Archive of Our Own

Behind San’s closed eyes, there is a childhood spent in isolation, of living at the mercy of other people, their nails caked with dirt and coal, blackened fingers petting his head before half a piece of bun or an open packet of biscuits is thrust into his small hands.

There is a boy with his feet in the moving water of the brook too, his brown pants rolled up to reveal golden shins and ankles, the boy who aims a crossbow at him the first time he sees him and offers him a full piece of cake before he takes off down the untrodden path, never looking back.

These are San's earliest memories of choice, of being seven and thirteen when people who didn't have to had extended kindness, showed compassion without demanding anything in return. 

If San really thinks about it, turning everything he knows around, the boy with the bow becomes a chapter to keep with him for life, a memory and a handful at first and then just the boy, whole and then not. 

And an allegiance is born, one San doesn’t realize the potency of until the day of judgment arrives amidst a crowd, their panicked gazes set on a transparent glass box filled with the names of the unfortunate.

San’s name isn’t called. Neither is Wooyoung’s. 

They end up in the arena anyway.

***

Loyalty, San learns, is rewarding but dangerous in their world, but danger has never stopped him, and being reckless as a consequence of being loyal has never been a thing he had to think twice about. Perhaps if he'd been more forgetful and less faithful, he'd still be digging into the dark soil in Siwon's garden, unburdened with the kind of agony that will last him two lifetimes. 

“San.” 

It’s Wooyoung, sounding as weary as San feels, standing at the threshold of the cabin. The metallic rattle of the train is dulled in here though motion sickness, despite being tamed by the pill Hongjoong had given him, still sits high in his chest. 

“Hm?” San hums, taking a good look at Wooyoung in the time it takes for him to respond. They haven’t talked much after the win. They had been pulled out of the arena and brought to the Capitol, cleaned and groomed, and Wooyoung hadn’t spoken much until yesterday’s dinner when Hongjoong had told them exactly what they needed to do to keep the people around them safe. 

"Are you listening?" Wooyoung asks, louder than earlier. San has missed whatever he said after he called his name. 

He nods, snapping himself to attention properly, turning around fully in his seat. 

Wooyoung is decked in black like San is, red accents on his textured blazer, unlike the gold on his own. His hair falls in fiery red waves over his forehead, delicately styled and at odds with how San’s own hair is slicked back. 

You look like a killer, Hongjoong had told him. It was fitting.

There is a healing cut on Wooyoung’s left cheek that has been caked with Hongjoong’s flawless foundation. It’s not visible, but San can see it still behind the light blush, a sign of what they have been through. He'd gotten it earlier in the week from a misdirected senbon from Kayla, the tribute from District 6. 

Blue hair and blue eyes. One of four of San's kills. 

Her eyes had still been open when San tugged Wooyoung up by his waist and pushed him past the trees on shaky feet. He had vaguely registered the wet, sticky feeling in his hand but hadn't paid heed to it, not until Wooyoung dragged him to the river bank and helped him clean the blood. 

Wooyoung is staring at him grimly still, feet anchored at the threshold like there's something stopping him from entering, whatever courage he'd gathered when he'd asked the question San had missed, evaporated and nowhere to be found. 

"What is it?" San prompts softly, exhaling and stiffening up because of how fitted and tight the blazer is around him. The only room he has to breathe in it is because he's lost a few pounds in the weeks they spent in the game arena. 

"Do you really not mind it?" 

It comes out quiet, so quiet that if San hadn't been focusing on the swell of Wooyoung's pink mouth, painted a light cerise, he would have missed it again. The faint mole on his lip is veiled under it. It's a little jarring to see him all decked up when the only hint of color on him in the past two weeks had been the vivid crimson of blood. 

"I wouldn't have agreed if I did," San says after a careful moment of consideration. He doesn't want Wooyoung to think this is a hasty decision, one he'd agreed to in the aftermath of an adrenaline crash out of sheer desperation. 

There had been nothing else San had to consider in fact, nothing except Wooyoung. 

"But it isn't fair to you. I keep thinking about it, how it isn't fair on either of us."

San smiles, humorless. He doesn’t tell Wooyoung that it is the fairest thing life has given him, though he doesn't expect anything to come out of it. Wooyoung's mouth is pursed as if he's holding a cry in, face scrunched up. 

San would never take advantage of his trust. 

Here, Wooyoung doesn't look like he won the Hunger Games with San, doesn't look like he could shoot an arrow straight to your chest and walk away without a single glance.

"What is fair about any of this?"

San climbs to his feet after he says it, walking closer to Wooyoung. He doesn't take a step back like he had in the arena that one time, but his eyes on him feel the exact same way. Maybe it had been for the audience then, but this right here is not for the audience, not for Panem's scrutinizing gaze. It's great that Wooyoung's keeping up appearances regardless. There is no room for errors for them, not anymore. 

"It's the rest of our lives," Wooyoung tells him, as if he's trying to give San one last chance to back out. 

San understands why. Wooyoung is too good to not feel any guilt even if they are both equally responsible for this fate. They had won the Games at the price of a lifetime to be spent at the beck and call of the Capitol. 

I was ready to die with you. What makes you think I'm not ready to live with you?

"Would you rather spend the rest of your life with someone who can never understand what you went through?" San asks instead, getting right to the point. 

The sound of cannons and the smell of iron. The inevitable nightmares. 

There is more to it, more to why they should stick with each other. The whole of Panem would set District 12 on fire if they realize they have been scammed, that there is no star-crossed love between the victors this year. And it'll be easier this way, Hongjoong had said, to have company in their victor's mansion and on Capitol tours through the districts, when they'd inevitably break down and shatter before being patched up. 

No one else will be able to handle this with them if they go separate ways, that is if they manage to escape the Capitol's wrath. No one will be able to scour through the ruins of who they are, forever changed by two weeks inside the arena of death, the one true hell on Earth in these trying times. 

"No. I don't," Wooyoung says, voice cracking. 

This is not a choice, but it's the best option they have. Out here, it's not just their lives at risk, it's the rest of their district, people they know and love though San doesn't have many, people who will inevitably be buried six feet under if they slip up. 

Even if no one cared about them, it’s still so many people's lives pitted against theirs. The choice is obvious. 

Underneath it is the siren call of something else, the one reason that had made the deal for San. 

Wooyoung. 

And the unassailable truth that where Wooyoung is where San wants to be. 

If it's on the outskirts of District 12 in a house that reeks of blood, so be it. 

***

There is the sound of silence accompanied by three-finger salutes in the air. 

District 12 is supposed to be celebrating.

San doesn’t tug the collar of his shirt or fix his blazer no matter how much he wants to. Hongjoong had asked him to look put together, to smile and wave, to look like he didn’t just win in an elaborate game of Russian roulette. 

Every gesture carries weight, he’d said, a careful look thrown at Wooyoung right before his gaze had landed on San again. 

The message was clear. 

The crowd in front of San, his people, don’t look much different than when the Reaping happened two months ago. It’s terrifying, the rows of people facing the podium, staring at him with pity and sadness in their eyes like they’re looking at an animal that is about to be butchered. The emotions are so vivid, so similar to the day of the Reaping that for a moment San is afraid he’s going to be sent out to the grid again.

Wooyoung is standing right next to him as a reminder that this is over though. He’s solid and real, leaking warmth into San’s right side with how close they are standing. His skin is glowing from the remnants of the huge lights placed on the sides since the sun has set. His fiery red hair is a landmark in San's peripheral vision, the only one on it that he pays attention to. 

“District 12,” the mayor bellows into the fancy mic. He’s a stout man San only sees once a year, on the day of the Reaping. He stays on the outskirts of District 12 the rest of the year, thriving near the boundary line in a mansion of excess while the rest of their hands are perpetually stuck inside the mines. 

It’s going to be them from today. The district will hate them, just like they hate the mayor. This momentary show of sympathy is just that. 

Sympathy.

“Your victors for the 74th Hunger Games, Choi San and Jung Wooyoung!”

There is applause this time, a deafening uproar. San barely manages to stop himself from reaching out to Wooyoung, so attuned to his breathing that he notices the moment the pace of it topples as the crowd roars, the mayor reading a prepared speech with a flourish though the words go unheard with how loud the crowd is.

"So tell me, San, how do you feel now that you have brought home the man you love?"

Hongjoong's steely gaze burns holes in the back of San's head as he smiles at the mayor. 

Make it good , he can hear him practically yell in his ears. 

"Like I am the king of the world."

The Capitol envoys giggle and cheer as he says it. Even some of their own people smile ear-to-ear, the ones who are not frozen still and dissociating. 

San chances a glance at Wooyoung. There is no trickery in this, in the way his gaze softens as if commanded by some other force, in the way his heart pounds extra hard out of neither fear or terror but because Wooyoung is the prettiest man San has ever laid eyes on. 

Wooyoung’s mind is still lost somewhere between the sprint from the cornucopia and the creek. San doesn't have to hear it from him to know it, but he smiles at San anyway, half for the crowd and half for him. 

The crowd cheers again, eager and excited at seeing their tributes, now victors, who have won and kept their love alive.

The game, San realizes, is not over. 

It has just begun.

***

The victors’ archive is the building behind the podium used by the mayor, maintained by high-ranking guards hired by the Capitol. San has only seen the structure from a distance. Civilians weren't allowed to visit, only victors and their families and close friends are. The walls are filled with Games memorabilia, plaques of gold and platinum studded with precious stones and endless holograms of footage from every Hunger Games ever conducted. 

San has no family that wants to see him, his aunt and family had rejected the Mayor's offer in fact. He hadn't been surprised. It's why he plops down on the couch in the main hall as Wooyoung disappears into the private room, accompanied by two Capitol guards who are dressed more comfortably, carrying plates with tea and snacks. 

They could have gone to Wooyoung's place, spent some time there before they traveled to the victor's house, but for some reason, Wooyoung's family had informed the mayor that they'd meet him here. 

San assumes that it's for convenience since both of them will have to assume ownership of the victor's house today itself. 

The plush seat under San is unsettlingly comfortable, just like the one he had been sitting on when the first tribute interview had taken place. Hongjoong settles on it on the other end, a respectable distance away from San. His well-styled ponytail is a little messy now, a few shorter strands of hair having escaped the iron hold of the hair spray. 

He looks like a winner. 

District 12 hasn't had a winner in two years. The last winner before Hongjoong was Jung Juwon, almost forty years ago. San has only seen him in the tribute videos on the day of the Reaping. 

And now here he is with Wooyoung. 

"Are you sure you don't want to see your aunt and her family?" 

Hongjoong daintily fixes the lapels of his long black coat as he asks it. 

"You heard the mayor," San reminds him. It had happened mere minutes ago. There is no way Hongjoong forgot. "They don't want anything to do with me."

Hongjoong hums lightly, as if San is talking about the weather. It's a habit, San has learned. Hongjoong thinks indifference is a weapon. 

It might be in the eyes of the Capitol, but not in front of him.

"You should be grateful then," Hongjoong tells him, sharp eyes fixed on the hologram video of himself that plays on one of the walls. 

"Grateful that I am alone?" San asks, chuckling without humor. 

"Yeah," Hongjoong replies without missing a beat, nodding at the man who brings them tea, a tray piled with snacks just like the ones they had taken to the private room. 

"Perhaps," San agrees, climbing to his feet to look at some of the exhibits. 

He is scrolling past the slides of the 70th Hunger Games when the door to the hall opens with a creak. Wooyoung's parents are too quick for San to even properly straighten up and bow. Hongjoong is also caught off guard, though he doesn't show it as obviously as San. 

San doesn't understand the hurry and frowns in concern, hoping that Wooyoung doesn't have to deal with any more than what he's already handling. 

Minutes later, San learns that the walls in the archive are not soundproofed. The conversation between the occupants is tense from the get-go, so much that Hongjoong tries to talk over it to distract San, but he can still hear the drone of the voices distinctly. It might be because he’s just especially mindful of the things Wooyoung does, tuned to the frequency of Wooyoung like waves to sand.

Wooyoung’s mom is telling him that they’re scared of him now, that no one who had killed that many people for a game is worth their trust. 

San fumes quietly, staring at the door with a glare that makes his temples ache. 

“He isn’t the first, San. And he won’t be the last,” Hongjoong tells him though San can tell that he’d expected something else too. 

Hope, San thinks, is humanity’s greatest asset and flaw.

If you ended up in an arena where even the slightest change in your breathing could kill you and somehow made it out of there anyway by the skin of your teeth, the general understanding is that your family would be glad to see you alive.

San had thought so at least. If he had a child and they returned home from something like this, he’d never let them out of sight again. 

That clearly isn’t the case here. Had Wooyoung already known? Is that why he hadn’t even argued when Hongjoong brought up the fact that Capitol would expect him to live with San at the victor’s house?

"You are a killer, Wooyoung." Wooyoung's mom is saying. The words are jagged, the tone even more so, no hesitation, targeted to hurt.

“Your brothers are scared of you. We are too.” She goes on, indifferent. The only emotion in her voice is distaste and fear. It only sounds like she’s using the opportunity to get rid of Wooyoung.

Wooyoung responds with silence, listening to his mother as her tirade touches realms ranging from how his younger brother wouldn't be safe around him to how no one in the family would be. His father joins in too, but his words are not as sharp or intense as his mother's.

"You told me to come home, eomma,” Wooyoung says. His voice doesn’t shake though the resignation is clear. 

"Not alive, Wooyoung."

San’s heart crashlands to the ground. He sees Hongjoong pinching his nose bridge just as tears sting his own eyes, taking him by surprise.

The door opens in the next few seconds, and San realizes that he wants to say something to them. He can’t possibly let them go free after what they just did. 

“Mr. and Mrs. Jung,” he calls loudly, rage making his voice resound in the large room. Hongjoong fingers form a vice grip around his bicep. 

“San,” he whispers furiously, warning.

San doesn’t mind him. He has nothing to lose. The one thing that matters is inside that room, probably broken even more by the selfishness, callousness, and indifference of the two people who should care more about him than the world.

Wooyoung’s parents stop, turning around to face him.

“If I have my way, you will never see him again, and that’s a promise,” San grits, watching them lose their composure for a few seconds before he storms off into the room where Wooyoung is.

***

Even if there were two winners this time, a first in the history of the Hunger Games, there was only one victor’s house to be given out every year. The Victor’s Village of District 12 has 14 free houses, so San doesn’t quite understand why this loophole is being abused. Hongjoong had told them the night before that it’s likely that their entire ruse of the star-crossed lovers during the pre-Games sessions and the grid would make it almost certain that they will have to live together. 

Maybe they had bested Capitol out there, but the rest of their lives would be at their mercy. President Waller would make sure of that.

San had lived a better part of what he could remember since he was seven in the attic of his aunt’s house, always making himself small and eating one meal a day to avoid being a burden. He had moved out into the streets when he couldn’t take the looks of exhaustion and annoyance anymore, fourteen, his stomach concave and bones stunting from the years he spent wasting away to show gratitude to three people who never wanted him there. He had hoped to pick up more tricks from the mining workers so he could move far into the outskirts and get a one-room hut for himself. 

Reaping had upended every aspect of that plan.  

Wooyoung had looked at him carefully the night before, Hongjoong’s watchful gaze on them still, before he asked if San minded that they’d have to share the house.

San didn’t. 

There had been the question of Wooyoung’s family too, but now that San stands in the middle of the washroom of their district’s victor’s archive, he understands. 

Wooyoung’s hands are on the white porcelain counter, head downturned in front of the spotless mirror, eyes shut. 

“Wooyoung,” San calls, the name hesitant on his tongue. Wooyoung’s eyes squeeze shut tighter in response. San can see it in the mirror, and he briefly wonders if he should leave him alone.

“Lock the door.”

San squints at the odd request, but he does it, the sound of the lock turning echoing in the mostly vacant room. 

Inside, he's fuming. Wooyoung's parents had no right. 

“I'm okay," Wooyoung says even if San doesn't ask.  He shakes his head once as if to rid it of whatever devastating feelings it’s working through and splashes water on his face carelessly, looking like he’s going through the motions on auto-pilot and not for any particular purpose. 

“You are?” San returns, voice making it obvious that he finds the situation incredulous, that he doesn’t trust him at all. 

Fathoming even thinking of the possibility of coming home from what could have been your funeral and having your family call you their biggest disappointment feels like absolute madness to San. 

Wooyoung doesn’t answer him for a long few minutes. San feels fear start to build a crafty home inside him, full of black plumes and smoke. It’s what makes him loosen his tie by force.

“Help me?” He asks. It gets Wooyoung’s attention.

He spins on his heels. His eyes are red, kohl a little smudged despite it being waterproof, lipstick rubbed over the lower half of his face. He looks debauched, something straight from someone’s wet dreams, sparkly-eyed with a lost look on his face. 

“Help you with?”

San gestures to his tie. 

Wooyoung smiles despite the circumstances and walks over, hands on San’s chest and his body in San’s personal space before he can prepare himself for it. There is a cloud of the scent of rose oil and sandalwood from the perfume Hongjoong had doused Wooyoung in ever since their first day at the Capitol. Under it, there is the smell of wood too, a scent San had associated with him ever since that time he had grabbed him to stop him from falling on the Reaping day four years ago. 

Skilled fingers straighten the collar of San’s shirt before the tie is stripped and unknotted. San ducks a little on instinct. He’s a few centimeters taller than him, barely an inch. Sometimes it feels like leagues between them. This is one of those times.

Wooyoung works fast, face going from a gentle, neutral expression to troubled as he finally pats San, the tie fixed and sitting a little looser against San’s neck than before. 

San retrieves the handkerchief Hongjoong had given him earlier and tugs Wooyoung along to the sink. His wrist feels thinner than it had been three months ago, even if Capitol had given them more food over the span of their training than they had eaten their entire life in District 12. 

“What are you doing?” Wooyoung asks, though he only seems confused. He doesn’t try to stop San when he steps in closer or when he squeezes his wrist a little tighter before he lets go.

“Your makeup,” San says, gently cupping his face in one hand and turning it to the mirror. 

There is a soft sound of delayed shock. 

“Can I?” San asks, receiving the arch of a groomed eyebrow and another smile. 

Wooyoung feels so much stronger like this, abandoned by his parents mere minutes ago and giving out smiles freely to a boy he had known for years. San is a stranger to him mostly despite the acquaintance because they’ve spent a lot of time together in the woods, but never asked much about each other. 

Wooyoung might know which angle San’s daggers will take, and San might be able to predict the trajectory of Wooyoung’s arrows, but they don’t know anything consequential about each other, not in the ways that matter.

Wetting the tip of the handkerchief with water, San dabs lightly under Wooyoung’s eye first, not wanting to rub too hard. Thin fingers come up to hold his waist as if on instinct. San doesn’t freeze up. Wooyoung’s always been the one to give out easy touches like these after all.

The corner of his brain that saves all the thoughts related to Wooyoung turns into a crescent for a second, prompting San to smile though he doesn’t.

Fortunately, he doesn’t have to work too hard to remove the smudge mark. It also helps that Wooyoung’s foundation is an exact match for his skin, so it doesn’t feel jarringly bare despite the layer under his eye being removed. 

The bottom half of his face is a mess though, the light red San had admired earlier smudged every which way. He cleans up what he can, but his skin is still tinted reddish pink. 

“You’ll need Hongjoong hyung,” San says at last, admitting defeat. 

There is a hint of a smirk in response, one of Wooyoung’s hands leaving San’s hip and settling over his heart, a look thrown at him through the light and shadow of his long eyelashes. 

“Thought I only needed you from now.”

Rest of their lives. Rest of their lives. 

That’s what had been said and agreed upon. 

“Yeah,” San whispers, stroking the jut of Wooyoung’s pretty jawline, thinks about how easily Wooyoung’s parents had walked out on this boy who is the only reason San is alive, thinks about the times Wooyoung was left in the rain outside his house because of whatever he’d done wrong that day, thinks of the utter defeat and resignation in his gaze right now despite the half-empty smirk on his face. 

There isn’t much thinking left to be done, San decides. 

