Work Text:
Chan has been doing this forever: speaking to trees and flowers, touching their leaves gently, and bringing life back to them. He doesn’t know exactly how old he was when he first heard the low tone of the big oak tree in his grandparents’ backyard but he remembers being small, missing half his teeth; his grandma’s bright smile as she explained to him what he could do; the color of the wet soil near the tree’s roots where they dug their fingers and the beige seeds he planted under her watch. Chan remembers the words he whispered to the seeds, wishing they would grow into beautiful flowers, and how the violets bloomed and preened under his touch.
This particular brand of magic makes a very profitable business where Chan lives (where he was born, where he will die, where his corpse will return to the land everything which it gave him) far enough from the big city where people with his ability abound but not so far as to be the only one who feels magic coursing through their veins like an electric current.
Chan speaks in a tongue no one else in town can hear let alone understand when he is awake. He creates life, cultivates it in his little garden, and then gifts it to his friends.
When Chan is asleep, he dreams of a dead man.
When Chan is awake, the taste of soil and decay lingers in his mouth.
“What if I’ve been cursed?” wonders Chan, throwing himself onto Jun and Minghao’s cozy sofa. Chan knows his tone is closer to a whine than an actual question—he’s trying very hard not to let his friends know just how much the dreams have shaken him.
Seungkwan rolls his eyes. “You have not been cursed,” he says.
Chan knows he’s telling the truth—Seungkwan has always been able to sense things like that—but he still shoves at Seungkwan’s shoulder, pretending to be annoyed. Seungkwan squeaks and shoves back. Just as Chan prepares to complain about how hyungs shouldn’t treat their poor suffering dongsaeng like this, Minghao leans forward and flicks both of them in the forehead.
“There is something weird about it, though.” Minghao leans back in his recliner, the beginnings of a frown disturbing his usually serene expression. “We can ask Jun to make a little protection charm for you,” he suggests.
Tears well up in Chan’s eyes. “I’d appreciate that,” he replies, voice barely above a whisper. Seungkwan leans over, resting his head on Chan’s shoulder in an offer of comfort. Chan lays his head on top of Seungkwan’s, forgoing the effort of pretending to be annoyed in favor of letting Seungkwan’s warmth sate his tired bones.
“I could sleep over,” Seungkwan offers.
Chan laughs, strained. He can’t tell Seungkwan that he wakes up crying at all hours, bruises all over and dirt embedded deep under his nails.
Instead, he teases, “You just want to eat all my beautiful cherry tomatoes,” and earns a bony elbow to the side. He gets as far as he can from Seungkwan on the small sofa but miscalculates, falling to the floor in a flail of limbs. “You’re so fucking mean!” Chan complains.
He stays on the floor in an uncomfortable pile of limbs, letting Seungkwan’s nagging wash over him, and does his best to ignore Minghao’s concerned gaze.
Chan has been dreaming all of his life but recently his dreams always start like this: darkness, all-consuming, and the feeling that time is running out. That something is behind him. He’s had the same dream every night for two weeks. He just can’t get used to the crushing sense of paranoia.
His mouth is dry as though he hasn't spoken in a long time. Perhaps he has forgotten how. He stays like that, silent and unmoving, for an eternity inside the dream.
Chan can’t move, nor can he see, but as he lies there he becomes aware of something. He can feel a presence nearby, something that makes the hair on his arms and back stand, something foul and rotten. Then—
Dead leaves crunch under someone’s foot. Chan’s heart stops.
Dreams are far from Chan’s expertise. They don’t listen to what he wants—that’s Seungcheol’s realm. These dreams in particular feel much, much bigger than himself. That sense paralyzes him. For a long time, he stands there with fear clawing its way from his stomach up into his chest as he listens to that someone breathing.
When he finally opens his eyes, he can see by the light of the moon (a moon that didn’t exist before; a moon that was always there, hidden; a moon that will be) that a man is standing right in front of him. He looks just like Chan—except for his eyes. God, his eyes. Chan has seen them before in other dreams but they still make every single nerve in his body burn.
