abandoned warehouse ✩

@kim youngkyun ᵖʰᵒᵉⁿᶦˣ The coals of his eyes burned, blinking and peering around the floor they landed in. Lucas took the brunt of the fall, coughing, the air being snuffed from his lungs. He still had a good grip on Hwiyoung, watching his eyes lower and the golden blaze of them cool to his usual deep brown. Deep in the inferno now the roaring and crackling of the decrepit wood was too loud to hear over, but watching Hwiyoung's lips, Lucas made out the word 'tired' before the collapse. All at once the wings that had once blanketed them were disintegrating, the phoenix shrinking within his palms until he was able to fit within them a small bird. Already he felt his anxiety rinsing away knowing that Hwiyoung was safe once again, though it was only because he didn't have the energy not to be. Lucas tucked the fledgling within his vest and looked for an exit. Pieces of the ceiling were raining upon them, hot shard of what used to be the room, dusting his shoulders of the ash it created. Getting to the stairs was the easy part, but getting down the stairs was a challenge. Lucas had to climb over beams of fire, the range of Hwiyoung, having no bounds after being uncaged. He chewed his lip. There had to be a better way to help him through his powers. But first, they had to get out of the building unsee and the sirens sounded close now-- they had to be right outside. "Don't worry babybird," He pat his vest soothingly, zipping it up and tucking the bottom into his belt to cradle the phoenix securely. Using both of his hands, Lucas pulled the fire from the walls, and ceiling and swirled it in his hands, stepping backwards to exit through a window off the back, and pushing the fire through the front windows in an explosion to mask their escape.

Tumbling out the window, Lucas rolled into a ball falling through the overgrown tangle of weeds and wildflowers outside the building and into the woods. After briefly checking on Hwiyoung in his vest, he took off running, circling around until he avoided all the light from the storm of fire and was back to the sticky wet grime of the under city's streets. He paused to slow his breath, and not seem suspicious, tucking his chin into the collar of his shirt and pocketing his hands into his vest pockets seemingly inconspicuous. His plan was to not stop until they got back to their apartment.

@wong lucas ᴶöᵗᵘⁿⁿ Lucas gripped onto him tightly, far too tightly to be comfortable but Hwiyoung felt it like an afterthought; lost as he was in his mesmerizing gaze. The jotunn spoke to him, his lips curling around the words as his hands finally fell away from him, and the phoenix watched disinterested as flames danced between his fingers before he was allowing his gaze to shift upwards again to the mans face. His hands following the upward motion back to where they were resting against Lucas’ face, the man didn’t burn. Why wasn’t he burning?

No sooner than the thought ran through his head, they were falling. It was as if the ground had disappeared from underneath their feet, the finally giving way to the insistent heat that claimed it. Flapping his wings reflexively in attempt to break the fall, but he was too slow, too heavy and space around them too crowded. The fall was enough to startle him back to his senses, but the actual landing left him stunned. It was like waking up from a too long sleep while he was sick, his whole body aching in that bone deep way that spoke of illness and his eyes dry and heavy. He felt exhausted in that way he got only when he over exerted himself, and he was cold despite the inferno raging around them; his fire a little flicker where it had just been an impenetrable force. His gaze bleary as he tried to right himself from where he had landed halfway on top of the Jotunn, shoulders slumping whether from weariness or relief to see Yukhei, he doesn’t know, but he mutters out a soft, “I’m tired,” before he was collapsing again. Curling in on himself and shrinking. His form becoming smaller and smaller until he was just a ball of freshly fledged feathers.

@kim youngkyun ᵖʰᵒᵉⁿᶦˣ The roof crunched, ashes flaking up and drifting away into the flames around them. The building was already a bonfire and the roof had been the first victim. The roof now as brittle and unforgiving as the flames were wild and carefree. Those same flames, curled and cuddled around his calves, nuzzling like kittens. He braced himself for the next steps. He took them carefully, pausing to test the ground before shifting his weight there, but when the phoenix approached him, there was no regard in the world for the integrity of the roof. Hwiyoung stepped strong in an airy trance, confident in each step, the fires swirling around him like an ocean current. Lucas grasped onto Hwiyoung--tightly-- for fear they were going to fall through their floor. Hwiyoung's touch was warm and gentle as it usually was but it was too hot for Lucas to maintain his assumed form and it kept peeling back layers, down to his true form and reforming shortly trailing where he was once touched. Meeting the bright golden eyes of the phoenix and shaking his head. In his eyes he saw that Hwiyoung was there, but was away, at a distance, caged by his own flames, just as they were caged now beneath his wings. Lucas clasped his hands at either side of the firebird's head.

