2011

Hyukjae steps around the doorway to find where Donghae has gone. He’d mentioned something about comforting the parents, but Hyukjae knows that he just hadn’t wanted to be in the room. Restraining people has never been his favorite part, possession or no possession. 

There are voices murmuring in the hallway against a backdrop of summer crickets, soft lilts of worry. Donghae’s low, steady voice soothes them away. It would almost put Hyukjae to sleep, that familiar tone, if not for the fact that strapped to the bed in the room behind him is a boy not much younger than himself. Protection for them, not for the boy’s own safety – that was compromised long ago.

“…the best decision you could have made for him,” Donghae is saying when he approaches. Im Jin Oh’s mother is wringing a damp kerchief in her hands and nodding. One way or another, the months-long horror is going to be over for her family tonight, Hyukjae is certain of that at least. Whether Jin Oh is going to survive demonic possession is anyone’s guess. He could be gone already, and the thought is heavy on Hyukjae’s shoulders as she steps down the hall.

“Donghae,” he murmurs, and Donghae looks over his shoulder at him and nods. He stands up and takes Jin Oh’s mother’s hands in his own.

“Remember what I said: that is not your son in there. But we’re fighting for him. Stay out here, please.”

Back inside Jin Oh’s bedroom, Kyuhyun is fiddling with the camera and Siwon nods at them as they enter. Donghae shuts the door behind them, quiet even in the silence. On the bed, Jin Oh’s head gives a rolls lazily on its side to look at them, but doesn’t speak.

“Ready, Kyu?” Hyukjae asks. He nods and gives the thumbs-up. Donghae passes behind Siwon where he’s standing at the foot of the bed and claps a hand on his shoulder in greeting. He backs up to the wall and settles there to watch. Hyukjae doesn’t miss the way Jin Oh’s head follows Donghae around the room, nor the slight crease in Donghae’s forehead as he looks at the bed. Jin Oh is staring right past Siwon, but Donghae doesn’t make eye contact.

Siwon begins with a prayer, all four of them chorusing an Amen when he’s finished. Jin Oh flinches, but his gaze doesn’t waver from Donghae. It isn’t unusual for all the focus of a preternatural being to fall onto Donghae: he commands it simply by being in the room. Hyukjae is used to the way Donghae sees the world, but it’s always jarring when someone or something else acknowledges it.

“I’ll give you one last chance,” Siwon says, flipping through the pages of the book in his hand, “to leave this boy of your own free will.

“It’s useless, Siwon.” Donghae still doesn’t look at the bed when he says it, but Jin Oh’s face splits into a cocky grin.

“All right, then,” and Siwon launches into the Latin ritual – a call to the angels for help. Nothing much happens here; Hyukjae reaches into his pocket to fiddle with the small bottle of holy water there. Sometimes they need a little incentive.

But he doesn’t need it just yet. Siwon begins a psalm, and Jin Oh’s gaze finally snaps to him with a snarl. “Behold, He sends forth His Own Voice, the Voice of Virtue, Attribute the Virtue to God..”

For a demon who hasn’t been very reactive so far, the response to this is violent. Jin Oh’s body lurches forward so fast that the leather straps on his wrists, ankles, and chest all snap at once. Hyukjae almost loses precious seconds in disbelief - the possessed have super human strength, but he’s never seen one bust through their restraints so quickly, or all at once. No wonder he had been quiet. He was saving up his energy.

Siwon is yelling at the demon to Be humble under the Powerful Hand of God, tremble and flee, but it’s having no effect. Hyukjae empties half the contents of his water bottle onto Jin Oh’s body. It flinches back violently, weakened enough that he can grab his arm and try to wrestle him back onto the bed. Kyuhyun and Donghae jump into action as well, Kyu on the other side of the bed while Donghae tries to hold down his legs. Hyukjae notices that the entire line of his body is rigid and his hold is weak. He snatches his hands back every now and then as if Jin Oh is too hot to touch.

It takes the rest of the water to keep the body from lurching forward again, Siwon’s demands for the demon to leave the body going unnoticed. His voice sounds muffled, like the air in the room is buzzing, and Hyukjae shakes his head to keep his focus.

From the corner of his eye he notices that Donghae is no longer in his line of vision. It’s not until the arm he’s holding down lies still that he glances back. There is still a loud white noise rushing through his ears, Siwon is still reading steadily from the Roman Rite, but Donghae has backed up into the wall. He's slumped against it like his knees have given out. “Hae?”

Donghae doesn’t look at him. He’s glassy-eyed, staring unfocused towards the bed and his eyes flutter in rapid half-blinks. The sight has Hyukjae’s already frantic heart rocketing blood through his veins in fear. “Stop,” Donghae says, voice small and scared, so quiet that Hyukjae wouldn’t have heard it if he hadn’t seen his lips move. “Stop!” he says again, louder, and Siwon’s chanting falters.

Jin Oh – no, the thing that has taken over Jin Oh’s body – sneers. “Keep going!” Hyukjae shouts, and Siwon snaps out of it and finds the next line.

Donghae has curled further into himself, whimpering “stop, stop,” and Hyukjae is two steps away from full-on panicking. Don’t panic, whatever happens, do not panic. If you can’t handle it, it's not shameful to leave the room. - Hyukjae’s own words, spoken to countless people in countless situations, echoing back at him. Donghae keeps up his litany of “stop,” and “no” through dry, cracked lips; his eyes have lost the watery sheen, still blinking rapidly and red-rimmed. The sweat that had been sticking his hair to the sides of his head seems to have dried up, leaving it flat and brittle against his forehead. His skin is pale, cheeks fever-bright.

“What the ,” Hyukjae says to himself, and then, shouting, “Donghae!”