(The truth is that San has done enough thinking in the past few months, his thoughts pirouetting gently like a river from I’ll die for him the moment Wooyoung volunteered to I’ll live for him the moment they won.) 

“You only need me,” he says, voice coming out deep as he cups Wooyoung’s face with both hands before he pulls away. He puts up a single finger in the air to direct Wooyoung to wait as he leaves to retrieve the travel-sized makeup kit he knows Hongjoong carries.

Wooyoung only needs him.

***

The mayor has a fleet of cars. For the longest time, San had been under the assumption that the man only had the burgundy sedan he uses every year, the tires of which squeal as he arrives on the day of the Reaping a quarter past noon.

That’s clearly not the case, he notes, as he climbs in behind Wooyoung into an emerald jeep. It’s well-maintained, big, and luxurious enough that there is space for two more people in the middle seat after they have both settled down. 

Wooyoung still sticks close though, like a layer of insulation on San’s side against the cold. He is glad that the right sleeve of his blazer is free of the heavy stones that decorate his left. Wooyoung can rest comfortably this way, and he does, his hand curled around San’s elbow, cheek resting against his bicep.

Hongjoong sits next to the driver, his eyes drifting to meet San’s before it lands back on the rough terrain filled with gravel. It’s ironic that their district which provides the coal and tar necessary for the roads of the Capitol and the other districts is the only one without a proper road network. 

Ironic but not unbelievable. This is how things are in their world. It’s not a novelty, neither is it something that will change anytime soon.

San watches the sand dust rise from the ground, staying suspended in the atmosphere as the driver speeds through the path with a calculated confidence that comes only from having travelled the same area multiple times. The mayor’s car races in front of them at pretty much the same pace.

The outskirts of 12, where Capitol guest houses for the mayor and the Victors’ Village are built, are far enough from where the majority of the population lives that it’s a good two hour journey. It’s intentional since Capitol administrators, if they ever visited, wanted to stay away from the coal-touched air from their mines. 

They cared about their delicate lungs and noses. 

Sixty-eight people died last year from damage to their respiratory systems in District 12. One of San’s cousin’s friends, a girl called Moonbyeol, had been ten.

A part of him wants to revolt, wants to deny the laurels and facilities from this win. He wishes there was some way to distribute some of this wealth amongst the ones in their district who are struggling to make ends meet, but the thought of Wooyoung and the Capitol’s wrath that actions like this will incur makes him pour gasoline over the foundations and watch it be consumed in an inferno.

“Is he asleep?” Hongjoong asks from the front, eyes on the rearview mirror. San focuses on Wooyoung, the steady ebb and flow of his breathing against his shoulder and nods. 

The mayor’s car takes a turn to the right just then, the jeep they’re in remaining on the same path.

“Hyung, are we going in the right—” San begins, panic registering in the sudden pounding of his heart before he even recognizes it. Wooyoung’s hand touches his stomach, cool skin over San’s navel like he is trying to calm San even if he is fast asleep.

“Our place is a little further away,” Hongjoong explains, voice softer.

San looks up at the mirror, and Hongjoong smiles, the first real one after they reached District 12. He looks relieved.

***

Their house in the Victors’ Village is two compounds away from Hongjoong, an odd placement in a residential locality, especially when Hongjoong had been their mentor. He explains that the victors are supposed to live in excess, grateful to Capitol for all the facilities afforded to them, while the constant isolation is supposed to serve as a reminder of the Games. 

We’re supposed to be haunted. It’s what they thrive off of. We’re supposed to train the victors that come after us, watch them die and if they manage to win, watch them live as shells of who they used to be.

San puts an anchoring hand on Wooyoung’s back as Hongjoong walks in front of them on the mosaic-paved walkway in front of the house. He slides two cards with chains looped on the edges out of the inner pocket of his long coat and puts one up in front of the dusty panels San assumes serves as a door-locking system. 

The cards are handed to San and Wooyoung before Hongjoong pushes the doors open. The inside of the mansion is just as massive as the outside had made it look. The ceiling is higher than the church they used to have in the district, the one that was dismantled when San was nine. The furniture and amenities are just like the ones in their quarters in Capitol — sleek, polished, and spotless. 

The overall theme for the decor is whites, greys, and dark blues. It’s almost greyscale, San thinks. If he wakes up in the middle of the night with an urge to reach for comfort, this place will still look outlandish even forty, fifty years from now. 

It’s somehow fitting.

Hongjoong doesn’t give them a tour. It’s nothing to be celebrated. They might have an entire lifetime’s fortune at their behest, but the price had been too much. 

“I’ll be right next door, well, a few doors away if you need me. Just dial 4 if you want to talk to me. Feel free to come over anytime,” Hongjoong says, fiddling with his hands as he addresses them. It’s the second time his composure has showed signs of being a facade. 

The first had been on the night after their win a week ago, when Hongjoong had teared up and hugged them so tightly San had winced, his body sore from the Games still. 

“For what it’s worth, I am glad both of you made it out, no matter what’s in the future, no matter the games you will have to play.”

There is a shadowed look on his face. Last year, the first Games after Hongjoong’s win, their tributes were two twelve-year-olds. They’d both died in the run from the cornucopia, one hit by a dagger, another strangled. San remembers watching the Games and shutting his eyes as the camera zoomed in on the dagger poking out of the girl’s body.

Eleven minutes into the Games, Hongjoong had told them. District 12 had lost both their tributes within eleven minutes. 

San doesn’t know what it must have been like for Hongjoong, losing kids he trained without even seeing them get a chance to make it.

Next year, it’ll be all three of them, mentors to whichever poor souls are destined to kill to survive or be killed for others’ survival. 

“I am glad we had you, hyung. We couldn’t have done it without you,” Wooyoung tells Hongjoong, taking three long strides and pulling their mentor in with his arms. San watches Hongjoong’s eyes flutter shut with a small smile. 

Take care of him, Hongjoong mouths over his shoulder, patting Wooyoung’s head twice before he releases him.

San will. He will. 

He nods.

***

Wooyoung picks up the hologram display from the coffee table as the door shuts behind Hongjoong. The display is playing a miniature version of the footage from the victors’ archive. They haven’t even looked around the house yet, but Wooyoung, as if motivated by sheer rage and instinct alone, takes off to the left hallway with purpose, the screen held in his hands. 

His hands are empty when he returns. 

“We don’t need the storage closet, do we?” Wooyoung asks San on his way back, a rhetorical question in all its intent, suddenly looking a few years younger, child-like happiness born from having put away something terrifying. 

San shakes his head. 

They don’t need the storage closet, he decides.

***

San’s room is on the second floor, directly opposite Wooyoung’s, separated by the five-foot wide hallway with an unnecessary and small blue chandelier hanging from the ceiling. The house has seven bedrooms, four of which are upstairs. The ones they’ve chosen are the only bedrooms that are close to each other, not estranged by a music room or office. 

San had stewed inside endlessly as they made their way upstairs the first time, Wooyoung behind him. There were no negotiations like San expected there to be. Wooyoung had simply come up and poked his head in the two rooms and asked if he minded if they used these rooms. 

Wooyoung’s motivations for the choice were unclear, maybe there had been none, but San is glad to have him this close, that on the ceaseless sleepless lights that awaits him, he can sit with his back to the ebony door of Wooyoung’s bedroom, reassured that he’d been able to keep Wooyoung safe at least, regardless of the blood that covered both of their hands.

During their first week in the house, San doesn’t sleep at all. He takes a second shower in the middle of the night every day and listens to the house creak, a whole new language San thinks he’ll have to learn if he had to get used to it. 

The routine doesn’t get time to stick because there is a knock on his door on the fifth night. 

“I can’t sleep,” Wooyoung declares without preamble when San asks him to come in. He looks haggard, red hair almost maroon in the dull yellow glow of San’s bedlamp, clumped together in places from how it is still wet from the shower. 

“Me too.” 

San gets up, staring at how Wooyoung looks so fragile and vulnerable like this. The cream sleep shirt hangs over his shoulder, exposing the smooth contour of his collarbone that San drags his gaze away from. There’s a bluish-purple bruise there from the time that Career from District 2, Morro, had tackled Wooyoung against the gravelly path before their final cornucopia run. 

Wooyoung is frowning, eyebrows pinched together as if pained. There is a lot to be devastated about. San doesn’t know what in particular he’s thinking of right now.

“Are you hungry?” Wooyoung asks him suddenly. 

Neither of them had been eating well, sustaining on ramen because it was low-effort and bananas because it was the only box of fruit that wasn’t in the fridge, a minor mistake from the staff who had stocked their house first. 

There were heaps of supplies in the cupboards. The fridge was well-stocked too. On top of that, the guards rang the bell every day at noon to ask if they needed anything. What could they need when everything they had been given remained largely unused? 

Vegetables and fruits wouldn’t last forever, but they needed time, San had known. To get back to the flow of things, to get used to normal life.

Wooyoung, it seems, wants to leave this behind them quick. Or he was scared that they’d do this forever, live in the past and not take any steps forward. 

Whatever it is that he’s thinking, San meets him there. 

“Yeah, starving,” he says. 

Wooyoung disappears into the hallway, leaving San confused. Three seconds later, he comes back with an arched eyebrow at the same pace he left, eyes brighter as if the sheer prospect of San’s hunger has set his soul alight. 

“Do you not want food?” Wooyoung asks him.

San sputters for words before managing a few rushed nods, remembering to switch the lamp off at the last minute before he follows Wooyoung down the stairs.

***

Surprisingly, Wooyoung ends up doing all the cooking. It seems he likes it that way too, batting San’s hands away when he tries to reach for the ladle or the stove. The only things San gets to do is peeling carrots and onions. This is something he can get behind though.

“My mom taught me how to cook,” Wooyoung tells him without prompting as he throws a handful of spring onions into the wok, flipping the rice around with an ease that makes San wonder if Wooyoung had cooked in the restaurant and not helped in general like he’d assumed.

His mom. The very same mom who left him behind, who called him a killer.

Wooyoung must recognize his train of thought because he runs a hand through his hair, the red strands freeing his forehead before falling over it like a tangled curtain. 

“She’s not my mom,” he mumbles, biting his lip.

“The woman that day,” he elaborates when San frowns in confusion. “She’s my step-mom.”

“Oh, I thought she was…” San pauses, unsure how to proceed. “So you and your elder brother have the same mom and your younger brother is your step-mom's?” 

It seems easier to understand somehow though San is aware that even blood mothers can hurt you beyond belief. It doesn’t explain how Wooyoung’s own brother didn’t volunteer in his place or how his step-mom had placed a hand in front of him when he looked like he was considering it.

Maybe the phenomenon of favorite children is true. San’s experiences tell him that it is.

“Yeah. Dad married her after my mom died when I was nine. My brother and I were too young to take care of each other. She’s never liked me. I’ve made peace with it,” Wooyoung tells him, like he’s just talking about any normal day. 

It explains the lack of an explosive reaction from Wooyoung. There were no screams about life being unfair, no sobbing, just acceptance of how this was how it was going to be. 

“Your dad?” San asks as Wooyoung turns the stove off, transferring the rice into two bowls he’d kept on the counter earlier.

“He’s always worked hard to keep the house running. When he married her, she brought money and stability, so he could work less. I can’t fault him for putting that first,” Wooyoung says quietly. There is a defensive tone to it. 

It takes San the better part of the two minutes that follow to understand it, that Wooyoung loves them still, despite the abandonment, despite them writing him off as easily as one would throw remaining food away in the Capitol parties, that he is sad about it, but he has accepted this without a fight. 

For the longest time, San had wondered about the reason behind the way Wooyoung’s eyes would light up before dimming to its baseline, a cold and dark hollow where happiness was always a visitor and never a resident. He had clues to patch together for understanding the whole story, but something had stopped him, maybe the insistence that he wanted to hear it from Wooyoung himself.

Being an orphan meant that you had too much time on your hands to watch people, and Wooyoung had been the only constant on San’s radar for years, first, the boy with the bow and then the boy with the laugh, the boy with the right words and so on and so forth. 

Wooyoung is a lot of things after all.

Standing next to him right now, San wishes he’d been quicker, wishes he’d done something earlier. Maybe it’s easier this way, with their families broken away from them. They can share the grief between them and not deal with prodding questions.

There is the sizzle of meat on the pan, an obvious halt to the conversation, pieces of marinated pork on oil making the house smell like the restaurant Wooyoung used to work at when he wasn't accompanying his dad to the mines, the one San never quite saved up enough to visit even once. 

“You like meat, right?” Wooyoung asks him midway through flipping the meat with tongs as if he’s suddenly remembered that he hadn’t asked him.

“I love it,” San replies enthusiastically, watching the branches of veins on Wooyoung’s forearms move as he puts a few more pieces on the skillet almost as if invigorated by San’s reassurance.

They eat well that night, but they don’t finish it all, though not for lack of trying. 

“I’d like to cook for us, if you don’t mind.” Wooyoung’s bottom lip is white where the points of his upper teeth sink into it as he awaits San’s response. 

“Dinners?” San asks, not wanting to assume as he puts the glasses on the rack. Wooyoung had fought him on cleaning too, but San hadn’t given in.

“All the meals,” Wooyoung corrects him, fiddling with the sleeves of his sleep shirt, looking shy like he’s been put on the spot.

“Are you sure you want to? I can cook, though I’m not as good as you. I don’t think you have—”

“San,” Wooyoung calls, a plea more than him just uttering his name.

Wooyoung’s eyebrows furrow as he waits, his throat bobbing like he’s nervous.

“I promise it’s okay. I want to.”

San frowns, still unsure.

“Please.”

Weak, San thinks, and agrees.

***

When San wakes up four hours later, the door to Wooyoung’s room is open though there are no signs of foul play. He stares at it for roughly the count of three and a half breaths and sprints down the stairs, eyes still calibrating to the sudden onslaught of the morning sun even in winter.

What if the negligible sense of security they had been living under for the past week had been an illusion by the Capitol to take Wooyoung when San least expects it? What if this had all been a ploy? What if he never saw Wooyoung again?

The mosaic path has a thin layer of snow when he steps out. The cold pierces into his lungs at the first inhale, and San swallows sharply, ready to go wherever he has to, to get Wooyoung back. He runs back inside the house, putting on the chunkiest boots he has only because losing his toes won’t help him find Wooyoung. He doesn’t bother with lacing them up properly and scampers outside again only to see Wooyoung closing the gate behind him with gloved hands.

He’s bundled up in one of the coats from the winterwear closets, flame-red hair hidden behind a thick beanie, though he’s still in his pajamas. He smiles before it fades as he takes in San’s state.

“Where were you?” San asks as Wooyoung rushes to him, mindful of the snow on the path. His voice cracks with panic, breaths trying to catch up with his racing heart. He doesn’t pay any attention to the tears that finally spill down his cheeks, heart pounding in his throat still. 

He’s here. He’s okay.

“I went to give Hongjoong hyung the leftovers from yesterday,” Wooyoung answers, though his voice is panicky too, hands reaching and retracting like waves in the ocean as if he wants to touch to comfort but isn’t sure if it’ll be received well. 

San turns around swiftly, taking his boots off as he balances himself on his shaky legs. 

The front door shuts softly as he settles on the couch, the cold catching up to him along with the crash from the panic and adrenaline.

“I’m sorry. I’ll write a note next time,” Wooyoung tells him, sounding guilty and apologetic. He sets a cup of hot coffee on the coffee table in front of San. He must have made it before he went out. 

Spending a few minutes trying to formulate a response to it, San gives up, settling on a nod. 

I thought they took you. Please never leave without telling me. I don’t know what I would have done if I couldn’t find you. I didn’t think it would be this way. 

When San looks up finally, Wooyoung is staring at him like he’s seeing him for the first time, like somehow San has spilled his entire feelings out for him to see in the span of a few moments in the snow in boots and the crack of his voice as he asked his whereabouts.

San doesn’t look away or say anything, but neither does Wooyoung.

***

They get three weeks to themselves to cope. 

You’re lucky, Hongjoong says with a weariness beyond his age. He had gotten hardly four days after the games before he got dragged into the districts for the Victory Tour, to face the families and friends of the tributes he had killed or had played a role in the reason why he was alive in the first place.

San remembers the little girl from District 8 who had walked forward with a blue silk doll that year, Hongjoong staring at the crowd with a heaviness that San understood intimately now. Their mentor had killed both the tributes from the district that year, one of the last ones he’d killed in fact, the deaths of whom contributed directly to his win. He remembers the horror in Hongjoong’s eyes as the girl threw him the doll. 

There had been the sound of a gun going off and the tortured scream that had sounded like it came from Hongjoong before the stream cut off abruptly, dousing District 12 in darkness.

There was no need for anyone to be shown what had happened, hearing was as effective as seeing. 

Just like he did for the Games and the interviews, Hongjoong designs their clothes. Capitol sends them the fabric from District 8 along with the tailor who had assisted Hongjoong in the pre-Games since no one from Capitol had wanted to work for their district. 

It’s an exception since the districts are not supposed to show any signs of alliances, but it is a loophole. Judging by the familiarity between their mentor and the tailor, San guesses it is something that runs deeper than that though Hongjoong doesn’t say anything to confirm or deny it.

Hongjoong tells them they aren’t permitted to wear black, a special order from Waller. The Victory Tour is for celebration, not for mourning, and anything that hints at something even remotely similar will land them in trouble.

President Waller sends them a short three-minute video four days before they are set to leave for the Victory Tour. It’s more a threat than it is well-wishes. Wooyoung’s fingers end up over San’s before they entwine tightly. By the time the video is done and Hongjoong has discussed a game plan with them, San’s right hand is numb with how tightly Wooyoung had held onto him. 

***

The night before their departure to District 1, San finds himself waking up thrashing in the middle of the night, sticky blood pouring over him in the game arena, no Wooyoung in sight in the dream. There is a solid warm body holding him down when he opens his eyes, frantic cries of his name in a sweet voice San has come to associate with forsythias blooming in the creek he used to spend most of his teen years in. 

The bed lamp is on, shrouding the room in a golden glow that makes the tear tracks on Wooyoung’s face shine when he pulls away enough for San to see him. His arms are still around Wooyoung, and he hastens to remove them in a panic, choked breaths leaving him in an unrhythmic staccato.

You’re here, you’re here, you’re here, San thinks, allowing himself to take a moment to steady his breathing though it doesn’t work. 

“I’m sorry,” San whispers. His voice cracks on both syllables, the inside of his throat feeling like it has been grated against the gravel inside the game arena. 

Sorry for waking you up, sorry for touching you without asking, sorry for this hell, sorry, sorry, sorry.

“Sorry for what?” Wooyoung asks him, tears freefalling from his eyes still like his body hasn’t gotten the memo that it’s over. 

In fact, why had Wooyoung been crying at all? 

“I didn’t mean to wake you up or…” San’s gaze drops to his own arms and Wooyoung’s torso, letting the ensuing silence do the talking. 

“Come here,” Wooyoung says instead after a whole few seconds of him contemplating what to say. 

San sits up, but he doesn’t go into his arms when he spreads them. Wooyoung sighs and pulls him in with a heavy inhale that rattles against San’s ribs as he finds himself in Wooyoung’s warm embrace.

Realization dawns later, San calmer than he had been when he woke up. The fabric of Wooyoung’s sleep shirt that covers his chest is damp. San hadn’t noticed that he himself was crying too. 

Long fingers card through his hair at an unsteady pace, but Wooyoung doesn’t ask him what the nightmare was about. 

“You were screaming my name.”

San shuts his eyes and takes a lungful of rose oil and wood, nose buried in the warmth of Wooyoung.

“I was dreaming about the Games.” It’s a pointless explanation since it’s as obvious as a red flag amongst a sea of white. What else could he be dreaming about anyway?

“We won,” Wooyoung murmurs, a consolation in a voice so gentle San thinks he could listen to him forever, but the words are their undoing.

No, San thinks. We lost. 

They’ve lost more than they would have if they had died in the Games. It wouldn’t have been worth it, but the thud thud of Wooyoung’s racing heart makes San selfish.

