Title: The Man Upstairs

Pairing: OnTae

Characters: Taemin, Jinki

Genre: fantasy, comedy, romance, vampire!au

Words: 3944

Summary: Taemin is pretty much obsessed with one of his grandmother's guesthouse residents. What he doesn't know is that the man has a dark secret.

Warning: Some language and general weirdness. 

“Clear your mind... Leave your consciousness... Forget the restraints of your body... When I count to four, your arms and legs will go to sleep... ” Mr. Kim's monotonous voice incanted, the sound swimming, reaching Taemin's ears through thick layers of air, it seemed, as he lay on that old, slightly smelly couch, waiting. Trying to follow the instructions in his mind. Pushing reality away. Commanding his senses to step aside. Breathing. 
“…Six... Seven... You're falling down, down, deeper... Your eyelids are heavy...”
He closed his eyes. He was almost, almost there. 
“You have left the boundaries of your consciousness…”
The noise of his own breathing was intoxicating.
“…Nine...”
Yes, he was drifting away, faraway.
“…Ten...”
A moment of silence ensued. 
“Taemin.”
“Yes.”
“Are you with me?”
“Very much.”
He heard a sigh. 
“It's not working, isn't it?”
He opened his eyes. The couch was as smelly as it had been a minute ago. He could feel his whole body perfectly. 
“No, it's not.”
The doctor took his glasses off and started wiping them furiously, his tick attacking him again.
“What does it mean, Mr. Kim?” Taemin asked, sitting up. 
“It means you're immune to hypnosis.”
“Is it possible?”
“Some people are like that.”
The young man pouted. 
“But I want to remember the first year of my life.”
“You'll have to ask your grandmother or something.”
Seriously, the old guy was going to rub a hole in his glasses. 
“So... Is that all? Just like that?”
Dr. Kim shrugged. 
“Yes. Unless you have something to work on. A traumatic experience. Like your parents' divorce.”
“But it wasn't traumatic,” Taemin said after he pondered a little. “It was exciting.”
The doctor sighed again and made up an appointment to shoo him away. Whether he felt professionally threatened or was simply fed up with the boy, he couldn't deal with him anymore. So, Taemin went home. 