"I need you to come back to me..." His eyes darted between the blazing yellow irises of the others. The phoenix had outbursts like this before and usually Lucas would find a way to traverse the labyrinth of his mind and quell the fire. This time though, Hwiyoung seemed far away and getting to him was proving to be a challenge. "Just focus Hwi," Lucas pulled some of the fire into his hands between them, cupping it into a ball and pulling it apart with his fingertips until it was a thin thread of fire, then crumpling it up again into a ball. His first technique was distraction. Hopefully by focusing on the small manipulation of fire would be enough to convince the phoenix's fire to do the same. "Okay, you try it..." He urged him to continue the shapes, believing that he was making progress as long as Hwiyoung didn't run from himself. He grabbed the other's hand in his, bring it down to hold the ball of flame, eyes glancing up to check his, "C'mon.. focus."

@wong lucas ᴶöᵗᵘⁿⁿ The building burned and burned. Creaking and groaning under the heat of the fire that encompassed it. It was warm, enough that sweat started to bead at his temples and drop down in tiny rivets that seemed to evaporate before they even had a chance to drip down from his chin. His amusement had long since died out the more the fire spread. Soon this building would be ashes and Hwiyoung would still be hot. Then… maybe he would be ashes too. Burning, until there was nothing left, and he blew away with the wind. The thought had another of fire fanning out as he took careful steps along the slowly crumbling roof, his wings flapping uselessly behind him, as if their only purpose was to add more fuel to the fire that seemed to moan and cry out as it took what it could from the building. Taking was what fire was good at. Taking in a passionate blaze until…

There was a familiar sound, one that drew his gaze almost reflexively. His movements halting before he was moving again; this time away from the path that he had worn down with his scorching steps towards that familiar voice as if he were a moth drawn in by a flame. Towards the dark red eyes that seemed to beckon him, his fire all seeming to reach for the man as soon as he registers him; billowing in massive reaching waves that seemed to kiss at the man, caress him with their heat but never latch on to him. The swirling blacks and reds of the mans gaze; dark and light, igniting and reigniting like lava— cooling around the edges before the molten core breathes life into the embers once more. Such a hypnotizing stare that the phoenix is reaching out, his touch scalding where his fingers splay over sharp cheekbones, thumb touching just shy of the corner of the Jotunns eye. His wings opening wide and then closing around this man, keeping him close in a wall of fiery feathers.

“Can’t you feel it?” He hears himself say distantly, almost marveling at the way the males skin burns, burns but doesn’t blacken and turn to ash. It blisters and and darkens a color that Hwiyoungs fire wasn’t able to create. “I’m burning.” They were burning. He would burn them all. The fire within him raging and coiling, unstoppable and unrelenting in its fury. The iron clad control that he’d gripped himself with suddenly lax, and in its absence rose a heat so far removed from the usual sparks that accompanied the Phoenix that he had no idea how to go about reining it back in.

@kim youngkyun ᵖʰᵒᵉⁿᶦˣ It was a tiring day.

City planning was feuding from within about the subway systems. It was the usual matters of the cheapest way or the lasting way and as usual those were not the same way to do things. Lucas personally wanted the lasting way so that he wouldn't have to return to back to his project to see it in complete disarray from shotty cheaper materials and have to work to bandage all the things that could have been built properly the first time, like he's usually done on almost every other job for the city. After surveying the space, and many long explanations of the materials, Lucas could finally go home and relax and maybe take a long shower. Upon opening the door, he was hit with a fine dust, floating in the air meaning the fire wards had been triggered.

