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He’s heavy, his foolish, prickly, needlessly noble little brother.
Rang-ah, he thinks, pulling him up and close, mirror of a lovers’ embrace. The well is deep, slimy somehow. Unpleasant on his skin. If you die like this I’ll never forgive you. And Shin Joo will drag himself to bone over hot coals. And—
And he himself will make all manner of awful choices. It is never too far, his nature, that fallen Guardian whose hands are slick with blood, who drowned himself in opium and violence. The mere thought of losing Rang again—
Nothing to it but to sink or swim. And this perhaps is one: an awful, glad choice. He slots their mouths together, drags Rang flush against him. Drags his lips open with a gentle thumb.
Love belt, wasn’t there a song like that? Love belt, I’ll hold you now.
The lyric’s wrong. Yeon breathes.
Swims. He feels a man on fire: he shelves the feeling, the scorch in every part of him.
The water breaks around them, rippling. “Rang-ah,” he says—pleads. His little brother’s limp against him, a weight that at any other time would be welcome. “Rang-ah. I know I said your curfew’s ten, but this really is no time to be sleeping. Okay? Rang-ah.” He kisses him, again, again. Desperate little life’s kisses.
Rang gasps. His eyelids flutter.
He has such beautiful eyelashes. Sooty, long and curling, water caught in their net like seedpearl.
It’s the wrong thing to be focusing on; but if he doesn’t think about it he’ll think instead about the cant of his hips, the near indecency in the way their bodies are pressed together, his little brother’s waist spanning his palm. The way Rang’s clinging to him, strong, tapered fingers, afraid and relieved and alive. Leeching his heat.
The way he likes, very much likes, all of it.
He’ll think, and wander.
Worse, he’ll think of how he almost got his brother killed, again.
”You’re not my mother,” Rang rasps, and Yeon lets out a strangled, wispy laugh. “I’m barely sure you are my brother.”
“Don‘t wound me, honey.”
Weakly: “‘m not your honey, either.”
Yeon’s laugh rings a little stronger.
They get out.
Somehow. They get out. “Stop fussing,” Rang says, irascible. It’s a weak refute: he doesn’t slap Yeon’s hands away when they check him over for injury, when they gentle over scrapes and torn fabric, over the angry bruising at his wrists.
When they set, and rest, on either side of his jaw.
“Idiot,” Yeon says, fond and relieved. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“What? Get kidnapped?”
“Yes.”
Rang rolls his eyes, patented little brother petulance. Yeon could kiss him.
Wants to, really, and wants it rather badly.
He settles for caressing his face. “He struck me from behind,” Rang says. “The bastard’s not just a bastard, but a coward.”
“Best get started on growing eyes at your nape, then,” Yeon says, and knows he must look quite foolish, kneeling there soaked and gazing at him as though he’s hung the moon. “This is the second time he’s got you like that.”
Rang makes a soft sound. A scoff, maybe, or maybe it’s a snort, as though he’s thinking, doddering old fool. “Says the man who very nearly lost his to a curse. How’d you get here, anyway?”
“Oh, that. I had a little help.” And because it isn’t the right place, although it’s almost the right time: “Good thing this is wool,” he says, smoothing his hands down over the lapels of Rang’s vest, lingering a little. “Myoyeongak’s a bit of a walk. The last thing you need is hypothermia.”
“If a cold is the worst we walk out of this with, Lord Yeon,” Shin Joo offers, rising, “I’ll be pretty damn happy.”
Yeon could almost kiss him, too.
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fin.