patterns had once spread like a disease, and back up to his face.
Something clicked.
She sighed, pressing a thumb to her forehead.
“Ugh. Fine.”
She puckered her lips into a comical heart-shape and spread her arms like a crucified martyr. Baby choked on his spit.
Abby exhaled through his nose, wiping the smile off his face with the back of his hand.
“Hold still.”
“I’ll do whatever I w—mmph!”
Abby’s hand cut her off, firmly securing her jaw in place. His thumb found her pulse point, but he swore he could feel everyone’s heartbeat in the room spike. Blush dusted the tip of her nose, and Abby absently wondered if it was possible to turn her the same hue as her hair. His lips curled in victory as her breath hitched
One eye flickered open, glared as if she would nip him the moment he let go.
“Easy,” he whispered, pressing his finger deeper into her pulse point as her heart raced.
Like a frightened dear.
A pang echoed in his heart, ancient and raw, but the ache could not implant, because it came from a heart he no longer knew. That had been resuscitated after a half-millennia of torment and numbness.
But he knew the boy he’d once been…wouldn’t want her to be frightened.
Their eyes met again.
Her pupils were blown wide, but her lips had thinned.
She wasn’t frightened.
Any minute now, said the bored, miniature Mira taunting him from the windows of her eyes. She was filing her nails.
As if he were tedious.
Abby huffed a laugh. Their faces brushed imperceptibly closer. Close enough to count her lashes, prettier with or without the stage makeup he’d grown used to.
He didn’t move in—not yet.
Let her squirm.
His thumb throbbed as if her heartbeat had transferred into his skin. Her breathing was shallow, all he could hear in the dead-silent living room. He’d waited just long enough for her to get impatient. To savor the control.
To see if she really consented.
He angled her head, and just before their lips met, her defiance cracked.
She made a sound—an enraged protest, a pleased sigh.
Deepening the kiss wasn’t hard. To any onlookers—6, to be exact—she’d gone limp in his hands.
But the insistent press of her lips said otherwise. She was slowly regaining dominance, guiding him at her desired tempo. Choreographing her own dance. A shiver erupted through her as he grazed his teeth over her top lip, sensually, as if they were the hands he’d let free if the others weren’t watching.
She retaliated with a sharp nip to his bottom lip—just enough to sting. Hell yeah.
Pulling back half an inch, eyes half-lidded, he watched the barest hint of a smirk tug at her lips.
She thought she’d scored a point.
How adorable.
If she wanted to fight dirty, he’d win dirty. His thumb returned to her pulse point, and his hand slipped off her jaw to fix her in place, daring her to resist. Which she did, and a ferocious excitement hummed in Abby’s veins.
Though her lips were soft, her neck was tense as her temper flared. Unyielding. Fierce.
He rose on his knees, tilting their heads at a harsh angle, and threaded his fingers into her thick hair. Her breath hitched.
She sounded livid.
Yes. There it is.
That sound felt like surrender.
It allowed his tongue to sweep past her defenses, and he kissed her like a dare, maddeningly controlled. Slow. Methodical, as if she were an idea he was considering.
Her nails dug into his arm and injected his skin with her tingling fury. Her jaw twitched, but she didn’t pull away.
And that was all the permission he needed.
He readjusted to claim her mouth even deeper, but in one decisive motion, Pinkie slipped her hands between them and shoved him away.
He didn’t miss the placement. One last feel-up.
Right over his abs.
“What the fuck did I just witness?!” Baby sounded scandalized. A bit intrigued.
Horny?
“Careful, Abigail,” Romance tried to make his voice light, but Abby heard the crack. “We have children present.”
“I’M 23!
“…”
“I think.
Abby shot a glare over his shoulder, and the maknae swiftly glanced away, burning a hole in the screen of his iPad partly tucked under Zoey’s thighs.
Ha. Gwi-ma starved them of many things.
Asshole thirsty demons. Whoops, not anymore. Humans.
That insult just didn’t hit as hard.
Baby poked Mystery, and it was like he’d flipped a switch. Chatter banished the silence, but all Abby could hear was the quiet rush of his blood. He’d never kissed anyone.
Not as a demon.
Not as a human—consensually, anyway, but he didn’t remember anything about that man’s desires being intimate. Face-to-face.
Always behind closed doors.
Always facing away from the tears of the pupil he’d defiled. Over and over.
Don’t think of that.
That fucker deserved to stay behind those doors, locked away, meaningless, nothing. A memory that would never matter again, a control over his own body that Abby would not relinquish even if offered to reunite with his family or meet the helpless boy he’d once been.
He’d never be helpless. Not to Gwi-ma, his past, to anyone.
Abby glanced at Mira, and some of the satisfaction barreled back at the sight of her swollen lips, bruised by his vehemence. He touched his jaw.
Sore.
Maybe he’d been a sloppy kisser. He’d never practiced.
But he’d always been a fast learner.
“Holy mother of long-necked turtles, you guys committed,” Zoey said. Mystery shyly handed her a sticky note. She held it aloft like the Holy Grail.
“Were we interrupting something?” it asked.
“Yeah, that was…” Rumi cleared her throat. “We should set a timer.”
“Agreed,” said Jinu, and he coughed a laugh. “I don’t think this was what Princess Bari had in mind when she reincarnated me.”
Rumi nudged him, and Abby spotted a faint glow emit from the iridescent white patterns on her skin, the scar above Jinu’s heart, and the larger burn-scar on his back.
“She had us in mind.”
The mood he and Pinkie had set wasn’t exactly romantic…but nonetheless, watching Jinu and his hunter interact diffused the last of the unease in Abby’s chest. He smirked. You’re welcome.
But, gods, this game was stupid.
Pinkie read his mind. “This game is so stupid.”
Romance let out an impatient whine, a sound that was more Mystery-coded than anything Abby was used to from the flamboyant man. It got even weirder when he slapped a hand over his mouth, eyes wanting and wide. His pupils were as dilated as Pinkie’s had been.