His grandmother owned a guesthouse on a quiet side street not far from the subway station. It was a bit ramshackle, but clean. And it brought money – especially on the ‘good’ season, starting somewhere around mid-April and ending somewhere around late October. Now was the ‘bad’ season, and people stayed put wherever their homes were. But Taemin didn't care, because Mr. Lee was not going anywhere. 
He didn't call him that actually. He called him by his first name - Jinki, which had been a power move on his part early on. Taemin was like a dog when it came to people's weaknesses - he could sense them miles away. And Mr. Lee, or Jinki, despite being clearly older than him, was too timid to ever upbraid him for his familiarity.
Anyways, Jinki occupied the shabby room upstairs. He was an owl, as he himself had confessed, and never went out in the light of day. It was most likely that, during the sunny hours, he slept in his room, slept like a baby, which Taemin had found out by knocking on his door and never getting an answer. His occupation was unclear, and nobody knew what he was doing at night, when he was awake. Some freelance work, probably. Sometimes he went out.
It was getting dark, and Taemin quickened his pace as he walked out of the subway. Jinki was going to help him with his History homework again. Whether he had other plans or not. 
Taemin had used to be good at History, but then stopped caring. Jinki was ridiculously informed about life in the times of Joseon, right up to the fall of the Goreyo dynasty – from them on and earlier, he couldn't help him much. Taemin didn't even open his textbook that often – he would listen to thrilling stories of countless blood sheds over the throne and detailed accounts of literati's daily life when they were told by that y, sugar cotton-soft voice rather than read about them in a boring book written by some smart fart with a college degree. His grandmother's 72-year-old cousin seemed to agree – he could listen to Jinki's talking at least forty minutes before drifting off, open-mouthed, in that old leather-bound armchair. (But it were probably the contents of the stories rather than the y voice communicating them that earned his unusually focused attention.)
Jinki was home and standing stiffly in the middle of the kitchen slash living room while Mrs. Lee, Taemin's grandmother, was mopping the floor ferociously and actively not letting him retreat to the blessed solitude of his own room. 
“It's really a shame you don't trust an honest woman like me, Mr. Lee,” she grumbled, evidently ready to explode with indignation.
Jinki looked at the white slippers that he was wearing on top of his diamond-patterned socks as if they could help him. 
“It's not that I don't trust you, kind lady,” he said softly, with that eerie ring to his voice that made Taemin's crotch tingle. “It is that, for my whole life, I have never behooved any other person's assistance in cleaning my dwelling.”
(Such was his way of talking.)
Mrs. Lee sniffed in obvious scorn. Those two didn't get along for a number of reasons, number one being that Jinki never allowed her to enter his room to clean, number two being that he wasn't a church goer and number three – that he never ate any food she made. It could be even said that the last one was the gravest offence: he had actually puked in the bathroom after being forced to try her famous miyeokkuk, – and her soup cooking skills had been tested by over forty years of experience! And that without mentioning kimchi, mandu and jeong, which had all been rejected by that heartless man.
“That man has lost his way in life,” she often said behind his back. 
“Perhaps you are just worried about the safety of your precious belongings,” she assumed, her passive aggression coming to a boil and ready to spill over the brim. 
“I am quite sure my belongings would be perfectly safe in your presence, madam,” Jinki argued with a slight bow of the head. “But it's not in my power to change a habit thus irrevocably fixed.”
Taemin smirked as he dropped his bag on the floor. 
“Hey, Jinki. Are you going to help me with my homework tonight?”
“Mister Lee,” his grandmother corrected him for an umpteenth time.
He kissed her cheek as a hello. 
“Will you, Jinki?” he asked, turning to the timid man. 
“Yes, Taemin.”
This time it was Yi Bangwon, or King Taejeon as he was later renamed, that he needed to know about for his report. 
“I suggest you to take notes, so that you don't omit anything.”
“No, I'll be fine. If I forget something, you'll tell me again.”
That's right, he didn't want to waste the time he could spend drilling Jinki's face with his intent stare on taking some stupid notes. He liked intimidating him that way. Sometimes he would blow air in his face while he talked, just because he couldn't leave him alone. And Jinki never got mad.

There was one thing he hated about Jinki. He hated it so much, in fact, that it drove him nuts at times. Jinki was an outrageous, incorrigible womanizer, and, what's worse, seemed to feel no shame about it whatsoever. 
He would leave the house on the weekends, dressed all in black, and come home in the morning, smelling like the perfume department in a supermarket. (Taemin's sensitive nose recognized at least a few different scents mixed together.) Sometimes he would invite the women in during the weekdays, which was completely appalling. Why Mrs. Lee was not saying anything about it, Taemin didn't know. But that might be because Jinki could be a sneaky bastard when he wanted to. 
The women would spend fifteen minutes or so in his room, and then leave, their eyes hazy as they took the stairs down. (The man knew how to do his business, for sure.)
A few times Taemin saw him meet them on the street and take them somewhere, most likely to that dingy ‘love’ motel a couple of blocks away.
“Your Jinki sounds like a major ,” Kibum told him plainly on the phone, and Taemin, even though he despised that, knew that his friend was right. 
The proximity of the Ehwa Women's University didn't help at all. He got a different woman every night. 
Taemin didn't dwell on the nature of his feelings towards the man, but he still admitted to himself that he was obsessed with him - his eye crinkles, his melodic voice, his plump mouth, his intelligent eyebrows and his Adam apple that moved when he laughed. He wanted to own him. That's why he couldn't bear the sight of Jinki leaving on Friday nights in that prim, almost funeral-style suit that made his skin look very pale. He always tried to detain him with questions, but Jinki would inevitably glance at his watch and stand up to leave.
Once Taemin physically blocked the front door.
“Don't go. I want to talk to you more,” he said, looking him in the eye. 
To which Jinki just silently removed him. All Taemin knew is that he grabbed his shoulders one second, and on another he was standing at a different spot. Jinki's hands were ice-cold. 
No matter how close they would get in the course of their conversations, no matter how exclusively genuine Taemin would be with him, Jinki would never stray away from his habit of meeting women to do dirty stuff with them.

