Work Text:
He looks down at his newest handy work, pleased. The glow and the consistency of his dream was just right. The light wash of baby blue, violet, and yellow coming out in exactly the tone that he wanted. The strands were warm and nothing too bright as he wove the sweet dream into his latest blanket, proud as he lied it over his last recipient for the night, relishing in the face that he was able to provide such comfort and happiness to children.
In this particular one he knew that it had something to do with a family outing that this child in particular was looking forward to, he would give him that sweet dream and hopefully some of it would become the best reality when he awoke.
Smiling he prepares to leave for the night, at least just to prepare more sweet dreams for the others he had.
“Kyungsoo.” The band on his wrist glowing as the voice filtered through.
“Yes, hyung?”
“Where are you now?”
“I’m just wrapping up my last weaving for the night, whats up Minseok-hyung?” his brow furrows in concern, his senior usually didn’t contact him during duty unless it was important.
Minseok is a weaver like him, his senior in fact, he was also the very one to teach him almost everything he knows, though his mentor didn’t go out and weave as much as he used to as sad as that was Kyungsoo had loved, still did, watching the elder work. The way he wove was only something that he could only dream to achieve, even though he was considered one of the best of his generation.
But before the elder could answer, Kyungsoo could see whaat the immediate problem was as it showed up on his bracelet, one of the spots that once a shifting hue of soft colors was now beginning to cloud over and that could only mean one thing.
He lets out a short curse under his breath.
“I can send someone with you…” Minseok says.
“No, its okay… I can handle it, Hyung.” He says with a sigh. “I’ll contact you with a status after… we may need a cell ready.”
The elder is silent for the moment. “Be careful, Soo. Don’t make me come for you.”
Although the elder couldn’t see it he was smiling on the other end. “You know me, same old trouble. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t give you gray hairs.” He laughs. “Contact you soon.” He ends the call.
The small frown returns as he does his last check at his current location before returning to a residence that he had previously visited earlier in the night. The little girl he’d woven a blanket of a butterfly garden, was now obviously uncomfortable, her expression on her face twisted. The multitudes of colors he’d woven no longer glimmered or held their pigment, they started to become sludgy and grey.
Luckily, the whole situation could be salvaged, he had never once in his budding career lost a blanket and he never planned to.
He quickly descends upon his work, carefully picking through the threads until every inkling of the nightmare was drawn out, happy when he finally saw the child beginning to calm down and the blanket begin to return to normal, her dreams once again butterflies and flowers instead of the bugs and spiders that had begun to invade them.
Once he was sure everything was stable he called out.
“I know you’re here. I don’t know why you insist on playing this game, Kai.” He says looking, read glaring, at a corner in the room.
A familiar, all too familiar if you asked Kyungsoo, smirk cut its way through the darkness, knife like, all angles, just like its owner.
Where he was a weaver of sweet dreams, there was also an opposite, the light to the dark. Where he wove light, the other wove darkness, nightmares. bleak of color, made to make fear, this man lived on it. Kyungsoo remembers that they learned about the ones who wove about the dark visages into the minds of all. But rarely did they attack children because although their fear was potent, they were protected by the ones like Kyungsoo and Minseok.
So therefore he’d never thought he’d have to face one since he was working with kids, but lo and behold it was just his luck one came to him and much to his displeasure hadn’t been alone since. He wasn’t going to lie, the first time he had encountered the other he had been nothing less than terrified knowing not what the other would do.
He had been expecting a grotesque beast and instead…
“Don’t look at me like that darling.” The white haired man pouts, his appearance the same every time he had seen him these past months. His hair pointed in every which direction as if he never stopped running his hands through it, pulling at it, the twinkle of slight insanity that was the only instance of light in his coal black eyes. White, billowy shirt tucked into black pants, showing off his bare feet. Black lines crawled up one side of his face like a disease, beautiful and disastrous in their own right as they marked the golden color of the others skin, eyes rimmed in dark making his gaze more intense if that was even possible.
They were almost mocking in the way they claimed his face.
“If I wasn’t mistaken, you look like you aren’t too happy to see me. Rough night?”
It was fine, until you came along. He wants to respond.
Kyungsoo bites his tongue, as he had learned from their previous encounters, responding in an emotional manner would only egg the other on.
“Why are you here. Don’t you have better things to do?” Kyungsoo almost spits, annoyed that he was interrupted in the first place.
As awful as it was he wished the other would just go to the adults and leave him, and the children, alone.
He didn’t know why the other kept coming back even when he made threats of putting him away.
“What? I can’t have a little fun?” The nightmare bringer leans against one of the walls.
Kyungsoo doesn’t respond only turning around and beginning to make his way out of the child’s room, knowing that the other wouldn’t try anything now as it would be too much of a hassle for him to do so since Kyungsoo had fixed his meddling.
And since the white haired man had nothing to say, it was causing him more precious time. His times had become terrible since this man had stared pestering him.
He’s almost out of the building and as expected the nightmare wearing white hair was following him, he couldn’t leave him here after all to do what he wanted, there had to be a breaking point and he was going to bring this man in finally.
“Soo~” The other whines, or rather singsongs.
It's what causes him to freeze in his tracks; over the months the dream weaver had been very careful never to give the other his name, even when the nightmare had even introduced himself the very first time they’d had the displeasure of meeting.
So how in the hell did Kai even know his name.
“Kyungsoo, Kyungsoo.” The striking man plays with his name on his tongue, saying it in an almost singsong manner, the slight insane cackle of his laugher coming through. “Don’t give me that look darling, you really thought I wouldn’t find out? It’s only fair since I told you mine.” He draws closer to the wide eyed weaver.
“What do you want.” Kyungsoo hisses, trying to keep the fear from trembling into his voice.