Silken folds of his flowy nightshirt hung loose, as if he’d dragged sweaty hands down his sides.
“Don’t know which one you wanna be?” Abby said, tossing a mimicry of Romance’s wink back at him.
“Hah,” Romance’s laugh was just a breath. His characteristically shrewd expression had softened.
So subdued.
Docile.
Wow, alright. Abby shook himself. What kind of predatory energy was he giving off right now?!
He glanced at his arms. No patterns. Scratched at his teeth. No fangs.
Huh.
All him.
“I’ll have my turn,” Romance said, finally. His tone was frivolous and light, but underneath…Abby sensed the same odd energy that’d gripped his soul for a moment there during the kiss, before he’d wrestled it back from the brink.
Strangled darkness.
A possessiveness that’d been learned, unleared, and echoed throughout their past lives and former demonhood.
Pinkie growled, swiping at her lips. “Would you both shut up?”
She shot Abby one last scathing frown, swiveled on her heel, and crawled over to Zoey. The girl squeaked, and Abby admired the soft flush that made her smattering of freckles stand out like a pretty little ladybug.
Rumi hollered as Pinkie cupped her friend’s jaw, infinitely gentler than she’d treated him, and pressed their lips together.
“Somebody get the fanfiction writers on this,” Rumi exclaimed.
Zoey’s fists clenched, and she beat one against her side and the other against Pinkie’s waist, as if the pent-up energy was too much to handle.
Pinkie pulled away, gave Zoey’s button nose a quick smooch, and patted her tomato-colored cheek. “Never let a man kiss you like that. I’ll kill him.”
“I—ah…errrrrr….of course, right, right!” Zoey’s eyes flicked to Mystery. A tendril of that dark possessiveness flared in Abby’s heart.
Um. Sanity knocked on his mind’s eye. What was that?
Dude, Truth or Dare was seriously messing with his mind. What in the angsty Mystery/Baby/Jinu aura was going on with him tonight?
Romance wasn’t faring much better. There was no build up, no withdrawn tension as he kissed Pinkie like a drowning man, and they became a flurry of roaming hands and crashing lips and breaths like swells of lightning.
Shock froze Abby’s next thought to the forefront of his mind. She’s reciprocating.
Kissing his bandmate with an eagerness she’d probably reserved. Was she stringing Romance along? Anger flared, but he quenched it with the rational. Pinkie wasn’t the type.
So she…liked Romance better?
They were kissing not as a competition but an exploration.
The thought should have bothered him.
Something told him the natural thing was to be bothered.
But…
But.
What was the natural thing? To feel jealousy as a glimpse of Pinkie’s tongue sent a rush of heat across Romance’s cheeks? To feel fulfilled as Romance suppressed an obvious moan?
Or to feel nothing?
Nothing at all.
The apathy scared him. It was new.
With effort, he severed his gaze from Pinkie and Romance, and let his wandering gaze trail over the ceiling, back to Zoey. He stiffened. She was looking straight at him.
The absence of Gwi-ma’s voice meant there was space, he remembered thinking, during their walk to Healer Han’s.
Space for old memories. For new ones. For opinions of his own.
New wasn’t so bad.
Zoey crossed her eyes at him, but turned beet red as—
Pop!
Pinkie and Romance’s lips separated, and before their panting could fill the silence, Baby pounded his fist against the floor. The empty candy bowl jumped. Abby eyed Rumi’s dazed expression as she popped the last Skittle into her mouth.
Impressive, he’d admit.
Hadn’t expected her to succeed.
She’ll probably have rainbow throw up. He side-eyed Zoey. Like Bunny, here.
“Shit, I get it,” Baby grumbled. “Truth or Dare is just a measly human excuse to suck face.”
Jinu pointed at him, as if to say, bingo! “You’re surprisingly mellow about it.”
“Its just like sucking that idiotic bottle you forced me to drink out of when I was all zombified and stuff.” Somehow, Baby managed to pout menacingly. “Which is abuse, I’d say.”
Romance snorted as Rumi choked.
“Its really NOT the same,” they said in unison.
“Baby, Truth or Dare?” Mira fired, getting back to business.
He yawned. “Dare.” His lazy, half-lidded teal shot open. “Wait, shit! The fuck?! Why’d I say that?”
“Sit on Abby’s back piggy-back style for the rest of the night,” Zoey said with the speed of someone who’d been carefully plotting their dare.
“Living on the edge there, Bunny,” Abby said. She grinned.
“Right? Hope you can handle it.”
Rumi chuckled, knocking her knee into Zoey’s shoulder. “Is it because of that one time—”
“Hah! That gameshow!” Pinkie had settled beside Romance, who watched her laugh with a bewildered grin, teetering between his usual flashiness and something like relief.
“Play games with uuuuuuuuuuuus,” Rumi bellowed in a spot-on impersonation of Jinu’s tacky tame-show-announcer voice.
Zoey waved her finger in the air like a wand. “Bring out the slide!”
The honorary game-show host himself narrowed his eyes.
“That was bad? Uh…the leather.”
The Saja Boys all winced in remembrance of the sound. Like an animal being punished for learning to speak human. An ambitious blender grinding rocks. Scraping a rusted fork down porcelain.
“Depending on the circumstances, I’d be open to leather again,” Abby commented, casually leaning on Mystery’s shoulder.
“Rebranding?” Jinu chuckled, spreading his hands as if lifting a banner. “Saja Boys comeback isn’t going to be anything like Soda Pop or Your Idol.”
Mystery held up a sticky note. “We’ll be all: Mommy don’t know daddy’s getting’ h—”
“Begone, thot,” Baby said, effortlessly ripping the note clean in half. “That was so two years ago, asshole.”
Thot? Abby’s (apparently) not-with-the-times brain couldn’t compute.