How could I have let you die? How could I not have been selfish? Is it fair that I would kill a million tributes in that arena even if it destroyed me if it meant you’d be alive still, that you would survive?

“I’ve got you, San-ah. I’ve got you.”

The words ring with the steadiness that San has only heard in the Games arena. Wooyoung had pulled them both through it. 

He’s inclined to trust him.

He trusted him before that. He will trust him still even if his carbon black bow is aimed right at him one day. 

(San had been prepared to die the moment he volunteered. A part of him had hoped Wooyoung would be the one to do it, that they’d be the only ones left, that by dying he’d ensure that Wooyoung would survive, would win.

Hongjoong had seen through him on the first day itself even if he never vocalized what he wanted to do.

He never stopped him either.)

It’s the first night Wooyoung sleeps next to him, his hand cupping San’s head to his chest, his slightly off-beat breaths lulling San to a dreamless sleep.

***

District 1 boos at them when they step out. It should be humiliating, but it isn’t. 

San thinks they deserve it actually. Wooyoung had taken out their male tribute, Garto, the Career who was expected to win the Games this year. 

They are supposed to bear the consequences of their actions. They are responsible after all. Situations had forced their hand, but in the end, they had been the ones to go through with it. 

Wooyoung had told San on the train that killing a trained tribute hadn't felt any different than killing the others. 

Privilege doesn't make your death different. Death is death regardless of who it is. 

It's the fact that it was unavoidable that San thinks Wooyoung struggles with. The beat of the Games was to kill or be killed. They're all just victims of the cycle.

There is a part of him that flips the images over and over in his mind. Wooyoung wouldn't have killed Garto if the tribute hadn't attacked San in the first place, if he hadn't dug his dagger into his leg with a promise for a gruesome death. 

Explanations don't matter here though, not when San recognizes the green-eyed family who is looking at them from the front line. There is pride on their faces along with something that can only be grief. 

It's an odd feeling. It takes him more than half of the mayor's droning speech to figure out what it is.

They're proud of their son for dying in the Games, San realizes. He had never talked to Garto other than when he had buried his dagger deep into his leg. He'd never thought of his feelings, of whether he ever wanted to join the Careers, to volunteer, to carve the killer instincts into himself before he even knew what love was. There is a torturing legacy here, in District 1, where being born rich means you have no choice but to volunteer regardless of whether or not your name is called. 

San hadn't thought of any of that when he saw Wooyoung behind the tribute, when he aimed and fired, no hesitation. 

What did that make him?

A killer without conscience? Someone with no scope for redemption? San might not have delivered the killing blow, but he is just as responsible. 

That's probably why he takes it upon himself to brave through it when Wooyoung turns pleading eyes to him when the mayor of District 1 asks them to speak. 

(It's also because Wooyoung is the one asking. San could never deny him anything.)

He understands how overwhelmed Wooyoung is, it's hard not to when he's the killer in the eyes of the crowd. 

It's easy to reach for the mic, letting his mouth say words he doesn't mean. He keeps his eyes open, blinks where it is necessary, lets his voice wobble in the right parts, and finishes what Hongjoong had written for them.

Wooyoung follows and despite the shutter he has drawn over his emotions, the cracks show thrice; when he says Garto's name, when he looks at his family, and when he looks at the picture of Garto displayed on the large screen, green eyes glowing with confidence. 

The mayor directs a lewd grin at them when the doors shut behind them. 

San's skin crawls as the man's eyes rake over Wooyoung like he's a piece of meat on a plate. Wooyoung seems unaware of the look, disoriented as he leans into San's hand around his waist. 

They don't stay in District 1 that night, Hongjoong telling them leaving early would be good for all parties involved. 

Wooyoung throws up the moment the train starts, the prolonged squeal of the horns louder than Wooyoung gagging. San waits outside the bathroom, his right palm splayed over it as he begs for him to be let in.

"Let him be," Hongjoong says as he walks by.

"He's in pain!" San hisses, angry at the flippancy in Hongjoong's tone. 

"Good," Hongjoong declares. "That's how you know that he's human. That's how you know that you didn't lose him in that arena."

By the time San can craft a good response for it, the door to Hongjoong's cabin is closed, blinds drawn. 

Wooyoung stumbles out a little over an hour later and falls into San without a word, his mouth open as he heaves for air. 

The smell of the mint and eucalyptus mouthwash emanating off of Wooyoung is overwhelming with every breath San takes. He must have washed his mouth with it more than once to get rid of the taste. 

"He was my first kill," he whispers later, even if San knows, his cheek against San's chest as if he belongs there. 

(San wants to stay with him forever.)

"You had no other choice," San reassures. The jut of his jawline digs into his left pectoral like he's trying to hide himself inside. 

There was. A choice that is. Wooyoung could have let him kill San. He hadn't considered it. 

If I could, I'd rip apart my chest and build a home here for you, where you won't hurt as much, where what I feel for you will be enough to protect you. 

***

District 2 and 3 look displeased with their wins. They don't boo or look particularly interested, probably because neither of them had killed any of their tributes. It helps with the indifference maybe. 

For them, it at least makes it easier to get on with the speeches. The words don't drag like barbed wire against San's throat, and he doesn't have to shut himself down to get through the ordeal. Wooyoung doesn't even need him to go first, both of them mechanically regurgitating the district-specific speech they'd prepared with Hongjoong. 

They are forced to stay at District 3 for longer than it says in the schedule because the train gets called back to the Capitol for an emergency safety check. Hongjoong tells them that someone from District 1 had attempted to mess with the train's chains, that the driver had done what he could, but that it's better they get this fixed sooner than later. 

So you don't have to stay longer in a district you don't want to, Hongjoong adds before he closes the door behind them. 

In a district you killed the tributes of goes unsaid but is understood. 

They stay at the guest house in the Victors' Village of District 3 during their unintentionally extended week-long stay. Two of the district's living victors, Annalisa Breyer and Blight Holda, are instructed to take them around District 3 by the Victory Tour organizers. 

"I don't want to," Wooyoung says, barely eating anything from his plate.

Their food is brought from the canteen since it's more convenient. After a few weeks on Wooyoung's cooking, San finds it difficult to stomach the bland taste of it, but he thinks of the people in their district who don't have the privilege of three meals a day, thinks of every meal he had to skip to make his aunt not get on his case and scrapes the plate clean.

"I don't want to won't cut it, Wooyoung," Hongjoong seethes, taking a long swig of the whiskey they'd been gifted. It’s the onset of a drinking problem. San has been keeping an eye. He’ll not let Hongjoong lose to it. He’s too strong to fail against something like this, but the strongest people have the simplest pitfalls. 

Weakness doesn’t discriminate.

"It should. I've done enough. We've both done enough. I don't want to sightsee when I was ripping into someone with a knife just over three weeks ago! I want time!"

Hongjoong smirks, looking every bit as vicious as he had on the game screen two years ago.

"You've done enough?" He asks, tone conveying how incredulous a claim it is. "This is a life sentence, Wooyoung! The whole point of it is that you die with the rest of the tributes there! No one and I mean no one survives the Games! You can think that you do, but ten, twenty years from now, you'd still be going around the cycle. Being a victor means that you lost. The moment you stepped into that arena, you lost the right to your life."

San seethes at the harsh words, but he can't say anything. Not when he knows Hongjoong's words don't have a single lie in them. 

"Hyung, I don't want this. Please," Wooyoung pleads, slumping in his seat, looking so much like a ghost, gypsum skin and bones, that San reaches under the table to put a hand on his leg just to prove to himself that he is right there. 

Hongjoong's resolve and anger ebbs, the fight leaving him as he stares at Wooyoung and then at the snow falling outside the window. 

"I know you don't, but this is the rest of your life. You at least have company, Wooyoung. You're not alone. You have San. You have me. There is no getting out of this. You can only navigate the obstacles. We have to count our blessings or we'll go insane. So please. Just work with me."

San had thought it impossible that Wooyoung's spirit would look even dimmer than before, but somehow it does. He moves closer to San in the seat, a hand placed over San's on his leg.

The outing goes just as well as expected. San can feel eyes on him the entire time, but it feels like whoever is looking wants to see something in particular. It's on the way to the hybrid flower garden that San actually voices it out.

"Hyung," San calls, Hongjoong turning around as soon as the word is out.

"I feel like we're being watched."

Wooyoung's fingers tighten around San's. 

Hongjoong looks troubled as he watches them. 

"They're looking for cracks."

Cracks in what? San thinks. 

It clicks, delayed. The cracks in their alibi. 

Wooyoung and San, the supposed love story for the ages. The revolutionary one that culminated in the Capitol being forced to let two tributes win the Games for the first time. 

The most dangerous lie they've ever told, and yet, the most important. 

The biggest con of San's life, rooted in his greatest truth.

"Us," Wooyoung mumbles before he repeats it, louder.

"Do something about it," Hongjoong says. 

San's stomach flips in unease at the deep breath Wooyoung takes and the ensuing nod.  

***

Wooyoung takes a page out of Hongjoong's book and does do something about it. He makes a show of giggling and leaning into San's side after the visit to the garden. He leans in and kisses San's cheek too, slightly wet lips on his skin that makes San feel like he can fly though his heart pounds for more than one reason. 

The intentions are different. Wooyoung's not kissing him to kiss him, but it makes no sense that there's so much desperation in it. There are so many sirens going off in San's head too, at the understanding that they literally have no choice. Wooyoung has said that he'll do whatever it takes to keep them alive, but all San can think is not like this, not like this, not like this.  

Their first kiss had been broadcasted everywhere. It had been an attempt from Wooyoung to grab the attention of the sponsors to help save San from dying. 

San remembers the kiss, but the details of it are blurry, like a fuzzy dream that fades once you wake up. He remembers the way Wooyoung had looked at him after it, at how he'd pressed another kiss to the corner of his mouth, a wisp of an apology whispered in the space between them for not giving him time to think, for not asking if he could. 

He wonders what it would be like, to tell Wooyoung how he feels, to let him know why he'd volunteered. For every day San spent thinking of the curve on Wooyoung's face, for every day it kept him going, he owes everything to him, but how do you tell someone else that unbeknownst to them, your life's purpose had been crafted around them?

All San envisaged was a hut of his own far from the rest of District 12, where he didn't risk running into his aunt and her family. He had imagined walking past Wooyoung's house one day and leaving a letter behind, one of gratitude and apology.

He had never planned on this, talking to Wooyoung like this or befriending him. He had wanted to bury his admiration in the coal mines of his home, to wash away the red-colored feeling in the black tar. 

But then Wooyoung had volunteered, and all of San's senses had gone into lockdown. 

And then there had been no questions as to whether to volunteer or not. 

He simply had. 

***

"If you're uncomfortable with this, you have to tell me," Wooyoung says quietly. He's frowning, teeth gnawing on the swell of his lip, clearly saddened by something. District 4's crowd had been distraught, but they'd both handled it just fine, so San doesn't understand. 

Hongjoong had told them that a couple in a relationship using two cabins was abnormal and that it was safer for them to share one when the train had returned after maintenance. It's why Wooyoung is sitting on San's, well, their, bed, looking both like he fits in and like he wants to burst out of his skin.

When the Capitol correspondent asked how they were doing, Wooyoung had smiled at him, lover-like and sweet, and San had leaned in, giving him a deep kiss, their foreheads touching. He knew it would undoubtedly make it on the front page, a grid of four pictures in the upper right corner, center if the editor felt particularly interested in the shot. 

This act will have to go on forever. He knows that too.

San takes off the blazer, emerald green with coal motifs that glow and hangs it on the rack with a hanger. He'll fold it and keep it inside later when the sweat has dried. 

"Uncomfortable with what?"

Wooyoung scratches the inside of his wrist. He's not wearing his blazer either, but unlike San's own silk shirt, Wooyoung's is made of lace, putting a lot of his skin on display in a tasteful, classy manner. 

And San is just a man. It's hard not to be distracted when it's the subject of all his affection since he understood what it feels like to love someone. 

"The PDA. I just… I feel like I forced you into this."

San shakes his head. It seems they’ll have this conversation and variations of it every once in a while. San has a treasure chest for it, of reassurances he can give Wooyoung. He’ll make sure he never runs out.

"I wouldn't do it if I minded it."

Wooyoung smiles without humor. 

"We would die if we didn't. That's a good reason to not mind it. That's the part that irks me."

San loosens his collar and walks to Wooyoung, sitting on his knees in front of him with his hands holding onto the other's. He's terrified out of his mind, but maybe truths don't have to be hidden for the rest of his life. 

Wooyoung can know and not do anything about it. It'll be more of a relief to San if that was the case. 

"What if I told you I didn't mind it because it's you? What if I told you I wanted it in fact? Despite everything?"

It takes Wooyoung time to realize what San says, but when it dawns, his eyes widen.

"There is no pressure here, Young-ah,” San scrambles to explain. “I'm here regardless of whatever you want from me, no matter what it is, big or small. If you want to kiss me in a crowd for the cameras to keep us alive, you have permission to do it. If you want to crawl into my bed at two in the morning away from the rest of the world because you want to, you can do that too. I don't need a label or a promise or a forever. Anything is just as good as long as you're happy and safe."

Wooyoung doesn't answer him with words, his warm hand cupping San's cheek before he leans in to kiss his forehead. 

It's enough. It's more than what San expected. 

"I don't know what I—"

"Nothing," San insists. "You don't have to do anything. I'm here. Always. Always."

The only ceiling light San had switched on is on one side of the cabin. It casts its glow in a way that makes Wooyoung’s face seem like a game of shadows and light, the angles of his face sharper, the curves softer. The highlighter dabbed high on his cheek shimmers. San feels like a cat as his gaze keeps catching on it, and Wooyoung makes a disgruntled sound, leaning in closer with both his hands on San’s face. 

“Wait for me,” he whispers, his breaths against San’s face with how close they are. 

“Wait for me,” he repeats, eyes scrunched shut.

San doesn’t ask him what he’s supposed to wait for. It’s such a vague statement. It could mean a lot of things, but hope sparks. Soon, it’ll catch fire.

San has always been ready to burn, to be set on fire till his blood turns to coal.

“Always,” San whispers. 

Even if you take ages. Even if you never get where I am. Even if you walk with me for years and decide to turn back one day. 

Even if.

Even if.

***

The rest of the Victory Tour is a blur but also not. In the moment, when they’re facing a grieving community, every second is a hundred years, and every breath Wooyoung takes beside San is a frame of reference for how much time has passed. 

District 6 and 9 are the hardest because they’d wiped out the tributes together and there is rightful rage in the eyes of the onlookers. 

Wooyoung’s words tremble in 9 just as much as San’s in District 6. 

Districts 5 and 7 are comparatively easier, nothing as intense as their experience in District 1 had been. 

It’s in District 10 that the game catches them by the throat and topples over the stability they’d painstakingly created. The chants of it’ll be okay had been getting believable by the day, but it falls apart under the afternoon sun, in the brightest high of daylight.

There had been a little boy, Chan, in the Games, thirteen and bubbly. Wooyoung had struck up an alliance with him after getting separated from San on the third day. 

(Hongjoong had pulled San out of bed to show him the videos, saying that he needed to understand. He understands now. He wishes he didn’t.)

Wooyoung hadn’t joined forces because he needed an ally. He had just gotten attached. 

Chan was round-eyed. Small. 

Delicate bones and delicate skin. 

Breakable. 

It was easy to see why Wooyoung had taken one look at him and hid him in his chest as the Careers ripped into the tributes from District 8. 

And then the Gamemaker had designed a trap. There had been an announcement of an additional bow near the creek when Wooyoung had gone scouring for food. Chan was supposed to stay in the cave. He wasn’t supposed to have seen the way the strings of Wooyoung’s bow were fraying. 

Unfortunately, he had. 

It was graphic, Chan’s death. The Gamemakers had sent hounds. 

San can see the image still, the way Wooyoung’s trembling hands had picked up the bloody bow minutes after the boom of the cannon. 

How he’d fallen to his knees in the pool of blood and flesh, how he’d been silent for so long that San wished he’d been there, wished he could have taken Wooyoung away so he didn’t remember all of it in meticulous detail. 

Wooyoung skips over parts of his speech now, looking back at San as if he is looking for strength. He finishes, somehow. 

San is proud of him.

A boy in the crowd, a few years younger than them kisses his hand and raises it, a three-finger salute. All of District 10 follows.

It’s forgiveness. 

A silent we understand you .

It comes with a hefty price.

San doesn’t realize anything is wrong until Hongjoong gasps two feet away from him. 

The Peacekeepers march forward with vicious intention built into their steps. 

Wooyoung screams, hands reaching forward as he gets ready to step into the line of fire. San’s body moves on its own. He drags Wooyoung to him, registering Hongjoong trying to hurry to shove them behind the doors as they close.

The boy is on his knees on the podium, looking at them with a small smile before he closes his eyes.

They don’t see the gun go off, but they do hear it. 

There is the thud of a body hitting the floor right after.

Wooyoung tries to leap forward and claws at the metal door with his bare hands, and San has to pull on all the reserves of his energy to stay anchored, to hold onto Wooyoung and unhear the animalistic screams he’s letting out.

“It seems your victor is distraught over the loss of the tribute of our district, Mr. Kim,” the mayor of 10 says in amusement, a careful eye on the Capitol envoys as he does, ignoring the boy outside who'd just been shot dead.

San watches Hongjoong’s chest heave as he nods. This is his second time. It must not be easy for him, but he’s holding on somehow.

San’s still in shock, but Wooyoung screams again, curses out of his mouth, and takes advantage of the momentary loosening of San’s grip on him. He flies out of his hands to attack the Capitol envoys who are watching him with rapt attention.

San’s hands don’t quite get a grip of Wooyoung’s thick blazer, but Hongjoong gets in the way, his fingers digging into his arms so tightly, San knows they’ll leave indents. There is also the drone of Hongjoong’s voice as he furiously whispers something that causes Wooyoung to freeze.

Whatever he has said is strong enough for Wooyoung to turn and take the two steps that separate him from San and bury himself in his arms, slumping like dead weight. 

San hears the whispers of they really are in love, there is no way he could have calmed him down so easily if they weren't, I bet the Capitol will love to be let in on this.

Sick. He feels sick. There is a young boy’s corpse right outside the automated doors, and here these bastards are, giggling over them. 

Romanticizing parts of a trauma response.

San hadn’t expected anything better, but it still hurts, to know he breathes the same air as people these inhumane, people who live guilt-free lives on the blood and tears of people they considered inferior to them.

Wooyoung chokes and shudders against him, and San spins on his heels, carrying most of his weight as he walks down the hallway in the path Hongjoong leads them in.

He wants Wooyoung out of their field of vision. He’ll crawl and carry him if he has to.

He closes his eyes for a moment as they wait for the elevator. 

The boy’s image is seared into his brain forever.

One more fallen for no good. 

One more because of them.

It’ll never get easier, San thinks and holds Wooyoung tighter.

***

Hongjoong is seething by the time they get to the train, his brows stuck in a seemingly permanent frown. 

San helps Wooyoung sit on the bed, straightening up to grab some water for him, only to find that Wooyoung doesn't want him to let go. 

Hongjoong stands at the threshold, wringing his hands for a tense few minutes before he speaks. It’s clear he isn’t about to praise them for stellar behavior. 

"I don't know how many times I have to tell you this, but your curse is to live. Setting yourself and San up to die like this when you have killed so many people to keep yourselves alive is unforgivable. If you didn't intend on living, dying in the arena would have been the best choice. Someone who actually wanted to live would have gotten an opportunity."

San's mouth tastes bitter when he swallows, but Wooyoung's hand grabs his wrist when he goes to speak up. 

"He's right," Wooyoung says, defeat in his voice and the slump of his shoulders. "They're looking for an opportunity to take us out. I don’t want to give that to them."

"But you didn't do anything. You were sad, Wooyoung."

Hongjoong's answering chuckle is filled with sarcasm even if San hadn’t directed his words at him. 

"We live in a world where sadness gets you killed, San. You'll be better off once you understand that."