This had been what Minseok had been worried about, instead of bringing the other in, Kyungsoo had chosen to vacate this sector of children in favor of that the white haired man would just lose interest and go away on his own, leaving his replacement hopefully able to fulfill his place and leaving him and the rest of his colleagues in peace.
The replacement had only lasted a week before he decided to go back.
It seemed that his absence had only caused much displeasure.
They were almost face to face now.
“You.” The other answers simply.
It felt like he’d been trapped in a nightmare of his own, like a ice bucket of water thrown over his clothes. This was exactly what he was sure that his mentor had feared, the elder had never said it directly, but he could sense it. There was one time that he had seen the elder looking over the image of sorts, a man, one with the smile of a cat the edge of his lips permanently quirked as if there was something that you didn’t know.
He knew it had something to do with the entities like Kai.
There was a lot about them they didn’t know.
Kai’s finger lightly trail Kyungsoo’s cheek, lightly brushing over his lips.
Instead, he’d found something beautiful.
Terrifyingly so.
Kyungsoo jumps back, placing distance back between him in the man still currently drinking him in with an intensity.
Almost a hunger, but not quite.
“Me?” It comes out in a whisper, stopping it from coming out in a squeak.
He knew he needed to signal for the back up now, that all he had to do was lightly brush over the button on his bracelet and Minseok with a team of others would be here to take Kai away and there would be one less disturbance to worry about.
However he found himself frozen.
Kyungsoo misses the small frown that covers the other’s face when he puts distance between again, taking away the warmth that Kai had felt momentarily felt against his fingertips.
“What do you want with me?”
Kai walks around, circling Kyungsoo almost. “What wouldn’t I want with you, Soo?”
He’s trying to get to you…
“Nothing. I don’t even know why you bother me. I’ll say it again, leave.” Kyungsoo forces himself up a little bit straighter. “There’s nothing for you here.”
But oh, what the weaver didn’t realize was that everything for him was here, he was everything, had been since Kai had first lain his sights upon him. Only intending to bother him once like he did with most weavers, but soon he found himself coming back to watch the weaver work, for once his mind quieted and he didn’t find his mind as fogged.
He saw light for the first time since he could remember when saw the small weaver, all hard work passion, small, kind features.
Before he knew it he was obsessed, the only way he knew, other than drawing from terror.
He needed to see him.
“I think that’s quite the contrary. You’re like me.” Kai states with a tilt of his head.
Kyungsoo’s lips part in a gaping silence, before his eyes hardened into a glare. “I am nothing like you, Kai.” He straightens him self, bitting his lip, he didn’t even know why he was still entertaining this. “I’m leaving.”
A surge of something welled up in him, it wasn’t fear and it wasn’t exactly anger. It was the memory of the last time the dream weaver had said those exact words, the last time he had really gone away and Kai didn’t think he was going to see him ever again.
It had been the longest week of his life.
His only enjoyment coming from scaring the life out of the weaver that had tried to replace his Soo.
Kai appears swiftly appears in front of Kyungsoo trapping him between a wall to keep him from leaving. Neither missed how Kyungsoo’s breath hitched with the proximity, maybe the end to the dance they’d been playing for months.
“Kai—” Kyungsoo starts with a hiss.
“Jongin.”
Kyungsoo looks up at the other with confusion. “What?”
“Jongin, that’s my name.” he responds, though he nods really sure himself if that was correct, it sounded correct though.
It felt like it had come from a dream of sorts.
“Its, my actual… I don’t know… I don’t know.” Kai runs a hand through his hair.
This was one of the moments that Kyungsoo had the thought that Jongin was much like a mirror, one that someone had broken and then put back together. But the only problem is that you could see the cracks in the reflection.
This could all be a ploy… His mind reminds.
But if it wasn’t?
“Kai, can you please back away?” He asks in a gentle voice, Kyungsoo takes the muddled confusion that the other seemed to be under and pushes him a little bit farther away.
“I’m going to go. This is the last time that I will ask nicely. You need to stay away from here.”
Suddenly that glint in his eyes was back and the fog of confusion gone. “But do you have to go so soon, darling?” He takes the initial step back now, taking the hand that Kyungsoo had resting on his chest and clutching it. “We were just getting to know each other better, Kyungsoo.” The other whispers his name and leans in closer than last time, the darks of his eyes trapping the smaller there.
Kai’s eyes travel to his lips and it doesn’t take rocket science to guess what he was thinking.
Before Kyungsoo can protest, the other has already taken what he had partly wanted for months. The kiss was intense but it was surprisingly gentle, Kyungsoo’s brain short circuited before he gained the motor function to push the other harshly off of him.
His chest was heaving as the other looked back at him with his signature smirk.
Kyungsoo finally fled, going to the place in between where he knew Kai couldn’t follow, leaving the other behind before another word could even be uttered.
Once alone he tried to calm himself.
What… What was that?
“Soo? Kyungsoo, answer me right this instant!” Minseok’s rang out from the bracelet on his wrist.
He took a breath to study his voice. “I’m here hyung, I’m heading back now.”
Minseok lets out a sigh of relief.
“I’m sorry I didn’t let you know as soon as I finished.”
The elder whispers something under his breath before responding. “Just get back here so I can scold you properly alright?”
Read: “get back over here so I can fuss and make sure that you’re really alright.”
Kyungsoo smiles. “Rodger that, see you soon.”
He cuts the connection off, once again left with his thoughts without the distraction of his Hyung talking to him, he touches his lips.
There had been light there, there had been light in the very man that was supposed to be nothing but darkness, a creature.
But he felt it, seen it through the cracks of that reflection.
Jongin…
Perhaps this was the beginning of a beautiful nightmare.