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Seungkwan has been asleep for less than an hour when someone-Hansol, he thinks despairingly, it’s always fucking Hansol-raps their knuckles lightly against the wood of his door. He lives alone, a decision not made lightly-though his coin purse may disagree-but he can’t bring himself to regret it. Except for when his best friend shows up in the middle of the night with some new vision that he needs help with right away, quickly Kwannie before it fades.
So as much as he would like to ignore the knocking, turn his back to the door and fall back asleep, he knows that he can’t, not when it’s Hansol who needs him.
He grabs a candle on his way and lights it clumsily, wasting two matches in the process and letting out a steady stream of curses as he unbolts the door as quietly as possible. A cloaked figure slips into the room, silent and swift as a knife to the throat, and Seungkwan would be more nervous if he didn’t know Hansol in the dark as well as he knows Hansol in the clementine light of early morning.
“Are you gonna stand there all night or are you gonna ask for my help with something?” Seungkwan snips while closing the door carefully, sliding the deadbolt back in place before glancing up again. Hansol has thrown the hood of his cloak back and Seungkwan steps forward on instinct, goes to Hansol’s side like a reflex.
“Her name is Eunha,” Hansol says, wide eyes staring directly at Seungkwan, as if daring him to argue.
“That’s a beautiful name,” Seungkwan agrees, relaxing slightly. This is familiar at least, Hansol bringing back injured, scared little creatures who need help and staring at Seungkwan with his big aggravating eyes until Seungkwan huffs a sigh and agrees to help. “Can I see her?”
Hansol’s shoulders ratchet down a notch and Seungkwan is granted the gift of watching his smile spread across his face, wide and goofy and devastating as he carefully pulls the clasp at his throat until it pops open, the thick material slithering off his shoulders and onto the floor.
Typically Seungkwan would be more upset about that-he just swept this morning-but he finds he can’t do anything more than gasp when he sees what Hansol is holding; not a puppy or a chick or even a baby dragon the size of a small horse. Hansol is cradling an actual, human (as far as he can tell) baby in his arms.
“Gods above Hansol, what have you done this time?” Seungkwan despairs, even as he reaches out to brush delicate fingers across Eunha’s plump, reddened cheeks. She is, Seungkwan thinks, a perfect baby.
“I found her,” Hansol coos softly at her as he shuffles his way to his usual chair by the fire, nothing more than embers now. “She was washed up by the river in a little basket like she was nothing more than a loaf of bread, I couldn’t just leave her.”
Seungkwan sighs but doesn’t contradict him.
This is Hansol, after all, and Seungkwan can’t help but ache with the bruise of fondness at Hansol’s kindness, his drive to do good by the world even at his own expense. They’ve known each other since they were children, Seungkwan small and sharp-tongued, Hansol a bug-eyed but quiet boy who even then could send the pebbles around his feet scattering away with a frown of concentration and a slash of his hand through the air.
Hansol spends his days now studying at the Academy, honing his abilities while Seungkwan hones his sword, a trusted knight to Crown Prince Seokmin after years of training so grueling he wasn’t sure he could make it. It was Hansol who brewed him tonics to relieve sore muscles, who whispered words in a language imbued with so much power it made Seungkwan’s hair stand on end just so Seungkwan could rest a little easier.
Never, not once, has Hansol asked for anything in return. Seungkwan owes him the world, owes him his body and the fang-sharp edge of his sword, his loyalty and his life, but he knows Hansol would never accept any of it, not willingly.
So instead, he offers his help.
“Has she been quiet this whole time?” Seungkwan asks as he stokes the embers, tossing a few split logs in for them to catch fire. It’s chill in the open air of his small home, and he worries for Eunha, especially since she came from the river.
“As a caterpillar,” Hansol nods.
“Because caterpillars are quiet?”
“Very.”
“Alright,” Seungkwan says around a laugh, and busies himself with putting on the kettle.