Intricate, unfamiliar lines of pitch-black ink curl across the pale skin of his doppelganger’s arms. They shift with a mind of their own, rippling all over the other man’s body—Chan’s body. He knows because he can feel them.
Chan raises one shaking hand. One of those black lines creeps out from under the hem of his sleeve— tattered like the passage of time has had its fun with it—and crawls down to the tip of his index finger, right across his nail. The man mirrors Chan’s movements but his eyes stay fixed on Chan.
"What does this mean?" Chan croaks, voice rough from disuse. He’s parched and his limbs feel heavy and worn out.
"That it's time for you to wake up," replies the man wearing Chan’s face. The voice that Chan hears isn’t his own. It’s deep and sweet. Chan has no business finding it comforting when he only hears it in dreams that terrify him.
The man turns to go. Chan tries to chase after him but he’s rooted to the ground, the soil claiming him as part of itself. “Wait,” he calls out, desperate. “What do you want me to do?”
“Find me,” whispers the wind in reply.
Chan wakes up with a raw throat and a forgotten name on the tip of his tongue.
“I tried to walk into your dreams last night,” Seungcheol says the moment Chan picks up the phone from the front pocket of his once-blue, now-multicolored overalls. Chan is taking a moment to breathe between conversing with his marigolds and lilies under the blazing summer sun.
“Gee, good morning to you, too, hyung,” Chan grumbles as he gently caresses the leaves of the small cluster of clover that grows in the mismatch of his garden. They preen under his touch. There’s a smile on his face despite Seungcheol’s words and it's because of the nature surrounding him, all clamoring for his attention.
“I couldn’t find you,” Seungcheol says. His concern cuts through the phone static like a blade.
Chan sighs, stops moving his hands, and gets comfortable against the trunk of the nearest tree. He musters up some comfort and bravery before answering. “I don’t think I’m in my dreams, hyung,” he confesses, voice small. On the other side of the line, Seungcheol encourages him to keep talking with a perfectly-timed mumble. “I think someone’s lost and trying to find a way out from somewhere but I don’t know him.”
After a pause, Seungcheol replies, “Chan, I need you to listen to me.” Chan’s heart jumps at his serious tone.
“I always do!” he whines, attempting to lighten the mood and dissipate the dark cloud starting to hang over his head. He doesn’t want to carry it around for an entire day.
“Don’t tell your dreams your name,” Seungcheol starts, ignoring Chan’s attempt at interrupting his spiel, “and please don’t bring anything back. You don’t know what it could truly be.”
“It’s not like I can do that, hyung, you know I’m not a dream reaper,” Chan protests. Still, he thinks about the soil that he finds between his nails, the dried tears on his face that aren’t his, and the smell of rotting that finds him at will.
Seungcheol sighs. “Just… be careful, Channie.” Chan can picture him reaching over to ruffle his hair and wrap his arms around Chan’s frame. He can almost hear his hyung’s comforting heartbeat.
“Always, hyung,” Chan promises. It sounds empty even to his ears.
“Are you still coming over on Saturday? Jisoo wants to make pasta for everyone, says he got a recipe from his mother’s neighbor or something.” Seungcheol’s sudden topic change is unexpected but not unwelcome.
“Wouldn’t miss it for anything in the world, hyung,” Chan replies, voice bright when he adds a much more truthful, “I’ll bake something for dessert!”
When Old Man Kim gets sick the next day, Chan jumps at the opportunity to make the monthly drive to the city for the village’s supplies in his stead. He’s sure that driving the decently sized truck and dealing with the rush of the city will be enough to quell the jittery feeling in his limbs and—hopefully—allow him to get a full night of sleep without any dreams, not even his own.
He should’ve known better. Since that eventful rainy night when he first had the dream that both was and wasn’t his, nothing has really gone his way.
Chan follows Minghao’s directions to the store where Minghao orders ingredients that he can’t keep in his backyard. It looks small and cozy from the outside. As he approaches the storefront, the painting in the front window catches Chan’s eye: a shifting image of a poorly drawn tiger holding a shining diamond. The ‘Diamond’s Edge’ etched in wide letters alongside the painting seems more of an afterthought than the actual name of the shop.
