THEM. － l.sm + k.sy

; o12

Seokmin did not cry. Seokmin did not speak.

Soonyoung watched him with a terrific horror as the person he loved had been seemingly drained away, leaving nothing but a breathing corpse at his side. They never returned to the castle, they would have been foolish if so, but the pair sprinted and ran, tripping over their weak knees and uncoordinated limbs, around trees and up distant hills, the afternoon sun having died out into the moon of night.

Soonyoung crumpled to the ground, palms digging into small rocks and soil, panting, desperately blinking his eyes to rid them of what they saw and violently shoving the idea that his father had met the same fate away. He dry-heaved, lungs burning with the thorns that pressed into them.

"I've been thinking, darling."

Seokmin had sat himself sloppily upon the ground abreast his lover some minutes later, placed a soothing palm at the male's back and gazed bleakly out over the valley below. This low hill was their own, safe and dark, with the ghost of what they had left and what they would leave.

"A number of things are not meant to be," the Prince went on as Soonyoung gradually shifted onto his bottom, legs stretching out limply ahead of him, "perhaps our love is one of them. Perhaps our existence in this world is as well."

Soonyoung carefully turned his head towards the other, curious, but Seokmin remained looking up at the moon in the vast sky of spilt ink, and a void smile curled across his lips.

"I've been thinking, my heart, that you and I are in a world that doesn't partain to us, that there is a place, a universe, where we can embrace in the sight of others and bear no shame or punishment. I've been thinking," Seokmin paused, turned to look to the older whose breath remained lodged by the abrupt appearance of a stone in his throat, "that if we were to end our existence here we shall be reborn elsewhere, together and, perhaps, in a world meant for us."

The tailor felt his soul being swallowed by the sincere and hopeless concoction that stirred within the crystal eyes of the other, and without him thinking much else he spoke.

"Do you truly believe such a place exists? Regardless if our souls disappear with us or if they are given the opportunity to be together in another realm, however, I shall follow you where ever you go and in what ever you do. Say the word and I am but your shadow."

"And I, yours."

Seokmin's quivering hand wrapped around the scabbard of his sword, gazed upon it as it glowed in the moonlight, sharply inhaled as the latter cried with its extraction and blinded him with its formidable blade.

He looked from the tip to his partner, silently asking for confirmation. Soonyoung gave a tremblant smile.

"If you and I are to be one, then you shall do that which I do," Seokmin whispered, fingers deftly grabbing the blade and directing the sword at his own abdomen, one hand holding it steady as the other gripped its hilt. His sight was stitched to that of Soonyoung, whose mind was devoid of thought, depleted of will and fight. Seokmin appeared ethereal in the blue shine and the grey it cast upon his skin, "If you choose to live on, do not fear the potential start of your new life. You need not force yourself to follow through with my folly."

Soonyoung's palm cupped the side of Seokmin's face; Seokmin dipped into the touch, at ease.

"As I said before, I will not leave you. A life without you is a life without reason."

A pause, a fond peck to the palm and lips tickling at the sensitive skin as they uttered, "I will stab at your stomach and weep at your pain. I will slice your flesh until it flows with bitter crimson and, if you'd let me, I'll hold your hand as we're met with liberation."

"To liberation then."

Soonyoung gave a final kiss to the Prince's lips. Upon such close proximity, he noticed the damp trails beneath Seokmin's eyes; he noticed, he had leaked his own.

"I love you, my heart."

The final push and a rasp of a breath, limbs shaking as lips sputtered in agony.

"I love you, sunshine."

And Soonyoung was a shadow.