Bounding excitedly, Zoey’s foot knocked Baby’s iPad from its hiding place, and he snatched it like a striking snake. “I can see it now. You all would come onstage decked out in leather and chains and whatever,” her eyes lit up. “Abby would start this time, too, and he’d be all: Helloooooo Pride! Daddy’s home,” she said in English.
Mira threw her front half forward, shaking with uncontrollable laughter and whacking the floor as if beating the carpet up would alleviate whatever cringe she was feeling. Rumi was visibly pouring sweat.
“Z-zoey!”
Her twin buns bounced as she slapped both hands over her mouth. As Baby and Mystery—chronically online little shits—caught onto whatever presumably freaky thing she’d said, Zoey crumpled into herself until she was the equivalent of a 2D cutout of embarrassment.
Baby, still giggling, stood and tapped Abby’s shoulder. He sighed and flapped open his arms like a chicken. He grunted as Baby’s surprising weight knocked out a grunt.
“Lay off the lollipops, would ya?”
“Aw, is wittle human Abby less buff now?”
Abby rolled over backward, squashing a wheezing Baby beneath his yes less strong but no less hunky human body.
“Mystery!” Baby yelled, determined to continue the game despite slowly crushing into a pulp.
Mystery’s sigh rattled his lips, and his bangs waved in the strong winds. “Dare, I suppose. That’s what everyone wants people to choose, anyway.”
Abby felt Baby’s scowl against his rippling back muscles. Then, he smiled, and Abby shivered as the smaller boy’s dark aura magnified to engulf them both.
“Sing Takedown. Make it yours, like they did to our Your Idol.”
“He’ll never beat it.” Pinkie’s response was immediate.
But Zoey’s gaze was softer, trained on Rumi. “Are you sure…?”
Ah. Understanding dawned. That song could have referred to her too, before.
Before Rumi could answer, Baby continued, “Since everyone’s enjoying the show so much, make this parody sexy or whatever. Not about demons. Freestyle it.”
“K” said Mystery’s sticky note. He imitated clicking a remote.
Zoey’s phone slipped out of her pockets and into her open palms at the speed of light. She scrolled furiously through a long list of demos, bare-bones concept tracks, and landed on the lyric-less version of Takedown. She moved to tap play, paused, jerked her finger back, had a two-second mental breakdown, and her finger swerved straight into Baby’s eye.
“Ow!”
He’d leaned away from his perch on Abby’s back to snoop on Zoey’s phone. Served him right for getting in her personal space, in Abby’s opinion.
“Sorry!” Zoey said, then slammed play.
An ominous beat filled the room, with a thumping bass like a heart tense with pent-up anger.
But Mystery spun it differently.
“Takedown, takedown, takedown-down-down-down,” he sang with his head down, and his airy, soothing voice lent the lyrics a hypnotic quality. “A Mystery that’s unveiled.”
Abby’s mouth hung slack. He’d even worked in a tagline to replace Huntr/x’s!
“Takedown, takedown, takedown-down-down-down.” Mystery’s head snapped up. “Don’t look away.”
A quick glance told Abby nobody would look away any time soon.
Mystery lifted a finger in the air as if tipping a chin up. “So sweet, so easy on the eyes, but riled up on the inside. Whole life running scared, I got you there, baby, nice try.”
He dropped into a semi-squat, shook his hips to the tempo, then popped up to kick his knee in sharply.
“I'm 'bout to switch up our vibes, you’ll finally open your eyes. 'Bout time I take control of your whole world tonight.”
His hands jerked upward, down to flare over his chest as he pumped it to the beat drop, then skimmed his fingers down his waist as he sang, “'Cause I see beneath your skin you can’t hide it now. Time to put you in your place 'cause you want me. How?”
“When my dark side starts to show”—Mystery smirked, then threw himself back into the fluid hip and knee action that drew eyes anywhere but to his face—v “that makes the hunger wanna pulse inside your veins.”
Abby’s jaw began to ache as it dropped even lower.
Romance squealed as Mystery did a smooth backbend as he held out the note, then twisted his torso back up and walked around the circle, slowly, his bangs swishing.
“I don't think you're ready for my takedown. I could have you begging in a different way—it’s all just a game. Yeah say my name. Lay you down in secret, let you go insane—'til I make you shake.”
“Oh my god,” Zoey murmured, just as the beat dropped again. I 818
“Watch it heat up, I’ll strip you down-da-da-da-down”—Mystery jabbed his elbow out as if cocking a gun, and relied on his hands to dance through the rest of the percussive notes. “Let the games start, I’ll break you down-da-da-da, down. It’s my takedown.”
The entire room collectively held its breath, thick with tension as Mystery shattered it with an aggressive, dominating rap.
“It's a takedown, I'ma lay you out, throw your head back like, Uh-huh”—in his peripheral, Abby spotted Zoey bite her lip.
Mystery had added a clever half-beat to her rap, and it was probably doing things to her.
“It's a takedown, I'ma lay you out and I ain't gonna stop. Heart is racin', grip your halo, drag you down below. You'll be beggin' and cryin', bodies collidin’, never miss my shot.”
Mystery’s dance became languid during the second chorus. Waltz-like. Suggestive.
Like he was teasing someone.
“Oh, you’re addicted to the danger. You can’t handle my fire. Watch me set the room alight with hunger. You won’t know who you are, so how? How will you breathe when I take your air? Drippin’ sweat, all caught in my wicked snare. Trace your skin and bite your lips, then watch you ahhh”
Mystery threw his head back, and Abby had to applaud committing to the bit. “Ahh” was a geniusly freaky replacement for “die”.
He frowned. Huh. Huntr/x’s diss track had been kinda freaking mean.
“You can run, but you'll crawl back.”
Mystery threw himself into the final chorus, his hair flipping just barely enough to reveal teases of his face that made the performance feel even more suggestive.