Once Taemin was almost trembling with anger. If somebody saw him, they could never tell – he always looked so dispassionate, as if he was only half-awake most of the time. But he knew better. He was feeling angry and even desperate. Jinki was with a woman upstairs. Taemin took one of those cheap Daiso glasses his grandmother had a batch of, smashed it with a hammer and then broke down the bigger pieces into smaller ones laboriously. After that he gathered the small sharp splinters with his bare hands and poured them into the toes of the girl's shoes, to the accompaniment of his grandmother's elderly cousin snoring. 
He sat down, waiting for the girl to come out. Jinki didn't even lead her down to the door, the cold-blooded ert he was. She walked down the stairs mechanically and passed Taemin like some unconscious phantom in a skimpy dress. She put her high heels on with empty eyes and faltered for a second as Taemin watched her feet. There was nothing – not even a whimper of pain - from the girl as she reached out for the door and went outside. He followed quickly to watch her walk down the street. She was limping a little, but not even stopping to check on her bloody feet.
Taemin frowned. Did he stuff them with drugs? He couldn't be that good in bed.
Kibum told him not to take it out on the girls. They were not the source of the problem, he said. 
Taemin agreed. He was going to make better judgements in the future. 
That's why, on another Friday night, he smashed another glass into pieces and filled Jinki's black leather shoes with them. He stood right there to watch him go. Jinki came down, dressed up, and put the shoes on. Taemin could hear the glass crumbling distinctly. He gulped. 
Jinki half-turned his head in his direction and looked at the boy with sad, moist eyes, taking in the sight of his chest heaving up and down in trepidation. Then he left silently. 
Something rolled down Taemin's cheek and he could feel salt on his tongue. He didn't know why.

Jinki was sick, he thought. He needed help. It was partially the wish to provide that help, partially the excruciating jealousy that prompted him to spy on the man on the next evening. Taemin put his sunglasses on, combed his hair differently from his usual way and threw his late grandfather's coat on, collar up. People on the street stared at him, but he never cared about anybody. 
Jinki went to a club and met a girl there. Taemin couldn't hear what they talked about, except for two words – ‘Black Widow’. Jinki bought her a drink without getting anything for himself and leaned in to whisper something on her ear. Soon after that they left, and Taemin followed them, sniffing the glass that the girl had left on the counter unfinished, on the way. The smell made him a bit dizzy because he wasn't good with alcohol. It was just a cocktail. 
It was hard for Jinki to control his desires, it seemed, because they were walking very fast, almost running to wherever they were headed. Taemin lost them at a big intersection, the lights changing just when he was ready to cross. He clenched his numb fingers into a fist. He was not giving up.

