Are you a decent girl with the potential to someday become an evil monster, or are you an evil monster that thinks it's a decent girl?

-Derek Landy

Some time in the middle of the night, Luhan had migrated from the couch to the bed with Yixing. When Yixing woke up, the older man was starfished on top of him, sound asleep, his freshly cut and dyed hair tickling Yixing's chin. 

Yixing sighed. Some habits didn't change. 

His phone was vibrating quietly underneath his pillow, and he scooted it out as gently as he could without waking the snoring Luhan. The caller was Baekhyun, and Yixing picked up with a smile.

"Hello?"

Baekhyun was, unexpectedly, crying, and he stammered out something unintelligible.

Yixing sat up, knocking Luhan to the floor with an surprised snort. "Baek?"

"Chanyeol--he--was going to--" Baekhyun hiccuped after almost every word. "He was--going to k-kill me?"

Luhan put his chin on the head, bleary eyes just starting to focus. "Did I just hear Chanyeol?"

"Say what now?" Yixing got out of bed, throwing a shirt on as fast as he could with a phone at his ear. 

"Chanyeol was--going to be p-paid to--to kill me--"

Someting hot rose up in his throat, a familiar, horrible warmth, and Yixing turned to Luhan, who was now thoroughly concerned. "Hey, Baekhyun, calm down. Where are you?"

"I'm home. Back on Gra--"

"You need to get out now."

Baekhyun's sniffles stopped. "What?"

"I need you to--please, just trust me on this one." Yixing threw on his pants from the day before, the burning growing stronger. "Get out of there, and go somewhere with a lot of people until either me or Chanyeol is there."

"Didn't you hear me? I j-just said that Chanyeol was going to--"

"Baekhyun, I'll explain everything, you just...you need to trust me. Trust us. Both of us."

Baekhyun was silent for a frighteningly long moment before speaking again. "I trust you. I don't know how much I can trust Chanyeol anymore."

Oh, you don't know half of it.

"Well, you'll have to. Go to the grocery store and wait there." Yixing hung up. Immediately, Luhan grabbed his shoulders.

"What happened?" he demanded.

Yixing rubbed his temples. "I don't know. Baekhyun thinks Chanyeol was going to kill him, and I don't--I don't know. Get the car. I need to call him." He grabbed the keys and Luhan's phone from the bedside table and tossed it to him.

Luhan pocketed the car keys. "Are you coming?"

"Yeah." Yixing looked around the room, at the snow falling like dying clouds outside. "Let's go."

Chanyeol had spent the whole day in Robinhood&Co., bent over the Sprite bottle he had been nursing for the past few hours. He had come after spending a night trying to call Baekhyun and receiving no answer, contemplating going to Baekhyun's house but realizing how bad that would have looked, and craving the empty comfort of alcohol.

Unfortunately, it was Boa's shift, and she stared Chanyeol down from even asking for the drinks menu.

She wasn't much help.

"Didn't your dad always tell you to burn those?" she said sharply, polishing a glass so hard Chanyeol was afraid it would shatter right there.

"I...I got complacent."

"Yeah, no s . Now you know."

Chanyeol looked up. "But Baekhyun--he's going to--he needs me."

Boa put the glass down on a table and sighed. "Does he really? Think a--"

Chanyeol snapped. "Yes, he does, and you wouldn't get it!"

Immediately, he regretted it. The compassion in Boa's eyes vanished, replaced by the stone cold expression she put on when she protected Chanyeol from his father. "What don't I understand, Park Chanyeol?"

Chanyeol stuttered, then looked away. "I'm fing everything up."

Boa's face softened. "This is the world you were born in, kiddo. This is what you have to do."

As if by some invisible script, Chanyeol's phone rang, and he picked it up without looking. "What?"

"Chanyeol, I need you to--it's Yixing. I need you to find Baekhyun right now. He should be at the grocery store on Ashbury and Cross."

"What?" Chanyeol straightened up. 

"Please. I have...a horrible, horrible feeling about, well, Kris. And my feelings aren't usually wrong."

