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San is cold.
The sun is shining light and shadow through the lattice of leaves over his head, dances them across his exposed skin. His bare feet slide through the leaves, the soil wet and squelchy with every step he takes, the twigs not strong enough to graze the sole of his feet snap under the weight of his heavy limbs.
He feels cold; the sky is still, overgrown grass and weed slide against his bare legs, the moisture clinging to the air licking at his skin and he’s cold. He’s so cold.
San doesn’t think he had ever been this cold.
He knew, had heard and had been taught that the forest was cold, always cold, that the warmth he had felt all his life was the warmth of home, the way the birds chirped and the soil welcomed him, how the berry bushes served delicacies and the leaves wrapped him in a blanket of green, it was all home.
San had a sense he didn’t grasp it all by then. The forest was forest, and the forest was home, so surely the birds would sing to him and the branches would lend him their sweet shadows no matter what, right?
No, as it turns out.
The home was the clan, and the forest without the clan is nothing but an abandoned house, dull and lifeless, merely an outline of what it used to be.
San was sad, indeed, when they turned around and ascended as the pretty wings on their backs fluttered, carried them up and up and his feet were lodged deep into the wet, loose soil that felt like a ton of bricks around his feet. His heart broke into a million pieces as he watched the blue wings disappear into the blue of the sky, away from his teary eyes one by one as he was left alone, abandoned like the forest was.
He didn’t think it would be a death sentence, though. No one told him the clan was the home and the warmth was because the clan existed so now, he’s there, with nothing but the pretty but incredibly nonfunctional clothes covering only a fraction of his body, limbs frail and wandering through what used to be home, teeth clashing against each other in between his silent pleas for some warmth, a little bit of warmth.
It feels so out of reach. With the fog clinging to his skin, with the moss licking at his forearms, shoulders whenever he crashes into a tree, San feels like he would never find warmth again.
Goosebumps litter his skin until his muscles start aching, the green and the brown in front of his eyes start fading into a void of pitch black and he’s scared. For a moment he considers yelling out, for anyone, anything so that he can borrow a tiny bit of heat enough to survive for a little more but the air he sucks into his lungs is piercing, his voice nowhere to be heard no matter how much he tries.
He’s scared.
“Hey!” He hears just as his legs give up and his body collapses beside a tree, its trunk wide enough to hold him up, the moss covering the bark almost like a bed full of sheets against his back. It feels comforting. Maybe the soil would accept him, when even his own family did not.
“…ey, you …kay?”
He barely hears footsteps approaching, the twigs snapping easily under the feet of whoever is the owner of the voice, a grunt of pain at what sounded like catching a root. San doesn’t know if it matters, honestly, even if he was able to open his eyes, even if he tried to hold onto the last bit of freezing cold air that’s left in his lungs.
҉҉҉
“Shh, shush!” Someone says. “He’s waking up.”
San does indeed open his eyes.
Three sets of curious eyes are what welcome him, two of them blinking back and forth and the third one stares deep into his soul, silent, before he turns around and away. San realizes there is a fourth behind, but he’s kind enough not to loom over him.
“Hi,” one of the two says, curious eyes beaming up as he does so. The other one turns around and yells over the loud rattling of the pots and pans, “Yah, he’s up!”
After the initial grimace, San blinks away some of his drowsiness. His eyes follow where the man is glaring at, the unintelligible chatter making it hard to focus as it swirls around the room, around them.
He first thinks what he’s seeing is a simple illusion. Nothing more than a trick his tired eyes play on him, merely a pull and thug at the light and a stretch in the rightest ways to create one pair of wings, just across the room, on the back of a man, tall, wearing a lot more than what San is used seeing on a fairy. His confusion doubles.
The wings flutter as the man silently giggles at what San realized is an even taller man across him says. San can’t pry his eyes off the ragged edges of the translucent wings, feels bad for calling them a pair when the left one barely has the bottom quartet and the right one looks like it was bent in the middle then someone had tried their best to straighten it poorly. His confusion triples.
“Yunho-yah!” The first one tries once more and this time Yunho listens.
“What’s up?”
The boy gets up, sets to where the two stand, an excited skip to his steps.
“Come here, the fairy is up.”
San wants to clear his throat at the sudden address of his existence but finds himself too tired to even try. Instead, he further melts into the sheets he has been provided, closes his eyes for a second to utilize the one second all attention is not on him. The footsteps are hurried but heavy, calculated and not until they stop beside him that he opens his eyes and is once more met with three pairs of curious eyes.
“Hey, how are you feeling?” Yunho asks and somehow there is genuine worry in his voice, the kind San doesn’t expect from a stranger, not when even his family did not bother giving it a second thought before they disappeared high up in the skies. San suddenly feels like shit.
The two from before are still there, intrigued by the mere occurrence of San being able to move his eyelids and the feeling nudging him to crawl into a hole and hide is too strong for a moment.
“‘m alright,” he manages, but his own voice feels foreign, shaky. Yunho blinks once, his worry doubling like hearing San talk somehow made everything feel even harder.
He raises his hand, waves it in the air at the two others. “Shoo, go,” he smacks the first one in the back, an act playful but the sound it elicits is loud enough to raise a grunt.
“What,” he whines, frowning.
“Go, scatter,” Yunho pushes him away, then the other, does not stop until they are far away enough. “He’s tired, stop crowding him.”
“Jeez, okay.”
“Hyung, but, did you-”
“Stop, leave, we’ll talk later,” Yunho tries one last time, his long arms creating even longer distances between San and the two, but they still don’t leave before koala-wrapping their limbs all around Yunho one last time.
Warm, it feels. Only a couple of steps away, the warmth that he would be able to touch if he reached just a little bit.
Like it’s even possible, he feels even worse.
It’s not until the two of them are no longer in the room and Yunho finally comes and sits beside him that San actually realizes he doesn’t feel as cold as he thought.
“Sorry, they’re kind of,” Yunho pauses, one hand at his nape as he searches for the word, “excitable.”
Not feeling ready to voice anything else out yet, San hums. There’s fabric shuffling over his head before they seemingly settle down again.
The silence is not so much silence, with the muffled giggles and rattling of the pots and pans, but it feels soothing. In a way that makes it feel like cold is eons away, when it’s probably not further than the wall beside him. He takes in a breath, lets himself make use of the warmth that’s not quite his to feel yet.
“Are you hurt anywhere?” Yunho asks, gently breaking the silence, “I didn’t realize anything big when I picked you up, but you could’ve broken a bone.”
San blinks, flashes of green and mud blur his vision for a second. “I don’t-” He stops, hesitant. “I think I’m fine.”
He too shares the hesitancy before he’s smiling enough to hide it. “Good, because you looked really battered and bruised,” he says, hastily adds, “I was sure you got attacked or something, honestly.”
San blinks, breathes out, “I was just walking.”
The only wing tall against Yunho’s back flutters over his shoulder, an unconscious act.
“Walking?” He echoes, “Where were you headed to?”
San blinks, the purple of the wing iridescent against his eyes and he blinks again because that’s all he can do. He’s tired and the warmth he’s given is not his to take and this man should’ve left him on the ground, covered in mud and moss because that’s all his people did anyways. He should’ve been left there, at the foot of an ancient tree. He should’ve become one with the soil like all fairies are one day supposed to become but here he is, laying on a bundle of sheets, too paralyzed with exhaustion to even move a limb so he blinks.
“I don’t know,” is all he says, when he wants to say even the soil rejected me so I stand before you, pathetic, dejected. “I was just cold.”