It was too freaking cold to be wearing tights in that weather. Taemin's eyes were stinging from the wind, and he thought he would die. But he had a thing to do. He hoped that the mascara he had ‘borrowed’ from one of the guesthouse residents was indeed waterproof. He was wearing her clothes, too, and the red wig he had found in an Ikea box inside her wardrobe. There had been pink shackles, along with some other funny stuff, but he wasn't going to arrest Jinki, he had figured, nor was he planning to have   with him. So he had left them in the box. 
The urge to scratch his  was unbearable. 
He arrived at the club before Jinki did, feeling more nervous than he had expected. The guard scanned him up and down, and apparently his lower region was satisfied, because he let him in without a question. Taemin was a gorgeous beast tonight. He ordered a cocktail to calm down, asking the bartender for something ‘soft’. The guy didn't charge him, thinking he was a new girl.
Taemin got drunk fast, and Jinki was nowhere to be found. So he sat on his stool, scratching his neck and blinking his heavy fake eyelashes slowly, not really paying any attention to a bunch of guys brawling over him. 
“I saw her first!”
“No, it was me!”
“ off!”
He filled his cheeks with air and puffed it out, his head as light as a balloon.
Through the neon haze, he saw Jinki, the gorgeous Jinki, walk in and take his usual spot. He needed to act quickly. Taemin grabbed his purse and stood up, rocking dangerously on his platform shoes.
One of the guys grasped his wrist, asking him where he was going, and he was ready to smash his glass against the brat's face, but there was no need to. The guy saw Jinki, standing awkwardly in front of a pinup poster of a  girl, with his innocent expression, and let Taemin go. 
“Hi,” he said, almost falling on the man. 
“Good evening,” Jinki greeted him back. 
“The Black Window sent me,” the boy continued, burping. “I mean… Black Widow… ya know. Haha.”
Jinki raised his intelligent eyebrows. 
“But I thought she was out of business.”
“Dirty libel,” Taemin argued, feeling the sweat streak down his flushed cheek. “Black Willow is never out of business.”
Jinki blinked. 
“I see.”
Taemin laughed, old woman style. 
“Also she gives you ten preaercent discount t'night... Let's get wiiiild, boooyyyy.”
He tickled Jinki's Adam apple, chortling. 
“But the kind lady already gave me fifteen percent,” the man argued, putting Taemin's hand away. 
Taemin hit him with his purse, offended. 
“Heeeey! I'm the kind lady's best ! You're lucky to have ten passent off.”
Jinki sighed. 
“There's nothing to be done, then. You have already had your share of alcohol, I presume?”
Taemin giggled. 
“You presume riiiight, baby.”
“Let's go, then.” And Jinki grabbed Taemin's hand to lead him outside.

The wind was blowing even harder now, bringing tiny snowflakes along with the piercing gusts of cold air. Taemin could barely move his feet as he followed Jinki into the dark. Even if he wanted to remember the route, he wouldn't be able to because of the wild weather. 
He saw the red sign of a love motel floating ahead. It wasn't really floating, of course, but his drunken mind surely was. It was to that motel that Jinki was leading him to.
“What name can I call you by?” he shouted through the wind. 
“Didn't Madam tell you?” Jinki was speaking quietly, but Taemin could hear his voice very clearly inside his head. 
“Dunno. I never listen to what the  says.” He hiccupped. 
“Onew,” Jinki told him, and Taemin mouthed: “Onew”, feeling a strange kind of warmth spreading in his chest, despite the apocalyptic cold. 
“Onew. Onew. Onew,” he repeated, climbing up the stairs to the room which the sleazy guy at the reception had given them the key for. 
“What?” Jinki asked. 
“Nothing. I just like the word.”
Taemin stumbled and fell on his knees. Jinki helped him up, putting his arm around his waist. 