The bell chimes with his entrance. There seems to be no one behind the counter but that’s okay. Chan is on a mission to find, to quote Minghao, the best candles in the region. When he spots the rather big selection of them that takes up most of the shop’s long back wall, he quickly locates the ones under the lavender label and grabs as many as he can hold.
A few steps bring him to the sales counter. He gently places the candles on the mahogany wood. As he goes to set down the last candle, a head of blonde hair pops up from under the countertop. It startles Chan so badly that he drops his candle. He barely jumps out of the way before it breaks in half on the floor at his feet.
Chan holds his left hand to his heart, breathing heavily.
The man with bright blonde hair looks sheepish as he says, “Sorry, don’t worry about it,” in a small voice. Then he takes one look at Chan and literally beams, his eyes shaped like crescent moons from the width of his smile. "Oh!" he exclaims, clapping his hands together. "You are finally here!"
"Uh," says Chan, flabbergasted. "These candles and an order placed by Xu Minghao? Please?" he adds instead of the flustered what the fuck stuck in his throat.
"Don't scare him away, Soonyoung,” nags a man as he appears from the back room. He reaches over to poke at the blonde—Soonyoung—but stands right by his side, close enough for their arms to press together. Even as he glares at Soonyoung, his smile doesn’t shift an inch.
Soonyoung pokes Jihoon back and expertly avoids a retaliatory swat directed his way. “Calm down, Jihoonie—he’s here for a reason!” Turning to Chan, he asks, “Did you find him?” His curious eyes peer into Chan’s as though looking for the answer to his question within Chan’s very soul.
“W-who?” Chan stutters, nervously rubbing the nape of his neck.
Soonyoung presses, “Wonwoo?” To his side, Jihoon sighs, looking like he wants to say something.
"I just want these candles and the bundle for Xu Minghao," Chan interrupts in a way that would get him a scolding if his mother was present. He doesn’t ask about the lavender-infused oil Minghao swore he should try out to help for his dreams. He knows he sounds a little desperate but he just wants out of there, away from the two inquisitive pairs of eyes that regard him with the familiarity of an old friend. “I don’t know who that person is,” he continues, even if it feels like a lie, even if there’s something about that name that strikes him with familiarity and the feeling of coming home. “I’ve never met him.”
The soil that once welcomed Chan like a second home now traps him instead. It fills his mouth in the total darkness. Tears prickle at the corners of his eyes as his lungs struggle. There’s not enough room to move. Something digs its points into his back and in various places across the rest of his body.
Someone calls for him.
Someone cries for him.
He tries to open his mouth but more dirt falls on him, trapping him deeper underground.
The trees in this forest are half dead. Chan feels it when he tries to lean against one to catch his breath. He runs and runs without stopping; he doesn’t know what else to do. He feels something dark and oppressive chasing him.
Something chases him.
Something calls him.
There’s someone out there, someone whose wails sound disturbingly familiar, and they beg for help– And Chan tries to answer but the forest feels wrong; it’s sick, rotten to its core, and silent even for Chan who, until now, has only known kindness from trees.
Please, the voice cries out in despair. Find me. Help me.
Chan runs in an endless loop. The strange pleas seem to get further and further away with every step he takes. No matter how careful he is, he keeps tripping over the same big, exposed root, making him fall to his knees in anguish again and again.
For once, Chan wakes up before the dream ends. Dazed, he tries to catch his breath, knowing there are still hours until his alarm will ring.
He lays there, frozen and numb. When he tosses the covers aside, he finds his sleeping pants completely destroyed. His bony knees, scraped and bloody, stick out of two big holes. The grey fabric is stained in a muddy, red color. The smell of caked blood mixed with fresh dirt turns Chan’s stomach.
A headache pounds right at the front of Chan’s skull.
Chan holds the innocuous business card in his hand, unable to decide whether he should call the number printed under the illustration of the tiger and the diamond or burn the thing and save himself the trouble.
He’s had a long day of things feeling not quite right. Everything seemed a shade off its true color. He stumbled along paths worn by his own feet.
A storm is brewing. The earth knows it, andChan knows the earth. He listens to her. And this… whatever she’s telling him is too muddled for him to decipher. It makes him feel off.
