Chapter Text
Wooyoung sleeps through four nights. When he finally wakes, Jongho is the one at his side and who tells him just how long he’s slept and how worried the others have been.
In hindsight, Wooyoung had been scared to wake up chained and bloody, but he made it out fine, didn’t he? And without a single scratch.
“What about you?” He gives Jongho the saccharine-sweetest smile he can muster, rolling over to nose at Jongho’s knee where the other is sitting on the edge of the bed. “Were you worried too?”
“You snore,” Jongho says, unbothered.
Wooyoung makes a noise of indignation and swats his knee, but Jongho just corrals him back towards the pillows and then stubbornly wraps his arms around his middle. Wooyoung sighs – Jongho is the least fun to tease because he can suddenly, effortlessly make it sincere – but he slings a leg over Jongho’s hip and nudges in closer too. Wooyoung waits for the you shouldn’t have gone into town by yourself or something along those lines, but it doesn’t come.
So the guilt starts to settle in, of course. Jongho insists on just holding him and not answering why he was so worried when you know this happens every time one of you apparates with me, you should just be happy I didn’t get sick on you.
“But you did,” Jongho huffs, muffled where he’s tucked his head under Wooyoung’s chin, and ah, right, Wooyoung does remember doing that. His recollection so far consists of landing face-first on damp grass, San landing on top of him, him pushing San off to upend his empty stomach, and then blacking out.
San.
“San,” Wooyoung whispers, the details starting to fill in now. “Is he okay?”
“He’s been locked in his room ever since I brought everyone back.”
He frowns into Jongho’s hair.
“Locked himself in his room,” Jongho clarifies, likely sensing it. “Yeosang said just this morning he’s been doing better. Calming down.”
“All right,” Wooyoung mumbles, though he doesn’t feel satisfied at all, “good.” Unbidden, the memory of San kissing him, dripped in angel’s blood, returns. Wooyoung hugs Jongho a little tighter. “What about the… That summoner?”
If he could be called that. What kind of summoner didn't know that they were summoning demons, not angels?
Hongjoong, he thinks, mulling over the name. Wooyoung remembers how those eyes had glinted with firelight, looking nearly inhuman himself. Then again, what evidence did Wooyoung have that he wasn't?
Jongho grunts. “I took care of him.”
Jongho is too gentle to kill — this, Wooyoung knows — but his words still send a small shiver through him. “What about the others that were with him?”
“I took care of them too. You don’t have to worry about them anymore, Wooyoung. Just should focus on getting better.”
Tempting. His stomach feels close to collapsing in on itself, but the questions milling through his thoughts are much louder right now.
Jongho presses his lips together tightly. “Seonghwa made roast earlier. You should go eat.”
It feels like he’s is about to let go of him now, which is very symbolic of how Comfort Time is over and now it’s going to be Face the Consequences Time. Wooyoung tries to cling to him a little tighter, but Jongho is the second most immune to his affection and he gently pulls his arms away.
Wooyoung sighs and lets him. It seems inevitable. “On a scale of one to the dish incident, how angry are the others?” He sits up too, noticing that he’s in a different set of night clothes now.
“Not at you,” is Jongho’s so-called answer.
“Right,” Wooyoung mutters. “Well, they can’t be mad at me when I followed all of the rules when I went out. That summoner must have known my routine.” He crosses his arms. “That wasn’t my fault.”
“It wasn’t,” Jongho agrees readily, but there’s an unspoken but there that Wooyoung can feel him holding back.
“But what?” he insists. “We already knew something like this could happen.”
“Yes, but not to you.”
There. “So you are mad!”
“No, I told you I’m not mad.” Jongho’s voice goes an octave higher.
“You’re not mad?” Wooyoung is rapidly losing track of what he’s arguing for, only that he feels guilty for something he can’t even put a name to, and that he doesn’t think he should feel guilty at all. “Oh, so it’s just the others who are?”
Jongho puts his hands up in exasperation. “Wooyoung, I love you, but sometimes you’re impossible. Do you want them to be mad at you?”
Wooyoung huffs. His only response for that is a, “Love you too,” muffled into Jongho’s chest.
Of course Wooyoung doesn’t want them to be angry at him. But the next possibility is that they’re disappointed in him, and Wooyoung would really, really, really not be able to take it if they were. Wooyoung knew how to handle anger, how to dull it over time or even apologize to fix it, but disappointment was something else, like an earthquake that left fissures in the ground long after it passed.
So, yes, maybe Wooyoung is hoping a little bit that they’re just angry at him.
“If you’re not convinced, go to talk them.” Jongho breaks through his thoughts, ever the voice of maturity. “Or at least to show them you’re okay.”