His feet landed in a wide stance—boom boom—with hands gripping his hip bones and chin glued to his chest.
“It’s my takedown-da-da-da, down,” he sang, then did the same tipping-up motion with his finger. “Kneel.”
“Wow,” Baby said, straight into Abby’s ear canal, and he just about left his skin behind as his heart jumped into the stratosphere.
“Dude,” he snarled, “warn a guy.”
Abby nearly broke the spell with laughter at Baby’s flabbergasted expression. Their maknae’s cheeks were bright red, and he looked equally impressed as he was irritated.
In the most nonchalant way possible, Mystery brushed nonexistent lint off his sweater, and padded over to sit beside Baby, who clung onto Abby’s shoulder as he leaned to give Mystery a fist-bump.
Mystery coughed, covering his mouth with a hand far too dainty for the sin he’d just spewed.
Abby saw past the mask. Mystery looked like the cat that had got the cream.
“So, we’re giving him rights to the song, no?” Rumi, glanced at her bandmates expectantly.
Zoey fanned herself. Her one response was likely the only word that’d cycled around her mind for the past minute. “Hot.”
“Never liked it much, but hell no. That’s our song, not a stripper’s anthem,” Mira deadpanned. She glared, rubbed her arms as if experiencing a chill. “It made me imagine us seducing the demons we fought.”
Romance chuckled and tweaked her nose. “Imagine that.”
“The ugly ones, doofus.”
He beamed as if she’d agreed to marriage, three kids, and a cat named Milo.
Mystery’s parody had carried too much aura for mere mortals to dwell on, so the game progressed through two more rounds. To Abby’s dismay, Jinu wasn’t willing to answer the diabolical Truth question Romance asked, and took the dare to open Bobby’s front door and howl like a wolf for 30 seconds.
“Mercy, please,” he’d called, hand hovering over the elevator keypad. “Bobby was finally warming up to me after finding out we all were demons. Can I skip out?”
“Now, he’ll just think you’re a werewolf,” Rumi teased.
Next, Rumi had to post something crazy on her socials. Zoey couldn’t think of anything worse than saying fart in another language, and Mira’s suggestions weren’t safe within the realms of PR. Abby hopped in.
“Post Could I be pregonate? Like spell it wrong.”
“I’ve seen that meme,” Baby cackled, and Mystery held up a sticky note with pom-poms.
“Ooh and I’ll comment under it: I think you’re pregante,” Zoey said, nailing the foreign accent.
“Dibs on pergert,” Mira snorted, already opening Instagram.
A couple seconds passed, and Jinu burst back into the room, flushed. He buried his head in Rumi’s shoulder, groaning. Suddenly, Zoey squealed, and Jinu clutched his chest as if he’d been shot.
“BOBBY RESPONDED!!! First, who just howled? Second, girls go to bed. Third…it’s pregananant.”
“Iconic man,” said Mira, and grabbed Romance’s arm, hauling him to his feet “But he’s right, I’m ready to conk out soon. Let’s get the popcorn and watch the movie already.”
Rumi took a moment to admire the replies flooding in under Bobby’s comment. “Hah. The fans are so confused.”
Turned out, Abby hated horror movies, but Baby payed attention to every minute detail as if the movie were a popular self-help book, and Zoey was the same way. Their manic smiles looked copy-pasted. Flashing lights reflected in their eyes, and Abby averted his gaze.
When your friends are creepier than the actual horror movie. Maybe Mystery could make one of his “meme” things about that.
Mira, surprisingly, was a bit of a scaredy-cat, but she hid it behind Romance’s dramatic flailing at every gory or slightly creepy part.
As a little girl got brutally murdered with an axe onscreen, Abby took a moment to appreciate the people he was with. People who respected his boundaries, pushed him out of his comfort zone, accepted who’d he’d been and was striving to be. People who could lounge on the couch and dish out stupid dares, acting as if they weren’t all bearing mental and physical scars, and the pressure of the world’s eye in their public lives.
It’d only been a couple weeks, but they already felt like family.
There were moments when he’d look back, and perhaps miss the power he’d once wielded in his blood. All of the boys would. They couldn’t help it.
It was a sick kind of attachment syndrome.
For 600 years, Abby had been tormented by memories someone else had created for him, then lost access to himself entirely—the duality of it was he desperately wanted to let go. Keep things behind closed doors.
So it was ok if he slipped.
He trusted these freaky-ass weirdos to help him back to his feet.
Trust.
Demons hadn’t had the capacity for it. Camaraderie, yes. Respect? Sure.
Trust?
Abby shoved Baby off of his back, grinning as the maknae struck the floor with a loud thump at the same moment the little girl’s head was lopped off.
Mira whimpered, and Romance made shushing noises as if she were an infant.
He ended up drenched in a tsunami of popcorn.
Hah.
Yeah, Abby could learn to live with new feelings. They’d lead to the new memories he wanted so badly.
Jinu could scream.
He’s already done enough of that during the movie, and was pretty certain Rumi had permanent bruises from how tightly he’d gripped her arm. Unfortunately, they’d returned to their rooms, and cut their cuddle time short.
His arms felt empty.
He could sneak down the hall…?
No. No.
Bobby would probably hate him more if he found him and Rumi sleeping together than if he discovered Jinu was the one who’d howled into his apartment.
Humiliation bloomed in Jinu’s chest, but he kept still.
Romance had instigated the quest for finding a label for a large group of humans sleeping together platonically. The boys hadn’t stopped discussing it since they’d rolled out the sleeping bags.
A napsemble?
Cuddle-culting?
A hiber-nation?
A snorgy? (of course Romance had to make his portmanteau suggestive)
Jinu’s money was on hiber-nation.