So, after dinner he decided to light some candles, curl up on the couch, and pray for guidance.
Then, he found it. Neatly hidden in the paper bag that held the candles bought in that odd little shop, an innocent business card. A phone number. Answers. More questions.
Chan gnaws on his lower lip for a couple of minutes and then calls the number.
It’s Soonyoung, the hyper blonde from before, who answers. “Hello! Diamond’s Edge shop here, how can I help you?” His voice sounds chipper even over the phone, somehow both grating on Chan’s nerves and making him breathe a little easier.
“Hello,” Chan greets. He takes a deep breath before speaking again. “I went there earlier this week? Picked up an order for Xu Minghao, bought some candles?”
“I knew you’d call today!” Soonyoung sounds delighted, a little like the cat who got the cream. “I told Jihoon to wait, and he said, ‘But I want to eat,’ and I told him to quit whining and order some chicken to the shop because I just knew I couldn’t miss your call,” he continues. His impression of Jihoon is shockingly on-point.
“How?” Chan asks. Before the cheery man can reply, Chan hears a series of strange noises, a grunt, and something dropping to the ground.
After an awkward beat, Jihoon’s voice replaces Soonyoung’s on the other end of the line. “Sorry about him, he’s a little psychic weirdo, that’s how he knows.'' In the background, Soonyoung responds with an indignant Hey! They must have put the call on speaker. “Did you want to order something?” Jihoon asks carefully, ignoring Soonyoung’s grumbling.
“Actually,” Chan mumbles, trying to work around the panic lodged right in his throat, “I have some questions about that, uh, guy that Soonyoung mentioned last time I visited.”
Soonyoung peeps, “Wonwoo?” and then groans like he’s been elbowed in the stomach—probably courtesy of Jihoon. Despite his inner turmoil, a little smile creeps onto Chan’s face as he listens to them bicker.
“I’ve been having some… dreams. Nightmares. I don’t really know what to call them and I don’t even know why or how they involve him but when you said his name– When you said his name, I felt something.” Chan stumbles through his words, finding it hard to describe what has been happening to him over the past few weeks.
The other end of the line falls silent.
“That’s… new,” Jihoon replies. “What happens in your dreams?”
“I’m trapped. Underground, sometimes. Or I’m looking for something. Sometimes… sometimes I hear a voice calling for me.” Finding words suddenly feels like pulling teeth. “Sometimes there’s this weird… line in my arm. It’s pitch black. He has it too,” Chan finishes, his breath shaky.
“Maybe that’s why I can’t see him,” says Soonyoung, voice no longer bright and cheery. “The black line… I shouldn’t tell you this but you’ve probably figured it out by now, anyways– Wonwoo is a necromancer.” And, yeah, that checks out. Everything in Chan’s dreams reeks of death. Soonyoung continues, “He sometimes goes off the radar doing his necromancer things but he doesn’t really talk about it with us. Sometimes I can’t see him because I can’t see death.”
The way Soonyoung says it, although matter-of-fact, is not unkind. Chan still flinches at the words.
After a moment of tense silence, Jihoon speaks up again. “We’ll do some research and call you.”
“Okay… okay.” Chan breathes out slowly, bunching up the fabric of his sweatpants in his fist. “I’ll let you know if something happens?” He means it as an affirmation but his voice tilts up at the end, second-guessing himself.
Soonyoung is quick to reply. “Of course, yes.”.
“Chan… thank you for calling,” says Jihoon. The words sound familiar even though the script is brand new.
“It’s...” It’s nothing, Chan wants to say but it’s not true. It’s everything, everything of a something that makes his entire body and soul ache. “Thank you for taking my call so late,” he says instead.
Answers, questions.
Rain splatters against the roof.
The candles lay forgotten on the coffee table.
This time when Chan sleeps he hopes for a meeting and not for peace.
When Chan comes to, he is once again not alone but this time it’s different. He opens his eyes to a bright blue sky, vivid green grass, beautiful flowers all around, and trees shielding him from the blazing sun. Birds chirp in the distance and the perfect leaves way in a gentle breeze. There’s a comfort to this place; it offers a respite from the dreams that have plagued him for far too long.
