Red | Sookai ✔

six: red

Red is love. Red is lust. Red is the blood that seeps from Hueningkai's neck when Soobin finally slits his throat.

He doesn't do it sober. Soobin's not a drinker, but he cracks open a bottle of whiskey he'd bought for graduation but never opened. And with every fiery sip that travels down his gullet, the guilt leaks away in small, sandy puddles. It's not for the blessedly cliché aesthetic of the drunken, murderous boyfriend. It's for someone, something, to blame for what Soobin knows he has to do.

Hueningkai's still asleep when Soobin slips into their bedroom, tears on cheeks, knife in hand. In the morning sunlight, Hueningkai looks like an angel, soft and warm and beautiful. He looks like the whole damn universe. He looks like home.

Soobin cries when he's killing him. He knows it's short, painless, that Hueningkai won't even wake up, that he'll never wake up again. But still, he cries harder than he's ever cried in his entire life, liquid crystal rolling off his lashes until he worries he might drown in the storm of his own despair. He cries for Hueningkai's stolen youth, robbed from him by Soobin's twisted hands. He cries for Hueningkai's ashen skin and snowy clothes, stained by wine-red death. He cries for Hueningkai himself, his angel, his love, his world.

(Yeonjun's wrong about one thing. Soobin's going to hell, but he won't be dragging Hueningkai there with him.)

And when it's finally over, Soobin sobs even more. He gazes at the blood-stained sheets and the corpse that had once been so full of life, and the whiskey does nothing to numb the regret. He touches Hueningkai's pale, still-warm face with his tainted palms, and the last shred of his soul shatters in his chest.

"I love you," Soobin says for the last time, tears burning hot against his clammy cheeks, and he means it, because he loves him, loved him, loved him so much he just couldn't let him go. He doesn't kiss him, because he's not worthy to, not worthy to touch Hueningkai's pure, holy lips with the same mouth that had killed him.

For once, Hueningkai doesn't say it back. He stays, still as sleep, beautiful even in death. Soobin thinks he's the prettiest person in the world. Even when he's gone from it.

Soobin wishes he could look back, but every glance at the love of his life sends remorse coiling through his stomach in a vengeful hurricane. So he doesn't look back. Instead, he stumbles on, head spinning, throat scorched, hands stained murder-red.

He washes his hands eight times before reaching for Yeonjun's gun and the half-empty bottle of whiskey. It's almost fitting, how he can't bear to let even a single drop of Hueningkai's blood touch something another man had laid hands on before.

(After all, that had been why he'd killed him.)

The handle of the pistol is cold in Soobin's palm, a brutal reminder of the beautiful, golden spirit he'd snuffed out. The precious life he'd cut short. The childhood he'd taken away. For a moment, he lets himself think about how things might have gone if he'd just managed to pull his shit together.

(Deep down, Soobin knows that nothing would have changed. He's too fucked up for that.)

So he stands, despondent in the bathroom doorway, thinking about Hueningkai's smile, Hueningkai's laugh, Hueningkai. Thinking about how he'd had the best damn thing in the Milky Way, and how he'd ruined it all.

I loved you. I still do.

The bathtub is cool, surface glistening with sparkling azure water. Not bothering to take off his clothes, Soobin lowers himself into it, the chill of liquid faith a balm to his tortured soul.

I'm sorry. I just wanted you to be happy.

"You were right, you know," he tells Yeonjun, Taehyun, Beomgyu, and all the other friends he'd once had, back when all was still right with the world. "I killed him. It just wasn't in the way you thought I would."

I just wanted to be happy too.

In the tub, Soobin kisses the ghost of his universe and cradles his empty chest. In the tub, Soobin presses the whiskey bottle to his pagan lips and the metal gun to his fucked-up head. And in the tub, Soobin takes one last shot.