*Tristo mietitore translating from Italian, which is my mother tongue, is The Grim Reaper*

The thing about death is that it haunts a person everyday of her life until it takes it into its cruel and beautiful hands and take everything away. Only a few can walk at their side, the ones that never have lived and the ones that are already dead inside. Kyungsoo knew he was one of the latter category: he had not lungs anymore, just twisted and thorny vines, he had not eyes, just two serrate leaves, he had not a heart, just a never bloomed flower now rotting and sickening the body… so why?

After all that time he was feeling something from his chest, a soft ache of longing that wasn’t going to cease or go away. Was the flower between his ribs coming to life again? He had gotten used to the dullness of his imposed loneliness, the nothingness in his brain that had stopped all his nerves from functioning the right way, but now everything had been returned to him with interests: all that he had thought lost, the memories and the feelings, had come back to him like a punch in the stomach.

He felt his heart bleeding.

-Kyungsoo, why are you crying?-

The killer hadn’t even felt the tears pouring down his cheeks like a waterfall, down his neck into his shirt.

-I… I don’t…- he tried to say, but he was at loss for words.

Jongin looked at him with probably the first worried look he had ever shot in his entire life: was Kyungsoo breaking already? What had he done? He searched for the other’s hand and took it up to his face, to make him feel the warmth of it, everything that was pawing under his skin, throbbing in his blood.

-I actually feel surprisingly okay- Kyungsoo managed to whisper at the end, looking with his hollow eyes the taller man.

The latter blinked a few times, making sure they were both still there in the reality of things. Sometimes it was hard to separate dreams from facts, but at times like this, the two things were starting to align and coincide.

Dream: Kyungsoo in his arms. Fact: Kyungsoo crying in his arms.

Close enough for him. Gently, he leaned forward and planted a soft butterfly kiss on his reddened lips, puffy like his eyes from all the tears, tracing a long line from them to the base of his neck sending shivers down Kyungsoo’s spine. It was not the time to let lust take over him, so Jongin stopped there, pressing the killer’s forehead in his chest and feeling his tangible physicality between his fingers and, as he did that, he started remembering…

He had tiny feet and tiny hands, but clutching a big stuffed penguin the size of his torso. His mother was in front of him, beautiful as always: raven locks down her face framing her perfect angel face in a living portrait of the most powerful woman alive, with hooded black eyes and a thin scowl that followed her everywhere.

-Mother, I wish for another Rembrandt- he had said, soullessly looking at the woman he desperately tried to love. He had failed every time.

-Jongin, you do not wish, remember. Either you demand it or you don’t really want it-

The tiny kid had pouted resentfully, clutching even more his plush in his arms. He had dreamed the night before, the beautiful painting, and when he had woken up, expecting to find it in his room, and he hadn’t, he had had to take a moment for himself to think: he was sure he had seen his father buying that painting for him at one of his auctions just hours before, why was it not there? Oh, yeah, it had been just a dream…

Just a dream…

A dream…

-Jongin?-

Now it was Kyungsoo’s turn to worry, looking at the lost young man lying next to him, but, fortunately, he snapped out of it in a second, standing up once again and fixing his wrinkled clothes.

-I have now an auction to prepare so I’ll let you know what your next job will be. In the meantime…-

Exo’s boss smiled, leaning down to reach the killer’s mouth in a tender goodbye kiss that felt like a knife cut on Kyungsoo’s lips.

From the death side he had outstretched his hand to reach the person next to him and now the Grim Reaper was looking at him, his skeleton fingers upon his head in a warning motion: he was starting to play a difficult game he was not ready for.

But mother death can’t control feelings, she just breaks them away from the soul. It was bad, yet sweet. It was evil. (I truly am sorry for this XD)

The place was that, Chanyeol was sure: a Victorian villa with black walls and bars on the windows, dark leaning towers and broken glass for panes.

Sehun was in the backseat with Lay, peacefully chewing a gum, making tiny pink bubbles with his mouth while the other one was tapping on his thigh along some mysterious music he only could hear. Their task was the simplest, but also the most dangerous one: they had to pretend to be masked guests like all the others, complete with fake costumes and invitations and the risk of getting caught was very high, but they weren’t the best pair of impostors on the market just by luck. They looked calm but they were secretly repeating the plan in their mind like a mantra.

Suho was slowly polishing his baseball bat full of tiny rusty nails and inspecting for the hundredth time his petrol tank’s supply. He had a simple plan: burn everything down, starting from the money chamber to the oldest member’s grave. Cleansing everything with fire, like a suture.

Chanyeol had a more noble mission, saving his partner, but the turbulence of feelings in his chest was far from chivalrous: he was going to rescue her and then watch everything crumble from afar, rejoicing of their misery, stepping on their ashes like they had done with Hari’s ones.

With the key to Exo’s code, he would become the savior of all the victims, the avenger of the martyr, but, above all, he would finally come to terms with Hari’s death and make peace within himself.

They just had to wait for the right night…

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Sorry once again for the wait, I've started my first batch of exams at school and I've been studying like hell (and watching dramas, let's be real) so here is it, a little bit more of Kaisoo interaction that never hurts, right? ^__^