bloodbound. (earinor & akira)

"And yet you let me tag along and didn't just push me down the cliff to rid yourself to me, and why is that? Because deep down you're lonely and know how stubborn you are for pushing away people that don't mean any harm?" This was getting tiresome and he was sure that it was annoying the blonde more than himself to always be reminded of the same things. Yujin should just zip his mouth, pretend to be as dumb as he had acted like when he first had burst into this room and introduced himself, but no. He was trying his best to annoy the everloving fuck out of Richard and he, among other things, seemingly was asking to be hit across the face so bad that he'd bleed all over the floor. Actually, was his back bleeding, maybe red or anything like that? He hadn't checked, but he didn't feel any pain either so his general assumption had been that everything was fine like that, that there was no need to think twice about all those things that had happened to him, his body or his precious little head, now that he found himself listening to the ideologies of someone that felt like he was beyond broken and instead of collecting all those lost parts of himself, he took them to crush them up some more and make them exude nothing but his own pain. "Make me shut up then, I'd love to see you try - now that you don't want to hear anything anyway, how's that sound for a change?", he asked, smiling at the blonde. Was this going to fix anything? No.

But teasing Richard was fun, Yujin was aware of that and he liked to think of it as some sort of divine favor that any of the thrian gods had done him, now that he was starting to get bored and run out of the usual ideas. Surely, someone had to come up with something and one way or the other, they all had to push themselves further and further until their last lifeline was out of the game. "I'm sure we can work something out, then", he let his new friend know, all the while he was trying to not get his hand singed. Did wolves even feel anything, have any pain tolerance whatsoever or were they, as some of the sheeps described them, just good as fodder for experimentation because their pain receptors were off? What did he know? Yujin couldn't care less, this was a stupid bet and he'd win it, one way or the other. "Why would that be my kink? You got out of your clothes voluntarily, I'm just trying to break the ice that you keep building back up because I get under your skin." Grabbing the flames themselves wouldn't help, so he just left his hand where it was, even when it started to get uncomfortably hot - he wasn't going to burn his own hand off, but in the end, one of them had to lose so the other got what they wanted, no? "Hmmm", he mused, but what for, really?

He should have shut up like, three months ago, shouldn't he? Yujin had dug his own grave and now he was the one being chastised for doing something stupid, for running his mouth and telling Richard that he could do whatever he wanted, that he didn't mind being manhandled like this, except ... he had never said that out loud, just claimed that the blonde could vent his frustrations on him by pushing him down a cliff. His hand had gotten singed by now, the feeling was weird, but he still hadn't pulled it away, instead, he was the one that let Richard do as he wanted, found himself pushed to the wooden floorboards and hit his head pretty hard on those already. It wasn't going to get better from here on out, not after what had just been said to him and he also was wondering why Richard hadn't just built off all of this steam earlier, why he hadn't tried mauling a wolf as soon as he got here, but now this was much more personal, no? Maybe it helped, or it just was something that felt justified instead of attacking a random passerby and Yujin didn't even make an effort to dodge the blondes attack, even though it was kind of obvious were his fist was going - anger wasn't strength, it never would be and yet that hurt, a lot.

For a moment, he stayed still, waited for either the warm blood to come running down from somewhere or for Richard to calm down, but the first happened, well, before the other. His nose hurt, his entire face did and for some reason the blood didn't feel like the only thing that was making it hard to breathe, actually, how hard of a punch could Richard even pack? Who knew - Yujin didn't and he stayed where he was, only bringing his hand up to his nose and wipe away the red liquid, seemingly unbothered by all of the pain that the area exuded or the kind of obvious burnt spot on his hand. Wolves weren't as indestructible as anyone claimed them to be, this was enough proof of that, but instead, he looked up at Richard, no longer interested in seeing his exposed body or the fact that they were joking about that just earlier, or well, he was. "And?", he simply asked, wondering how mad his father would be if his nose was actually broken - but he could just hide that, at least until tomorrow, right? Then he'd just claim some nonsense, tell Muhan before he told Shuren and all of this should be fine, no one had to know and nobody needed to know that Richard was the one responsible. "Did that do anything for you?", he asked, as solemn as he could, ridding himself of the ridiculous accent once more, just to appear less joking as he had earlier. What did either of them gain from this? At least the view from down here was nice, no?