A small voice to Chan’s right startles him out of his brief peace when it asks, "Who are you?"
Chan sits up tentatively, holding his breath as he turns to look for the source of the voice.
It’s a boy.
It’s a boy and his hands tremble where he holds them close to his body. His clothes look destroyed as though he’s been running through the forest from something—
It’s a boy and he has one of the marks with which Chan has grown familiar over the past few weeks: the one on his arms, the first one Chan was ever able to distinguish. He’s just a fucking kid. Why does someone so young carry a link to dark magic?
It’s a boy and his eyes are wide and scared.
Don't tell your dreams your name, Seungcheol had told him. Chan had listened, knowing Seungcheol regularly traded, but now he hesitates. The kid sitting in front of him, knees hugged to his chest, looks like he could use some comfort. Chan has no idea how to offer it to him.
Chan plucks one of the soft, pink flowers near him with care, asking for forgiveness as he takes it from the earth. He carefully offers it to the boy. The kid blinks, confused, then snatches it from Chan’s hands quickly before scooting away again.
"I don't know who I am here,” Chan answers. “Who are you?"
"I am you," the kid says plainly as if sharing a universal truth. He tilts his head to the side and frowns. His expression reminds Chan of how Seungkwan stares at him when he says something dumb. Chan can’t help but chortle before he takes another good look at the kid and raises an inquisitive eyebrow.
He covers his mouth with his hand before another giggle escapes, and then says, "That's funny.”
The kid looks unamused. "But we are the same. If I'm not you, how can we be here? How come we share this?" he asks in quick succession, pointing at the dark ink in his arm.
"Maybe you lost your way,” Chan ponders, “or I lost mine." He digs his fingers into the soft soil. The grass brushes up against his fingers, whispering words of comfort in a thousandfold voices. Since the black mark first showed up in his dreams, Chan found himself looking for it to distinguish his normal dreams from this alternate, shared dream space—or whatever-the-hell else it could be. He should’ve done that in this dream, too. "Did something happen to you?" he inquires, tentatively holding out his right hand for the kid to hold.
"I'm scared," says the kid. His hand trembles when it touches Chan’s. The sky is turning grey, rain clouds threatening their little sunny place. “I’m not from here. I don’t know what I’m doing.” He says it like a secret, as though he did something naughty that he has to hide from the world.
Chan confesses, “I’m not from here either.” A smile blooms on the kid’s round face. "What's your name? Maybe I can ask around, get help." The sky is dark now, thunder rolling close enough to make Chan’s skin prickle.
"Wonwoo," the kid whispers.
Chan wakes up before he can say anything else to the kid—to Wonwoo. The name tastes like honeydew on his tongue, or like the grass after a sweet summer rain.
There are tears in his eyes and a sob threatening to escape his chest. The clock on his bedside table tells him it’s 3:36 A.M. Rain falls against his window with a vengeance.
He knows what he has to do.
When Jeonghan opens the door wearing a too-big flannel shirt too big for him, takes one glance at Chan’s drenched frame, and frowns deeply enough to set wrinkles on his face, Chan knows he’s going to get what he came looking for.
The walk to the cozy house that Seungcheol and Jeonghan share didn’t take long but the pouring rain still managed to make a mess out of Chan despite the yellow raincoat he had remembered to grab on the way out the door. He knew Seungcheol would be unlikely to be the one to wake up and answer when he knocked. Chan also knows Jeonghan has a soft spot for him, especially when he juts his lower lip out and asks in just the right way. Doing this at such a late hour makes Chan feel all kinds of awful but he’s desperate. He hopes that he’ll be forgiven after he properly explains everything. But for now—
“Hyung, I’ll explain everything later, I swear, but I need your truck, a flashlight, and some towels,” Chan pants, resting his weight on the doorframe. “And a shovel, too, please.”
Jeonghan looks puzzled and profoundly worried but one look at the determined set of Chan’s jaw and wide eyes is all it takes for him to relent. “You owe me,” he says, voice dark as he digs his finger into Chan’s sternum. He turns to go back inside to fetch Chan’s requested items. “Shovels are in the shed.”
