Taoris | R | 4.800w total | aka Steampunk!Taoris, now finished
Rated for violence and possibly disturbing imagery, implied character death.
It's a pretty simple business, the one that keeps Tao busy. Resurrections & Life Saving, or so the sign says. And it's a pretty simple business, the one that keeps Kris busy. Cage fights to death, or so the billboards say. It's not quite so simple when they intersect, though. Or so experience says.
-
How does one take back words they haven’t spoken? Or worse even, how does one take back a thought?
It shouldn’t even matter that much. They live apart, and as part of a relationship that’s been officialised – as much as something so parasitical is allowed to be officialised – somewhere between the cage where the fights take place and the back room where the defeated one comes to die. It’s not love, it’s convenience. Maybe.
Maybe Tao doesn’t really love Kris as much as he loves being useful, as much as he loves affirming his own superiority both of caste and abilities.
And maybe Kris doesn’t really love Tao as much as he loves being high on the adrenaline of conning the world, and it just so happens that Tao tends to be present during those moments. And only during those moments, because apart from them and the long nights that usually follow, there’s always something else keeping them busy. Tao has no idea of what the other does when he’s not dying or killing, but he has a perfect grasp on his own time management.
Resurrections and life saving. And the occasional complaint from an unhappy customer.
One would think they'd read the contract. They can bring life back. Lay defines life as blood streaming through someone's veins and full functionality of all organs and senses. But they can’t fix families, nor marriages, nor relationship strains caused by accidental killings of one's best friend – otherwise they'd be called Resurrections & Life Fixing. They can’t fix the problems that ultimately lead to one's death – and thus they can’t be blamed that most of the people they save end up dead again in the short span of a week or two.
Then people come and complain. But one would really think they'd read the contract first, no?
Maybe love, or convenience, should come with a contract.
I shall never admit that I don’t, in fact, love you. That I’ve kind of gotten used to your presence and you’re something warm to fall asleep next to, even if your hair smells like smoke and ashes and fire and your skin feels like coal. That I never know what to say in the morning, so I make time stop while I get dressed because I don’t want to carelessly awake you and have to deal with your groggy voice and whatever cross you’re carrying for the day. That I care for you as one cares for... a pet, maybe, but not enough to let you out of this little set-up of ours, this little entourage of two cage fighters, a bet collector, an embalmer, an immortal and a time traveller. That, assuming I care for you as I would for a pet, maybe you’re not a cherished pet, a lustrous cat like the one our prince most certainly enjoys perching on his lap for effect – maybe you’re just a stray dog I enjoy feeding from the back door, or in the back room, because that’s basic human decency, isn’t it? That sometimes I wish Lay would freak out and refuse to revive you, so I wouldn’t have to make that decision, and so many others, on my own.
I shall never let anyone say anything that, if said by me, would leave you wrecked. I shall never...
*
The cage door slams closed. Luhan locks up and steps back to safety.
It’s happening, and Tao reviews the plan. Let one of them die. Let everyone know it’s happened. Let the confusion start. Let the winner walk around the cage with slumped shoulders, with a guarded expression, maybe even kick the loser’s corpse for effect. Let the fire burn.
Then stop. Freeze. Enjoy the silence for a second. Walk up to Luhan. Touch him, anywhere as long as it’s his skin. Get him to open the cage. Touch the winner. Anywhere, as long as it’s his skin. Remove the corpse, to the hearse, to Baekhyun’s caring hands. Leave Luhan in the arena, so his occult talents can make believe that the corpse is still really there. Wait for the post-fight confusion to subside. Collect the money. Pay Luhan. Find Lay. Go back to Baekhyun. Revive the corpse. Pay everyone. Done. Another successful con.
*
Chanyeol is the first to strike, and it’s barely a surprise when the small fireball that consumes his hand shoots up the air with a hissing sound to take on the shape of a giant phoenix.
Kris is more dramatic. He drops his coat with a calculated movement, strikes a match and lets it drop on the cloth. Tao is sure he’s the only one seeing it in slow motion. He always sees the fights in slow motion.
The fabric catches fire. Chanyeol waits, arms crossed, phoenix perched on the cage, the tip of a wing just casually grazing its owner’s hair with what’s almost... affection. That’s not something you see a lot in the underworld. They both wait, as the flames engulfing the fabric start twisting, turning, rising high above Kris’s knees, then his shoulders, curling around the bars of the cage, taking on a shape, spreading massive wings.