Yujin enjoyed himself not one bit, but they both had been equally as stupid and the whole question that he had for himself - and Richard - was, if they'd ever get along, now that they were doing all of this, as fast as they were. Surely, they'd come up with something, they'd have an idea or Yujin would, but instead, he just lay there and watched the blondes face contort into more and more anger and he wondered what it was, that ate him all the way up from inside. There was nothing to laugh about, there was no reason to fight back and yet, he was expected to by Richard, for some odd reason. Did he think that everyone was as angry as him, that it was fine to just go around and seek out all this trouble, just to feel something, anything? Whatever it was, the wolf couldn't put his hand on it, but he left it be, instead, he still looked up into those uncharacteristically brown eyes and wondered what it really was that plagued Richard, that he didn't get, but who cared? He couldn't, he couldn't relate to any of this and he couldn't really figure any of this out either, so that just meant he had to accept it at face value and try to not remind anyone of the past that haunted them unwillingly, wasn't it just that? For now, he was more concerned about the droplets of blood coming out of his nose than anything.

Richards sanity was the second thing that he wasn't sure about - just how much of himself had he lost between earlier and right now? What even was his tipping point and why the hell did he reach it this fast? Had no one ever talked with the blonde, tried to make his life something else other than a goddamn misery or did his father just not care? "And there you go again, putting words into my mouth", he sighed. None of this was worth his time and if he tried, he'd probably have the upper hand in no time, but he didn't want to be the one that punched the blonde until he bled, either. Instead, Yujin took the second punch as well, simply flinched when it hit the already hurt area and then, once he felt like Richard wasn't going to barrage his face right thereafter and he was sure that breathing through his nose was ridiculously difficult, more than it needed to actually, he sighed. "I'm not angry and I don't see why on earth I should punch you. If you want to take your frustration out on me, be my guest, but I'm the wrong person if you expect a fight", he explained and just remained where he was. So they both had hurt themselves with fire, he had been hurt with some fists and the fact that his back and the back of his head hurt as well were only testimonies of the fact that he wasn't unbreakable, not made of metal and not unfeeling. Still, he rubbed the blood from his face when he got a chance to, lest someone would fling the door open and barge in all of a sudden, but why would he even care. "And?"

Nayantai sighed as he saw his son standing there in the end - things had changed, hadn't they? While Richard would, theoretically, not attempt to do stupid stuff like this, he had now and there was no one else to blame but Richard and himself. Unfortunately, Nayantai couldn't claim that this had been Dayans doing, that the older of the two was to stop taking the younger along or planting stupid ideas into his head because, frankly, he wasn't there anymore and he'd never be there again. "Look", he suddenly spoke up. "I'm not angry, you don't have to keep averting your eyes", Nayantai explained to his own son and eventually figured that he should just leave him be, but for now, that wasn't an option, he didn't want to make things worse than they were to begin with. Silence befell either of them, though, and Nayantai was the one that wondered where he'd gone wrong and why he had. "I'm not going to question why you lashed out at him, I won't punish you for it, what's done is done and I can change anything about that. The least you could do is let me have a look at your hand, will you? I don't want you to get hurt from something stupid like beating something up, hm?" Being all glooming and shutting the rest of the world out of his head wasn't like him, it had never been, so it only followed that he might as well look out for his son.