Siwon stops speaking. Everything happens at once.

Hyukjae’s loose grip on the still body is shaken off with ease, Kyuhyun on the other side thrown bodily to the floor as the thing inside Jin Oh takes advantage of the confusion. It launches itself across the room with no regard for propulsion, body limitations, or how limbs should work. Donghae slumps completely to the ground a with dry sob, fingernails scrabbling at the wall like he’s going to dig right through it. Hyukjae grabs wildy at Jin Oh’s shoulder and Siwon fumbles with holy water that barely makes him twitch. From the other side of the bed Kyuhyun picks himself off the floor, muttering “what the , how, what the ” and tries to drag Jin Oh down as best he can.

Jin Oh’s arms reach for Donghae, for Hyukjae’s Donghae, and grabs him roughly by the chin, forcing him to look at Jin Oh’s twisted sneer. Donghae screams.

It’s a sound wrenched out of him, a sound that goes straight to Hyukjae’s bones and makes his stomach lurch. He yanks hard at Jin Oh with a strength he didn’t know he was capable of and they topple backwards, Jin Oh and Hyukjae and Kyuhyun clattering in a heap against the camera’s tripod. It hits the floor with a decisive crunch. Siwon starts the exorcism rite again from the beginning, but Jin Oh isn’t struggling now. He just laughs, craning his head to look up at Donghae where he lies with his arms around his head, covering his ears. Jin Oh says, “You’re wrong,” as if picking up a long-ago conversation. “God is not with you.”

And then he just waits. Jin Oh’s eyes stare up at the ceiling on a face that looks nothing like the scared boy Hyukjae had first met two days ago while Siwon incants the exorcism, breath shaky but words clear. It waits, laughing to itself intermittently, and Hyukjae lets his head lull to rest on his own bicep, waiting too. The color of Jin Oh’s skin turns gray and ashy, fine like thin paper under Hyukjae’s hands, until the gray sloughs off the top of his skin and falls away like sawdust, there in one blink and gone in the next.

Jin Oh doesn’t move. Kyuhyun’s fingers slip to his neck and he announces that there’s still a pulse. Siwon, voice shaken, moves right onto prayers without a hitch as Hyukjae finally gets to Donghae. His whimpers had died off when the demon had and now he’s curled on the floor, eyes open and bloodshot.

“Donghae?” Hyukjae says, vision blurred. He wipes angrily at the wetness but gives up in favor of cradling his hand over the nape of Donghae’s neck, up the back of his head and over the curve of his forehead.

“Donghae?” His voice is strangled with tears.

Donghae blinks, eyes finally focusing and pupils dilating as he looks at Hyukjae’s face after what must be the whole space of an eternity. “Hyukjae?” he says, voice small and awed, and then falls unconscious.

It’s the last word he says for a very long time.

Siwon startles Hyukjae with a gentle touch to his shoulder. “You should get him home,” he offers.

“Siwon,” Hyukjae chokes out. He’s vaguely aware of Kyuhyun gathering up the shattered camera but avoids looking back at Jin Oh. “Siwon, what was that? What happened?”

He hesitates. “I… I wish I could tell you, Hyukjae. I’ve never seen anything like it. And for the love of God, it’s never going to happen again.”

Hyukjae just tips forward to press his forehead against Donghae’s, brushing hair out of his sleeping face.

“Let’s get him home,” Siwon says again. “I can take care of the family.”

Hyukjae nods.

-

Three days in and Hyukjae is trying to process the evidence for the casefile, flipping through photograph after photograph with unseeing eyes. His mind is upstairs, behind a closed door. Soon he gives up trying work and finds himself out in the hallway, staring at it.

He steps close, speaking into the wood. “Donghae? Donghae, please. Open the door.”

There’s no response. Inside, Hyukjae imagines that he’d find the same scene he was met with yesterday and the day before that: Donghae rolled up in his sheets, back to the door, breathing evenly but not moving. Not talking to anyone, looking at anyone, acknowledging anyone at all. Not even Hyukjae.

He puts a hand to the wood, fingertips running down the smooth surface and curling into a fist, his knuckles scraping against the door in frustration. There’s nothing he can do, nothing he can do, nothing.

On the eighth day Hyukjae slips inside at dawn like always with a bowl of rice and bottled water, and Donghae is sitting up in bed with the blankets draped over his shoulders. His face is pale and sallow, his hair dirty, but he is responsive for the first time in over a week. Hyukjae almost drops the rice in relief.

“Hyukjae,” Donghae says, hoarse.

“Yeah, Hae, I’m right here.”

“Is Jin Oh gone?”

Jin Oh had died under hospital care after lying comatose for three days following his exorcism. With a pang, he wonders if he should have told him sooner.

“Yes. He’s gone.”

Donghae looks up at Hyukjae then, eyes wet with tears. “We saved him from that. We saved him.”

Hyukjae doesn’t know what to say. He sets down the food and water and comes to the edge of the bed,presses his knees into the mattress on either side of Donghae’s thighs, and pulls him into a hug. With a gentle hand, he pushes Donghae’s wet face into his shoulder. The heaviness that had been weighing Hyukjae down settles into a deep grief and he’s not holding Donghae close enough – never close enough to protect him from the things Hyukjae can’t experience. He wants to be angry; angry that this happened to him, angry that the other side is so relentless in its corruption and horror, but he can’t be. Not only because they would feed off his anger, or that it would only make Donghae susceptible to more danger. He wants to be angry because the sorrow sits too solidly in his throat to make room for anything else.

“Yeah, we did, we saved him. Donghae. I love you. I love you so much.”

Donghae slips his arms around Hyukjae’s ribcage and cries.