The dragon lets out a massive roar – though it sounds a lot more like a high, deafening, screeching sound turned hoarse by the crackling of the fire around it – as Kris retreats from the center of the cage, backing into a corner. Chanyeol is immune to his own fire, since he owns it, since it’s technically a part of him. Kris isn’t. He can control it only as the elusive prince can control his troops – he’s not necessarily immune to their gun powder should they wish to point their barrels at his noble skull.
Tao’s not easily fazed. He’s seen the creatures before, and he’s seen them in all their might. He’s seen Chanyeol write a thank you note to Baekhyun with a flaming feather pulled straight from the wing of his beloved phoenix... but down here, keeping the beasts alive for the duration of a fight takes effort, draws energy, and so it’s not like either of the summoners expends any extra effort creating details and aesthetic nuisances. No one’s looking for art in the arena. So the dragon and the phoenix are reduced to unshapely masses of crackling and blowing and hissing flames and since it’s not supposed to look pretty, Tao admits it, it really doesn’t.
For most of the fight, it’s fire against fire, and while Kris doesn’t seem to worry about much other than directing the dragon, keeping the flames from extinguishing, and staying, as much as humanly possible, out of harm’s way, Chanyeol puts on quite a show out of keeping his phoenix alive – for what harms one tends to harm the other. Kris doesn’t hold back, though, not even when the phoenix is lunged back a few good meters in a fire ball, crashing through the cage and incinerating half the left side of the arena, not even when Chanyeol sinks to his knees as if he’s been kicked in the gut himself. An alcohol-filled and alcohol-covered spectator keeps the fire burning, a morbid spectacle, as the phoenix recovers and spreads its wings once again, as the scent of charred meant fills Tao’s nostrils and he has to hold down his – already turning – stomach to keep from throwing up.
Chanyeol takes a little longer to recover than his metaphysical pet. There’s something awkward about the way he moves, something uncanny about the way he finally stands, hands not touching the cage for leverage because his fire can’t harm him but incandescent metal can, patting the multiple pockets of his trousers and the holster hanging around his thigh. He seems relieved. Kris seems confused. Luhan is retreating even further away from the cage. The burning man has stopped struggling.
I’m sorry.
Whatever thing that’s turning inside Tao’s stomach succumbs and decomposes into dead weight, keeping him immobile, keeping him anchored to his seat, because that’s Luhan’s voice he’s hearing in his head, that’s Luhan’s face contorted in fear somewhere along the right side of the arena, and that’s Chanyeol’s voice screaming until it breaks when the dragon lunges, not against the fallen phoenix but against him, never actually touching him but forcing him to step back against the red-hot metal, burning straight through the fabric of his flimsy shirt and the tissue of his flimsy skin. The audience cheers, deafening and repulsive, ignoring the way the flames are licking up the spilled alcohol and god-knows what other fluids up the left side of the arena and something feels very, very wrong.
Tao is sure he’s the only one who notices the explosion near the main gate – but since he’s petrified because things are going so dangerously off-track, since his mouth has gone dry because he’s not even sure Chanyeol is still alive in his utter lack of movement, since he doesn’t even want to think about it because the phoenix has shrunk to about the size of small child... he doesn’t react.
I’m sorry.
*
It happens too fast. Too sudden. The explosion turns out to be a wave of soldiers, crashing through the main gate and against the compact mass of onlookers, pushing some of them against the burning cage, trampling a few others under steel-toed boots, looking around for something and Tao is suddenly sure of it, too sure... he is something.
But he’s too scared to move, and so his brain somehow tells the world to stop moving, too. It’s become an unconscious thing over the years, his very own brand of survival instinct.
Freeze. First his own body, out of a natural reaction to fear, then the world, out of a constant need to step back, take some time out, regroup.
Flight.
Avoid fighting altogether.
So he stands, slowly, evaluating the situation and concluding nothing other than the immediately obvious. They’re there for him, but he’s there for someone else – which is why following the plan seems like the sensible thing to do.
Luhan first.
It takes a minute to find him in the crowd, and another minute to clear a path to him – for people who have been frozen in time aren’t particularly prone to moving out of the way –, but less than a minute to remove a glove and poke him softly on the chin with the pad of a fingertip. Luhan’s horrified expression doesn’t quite fade as he’s unfrozen. If anything, it grows more intense, enough to make him take a step backwards and trip on the steps.
“I... I didn’t... Tao I...”
I’m sorry.
Sometimes Tao wishes Luhan would perfect the art of communicating using just one method at a time. He tells him so. Then he asks him about the constant, unspoken apology.
*
It doesn’t really take much explanation, as the deer eyes move from the filthy ground between Tao’s boots to the mass of invading soldiers, as Luhan’s voice breaks in a low chuckle that makes his Adam’s apple bob weakly against the skin of his throat.