Except when Wooyoung tentatively reaches for the part of his thoughts where Yeosang has made a home, he finds the bond closed off and cold, so. Jongho’s idea is off to an inauspicious start. But Wooyoung is okay, and he’d never been in danger of really getting hurt, so theoretically they should all be able to move past this. Theoretically.
Wooyoung rolls over and vents his frustrations into a pillow with a scream, then another for good measure. Jongho pats him on the back. Wooyoung wallows there for another moment before sitting back up again, grim.
He hates when any of them is angry at each other, mostly because they have to live together, and not even the Jung manor, with its sprawling acreage and excessive number of rooms, is big enough to completely dilute the sourness in the air. Especially when four of them are demons.
Maybe he’ll go to San first; San’s never been able to stay mad at him for long.
Wooyoung’s attention drifts back to reality, and Jongho is gathering up the clutter that have apparently built up on the side table – a basin, some washcloths, a small stack of used plates. “You practically moved in here with me,” Wooyoung groans.
“Not just me,” Jongho says, “Seonghwa too,” like that’s supposed to make it less mortifying. Another disadvantage of living with interplanar beings: they all treat him as if he’s…well, as if he’s human.
As he stands up to stretch, he spies a charcoal stick and a certain sketchbook among the clutter.
Wooyoung bites his lip, resisting the urge to tug at the bond again.
Yes, he’ll go to San first.
--
(Except when he comes out of a much-needed bath, it’s Seonghwa he runs into first. The eldest is apparently there to pick up his books, and Wooyoung doesn’t think he even notices him until Seonghwa says, “Are you feeling well?”
Wooyoung pinches the sash of his robe. He’s dripping on the carpet, but his feet don’t want to move. “I’m perfect.”
Seonghwa glances at him. Glances. Wooyoung barely gets to meet his eye before he turns towards the door. “I’m not mad at you, Wooyoung.”
“It kind of sounds like you are.”
Seonghwa sighs. Is it just Wooyoung’s imagination, or is the room turning colder at his presence? “I still have wards to replace,” he says. “Go to San. He’s been worried out of his mind.”
Seonghwa leaves him like that, frozen in place and dripping bathwater and feeling quite dumbstruck.
Not mad at him, his ass.)
--
San’s room isn’t locked, but it has a demon ward carved into it, so in a twisted way, it is locked for San.
They only call it San’s room because Wooyoung gave everyone rooms when they first moved in, but Wooyoung’s room is more apt to be called San’s room. He usually sleeps with Wooyoung, jamming his hands under Wooyoung’s sleep shirt to warm them up and holding Wooyoung like Wooyoung is an oversized pillow, or sometimes with one of the others whenever he and Wooyoung have a petty fight.
San hasn’t been in his room for a long time. The only reason he uses it now is for his sigil carved into the wood, paired with a demon ward: less to keep people out, and more to keep San in.
Yeosang had been the one to carve them. It’s a memory that Wooyoung wishes he didn’t remember so clearly: San had been helping him sort through his mother’s old study, trying to put names to the potions she had amassed over the years, when Wooyoung accidentally dropped a vial of angel's blood. He’d had barely enough time to register it breaking on the floor by his feet before San was on him, eyes gone black and teeth bared in a hungry snarl, and it had taken both Jongho and Seonghwa to wrench them apart and then Yeosang to apparate San somewhere not-there, somewhere he could no longer be intoxicated by the scent of painsufferingfilthfilthfilth from the pool of angel’s blood on the floor.
Jongho had looked as shaken as he was, but Seonghwa had been quiet. He’d refused to tell Wooyoung where San and Yeosang went, and Wooyoung had been furious at him. Later, he was furious at Yeosang too when he found him in the manor again, carving sigils into San’s door: one of them San’s, the other a mark of warding.
What the fuck are you doing? Wooyoung had demanded, That’s San, our San, because Yeosang, Yeosang, of all of them should’ve known how it felt to be caged like some animal, but Yeosang had shaken his head and driven the knife a little deeper to complete the ward and said, San asked me to.
It was weeks until he saw San again – or, weeks until the high had run its course and San had let Wooyoung see him again. He had spoken with his head low and hands clasped together, nails digging white crescents into the backs of his hands, I’m so sorry, Wooyoung. He’d said, voice uncharacteristically meek, I think it’s better if I go.
Wooyoung had learned then that there was something inside of San, something that lied in wait, calculatingly cold and patient. Angel’s blood tempted all demons, but never beyond their control – only whatever was inside of San seemed ravenous for it. He knew that incident spurred San to learn how to control it, to build a tolerance against it, but that San never risked it while any of them were nearby.