Wooyoung barely says anything the entire night. He doesn't stop clinging to San either. When he finally falls asleep, still in their clothes from the ceremony, San takes his shoes off, rearranging the duvet on top of him before he gets off the bed. 

The lights are on in Hongjoong's cabin, golden light leaking into the darkness of the hallway. The train's vibrations thrum inside San's chest.

He knocks. 

"Come in," Hongjoong says. He's looking at a journal of some sort, a half empty crystal glass of whiskey in front of him. 

"What did you tell him?" San asks, getting right to the point. 

"I told him a lot of things. You'll have to be more specific."

Letting out a sigh of frustration, San forces himself to not give in to the urge to yell. Hongjoong means well, he knows, but Wooyoung is so vulnerable, he deserves some more kindness and consideration. 

"What did you tell him when he tried to attack them? He looked terrified, like you'd threatened him with something even worse than the Games."

Hongjoong closes the journal, picking up the glass to swirl the liquid inside it with a manic look on his face.

The pause feels like it drags on for a millennia. San has learned to wait. 

"I told him he'd get you killed, that everything he does will affect you first before it comes for him." 

"Hyung, that's not true." It can't be, can it?

"Oh but it is, San. They know he cares about you. It's a double-edged sword you see? You fake it enough to make them think it's real, but the realer you make it seem, the more they think you are each other's weaknesses, so yes, everything he does comes back to bite you before it does him. Capitol takes your loved ones first before they take you."

Hongjoong's gaze flicks over his face with something softer now. 

"It's what terrifies me, you know? Because it's real. It's in everything you do. This thing between you two is as real as it gets, no matter what you think right now."

San leaves the room with his heart in his throat pounding to the beat of the drums that played on the day of the tribute parade. 

Wooyoung's crying in his sleep when San gets back. He strips out of his blazer, not bothering to change out of the rest of it as he drags Wooyoung in close, burying his nose in his hair.

He feels like he's stepped into a maze. It's true. He has, and Wooyoung is stuck here with him.

Maybe if someone had told San this is how it would go, he would have done something to stop Wooyoung from volunteering, but then again, he had noticed him first for his kindness and then the care he had for the people around them. This was inevitable, Wooyoung signing himself away for something like this. 

If not the Games, he would have wasted away in the mines, or started a rebellion. 

It would be unfair to think this happened because they were ignorant though because there is no possible way neither of them knew what would be on the other end of the Games. 

It's just that now that they're weeks into a win that has been life-changing to say the least, San realizes that it was not just him who walked into the Games with the resignation that he'd die. 

It was Wooyoung too. 

That's why he's acting up, having a hard time swallowing the hard pill that the victor's life is.

Maybe people might wonder what's so bad about being the last one standing in a brutal game like that, but the dead don't have to deal with the burden. 

It's the ones living who have to. 

And fortunately or unfortunately, they are alive.

Wooyoung's breathing stutters before a scream follows, and San pulls him closer, muffling the sound against his chest as he drops his voice to whisper reassurances.

It takes a few minutes, minutes that feel like hours, amplified and tense and worn out before he calms down and melts into San, his veiny fingers bunching up the fabric of his shirt in a desperate grip.

San hums, a little melody he'd heard on his nights spent outside the taverns, trying to get Wooyoung's screams and the thud of a body on the floor out of his mind. 

Wooyoung sighs against San, a heavy, relieved one and only wakes up two more times.

***

There are fingers drawing shapes on San's chest when he wakes up. If not for the memory and knowledge of how Wooyoung feels against his body, San would have instantly gone into flight mode. 

As it is, his heart rate still picks up, it'll be long before that instinct is tamped down, but the scent of smoke and rose oil is calming along with the steadiness of Wooyoung.

"I am sorry about yesterday."

His voice is oddly stable like his breathing. It's like he'd gone diving and suddenly has found clarity after being underwater.

"You have nothing to apologize for." San's voice is more a croak than anything from disuse.

The finger stops dragging over his chest for a few moments before it resumes. It's a different shape now. 

A lily, San thinks, but he isn't sure. 

"Yes, I do. There's a lot I have to apologize for."

San doesn't get what Wooyoung means, but he doesn't get time to ask because Wooyoung tilts his head, staring at him at an angle that can't be too comfortable before he kisses his jawline.

Casual affection like this is not new from Wooyoung, but there's something here that makes him ache. Maybe it's the combination of the events from yesterday and the warm, domestic aura right now, with the sun casting the first rays of dawn into their cabin through the gaps in the blinds and falling on Wooyoung's collarbones and face in slits. 

San takes a shaky breath, sitting up as Wooyoung strips his shirt. Suddenly, there's more of Wooyoung's skin than San has ever seen. Sure, they mostly dressed together for the events right from when they volunteered, but San had never risked looking back at Wooyoung to check him out. They always did the count, just to stop things from getting awkward. It's probably why San's throat feels parched as his gaze maps the golden territory that is Wooyoung's skin. 

He's all toned up, but he's also thinner than he had been during the Games, ribs bulging under his skin when he breathes. He looks small, leagues more so than San even if he knows they aren't drastically different in size.

The thought is something that makes San force himself to look away.

"I am gonna take a shower. Go back to sleep," he says softly, voice still morning deep though not by much. His voice already has a dulcet quality built into it, at war with the image his looks paint. 

The dichotomy had been one of the few things San learned first about him. 

"Are you sure?" San asks, regretting it the next second. What the fuck was that supposed to mean?

Wooyoung smiles, a quirk of one side of his mouth. It's good that humor is still on the table, that it's not another thing Capitol has ripped away from them.

"What? You wanna come along?"

San frantically shakes his head, slumping against the mattress again. He watches the ripple of Wooyoung's back muscles as he picks up a towel and clothes for him to wear after the shower. 

What he doesn't expect is for Wooyoung to join him around twenty minutes later, shower warm. He instinctively touches his head with the intention to pat it, anticipating wet hair. 

It used to be one of his pet peeves. Going to sleep with wet hair that is, but San's been through the Hunger Games. Wet hair is the least of his worries. 

Strangely enough, his fingers land on smooth strands, unclumped. Wooyoung's hair is dry. San cracks one eye open to double-check. 

"Didn't want you to have to put the pillow out and dry it later. Go to sleep," Wooyoung explains, voice muffled with how close his mouth is to San's arm. This time he is the one to pull San to him, the bracket of his arms warm and comfortable. 

San tries to hold onto the feeling of being held, of warmth that comes from having someone in the same bed as you, a feeling he has never experienced before he met Wooyoung.

His eyes close on their own accord, feeling content in these stolen moments of daylight even amidst the thoughts of the horrors. 

***

District 11 looks at them with what feels like all the hatred in the world. There is no kindness in their eyes, not that San thinks they deserve it, but for the first time, it feels like everyone in a district has joined in on the belief that victors can't be victims.

It might be because of what happened in District 10. The stream must not have cut off as early as the Capitol would have liked it to have. 

"They hate us," Wooyoung whispers as the door closes behind them, taking the cold and distant crowd out of sight. 

"They have good reason, don't they?" San asks, just wondering aloud.

Something cracks inside Wooyoung and it shows on his face, but he nods, agreeing. 

San keeps him extra close on their tour through the markets the next day. He doesn't like the way the people scan Wooyoung from head to toe like they only see him as the problem. 

It’s what prompts him to put himself on the line of fire and look them in the eye. 

Look at me. Wish hell on me. 

And they do. 

It seems that having anger be directed at two targets works better than directing it at just one. 

***

The Victory Tour ends two days later, officially closing with the ceremony at District 12. President Waller watches them through the stream and declares that Panem will host a party for them in two weeks. 

There is no choice but to go. 

Hongjoong bows first, as if used to the status quo. San bows next, a gentle hand on the small of Wooyoung’s back.

“Is your back sore, Mr. Jung?”

Cursing internally, San makes up an elaborate story of how Wooyoung had fallen down the stairs of their home that morning, tired from the journey. 

It’s obvious to everyone that the President doesn’t believe them, that he has zoned in on the not-quite ninety-degree bow from Wooyoung through the pixels of the stream.

Fear sits lead-heavy in San’s stomach, and then, Wooyoung apologizes, bowing properly. 

It’s a consolation. 

Waller looks pleased. 

Hongjoong asks them to count their wins.

There is none, San thinks and waits for the camera to be shut off before he asks Wooyoung if he’s okay.

***

The week they get to themselves, free from onlookers, well, most onlookers that is, is not particularly eventful. It is difficult to fall back into the routine they’d established the month before, but they make it work.

Wooyoung drifts in plain sight, but San does too. The only true relief is that there are no shut doors between them.

They don’t talk about the Games, but the mundane conversations they have over laundry and the weather are appreciated. It feels like they have picked things right from where they left it incomplete on the river creek. 

Wooyoung cooks. 

(Nothing fancy. They’re bare-bone meals. San is grateful. He isn’t sure he can stomach proper food after the violent mess that the Victory Tour was.)

San does the dishes. 

Wooyoung also likes cleaning and won’t let San touch the vacuum or the automatic mop, so all San gets to do is moving the furniture around for him to clean. He’s just glad he is allowed to do at least that.

Hyperfocusing on the normal is an attempt to forget that they have one more obstacle, the party in Panem, coming up. They’ve gotten this far. They can handle the party too.

And hopefully, that will be the end of it until the next Games. 

It’s not the first lie San has told himself. It won’t be the last.

***

“What do you say, San?”

San straightens up in the chair at the sharp focused tone of Hongjoong’s voice. He has a hand on Wooyoung’s chin, two fingers delicately holding his face to the light. 

“What?” San hadn’t been listening.

“Eyeliner, yes or no?” 

Wooyoung is watching him from the corner of his eye despite his head being tilted back on the chair. He looks drop dead gorgeous, even more so when compared to all the times he’d been decked up for the Games and the Victory Tour, or maybe it’s just that San’s feelings have only grown in intensity over time.

“No. No eyeliner,” San stutters out. Wooyoung’s eyelids are already shimmering with a dark brown and gold eyeshadow gradient that makes his eyes pop. Adding eyeliner would only make him even more enticing, and San doesn’t want to reenact the Games in the Panem’s city hall, doesn’t want to see them leer and check him out everywhere he looks.

San runs a hand through his styled hair that has Hongjoong clicking his tongue at him even as he gets to work on Wooyoung’s lips. He doesn’t conceal the bottom half of his lip, lining it in its correct dimensions with a steady hand. 

The swell of it is bitten raw a little, a nervous tick, but the gloss conceals it as it spreads over the pink surface.

Wooyoung’s eyes are still on San. San smiles in what he hopes is a reassuring way and grabs the fizzy soda that had come along with the complimentary snack hamper. It’s a little too sweet, but it has a kick to it that makes him feel instantly awake.

They’re both dressed in black today, a cropped buttoned blazer for Wooyoung made out of some kind of expensive and textured brocade and a normal length velvet suit with minimal stone work for San. There are green accents here and there throughout their outfits.

Wooyoung has a delicate emerald bracelet on his wrist that connects to a small ring on his finger too, the two pieces linked with gold chains. It’s not the only accessory on him either. There is a long gold earring dangling from one of his ears and a green and gold boutonniere clipped to his blazer going with the theme they have. 

Wooyoung sits up as Hongjoong closes the lipstick container. He looks beautiful, every bit the winner. There is a bitter taste in San's mouth as he thinks it, something about the situation and how lovely Wooyoung looks warring inside his mind.

As if Wooyoung can sense his gaze on him, his eyes drift straight to him.

The smile he sends him is understated and genuine, the same one he always gives San in the quiet, when it’s just the two of them. 

It’s becoming a constant, San realizes with a jolt, the curve of his mouth, the way the dimples show when he smiles like this. San swallows, throat suddenly feeling dry.

He’s terrified of constants. He’s not used to them.

San does allow himself to smile back though, no thoughts about keeping his face neutral taking priority over returning the smile Wooyoung gives him. He has no reason to deny him that, not when he's the one knee-deep in this, not when it has no actual outcome that will benefit either of them. 

Hongjoong adjusts the blazer by giving it a hard tug and steps out of Wooyoung's space. 

“The crew will come get you in a few minutes. I might not be around the entire time, so be careful, and if anything goes wrong, call me immediately,” Hongjoong instructs and walks out, the thick fabric of his long coat whipping harshly with the force of his strides. He's supposed to be networking. There are expectations on old victors as well. 

Hongjoong can't be their guard dog for the rest of their lives.

“You look good,” San says once he's gone, keeping his eyes on Wooyoung’s face even if he has the urge to do another once over of him. It feels like he’ll cross a line if he does that though, like he’ll ruin this tentative bond they have and taint it with something vain. He's looked at him plenty when they're at home. Maybe it's just that the outside air just feels too populated with fear for San to relax and give in.

“Hello to you too,” Wooyoung says, a light teasing smile on his face. “You clean up well.”

San mumbles thanks under his breath just as there is a three-beat knock on the door. 

"Let's go?" Wooyoung asks after taking a deep breath. 

Nodding, San leads him out with a hand on his back. 

***

Apparently, President Waller will arrive late to the party. San feels a huge rush of relief as the announcement is made. The later the President is, the lesser time they have to be cautious of him.

It's been around half an hour since they arrived. It’s obvious that he and Wooyoung aren't feeling it tonight, that they’re being awkward, not because they're uncomfortable with each other, just tired of keeping their guard up constantly because they are surrounded by people who serve the Capitol out of loyalty, for power, and out of desperation.

It’s an odd combination to deal with on a daily basis.

The focus of the crowd is on them as they walk the carpet. 

They should probably do something coupley that the people around them can talk about later. Word traveled faster than light in their world after all.

Wooyoung gets to it before he can as soon as they leave the carpet and gets to the wait area, but San's too focused on the burly man from the Games team who's been tracking Wooyoung ever since they stepped in. It's probably why he flinches when Wooyoung calls his name under his breath. 

San can hear the shutters go off without a single break, media working hard to get the best shot.

“Sheesh, breathe. I don’t bite,” Wooyoung tells him, placing a palm over his chest casually. San wills his heart to slow down, and when it doesn’t, he prays that Wooyoung won’t be able to feel it through the layers of fabric.

“Oh wait,” Wooyoung suddenly says, unaware of San's crisis, unbuttoning the first few green buttons of his blazer. San barely resists the urge to look away. It's not like Wooyoung is about to strip himself naked.

When had San turned into a prude? Well, it's more of the fact that the man's eyes are still on them, so he can’t really blame himself. San wants to warn Wooyoung, but it's impossible to do it without risking a confrontation from the man. He doesn't look like he's scared of approaching them and demanding whatever it is that he wants. 

San has a feeling the night won't end well if he gives the man a chance to come over. He watches as Wooyoung obtains a boutonniere that looks the exact same as the one on his chest from the inner pocket. It's green and fresh, but some stems and leaves are painted gold for the aesthetic. 

“For me?” San asks, confused. He'd just guessed it was a statement piece for Wooyoung's outfit. 

“No,” Wooyoung says, voice serious, his index finger brushing his side swept and artistically arranged red bangs. “It’s for my boyfriend. Let me go get him real quick.”

For a second, San nearly steps out of his way so Wooyoung can go get this person until he realizes San is talking about him. He internally facepalms, silently glad for his resting bitch face that wasn’t vulnerable to instant changes of expression.

“God, you’re such an idiot,” Wooyoung murmurs like he can read San's mind. “Of course, it’s for you. Do you see a group of men lining up to get a boutonniere from me?”

San shakes his head, but can’t help it when he throws a stray glance at the man. 

If only Wooyoung knew.

“Exactly,” Wooyoung says, pulling him a little closer with one hand on the lapel of San’s jacket.

It's a little odd, how this is probably the most normal San has seen him be since they volunteered. It’s strange too, how San can’t understand how much of this is fake and real.

“Now stand still,” Wooyoung directs, carefully pinning the item to San’s chest. He pats his chest softly when he’s done, looking up at him with sparkly eyes. San’s gaze lingers on the subtle gold glitter around his eyes. 

Wooyoung licks his lips once followed by his teeth worrying his bottom lip. They’re spit slick and pinker than they normally are owing to the lipstick. San wonders what he must be thinking so hard about.

“I’m gonna kiss you, okay?” Wooyoung warns, starting to get up on his tiptoes only when San nods, bracing himself. 

Wooyoung's mouth presses gently against San’s, feather-light first and borderline insistent as he lingers. His lips are as soft, if not softer, than they look now. 

It’s supposed to be pretend, San knows, more than most, but he’s also only human, and getting a kiss from someone who was as pretty as Wooyoung was still a win, no matter which universe was in, especially if he was the same guy you were in love with for the majority of your teenage years. Perhaps fourteen-year-old San would have gone home and squealed into his pillow, twenty-one year old San only counts down in his head because good things don’t last.

He can testify to prove it.

Something is swirling in the sparkly gaze of Wooyoung when he pulls away. San feels himself spinning and turning like the tide in it. 

Wooyoung had asked him to wait, he reminds himself.

The moment lingers between them, dangerous and threatening to ruin their practiced impasse. San wants to stomp all over it and disappear because Wooyoung is the first person in years who has treated him like a person and not Choi San, the orphan no one wanted, the boy who spent his time outside the barbed wire fence in the forest, the boy who had a death wish, the nobody who won the Hunger Games.

The irony is not lost on him. That’s exactly why he knows that any step they take in each other’s directions beyond the lines they have drawn for each other is a gamble with too much at stake.

He pulls Wooyoung close anyway.

***

If San thought the outside was bad, thundering shutters and lightning flashes, the heartland of the party is worse, populated by greedy hands and greedier words. There are the ones who hail from families so rich they were practically royalty, and the ones whose grandfathers’ generation worked themselves to the bone to get here. There’s a common line both these types hover over; reveling in the luxury of excess, of being residents of the Capitol. 

Then, there are the ones who are here just for the sake of it, the ones who will walk out any moment if something came up, because they don’t care for it, the ones who don’t have an agenda to fulfill, no itinerary planned out for the night’s afterparty after afterparty. San thinks he can tolerate them better than the others because they’re only troublesome when they’re bothered.

There are the rare ones as well, who are here because they can’t afford letting an opportunity like this go, to socialize, to build their way up, whose legacy, if they succeed, will decide if their kids will belong to category one two or three decades later. 

Then, there are past victors, who are husks of who they would have become if the Games didn’t topple their entire lives. This is who San and Wooyoung will be next year and all the years after that, blending in crowds at parties meant for the victors of the Games.

It’s a circle, ever-spinning like a tornado, the eye of it seemingly calm, contrasting against the wind that wrecks the world outside of it.

“Mr. Choi, Mr. Jung,” San hears, grateful for the interruption as he turns around to see a woman holding a writing board tight to her chest. She’s flushed red, gaze flicking between the two of them. Her hair is a bright neon green, like the caps of the highlighter pens Hongjoong uses. San doesn’t understand what could have convinced her to think it looked good. It’s not his job to find out either.

There is a special private exhibition for the guests, she says. It's their turn. 

“San-ah, is something wrong?" Wooyoung asks him as they wait next to the main entrance, waiting for their cue. 

Isn't everything ? San thinks, but he doesn't say it, shaking his head instead. 

Wooyoung doesn't look convinced. He doesn't push him to answer though. 

Wooyoung's arm ends up wrapped around his bicep, San's elbow digging into his stomach though he doesn't seem to mind it judging by how he doesn't adjust his hold to angle it away. 

The hallway is empty, so it’s easier to catch steady whiffs of Wooyoung’s perfume. It’s anchoring, growing panic being quelled by every breath San takes.

The private gallery has an art exhibition consisting of mostly abstract paintings. San's never been too smart for this, for art interpretation that is, to peer curiously at the strokes of paint and craft a story out of it. District 12 isn't rich enough to have paint be a luxury its children could access. 

San doesn’t intend to, but he zones out and barely hears anything Wooyoung is saying. To his credit though, Wooyoung isn't saying much either.

When they come out of the room, the occupants of the hall have their glasses raised in a toast, President Waller standing on top of the lifted dais. He looks every bit as evil and scheming as he always does. 