“Oh, I hate cold.” Yunho visibly shivers, as if to emphasize his point. “Good thing you ran into me then, this place is warm enough.” He stops, hastily adds upon consideration. “It’s warm enough, right? If you’re still cold I can tell Hongjoong-hyung to fetch some more blankets. Or we can put more wood in the fireplace, I’m sure we collected some extra-”
“It’s- It’s warm enough.” San cuts his rambling off, fearing it might go on forever. Yunho gulps, somehow more taken aback than San can assign any meaning to. He briefly wonders if he’s being rude for turning it down, but can’t dwell much on it when another voice booms through the walls and dissolves the tension in the air.
“Food is ready!”
The silent two behind him that San had long forgotten shoot up and leave the room before San can spare them any proper glance and he feels kind of grateful to have them gone. Yunho blinks back at him even as they leave, but San knows it’s not because he’s tired. Surely if he was tired, his smile wouldn’t be as big when he smiles at a stranger.
“I’ll bring you some food,” he says calmly, taking San’s silence as confirmation as he gets up. San watches him turn around and walk away; one tall wing, golden light reflecting off the violet hue as it twitches and flutters, and San feels remorse upon realizing the remnants of his right wing are not really mobile.
Upon the remorse and beneath the dejection, he searches, for the wings, and he can’t really find anything but admiration.
“You’re a fairy,” he finds himself slipping, nothing more than an observation reflecting on a whisper, but Yunho hears it just fine.
A chuckle leaves his lips, his head slightly cocking to the right. “So are you,” he says, like it’s obvious, before leaving the room.
All San does before he walks back into the room with two full bowls of food is stare at the wooden ceiling and doubt it.
“You can stay here,” Yunho says nonchalantly around the bite of food he has in his mouth, when already halfway through his bowl.
San gazes down at his own, pushes the food around with the wooden spoon he was provided but has barely used.
“I don’t…” He trails off, sighs. “Would it be appropriate?”
“Of course!” Yunho exclaims, muffled, then slightly chokes and recovers before San actually starts getting worried.
“Hyung insisted you stay, too, you know. You can stay for however much you want.”
San isn’t sure if he wants to stay, to be exact, he’s not sure if he even should be. He’s also painfully aware that he has nowhere else to go.
“Just for two days,” he mumbles just as he’s stuffing a spoonful of food in his mouth, more to himself, hopes Yunho doesn’t hear.
Two days turn into two weeks, two weeks turn into two months and at some point San forgets to count how many times the sun tails the moon, how many times the hearth is filled to the brim with gentle flames, lending too much warmth for him to ever be able to pay pack.
In about two hours after he is able to leave the bed, he learns the first one is what they call a ghoul, feels all the jitters when he is told what a ghoul is, and that his partner is also one. He doesn’t feel like asking for more than what their names are, Wooyoung and Jongho, respectively, and leaves it at that for the time being.
Two days pass when he feels safe enough to roam in the house without feeling like someone is going to jump on him and has a piece of paper shoved into his face the moment he steps out of the bathroom, the action itself taking him off-guard more than the two silently waiting for him right outside. They don’t stay for longer than San reaching and grabbing the paper, and their backs are already turned when San raises his head with a dozen questions in his head, the black-haired man dragging the blonde one by the hand as their heads disappear behind the railing, descending downstairs. Their footsteps manage to be just as silent.
It's not long until San realizes he doesn’t understand what’s written on the paper, the shapes and lines eerily resembling what he had seen when he wandered around and accidentally -read: not- stumbled too outside the forest and into the human world, never had enough time or need to learn the ins and outs.
He’s slightly regretful as he timidly searches around the house to find Yunho and asks him what the shapes mean in hopes that he would have any idea, finds him as he’s placing the freshly cut wood into the fireplace downstairs.
“Please,” he barely whispers, cheeks red with frustration, eyes wary of anyone else, especially the two. “I don’t- I don’t know this… language…”
Yunho takes one look at the paper, chuckles to himself from where he’s crouching on the floor.
“What?” San frowns.
Yunho looks up at him, a smile displaying his teeth, almost cheeky. “It says;
‘Beware!!! This is an introduction.
We’re glad you finally feel okay enough to get up, but Seonghwa also feels like it was rude that you didn’t talk to us at all when we brought you all your meals these past two days. Please talk to Seonghwa more, I won’t forgive you if you make him sad.
-Yeosang.
PS: He’s busy earlier in the day with his bath, so I hope you’re not a morning person like that.’”
San blinks.
He blinks and two weeks just pass by, and he somehow finds himself tailing Yunho wherever he goes, when he’s placing the wood in the fireplace for about four times a day, when he’s out gardening, when the sun is out and when the moon shines down on them as they sit close at the porch, a cup of chocolate warm in both of their hands. San is not so cold anymore, he realizes, as Yunho presses his shoulder against him and giggles at the latest joke Wooyoung had come up with, his sips obnoxiously loud and followed by an equally obnoxious sigh, San realizes.
“Are you not cold?” He finds himself blurting out, belatedly grasping the extent of what he had just asked, attempting to immediately take it back but Yunho laughs it off, raises his cup in his hands, takes another sip. This time not quite loud.
There is silence hanging in the air. The forest is lively as both of them say nothing for a moment, even during the night.
“I was cold once,” Yunho says at the end, his eyes distant as they stare into the darkness blanketing the trunks, nothing but black lines in the distance. “Not anymore, though,” he adds with a shrug, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, fleeting and tainted with worry when he meets San’s eyes. “Why? Are you cold?”
“No.” San denies, stern. He can see the way Yunho’s wing faintly flutter under the two layers of clothes on his back.
He counts about two months when he’s descending down the stairs and hears Hongjoong calling for him, the sound of the large pot bubbling over the fire reaching him even before he steps into the kitchen.
“I wanted to apologize,” Hongjoong says, and it comes out naturally as he is tossing the vegetables he chopped up into the pot, tosses them around before he attempts eye contact. San somehow knows he means it.
“A- Apologize?” He clasps one hand in the other when he doesn’t know what to do with them, blinks as he waits. The birds are chirping outside, his ears catch on. It kind of feels like the summer is finally knocking on the door of his nonexistent home.
Hongjoong’s gentle smile breaks into a hearty giggle, he waves a hand in the air. It’s small and dainty.
“Don’t look so nervous,” he says, binds his arms on his chest, cocks his hip against the counter, “I’m the one that didn’t give you a room of your own yet.”
“Ah, no need,” San refuses, “I’ll be leaving soon, anyway, please do not fret.”
There is a moment of concealed uncertainty in Hongjoong’s eyes before his gentle smile is back. “Really? The boys love you, though. Wooyoung barely left your side to collect wood with Yunho before you woke up. I’ve never seen him so dejected.”
“He’s…” San trails off, finds himself looking for a word for too long but feels nothing but fond about it. “…lovely.”
“Ah, he’s a sweetheart,” Hongjoong almost corrects, nostalgia clouding his eyes, his smile. “When they first walked through that door, Jongho and Wooyoung, that is, to be frank, I never thought they would have a glint of light to their eyes. Ever.” He nods, his eyes now chasing the memory on the wooden floor. “Broken and bruised, how dare they not be who they are, all that nonsense, whatever.” His eyebrows are now furrowed, voice almost angry. “They have wronged those boys, those sweet boys. Terrifying what your closest can do to you.”
Terrifying, indeed, San thinks to himself, does not voice it out. The memory of the blue wings disappearing in the blue sky is enough to make his chest ache.
“But enough with the moping, you’re here to hear my apology.”