Yujin could hear them, at least Shuren, yelling after him and god fucking damnit, he really, really didn't want to deal with either of those right now. Sure, Shuren would hit him over the head with his fan, then throw him into the snow like he was made of thin air and call him a disgrace, but all of that had happened often enough because people tended to just view the things from an outside standpoint and not the inside, especially with a meek and scholarly person like his father. The wolf sighed, sped up and hoped that once he'd arrived home, he'd have forgotten about all of that - and so he did, he ran, all the while his parents made no effort to actually do so, which might have been why he arrived home first, why he cast aside his wet clothes, dug out something to dry himself off with and then started grumbling as soon as he found his way into other robes, into things that fit better, into clothes that merely were made for catching a good nights sleep but why was he complaining? Yujin had no idea why he would complain about the fact that his home was made of solid ice, that all of the things that had been decorating it - or many of them - weren't and that it was cold as all hell in here, just because it felt like home. Instead, he stood there, almost frozen in his tracks as he was approached by his father, or rather both of them, just that the shorter figure was fast and had a fan in his hand that he hit him over the head with. God, his face must have been caked in blood, though, because the fan was another impact that he braced himself for but it simply never came. "You look horrible", Shuren grumbled and Yujin was grinning at him like an idiot. "At least I got my ugly genes from someone even uglier", he replied and then, the fan actually hit him. "Sometimes, you're terrible." "Just like you." "And there you go again, no manners at all!" But instead of silence overtaking the situation, Muhan peeked at them both from the doorway that he stood in and started chuckling, something that the old wolf rarely did, despite his good-mannered nature. "What's so funny, hah!?", Shuren spouted at his husband, but instead, he just approached them, towered over them both and shook his head. "This reminds me of that one time tha-" "Muhan, this is not the time." "Shh, I'm just saying, you haven't changed one bit and I remember when you hit Nayantai over the head with the same fan for giving me a scar on accident." More grumbling that Yujin didn't care for, instead, he audibly gagged at the two lovebirds that he called his parents and there it was again, the fan, this time hitting him in the upper arm. "What did you two even do!?", Shuren still sounded like he was majorly pissed off, but instead, Yujin just shrugged his shoulders. "No idea, I just annoyed him a bit a-" "Yujin, you-" "Look, I annoyed him, he threw me off a cliff on accident and when I thought I finally could talk to him without having him yell at me, he turned into a rabid dog." "Sometimes, you're just tonedeaf." Then, there was silence and Shuren just removed himself at some point, yelling something along the lines of "patch him up and get him out of my sight", which, given who he was father was, was a perfectly normal reply to being disappointed. "He isn't mad, is he?" "No, just disappointed ... and this will hurt." "Oh I know." Well, that probably was the last thing he did think about because he really, really just wanted to sleep.

Nayantai knew that none of this would help, yet he tried anyway - and he tired himself out while doing so. Richard wasn't the only one that was hurting, that felt like he hadn't done enough, but Nayantai was the one that decided he'd take all of it, decided that he'd let Richard yell at him as much as he wanted and do whatever he wanted if that made him feel better, if that made him change, even though none of that was in sight. Was he wrong to proclaim all of this to be a fair game, was he wrong to have come here with the only person he had left or was it all just in vain? To be fair, not even Nayantai wanted to be here, simply because none of that made any sense, simply because it all was stupid and because his body should have given out under him and the pressure he put onto it long ago - but as his father liked to remind him, none of their bodies were willing to give out under all that stress to begin with and none of this was worth the trouble that they were carving out for themselves. Silence was all they had left to share and thus, he didn't even question it. "Should I punish you then? You wouldn't even care, you'd just do whatever you want anyway", he sighed and let his only son have his way - wasn't that almost like his fate?

Dayan, both of them, were dead and he wondered if he should stop clinging to a name like that, why Rain had actually let him be sentimental in that regard, but who cared? This was stupid, he didn't want to think about it longer than he had to and yet, that was all he could do and it would be all he would do for now. Yelling at those that were still alive wouldn't bring the dead and being angry at those that had died wouldn't help him either, so he just accepted Richards words at face value, left the room and returned with a wooden box full of bandages, ointments and other things. "Yes, we do", he simply said before opening it up, taking a roll of fabric bandages out and grabbing an ointment, just in case. "You should wash the blood off first, then let me see your hand", Nayantai elaborated. When had any of this been so hard? Some odd months ago, Richard wouldn't have acted like this, wouldn't have just beat someone to the pulp and now all of this was different. Instead, Nayantai sighed. "Just apologize to him tomorrow, will you?", he grumbled at his son, not asking for details, only to shake his head. "You smell like salt and ice, so my best guess is you pumelled into the sea. I'm not going to ask why or how if you don't want to tell me, but take care."