Until Hongjoong a few days ago, of course. Wooyoung had felt only borderline pity for the man when he first woke in that room with him – it wasn’t uncommon for people to use the wrong sigils in a summoning and get more than they bargained for – but now he feels the beginnings of anger.
He has a brief, petty thought of, I hope Yeosang taught him a lesson. Then he feels bad for purposely hoping that Hongjoong got hurt and settles on, I hope he’ll leave us alone now.
Surely Hongjoong deserves some of that anger, though. Surely anyone who makes San feel like he must lock himself in a cage would deserve it.
Wooyoung fidgets with the sleeve of his shirt, counting the seconds tick by. He’s been standing in front of door for several long minutes now, worrying the nail of his thumb between his teeth as he runs through all the different ways he should greet San so that it doesn’t end with San isolating himself for weeks. Wooyoung really doesn’t want that to happen again.
“Wooyoung, please just come in already.”
Oh.
Wooyoung reddens, and he considers turning around and fleeing anyway.
Miraculously, his guts don’t fail him. He opens the door and steps into the room instead.
As one of the many spare rooms in the manor, it’s furnished to be comfortable but also impress whichever guest his parents happened to be hosting at the time. Wooyoung’s seen the others take liberties with theirs, but San’s looks the closest to the original arrangement since he’s used it so little.
There have been minor redecorations, though. Namely, all of the covers and pillows have been dragged off the bed and piled into the corner, where Wooyoung spies San’s dark hair among the rose and violets and San’s eyes watching him from behind a bundle of sheets. San looks like he’s just woken, but his eyes are sharp and alert as Wooyoung leaves the door ajar and slowly approaches.
“I could feel you thinking from here.” San’s voice is lower, sleep-roughened. “You’re so loud.”
“You’re loud,” Wooyoung shoots back without much heat. He pauses at the foot of San’s pillow pile.
It’s a strange feeling. He’s never had to hesitate with San before.
Eventually, he decides that that shouldn’t have to change and throws himself gracelessly into the pile. Unfortunately, he misjudges how thick it is and bangs his knees against hardwood. He whines in pain, and San whines too.
“Wooyoung, be careful.”
“I’m fine!” Wooyoung crawls up to fit himself into the corner with San, bringing an edge of a blanket with him. “I’m fine.”
They wrestle with the sheets until Wooyoung finally settles below them too. He feels San hesitate when he curls up to him, but a few seconds later, San’s arms slip around his waist and bring him in to his chest. Wooyoung is happy to go, their legs tangling already under the covers. San is warm for once, which probably says something about how long he’s kept himself bundled up in here.
“Fine?” San’s voice starts to lighten, but it still holds a note of caution.
“Fine,” Wooyoung insists. Normally San will crush him in a hug and only bunker down tighter when Wooyoung complains, but now he’s holding Wooyoung like he’s holding a piece of china and Wooyoung— Wooyoung can’t decide if likes or resents that. He burrows closer to San. “Did you eat dinner yet?” he prods.
“No.”
“Are you hungry?”
“A little.”
Wooyoung noses upwards, pressing a little kiss to the underside of San’s chin. “Do you want to go eat together?”
“I could just eat you,” San hums. He’s closed his eyes, though Wooyoung can see his lashes fluttering like he’s struggling not to look. Wooyoung thinks he’s beautiful all the time, but San looks especially beautiful now in the partial moonlight.
“Hope you like the taste of soap,” Wooyoung scoffs.
San doesn’t seem to care, mouthing playfully by Wooyoung’s temple, but Wooyoung’s no coward and retaliates by scraping his teeth along the nape of San’s neck. It earns him a little growl, and then he’s on his back with San hovering over him. San is pouting.
Wooyoung successfully bites back a giggle but not a grin, and San’s pout turns theatrical as he demands, “Why haven’t you eaten?”
“Why haven’t you?” Wooyoung challenges, looping his arms around San’s neck. “I was sleeping, I have an excuse.”
“Well, I ate yesterday.”
“That doesn’t count!”
“It’s been less than twenty-four hours.”
“Doesn’t count.”
“Fine. But I don’t have to eat every day like you do.” San’s eyes flicker to his lips, then back up to meet his eyes again. Wooyoung hasn’t seen this side of San before: his foxlike eyes are serious, perhaps even somber, and there’s an uncharacteristic frailty in his words. “You were asleep for so long.”
He sounds afraid.
Wooyoung drags him down for a kiss, one that tastes of San and San only. He feels San stiffen for a second, before the other exhales inaudibly against his lips and kisses him back, deep and unhurried. San cups his cheek like he’s something precious, and Wooyoung has never known how to react to that except to throw himself deeper in and not think about it at all.