“Ah, but really-”
“I won’t hear it.” Hongjoong cuts him off, sharp but soft at the edges. “You’re here now, so you deserve a room of your own. You know how much Seonghwa complained when they arrived and the house did not fit the seven of us without serious wall adjustments and I needed about two weeks to prepare the sufficient spells to push the walls back?” He stops, eyebrows raised. San doesn’t have an answer, but Hongjoong continues anyways. “He complains a hell of a lot for someone that doesn’t talk.”
A giggle breaks past San’s lips but he’s quick to shut it off. He’s not there to disrespect whoever opened his whole house to him.
“Anyways,” Hongjoong shrugs before he turns, takes the knife in his hand, and keeps cutting away. “I’ll prepare the spell much quicker this time around, so you don’t have to worry that you will wait another two weeks.”
Another rebuttal threatens to slip, but San wills himself down.
“What- What kind of- spell?” He asks instead, timid. He’s not sure how many types of spells there are in the vast world, but he’s sure it’s not one.
“Ah, just some simple blabber from my old witch days, nothing much,” Hongjoong says, leaves the knife on the cutting board, steps closer to the stove, stirs the bubbling pot. “You better not worry your pretty head over it.”
San tries not to.
҉҉҉
“Here.”
Pulled back from the depths of his mind, San twitches, looks up to see Yunho reaching for him, a cloth wrapped around a sandwich in his hand. He feels even smaller when he reaches back and grabs what he is given, their fingers brushing against each other in the process.
“So?” Yunho asks, unwrapping his own sandwich to take a mouthful of it. San doesn’t have any idea what he is supposed to be answering between the harmony of the forest until he swallows the first bite and clears his throat. “How have you been doing?”
San unwraps his own sandwich, careful as he unfolds each layer of light yellow cloth, mouth watering at the sight of fresh bread.
“Okay,” he answers and takes a small bite of his own not to continue his answer. It feels crisp in his mouth, crusty and still somehow hot, tender.
Yunho hums before he’s taking another bite, delighted as he bites into another piece of sandwich that’s more plain bread than anything in his mouth, reclines in his makeshift seat and lets the wind blow through the blonde strands of hair and San suddenly feels remorseful his wings are tucked in under his jacket. The sun has risen some time ago, right before they left the hut and descended the hill that was apparently the way to the hut from the forest, two sandwiches wrapped in pieces of cloth for breakfast when their stomachs stop aching with the morning, a slow leisure walk in the forest as Yunho had convinced him into until the sun rises on top of their heads and the forest too hot to walk around without hats. San bit his tongue and did not ask why don’t we get hats then?
“Hyung told me you refused the offer for a room, no matter how hard he tried to convince you,” Yunho says when he swallows half of the huge bite and there is definitely a question mark clinging at the end of his sentence.
“I- I just-” he starts, some kind of panic stuck in his throat that he can’t pinpoint as to why. “There is no need. I will leave soon, probably.”
Yunho blinks, mouth still full. “Where to?”
“Some-” He stops, eyes unfocused on the bark of some tree in the distance, covered in moss that makes San’s arms rise with goosebumps. “Someplace people like me go to, I presume.”
There is another moment of stuttered gulping before Yunho softly chuckles. “What do you think this place is for?”
The wind blows in San’s face and he expects it to somehow knock him down the old truck they have been perched upon, but it’s gentle. The forest is a lot gentler than he thought it would be if he were to return to it.
“What do you mean?” He asks, takes another small bite not to seem too eager. He wishes he was not.
Yunho shrugs, cheeks full before he swallows and there is an oddly fond smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
“Jongho and Wooyoung,” he starts, takes another bite and San realizes he’s almost out. “They found the hut after their whole kind refused them just because Jongho didn’t want to keep eating humans or drink their blood, or whatever ghouls do, and Wooyoung was too loyal to let him be exiled on his own. They were near starving before hyung helped them regain some strength to eat something.”
San hums, sandwich long forgotten in his hand, just to show he’s listening.
“Yeosang and Seonghwa?” Yunho asks like San would actually have any idea. “You know, based on totally wrong assumptions and traditions that I am not agreeing with, apparently mankind wasn’t supposed to have relationships with mermaids. They found out about it the hard way. Maybe hyung would tell you one day if you ask. Yeosang wouldn’t though. But in the end, they found the hut and ever since they’re with us.”
“M- Mermaid-?”
Yunho blinks as he had just realized. “Ah, you didn’t know? Seonghwa-hyung is a mermaid. That’s why he needs his “baths” and they don’t really talk because, according to Hongjoong-hyung, they have other ways of communication so they don’t bother unless it is absolutely necessary.”
San’s lips form a small “o” when suddenly everything makes a lot of sense. He suddenly feels oddly good about the number of letters he got from Yeosang over the course of his stay, since they’re a direct indication that Yeosang bothers to talk with him.
“You’ve seen Mingi around?” Yunho asks, San barely pulls himself from the info he’s already been given and nods his head a distracted no.
“He’s very pretty, right, and shy, with you around I doubt you would’ve seen him, but he’s an elf, and I don’t know if you’ve actually seen one, since the paths of fairies and elves don’t really cross, but they’re normally actually really small. Like, really small. Mingi, on the other hand, is pretty much taller than me, so I think you can guess how that played out for him.”
San’s mind offers him a replay of the only a couple of times he had seen Mingi around, when he’s basically running to go get a cup of water and a plate of food and when he’s peering behind the wall when and conversation is happening and he’s too shy to join, confirms that he is indeed very tall.
“My point is,” Yunho emphasizes, raising his brows at San, the smile tugging at his lips still just as fond, “Every single one in that hut is someone like you, whatever that means.”
San breathes out, not quite a chuckle but the smile is there when he says, “You know what I mean.” Somehow Yunho has this effect on him. Soothing. Like the dead weight on his shoulders in nothing heavier than a feather.
“Do I, now?” Yunho chuckles, tucks the last bite of the sandwich in his mouth before he lets the crumbs fall into the soil and folds the cloth gently once, then twice, then another time before he tucks it into his pocket. “All I know is that a beautiful fairy almost froze to death in the forest in front of my eyes, therefore earning a spot at the infamous hut.”
San uses too much force to push down the giggle that climbs up for his liking, clears his throat. “I don’t remember you taking my opinion into consideration on that.”
“On what? Being left to die?”
San shrugs, his smile damp. He wraps the remaining of his sandwich back up when he doesn’t feel hungry anymore. “I don’t think the forest would’ve liked having my dead body either,” he mumbles, huffs out a laugh, humorless as he says, “Good thing you saved yourself the burden.”
“What burden?”
“Burden of the wrath of the forest,” San says like it’s obvious.
Yunho scoffs, more offended than he should be, really. “Stop being ridiculous,” he frowns, “Do you expect me to try and convince you that yes, of course the forest would want your body if you were to die?”
San shrugs, nonchalant. He just does not think the forest likes him very much.
Yunho is stubborn, it turns out. “The forest made you a fairy because your existence meant something, San-ah.”
San bites his tongue not to immediately oppose.
Instead, he huffs, a frown pinching his brows as he’s swaying his feet where they don’t quite meet the ground. “The forest was simply confused, methinks.”
“Even if the forest was confused,” Yunho says as he’s sighing like he already gave up, or like trying kind of seems pointless even from the start, but doesn’t sound like it when he whispers, “I think you’re one of the prettiest fairies I’ve ever seen.”
Before he knows it, San’s head whips in Yunho’s direction, wide eyed and mouth agape in shock, breath caught in his throat. Yunho shares his shock for a split second when their eyes meet, but it soon melts into a warm chuckle, a shrug as if to say it’s true!