“They had Sehun, you see...”
“I didn’t know you we-”
“Well I didn’t think anybody knew either.”
Tao can’t hear anything other than his own ragged breathing, his own blood pumping against his temples, the horrible sound of Luhan’s nails absently raking against the stone steps.
“Give me the keys, Luhan.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Then I’ll take them from you.”
“I don’t have them.”
“Then who does?”
Luhan swallows, hard, dignified, but doesn’t say a word.
“Luhan, please...”
“I can’t let you leave.”
“What about them?”
“They’re none of my business. My only responsibility is to open the cage. I can’t do it tonight. Maybe I should apologise for that, too.”
And it’s only despair that runs through Tao’s mind as he looks back at the cage and realises that Kris is too far from the bars to be able to touch him, that Chanyeol, even though he’s curled up near them, is probably unconscious anyway, unable to be awoken.
I’m sorry.
Now don’t move. Here, here. Drop the enchantment, Zitao. It’ll be okay.
It’s too late when Tao realises that the thing turning around inside him had been conflict, all along. Conflict between his own will and Luhan’s as it spilled slowly and barely noticeably from his brain to his muscles and joints. The silence starts fading, the sounds returning, and it’s with horrible consciousness that Tao realises it’s all falling apart, all crumbling, because his mind has been invaded and his will no longer matters.
Luhan stands up, lays a small hand on his shoulder, whispers in his ear in the fleeting moments before the soldiers reach them.
“The key... Chanyeol has it.”
Now shhh. Go to sleep. It’ll all be okay when you wake up.
There’s relief there, for the second it takes a thought to travel from Luhan’s mind to Tao’s own. Fleeting relief that is soon overcome with excruciating doubt. Chanyeol has the key.
But the only people who know it are Luhan, Chanyeol himself, and Tao.
Luhan won’t tell. Chanyeol might be dead. And Tao is slowly drifting into unconsciousness.
*
Baekhyun takes a small puff from his cigarette, pointy boots against the control panel of the hearse, delicate features moving in and out of the shadows as the remnants of one of his energy blasts flicker weakly inside a crystal sphere. He makes sure they all last around an hour.
This one has.
It’s just that the wait doesn’t, usually.
-
AN:
Rated for violence and possibly disturbing imagery, implied character death.
It's a pretty simple business, the one that keeps Tao busy. Resurrections & Life Saving, or so the sign says. And it's a pretty simple business, the one that keeps Kris busy. Cage fights to death, or so the billboards say. It's not quite so simple when they intersect, though. Or so experience says.
-
How does one take back words they haven’t spoken? Or worse even, how does one take back a thought?
It shouldn’t even matter that much. They live apart, and as part of a relationship that’s been officialised – as much as something so parasitical is allowed to be officialised – somewhere between the cage where the fights take place and the back room where the defeated one comes to die. It’s not love, it’s convenience. Maybe.
Maybe Tao doesn’t really love Kris as much as he loves being useful, as much as he loves affirming his own superiority both of caste and abilities.
And maybe Kris doesn’t really love Tao as much as he loves being high on the adrenaline of conning the world, and it just so happens that Tao tends to be present during those moments. And only during those moments, because apart from them and the long nights that usually follow, there’s always something else keeping them busy. Tao has no idea of what the other does when he’s not dying or killing, but he has a perfect grasp on his own time management.
Resurrections and life saving. And the occasional complaint from an unhappy customer.
One would think they'd read the contract. They can bring life back. Lay defines life as blood streaming through someone's veins and full functionality of all organs and senses. But they can’t fix families, nor marriages, nor relationship strains caused by accidental killings of one's best friend – otherwise they'd be called Resurrections & Life Fixing. They can’t fix the problems that ultimately lead to one's death – and thus they can’t be blamed that most of the people they save end up dead again in the short span of a week or two.
Then people come and complain. But one would really think they'd read the contract first, no?
Maybe love, or convenience, should come with a contract.
I shall never admit that I don’t, in fact, love you. That I’ve kind of gotten used to your presence and you’re something warm to fall asleep next to, even if your hair smells like smoke and ashes and fire and your skin feels like coal. That I never know what to say in the morning, so I make time stop while I get dressed because I don’t want to carelessly awake you and have to deal with your groggy voice and whatever cross you’re carrying for the day. That I care for you as one cares for... a pet, maybe, but not enough to let you out of this little set-up of ours, this little entourage of two cage fighters, a bet collector, an embalmer, an immortal and a time traveller. That, assuming I care for you as I would for a pet, maybe you’re not a cherished pet, a lustrous cat like the one our prince most certainly enjoys perching on his lap for effect – maybe you’re just a stray dog I enjoy feeding from the back door, or in the back room, because that’s basic human decency, isn’t it? That sometimes I wish Lay would freak out and refuse to revive you, so I wouldn’t have to make that decision, and so many others, on my own.