Chanyeol laughed bitterly. "Well, what could I do? Baekhyun won't even look at me."

"I know. He told me."

"So--"

"I don't give a f . Go. I'll talk to him later." Yixing hung up, and Chanyeol stared at his phone screen.

Boa raised an eyebrow. "Now what?"

Chanyeol put his phone in his pocket and checked for his gun in his coat, then jumped off the barstool and pushed outside into the raging blizzard.

Yifan dreamed of fire.

When he closed his eyes, he saw flames dancing around him, dark hands grabbing at his own, smoldering like coals, creeping up and reaching into his chest and tearing through to the other side. He felt them, too, piercing heat that seemed to fill his entire body, especially when the Eyes appeared.

It wasn't always like this.

The Eyes first came three years ago, in the middle of the night, behind him in a mirror. He had shouted loud enough to wake up the neighbors, and Yixing was the one who soothed him back to sleep. The Eyes whispered to him, taught him about fear, told him that the children of fear and evil were the reason why Yifan couldn't live normally, that they were the only things between him and peace, that he just had to kill them and a good night's sleep would be his forever. Kill them, kill them, kill them. Let their blood be proof that the world was dirty--

(And that one man, oh the one man. The last one. The one that the Eyes wanted so badly, yes, him, the one whose father and grandfather whose family's blood was tainted so deeply and that the Eyes needed dead oh yes the Eyes needed that Byun man dead DEAD have him dead that man's eyes would be the Eyes' and his hands the Eyes' and the very muscles that his forefathers had given him DEAD let his bones breDEADak and crack wDEADith the weight of the worlDIEd the Eyes had to hoDIEist themselves THROWN UPON THEM like curses aMINEahahaHAhaHAHAAAHMINEAHA)

The voice in his head...whose was it?

Chanyeol was never a runner. His stamina was minimal, having been more reliant on reflexes since birth. Forget running in the rain; he had done it once and come home with a twisted ankle.

But here he was, running faster than he ever had in his life, snowflakes throwing themselves in his face and catching in his eyes, wind like razors against his cheeks.

Stoplights turned yellow, then red, disappearing in the corners of Chanyeol's eyes as he passed. Street signs grew shabbier until finally, there, the grocery store at the corner of Ashbury and Cross.

Chanyeol threw open the door, startling the young man behind the cash register.

"Sorry," he wheezed. "I--I ran--"

The register man gaped. "Oh. Uh..."

Something clattered further back in the store, and the young man straightened. "Oh. Um, yeah, there's a guy who's been here for a little while. I don't know what he's doing back there, but..."

Chanyeol his heel and walked down the aisles, ducking his head into each. Finally, at aisle nine, he stopped.

Baekhyun was sitting at the end of the aisle, head in his hands, chest heaving visibly even under his puffy jacket. Without thinking, Chanyeol rushed to his side.

"Baek?" He kneeled down in front of the older man. "Hey--"

Abruptly, Baekhyun slapped Chanyeol's hands away. "What are you doing here?" he hissed.

Chanyeol felt something shatter inside of himself. "I--Yixing--"

"He said he was coming." Baekhyun tried standing up, but a foot slipped out from underneath him, and he sat down heavily. "F !" He threw his head back, biting back more swears. "What do you want?"

Chanyeol opened and shut his mouth, words no longer forming on his tongue. 

Baekhyun looked him up and down, knees up in front of his chest, ready to fight back against a murder attempt he felt was coming. "Well? Aren't you going to--"

Suddenly, his eyes went wide, fixed on something over Chanyeol's shoulder. A strangled scream tore from his throat, and he backed up into the wall behind him. 

Something moved at the edge of Chanyeol's vision, and he ducked just before something swung through the air where his head was a moment ago. There was a heavy thud somewhere far off. He turned and rolled onto his knees, then froze.

Kris stood a few feet down in the aisle, hands tucked into the pockets of a pair of bloodstained jeans. He was studying Chanyeol's face, a strangely calm expression in his eyes. 

"Nice one," he said, voice a deep, soothing timbre.