Wooyoung's warmth and breathing are the only things in the room that San isn’t tuning out. 

Wind, San thinks. Wooyoung is the wind in the rock boulders San spent the better part of his days in.

It’s District 12, and the wind is speaking to San from across the creek, nothing important, nothing to be remembered.

Do you know I remember every word you said?

President Waller gives a short speech, about Hunger Games and the necessity of it, his gaze drifting towards them every now and then. San is overcome by the urge to move Wooyoung behind him, but he stays rooted, Wooyoung’s hand in his. They have a target on them anyway. He doesn’t want to make it worse.

The spotlight falls from a slanted angle on them when the President motions at them following it up with a few words about them being the highlight of the night. San is too busy hoping the President won’t talk to them that he doesn’t really register anything else.

Fortunately, that’s the way it goes. The President doesn’t come to them. Instead, there are businessmen from Capitol offering them brand endorsement deals and sponsorships. Wooyoung handles them just fine, only looking at San at points to prompt him to nod and smile. 

He follows through.

Hongjoong had told them to not make enemies tonight. 

Or ever. 

San drifts so far as the night passes that he doesn’t register Wooyoung until he snaps his fingers in front of him.

Wooyoung’s lips are stretched in a fake grin as he leans in.

“Stay with me,” Wooyoung says, his lips touching the cool metal piercing on San’s ear. It’s not intended to be flirty, the roar of the crowd is genuinely making it hard to hear anything around them. He probably has leaned in so close to avoid someone reading his lips, but San already knows by the sudden flashes that illuminate them from upstairs that this will make it on some article too, analyzed and read into, keyboard warriors of the Capitol battling it out about what lewd joke Wooyoung has whispered to his beau, if it’s a reminder of who drilled who into the mattress.

“Always,” San mumbles, letting his chin hook over Wooyoung’s shoulder for a moment. The reply comes out delayed, his lashes fluttering slowly. 

“Is this okay?” Wooyoung asks, his hands shaking as he hugs him tighter. San’s worried until he realizes it’s not because Wooyoung’s going through something, that it’s because he’s worried about San, because they can’t run away from here, not with a million cameras ready to make it storm. 

Too many people are on their case and he knows that they can’t ruin this thing now, not when the stage is all set. 

They’re not the ones who get to call in sick and go home, not the ones who get the lifeboat to save themselves, they’re the ones people would rather watch drown and sink.

They’re the spectacle.

***

A sponsor approaches them much later into the night. He’s young, probably in his late twenties, and objectively handsome except his blue and orange hair that makes him look a little cartoonish. 

He is courteous in the beginning, telling them about how he inherited his parents’ perfume company and how he understands his privilege, and so on. San even makes an effort to hear him out properly, his first solid attempt for the night.

And then, regret digs deep into him like a snowpiercer.

What irks San isn’t the man’s attempts at striking up conversation, it’s his attempts to talk to Wooyoung in a manner that is obvious that he’s flirting. He shifts his feet multiple times as the man tells Wooyoung about how he looks good tonight, about how he’d been rooting for him throughout the Games, about how he hadn’t expected him to be so petite, about how his voice is light and he’s never heard anything like that.

Wooyoung, all credit where it’s due, takes the praises with grace, but he also pulls San into the conversation multiple times, trying to not so subtly turn the man down.

The man frowns, clearly displeased, and San gets the weird urge to tackle him. He’s been toeing a line ever since he woke up, and all this tension isn’t helping matters. 

The last straw is when the man leans into Wooyoung’s space and takes a deep whiff. 

San sees red. He moves Woyoung behind him, yelling hey before he even thinks it.

“Are you sure you can handle it, Mr. Choi?” The man asks like he’d been hoping to break into San all night, all good-natured smiles from before gone. 

Wooyoung’s fingers have an iron grip on San. “San, let’s go. It isn’t worth it. Please.”

“You’re not the one who killed other people in a death game,” San seethes at the man, ignoring Wooyoung. He can feel Wooyoung root his feet to drag him, but he doesn’t budge, still glaring at the man. 

“How are you so sure I haven’t killed more?” The man asks, voice dropping, and San realizes that he’s right. 

He doesn’t know. 

Fuck. 

“You’d do well to keep your anger to yourself, Mr. Choi,” he says, leaning in menacingly. San can feel his heart pound in fear for Wooyoung, something like the rawest terror seizing hold of his veins. 

Two guards approach them as if on a tight schedule, hurried but steady, and San realizes that he’s probably fucked up things for himself and Wooyoung. He’s about to picture himself dwindling into a crack in the ground beneath him, dragging Wooyoung and Hongjoong with him by mere association, when the guards hand him a paper before leaning in and saying something to the man. 

Whatever it is that is said, it does the job. The man only throws them a cursory glance before leaving, straightening his coat and dusting off his shoulders like they were some meager nuisance.

Wooyoung is holding him so tightly, all his focus on San, patting San’s cheek to get him to look at him and not the note.

Easy, Mr. Choi. - W

San looks up to see President Waller standing just a few feet away, a drink in his hand, lime yellow and ugly just like the look in his eyes that promises retaliation should San act up again. 

Wooyoung, as if tired of the way San is looking at the paper and not at him, of how he seems to be stewing on his own, puts his arms around him and hugs him. 

“Thank you,” he says, but even beneath the steady clamor of the people in the hall, San can feel his racing heart, of fear that will exist as long as they live, of fear that is now amplified all because of San.

“I’m sorry,” San says, bunching up the paper in his hand and putting both his hands on Wooyoung’s back though delayed.

Wooyoung shakes his head, his chin rubbing against San’s shoulder lightly. 

***

Hongjoong finds them an hour later, a slightly crazed look in his eyes and a spring to his pace that isn’t from anything joyful. Wooyoung begins to explain, but Hongjoong shakes his head and tells them he knows. By the furrowing of Wooyoung’s eyebrows and the way he clears his throat, it’s obvious that he’s about to defend San’s actions to Hongjoong, but he doesn’t have to.

San had expected a tirade from Hongjoong, but all he gets is a look of mild satisfaction, of relief that makes him understand how much Hongjoong cares. 

“I shouldn’t promote this. In fact, I should be pissed, and I am, trust me,” Hongjoong tells him when Wooyoung leaves to get them a drink. 

“But I think I am more relieved by the fact that you risked it. And he would have too, if it was you.”

Awkwardly shifting on his feet, San only watches Hongjoong, at the way he’s avoiding his gaze and silently wonders if there was something he wasn’t brave enough to do, someone he wasn’t brave enough to stand up for.

“They know you care about him so they will use him against you. But if you don't show you care about him, he still gets taken. I was wrong before. If you’re going down anyway, I think you’d prefer to go down swinging for him.” 

There is a question in it, but Hongjoong is right. He’s got a far away look in his eye now, but he snaps out of it quickly and continues as if he never stopped.

“It's probably the stupidest thing you've done, but it’s also the greatest thing you will ever do, to stand by someone you love.”

The only, San thinks. The only person he loves.

***

The realization hits and sinks in slow in the moments between waiting in the laundry room for Wooyoung to separate the whites and the conversation about paying Hongjoong a visit in the evening. 

District 12, San thinks, is no longer associated with the voices of the miners in the taverns or the monotony that comes from having no actual friends or people to take care of. 

San had just been a drifting island back then.

Three months ago, he corrects. It’s not been a long time.

The only person he’d actually tried to strike up conversations with was Wooyoung. Wooyoung who came to the brook every Wednesday and Saturday evening, Wooyoung who said so much without saying much, Wooyoung who looked at San and smiled like he was a friend. 

Wooyoung, who San fell for. Wooyoung, who San thought he could watch forever. 

It’s strange how it’s the only thing he’s gotten right so far. 

District 12 now, San thinks, is Wooyoung in this house moving about, Wooyoung in the kitchen with his calloused fingers on the long knife, Wooyoung and his soul stripped bare for San to see.

“You’re being very obvious that you’re staring,” Wooyoung points out without looking at him. His index finger presses the button that gets the washing machine going, the beep that follows snapping San out of his reverie.

“San-ah?” Wooyoung calls again, tilting his head a little. It’s fox-like, playful even if it’s more of a gesture of concern. 

“You’re really pretty,” San mumbles before he repeats it. He’s thought this a thousand times, but in here, with the morning warming up to noon, the light blue tinted windows causing a limited amount of light to drift inside, San can’t help but be honest. 

“Is that the reason you were staring?”

“There are a few others,” San admits. There are dark circles under Wooyoung’s eyes, and his red hair is fading quickly. San has a feeling that he’s given up on using the color protector shampoo after seeing the price even if they have more money than they know what to do with. His roots are growing in too, now that Hongjoong isn’t dyeing it since they don’t have any public appearances scheduled. He looks normal, well, as normal as someone living with a mix of trauma and survivor’s guilt can look. 

“Like?” Wooyoung prods, leaning back on the washing machine with his hands gripping the rounded edge of it. His wrists are bony. If San didn’t eat meals with him every day, he’d think Wooyoung was starving himself. 

It’s a sign of how much their lives have changed.

For the longest time, he’d thought that if he had a room to himself and a certainty of three meals, he’d be happy. 

He wonders if Wooyoung used to think that way too, wonders how much of his thoughts have been forced to undergo metamorphosis, how much of who he thought he was has been capsized.

“Hard to explain,” San says after a minute of attempting to.

I can’t believe you’re here with me. Is it bad that I’d rather have you like this than not have you at all? 

Are you glad that I’m with you too? 

How often do you regret this?

Do you know I look at you and fall a little harder every day? 

How is that even possible when we’re both in so much pain? 

If I could, I’d sit beside your bed and take your nightmares away in a flask and drink it every night just so you can sleep through the night.

Wooyoung blinks at him, mouth parted a little, looking like he’s been ruined in every way possible, expression shuttered. Except San sees it though, in the set of his jaw and in his dark eyes, there is still the spirit, the call of it that had allowed them to survive.

Most importantly, it’s how quickly Wooyoung realizes he’s lost himself to his mind, how quickly he recovers to direct a smile for San, full lips curving upwards.

“Do you remember the reaping three years ago?” 

It’s a topic change, but not really. It seems Wooyoung is trying to make a point here.

San doesn’t have to scramble to find the memory. Every single one with Wooyoung in it is at the forefront of his mind. 

“Yeah,” he mumbles.

“You told me you didn’t think we’d ever be chosen,” Wooyoung tells him.

San had. There are flashes of Wooyoung still in his pressed shirt, crinkled around the torso, his hair slicked to the side and back, his feet hanging above the water. 

San had been right too. This year was their last reaping. You were officially out of the lot once you were over twenty-one.

“I was right,” San replies. 

“You were,” Wooyoung agrees. 

There is no victory in the I told you so this time. They had lost anyway. 

“Would you have told me if we never volunteered?” 

It takes San a long time, time that feels like it’s going excruciatingly slow, to realize that Wooyoung means his feelings. 

“No,” San says, leaning back against the wall to have something steady to hold onto. 

San had decided it when he was sixteen, just weeks after he put a name to the feeling in his chest, that he didn’t want Wooyoung to know, not because he didn’t want him, but because he didn’t want him to feel pressured.

He could be the boy with the bow whom San loved in secret forever. His knowledge of San’s feelings wouldn’t change anything. 

San had been prepared for all the ache that came with it.

“Why?” 

“Because it didn’t matter if you knew or not. I didn’t want to hope.”

Wooyoung looks out the window, his jawline so sharp San wonders if his mouth would be sliced open if he ever tried to kiss down the slope of it.

It’s traitorous, the thought, especially when he insists he doesn’t want Wooyoung to like him back, that he’s okay with living this way.

“What made you change your mind?”

“I didn’t really change my mind. Technically, I haven’t even told you,” San points out. He had stringed words together to skirt around it in the train, but he hadn’t said it outright. He’s been careful in keeping the overwhelming waterfall of feelings to himself. 

So, Wooyoung knows, but he doesn’t know. 

“But you do,” Wooyoung whispers, voice cracking. “You say so much. All the time. It’s there when you’re watching me watch the snow, when you sit on the floor outside my room with your back against the wall. It’s there right now, when I am looking at you and you’re looking at me, and all I see in your eyes is something no one has ever looked at me with.”

There are tears in Wooyoung’s eyes now, but he’s smiling, small choked breaths escaping his mouth.

“Young-ah,” San calls, but he doesn’t know what to follow it up with. He hadn’t meant to make Wooyoung feel obligated. He hadn’t known that Wooyoung noticed. 

Wooyoung smiles wider, wiping at his eyes when the tears spill over.

“I like it when you call me that. No one else does.”

“I will call you that forever. Or as long as you want me to,” San says, carefully contemplating. The tendency to leave the option open is instinctual, a part of him cautiously considering it because what if Wooyoung got tired of it? 

San will find new nicknames for him if he has to. In fact, he’ll start thinking about it as soon as Wooyoung turns around. What he will not tolerate is Wooyoung coming to hate the name and being unable to voice it because he doesn’t want to hurt San.

Wooyoung may be fierce and opinionated, but he doesn’t like hurting people.

“What do you want in return?” Wooyoung asks, and suddenly, he’s walking to San, all the combined force of his irresistible eyes on him, but he stops just one foot away. 

“Nothing,” San says easily. This has never been a hard question to answer because he might want a lot of things from Wooyoung in theory, but in reality, there is nothing really, nothing he wants from Wooyoung. He will take what he gives freely, but he will never ask for more.

San keeps his gaze on the mole below Wooyoung’s eye, the one he used to call dot.  

“Are you sure?” Wooyoung asks, and there’s something inside him crumbling. San can see it, but he doesn’t know what. 

San nods. 

Wooyoung stares at him for a few more seconds, closing the distance with a light step into San’s arms. It’s impossible to describe the way Wooyoung hugs. He leans in close and makes sure they’re touching from head to toe, crowding into San’s space with all the innocence and insistence of someone who wants to protect, all the certainty of someone who loves. 

San is loved. It doesn’t matter which way it is.

San archives it in the deepest chambers of his heart, the way Wooyoung melts into him, the way he slumps against San a few moments into it, like if San isn’t going to fall apart in his arms, he will take the opportunity to do it himself. 

A hand on the small of his back, the other cupping the back of his head, fingers through his light red hair, San lets him, smiling when Wooyoung’s fingers slide to his head, buried in the hair at the base of his neck.

I will hold you through all your breakdowns and keep doing it until the end of time, until the end of us, whichever comes first.  

***

Cooking dinner. 

Wooyoung’s handwriting isn’t the prettiest or the neatest, but San has always thought that there is a whole lot of history embedded in the lines and curves of it. He sets the note down, residual panic from whatever he’d been dreaming about receding. Wooyoung had been sitting on the loveseat when San fell asleep on the couch. 

They were talking about flowers. San doesn’t remember where the conversation halted, when he’d inevitably lost to sleep. 

The big clock above the front door says it’s 9:17. The last time San had looked at it, it had been a little past 7. Had he really slept for two hours?

Wooyoung is pouring what looks like some kind of curry into the bowls when San gets there. He looks like he’d napped too, eyes red and face a little swollen, but his skin is radiant, not as pale as it had been for the past few days. 

“Hey,” Wooyoung greets, still scooping out the curry into the bowls. 

San waves, running a hand through his hair so that they don’t obscure his vision. 

“I hope you like katsu curry,” Wooyoung says before turning around and putting the pot in the sink. 

“I do. Thank you for cooking,” San says, walking around the counter to help with the dishes. 

“Leave it. You can do it after eating,” Wooyoung tells him, grabbing him by the wrist and drawing him away from the sink. 

San’s setting the bowls down on the dining table when Wooyoung brings rice and water. He doesn’t look away though, gaze lingering on San. 

“What is it?” San asks, when the staring doesn’t stop even after he straightens up. 

“Your hair is getting long.”

As if to prove it, Wooyoung’s fingers bury themselves in it. San shivers.

“I’ve been meaning to cut it, but Hongjoong hyung has been busy,” he manages. He would have cut it himself, but he’s careless when he does, having grown up never having to worry about his appearance. He couldn’t afford to. 

Right now though, they have no clue when a new Capitol schedule would be announced and they’d have to go running to Panem. What he looks like matters now, more than it ever has before.

Wooyoung hums. “I can cut it if you want me to?” He offers easily.

The image is so dreamlike that San doesn’t even think twice before he agrees.

That night finds him perched on the closed toilet seat in Wooyoung’s bathroom after dinner, Wooyoung’s long fingers buried in his hair as he carefully snips at the ends of his hair.

“Did you learn it from someone?”

Wooyoung chuckles, but he doesn’t reply as quickly as San expects him to, like he’s thinking about a memory and considering how to say it. “My eomma used to do it for me. And Gaeul hated doing it for me, so I kind of started doing it myself. Eomma used to make me sit in front of the big window in the attic. It was a little tinted so if she cut it in the morning, I could see the reflection, like a mirror. So I had a base to work with when I began doing it myself.”

Now that San thinks about it, he can see it, the way Wooyoung’s bangs had been a little shorter at the front when he met him first in the forest. There is a timeline to his hair, how it had gone from looking choppy all around to nearly seamless somewhere around when they both turned sixteen.

Somewhere in that space, Wooyoung had become independent, had grown into himself at the realization that his mother was no longer around, would never be, and that for the rest of his life, it’d be him alone. 

“Do you miss her?”

Wooyoung’s fingers halt in San’s hair before the motions pick up again. 

“Not as much as I used to.”

It’s honest. San relates. All he remembers of his parents are the random outings to the Hob and dinners at the table with the chipped edges. With every year, he feels like their faces are getting blurry despite his endless attempts to hold on tight.

“That’s understandable,” San says, tilting his head when Wooyoung directs him to with a hand on his nape. 

They don’t speak much after, but Wooyoung does ask him to stay, half of his face hidden under the covers. 

San doesn’t have to think twice.

***

Wooyoung argues constantly with Hongjoong over simple things, slamming his hands down on the oak table, his face red with fury. Sometimes, San doesn’t even listen in. It’s not that they leave him out. It’s just that he’s not interested in the cause. He wants the world to be a better place, but he also knows his priority is Wooyoung. Besides, sitting inside the four walls of the house and arguing about what could have been better won’t do anything. 

That’s why San chooses to alternate between looking out the window at the snow and then at the pair debating the new happenings in the Capitol. They have so much to talk about, so much rage stemming from plans they think could have helped the districts if the Capitol was just a little bit humane.

On the rare times San does listen in, he thinks Wooyoung and Hongjoong could start a revolution. 

He nearly says it too.

You could win a war. I’d fight with you. I’d fight for you.

It’s too idealistic though. Especially when they’re all dealing with their demons still, when they all wake up in the middle of the night thinking they’re still on the wet bed of leaves in the game arena. 

Maybe someday, they would fight though San wishes selfishly that the someday will never come.

Wooyoung storms away to the kitchen, another argument culminating without a conclusion, having reached a standstill. This happens all the time. Hongjoong never walks away, no matter if he's right or wrong, but Wooyoung does. 

There’s a steady pattern to his rage. He climbs to his feet, throws a look of disappointment and rage at Hongjoong, and storms to the kitchen in quiet, calculated steps.

San never follows him right away. 

Hongjoong tells him he should.

“He is not angry at us. He is angry at the world,” he says, taking a sip of the ginger tea Wooyoung had made him. It must have cooled down, but Hongjoong doesn’t seem to mind the temperature. 

It’s nothing San doesn’t know, that inside Wooyoung, there is a heartbroken boy who has had to make do with the hand life had dealt him. That he has more than enough reasons to be angry at the world, but he still likes creating the illusion that Wooyoung can have his space.

Wooyoung is hunched over the counter when San gets there. Usually, he’d put a hand on his shoulder, reassuring, a gentle I’m here for you for all the demons Wooyoung is fighting away on his own.

San doesn’t know what’s different today, but his arms have a mind of their own as he gathers Wooyoung to his chest, Wooyoung’s back pressed to his front. His frame is so small, folding in even further as he grips San’s hands and pulls him over him tightly as if San were a shield.