Before even moving into the shop, Lucas had to determine a way to fireproof the home. In all the years he's lived with the phoenix, fire was a common and reoccurring thing. He'd needed a way to make sure the fire was contained as much as possible if he wasn't around to snuff it out, so there were wards for defense to douse out fires along with flame retardant fabrics and other flame woven fabrics his mother had made for them. The wards being triggered, concerned him, but it wouldn't panic him until he checked the apartment and found no sign of Hwiyoung anywhere. The first thing Lucas did was call his phone and it rang back, unsurprisingly by the bed... but the window was open. Dark, scorch marks in the shape of footprints led out the window and then disappeared. "Aw --"

Racing down the steps of the apartment, the giant hit the street running, barely aware of the traffic and other societal norms, blind to them as he searched for Hwiyoung. Lucas never grew out of the idea, that Hwiyoung was his responsibility, meeting him firstly as a pet and now knowing him as a companion. Barreling through the city, his feet seemingly knowing where to go before his mind did. 'I should have listened,' He thought, rubbing his shoulder where a mark had appeared shortly after meeting Hwiyoung for the first time, 'I should have checked on him.' And as his pace slowed he heard the deep thrumming of the phoenix's firesong, loudly as he chanced upon an inferno.

The whole block was aglow, flames dancing in reflections on the nearby windows. Eyes widened in shock, as the giant took in the scene. The building was engulfed from the roof down in flames, embers catching on the wind, small explosions could be heard within the building but when he looked up he saw Hwiyoung, balancing on the edge of the roof. He felt uneasy, the mix between his shoulder burning and the deafening bass in the firesong, Lucas felt the distress within. Quickly, he glanced around, a small bundle of people began to accumulate and he heard sirens distant in the background, he had to get the phoenix down from there.

Making a mad dash, into the he squinted through the flames, eyes preferring to be in their natural state of swirling coals to see through the blazed, finding some stairway, capsized onto itself by the ceiling of the floor above. He shielded his eyes, peering through slender fingers and taking the steps three at a time to get to the roof. Relief shortly followed by dismay at the entrance to the roof being blocked by a smoldering ceiling beam. Moving his hair out his face, Lucas shouldered through the door and fell out on the roof calling out for the other. "Hwi!" The building crumbling behind him, being structurally unsound enough without the addition of flames. "Hwi... what's wrong?" Lucas stood up dusting his hands off to approach, careful of where to step to now fall through the roof.

@wong lucas ᴶöᵗᵘⁿⁿ It was hot.

That always carefully controlled fire that burned underneath his skin, it was hot. Pushing back against the tight shackles of his restraint until they were stretched taut. His solidly constructed walls burning away from the inside until all that remains were charred remnants.

He should have known by the way Lucas was hovering, his gaze worried and his hands always close. Since their journey to the waterfall, his fire had been agitated. It’s undercurrents irritable and staticky rather than the simmering crackle that it usually was. He was quicker to anger, and longer to calm. His skin hotter to the touch and his gaze lightening from its usual deep rich brown to a honeyed gold that seemed to spark and bristle with his moods.

It was hot.
Maddeningly so.

He’d awoken in his bed, and he could tell that something had been wrong. He moved before he could register it, his body his own and not at the same time. As though he were watching himself from the outside, pushed aside by the overflowing anger that seemed to light him up from the inside out. He didn’t look like himself. He didn’t move like himself.

It was hot.

He moved languidly, a small flame flickering to life with each step he took towards the window. If he had the presence of mind, he would feel sorry to Lucas— that he was damaging their shared home with such little disregard. Pushing open the window and stepping onto the sill, the calm and cool night air greeting him, fanning the flames that had moved so close to the surface. He stepped out. His eyes were dazed as the ground grew closer, but they never met. His wings stretching out against the night sky like a bright and fiery beacon of fury— bright and heavy. Vibrant reds and golden yellows that enveloped his freshly fledged feathers, kissing the night sky and lighting it up with life.

His wings carried him across the sky with a choppy sort of unease, as though he would fall from his journey to the sun on wax wings; the wind that swept through his messy strands warm, through his burning feathers and keeping his flames alive, keeping him afloat with the force of their fire. There was no particular place in mind, but he flew. Over trees, over buildings, over people, until he was landing on top of a building. Metal cold underneath his bare feet as he walked along the edge of the building.

It was hot. It was hot, hot— hothothot-

…Why was he the only one burning?

The fire came to life as quickly as he blinked. One second it was dark where he stood, shadows dancing together and hiding most of the rooftop of the abandoned building from his sight. The next moment there was lines of fire, branching out from his feet like veins. Slowly bringing the building to life with its warmth and golden rays that banished the darkness that once found home there. He would burn it. Burn it all away.

His lips curled into a smile, something distant and amused. Something sharp at the edges even as that vacant look in his eyes kept him trapped within its heat.