When San pulls away for breath, he remains close, lips brushing the corner of Wooyoung’s. “Yeosang shared some of your bond with me,” he admits quietly. “I just wanted to make sure you were feeling okay, but I shouldn’t have asked him without asking you first. I’m... I'm sorry for intruding.”
Wooyoung’s eyebrows furrow slightly, and he smooths San’s long hair out of his eyes. “I love you,” he says, “and Yeosang loves you too. You…were just worried.” When San is silent, he insists, “You weren’t intruding on anything.”
He’s never seen his and Yeosang’s bond as some exclusionary sign that they love each other most. Wooyoung would bond with them all if they could, but he knows little about how demons can form bonds with humans aside from being forcibly drawn at the time of a summoning. It just happened that his mother made that decision for him and Yeosang years ago.
“I’m still sorry,” San says, slumping back down to the pillows with him. He plasters himself around Wooyoung again, clinging to him without shame, and Wooyoung makes a content little noise and lets him. He’d been afraid San would push him away “for his own good,” but San has been surprising him so far. He's thankful that San has let him this close.
“I’m sorry you had to listen to me sleep.” Wooyoung wrinkles his nose, trying to lighten San up. He really can't remember anything particularly good or awful about how he’d slept, though, which must mean it was a duller affair than San’s worrying about. He shoots San a coy look, trying to shift the subject somewhere lighter. “Was I at least having a good dream?”
It takes a beat, but San thankfully plays along. “Hmm,” he drawls, “you were dreaming about me, so yes. And missing me so much. And missing my cooking, and apologizing for all the bad things you’ve ever said about it—”
Wooyoung makes an offended noise and swats at him, insisting, “If you stopped somehow burning water, I’d miss it more!”
San bursts into a little giggle and takes every smack without missing a beat, which only fuels Wooyoung into trying to tickle him into submission. But San is impervious to that or something, and it takes a single poke into Wooyoung’s ribs for Wooyoung to fold instead, laughing, “Mercy, mercy.”
“That’s what I thought,” San says smugly, claiming his victory with a kiss. Wooyoung rolls his eyes, but he would be lying if he said San’s laughter didn’t lift a stone’s weight off his chest.
He thinks that he and San are going to be okay.
“I missed you.” San confesses this for free, resting his chin atop Wooyoung’s head once Wooyoung finally gives up and just jams himself back into San’s arms. San’s hand comes to rest warmly over his back, two fingers tracing idle lines there. Wooyoung doesn’t know about art as well as Yeosang, but he thinks the lines feel artful. “I thought you were never going to wake up.”
Wooyoung has never heard of such a thing happening before. “Hm. If it happens again, you should kiss me awake,” he suggests.
“…Why would that make you wake up?”
“It’s from the fairy—” He stops. “Never mind, I’ll show you another time.”
He wants to bask here with San a little while longer. He’s still not sure why San had to drag out all of the sheets to this specific corner, but he’s starting to see the appeal, because the longer they’re cocooned, the more tempted he is to just fall asleep again.
Actually, that does sound very preferable to facing Seonghwa or Yeosang.
“Don’t fall asleep,” San warns, as if he knows what Wooyoung is thinking. “You’re never allowed to fall asleep again.”
“I wasn’t,” Wooyoung snips. His stomach rumbles then, but his mind is still on other things. He noses at San’s collar. “For now. Will you sleep with me tonight?”
San hesitates.
Wooyoung tries not to feel hurt about it, because he knows San is just thinking about his safety, but Wooyoung wonders when he’ll ever convince him that he can never possibly think San capable of hurting him.
“If you want,” San eventually relents.
He’s tracing protective sigils into Wooyoung’s back, Wooyoung realizes.
Wooyoung places a hand on his arm and guides it away, so that he’s holding onto San’s hand instead. There is nothing in this room that Wooyoung needs protection from. “I want you to,” he says. He doesn’t know how much of the bond San can still feel, but he sends love down its length, hoping San will catch at least a thrum of it.
“All right,” San says, and maybe he does. “I will.”
They lapse into silence.
“Usually when…that part of me comes out,” San whispers, so quietly that Wooyoung almost doesn’t hear it, “I feel far away. I hear and see and feel what It does, but I can tell that It’s in control, not me.”
Wooyoung wishes more than anything that he could absolve that guilt in San’s voice, but Seonghwa had told him once that it wasn’t that simple, that it wouldn’t happen overnight. That they could only be patient and let San take his time, stay with him through it, and be there for him in the aftermath.