I’ll be your sword, your shield, the closed window to keep the eyes away, the moment right before you fall asleep when you’re still coherent. I’ll turn into everything good for you.

San puts his chin on Wooyoung’s shoulder, closing his eyes, inhaling rose oil and eucalyptus and wood, at the bite to his scent that nearly gets drowned in the delicate overtones of it. 

“Let it go,” San says, whispering it to Wooyoung’s ears.

And like a house of cards, Wooyoung does. 

He falls, shatters, and San holds him through it, puts him back together as best as he can. 

If he had to keep looking for Wooyoung’s pieces his entire life, he’d still consider it the greatest thing he’s ever done.

***

They had stood there together with their fingers on the guns stolen from the cornucopia, the barrels of it pressed against each other's foreheads. 

It hadn't been a possibility to be considered, but Wooyoung had worked it out as soon as his gaze landed on the guns. San's pleas had fallen on deaf ears. 

Fifteen days spent surviving, spinning a game of lies to live to see one more day. And the last day had arrived.

Walking in, San had never figured that he’d walk out of this. He had had nothing to lose. It was his one big sacrifice. To be remembered by someone because no one else would otherwise. No family, no friends.

Those were the bonuses. The reality was that he could ensure Wooyoung’s victory with his death, but at that moment in the Games, standing there barely breaths away from Wooyoung, San had realized he had something to lose.

Wooyoung didn’t know he loved him, and San didn’t want him to know, but he’d lose everything else, the opportunity to take care of him if only from a distance, the privilege of being there to hold him through his breakdowns.

For a moment, San had wanted to live with Wooyoung. 

The next best plan was to die with him.

"Will you die with me?" Wooyoung had asked then, as if reading San’s mind, but it was also for the Gamemakers to hear, for Panem to hold their rotten breath and spill crocodile tears for two souls who didn't have much to lose except their lives. 

San had nodded anyway, had leaned forward and closed his eyes as the cold mouth of the gun pressed against his forehead, as the gun in his own hand pressed against Wooyoung’s. 

There were tears in Wooyoung's eyes, the cut on his cheek reopened and bleeding, but there was something like relief too, like a last victory against the Capitol if the plan didn't work. 

The plan did though. They had both won.

San closes the book in his lap, looking up to see that Wooyoung is already looking at him, the sleeves of his t-shirt pulled to the center of his palms. His legs are folded, knees pressed against his chest. 

He looks like he’s as fragile as he is strong. San inhales, trying desperately not to reach out and touch. 

It clicks slowly, somewhere in the background, that he’s wearing San’s shirt.

“We won,” San says, and Wooyoung nods, putting his chin on top of his knees, eyes still on San.

They did. 

Some days victory, no matter how gory and violent it was, needed to be appreciated, or they’d go insane.

***

Winter is on its last rungs when Wooyoung mentions wanting to give some of the food away to the people at Hob. The Capitol guards had visited with more groceries than usual in the morning. It was obvious that they wouldn’t be able to finish it before the next one. 

San doesn’t know the protocol, but he feels like there should be something to stop such activities. Capitol didn’t like it when people stood together. Groups scared them. Asking Hongjoong about it would instantly make him shoot it down. 

“We’ll go tonight,” San says, a plan already forming in his head. 

Wooyoung is quick to agree. They spend the afternoon carefully setting aside everything they don’t need. Wooyoung is generous, giving away all the chocolate bars San knows he likes to  munch on when he has a good day. 

San realizes that what Wooyoung is going through is motivated by a feeling of wanting to give something away out of guilt than a random situation brought about by the excess set of groceries. 

It’s just as valid. 

It’s for Wooyoung’s peace of mind. 

And there isn’t much San wouldn’t do for Wooyoung.

They are in the living room a little after five, Wooyoung wrapping a scarf around San’s neck when the doorbell rings.

“Coming,” Wooyoung yells before knotting the fabric of the scarf and patting San’s chest once. 

It’s Hongjoong. 

He takes one look at the bags San is surrounded by and clicks his tongue. 

“You guys are so predictable,” Hongjoong says, wagging a finger between the two of them.

“Hyung, there is so much—” Wooyoung begins.

“You can’t,” he replies, quick to cutting him off. “I got extra stuff too. There’s nothing you can do about it. This is what they want. For you to go running to the people with your privilege. This is another one of their games, Wooyoung-ah. They’ll never leave us alone. Get that through your head.”

San can’t see Wooyoung’s face, but he doesn’t have to to know the look of helplessness and disappointment.

“If you want to, we could still visit the Hob and buy some stuff to help the shopkeepers out. Capitol can’t do anything about that.”

It’s a consolation. It’s clear as day on Hongjoong’s face that the only reason he’s offering the idea is because Wooyoung looks distraught.

“San-ah, can we?” Wooyoung asks, spinning on his heels.

“Yeah, of course,” San says, nodding.

“We’ll take my car,” Hongjoong says, turning around with a nod to himself.

They have a car in the garage too, a sapphire blue jeep that is sparkling new. It comes with the house, but neither of them had found enough peace to ask Hongjoong to give them a few driving lessons. The elder had offered a couple of times. 

It is what it is.

Hongjoong has a red jeep, a slightly older model than the one they have.

“Were you going to walk with those bags?” Hongjoong asks as he turns the steering, the jeep peeling out of the driveway of his house. 

“Yeah. It’s not that far,” San answers, looking at Wooyoung’s profile from the backseat.

Hongjoong laughs. “It would have taken you at least four hours.”

San knows. He’d asked if Wooyoung was okay with walking that far. There was no other option after all. There were guards who were assigned to take them, but it didn’t feel very smart to use them to do something they didn’t want the Capitol to find out.

“It’s only four hours, hyung,” San repeats. 

They had walked around for weeks inside the arena. Hongjoong should know they are fully capable.

Hongjoong’s eyes find him in the mirror, but San can’t decipher the expression. 

The trip to the center of District 12 is only easy until they reach the residential area. There is the clamor of the mining workers getting home, children waiting on the roads for their parents to come home. Some of them have already made it, bending at the knees to pick up the younger ones, patting the older kids on their shoulders and ruffling their hair. 

The noise of the engine must feel loud in the district since most people thought that only the mayor owned a car. 

The looks thrown at them aren’t particularly affable tonight. 

San wonders if something terrible has gone down, and then he reminds himself that for people who lived in poverty, working endlessly in mines they know will cut their lives short one day, this show of privilege must feel like a joke being made at their expense. 

He'd known this on the day they returned as victors, that the sympathy wouldn't last very long. He had seen how they treated Hongjoong. 

They probably should have parked the jeep around the podium and walked, but what’s done is done.

The shopkeepers at the Hob are closing up shop when they get down from the jeep. Miyeon, one of the older women who used to give San the extras she had in her little bakery, takes a while to recognize him.

“San, my child!” She exclaims, coming around the makeshift counter to give him a hug.

“Hello, halmeoni,” he replies, smiling.

“Have you not been eating well?” She asks, slapping his arm.

“I have. He’s been taking care of me,” San says, taking a step aside so that she can see Wooyoung too. 

“Ah, Wooyoung-ah, you came too,” she says, calmer, pulling him into a gentle embrace, telling him something San doesn’t get to hear amidst the din.

They pay her for the baked goods. She’d been about to give them away to the children in the neighborhood. 

San had been one of them once. 

Wooyoung shakes his head when she extends the bag to him, filled to the brim with puffed pastries and sweets. 

“Our treat,” he says, covering her hands with his. The Hob isn’t well-lit, but San sees her eyes shine anyway.

Miyeon is the first and last one gracious enough to extend a warm welcome. 

The others at the Hob treat them like they belong to the Capitol, eyes flicking over Wooyoung’s hair and San’s shoes, lingering on Hongjoong’s watch and their wallets. They're not dressed up, but their clothes aren't worn out. Hongjoong looks like he’s used to it, merely choosing items randomly and paying for them without any seeming plan. Motivated by it, San does the same. 

Glass ware, stone carvings, recycled paper, coffee ink. There’s so much he and Wooyoung get.

When they leave, Hongjoong leaves the items in the aisle next to the Hob, gesturing for them to follow.

“They’ll take it back. They always do.”

San must have felt hesitant to give things away months ago, when he’d been living on the daily wages he made working in the mine and the offhand jobs here and there, but what he has now is blood money, an endless pit of it. So he doesn’t mind giving the items away. 

Hongjoong suggests visiting the tavern on their way back. San knows it won’t go well, but Wooyoung agrees before he can shoot it down.

There aren’t many people when they get there. The ones who are present are either too drunk to pay attention to them or too present to ignore them. 

They pick a corner table, Wooyoung hovering close to San. 

The server has a displeased look on his face when he takes their orders, but San powers through the order, Hongjoong busy talking to Wooyoung about one of the framed pictures on the wall with their mayor.

It’s anxiety-inducing, sitting in a quickly filling bar with the power divide so obvious and present. There are men at the tables counting their coins before ordering drinks. 

San wants to leave .

He watches the sky darken outside, taking occasional sips of his ginger beer and not contributing much to the conversation between Wooyoung and Hongjoong. They’re not saying anything meaningful either, filling the silence with random topics to have a reason to stay longer. 

“Who let these fuckers in here?” San hears a man shout. He’d just walked in with a pleasant smile, putting the satchel with his tools on the chair and ordering a beer before his gaze had fallen on them. 

Hongjoong is the one to get up first, slapping a wad of cash on the table and tugging San up by the elbow, gesturing with his chin at Wooyoung to get a move on. 

“They are murderers! I would rather have seen them die in the fucking game than see them parade their money around like this! If they cared about us, they’d share their money with us. Why should we accommodate them in our homes and bars when they haven’t done anything for us?” 

It’s a harangue, his voice booming as some of the men including the servers try to hold him back. 

San hears him keep going even as they rush out of the bar. 

Wooyoung’s breathing is labored, his hand painfully tight around San’s. 

San wants to comfort him, tell him that the man is mad, but he’s dealing with it himself too. 

We killed for you. We killed for you. 

San gets into the jeep, one last look thrown at the tavern, the golden lamps outside it, knowing that he might just never come back here again. 

We killed for you. We killed for you.

His heart folds in on itself and whispers something that makes him sober up almost instantly.

No, you killed for him. 

***

There is the overwhelming sense of hollowness in the days that follow, triggered by the man’s outburst and the constant of the lingering effects of the Games. It devours him whole and then spits him back out, only to do it again. San barely gets out of bed, barely manages to shower, barely eats, the space in the house making him feel the emptiest he’s ever been all of a sudden.

The house suddenly reminds him of the arena, of fear that he could taste in his mouth, of fear that he could smell in the air. It doesn’t make sense that something that didn’t hit months ago is hitting him now.

Sure, he knew he couldn’t love the house, not in its entirety, but this is where Wooyoung is, where San is supposed to spend the rest of his life in. It’s devastating to no longer associate any type of peace with the four walls San has grown to become familiar with. 

He just hopes it is a phase, a phase he will overcome.

Wooyoung stays away the first few days, four, San counts, only coming to give him his food and push the hair away from his forehead. All San wants to do is crawl to the other’s room, fall asleep with his breathing in his ears so he won’t wake up, mouth open in a silent scream from a nightmare where the hounds rip Wooyoung apart.

Stay with me, stay with me, stay with me. 

San doesn’t want to be alone, but he doesn’t know if he has the freedom to reach for Wooyoung when he’s dealing with the same things San is, when he’s also handling the additional grief of having an alive family who won’t spare him a single glance.

It’s an age-old tale of sacrifice, of wanting to die for someone and wanting to live, of living without many choices of your own, of good people who don’t know who they are anymore.

“You can’t keep doing this,” Wooyoung says on the fourth day when he comes to take San’s plates away. He had barely touched his food. 

He cranes his neck to look Wooyoung in the eye, suddenly registering the way his skin is ashen, hair looking like it’s seen better days, back to how he looked like in the beginning when San had hovered around him with the thought that he was fading away.

“Are you okay?” San asks, sitting up, holding onto Wooyoung’s forearm. Wooyoung’s watery gaze flicks to his grip on his hand, his mouth wobbling before he falls into San, hugging him so tightly San feels the dying warmth in his chest spark.

“Am I okay?” Wooyoung asks, his voice wet. “Am I okay?” He repeats, voice cracking.

“Young-ah, what’s wrong?” 

Wooyoung pulls away from him, but stays close, his hands clasping San’s desperately.

“You weren’t really here. At all. It was.. I was so worried. I didn’t know what to do,” Wooyoung sobs, ducking to rest his forehead on their clasped hands.

“I was here though,” San says even if he understands what Wooyoung means.

“You weren’t , and I didn’t know if you wanted me here, if I was helping or not. I just…”

They have to live together for life. San can’t lie to him about this. He has to be honest. They only have each other. 

Wooyoung needs reassurance that San wants his help. This is the only way they’ll be able to help each other.

“One thing you should know about me is that I will always, always want you here. No matter what I’m going through, no matter how I act, okay?” 

Wooyoung nods, eager and earnest like he’s saving this forever, like he’s writing it down and framing it somewhere in the innermost corners of his mind where he can see it constantly, remind himself of how much San needs him.

“You closed the door,” Wooyoung tells him later. 

San had. He’d kept the door shut to keep Wooyoung away in case his nightmares had him waking up disoriented and violent.

“I was scared. In all my dreams, you get hurt,” San says, honest.

Wooyoung’s smile is equal parts agony and fondness. “Mine too. Guess we will just have to stick close to each other to keep the nightmares away, hm?”

“I guess,” San agrees, opening his arms before Wooyoung falls into him again, breeze and the first touch of roseoil rain against his skin.

***

It’s just when they are settling back again that they all receive a message from the Panem External Affairs office that the annual Panem Gala is coming up in a week. 

San doesn’t particularly mind that they have to attend gatherings like these. He’d rather they do this than anything else for the Capitol. That’s why he doesn’t see any problem with the invitation until he walks in on Hongjoong and Wooyoung talking in the living room.

They’re arguing over hair color. San doesn’t think it’s a big deal until he takes a look at Wooyoung and realizes how distraught he is. 

“It’s just hair,” Hongjoong says, clearly trying not to yell.

“Exactly! It’s my hair! I hate it, hyung. I want to go back to black. Every time I look in the mirror, it’s a reminder of everything I did in the games. I don’t want a physical reminder of it, especially if I think about it enough as it is.”

Hongjoong waves a golden envelope in the air. San remembers him getting them during the Victory Tour too. It had the etiquette and dressing instructions. 

“But it says here that you can’t make drastic changes to your hair, Wooyoung. Your hair is all faded now. I will have to dye it red.”

Wooyoung rakes a hand through his hair, sighing. 

“No!”

“Young-ah,” San calls, deciding to help Hongjoong out since it doesn’t seem like there’s an option here to do what Wooyoung wants.

“San-ah, I hate it,” Wooyoung says, defeated.

“I know, but we don’t have a choice,” San says, even if it hurts him to say it.

Slumping, Wooyoung sighs again.

“I can do it for you,” San offers, throwing a look to Hongjoong to check if that’s possible. “Hyung, is that okay? He won’t need the bleach, right? You can just tell me what to do and I can do it.”

Hongjoong nods eagerly. “That’s definitely doable. Just follow the instructions on the box and be careful to section the hair properly. Are you okay with that, Wooyoung?”

Wooyoung stares at San for a few moments before he nods. 

“If he’s doing it, yeah.”

Shaking his head, Hongjoong throws San a box of dye. 

“Way to make me feel like shit, you brat,” Hongjoong mumbles before he goes on a longer speech about hair dyeing. San makes mental notes of all the instructions, committed to delivering the best dye job he will ever do.

Wooyoung is oddly more pliant than San expects him to be when he sits down on the toilet seat, head down, silky smooth and unnatural orangeish hair falling forward. 

San misses his inky black hair. 

The red hair plan had been a move Hongjoong thought would get them on the radar. San remembers seeing it for the first time, the first time he actually thought someone looked good with dyed hair. He’d associated it with the Capitol for such a long time, but somehow Wooyoung had made him forget it, had looked at him with the saddest look on his face until San had choked on his compliment.

It’s not that Wooyoung looked better with black hair, it was more the association and what it signified. 

It probably didn’t help that red had such a blatant connection to blood.

“You’re confident with this?” Wooyoung asks him after San has put a plastic robe around his neck.

“Not really, but if this is what I need to do to get you to dye your hair, I don’t really mind,” San says, honest, reading the back of the box for instructions. 

“Do you think I’m being dramatic?” 

San looks up so quickly the room spins a little. 

“What? No. You’ve had black hair all your life. And you agreed to the dye because it gave us a chance in the arena with sponsors. Right now though, it just feels like it’s being dragged forward for no reason. You’re not dramatic for wanting your hair to look like you want it to, Young-ah.”

Wooyoung nods as if satisfied. 

It’s not just hair. It’s their choices, the ones that are being taken away as the days pass, the realization that it is happening right in front of them, the way they have to live with the defeat that grabs hold of them when they know for certain that there’s nothing they can do.

San’s hands tremble as they bury themselves in Wooyoung’s thick hair, auburn giving way to the deep red that will give way to the blood red they want.

“Sometimes, I think it’d have been easier to die inside the arena,” Wooyoung mumbles. His voice is stiff.

San freezes in his ministrations. “Why… why do you think so?” He asks after clearing his throat. 

Wooyoung looks up right at him. “You know, San-ah,” he says, pausing, tired eyes on him still. “Wouldn’t it have been so much easier if we could have still been ourselves? Capitol will always have a hand over us either way, but it wouldn’t have been this suffocating.”

San understands it, but his ears feel clogged with the rush of blood. Did Wooyoung still want to die? 

Wooyoung continues. 

“But then I think that it’s good that we won. I have you. I had you before too, I know, but I didn’t have you like this, your hand in my hair or your presence in the kitchen or you looking at me when I’m asleep. I didn’t have you, but I do now. I think despite it all I am happy I have that, that I have you.” 

San blinks, unsure how to proceed with how honest Wooyoung is being. 

“You make me feel like living is worth it,” Wooyoung says like it’s the easiest thing he’s ever said. “So I may be angry at having to dye my hair or going with the flow they dictate for us, but I’d do it all if I get to have you by my side like this. There’s nothing else worth living for.”

“You… You mean that?” 

Wooyoung grabs his forearms, hair a wet dark red mess atop his head. “Look at me and tell me if I don’t.”

And San looks.

San sees.

***

The gala goes relatively better compared to the other party they’d gone for, but Wooyoung drifts so blatantly that San has no choice but to make up for his lack of interactions with his own. 

It’s the Victors’ party again, except they’ve switched roles. 

It’s fine though. They’re bound to have their bad days. Besides, there is a running pattern, one that is effortless, of them picking up after each other.

Wooyoung reels himself back in around two hours in, back in his element again with the guests who approach them, but then he starts to pull away again. He crowds closer to San, cheek against his chest as San holds him around the waist, taking them around the hall in a slow waltz that’s more hugging than anything else.

The Panem journalists definitely won’t be complaining.

“They think we don’t see them,” Wooyoung says, eyes still closed, his head over San’s chest. 

“Yeah, but we do.”

“What do you think will happen if we just dip?”

San stops himself on a laugh, registering the way the comment lacks the usual commitment Wooyoung puts into their conversations. 

“Young-ah,” he calls and gets a blink in return, eyes open now. Wooyoung is looking at him, but he’s not all here.

“Wooyoung,” he calls again. The crowd around them roars again, chanting louder for another pretentious bastard calling for a toast.

Another blink. San’s heart pounds. 

San repositions his hands over Wooyoung’s waist. He doesn’t know what else to do to help the other man stay firm on his feet.

Wooyoung still has his eyes trained on him, blinking slowly in a haze like he’s watching the world move in half the speed normal people perceive it in. The smile that takes over his face is breathtaking but slow. It feels like it takes eons for every millimeter stretch of his lips.

San squeezes his waist, his fingers sinking into Wooyoung’s side firmly, praying to any God that’s listening that Wooyoung does not feel uncomfortable.

There is a sharp intake of air from Wooyoung in the next moment, like he’s a drowning man resurfacing from murky, cold and unknown waters. 