He cracked open an eye, and sucked in a breath as he found Abby’s face inches away. He was turned toward the TV, watching the muted gameshow host ramble about some actor scandal. The lights illuminated the hollow of Abby’s cheeks and throat, lending his skin a ghoulish tint that sent Jinu back to the underworld. Time seemed to warp as the flickering lights accentuated the sharpness of Abby’s smile.
Baby turned from the headlock he’d taken Romance into for daring to suggest snorgy sounded better than cuddle-culting.
“Wh-why do you look so creepy?”
“Oh my,” Romance whispered, his cheeky grin still intact as he leaned away from Baby’s murderous aura. “He looks like a mongdalgwisin.”
Flicker. Abby’s smile crumbled. Flicker. Suddenly his stare trained on Romance’s side profile. Flicker. A flash of yellow across his eyes, faint, but betraying a bit of the lingering demon. Flicker. His mouth opened.
“Did I just hear right? You essentially just called me an undead virgin?”
“Hell yeah you heard right,” Baby said, somehow managing to hold a lollipop up to his lips. Jinu swore he kept a stash in the bottom of his sleeping bag.
“Oh, Abigail~” Romance sighed wistfully. “To be in my youth, deprived of the pleasure of a woman—”
“Oh, you’d better pray now.”
Abby attempted to tear open Romance’s bag, but the other man thrashed like a possessed snake, so Abby mostly achieved the effect of a muzzled dog dry-humping a fire hydrant. Jinu tore his eyes away from the weirdly erotic fight unfolding in front of him to zip his sleeping bag. He jumped when a large hand gripped his shoulder.
“We have generous hearts.” He rested his hand Jinu’s shoulder, giving Romance one last side eye. “We still love you.”
“He knows that, we all wept about it in a steamy bath scene,” Romance said, wriggling his top half out of his bag to stretch languidly.
Baby huffed. “We agreed to never mention that.”
“A secret among sworn brethren,” said Mystery’s next sticky note.
Abby nodded, solemnly. “Only the ajusshis in their bath towels know about those tears.”
Jinu pinched his nose, stiffened as Romance side-eyed him. An exasperated grin pulled his lips. “Who wants to bet Rumi-sshi knows by morning.”
“TRAITOR!” Baby sprang forward like a deranged Jack-n-the-Box toy and knocked Jinu over into Abby.
Jinu squawked. Bird probably would have glared at the poor attempt at speaking the magpie language…if he and Goyangi weren’t traitors themselves, choosing to sleep with Rumi.
“Baby, I haven’t told her anything about the bathhouse yet!”
“Yet!?”
Damn it.
Baby clung to him his middle like a blue-furred koala. Jinu grappled for something to grab on to. Which happened to be Abby’s left pec.
“Whoa there,” Abby said, clicking his tongue. “Samantha usually likes a little lead-up to the rough stuff.”
The room went still.
“You…you don’t”—Baby coughed, a laugh constricted in his throat—“have names for your pectoral muscles as well, do you?”
Abby shrugged. “Bunny,” he offered as explanation.
Mystery slapped a sticky note over his mouth: “👁👄👁”. Pointing at it, Baby unwrapped his arms from around Jinu and shook Abby hard enough to make his neck look boneless.
“You mean to tell me you let the freaky Moon Rabbit that the shaman gets that icky piss-water cleanse from named your pecs and not me?!”
“Us,” Romance corrected, pouting.
“Er, Zoey,” Abby said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Bunny is just…Zoey named them.”
Silence.
Finally, peace and quiet. Jinu closed his eyes.
Sleeping bags shifted. Low light patterned the carpet in rectangular strips, filtered through the gaps in Huntr/x’s automatic blackout curtains. Sleep hovered at the ceiling of the room—present but distant, just out of reach.
Abby’s serious voice and Baby’s deep tenor should have sounded calming.
But no.
They started discussing popcorn. Romance joined in, yapping about how he’d expected more pizazz to its flavor profile after seeing it stream out of Zoey and Mira’s eyes.
Jinu grit his teeth and violently thrashed himself into a more comfortable position, ignoring the way his feet bumped up against the other boys’ sleeping bags.
They deserved it.
They wouldn’t.
Stop.
Talking.
Forget crying in the bathhouse, he was going to weep from lack of sleep.
His ears were bleeding. His hands sought blood, too, and his contained fury made the air trapped in his sleeping bag sting like lava.
Ugh. Jinu shifted positions again. Is this how hotpot meat feels?
“Come to think of it,” Abby’s deep voice buzzed in the darkness, much too loud for how late (early?) it was. “I haven’t slept with a large group of guys like this…ever.”
Tears rimmed Jinu’s eyes. Abby had already contemplated that same sentence ten different ways, as if he were trying to test Jinu’s patience.
They’d never agreed on what “friends sleeping together” was called.
The girls would know in the morning.
“Wow, hyung. No way. Maybe because we were born in the stone age?” Baby said, drily. Jinu felt, not saw, the maknae sit up in his sleeping bag like a reanimated corpse. Gosh, he was so sleepless, he must’ve developed echolocation.
Romance sat up, too, a bit more gracefully than Baby had.
Lay down, Jinu silently fumed, the angry heat inside his bag intensifying with every ragged breath. Lay down, lay down, lay your freaking fatasses flat down on the floor right now or so help me gods—
Romance squiggled closer, sprawling over Jinu’s middle. The impact knocked a wheeze out of him, but he froze.
If they realized he was awake…doom.
“Ah,” Romance whisper-wailed, “the luxuries we’ve missed out on. I’ve wanted to do this very thing since boyhood.”
“Boyhood?! What are you, eighty?” Baby scoffed.
“Respect your elders, young one. I’m one-hundred years your senior.”
“Young…one?”
Baby’s tone was dangerous. Jinu sensed the dark waves of wrath emanating from the maknae’s neon green sleeping bag. An eyesore, if he’d ever seen one. But at least it wasn’t pink.
The Saja Boys had had enough pink.