“I love you!” Chan whisper-screams. He exits the dry porch, hurrying to the back of the house. As he passes the oakleaf hydrangeas he planted a couple of years ago as a housewarming gift (the ones he had picked out to keep company to the two white cedars that were there long before the couple moved in), he brushes his fingertips over their leaves and tells them not to worry.
The road is quiet. It’s quite the juxtaposition to the roar of Chan’s mind and the thrumming in his arm where an invisible line itches and pulses.
Chan doesn’t know exactly where he’s going but he knows that he’s going to find Wonwoo at the end of this impulse he’s following, and that when he gets there he’s going to put an end to all of this.
He drives as fast as he can for about half an hour before an acute pain in the center of his chest makes him swerve out of his lane. It forces him to pull up on the side of the road, practically falling out onto the asphalt to dry heave.
Rain pours down, hard, as though trying to wash away every sin before it can happen. The air around Chan thrums with untamed energy. Even over the storm and the engine of the beat-up truck, he can still hear the chorus of the trees. The forest that was quiet when he last rode through on his way to the city now talks over itself, frantically and earnestly directing him to somewhere in its depths.
Chan has always been good at listening. So he does.
Not even his worst dreams could have prepared him for what he finds.
He’s been walking through the mud for what feels like forever, barely staying on his feet thanks to his rain boots and the use of the shovel as a makeshift trekking pole, when he trips over a root that he has never seen before but has tripped over countless times, over the course of countless nights and countless dreams..
Chan’s heartbeat speeds as he struggles to his feet, hands slipping on his borrowed flashlight in his haste to turn it on. It takes three tries before the light cuts through the darkness and when it does, Chan lets out a horrified scream that the rain does it's best to drown out.
A face—the face Chan has thought about for both an eternity and no time at all—lies half-buried in the freshly moved soil.
A face, and no body.
Despite the uncomfortable throb in his left foot, Chan cuts the distance between them in a moment. Setting the shovel to the side within reach, he gets on his knees right in front of Wonwoo’s face and uses his hands to desperately remove the mud that clumps around Wonwoo’s mouth and throat.
He moves to work on Wonwoo’s chest next. The shovel is too dangerous to use, he thinks. What if he accidentally hurts Wonwoo? Chan will have to use his hands for this, too. Maybe it’s what he was meant to do in the first place: to push the soil away from Wonwoo’s body inch by inch with his fingernails, regardless of how the smell of rotting becomes more prominent the more Chan manages to uncover, regardless of his knees digging painfully into the cold, wet dirt.
Only when the tips of his fingers feel raw and bloody does Chan feel one of Wonwoo’s legs twitch. Then, the other. And then, a gasp. The trees around them burst with energy as Wonwoo sits up, eyes unfocused, thrashing to free the rest of his body from the grip of the earth. Chan’s eyes find Wonwoo’s face as the latter takes his first deep breath. Chan can’t see much despite the flashlight he’d cast to the side in his rush to dig Wonwoo out. His wrists ache.
“Wonwoo,” he yells, startling the heaving man. Please don’t puke on me, he thinks, like an idiot. Something disgusting crunches when Wonwoo attempts to reach over to where Chan is working to remove the last of the mud. Chan knows what that noise means even if he’s never heard it before—bones breaking, bones grinding down into dust. He feels bile rising up in his throat and finds that he’s the one close to puking his guts out.
He swallows down the urge in favor of reaching out to Wonwoo and pulling him into a desperate embrace—one that feels larger than life, like returning home, like a new beginning.
The blanket Chan had carefully wrapped around Wonwoo upon helping him into the truck does little to prevent Wonwoo from shivering, and the towels on the seat do little to keep the mud off the leather. Chan’s fingers burn. He refuses to look at his hands, aware that he’s missing at least one full fingernail.
He reaches across the seat regardless, wrapping one hand awkwardly around the blue-tinged fingers peeking out from under Wonwoo’s wet towel, breathes in the smell of earth and death alike, and expels fresh air.
“I’m Chan.” Wonwoo’s eyes, the ones that looked so lost in the dark, dart up to meet his own. “Where do you want me to take you?” Chan asks, voice gentle.