The wind comes to a stop, San realizes. The forest feels cold and distant but he’s grateful if he was to shimmy a tiny bit closer to Yunho there would still be some warmth to be felt. Some hope to chase after.
The wind comes to a stop and the birds still sing them a song that resonates among the dancing leaves, just for the two of them.
At least it feels like it, as Yunho is looking at him with the tiniest question mark a glint in his doe eyes and as San feels like he will combust and turn to ashes under the new sun if he does not lean in and feel his warmth on his own lips, maybe just to see how it feels to have someone else’s lips on his own, just to try it, and Yunho feels like he’s worth his trust, somehow, in ways San is not able to understand no matter how hard he tries, or maybe just as a simple thank you, thank you for seeing me as who I am, thank you for not letting me spiral as the voice of reason besides me, I don’t even think I would’ve survived if not for you, I wouldn’t even be here, breathing, feeling you, but all he lets out is a silent plea that he will stay still when he reaches for Yunho’s face, tips of trembling fingers barely touching his chin but he still feels it soften under his touch. He sees the clarity in his eyes before he closes his own, feels safe, feels secure as the warmth pulses under his fingertips, the slightest bit of pressure that San doesn’t even have the time to decipher before-
“Yunho-yah,” they hear, both of them nearly jump off their seats before the culprit comes to a baffled halt beside them after crunching on the leaves that have been dead for too long and snapping twigs under the coarse sole of a pair of boots.
“Am I…” Wooyoung trails off, alternating between the two, San that tries to adjust his belt and Yunho that dusts the invisible dust swarming his clothes. “Am I interrupting something?”
“No!” they both yell. A couple of birds nearby fly off with how loud they oppose.
“Okay…” Wooyoung raises a brow but does not pursue his blatant suspicion any further. “Hyung calls you both back, he says he needs everyone’s help to prepare for the special dinner today.”
“Special-” San’s voice comes out as nothing more than a squeak, so he clears his throat and his guilt away. “There’s a special dinner?”
“Yeah,” Yunho confirms, cleaning his own throat, avoiding the general direction of the both of them but San can see the right red tips of his ears. “Hyung prepares a special dinner with the very first harvest from the garden, it was about time.”
“Yeah,” Wooyoung confirms, hands on his waist, eyebrows raised condescendingly as he continues, “and he has a bag almost his height waiting to be prepared so move your butts already.”
Yunho mumbles a grumpy fine as he kicks himself up the seat but his hand when he reaches for San to hold it, along with the smile that infiltrates his flushed face when he steals glances and thinks he is so sneaky, is impossibly warm.
҉҉҉
The sound of cicadas is one San is not so fond of.
It’s repetitive, shrill, sounds like they are shrieking at each other, even if he was told quite the opposite once by a shadowy looking traveler passing by the forest, unphased by the lack of wings on his back when they encountered, whispering that they told the tales of tomorrow, that if you listened close enough you would understand, learn, borrow their wisdom.
San still thought they were shrieking just to get laid.
“So, you’re telling me they tell the future?” Yunho takes a moment to consider, a small smile lingering on his lips from when he was laughing a second prior, a bag hanging off his shoulder filled to the brim with freshly cut wood, his feet dragging on the floor lazily.
“I was told so,” San shrugs, immediately regrets it when the bag almost throws his balance off. “I just think they yell really loudly.”
“Oh, it’s loud, alright,” Yunho chuckles, raises his eyebrows at one that shrieks just as he says so. The giggle that rises up San’s throat seems to have a volition of its own.
“I don’t know where we are anymore,” he says in between, basically scraping the rather small bag of wood entrusted to him on the floor when it starts to simply cave his shoulder in, the sun clinging to his skin, the humidity sticking to his lungs.
“I know where we are,” Yunho looks around, the smile still clinging to his lips. San feels almost too distracted to pay attention when his lips come into his sight. For some reason, he has been finding them too distracting ever since-
“Are you going to tell me then?” He demands, tries swaying the bag full of wood in Yunho’s direction not too hard, not too slow, but it is too late before he realizes it is an awful idea and totally not worth the reaction it would draw when his straw shoe gets stuck on a tree root on the floor, send him toppling on the dirt ground with a shriek that would put the cicadas to shame.
“San!” he hears before his vision is not all blurry and his knees are aching dully, mud covering the worst of where the impact happened and some more around his knees and his fingers deep into the damp soil, and when he raises his head and the shame catches up with the panic in Yunho’s eyes frantically checking him up and down, he feels dumb.
“Did you just-” Yunho blinks, San blinks back. He does not feel like explaining that he tripped on a root and plummeted to the floor.
“You did not just,” he barely makes out behind his hand covering his mouth, his vowels wobbly with amusement.
“Don’t,” San warns, wills the urge to look away but his ears are giving him away too much for his liking.
“I’m not,” Yunho bites on his lips, averts his gaze for a moment clearly meaning to collect himself. A frown places itself over San’s brows, he gives in to the urge and pushes Yunho into the dirt, makes sure he stays. A surprised yelp leaves Yunho’s mouth as he meets the ground with a small thud, sending the floc of birds finally leaving from on top of the trees surrounding them.
“Hey!” he yells as San’s small hands are doing their best to smear his back right into the soil damp with freshly melted white frost, as a means of retaliation because if his knees are covered in mud and he is mocked about it, he will not go down alone.
“Ow, my wings,” Yunho hisses and it is not even a quarter of a second before San is letting him go, eyes the size of saucers and hands hanging in the air guiltily.
He didn't know, never thought about how every time someone pushed him into the ground his wings were supposed to be in the way, and he had been pushed into the ground far too many times before not to have realized that it is only another way to let him know that he is lacking, that he's doesn't have the thing that was supposed to make him who he is, never had it to even lose it.
Of course. Yunho has wings to get squished under him and he doesn't. Tragic.
“You have one,” he finds himself blurting out, hands still in the air, eyes getting dryer by the second. When Yunho all but blinks back at him, he adds, “I mean- Wing. One wing.” He stops, gulps and realizes he doesn’t know what he means when he says, “I’m sorry.”
It’s another second until Yunho huffs out a laugh, turning his head around on the ground, long strands of blonde hair twirling around his slender neck, muddy and damp at the back and San feels the guilt kick him in the guts really hard.
“I don’t mean it like- I mean- I don’t know what I was thinking-”
“San-ah,” Yunho says. When he looks back at him, one of the small braids on the side of his head catches a dried leaf and his lips are stretched into a smile that San doesn’t feel like he deserves. “That’s like really rude.”
“I know!” San tries to say, acknowledging and honest, but it comes out as nothing more than a shrill cry for help. “I just, like- I don’t mean to be-”
Yunho interrupts, the smile still on his lips, hiding his teeth and his cheekiness. “I know, it’s fine, really. It’s just fun to see you flustered, all cutely.”
“I-” San blinks, sits back on Yunho’s thighs, confused, the little cogwheels in his brain turning so fast that he feels overwhelmed. “What?”
“Now we need to go back home and wash up,” Yunho clarifies. It somehow still doesn’t make sense for another second that San dreads the feeling of drying mud over his skin.
“You know if there is a lake around here?”
“A lake?” There are wrinkles in between Yunho’s eyebrows, confusion etched into every one of them. “Sure, but why?”
San blinks back, half confident when he says, “To wash up.”
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“A- Are you-” Yunho stutters, his feet dragging on the floor as San’s smaller hand pulls him into motion. “You know- We don’t even know if the water is safe for taking a shower.”
“Are you kidding?” San chirps, his skin tickling in excitement at the iridescent water of the lake only a couple of steps away. “I took showers in the lake my whole life.”