A heavy body sprawled over Jinu’s—he wheezed harder, because, no, how was Baby so solid? He inched across Jinu’s torso to stick his threatening expression into the hood of Romance’s sleeping bag.
“Say that again, grandpa.”
“Aw,” Romance cooed, the velvet edge of his word concealing a blade. “Is someone hungry? Do I need to burp you? Fear not, my fatherly instincts are unparalleled.”
Whap!
Romance squealed as Baby launched himself from Jinu’s stomach with a strangled roar, and the two tumbled into the wooden base of the couch. To anyone watching, it would just look like two drunk homeless dudes dueling each other, or maybe beached walruses slapping each other over territory. Baby smacked his forehead against the couch base with a crack, and Romance only made it worse by shouting about boo-boos.
“Hold on,” Abby muttered. He was thinking so hard, Jinu saw equations and graphs whizz around his head. “What is this called? Sleeping with other humans. But not sex. What’s it called, guys?”
Oh, how we go in circles.
Jinu slunk lower in his sleeping bag, letting the shadows consume his gaunt face.
Bobby. Help, Bobby.
Or Mira. She’d probably be the best bet at taming them.
But Huntr/x and their was a deep sleeper. When they’d still stayed in Bobby’s apartment, Abby had already tried multiple pranks, including an airhorn and the whipped cream trick Mystery found while scrolling on Rumi’s phone.
She really needed to cut his privileges. Mystery was becoming an online cryptid that haunted Reddit threads and Twitter fanpages.
Rumi complained about the message notifications she kept receiving from Zoey stans’ chatrooms.
Pfft. Jinu muffled a snort. And she wondered who’d subscribed to them.
He wouldn’t let his boys grow up to be screenagers. Absolutely not. Maybe farming should make a comeback. War would certainly shape them up, but modern wars were uglier than those in history, no less brutal and ruthless and messy, but more uncontrolled. Widespread.
Wait, shit. It hit him like a fish slapped across his cheeks. Are we going to have to do obligatory military service? I heard that’s a thing…
“Truce! Truuuce!” Romance shouted. Baby yowled as the taller boy wedged his head underneath Baby’s bag and heaved him off to the side. As Baby flew by, his feet donkey-kicked into Jinu’s hamstring.
Lightning pain struck up his back. He doubled over, curling into a padded little ball, feeling like an old man who’d fallen and cracked a hip. So much for acting asleep.
Romance tittered. “Psyche~ I am the victor!”
Baby growled…but an answering growl came from the darkest corner of the room. Mystery rolled from the depths like a frowning billiard ball and came to a stop at Jinu’s feet.
“Sleeping with you all…it doesn’t feel uncomfortable.”
His voice was barely a whisper. See, Jinu wanted to holler, that’s how all your voices should sound right now!
“Yo,” Baby hissed, “you’re breathing on my neck.”
“Sorry,” Mystery said, sounding too detached to be anything sorry at all. Jinu tensed as he started rolling again and used Jinu’s body as a ramp. Mystery plunked down next to Abby. Instantly, contented snoring filled the room.
Jealousy made Jinu’s insides feel like a combusting star. Not fair. A single tear fluttered at the corner of his eye.
“You know, Mysty-poo is right. I’m very comfortable.”
The single tear sucked back into Jinu’s eye as a wet smack resounded in the living room like a shot in the dark. Abby’s scandalized gasp chased after it.
“Ack, dude! Did you just kiss my neck like some kind of vampire foreplay?”
Romance’s chuckle was downright sultry. Jinu shuddered. Nevermind, the single tear had made a comeback.
“Dude…”
Abby didn’t sound as mad as Jinu thought he should’ve.
Considering how he’d acted during Truth or Dare…Jinu shuddered. What had come over all of them?
He’d never see Mystery the same.
Jinu wriggled a bit in his sleeping bag, deliberately poking Baby in the side, but then snatched his feet back as withering embarrassment forced him into the fetal position. What was he thinking? There was no need to get their attention! He didn’t feel left out! He didn’t want to participate in naming human stuff! That was absurd!
But he was human...ish. Shouldn’t he be participating?
Gods, the sleep depravation was infiltrating his mind now. He could feel it cackling, rubbing its hands together like a stereotypical cartoon villain or a scheming praying mantis, plotting his death by all-nighter.
Mystery abruptly cut off mid-snore. “Yes. This is comfortable.”
“Right, so fun.” Romance said.
“Right,” said Baby, propping his chin on Jinu’s stomach.
“Right?”
Abby was still rubbing the spot Romance had smooched. “Heh. Right.”
“Aiiish,” Jinu muttered. He kicked his legs wildly, and all the boys jumped back with a yell. “Not right, WRONG! WRONG, WRONG WRONG!”
He shot up. His sleeping bag hood slipped down to reveal bloodshot eyes and murderous steam pouring out of the overheated bag. Baby yelped as a jet of hot, angry air hit him square in his angelic face. Abby and Romance scooted towards each other like two terrified slugs.
They shriveled as Jinu loomed over them.
“I’m uncomfortable right now. Go to sleep.”
Abby straightened. There was a naughty gleam in his lazy eyes. “Sure, I’m not stopping you.”
“We have a lot to discuss,” said Romance, snaking an arm out of his hood to give his heart-shaped bangs a dramatic toss. Jinu’s eye twitched. He growled low in his throat.
“Discuss with your pillows.”
Behind him, Baby let out a disbelieving scoff. “Romance makes out with his pillow; he doesn’t talk to it.”
“Young man, do not allude to such vulgar acts—”
Baby’s hissed like a possessed man; his look alone could murder. Romance retracted his head into his hood like a scolded tortoise.
As Baby scooted towards his prey, the flickering lights polluting the living room’s darkness didn’t help the ominous mood. Seoul liked to contribute to mood lighting. Jinu wanted to swan dive out the window, plummet the thousands of feet down onto the nearest blinding billboard, and rampage them all.