Hansol has stumbled his way through Seungkwan’s front door in the dead of night so many times that at this point they have a routine. Seungkwan will putter around the space making tea while Hansol explains in his quiet, steady monotone what happened this time-the vision he saw while sleeping and couldn’t get out of his head, the ivy he was harvesting in the light of the waning moon that burned when it wrapped viciously around the bone of his wrist, the helpless little animal he heard braying in the woods that he simply had to go and rescue-and Seungkwan will listen, will cluck at the welts scarring Hansol’s warm skin and will coo at whatever creature Hansol felt it important to save.
Hansol will sleep on a pallet of thick blankets next to Seungkwan’s bed and Seungkwan will lie awake listening to Hansol’s even breathing until exhaustion tugs him like an anchor down into sleep, or until the orange light of dawn starts poking its way shyly through his curtains.
This time, however, things go a little differently.
The moment Seungkwan moves away from the fireplace Eunha heaves in a great big breath and, instead of the loud wailing that Seungkwan has been half-expecting since the moment he realized Hansol brought a baby into his home, a torrent of water pours out of her mouth and splashes to the ground. It douses the flames that had just started licking their way up the edges of the fresh logs immediately, and Seungkwan can do nothing more than gape with slack-jawed wonder as the torrent spilling from Eunha’s open mouth quickly slows to a trickle, then to nothing at all.
Hansol is soaking wet, carefully holding Eunha in his sodden arms like something precious. He’s also grinning so wide Seungkwan can practically count all his teeth.
Eunha burbles, smugly Seungkwan thinks, then wriggles around until Hansol has to change his grip, maneuvering her easily onto his shoulder to assume burping position. He looks so natural like this, rubbing soothing circles into Eunha’s small back while he bounces her gently, that Seungkwan can almost forget that this baby just completely drenched his small den with more water than her little body could possibly contain.
“Hansol.”
“Mm?”
“I don’t think Eunha is a human baby.”
Hansol continues bouncing Eunha gently but meets Seungkwan’s eyes. The nip of cold air has started to settle around them like a blanket, but Hansol’s eyes are still warm. “We don’t know that.”
“Okay, well, you’re the person I usually go to for figuring out magical conundrums so there’s got to be some way to tell.”
“There is,” Hansol says, looking away from Seungkwan as he does. He sounds resigned. A little sad. It hurts Seungkwan’s heart more than it should. “But I’ll need to wait until the morning. You know magic is always at its most earnest during sunrise.”
Seungkwan doesn’t know that, actually, but he nods along like he does.
When he goes to fetch some towels to clean up the mess a few minutes later, he realizes that there’s no water left on the smooth wood of the floor. Even the logs in the fire seem to have dried out, and are back to crackling joyfully as the flames slowly eat away at them.
“Come to bed,” Seungkwan whispers. He blushes furiously when Hansol arches a thick eyebrow at him, and sticks his tongue out because he doesn’t want to yell and wake up Eunha. He doesn’t know where Hansol gets his nerve. “Or, you can give me Eunha and you can sleep down here, take your pick,” he sniffs. Hansol just giggles, quiet and reserved as he carefully gets to his feet and carries Eunha to Seungkwan’s bedroom.
It’s small, like everything else, but he loves it because it’s his.
There’s a bed, rumpled and cold now because of Hansol’s knock at the door, a large chest of drawers that holds all his casual hanbok, and a half-full closet where his formal attire and his sword are hung fastidiously. The extra blankets for Hansol’s pallet are shoved unceremoniously in the bottom of the closet, but Seungkwan hesitates before pulling them out.
“Do you think,” he starts, and then stops so abruptly he almost chokes on his own tongue. What is he thinking? He can’t just ask Hansol to-
“Kwan?”
Hansol is looking at him. His eyes are huge and searching, hunting dogs whipping through the forest at breakneck speed to run down a fox and snap its neck, except that’s not it at all, not Hansol who has cried over more animals than he has ever killed, whose hands pacify and heal in equal measure, a balm and a friend and a man Seungkwan has come to love.
Stupidly, earnestly, against his own better judgment. He loves Hansol.
“Well,” Seungkwan says, and damn all the gods there are tears in his eyes, Hansol is holding an exhausted infant and it’s Seungkwan who’s crying, “I was going to ask if you thought we should both sleep in my bed tonight, to make sure Eunha doesn’t hurt herself, but,” his throat clicks a little and he sees Hansol’s free arm moving slowly toward him but he keeps going, “but if I lay with you right now, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to let you go.”