It has been a while. He doesn’t want to be rude, but he frankly hates what they call a plumbing system, magically constructed or not, and four walls surrounding him when he’s trying to clean his body and his soul.
“Come on,” he tugs and tugs and before he knows he’s running, the silent protest of Yunho unheard as he kicks his shoes where the water licks the soil, lets go of Yunho’s hand only for enough to pull his shirt up to his head, toss it to the side. A sap sweet smell dances at his nose as he looks up at Yunho, expectant as he gives his hand a squeeze, but some of his excitement wilts away when he sees the look in Yunho’s eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, worry in his voice. “Do you really not want to bathe in the lake this much? I just thought that you know, since we’re here and the hut is not really close, it would be-”
“It’s just been too long,” Yunho breathes out, a smile pulling at the corners of his lips as he twists their hands and cups San’s smaller palm, raises it to his lips, places a kiss on the back. Feather light, heart fluttering type.
“Let’s go.”
As the water embraces their half-naked bodies, a yelp leaves San’s mouth at the chill that runs up his spine. The sun is barely up in the spotless sky, the rays piercing the still surface, peeking through the pines that tower over them. A breeze carries over the mint, dances along the sappy sweet scent lingering in their lungs.
The water is barely over Yunho’s waist and San feels it’s absolutely unfair that it reaches up to his chest, almost the base of his neck.
“We don’t even have shampoo,” Yunho says, hands splayed over San’s waist, stepping closer in the water so there is only an inch between their bodies.
“Shampoo?”
“Shampoo,” Yunho agrees, uncertainty still clinging to his voice. It takes a moment before San realizes he’s actually serious.
“We use pondweed,” he says, blinks at his own wording, a bitter feeling in his chest. “We used to. You know, when I was… with the clan…”
The silence that entails is bitter for a moment the memories flood into the back of San’s eyelids, but the lake is placid at its core, soothing the turmoil in San’s heart.
The dry parts of his shoulders ache with the cold when Yunho is splashing water on him the next second.
“Hey!” he protests, guarding his face the best he can with the small pair of hands that he has, but it’s not doing much. Especially not when he’s nothing but a giggling mess, balance barely not thrown off inside the clear water of the lake, his feet barely visible through the refectory.
“How is pondweed gonna get the dirt out of this hair?!” Yunho yells, playful, equally reduced to a giggling mess as he walks closer to close the gap San opened between them when he was taking escaping steps backwards.
“It does, okay!” San yells, his arms no longer defending as he’s now fighting back. “Even the ones with the longest hair used pondweed to clean up!”
A chuckle as Yunho surrenders. “Yeah?”
“Yeah!” Both of their hair is conveniently drenched, San realizes. “Just because you have pretty hair…” He mumbles under his breath as he watches the droplets fall off Yunho’s blonde bangs, one of the braids now undone and sitting idly over his shoulder.
The cheeky smile that spreads over Yunho’s face is almost suffocating when joined with the wing expanding, reaching tall on his back.
“You think my hair is pretty?”
San does not think he has the heart to say your everything is pretty quite yet.
“We should get some pondweed,” he says instead, lowering his head to half look for a useful bunch of pondweed, half not to be more exposed to the smile that expands in amusement.
“Sure,” Yunho joins, the lilt to his voice indicating he will not drop it any time soon as he adds, “Yeah.”
It is expectedly San that finds the right kind of pondweed a couple of meters away, loosely attached to the bottom of the lake and it is Yunho that pulls it out fearlessly when San feels too squeamish to dip his hand into the flora.
“This is dumb,” Yunho says, and sounds dumbfounded himself as he keeps rubbing the pondweed into his golden strands of hair. “Why is this working?”
“I told you,” San’s shoulders rise along with his chin as he’s working his own handful of pondweeds into his hair.
They count to three and both dunk their heads underwater, the surface of the clear immediate lake surrounding them now slightly turbid with mud previously clinging to their bodies and San needs to think about it precisely to even realize it feels good. The bathroom back in the hut is okay, it has warm water, it is convenient that it’s not necessary to walk through the forest for sometimes hours just to wash up, but this feels natural. This feels like the birds are singing to him again, like the pine trees above them are finally ready to lend him their shadows.
Like the forest doesn’t hate him so much anymore.
He’s surprised to find Yunho’s hands on his body as he pulls him closer, his breath against San’s own and the tips of their noses brushing, the flutter of his heart in his chest when their lips touch, hot and buzzing, also feels natural.
“Okay, but,” he blinks the water out of his eyes, a chuckle stuck in his throat even when he closes his eyes and Yunho is not in his sight, the tingle on his lips still present, but it helps with what he’s about to ask, only a little.
He has to. Even if it will take the tingle away.
The water that comes out of Yunho’s hair when he squeezes it when after stepping back with a gentle question mark leaves San in awe for a moment. He steals a glance at the purple sheet of beauty behind his back that twitches in annoyance at the water trickling down the veins, the water trickling down the golden skin when his own small hands have been a second ago.
“Yeah?”
San has a hard time pulling his eyes away. “I took baths. In the lake.”
“You said so,” Yunho raises a brow, his smile baring his teeth as his long fingers are working on undoing a thin braid. “You want another handful of pondweed? Because you’re a lot better at finding them than me, I’m afraid-”
“With my clan,” San cuts, kind of dazed, feeling smaller than ever.
Yunho stops, the hands in his hair let the blonde strands drop over his shoulders, damp but not so drenched anymore. “Sure.”
“And you do not.”
A chuckle, kind of confused, kind of timid. “We have a very useful bathroom.”
“Yunho.” San breathes out, looks down. He can’t see the way his toes wobble inside the water and he’s kind of bummed out about it. “Where are they?” He adds, kind of hopes Yunho doesn’t hear, kind of hopes it was loud and clear so he doesn’t have to again.
It feels awful regardless of when Yunho’s smile first freezes, then slowly disappears.
“They…” Yunho starts, a sigh heavy on his chest as he steps closer to wrap his arms around San’s smaller frame once more, smiles down at him but it doesn’t feel like it holds any lilt to it. “Why do you ask?”
“I just…” San trails off, looks down even though his palms are doing their bests to wrap around Yunho’s biceps mindlessly. “I feel like you have a story to you,” he says, looks up with a tiny smile that doesn’t even quite raise the corners of his lips when he adds, “I want to know. About you.”
All Yunho does for a moment is to look, to observe silently, the birds chirping and the breeze shaking the leaves in the background, and all San has to see not to feel like he needs to crawl into some cave and expect death is the little content smile stretching his kiss flushed lips as he sways them from side to side, gentle, like San could break any moment.
“Is this some kind of proposal?” he asks at the end.
“It’s more like the elephant in the room, honestly,” San says, is content when it makes Yunho laugh one last time before he clears his throat, lowers his head to clear his head too.
“There was a war,” Yunho starts, simple, but it still makes San’s heart immediately do a thing.
“Just- Over resources and all. The clans too close to each other and too stubborn to make amends. You know. It’s not uncommon.”
San nods, careful, his hand shifting up and down over Yunho’s arm in an unconscious way to provide consolidation.
“Except,” he says, sighs when the words get caught up in his throat. San slides his hand up to cup his cheek, gentle enough when he rubs his thumb over the porcelain skin. Water trickles down his elbow, creates tiny waves over the surface before they ripple away.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he whispers, “Not if it’s too much.”
Yunho leans his cheek against San’s hand, closes his eyes. “I want you to know.”
“Okay,” San nods, his eyes threading between Yunho’s, a strong part of him wishing he kind of never opened his mouth.
It’s another moment of tranquility until Yunho opens his eyes, smiles down at San’s worried face.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers, “even when you look like you’re about to break.”