“But when you said my name in that room,” San squeezes his hand, and he’s shaking, and Wooyoung keeps his word and holds him through it, “when you told me to come back to you, I wanted to. It wanted to, too.”
“And you did,” Wooyoung says softly. “All of you.”
San goes quiet for a few more seconds. “I used to think It wanted to hurt you. But I think… I think you help. It listens to you.” Another pause. “Thank you for bringing me back.”
Wooyoung feels his face grow warm at that. He hides himself against San’s chest, where he can hear the earnest beat of San’s heart.
“I always will,” he promises.
--
He does manage to coax San out of his room to join him and Jongho at the dinner table. San admits he lied about being hungry, but he's acting a lot more like himself now, and Wooyoung is just grateful for that. Meanwhile, Wooyoung's hunger is finally rearing its head and it takes him until his second of plate of food to notice that San has his cheek leaned against folded arms and he's watching him. Across them, Jongho says something about San being so moon-eyed, whatever that means. He might have said it to make them blush, but Wooyoung's too busy chewing and San's too far past shamelessness about his affection, so Jongho just shakes his head into his food.
“Don’t watch me so closely,” Wooyoung complains, holding up a dinner roll between them to wall off San’s eyes.
“But you’re pretty,” San complains back, straightening and plucking the roll out of Wooyoung’s hand.
Affronted, Wooyoung tries to snatch it from him. “You said you weren’t hungry.”
“I’m not.” San bats his arm away so he can offer the roll to Wooyoung’s lips. “Here.”
Wooyoung rolls his eyes but swallows his latest bite of roast before parting his lips for San.
“So good for us,” San purrs, which a small coughing fit from Jongho.
“Don’t say things like that around Jongho,” Wooyoung says with a frown, reaching over to rub Jongho’s back reassuringly. He expects a look of gratitude, but Jongho just looks sour.
“Please, he’s probably thinking the same.”
“I’m eating,” Jongho says, chewing pointedly.
“See?” San taps the roll against Wooyoung’s bottom lip again, and Wooyoung pretends to give a long-suffering sigh. He’s about to indulge San again when he notices someone standing in the kitchen doorway.
Seonghwa’s expression is unreadable, but he doesn’t look displeased, per se. He just turns and leaves before Wooyoung has a chance to call out to him.
Wooyoung’s mood dips a little.
“They’re not mad at you,” Jongho says without looking up from his food. Wooyoung figures he noticed too. San says something about wine and springs up to fetch it, leaving through the same doorway Seonghwa was just in, but Wooyoung doesn’t hear them running into each other.
He glances at Jongho, who’s still looking at the doorway with a faintly troubled look. “I’ll talk to them later,” Wooyoung promises him, digging back into his food.
“Okay. Because Seonghwa cleans twice as much when he’s antsy, and he hasn’t left my room alone for two days,” Jongho says. Wooyoung suspects there’s more to that, but he doesn’t push.
“Sleep with me and San tonight,” he says with a shrug. San tends to cling without leaving much room for Wooyoung to cling back; Jongho is more reserved, but he never minds when any of them sidle up to him, so it’s a perfect arrangement.
He doesn’t really want to be alone, either.
“I found them,” San sing-songs, reappearing with a bottle of wine and…three champagne flutes. Wooyoung doesn’t have the heart to tell him, and it’s their house now which means they can do what they’d like anyway, so he watches San pour them each a glass. “Did you say you’re sleeping with me and Wooyoungie tonight?”
“I have to,” Jongho says, shuddering. “If Seonghwa keeps me up to clean again, I’ll cry.”
“We’re not letting Seonghwa make you cry,” San declares.
“I can hear you,” comes a sharp voice from upstairs.
San breaks out into snickers. Normally Wooyoung would laugh with him, but the most he can muster is a flimsy smile, Seonghwa’s tone echoing in the back of his thoughts.
“We should all sleep together,” San says. It looks like he’s missed a few things while he was hiding too, except that maybe he’s not as worried as Wooyoung, or Jongho just didn’t tell him as much. “I can’t remember the last time we did that. Tell Seonghwa and Yeosang they should come too.”
“We should,” Wooyoung’s mouth agrees before his brain can catch up. San’s right – they haven’t slept together in a while, and Wooyoung hasn’t realized how much he’s missed it, how much he’s missed them all. The four nights he lost are finally starting to catch up, and he just wants to be wrapped up in them. “I’ll ask them later.”
Jongho glances at him questioningly over his plate.
Wooyoung puts on his best smile. He will.
Later.
How? He’ll figure that out later, too.
For now, he lets himself relax in San and Jongho’s company, relishing the feeling of being home.