I shall never let anyone say anything that, if said by me, would leave you wrecked. I shall never...
*
The cage door slams closed. Luhan locks up and steps back to safety.
It’s happening, and Tao reviews the plan. Let one of them die. Let everyone know it’s happened. Let the confusion start. Let the winner walk around the cage with slumped shoulders, with a guarded expression, maybe even kick the loser’s corpse for effect. Let the fire burn.
Then stop. Freeze. Enjoy the silence for a second. Walk up to Luhan. Touch him, anywhere as long as it’s his skin. Get him to open the cage. Touch the winner. Anywhere, as long as it’s his skin. Remove the corpse, to the hearse, to Baekhyun’s caring hands. Leave Luhan in the arena, so his occult talents can make believe that the corpse is still really there. Wait for the post-fight confusion to subside. Collect the money. Pay Luhan. Find Lay. Go back to Baekhyun. Revive the corpse. Pay everyone. Done. Another successful con.
*
Chanyeol is the first to strike, and it’s barely a surprise when the small fireball that consumes his hand shoots up the air with a hissing sound to take on the shape of a giant phoenix.
Kris is more dramatic. He drops his coat with a calculated movement, strikes a match and lets it drop on the cloth. Tao is sure he’s the only one seeing it in slow motion. He always sees the fights in slow motion.
The fabric catches fire. Chanyeol waits, arms crossed, phoenix perched on the cage, the tip of a wing just casually grazing its owner’s hair with what’s almost... affection. That’s not something you see a lot in the underworld. They both wait, as the flames engulfing the fabric start twisting, turning, rising high above Kris’s knees, then his shoulders, curling around the bars of the cage, taking on a shape, spreading massive wings.
The dragon lets out a massive roar – though it sounds a lot more like a high, deafening, screeching sound turned hoarse by the crackling of the fire around it – as Kris retreats from the center of the cage, backing into a corner. Chanyeol is immune to his own fire, since he owns it, since it’s technically a part of him. Kris isn’t. He can control it only as the elusive prince can control his troops – he’s not necessarily immune to their gun powder should they wish to point their barrels at his noble skull.
Tao’s not easily fazed. He’s seen the creatures before, and he’s seen them in all their might. He’s seen Chanyeol write a thank you note to Baekhyun with a flaming feather pulled straight from the wing of his beloved phoenix... but down here, keeping the beasts alive for the duration of a fight takes effort, draws energy, and so it’s not like either of the summoners expends any extra effort creating details and aesthetic nuisances. No one’s looking for art in the arena. So the dragon and the phoenix are reduced to unshapely masses of crackling and blowing and hissing flames and since it’s not supposed to look pretty, Tao admits it, it really doesn’t.
For most of the fight, it’s fire against fire, and while Kris doesn’t seem to worry about much other than directing the dragon, keeping the flames from extinguishing, and staying, as much as humanly possible, out of harm’s way, Chanyeol puts on quite a show out of keeping his phoenix alive – for what harms one tends to harm the other. Kris doesn’t hold back, though, not even when the phoenix is lunged back a few good meters in a fire ball, crashing through the cage and incinerating half the left side of the arena, not even when Chanyeol sinks to his knees as if he’s been kicked in the gut himself. An alcohol-filled and alcohol-covered spectator keeps the fire burning, a morbid spectacle, as the phoenix recovers and spreads its wings once again, as the scent of charred meant fills Tao’s nostrils and he has to hold down his – already turning – stomach to keep from throwing up.
Chanyeol takes a little longer to recover than his metaphysical pet. There’s something awkward about the way he moves, something uncanny about the way he finally stands, hands not touching the cage for leverage because his fire can’t harm him but incandescent metal can, patting the multiple pockets of his trousers and the holster hanging around his thigh. He seems relieved. Kris seems confused. Luhan is retreating even further away from the cage. The burning man has stopped struggling.
I’m sorry.
Whatever thing that’s turning inside Tao’s stomach succumbs and decomposes into dead weight, keeping him immobile, keeping him anchored to his seat, because that’s Luhan’s voice he’s hearing in his head, that’s Luhan’s face contorted in fear somewhere along the right side of the arena, and that’s Chanyeol’s voice screaming until it breaks when the dragon lunges, not against the fallen phoenix but against him, never actually touching him but forcing him to step back against the red-hot metal, burning straight through the fabric of his flimsy shirt and the tissue of his flimsy skin. The audience cheers, deafening and repulsive, ignoring the way the flames are licking up the spilled alcohol and god-knows what other fluids up the left side of the arena and something feels very, very wrong.