What the hell were blackout curtains for if they didn’t black out all light?!
“Go talk outside!” He pouted, leaning back to rest his head on the couch cushions. “I’m tired.”
Abby’s face blocked the flicker of the city lights. “Hi, tired, I’m—"
“Don’t. You. Dare.”
“Yo, just go to sleep.” Baby stuck his head around Jinu’s torso. “Don’t be such a doormat.”
“A what?”
Baby’s hand emerged from his bag to pull his eyelid down mockingly, and he blew a raspberry.
“A fuckin’ wet blanket.”
Suddenly, Romance’s head spawned on Jinu’s lap, and he blinked up with innocent eyes. “Oh ho~ who’s wet?”
“Just imagine you’re alone,” whispered Mystery, his voice raspy with the glorious sleep Jinu was missing out on. “You’ll fall asleep in no time. Right?”
“Right.” Abby huffed, and flicked Romance in the forehead.
“Right,” said Baby.
Romance chortled. “He can try~”
He shot Jinu a wink as he dramatically crumpled sideways. A lump had already formed where Abby had flicked him.
Baby quickly claimed the vacant spot on Jinu’s lap, sighing as if it were a luxurious pillow. Mystery inched over, scooting his body across the floor until his cheek rested on Baby’s knees. Romance and Abby claimed both of Jinu’s shoulders. He slumped.
“I should have left you in the demon realm.”
He said it with his chest. He meant it with his whole heart. Gods, if only Bobby would let him sleep in Rumi’s room!
Once he found out Jinu was a 400-year-old demon, suddenly the rules had to reflect that. Give it a few months before the shock wore off, and Jinu would be living in luxury. Wow…he could just imagine the astonishment on the boys’ faces as he left them behind. It’d look like a renaissance painting of betrayal. Romance would cry.
Which really should worry Jinu a bit more, considering everything that’d transpired after being forced to abandon his amma and Soosa.
Yeah…see if he’d develop crippling guilt about leaving these four idiots behind.
Doubt it.
The bathhouse flashed through his mind—boys covered in soap entrusting each other with their lives, trading insults, bathing and crying (but nobody is supposed to know, so keep that pretty mouth shut.)
Family. Free of patterns. Limitless.
Damn it. Yes, I will miss them.
Abby shook his head. “Low blow, man.”
“Yeah!” Baby snapped, his eyebrows pulling into a V. “Be lucky you can call us friends, with that personality!”
Romance yawned, curling his pink tongue.
“Rumi-sshi could do better.”
“With WHO?!”
Ferocious anger tore through Jinu’s mind, and he flopped around to dislodge the bodies sprawled over him so he could end Romance’s life for even suggesting that…but it was pointless. Baby was still shockingly heavy, and Abby’s head was like a dumbbell. Romance took a chunk of Jinu’s sleeping bag in his mouth to keep his comfortable position. Mystery just…didn’t move?
“A rich, successful man?” Jinu felt Romance shrug as if the threat of manslaughter wasn’t dangling over his head.
“A man with self-esteem?” Mystery whispered.
Baby let out a mocking laugh. “She probably secretly fears your jawline.”
“She fears his purity,” Abby said, whacking Jinu hard enough to knock out a wheeze.
“W-what?”
Romance drew a heart in the air with his fingers. “We’re talking about your pristine historical artifact.”
“Museum-grade chastity,” Baby said flatly.
“My what?”
Abby’s eyes flicked to Jinu’s lap.
“Your junior.”
“Ur chopped dick” announced one of Mystery’s sticky notes.
Jinu closed his eyes. “I prefer you guys when you’re quiet,” he muttered, as the feeling of their heads on his body started to prickle at his nerves. They had guts, saying that after Truth or Dare.
At least he had a girlfriend.
“Mystery already is quiet,” Baby’s response was toneless. Did he just hate the world or…?
Slap!
Jinu breathed a sigh of relief as Baby hooted in disbelief and rolled off his lap. The maknae’s hood fell away, and in a rectangular strip of light, Jinu saw a familiar sticky note dangling from his forehead.
“Bitch” it said, in polite sparkly-purple calligraphy.
Mystery held up another sticky note, waving it between two fingers like a throwing star. Baby flipped him off and used that middle finger to deflect the sticky note. It stuck onto Abby’s left pec.
He sighed. “What did I say about Samantha and rough stuff?”
“Bahahaaa,” Baby swiped his middle-fingers under his eye, catching his tears. “Samantha and Rachel. Zoey is the second-best rapper, but she deserves a fuckin’ award for those names.”
Jinu raised an eyebrow at the low growl that vibrated through Mystery’s chest. He observed the sound transform Abby’s face from laid-back to competitive and mischievous. But before he could speak…
Slap!
Jinu didn’t have a chance to read the sticky note’s message before Mystery unleashed the full potential of his non-verbal fury on Abby’s chest.
Slap!
Slap slap!
Slapslapslapslapslapslapslapslapslapslapslapslapslapslapslapsl—
Abby caught his wrist, squeezing hard enough that Mystery whimpered but continued to glare through his bangs. A territorial look that was dry enough to shrivel a lesser man’s abs.
But Abby’s abs were not any normal man’s.
Romance whispered too close to Jinu’s ear. “Shall we make some more popped corn?”
“Popcorn,” corrected Jinu, on autopilot.
Baby scoffed, leaning back against the couch to get a better view of the original sticky note’s message, and its fellows. “Just call Zoey in for that. Remember her corn eyes? And our magic is supposedly ‘unnatural, yeah right!”
“You’d make a great shaman, Myst,” Abby said, easily dodging another round of sticky notes. “You’d incapacitate someone with talismans real quick!”
Mystery bared his teeth in a sneer. “I want to incapacitate you. Forever.”
Romance leaned in and plucked a note from Abby’s shoulder. “Ha! Half of these say womanizer on them.”