San’s fingers freeze.

Wooyoung beams at him next, murmuring gratitude that fades into the cacophony, just as another woman approaches them.

***

There is a steady thrum under the floorboards of the house that San sometimes thinks speaks to them. Hongjoong tells them it’s just the underground stream that the house has been built over. 

San doesn’t think it sounds like water, but he lies down on the floor on some days, one ear pressed flat to the ground like a man who has lost all his marbles. Wooyoung humors him sometimes, lies down right next to him, his scent drifting into San’s nose, his hands buried in San’s hair, gentle gaze set on him.

Like he’s just there to accompany San, not to hear what the ground is saying.

Wooyoung had called him cute one day, eyes closed, fingers still mapping out unknown routes on San’s scalp.

It’s on one of those days when San is alone on the floor, Wooyoung flicking through the channels aimlessly on the TV when the world comes crashing down for the umpteenth time. It’s announced by the tell-tale jingle of a Capitol announcement. 

It’s President Waller, dressed in a regal purple brocade suit, his hair salt and pepper, slicked away from his forehead. He looks every bit as imposing as he always does. San sits up and moves back, his back hitting the couch. 

It’s instinctual for his hand to curl around Wooyoung’s shin.

Wooyoung is anxious, stiff in his seat though he does relax as San rubs circles with his thumb on the side of his leg.

Then it’s a waiting game. 

San doesn’t look at Wooyoung, terrified of seeing the blankness that he knows is reflected on his face.

The President seems just as chipper as he does on the yearly Games announcements. He wishes the districts well, not an ounce of sincerity in his voice or his words, going about his poorly rephrased intro before he gets to the point.

“This year, the Hunger Games had two victors, bound together by the power of a love so strong that the Gamemakers had to yield to them or risk having an edition of the Hunger Games be without a winner.”  

There is a grand pause here, one to let the words sink in. San can feel it, that the next words will be an avalanche.

“For what it represents, it wasn’t something we were willing to go through with. However, it is clear to us that it’s unfair on all the tributes in all the past seasons to have not been given an opportunity to win along with their victors. As a result, a decision has been made to let this year be an exception. The 75th Hunger Games onwards, there shall be no leniency, no rule changes. There shall be one victor only. And if at all, circumstances arise like the ones with this year’s victors, one of them will have to choose the other.”

San feels a rope of selfishness wrap around his chest and squeeze. It’s not the worst thing for them. It’s not a do over of this season or one of them having to choose each other or an even worse fate. 

They get to live. 

There is a sob from somewhere above San as the announcement video stops a few minutes later after a long winding speech about the pertinence of traditions. It’s a sob that catches in Wooyoung’s throat. 

“Young-ah,” he calls gently. 

Wooyoung gets up from the couch, slightly swaying. San is on his feet before he knows it, grabbing him by his elbows to steady him. 

“We’re safe. It’s okay. It’s just the future of the Games. We’re okay,” he says, an endless stream of reassurances. 

There is terror on Wooyoung’s face, his eyes wide as if he’s looking at a monster, but his gaze isn’t set on San. If San didn’t know of the yard long stare Wooyoung had a tendency to lapse into, he’d have turned to see if something was behind him.

“That could have gone so differently,” Wooyoung says, voice scarily stable.

“But it didn’t,” San points out insistently. 

Focus on the good, forget the bad. That’s the only way to get through the fear, to keep their head above the water.

“You could have died.”

“I didn’t.”

“They could have asked me to kill you.”

“They didn’t.”

“But they could have.”

It’s the worst spiral for someone who survived. The eternal descent into all the would’ve could’ve should’ves.

San shakes his head. 

“They didn’t.”

Wooyoung doesn’t look convinced, looking at San like he’s questioning the reality around them, if San himself is real.

“You’re here. Real or not real?” 

Something shifts in the air. This is suddenly not about the Games. Some of it is, but it’s also not.

San heaves out a breath, ribs aching with how full his chest feels. 

“Real,” he whispers, tucking the few strands of hair that have fallen into Wooyoung’s eyes to the back of his ear, hoping that the red hadn’t felt like he was gazing at him through a curtain of blood.

Wooyoung leans into the touch for a fraction of a tense moment before he backs away, walking out of San’s reach with determination that confuses San.

“You love me. Real or not real?”

There is so much emotion packed into it, the way Wooyoung says it like it’s a delicate structure that has resided inside him for too long.

San wishes he can take Wooyoung’s trembling hand, placing it on his chest where his heart is pounding still from the residual panic of the announcement and racing at the Wooyoung-pace it has accustomed itself to. 

Wide eyes fill with tears. 

All San sees is red, red, red.

Red that is not the color of blood anymore. 

Red that is love.

“Real,” San says again, barely louder than a breath, all his strength suddenly drained from him. 

It’s unexpected, the way Wooyoung smiles at him, a blend of relief, fear, and copious amounts of something San has always thought to be affection but feels different now, a strain of it that has always been there more clearer than ever now.

Love, San thinks. 

Wooyoung stares at him for so long San is convinced time has frozen, but then Wooyoung moves. He doesn’t storm to him like you read in the books, two people passionately reaching for each other, not yet. Instead he weighs every step he takes, eyes set on San like he’s the prize for the Greek hero at the end of a contest, like he’s the song Wooyoung wants to fall asleep to and wake up to, like San is the only person he wants.

San feels treasured and desired and… loved.

He feels so loved .

That’s how he’s felt this entire time.

Somewhere in the space between that day Wooyoung aimed his bow at him and this moment, San has gone from being on the other end of Wooyoung’s consideration and care to the subject of all his love and desire too. It’s crazy how blind he has been when Wooyoung’s always looked at him like this.

“Tell me you don’t want this,” Wooyoung says.

“Then I’d be lying, Young-ah,” San breathes. 

There’s a shift in Wooyoung as he hears it, as he closes the distance between them with three long strides, like they’re long-lost lovers in some epic novel, San all dark and smoldering and Wooyoung all light and wanting, and vice versa. 

When Wooyoung finally kisses him, for real this time, it’s so gentle it almost feels like a dream, like the wispy tendrils of something good you had to leave behind at the wake of the end of your sleep cycle, something magical and wistful, longing built into its very core. 

His lips are as soft as they look, perhaps even softer, slightly bitten raw. It’s just a peck, but it feels like so much more, so much more than just lips on lips. 

I want you so much it hurts me, San thinks, finally, finally allowing himself to want to his full capacity.

San curls a hand around his left hip, backs him gently against the counter that separates the living room and the reading area and leans in. His eyes flicker between Wooyoung’s, and his free hand comes up, the one that is not holding onto his hip, to gently move his hair out of his eye, tuck it to the back of his hair like he’s done a thousand times.

It’s dizzying, how much he wants, how good Wooyoung smells even when his scent is inexplicably tangled with San’s body wash from when he’d walked into his bathroom today, how much this moment, this intentional closeness that’s obvious, makes him happy, euphoric even.

“Young-ah,” San whispers, and Wooyoung’s so close San could lean in just half a centimeter and his mouth would slot against San’s like lost puzzle pieces finally coming together, their fringes tangling together in a way that makes San’s heart pound a thousand times harder. “Can I?”

San cups Wooyoung’s cheeks, caresses a thumb over where he knows Wooyoung’s dimples are when he smiles. 

And watches as Wooyoung nods.

It is all the confirmation San needs as he captures Wooyoung’s lips in a kiss that sears through his entire body, he nearly trembles with the passion in it. He barely registers the way Wooyoung’s hand comes up to hold his other side, pressing down firmly in a way San wonders if it would bruise. He’ll carry the marks, any sign of Wooyoung’s touch proudly, just as they should be.

There’s a shuddering breath that leaves San when Wooyoung goes completely pliant under him at the moment their lips meet again, closing his eyes at the way San’s lips on his makes his toes curl on the ground. Wooyoung’s hands scramble to grip San’s shoulders for purchase as he nearly bends him back with the ferocity of the kiss, their mouths meeting again and again until San’s tongue slips into Wooyoung’s mouth effortlessly. 

Wooyoung moans, pressing them closer than they’ve ever been, San’s tongue in his mouth, mapping his insides with Wooyoung letting him, their hearts pounding. He can feel himself tear up, but he’s too far gone in this moment to even try to stop himself.

It’s not a realization, it’s a slow learned lesson, that this thing between them, nameless and unacknowledged has been here for months, had made a home for itself and comfortably reclined between the two of them like it knew it was here to stay. It sure as hell feels like that when Wooyoung pulls away, eyes glossy with tears and something so dark San’s soul sings at getting to see it. 

Me too, San thinks. 

Me too. I’m right where you are.

“God, you’re so beautiful. You’re so… fuck,” San swears, leaning in to peck him.

It’s not how he imagined these moments going. He’d expected tears, Wooyoung trembling with sobs against him, disturbed nights brought back full swing again, but this is a whole world apart. This is Wooyoung letting himself be kissed by San and kissing him back. This is San’s dreams come true, an eternal wait not seeming as eternal as it had minutes ago.

Wooyoung lies down on top of San later, his head resting on his chest. The moment feel hearth-warm and charged with electricity.

“Why now?” San asks, breaking the quiet, letting his fingers card through Wooyoung’s hair. 

“A revelation.” It’s all Wooyoung says for a few minutes, letting the quiet linger on. San doesn’t prod. He’s content never knowing. 

“I’ve always known in a way, that what I felt for you wasn’t just friendship, but it seemed so unreachable. We felt so different, but we weren’t really. And after we volunteered, I was dead set on forgetting that connection, but you made it so hard for me, San-ah.”

“I’m sorry,” San says, instinctual. 

Wooyoung lifts his head, shaking it in denial. “No, no. You taught me what it’s like to love unconditionally. I thought we’d never be able to connect after we won, because we were so haunted, but you held me together, and you never asked for more. You never pushed. And when we were in the game, you did everything you could.”

“I would have done it for anyone,” San says. 

Wooyoung sits up, tracing a line between San’s eyebrows. “No, you wouldn’t have. Do you think I didn't know that you wanted to die for me? Do you think me so stupid that I wouldn’t understand that you loved me back then? I did. I saw through you, but it seemed like it’d pass. No, I guess I convinced myself that it would. The day before the Games, Hongjoong hyung told me, that I could live a million lifetimes with other people and you’d still be the one for me at the end of it all, that if the world was ending, you’d be the only one coming to find me amidst the ruins, that he couldn’t fathom loving anyone that much.”

San’s heart drops to his stomach, but he thinks he deserves this, this acknowledgment. He didn’t love Wooyoung to hear him sing praises of him, but it’s been a long wait, and he tells himself that it’s okay to hear this, to not stop Wooyoung with a finger on his mouth, to not halt his thoughts with a kiss.

“I told you to wait for me because I knew this would happen eventually. I may have volunteered and won the Games, but I did it because you were there with me. I was strong because I had to protect you. Just like you were strong to protect me, but I am not strong enough to see the love in your eyes and deny myself that. I’m too selfish, San-ah.”

“You can be as selfish as you want to be,” San reassures, leaning into the way Wooyoung is stroking his cheekbone.

“And today, the announcement felt like a sign. Seventy four editions of the Games and we are the only ones to get through it together, two instead of one. If I let you wait any longer than this, even the universe wouldn’t have forgiven me. I had you even before I knew I did, but it felt like a crime to keep you waiting still, not when I know how many people didn’t have the opportunity to do what we could, how many people will never have the opportunity to.”

“I would have waited forever.”

Wooyoung smiles. It’s tinted with pain only San can understand, but San loves him like this too. 

“I know, but I don’t want you to.”

The world could be ending and I wouldn’t be bothered if I was listening to you speak because at the end and beginning of everything, you’re the one voice I want to listen to, the one voice I hope sings my dirge as the soil starts to hide my face from you, as the fire spreads around us, as the water submerges us.

***

Wooyoung’s a lynchpin, San thinks, the one thing he’ll forever spin around, the axle to his wheel. He’s the one solid thing keeping him grounded because if he wasn’t, San is certain he would have drifted years ago. 

It’s too much maybe, to burden someone with, but it is the truth. 

It shows in everything they do.

It’s in the way Wooyoung’s tongue flicks against the roof of his mouth, the back of his teeth, the slow and sensual dance of their tongues hurried and passionate one moment and steady and dragging on the next, making San feel like he’s going to float, anchored only because of his hands on Wooyoung’s narrow hips, his entire frame pressing against him.

It’s in everything they do, clear as day, obvious as anything.

Wooyoung squeezes the back of San’s neck when they break apart for a breath, not stopping himself from moaning a little.

I feel like I’ll die when you do that.

Do what? 

San doesn’t have an answer.

Too many things. Too many things.

San surges back in again at the sound with a frustrated sigh. “You make the prettiest noises I’ve ever heard, Young-ah,” San says later, licking into Wooyoung’s mouth, testing, a hand coming up to cup his cheek. It’s reassuring, the way his hand stretches over Wooyoung’s skin. 

“Do I?” Wooyoung murmurs, eyes closed, voice coming out huskier as San just rests his forehead against his to catch a breath. 

You do.

***

San realizes it a moment after it happens, his hand at the base of Wooyoung’s neck, clutching his hair and pulling it. It’s a loose grip, but it’s one all the same. He pulls away from his mouth, resting his forehead on the other’s.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, watching the glazed look clear in Wooyoung’s eyes.

“No, it’s okay. I’d tell you if it wasn’t okay,” Wooyoung says, breathless and hurried, like he’s just sprinted five miles. 

His mouth is spit slick, slightly red, and swollen from just five minutes of them making out.  Or maybe San’s lost count. It’s become a habit now, like drinking the chamomile tea Wooyoung makes or making ramen for the both of them in the middle of the night or always putting his left sock on first. 

It’s become a habit to kiss Wooyoung. There’s nothing weird about it, San knows. People in relationships kiss each other all the time. 

They do a lot more than that too, but San’s waiting for Wooyoung to give a sign to go further before he does. The last thing he wants to do is push Wooyoung into something he’s not ready for.

If San couldn’t ever have him like that ever, that’d be okay too. San’s never built mountains worth of expectations for people and hoped for them to live up to them.

Wooyoung is unique though, he’s better than what any expectations could possibly imagine up for San.

Wooyoung is looking up at him through his eyelashes, the fondest look in his eyes mingled with one that spells out desire. It’s an odd combination, but one San takes as Wooyoung asking to be kissed within an inch of his life. 

If he can’t touch, he won’t, but this, he can do.

So San does, tips his chin up with a finger, presses a kiss to the skin under his ear, the corner of his eyes before he goes for the prize. Wooyoung’s lips part easily under San’s, a whine escaping him when San experimentally reaches for his hair again and tugs it gently.

San feels like he should be taking notes, catalog every single sound that escapes Wooyoung’s mouth when he’s kissed right. It could be the soundtrack of his life. He could listen to him gasp and stutter for a lifetime and a half.

God, he could listen to Wooyoung forever.

It’s an all-encompassing feeling, of having Wooyoung love him back, of knowing that he does. It feels like a privilege, like a gift from a god who’s never really cared for him as if saying here you go, he is yours.

And he knows he has him. 

San tilts his head and gently presses Wooyoung against the wall, stifling a moan when he keens breathily as San parts his legs with his thigh. He doesn’t move away, eyes fluttering in quick motions as he kisses San back. 

There’s a flush traveling down his neck from his cheeks. San so badly wants to see how far down it goes, but he doesn’t have permission, not yet. He pulls away from the kiss and waits, feeling Wooyoung’s hold on his collar tighten and loosen and repeat.

There’s hesitation in Wooyoung’s eyes when he looks back at San.

“It’s okay,” San says, and he means it. If Wooyoung isn’t ready for sex, it’s fine. 

The urge to stroke his fingers at the skin on Wooyoung’s waist is insane and all-pervading, but he stops himself, stroking his fingers through Wooyoung’s fading red hair when he sets his forehead against San’s shoulder, panting and coming down from the high of kissing.

“It’s okay,” San repeats, and Wooyoung looks up at him, something indiscernible drowning in his dark, dark eyes.

***

Wooyoung tells San he loves him on a Friday evening. San’s hands are wet with dishwasher soap despite being covered by gloves. 

He freezes, looking back at Wooyoung who stands beside him, his face glowing under the setting sun’s orange rays. 

“What did you say?” He asks, just to hear it again. He briefly wonders if Wooyoung will tease him, but he doesn’t.

“I love you, and I’ll say it for all the times I didn’t,” Wooyoung tells him, leaning in to kiss the corner of San’s mouth before he kisses him full on the mouth. 

I love you, I love you, I love you.

“I love you,” San stutters between kisses. He feels Wooyoung’s smile against his mouth more than he sees it. 

“I know, San-ah. I know.”

Good, San thinks. 

Don’t you dare forget it.

***

It goes like this.

It’s a wet, murky evening, the sky darkening into a chrome gray before it turns black. San is lying down on Wooyoung’s lap, eyes on the rain pouring outside, the pitter-patter of it so loud San can barely hear Wooyoung breathing. He crawls closer to his stomach, hiding his face into the softness of it, his arms curled around Wooyoung’s waist.

Wooyoung giggles, but he doesn’t push him away, gathering him closer. San inhales, wood and roseoil and something so Wooyoung he’s flattered to be this privileged enough to get to touch.

“If you get any closer, we wouldn’t even be two people anymore,” Wooyoung teases. 

San pulls away just a few inches to look at his face. 

“What’s so wrong with that?” San asks, Wooyoung leaning down with a smile to kiss the side of his forehead. 

“Nothing,” Wooyoung replies, shrugging. 

“San-ah,” Wooyoung calls after a few minutes. His voice is steady, unblemished. It’s the tone he uses when he pretends to not care about something. San hasn’t been on the other end of it much, but he is now. 

He doesn’t like it.

“Hm? Tell me,” San prompts, pressing his nose into Wooyoung’s stomach one last time before he sits up. 

Wooyoung’s fingers fiddle with the fabric of the sweatpants over his knee. It’s a nervous tick. 

Outside, the rain is slowing down, but it feels heavier suddenly. They’ve been having a good week. San hopes it never changes though he knows the cycle will bring the bad ones too. 

They can only run for so long. When the inevitable catches up, they’ll suffer. And they’ll run again after storing up some energy for another few laps. It’s a ceaseless sequence.

“Do you not…” Wooyoung looks at him through the strands of his hair. He’s been sleeping better these days, so his eyes aren’t as red, but earlier, he’d gotten shampoon in his left eye, so it’s a little irritated. San had laughed at him before he was tackled to the bed. 

“Do I?” San prompts.

“Do you not want to touch me?” Wooyoung asks, his bottom lip squished with his teeth so hard that San nearly reaches out. 

And then the words register. 

Realization is a series of tides at sea, pulled by the moon. 

“I’m…” San stutters, watching in horror as Wooyoung curls into himself like San has confirmed his worst fears. 

San hates it, hates that the words don’t make it to his mouth coherently. It comes in pieces, like an engine huffing before it properly roars to life. He wishes he was more eloquent, wishes he wasn’t so overcome with his emotions that words fail him.

It’s as much desire as it is the urge to touch that has made him pull Wooyoung’s sweater’s neckline a bit to the side a hundred times, cataloguing the way Wooyoung stills under him before he relaxes. He had taken that as cues to back off.

San has stopped himself so many times, tied the cord back around his body, and wrapped his arms around Wooyoung in tight embraces, trying to not cross Wooyoung’s boundaries. He has laid awake on so many nights thinking about it, how to let Wooyoung know that it’s fine to say no, to let him know when he crosses a line or is teetering over it. 

And now he just feels like a fool. 

Wooyoung tries to scramble to his feet, as if he needs space. 

San holds him by the wrist. 

“No, no, no. That isn’t it!” San says, desperate to get his point across. He’d been so worried about dealing with the aftermath of the Games and thinking Wooyoung didn’t want to be touched like that that he had made up a whole perspective that isn’t true. 

“But you won’t,” Wooyoung says, accusing. 

San’s so tense he thinks he’s going to die with the sheer amount of thoughts his brain is processing. 