Tao is sure he’s the only one who notices the explosion near the main gate – but since he’s petrified because things are going so dangerously off-track, since his mouth has gone dry because he’s not even sure Chanyeol is still alive in his utter lack of movement, since he doesn’t even want to think about it because the phoenix has shrunk to about the size of small child... he doesn’t react.
I’m sorry.
*
It happens too fast. Too sudden. The explosion turns out to be a wave of soldiers, crashing through the main gate and against the compact mass of onlookers, pushing some of them against the burning cage, trampling a few others under steel-toed boots, looking around for something and Tao is suddenly sure of it, too sure... he is something.
But he’s too scared to move, and so his brain somehow tells the world to stop moving, too. It’s become an unconscious thing over the years, his very own brand of survival instinct.
Freeze. First his own body, out of a natural reaction to fear, then the world, out of a constant need to step back, take some time out, regroup.
Flight.
Avoid fighting altogether.
So he stands, slowly, evaluating the situation and concluding nothing other than the immediately obvious. They’re there for him, but he’s there for someone else – which is why following the plan seems like the sensible thing to do.
Luhan first.
It takes a minute to find him in the crowd, and another minute to clear a path to him – for people who have been frozen in time aren’t particularly prone to moving out of the way –, but less than a minute to remove a glove and poke him softly on the chin with the pad of a fingertip. Luhan’s horrified expression doesn’t quite fade as he’s unfrozen. If anything, it grows more intense, enough to make him take a step backwards and trip on the steps.
“I... I didn’t... Tao I...”
I’m sorry.
Sometimes Tao wishes Luhan would perfect the art of communicating using just one method at a time. He tells him so. Then he asks him about the constant, unspoken apology.
*
It doesn’t really take much explanation, as the deer eyes move from the filthy ground between Tao’s boots to the mass of invading soldiers, as Luhan’s voice breaks in a low chuckle that makes his Adam’s apple bob weakly against the skin of his throat.
“They had Sehun, you see...”
“I didn’t know you we-”
“Well I didn’t think anybody knew either.”
Tao can’t hear anything other than his own ragged breathing, his own blood pumping against his temples, the horrible sound of Luhan’s nails absently raking against the stone steps.
“Give me the keys, Luhan.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Then I’ll take them from you.”
“I don’t have them.”
“Then who does?”
Luhan swallows, hard, dignified, but doesn’t say a word.
“Luhan, please...”
“I can’t let you leave.”
“What about them?”
“They’re none of my business. My only responsibility is to open the cage. I can’t do it tonight. Maybe I should apologise for that, too.”
And it’s only despair that runs through Tao’s mind as he looks back at the cage and realises that Kris is too far from the bars to be able to touch him, that Chanyeol, even though he’s curled up near them, is probably unconscious anyway, unable to be awoken.
I’m sorry.
Now don’t move. Here, here. Drop the enchantment, Zitao. It’ll be okay.
It’s too late when Tao realises that the thing turning around inside him had been conflict, all along. Conflict between his own will and Luhan’s as it spilled slowly and barely noticeably from his brain to his muscles and joints. The silence starts fading, the sounds returning, and it’s with horrible consciousness that Tao realises it’s all falling apart, all crumbling, because his mind has been invaded and his will no longer matters.
Luhan stands up, lays a small hand on his shoulder, whispers in his ear in the fleeting moments before the soldiers reach them.
“The key... Chanyeol has it.”
Now shhh. Go to sleep. It’ll all be okay when you wake up.
There’s relief there, for the second it takes a thought to travel from Luhan’s mind to Tao’s own. Fleeting relief that is soon overcome with excruciating doubt. Chanyeol has the key.
But the only people who know it are Luhan, Chanyeol himself, and Tao.
Luhan won’t tell. Chanyeol might be dead. And Tao is slowly drifting into unconsciousness.
*
Baekhyun takes a small puff from his cigarette, pointy boots against the control panel of the hearse, delicate features moving in and out of the shadows as the remnants of one of his energy blasts flicker weakly inside a crystal sphere. He makes sure they all last around an hour.
This one has.
It’s just that the wait doesn’t, usually.
-
AN:
- So. Yeah. Mado's fault. I can't write steampunk but I tried really hard because she made me. I hope it's... passable?
- Also. Oh dear, I have never felt so exposed writing fanfiction before. This is too close to my original-fiction-style.
- Aaaand there are a lot of things I wish I could have done better.
- Regardless. Thank you for reading! ;)
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