“I will not,” San retaliates immediately, gains a kiss on the lips and a giggle he doesn’t really think he earned.
“My beautiful little fairy,” Yunho says, gentle, like he means it, and San feels like the ache in his chest is pleasant this time, but can only be rid of by yelling on top of a tree for hours on end.
He settles for a whine and a loose fist against Yunho’s broad chest this time, blood already rushing to his cheek, neck. “Go away.”
“You want me to leave?” Yunho asks, amused when San buries his head against his chest.
“I don’t…” San mumbles, pouting at the way his heart is basically pounding violently against his ribcage and not even the gentle flow around their bodies is enough to calm it down.
Yunho chuckles, and it sounds warm and collected as he lays his palm over the side of San’s head, but San can hear the way his own heart is running leaps just the same.
“We weren’t really the kind of clan that had the supplies to attack, let alone defend, honestly,” he continues after what feels like a serene eternity. “All we had was the crops we turned. We just sowed what was necessary and reaped when it was time, relied on good relations and careful actions as our safety, but then-”
He sighs, presses his lips over San’s damp hair, stays there for a moment. “I don’t exactly know if they wanted the territory to themselves or were greedy for the food we had, but it felt like it lasted merely a second, honestly.” He stops, scoffs a humorless laugh before he says, “One second I was running around, oblivious, then the next second everyone was dead. Well- except me.”
Goosebumps wreck through San’s arms, legs, his heart drops. “Yunho…” is all he can say, whisper as he tries to pry away from Yunho’s chest but Yunho gently keeps him down.
“I had to pretend I was dead, actually. By- uh- by laying lifeless under… the others.” he chuckles with a shrug that shifts against San’s face, cold. It’s chilly when the wind blows in their faces and when the cold seeps through the cracks between their bodies, only adding to the goosebumps. “Pretty sure by then my wings were mostly broken anyways but trying to crawl out of the pile did indeed tear a big chunk of them off, as you might guess.” He stops again, another chuckle shaking his shoulders grimly as he plays with San’s hair, mindless. “I’m not sure how but apparently I just found hyung after that.”
“Is there no one else left?” San asks, voice small, afraid. “Anyone?”
“It didn’t seem so,” is what he doesn’t want to be the reply, but it is anyways.
“I’m sorry, Yunho,” he whispers after a moment of silence, heavy. He gently pries himself away and the sight of the vibrant green and the endless brown is too much to keep his eyes on for a moment, so he lowers his gaze.
He knew, the clans got territorial sometimes, he knew, not every clan was going to get along with the next, heard tales about even his own clan getting into some petty arguments in the past, resolving them in questionable ways, but he didn’t know-
He doesn’t know what he didn’t know. He wasn’t anything more than the wingless fairy in a world full of wings, away from anything important in the life of a fairy other than the daily errands on the ground, his whole life.
“Do you know who they were?”
Yunho shakes his head to the sides, breathes out a sigh. “I don’t specifically know who they were,” he stops, takes a breath, breathes it out as another sigh when he says, “I just know they had blue wings.”
San’s heart drops. It just drops, leaves his body, travels all around the world before it lunges itself back in his chest and starts vigorously thumping against his sternum. No way.
“Blue as in?..” he trails off, terrified of saying, hearing anything else as he takes a step closer.
“Blue,” Yunho shrugs, pushing the water out mindlessly with his palm just to have something to do with his hands, oblivious to San’s heart breaking in a million pieces when he says, “It looked like the sky when it’s clear, spotless.”
Blue, San echoes in his mind, like the sky when it’s spotless.
Like the wings he had seen his whole life, like the ones he wanted as a pair of his own, standing tall on his own back.
The ones he watched ascend into the sky and abandon him on the ground until they blended in with the iridescent blue of the day, clear and spotless.
No way, right?
“Anyways,” Yunho shrugs, reaches his arms around San again with a chuckle, his smile this time slightly alive when he says, “What’s done is done and all the flowers around are about to wilt and all the fish are about to float to the surface with how gloomy I made it now, so, do you wanna go back?” He rubs his hands on San’s sides, oblivious to San’s turmoil. “For the sake of the forest? It’s cold and we’re clean anyways.”
San regrets. He regrets ever opening his mouth.
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San doesn’t know what to do with himself.
His refusal for a room ended him up at Yunho’s temporarily -not really-, and the part of the arrangement did include them sharing a bed and he kind of loves that part of it, loves that Yunho is in his immediate reach, loves that they can share kisses whenever they want without needing to walk through long corridors.
He spends his days similar to his days with his clan; helps with the food, the dishes, the laundry, visits the forest when he has the will to do so, with a fun twist of Yunho beside him no matter what he does, where he goes. That part he enjoys.
Probably more than he deserves.
But more like, does he deserve anything at all?
It’s a question San asks; while he’s grabbing a late night dinner, while he’s helping with the fireplace, while he’s doing the laundry when it’s his turn and the answer always leads up to no, you don’t even deserve a space in this hut.
He’s feeling tired of it.
The guilt, hot and painful, like cobwebs all around his chest, he feels like he should just let it consume him on the nights he gets to see the stars, when Yunho sits right beside him, a cup of hot chocolate in his hands, his smile brighter than any he’s ever seen on the sky.
On some days he feels like it’s not even his fault, that he was never even part of that clan anyways. When it was time to choose the next generation of fairies to train for what San now knows for, they didn’t even consider the alien with the lack of a pair of wings on his back, subpar on anything else and worse on being a fairy.
He should’ve known that the tales of when it was the time for the flowers to bloom under the full moon all but one did and when everyone lost their hope on the last one and returned to pick up the leftovers the other day, they found a baby in between the rotting petals should’ve been revealing enough of this outcome.
On other days, though, he thinks of the time he was barely a teen and heard about a war from a couple of passersby while he was hanging laundry and thought nothing of it, if the clan was okay surely, he would also be okay.
He didn’t know. He swears to the moon and the stars that he didn’t know but it doesn’t make the one wing behind Yunho’s back two when San is patting it as Yunho cries after waking up from an awful nightmare, contents brushed off as it’s just the past.
His back starts itching after about a month or so.
“Here?” Wooyoung asks as he’s scratching his fingernails over the thin fabric on San’s back, the feeling so euphoric as it spreads over San’s limbs that he closes his eyes for a second.
“More to the left,” he mumbles.
Wooyoung keeps scratching, this time more to the left, clicks his tongue. “Are you sure you’re good, though?”
“I’m fine,” San answers, adds, “Just-” and leaves it there to let himself revel in the momentary relief of not itching like he's been infested in tiny bugs crawling all over his skin since the second he opened his eyes to the morning sun beside Yunho. He shimmied out and away from the bed when it was too much to bear, numbing his fingertips with the need to scratch and scratch forever, and hoped it was a stray hair stuck to his shirt, but it’s simply not going away.
“You know, San,” Wooyoung starts, the frown reflecting on his voice, “I would scratch your back the whole day if you need me to, but-”
“What’s up?” Yunho interrupts and San almost jumps with how silent his footsteps were as he approached.
“San here is itchy for some reason,” Wooyoung breathes out.
“Itchy?” Yunho walks in, sits on the floor beside them, the frown settling on his forehead deep with concern. “Did you eat something bad? Are you allergic to anything?”
“I don’t think so,” San says and means it for both of the questions, confused himself.
The subtle push Yunho inflicts on Wooyoung is more obnoxious than intended when Wooyoung throws himself on the ground in betrayal but is unattended for when Yunho replaces him as the most appreciated back scratcher. San would normally be the one to indulge Wooyoung, but he’s about to lose his mind this time. Or a chunk of skin on his back. He doesn’t know what would be worse.