Before Jinki, or Onew, could flick the lights on, Taemin turned around and pressed him against the door, kissing his mouth. He wasn't really rough. He put his hands on the man's cheeks and touched his lips with his own. Slowly, softly. Through his drunkenness and fear, he felt alive and magical. 
Jinki's fingers closed around his wrists and, softly, he pushed him away, towards the bed. Taemin fell on his back, and the unexplainable fear returned. 
Still not turning the lights on, Jinki walked towards the window and peeked outside. Then he locked the door and came back to sit on the bed beside Taemin. He turned to him, looking the boy in the eye intently. 
Taemin gulped. 
Had Jinki brought him there... to kill him? 
“You are not going to remember anything. You will forget my face, ” the man said slowly, in a deep voice, not breaking eye contact. 
It took the drunk Taemin a few moments to realize that he was trying to hypnotize him. He had no idea what to do. So he just repeated his words mechanically:
“I'm not going to remember anything. I will forget your face.”
Jinki seemed to buy it, because he took his coat off and leaned down to him, his smooth, handsome face outlined by the moonlight. His eyes looked black in the darkness. 
Taemin  his lips, hoping for a kiss, but Jinki turned his face to the side, and the boy could feel his quickened breath upon his neck before he pressed his lips to the spot where the blood pulsed through his veins most richly.
If he cried out, he would probably be dead.
That's why Taemin didn't make a sound as a sharp pain pierced his neck right where Jinki's mouth was. Dizziness intensified. Weird flashes of color and images filled his intoxicated mind and started dancing wildly. He could feel the blood flowing out of him and into Jinki's mouth. He thought for a second that he caught a glimpse of the vampire's heart's core. It was beautiful and kind, shining bright like some magical flower in a garden of living crystals. Tears flowed out of his eyes, because he was not afraid anymore. He was happy. 
His body was rapidly losing strength. 
He wanted Jinki to drain him. He wanted to feed that beautiful, kind soul, that was so pure and powerful compared to his own. 
In a last spur of strength, Taemin's fingers grasped the vampire's hair lovingly, urging him to satisfy his hunger in full. 
He wanted to be killed.
But then it stopped. The images flew away. 
Jinki pressed a cotton pad to Taemin's neck. He grabbed his coat to leave. 
“Jinki... Jinki...” Taemin called in a weak voice. 
The man stopped, his fingers gripping the handle. His clothes rustled as he turned around. 
Taemin blinked when the bright electric light hit his eyes. The man came closer and his lips parted in surprise. There was still some blood on his pale mouth. 
“Taemin?!”
“Yeah... baby.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Spying on you... Onew....” Taemin laughed coarsely. He couldn't move at all. 
“But why?!”
“I wanted to know... your secret... ”
Jinki sighed and sat beside him. He hid his face in his hands. Not much was left from his powerful presence from a minute before. He was the old timid Jinki who avoided Christmas cookies like plague.
“I wish you had not.”
“I won't go to the police… You don't have to get rid of me.”
Jinki shook his head.
“That's not it. I'll have to look for a new abode and that unsettles me.”
“You won't. I won't tell grandma either. Or anyone.”
The vampire looked at him, bloody tears standing in his eyes. 
“You won't?”
“No...” Taemin cleared his throat. It was a bit awkward to be lying there in that wig and those ripped tights and saying what he was going to say, but he couldn't even sit up. His body was aching too much. “But I have a condition.”
“What sort of condition?” Jinki asked, eyebrows raised. 
“You'll go on a date with me.”
Pause. 
“Or I will blackmail the crap out of you,” Taemin continued, because he was growing nervous. 
“Aren't you already?”
He didn't answer. 
“But why do you want to have a romantic meeting with me?” Jinki asked, confused. 
“Because... I feel something for you.”
“What is it?”
“I don't know,” Taemin said honestly. 
Jinki sat in silence for a while. He wasn't human, and his silence was not human either – an embodiment of stillness, an abyss in time. So many things about him were slowly becoming easier to explain and understand. Taemin wanted to reach out for his icy pale hand.
“Doesn't the fact that I am what I am repel you?” the man asked softly. 
“As long as you're not meeting those women for ing, you can mind your vampire business all you want. I don't care.”
Taemin was surprised to find that Jinki's hand was not icy when it slowly closed around his own. It was kind of warm.
He took that as a ‘yes’.
“Will you take me home? I can't walk,” he asked after they stayed like that for a minute or two. 
“Sure.”
Jinki scooped him in his arms and carried him out of that seedy room into the cold of the night. He told him shyly that he made a very pretty girl, and the boy grinned despite his face getting numb in the wind. 
“Was my blood tasty?”
“It was. I drank more than I meant to, forgive me.”
“That's alright. I'll eat red meat, and apples, and pomegranates,and all that , and turn into a real blood bag, so that you can  me dry everyday.”
For the first time in the course of their acquaintance, Taemin heard Jinki laugh – heartily, openly, the sound of his voice filling the tunnel he was carrying him through with deep echoes. 
“What?” he asked, his eyelids drooping. 
But Jinki kept laughing, and he laughed along, too. Then he fell asleep, because it was a really, really long day, and his dreams were lighter than a butterfly's wings and fuller than a sweet lover's kiss. 

Taemin stopped caring about remembering the first year of his existence. To him, it didn't matter anymore. Because he felt like 
his true life was only beginning.