“Home.” Wonwoo’s voice is rough from disuse when he speaks for the first time.
Chan nods, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “Okay. Where—”
Wonwoo interrupts him with a shake of his head. “With you, home,” he insists, eyes wide and plaintive.
“This will help settle your stomach,” Chan says, aiming for casualness despite the way his heart thumps against his chest like a wild bird caught in a cage.
Wonwoo’s hands tremble slightly when he accepts the cup of black tea with lemon that Chan offers. His head barely peeks out of the blankets in which Chan had carefully bundled him up the moment that the older man had exited the bathroom after a rather quick shower. It hides the awkward, too-small fit of Chan’s clothes on Wonwoo’s bigger frame.
He looks settled now, not an ounce of fear left in his body. Amazement crawls into Chan’s belly as he settles down next to Wonwoo on the well-worn sofa, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from the latter—a stark contrast to how cold he’d been when Chan had helped Wonwoo hobble into his home just an hour or so earlier. . He tries to be discreet about the way he stares at the slope of Wonwoo’s nose, mesmerised by how it scrunches up when he sniffles.
“Thank you,” replies Wonwoo, closing his eyes as he inhales deeply to take in the scent of the tea. He takes a small sip, grimacing when he burns his tongue. Outside, the heavy rain seems to be settling down into something softer, gentler: like summer rain washing away all the heaviness after an impossibly humid day.
Chan breaks the surprisingly comfortable silence to say, “I’m sorry.” His thoughts race. “It took me so long to find you, and I should’ve told your friends before, fuck, I forgot to call them to tell them where you are, they are so worried and I just—” Chan feels awful the longer that he speaks, like he’s got it all wrong. He should’ve delivered Wonwoo to Jihoon’s and Soonyoung’s waiting arms instead of selfishly bringing him to his own home.
Wonwoo cuts him off. “Chan.” He says Chan’s name with unexpected reverence. Chan’s heart skips a beat. He remembers how it felt just hours ago when they were both coherent enough to introduce themselves properly after the chaos of their first meeting in the woods and how sweet Lee Chan had sounded in Wonwoo’s baritone.
“Yeah?” Chan squeaks out, caught like a deer in the headlights.
“You took me out of there,” says Wonwoo, pinning Chan to his spot with his eyes. “You can call them later. They– Well, they know how I am and what I do,” he continues. Chan wonders what the fuck has Wonwoo gotten up to in the past for his friends to be only mildly concerned about him disappearing for a weeks at a time. “I know what I am and what I do, and all that means.”
“Okay– Okay, I’ll call them later.” Chan breathes out through his nose, trying to dissipate the anxious feeling building from his gut up to his throat. The way Wonwoo makes himself smaller to avoid trespassing into Chan’s personal space doesn’t escape his notice. Chan wonders how Wonwoo couldn’t know that all Chan wants is to bring him closer. “How did you even get there? There was no one in that forest, nothing keeping you from leaving.”
“I fucked up,” Wonwoo says as an explanation, right before letting out an ugly snort. He must see something in Chan’s face (or at least that’s what Chan hopes for; Wonwoo to notice his yearning for a man he doesn’t know and knows more intimately than anyone else at the same time, the yearning for a man he’s eager to learn inch by inch) because he shifts closer to Chan as the latter holds his breath. “I tried to find you, didn’t tell anyone what I was trying to do, and revived the wrong damn corpse.”
“Trying to find me?” Chan asks, flabbergasted. Why was a necromancer risking so much to contact someone as common as him?
Wonwoo avoids Chan’s eyes. “I dreamt about you last year for the first time.” He has a white-knuckled grip on the edge of his blanket. Chan gives into his longing to touch and reaches across to cover that bruised, tense hand with his own. Wonwoo releases a deep breath and then continues, still refusing to meet Chan’s gaze. “Soonyoung talked so much about you and my dreams were so full of sunshine and happiness that I just… wanted to know if you really existed,” he confesses.
Oh.
“Wonwoo,” Chan breathes, awed. Wonwoo still won’t look at him but Chan feels so many things all at once that it leaves him momentarily stunned. He wants to smile, to cry, to tuck Wonwoo under his arms and never let him go.