As Wooyoung pulls himself up and grumbles under his breath and leaves the porch, Yunho mumbles, worry still etched in his voice. “You think we should get Hongjoong-hyung to take a look? He patches me up every time I get a nasty wound, so I’m assuming he has some knowledge.”
“I don’t-” San starts, sighs and gets even more irritated even the action makes the very core of his lungs itch. “Not like I can tell him exactly what caused this.”
“We could try, you know. Hongjoong-hyung knows some stuff you wouldn’t ever think of,” Yunho says, trails it with an amused chuckle. “What if it’s because you keep falling on your back at the forest and this time some bug bit you?”
“Funny,” San says, humorless, almost mean even though he definitely doesn’t mean it but the irritation is getting the best of him. He knows Yunho understands, because he does. He always does.
“Oh, oh!” Yunho chimes all of a sudden, hands stop working for a moment San dreads. “What if it’s your wings?”
The way his stomach drops is almost so painful that the following moment San dreads it even more.
His wings.
His back keeps itching when Yunho goes on about how his back also kind of itched slightly right before his wings came out, excited but also nostalgic, and San knows he doesn’t exactly think that the chances of it being his wings over a stupid bug bite are not so high and it’s nothing more than a fun possibility, but something in San knows.
He knows that it’s not a stupid bug bite. They haven’t even been to the forest in more than a week.
He knows that it’s time. Somehow. They did always tell him a fairy knows when it’s time to die and when it’s to get your wings.
His blue, blue wings.
Nothing but the burden he will carry on his back.
The embodiment of his dread, his guilt.
As he slips out of the bed and steps out of the front door the next day when it dawns crisp and clear, his sachet full of belongings small but his heart heavy as it can be, his vision is slightly blurry at the sides with the excruciating ache that started piercing the space right between his shoulder blades and the sleep that was stolen from him.
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“Hyung, his things are gone,” Yunho says, his voice almost cracking at the reality of the words, at the empty bed he woke up to, cold and dreary. He stops, takes in the way anxiety runs cold and hot in his veins, the way Hongjoong looks at him equally as clueless, the way the words hang in the air.
“Yunho,” Hongjoong starts, a troubled sigh leaving the gentle curve of his worried lips. “If he wants to leave, we can’t force him to-”
“He was hurt, hyung!” Yunho finds himself exploding, knows the barely there wince on Hongjoong’s brows is the last thing he wants to see under these circumstances. “He couldn’t even sleep the whole night, I just- I passed out for a moment and he was gone, please-” he begs, doesn’t even know what he’s begging for. He knows he’s hurting. He knows San never made a sound, bit his lips, held his breath but he was hurting.
“I’m going to go look for him,” Wooyoung says after a moment of silence, shooting up from where Jongho was curled up beside him on the couch, worried eyes darting around the room, around everyone equally perplexed. He follows Wooyoung after a half a second of contemplation, runs after him as he leaves through the porch, yells Wait!
It’s not long until Yeosang nods at Seonghwa’s silent offer, Mingi picks up a coat that basically covers all his body and an axe and they too follow the trail of Wooyoung’s rushed footsteps disappearing into the woods.
Yunho takes a last look at Hongjoong, breath shaky as it comes out. “You don’t have to come if you don’t wish to, hyung. I know you don’t like the forest.” He stops, fills his burning lungs. “But please, if you can do anything to help, promise me that you will.”
“I will,” Hongjoong whispers back, swats a hand in the direction of the five that are no longer in sight, but their voices are calling for San. “Leave.”
Yunho does.
As he walks through the green and the brown of the forest, as he pushes branches and stomps on fresh puddles, he calls. He calls and calls until his lungs feel like they will give out, until his voice cracks and breaks, his heart feels like with every call of his name it shatters to even smaller pieces. The way San squirmed and panted the whole night and refused any help, just silently suffered as a single tear slipped over his pale cheek piercing into his chest and he feels like he will explode. Like his head will explode, heart will shoot through his aching chest.
He feels like he’s suffocating.
He doesn’t know what he did wrong, what he did to make San decide he should leave, especially when he’s in indescribable pain. He doesn’t know what made San believe he should not ask for help, that he cannot ask for help. Did he think no one was trustworthy enough? Did something happen to make him think he didn’t belong?
Yunho thought everything was okay. After the initial confusion, he was sure San adapted well, he was sure he was genuinely happy every time he smiled and honest every time their lips would meet, so-
Did he, himself, do something? Was it his fault, was he too condescending, was he-?
“He’s here!” He hears over the sound of rustling leaves and his own frantic breath. The voice sounds deep and velvety and foreign, but he knows when his frantic footsteps take him to where the others quickly gathered outside a small wooden shack, the one holding the rundown door open is no other than Yeosang.
“Where-” he starts but doesn’t even bother finishing as he runs past the few trees left between them, steps frantic as he tries and fails to be gentle as he pushes past his family to see for himself through the door, his mind chanting another version of the plead that nothing bad happened, that he was fine and-
There San indeed is, collapsed on the dirt floor between four wooden walls, his porcelain skin covered in mud and silky hair disheveled, latched with dry leaves and dust, mouth agape in silent gasps and eyelashes fluttering over his cheeks, long and divine, the skin over his exposed back raw and red with irritation, attached with-
Wings.
A pair of sky blue wings.
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It’s painful.
The excruciating pain on his back had long turned into a dull ache and a heavy presence, but no matter how hard San tries, the one in his chest as Yunho threads right and left in the room ever since he opened his eyes does not subside in any way.
“Why did-” Yunho says as he stops for a moment, frustration visibly bubbling up his throat in the way he combs his fingers into his blonde bangs, tugs so hard San winces. “Why did you run away?”
“What?” San squeaks more than anything, the heavy lump in his throat painful, painful-
Yunho stops, points in the direction of the door, the other hand on his waist, the purple wing on his shoulder twitching in distress once in a while.
“Were you leaving, if Yeosang hadn’t found you?”
An interrogation, this is. San understands. All he wanted was to not hurt Yunho, but the face distorted in a concoction of emotions that San is too tired to try and decipher one by one, tells him he also failed at that.
“Yeah, I- I was-” he stammers, gulps as the muscles on his back contract on their own volition and it feels heavy and foreign as his wings twitch twice, nervous, nothing but an unnecessary dead weight on his back. “I figured you-”
Yunho doesn’t listen.
“So that’s it then? You are fixed now?” He says it like he spits the words out, one by one. “You don’t need to stay here anymore?”
San doesn’t think he had ever seen him quite like this, nor did he think he would ever. It’s frightening, how the reason for the storm inside Yunho’s eyes is him.
“I was going to tell you,” he says, it doesn’t come out as more than a whisper, “I know I should’ve told you sooner but I- I just couldn’t, I’m sorry, you don’t-”
Don’t forgive me, even if you might want to, he wants to say, what am I if not the embodiment of all your nightmares, if not a reminder of your pain.
The sigh Yunho sucks in is heavy, deep, incriminating more than anything in the world.
San knows. San knows he doesn’t deserve any of his kindness, but it still hurts. San knows he doesn’t deserve any words, but his silence still pierces his chest, the glances he momentarily takes in his direction like he wants to say something but ends up sending a dozen more daggers instead.
“When exactly were you going to tell me?” His silence erupts at last. “Because I don’t even see a goodbye note, San. But fine, whatever.” After his eyes quickly land the pair of blue wings on his back in disdain, he looks away. “You got them now, I understand, it’s whatever. You can do whatever.”