If he felt like it, he could have done something, not just flee and Nayantai wanted to make all of this up to someone somehow, but he couldn't didn't feel like this was the right way to go about it and he probably was right. Surely, he'd come up with something, figure one or two things out and then he'd know what he wanted himself, but for now, he'd rather be a nameless thrian that no one had to give a damn about, that nobody had to look at or look for. In the end, for the sheeps, all wolves were the same. Sure, those who had mixed blood of their own - like his father, like Richard, like himself to some degree - didn't fit anyhwere, didn't belong with the rest of them and yet they stayed where they were, tried to fool one of the two countries into making them one of theirs, but in the end, they fit nowhere, no matter what they tried or how hard any of their attempts would be. Nayantai sighed, rubbed his temples and just let Richard do what he needed to do before they both could settle down at the table they were at, before any of this could make sense to both of them and he wondered what Rain would think about them if he'd see them like this. Sure, he'd maybe try to lighten their mood, but in the end, all of that was a forlorn dream.

Nayantai watched his son, looked at the hand once he extended it towards him and then, once words started pouring from his mouth, he wanted nothing more than his old life back, nothing more than forgetting about any and all pain that either of them felt, but he couldn't, not for his own sake and not for those of who had died. "So you crawled out through the window, both of you fell off of the next best cliff, you crawled out of the water without dying, climbed up somewhere, got back in here and then you decided to beat him up?", Nayantai asked, raising his eyebrow all the while he took the extended hand into his own and a familiar, disgusting stench hit his nose. "And you burnt your flesh. Is Yujin responsible for that as well?", he sighed, inspected Richards hand some more and then, only then, did he start actually bandaging it and hearing a familiar sneeze. While his son wasn't as feeble as his husband, he knew that Rain had passed part of his condition down to the blonde and while it already had been worse, he expected it too be much worse than it was. "Remember the last time I wasn't worried about you? Thought so", he sighed, spread ointment on the burn and then fixed up the bandage. "Look, I can't lock you up in here, but if you really want to ... no, nevermind. That's a topic for another day. Just apologize to him tomorrow, or at least his parents. If you can manage that, I'll tell you what I had on my mind."

The night had been rough, mainly because he couldn't decide whether or not he could breathe through his nose and whether or not he could actually make sense of his own behavior. Sure, he tried, did the best he could and yet he woke up a few times and figured that he didn't need to do anything but focus on the tasks at hand, which seemed to be rolling into bed and not doing more than watching the ceiling that seemed to be further away from him than he'd thought. Yujin was convinced that he was the one that lost his mind all of a sudden, was convinced that the world around him had stopped working and yet he was the one that couldn't get any air in, that felt like his head was spinning and even the ice that Muhan had brought him only helped partially against the swelling but melted before he could even really use it. Did he feel sorry, was he in pain or was all of this simply his luck? Who knew, who cared - he didn't, even though his sleep felt like agony and the only thing that he thought came close to it was that one time he had actually ripped a good portion of his stomach open and felt like his intestine was going to fall out, among other organs - but that hadn't happened and he was still very much alive, so what the fuck was he even supposed to do now?

Once he got up in the morning, it felt almost agonizing, his face felt numb and once he took a look at himself in one of the mirrors, he looked the part - his face, or at least the area around his nose - was purple and blue, all sorts of painful looking and a bit swollen, but he didn't care, instead he cared about not looking as pathetic as he did, about fixing all of this up and wearing the broken nose with as much pride as he could, but alas, if this was staying in place like Muhan had basically taped it to, he'd be more than lucky. Yujin spent, most likely, a ridiculous amount of time in front of his mirror, fixing what he'd undone yesterday and he spent even more time picking out clothes, braiding some of his hair and overall making the impression that whatever happened yesterday didn't bother him even once. Instead, he took it quite personally to join his older brother on his morning stroll and discuss some wildly different topics with him and avoid any servant that wanted to question something - in the end, he and his brother could just leave, stroll around town and then-- well, one of the guards opened the front entrance to let them out and there he stood. "Oh, Arikins, I didn't expect you here", he chuckled. Then, he shot his brother a glance. "I think you'll have to go on your walk all on your own, it seems I have a guest ... it was nice talking to you." His brother just nodded, greeted Richard with nothing more than a bow and brushed past him. "Care to join me?"