“You want me to touch you,” San states. There is a question at the end of it. 

He wants confirmation. 

Wooyoung climbs to his feet so suddenly San nearly falls back, his hands scrambling to balance him. 

“Of course I want you to. And I want to touch you too,” Wooyoung replies. He sounds so frustrated, as if he wants to shake the stupidity from San. 

He should have.

“You want to touch me,” San says slowly. 

The dam breaks, slow cracks and then a whole earthquake as it explodes. 

Wooyoung wants him. 

San stands up, reaching for Wooyoung just as he turns away as if tired of the slow progress of the conversation. 

God. San had been so stupid. If he’d just asked.

“Wooyoung, oh God.” San’s hands slip under his sweater, his cold hands on Wooyoung’s warm skin, and he wants to feel it forever, like a tattoo that he’ll never erase. “I didn’t know. I thought you’d give me a sign.”

“I’ve been melting under your touch every single time we kiss, San-ah. How could you have missed this?”

This is one more thing San has gotten wrong somehow. 

Wooyoung turns around in his arms. There are only a few inches between them, but it hits so much more different this way, with this strong an undercurrent of want, of desire.

“It’s not your fault alone. Takes two to tango,” Wooyoung pauses. “Or not to tango, I guess. I should have told you I wanted to. You’re always so careful with me. I should have known better than to think you’d take that step without asking me or worrying about it.”

“I’m sorry,” San says and kisses him, hoping that it's not an apology that sizzles through Wooyoung’s skin, in his veins, all over his body, now that he knows. “What do you want?”

Such a complicated question.

But San will give anything Wooyoung asks for.

“You,” he says, feels Wooyoung’s quivering inhale.

“Are you sure?” 

Wooyoung nods. “I want you.”

That is all San needs. 

Permission. 

His hands curl under Wooyoung’s thighs, lifting him up as he connects their lips. This kiss is hot and heavy, promising something to come, intense and electric. San’s head spins as he carries Wooyoung up the stairs to his room, careful even as he feels himself spiral, brain catching up to all the sensations with his mouth on Wooyoung’s. 

“Careful,” Wooyoung tells him, hiding his face in his neck to make it easier, like he knows San won’t make it with his lips on his. 

It’s true. 

“Always,” San replies, readjusting Wooyoung, his weight a pleasant steadiness he can anchor himself around. He nudges the door to his bedroom open with his foot once they reach the first floor, grateful for hav, and it feels almost like a crime as he takes in the way Wooyoung’s hair fans out over the pillow.

“You’re the best thing in my life, Young-ah,” San says, and his voice cracks. Wooyoung pulls him down by the collar of his shirt.

“Mine too. You’re mine too,” he whispers, tearing up at the gentle peck San gives him. 

San sees the way Wooyoung’s looking at him now, like he’s stumbled upon a mirage in the desert, like he doesn’t know how to feel about this feeling that’s taking over him. 

I’m real, I’m real, I’m real.

And I want you.

It’s all San can think as he kisses Wooyoung into the mattress, his pillow sinking under the combined weight of their heads, at the pressure. Wooyoung takes it, San in all his intensity, inhibitions stripped away.

At one point, San tugs his button-up and t-shirt off, letting Wooyoung slide his palms over the skin of his chest and defined stomach. 

San’s eyes are on him though, at the sweater that’s covering Wooyoung. Wooyoung catches him looking, smiling lopsided, the beginnings of his cocky grin but feeling too emotional to commit to it.

“Take it off for me,” Wooyoung says before San can ask permission. There will be a day when San won’t stop at every move with Wooyoung, but it’s not tonight, not when they’re touching each other like this for the first time.

San thinks his self-control is nearly flawless because he doesn’t twist Wooyoung to fit into his motions. Instead, he guides him slowly through it, a skater on ice for the first time as he pulls Wooyoung’s arms up to tug the shirt over his head.

The rain is coming down hard outside again now, tiny droplets drenching the floor under the open window in the room. San feels it kiss his skin just as Wooyoung cranes his neck and presses a kiss to his forehead.

Wooyoung’s built small, narrow shoulders and his sternum bones showing everytime he moves, the delicate structure of his rib cage sticking out when he wears something tight-fitting even if the fabric is thick. And now that he’s half-naked, San is torn between wanting to stare at the red travelling down his chest or mapping the stretch of skin with his mouth. 

“You blush everywhere,” San remarks, awed as he splays his palms over Wooyoung’s torso, feeling the way he shivers at the touch. It makes him whine too, a needy sound, like he wants San to bend and break him with his touch tonight, make him feel it for days.

Their chests touch as Wooyoung pulls San down by his neck even if the other doesn’t let his arms slip, not enough for Wooyoung to feel his weight against him.

“San-ah,” Wooyoung calls, sounding affronted.

“I’m going to hurt you. I’m heavier than you,” San says, even if it pains him to admit it.

“I like that you’re bigger than me, and you won’t hurt me. Just come here,” Wooyoung reassures and tugs on his wrists this time.

This time, he does let go, splayed over Wooyoung for the barest of seconds before he puts his palms on the mattress and goes back to what he was doing.

“Just come here for a second,” Wooyoung says again.

“I’m going to crush you,” San says, worrying.

“No, just, please. Please. I’ll be okay,” he reassures. 

They’ve never done this before, but Wooyoung has managed to pull San over him when they sometimes cuddle on the couch, his full body weight, almost all of it at least, pressing Wooyoung to the cushions, an anchor to him when he’s floating, before he sinks.

San never wants Wooyoung to sink, not if it isn’t without him by his side. Not at all if he can help it. He can’t help how his eyes water, surrounded by Wooyoung after wanting him for so long, chest aching from the relief that runs through him.

“Let me know when you want me off of you,” San whispers, pulling back, his gaze darting between Wooyoung’s watery eyes. 

It takes a bit of adjusting for San to finally maneuver their limbs in a way that won’t be uncomfortable. Shakily exhaling, Wooyoung nods against him, his hair tickling the side of San’s face, relaxing even more than he had been before, feeling the pressure seeping out of him with Wooyoung being so calm about this.

Wooyoung breathes San in, dancing his fingers up his spine before he reaches for his neck.

San lifts his head up from where he had been resting it beside Wooyoung’s on the pillow. 

“What do you want?”

He will ask this a million times, hoping the answer would be the same every single time.

“You,” Wooyoung whispers again, feeling a tear roll down the side of his face. San’s gaze tracks it before he leans in and presses wet lips at the corner of his eye.

“You already have me, Young-ah. You have all of me,” San says. 

When San gets up off of him a few minutes later, Wooyoung asks him to strip him. His brain nearly short circuits at the request, Wooyoung smothering a smile into his forearm. He must feel shy, naked and on display for San, both of them so painfully hard it isn’t even a joke anymore, not that it ever was, but he doesn’t let it show.

San feels their cocks drag against each other as he reaches for the drawer and grabs the lube and condoms. Wooyoung hisses like he’s trying not to grind up into the contact.

Wooyoung’s eyes are darker than the night as San watches him, settling back on his haunches on the bed in the middle of his wide-open legs. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Wooyoung says, closing his eyes.

“You’re beautiful like this, all for me, baby,” San whispers as he leans down, his breath ghosting over Wooyoung’s erection against his stomach before he moves to the side, pressing kisses over his hip bone, mouthing hickeys over it, Wooyoung’s legs shaking against his face. His inner thighs are worshipped next, San’s hands parting his legs wider, Wooyoung shutting his eyes of his own accord. He’s so pink from head to toe, so strong and delicate, an oxymoron all for San.

“All for me,” San says as he bites at the sensitive insides of Wooyoung’s thigh. He quivers like a bow strung too tight, like he’ll let San play him like a fiddle. 

Wooyoung nearly shouts at the first lick of San’s tongue at the sensitive tip of his cock, his hands pressing bruises over his thighs.

“San-ah,” he moans, voice thin.

“I’m too fucking sensitive, I will come so quickly, you’ll have to wait to do this,” Wooyoung warns. San bobs his head experimentally.

Wooyoung moans again, a breathy and mangled version of San’s name escaping his mouth. His fingers curl in San’s hair, still slightly wet from the shower.

“I don’t want to come like this,” Wooyoung breathes again, shaking his head.  “Wanna come with you inside me.”

The words have San reeling and he finally pulls away. Wooyoung eyes him, all red and wild as he swoops in tongue first into San’s mouth. He smiles into the kiss at the intensity, wondering still about how he’d mistaken every green flag Wooyoung gave him for a red one.

It’s a weakness, feeling the curve of his lips against him, at the way he doesn’t even have to open his eyes to see the dimples that dent Wooyoung’s cheeks, at the way his eyes are closed like he’s so lost in the sensations.

San’s so far beyond gone, he knows there’s no returning from this. San could live here forever, Wooyoung under him and away from the cameras, where Wooyoung loves him in silences and delicate words, where Wooyoung talks to him for hours and holds him, where he lets him press him into the mattress and tells him which way to go, where Wooyoung can shield San from the darkness that haunts him, from a past that is bound by a sin they both share.

Here, San is safe. 

And his only concern ever has been to keep Wooyoung safe too.

The first touch of San’s finger against Wooyoung’s rim has him exhaling loudly despite San warming up the lube. He’s kneeling on the bed, and San feels just as exposed, the breeze washing over them, making Wooyoung’s hair flutter lightly. He looks ethereal like this and all San’s. 

The first knuckle slips inside as Wooyoung relaxes. There’s nothing to be tense about. One of his hands are gripping San’s shoulder tight, but he’s looking at him so gently like he trusts him with his life. 

San knows he does.

The second finger takes time. San works him up to it, leaning in and kissing him, mouthing at his hipbone to get him to relax, biting bruises on his torso, covering him in kisses. It feels good, the kind of surreal good that has San biting back loud moans just as much as Wooyoung does. San can’t help the way his breath stutters every time Wooyoung moans.

Let me hear you, let me soak all your sounds up, record it all up for an eternity I want with you.

“Hey, I’m ready,” Wooyoung whispers, breathy and moaning when three of San’s fingers are thrusting in and out. San licks into his mouth again, feeling the blood rushing to his face.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” San says, stroking his hipbone with his free hand. 

“San-ah, baby,” he whines, squirming away. “I want to feel it,” Wooyoung moans.

“Let me feel it, please.” He places a hand on San’s wrist.

A little more time would make it easier for Wooyoung to have San inside him, but Wooyoung tells him he doesn’t want easy, not when San’s been fingering him open for twenty minutes, crooking his fingers and grazing his prostate every now and then. San’s stomach aches from trying to hold back the wave of pleasure that threatens to overtake him, and he knows Wooyoung wants to be taken by San, feel him deep, feel the stretch of his hole around his cock, to remember it for days.

“You sure?” San asks, sweaty bangs against Wooyoung’s sweaty hair as he presses their foreheads together. 

Wooyoung nods.

He helps San put the condom on. San hisses at feeling his warm fingers on his cock. Wooyoung touching him is too much.

“You’re going to drive me insane,” San whispers, hot and heavy against Wooyoung’s ears. 

It’s insane how normal, how domestic it feels to push into Wooyoung with his hands clasped behind San’s neck like this, how good it feels to lean down and be met by Wooyoung’s warm mouth as he slowly inches inside him. 

Wooyoung takes everything he gives him, moaning so loudly San is briefly grateful that Hongjoong lives two houses away. San feels so overwhelmed with all the sensations, all the heat of their combined body temperatures raising the heat in the room despite the cool breeze from outside drifting in and out of the room. 

San hides his face away in the smooth contours of Wooyong’s collarbones, remembering the first time he got the opportunity to do this when they were inside the arena, San dealing with a stab wound to his thigh, and Wooyoung raging from anger for the tribute who took the shot when he had the chance.

Rendering a curved line of kisses down the slope of his shoulder and his chest, San keeps the pace up, cataloguing every sound Wooyoung makes because of him and the steady litany of praises he sings. 

They were wrong, San thinks. They told him he’d never be loved, hisses of hatred from his aunt and uncle at the dinner table where San sat without a plate, wondering if they were right, convinced they were. 

They weren’t.

Wooyoung loves him. Wooyoung loves him enough to let him in this way. 

“I love you,” San says, slowing down the thrusts to drag this out a little longer despite the pleasure mounting in his chest. 

Wooyoung smiles at him, pushing his hair back from San’s forehead only for it to fall under gravity’s influence. 

“I love you too. So much.” His voice breaks on a moan again. 

Wooyoung comes first, head thrown back against the pillow, the nails on both his hands digging crescents into San’s shoulders. It’s a pleasant rush of pain.

“Keep going,” he mumbles, pleading when San stops, scared of hurting Wooyoung.

“But you—” he begins only to get cut off.

“Just fuck me. Please,” Wooyoung breathes.

It’s no use fighting it, so San thrusts in deeper, egged on by the breathy moans Wooyoung lets out, four, he counts before he collapses against Wooyoung, spilling into the condom, completely spent, his wrists still shaking from holding himself half-up above Wooyoung.

San barely has enough prowess left to pull out and tie the condom to throw it in the bin.

“Thank you,” he says, repeating it twice before Wooyoung crawls on top of him, looking debauched, lips swollen and the flush of pink travelling all the way down. 

“Thank you,” Wooyoung tells him, stress on the you, and San feels so loved, feels it curl from his head to toe, feels it in the way Wooyoung licks into him, sugar sweet and gentle, savoring it. 

It’s so easy, San thinks, to pretend like the world they live in is not so dirty, not so hateful, not when Wooyoung’s voice is so light against his ear, not when his mouth is so soft against San’s earlobe. 

I could live a hundred lifetimes and never see you again, and I’d love you still, San thinks. 

Wooyoung unaware, nags at him to get a washcloth to clean themselves up with, and San goes because it’s Wooyoung asking something of him, Wooyoung who San loves, Wooyoung who loves him back just as much.

***

"Do you ever think about it?" San asks Wooyoung when they're back after another visit to Panem, after days spent stuck in a world where they don’t belong. Wooyoung is changing into another one of San's shirts. It’s a deep green, the color of the forests in District 12. 

San is seated on his bed, watching Wooyoung like he usually does.

"Think about if I'd hurt you."

Wooyoung freezes, and pulls the shirt on so quickly that San nearly gets whiplash. He hurries to San, cupping his cheeks and presses a kiss on his forehead, wet lips against his slightly sweaty bangs.  

"No, why would I?"

San doesn't reply even as Wooyoung sits on the bed and pulls his head to his chest, smoothing his fingers down his thick hair. 

"You've never… I've never felt as safe as I do with you with anyone," Wooyoung says, voice fraying like he hopes it will be enough, like if he said anything more, he'd break down himself. 

No one had told him that love made it possible to feel another's pain with an intensity that made it seem like his chest was caving in. 

Heroes, San knows, weren't always promised a happy ending, and it's difficult to think of any possibility where someone like Wooyoung doesn't get the happy ending that he deserves. 

"You are safe with me," San says, fisting the fabric of Wooyoung’s shirt before he pulls away. 

It's much later, the time of transition, when morning turns to noon, the bright light painting Wooyoung in shades of gold when San takes a good look at Wooyoung again. He’s seen him in the same light a hundred times over the years, but this is a series of memories he’ll associate forever as being the first ones after they’ve admitted to belonging to each other, and San knows that even if the world ended right now, he’d feel hopeful, for another dusk, another dawn where Wooyoung will still hold him closer than he has ever known he wanted to be. And they’ll live through this moment and the next, because that’s how the game works, that’s how the world works.

All the hurt wouldn’t matter, not really, because they’re human.

They’re built to overcome. 

And they will. 

The cameras, the masquerade parties, the spotlight, the lies. All of it. 

But they don’t have to do it alone. That’s how it will be from now on. It’s how it’s been since the inception of this sham, this elaborate masquerade, though tentative and hesitant, and they had blurred the lines, more so than usual, more than necessary, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way anymore.

This is love. This is permission. This is acceptance. 

This is approval of the kind San didn’t know he needed, and when Wooyoung presses him against the mattress with a passion that is new but familiar, desire an electric current that perpetually sparks across San’s spine, all he can do is smile into the kiss, put his hand over Wooyoung’s splayed over his ribs, feel his heat against his, toes curling from their mouths inexplicably entwined.

“If I ever do anything—” San breathes against his lips, hands on either side of Wooyoung now, mattress sinking under their combined weight. He tastes and smells like the chamomile tea he had made for San earlier. It makes something glow inside his chest.

“You won’t.”

Wooyoung’s eyes on him are molten and somber, like San doesn’t know what he’s saying, like he’s ready to say it until San believes it too.

In his head, the trajectory is clear, cameras shoved into their faces, a million gazes on them, and their gazes on each other.

In the real world, Wooyoung’s hand reaches for San’s, his eyes closed as he leans back, like he can map San out without ever seeing him.

Maybe he can.

***

San used to watch Wooyoung as he drew on the mud next to the creek with the tip of his arrow, veins like branches on his forearm, the tip of his tongue poking out as he did. 

Somewhere between all the years of watching him do it from the opposite side, their legs hanging a few inches above the water, San had fallen hard, thinking nothing will come of it. 

He knows better now as he holds Wooyoung’s hand and helps him balance as he lowers himself to sit on the rock boulder, both their eyes set on the water that flows gently down the creek, trilling pleasantly. 

In the silence that stretches between them, there is the sound of a love that has been forged in death, in a gamble of blood, and now in the boundary between life and pain. 

***

The soil in their backyard is fertile, dark and wet with the moisture from the rain from the weeks of it. San looks at the potted forsythia plant, wondering if he should uproot it and put it in the ground or take care of it as it is, transferring it to a bigger pot when it gets bigger. 

“San!” He hears, the tell-tale dulcet tone of Wooyoung’s voice ringing with panic. He turns to see Wooyoung running to him. He climbs to his feet, stumbling with the momentum, cradling Wooyoung close to his chest.

He’d hoped Wooyoung wouldn’t wake up so early since they’d been up late sparring in the gym. He’d woken up twice in the night, screaming San’s name both times, only falling asleep clutching San.

It’s why San thought this would be a surprise, having asked the guards to find him a forsythia plant three days ago. 

 How did Wooyoung know to come find him here?

Oh well.

San doesn’t spend too much time dwelling on it, but only because it's Wooyoung. He's good at this, creating possibilities when there are none, shattering boundaries when everything else is at an impasse, and keeping on trying until things turn around.

Besides, Wooyoung has always had the unique ability to figure out where San is at all times.

It’s what had been working when he found San in the woods all those years ago. 

It’s what has him in San’s arms now, clinging to him like he never wants to let go. 

“You okay?” San asks. 

Wooyoung nods, his hair ruffling against San’s chest.

“What are you doing so early in the morning?”

San strokes his waist, pointing at the plant, freeing one arm so Wooyoung can move.

“Is that…”

San nods, smiling.

“How did you know?” Wooyoung asks, awed though he doesn’t move to touch the plant.

That they’re your favorite, that you love them because they remind you of your mom?

“You told me once. And they remind me of you,” San replies, not teasing when Wooyoung leans in to give him a deep kiss.

“Slow down, baby. What will the neighbors think?” He asks when Wooyoung jumps into his arms next, San’s hands instinctively going under his thighs. 

“It’s only Hongjoong hyung. He can watch if he wants,” Wooyoung says, a menacing smile on his face. 

Later, Wooyoung tells him he’s unreal in the kitchen, slathering jam on toast, and nudging it to San. San was full three slices ago, but Wooyoung’s insistent he eat well. 

You’re the one who’s unreal.

The next edition of the Games is barely three months away, but San can bask in this moment for a little while before reality crashes into him like it does every so often. Until then, he’ll listen to Wooyoung in all his words and his silences, look at him as he always has, as he has promised to himself he always will. 

Capitol will move on to the next victors and the ones after that, and they won’t be thrust into the spotlight as much as they are now. 

San will love Wooyoung then too, thirty, sixty, eighty years from now, when they’re alive and after they’re both long gone, just like he has until now. 

It won't be easy, but they are under no pretensions that it will be.