The silence surrounds him once more, feels like a thousand bricks on his chest.
“Whatever?” he whispers, his vision blurry, wet as he looks down.
It hurts, the mere gaze Yunho lands on him, on the wings that won’t fucking stop twitching on their own nervously, the more he tries to control them the more his back muscles feel like they will snap through his skin, and it hurts so much, the disappointment, the hurt in his voice-
“You didn’t plan on staying for a long time anyways, right?”
The tear that slips down his cheek is followed by another, then another, but he can’t say no. He can’t say I wanted to be with you forever, I wished we would be together forever, he can’t say I’m sorry, please forgive me, I didn’t know, because he doesn’t deserve it. He simply does not.
“Right,” he whispers, his voice breaking at the end pathetically before he’s taking steps out the door, through the other six that watch him as he leaves silently save for the painful hiccups that climb up his throat.
҉҉҉
Something inside San at least hoped now that he got a pair of wings for himself, the forest would also be more welcoming to him.
The birds chirp and the soil offer the most delicious berries, the silken leaves wrap him in a blanket all the same. The sun shines over his fabric clad skin, the branches creating a shadow just enough to engulf his small body he threw against one of the trees, the moss growing at the sides slightly tickling.
But he knows it’s not for him. None of it is for him.
In fact, on worse nights he feels like the moisture the soil catches is of the color red, sticky under his feet, squelching uncomfortably between his toes as it leaks through the straw shoe gifted to him.
On worser nights, he feels like he can hear the screams of the people he had never met and never would, a rusty metal thrust through their chests, for no reason other than that they were in the way.
He can’t stand it.
He can’t stand the way the wings on his back flinch and sway without his knowledge, he can’t stand that when he tries to stop them it does nothing but hurt his back. He can’t stand that he can’t lean on a tree without them being in the way, he can’t lay on the floor, that he can’t wear the clothes he likes so much without cutting two giant holes in them.
He can’t stand that they exist.
He can’t stand that they’re blue.
He also knows that he doesn’t deserve to be angry, or feel anything but guilt, really.
On bad days he imagines the hut is behind a couple of trees, waiting for him with open arms and a hearth full of crackling wood, just the same.
On worse days he imagines this is just a normal trip he and Yunho took to the forest and he strayed a bit further away while Yunho is collecting woods, almost getting himself lost even though the forest would never let him get lost. He imagines Yunho coming to look for him anyway.
It’s not Yunho that shows up through the thick bodies of the trees one humid afternoon.
“Hey,” Hongjoong says as he crouches beside him on the floor and San fully thinks he ate too many mushrooms and is imagining for a good minute until Hongjoong shakes his shoulder. His hallucinations never shook his shoulder.
“San?” he asks, and San’s eyes widen comically. He momentarily thanks the clouds are shadowing the bright sun, so he doesn’t have to go blind.
“Hyung?” he says, his voice nothing more than a whisper. Even then it feels foreign.
On the other hand, the smile that spreads over Hongjoong’s face is more familiar than ever.
҉҉҉
San doesn’t know how much time has passed since he has last passed through that door, but he knows it doesn’t matter. The fire burning in the hearth is as cheerful as ever, welcoming him after a night of thunder and storms. The kitchen still smells of the riches of the spices even though Hongjoong is there right beside him when he comes in.
One of his biggest regrets is that he doesn’t remember his first time stepping through that door, since, quite literally, he was unconscious when he did so, possibly in the arms of the man he then had no idea he would fall so hard for. He imagines it is just as welcoming as it feels right now, even though the first rays of the morning sun are barely peeking through the airy curtains, the house still asleep after a lazy evening tainted with rain.
He's sure he feels lighter, though. Like the weight on his shoulders, on his back is now gone, hopefully and seemingly for the foreseeable eternity.
They climb up the stairs, gentle and in tune with the serenity of the early morning. Hongjoong nods him off in the direction he is familiar with before he continues in the direction of his own room and San feels like he will forever be grateful for the back as it disappears behind the door down the hall.
He feels lighter, as he’s standing before the room he had spent his last nights in, the man he hopes to spend the rest of his life with probably inside, sleeping.
His heart is doing things he never knew were even possible as he pushes the door open.
He’s there, perched up at the edge of the bed, staring out the window with doe eyes filled with longing, and it’s not until he recognizes San standing at the door with his heart pounding against his chest that the glint in them reignites.
It takes approximately three steps of his long legs that he pounces San into his chest, wraps his arms around him so tight San can’t breathe for a moment.
“Hi,” he whispers out, right into the wide chest, right against the heart that is as frantic as his own in his ear. He puts his own hands on his back, can’t hold back the tears that threaten to spill but this time he knows he would be there to wipe them.
“I’m sorry,” he hears, broken, wet, feels his own heart twist painfully amidst the relief that fills his chest. It’s warm. He’s warm.
“No, I’m sorry,” he whispers back, “I should’ve told you sooner.”
“You shouldn’t have left at all,” Yunho answers, and it feels a lot like scolding. “I don’t care when you tell me you’re gonna leave. You think it would’ve made things easier?”
“Leave?” San blinks, reluctantly pries himself off the man’s large body, prays the sturdy arms around him don’t disappear. They don’t.
“I- I mean that- My wings were coming out and you know what my clan apparently did to yours-”
“I don’t care, San,” Yunho interrupts and San can finally see that the corners of his eyes glisten wetly. “I don’t care what your clan did, I don’t care what the color of your wings is, all I care about is that you stay.”
San blinks, then blinks, tries to wake up from this dream that the forest is probably playing a trick on him as an act of twisted revenge, tries to pry his eyes open and find himself under the leaves of an ancient tree, rolling in guilt and pain.
Every time he closes and opens his eyes is the same ethereal man looking into his eyes with a silent plea, broken and hurt but sharing the relief that’s overflowing in his chest.
He can’t bring himself to be so shocked, when he thinks about it. Yunho is kind to anything other than himself, after all, too forgiving for his own good.
“Thank you,” he whispers, tears finally fully streaming down his flushed cheeks until he can’t take it anymore and buries his face deep into Yunho’s chest. “Thank you, Yunho-yah.”
“Thank you for coming back,” he hears Yunho whisper, his chest stuttering the only thing giving away his own tears.
҉҉҉
“When I asked hyung for help,” Yunho mumbles, mostly to himself as he inspects the way his hand falls off San’s back flat, two small bumps of flat lines the only thing obscuring his motion. A small bit of sky blue peeks through the mostly healed wound and the surrounding skin looks slightly irritated. “I didn’t think he meant this.”
“I didn’t want them,” San mumbles lazily, blissful as his aching body is wrapped inside a bundle of sheets and nothing else, pleasant buzzing lingering delightfully over the places Yunho had touched previously. “Not if they had any potential to further hurt you, not with the weight of what they remind me of.”
“I just wish you talked to me first, actually.” He chuckles, index fingers gently traveling over the porcelain skin, devouring every bit and reminding San of the love bites tattering the base of his nape, aching blissfully. “At least about the part you were worried about me. Such a beautiful pair of wings you had, now all gone to waste.”
San hums, spends all the leftover energy in his body to prop himself on his elbows, leans in and places a kiss on Yunho’s lips, lingers there for an extra moment.
“Now I have you,” he whispers. “I’d rather have you, as myself.”
“I’d rather have you, no matter what,” Yunho whispers back, the smile gently stretching his lips is everything and anything San had ever wanted.
The next morning, the whole house wakes up to the sound of a horrified Wooyoung yelling at the top of his lungs.
“Why the fuck is there a pair of blue wings in the garden, oh my god!”