He takes a long sip of the warm mug before placing it on the small coffee table, moving to do the same for Wonwoo, who easily relinquishes his mug to Chan’s careful hands.
“I didn’t know it’d be so terrible for you,” Wonwoo mumbles.
Before he can shrink further into himself and shut Chan out completely, Chan reaches over to gently cradle Wonwoo’s face in his hands. He stares right into Wonwoo’s eyes with all the tenderness surging through his body, from the tip of his toes to the ends of the hair that grows on the top of his head. “Wonwoo, you were buried alive for days and you’re worried that it was difficult for me?” he asks, baffled, hands gentle even as he refuses to let Wonwoo’s eyes stray from his own teary ones.
Wonwoo opens his mouth like he wants to speak in his own defense, closes it and repeats the process a couple of times as he tries to find words.
“Actually, I don’t think you were using your head at any point during this whole ordeal. Please never do anything like this ever again or I’ll refuse to meet you,” Chan manages to say, and his voice doesn’t break even once. Then, a sob escapes his lips and the dam breaks. Chan only feels slightly embarrassed as he hiccups and brings Wonwoo close by the shoulders. He can’t bring himself to feel too terrible about re-wetting Wonwoo’s neck with his tears.
Wonwoo holds onto Chan’s waist like it’s the only thing keeping his head above water. His hands are so big and warm. Chan feels every single nerve in his body alight with something new, something old. “So... you’ll meet with me if I promise to never do that again?” Wonwoo mutters into Chan’s hair, sounding like an annoying smartass. Chan wants to punch the smugness out of his voice, wants to kiss him until he can no longer breathe, wants to memorize every single line that coats his body in the story of others, every single mark that makes him Wonwoo.
“You’re not getting out of this so easily,” Chan grumbles as he pulls away. He scrubs at his wet cheeks with his palms, a thick laugh escaping his lips.
Wonwoo’s eyes shine like he’s witnessing something he never thought he would, an old god or a piece of his future. “I’ll tell you later,” he promises, face serious.
“We have all the time in the world,” replies Chan, voice barely above a whisper. His heart floods with the knowledge that this isn’t the first time, that this isn’t the last.
&
Words fail me here. Can you understand? I sink to
my knees tired or not. I now know the ragweed from the goldenrod, and the blinding
beauty of green. Don't you see? I am shedding my skins. (...)
How could I know what slept inside? What would rend my fantasies to cud and up
from this belly's wet straw-strewn field—
these soundings.
"What will you do when you find me?" Chan asked. Flowers came to life whenever his hand rested on the dewy grass, and he plucked them to weave into an intricate crown. Blues and yellows twined through violets.
They sat together in a meadow, knee to knee, leaned against a tree wide enough to accomodate three. Sunlight broke through the bright green leaves that covered them. The air smelt of freshness, of new beginnings and life.
In a moment of courage, Wonwoo said, "I'll kiss you.” Chan's shy giggle cut like a knife through his heart, settled right at home near its center.
"Right away?" Chan pressed, his eyes shifting from the almost finished arrangement to meet Wonwoo's gaze. His cheeks were tinted a lovely pink. Wonwoo marveled at how color seemed to come with Chan, how he lit up the dark space of Wonwoo’s dreams with just one glance. "We'll have time," he added.
The words rang true in Wonwoo’s ears, but– "I can't wait," he insisted, resting a hand on Chan's bony knee and squeezing once. Enraptured, he watched a smile bloom on Chan’s face. Wonwoo was in love with a man he hadn't yet met and known his whole life.
Chan sighed. "You should be patient or it'll all go to hell." His delicate fingers bound the last knot of the crown together.
"If I meet you, it’ll be worth it," Wonwoo promised. Immediately, the ground beneath him started to crumble piece by piece.
"Oh, Wonwoo," Chan breathed, shifting to place the flower crown on top of Wonwoo's untamed curls. His voice sounded sad. His eyes shone with unshed tears. "Look at what you just asked for."
A flash illuminated the sky and then everything went dark. Thunder rolled in the distance.
The petals of the flowers on Wonwoo's crown withered.