"Just for a quick walk around, if you're here to apologize you might as well tell that my parents - and trust me, you'll get lost in here or slip and break something before you know it." A castle made of ice wasn't the ideal living place, Yujin knew that himself, but what else was he supposed to do? Just deny his birthright, run off and claim he didn't want the riches he was offered, didn't care for the things he would be handed after his parents passing? Who knew, really, he wasn't going to impress anyone, he wasn't going to try and gain some favoritism, no - right now, he just wanted to be somewhere alone with Richard, some isolated room like his own and punch him in his stupid face, but alas, Yujins anger was misplaced and he sighed. "Well, at least you do have the gall to show up here after you beat me in the face and you seemingly came here out of your own volition, too", he mused, before he just grabbed ahold of the blondes wrist. He was going to drag him along, up the staircase, past curious onlookers and somewhere where they'd be alone, where blood would make a good contrast for the white and translucent colors that mainly made up this place. Sure, he could have tried not to be so harsh on either of them, but where was the fun? "Don't sweat it, I'll come pick it up in a few days, then. Thank you, though."

Silence was all that followed as they passed countless nameless faces, weird paintings that had been strung along the wall and things that just looked odd, like blossoming flowers in a vase and upon closer inspection, one would find that they weren't real, or the fact that some of the chandeliers, that had no purpose, were crafted out of ice, that the rooms had been padded with some layers of snow to obscure things from the outside if the ice wasn't blue enough and so on. Yujin lovingly referred to all of this as a hellhole from time to time, simply because once you'd stray from the colorful furs and carpets that all seemed to be in-line with the rest of the decor, you were bound to slip, fall headfirst and break open your skull. All of this was stupid, wasn't it? They stopped infront of a door that had been left ajar, only for him to drag Richard in, to pull him into his own room and then for him to close the door behind them, push Richard away from him once he let go and then punch him straight in the face, pull him to the floor and restrain his hands above his head, just to get a look onto his stupid and hopefully bleeding face - he didn't want Richard to crack open his skull, not like he'd almost done yesterday, so there was no need to punch him til he fell down onto the floor, but still, this sight was rather welcome. "Payback", he said simply and he wondered - should he just spit in the blondes face?

Sure, he could have been more gracious about all of this, but Yujin of Silesse had never been - he had always been messy, like his reputation and now that he had somewhat gained a cleaner slate of recognition, he no longer cared about why or what when he could do so many different things in secret. The world didn't revolve around him or anyone, really, so it was almost as if he had to make it the way he wanted it and that alone sounded like the most ridiculous thing he'd ever come up with. Silence was all he wanted, instead, he heard the same fucking words from Richards lips that he had said to him yesterday - and soon felt spit cling to his face. "Eugh, disgusting", he promptly grumbled, wiping it off of his face with one of his sleeves, gargling and then returning the favor to the blonde. What was this? Some sort of sick game that neither of them was afraid to play or was it just their imagination that neither of them really wanted to think about? Whatever, who cared. Yujin, instead, grinned at Richard and the spit that he now found his own face caked in, well, that served him - and he wasn't one to shy back down, either. Instead, he brought his free hand to the blonde hair, propped himself on his knees over Richard and tugged on it.

"Look, if you don't feel like letting yourself be helped the formal way and you want me to fight back and ruin you, you could have just said that. But you didn't. Just expect to get back everything you're doing to me, ya heard?", Yujin made his standpoint earily clear, wanted to lang another punch, pull on those blonde locks some fore or spit in Richards face again, but he didn't. Instead, he wanted to let go, wanted to get off of him before anyone barged in here and thought about this little scenario a little bit too hard and put one and one together, despite there being nothing else to do with. "To be frank, it did nothing for me, but I'm sure you like spitting on and looking down upon people, I'd be surprised if you didn't, ice prince", he hissed, like some snake that found itself in grave danger, but he was none of that and if anything, just a two-faced bitch that knew better than this but didn't want to, just for the sake of having the upper hand. Now, he kneeled there, above the blonde and suddenly, he started chuckling. "You know, you look pretty good when you're humiliated like that, shame that I still have manners and I'm not a brainless bastard, though", he mused, still not making any efforts to get off of Richard in the slightest. "You still wanna apologize to my parents or would you rather just stay here and bask in this feeling?"