“Dude…”
Jinu sensed his braincells atrophy at every sticky note Mystery whipped out of nowhere, at each one of Romance’s cheers, at Baby’s heckling.
They were idiots. And he was idiot-by-proximity.
That just wouldn’t do. His face was too pretty to be idiotic.
Abby drooped and pointed forlornly at Romance. “You’ve got the wrong guy, Myst! Ro would flirt with a corpse!”
Baby fell backward, his feet kicking into the air as he held his stomach. “R-remember when he tried to seduce Gwi-ma?!”
What. Shock struck Jinu’s spine like a lightning bolt. He sat ramrod straight. WHAT?
That was a lore drop that would have upgraded Truth or Dare into a full-blown confessional.
Abby’s eyes lit up. “No way. That was ages ago. I’d been demon for like…a century?”
“Well I’d hoped to forget that particular incident, thank you very much,” Romance muttered.
“Did he….” Jinu swallowed, tasting smoke. Was that would Gwi-ma would taste like? Oh, wow. Oh, no. What a foul thought. “What did he do?”
“I thought it was worth a shot. My seductions were certainly noticed. He dialed the tragedy of my memories up to an agonizing level, until I could feel my shame and sadness bleeding out of my ears,” Romance said, flatly. “So despite what Baby may claim, I could not romance a rock. Or a fiery Demon King.”
His head came to rest on Jinu’s shoulder again.
This time, Jinu kept still.
“You romanced Mira pretty well,” he awkwardly reassured.
“Ah, I believe Abby did a better job at it.”
“I did,” said the other man, winking. “But you can catch up.”
Jinu shivered, as if the freezing air outside had leaked through the blackout curtains, too.
“So you guys did suffer. He did trap you in the torments of your past like he did me.”
Baby scowled, crossed his arms, gnashed his teeth. “You fuckin’ stupid or something?”
“You just…we just…” Jinu averted his eyes. “Never shared that kind of information, so I always thought your memories hadfaded. Before.”
Before you became husks.
Before Gwi-ma forgot about you, and moved on, and eventually tormented me.
Before I made you into illusions.
Before our mission failed.
Before we switched sides, and won at last.
“I’m sorry”—Jinu pressed his fist into the carpet, wishing for a hard surface he could crush his knuckles against until they throbbed— “for the lies. And for using you.”
Romance nuzzled his cheek into Jinu’s shoulder. “Splendid job. You’ve made the mood serious again.”
“Shit,” Abby said, his lips wobbling. “You’re gonna make my cry. Again. And there’s no steam for emotional shelter here!”
“Asshole,” agreed Baby, trying to look threatening but failing miserably.
Gently, Romance pried Jinu’s fist from the indent it was making in the carpet fibers. He brushed a hand over Jinu’s knuckles, just once, then guided his hand to rest on the layer of sleeping bag between them.
“Save the sentimentality for the bathhouse,” he teased, then shimmied off Jinu’s shoulder, landing on his back in a dramatic flop.
Abby blew at the sticky notes riddling his chest; his valiant effort paid off, and soon the carpet was littered with sparkly purple words. He flinched as Mystery held up another note, which made the silver-haired boy smirk.
It was his first note. “A secret among sworn brethren.”
Jinu nodded. They’d tell him everything that they remembered. Eventually.
When the past became weightless.
Sleep watched from the ceiling as the boys huddled closer to Jinu, situating themselves in an organized pile. Jinu stayed awake a second longer, battling the exhaustion. Each blink, his eyes grew blurrier, and the light under the curtains distorted, splintering into thin threads almost like the Honmoon. He hummed, and they seemed to react, buzzing with a soothing energy. Baby smiled contentedly and relaxed against Jinu’s side.
But it couldn’t be the Honmoon.
That was a Hunter’s magic to wield.
Not human, never demon.
Demons would adjust to human life, Jinu knew it, but there were 500 of them birthed into a new world once more. He’d like to think he had already adjusted.
The source that reminded them of their shame had been snuffed out.
But guilt? Guilt was different—deeper, more stubborn, something that couldn’t be pardoned so easily.
Despite Mystery’s admittedly believable ‘hotness factor’ theory, their past deeds weren’t just excused. Jinu might be an idiot, but he wasn’t stupid. There was no way to wipe away the stain of the souls the Saja Boys had stolen—that any of the demons had.
Steam from a bathhouse wouldn’t do it, nor an apology in the wee hours of the morning. Hunting the monsters coming out of the woodwork after the era of demons had ended wouldn’t rectify all they’d done. Not even aiding the Hunters in fortifying the Honmoon with gold was a proportional atonement.
And yet.
Jinu closed his eyes, letting sleep wrap its hands around his mind and shut off the voices.
Here they were.
Their deeds didn’t deserve redemption.
Most never do, but they’d reached for it anyway, and others had lent a hand.
One day he’d wear Bobby down and finally get to share a bed with Rumi (gods…he nearly giggled at just the thought of it). It wasn’t an if, it was a when. Determination rolled off him in waves, and Romance muttered under his breath as if he’d sensed Jinu scheming. Soon he’d never have to endure any midnight sleeping bag shenanigans again.
…
Fine.
He really would miss these idiots if Bobby let him sleep in Rumi’s room.
If they ever went their separate ways. The thought spread a layer of frost inside his lungs.
His boys.
His friends, no matter how insufferable.
Even if the Saja Boys Haitus was permanent.
(Doubtful)
And one day, maybe the 500 ‘reformed’ demons who’d defied Gwi-ma could live lives worthy of the mercy that’d been shown to them—make friends of their own, start families, choose to do good. That hopeful future dragged Jinu deeper into sleep.
Until Abby’s deafening snores fractured the peaceful silence.
Oh. Jinu’s eyes blew open, bloodshot and bloodthirsty. You’ve got to be kidding me.