“You’ll hold me hostage?” Hansol asks, voice quaking on a laugh, and for a moment Seungkwan is incandescent with embarrassment, wants to storm out of his own house and throw himself on Mingyu's front step until he lets him in. Hansol must notice his mortification because he grabs at Seungkwan’s hand until he goes limp and lets it be taken, brings his hand up and places a soft kiss against his knuckles.
Another one at the base of his thumb.
And another and another and another to the rough callouses scattered across Seungkwan’s palm like rudimentary constellations.
“And if I’m willing?”
“What?” Seungkwan is staring at his hand, at the slight sheen on his skin that Hansol’s lips left behind, a brand burned into his flesh not from the harsh kiss of fire, but the sweetness of Hansol’s mouth.
“I’ll stay as long as you’ll let me. I thought you knew that.”
“How was I supposed to know when you never told me?” Seungkwan sighs, fondness creeping up his throat like the warmth of a palm pressing against his Adam’s apple.
“It’s always been you Seungkwannie,” Hansol says. “I’ve just been waiting for you to see it.”
Seungkwan gapes at him, half convinced he’s about to start spewing water all over his interiors like Eunha before he manages to collect himself. He pats the edge of his bed for Hansol to sit and he does, pulling the covers down and placing Eunha in the middle of the bed with steady hands and a look on his face so gentle Seungkwan thinks he could melt from it.
“What do you-” he starts to ask, but suddenly he gets it, all of it, the determined way young Hansol hung around Seungkwan until he agreed to be his friend, the easy way they move around each other, Hansol reaching out and Seungkwan always taking his hand without question, the knowing quirk of Hansol’s eyebrow when Seungkwan would suggest they do something dangerous, a little stupid, the cloud-bright smile on Hansol’s face when they lay in the shade of the tangerine grove a few blocks away from Seungkwan’s house.
You’re more powerful than people know, aren’t you, he wants to say. You could probably run circles around the mages teaching you in that fancy school, who study magic like it’s something that can be explained by science and mathematics instead of something raw and loamy, of the earth and the rivers and the seas, the eggshell and indigo and tangerine of the sky a backdrop to clouds that loom larger than mountains and all of it connected, infinite and yet infinitely finite, and all of it coming together in you, Hansol, who has never let a good deed go unrewarded, a constant and impossible trudge against the unfairness of the world.
Instead, he says, “You let me fuck Mingyu?!” because he’s had a long day, a longer night now, and he knows that Hansol will tell him everything eventually, because he knows he’s going to demand it.
Hansol giggles.
“I didn’t let you do anything Kwan. You belong to yourself, you know that. You always have.”
It is a rare thing, Seungkwan thinks, to have someone look at you and say exactly what you need to hear before you even realize you need to hear it. Seungkwan refuses to cry a second time in one night in front of Hansol, but he’s making it difficult.
“Stop being so darling when I’m trying to be mad at you.”
“Okay,” Hansol grins, and Seungkwan deflates, all the righteous indignation puffing him up replaced by something a little softer, a little sweeter.
“You’ve been waiting for me?” Seungkwan asks quietly. He fiddles with the edge of the sheet, tucks it a little tighter over Eunha’s chubby belly.
“It was easy,” Hansol shrugs. “You’re an easy person to wait for.”
“Hansol,” Seungkwan says, because anything else, anything else but a sigh of his name seems dishonest. “Hansol, you are so-”
It is a rare thing, Seungkwan thinks, to have a confession stolen from your tongue with a kiss sweet as wild honey. Hansol swallows his words, presses them back into the plush heat of his mouth with his tongue, and Seungkwan clutches at his hand as he accepts it all openly, eagerly.
Hansol pulls away, reluctant but grinning, and Seungkwan doesn’t chase after him because he still has his pride, after all.
“Will you lay with us tonight?” Hansol asks, shuffling around to lay on his side on the other side of Eunha, curling around her like a cupped palm.
“You’re inviting me to my own bed?”
“Yes.”
“You’re impossible,” Seungkwan huffs as he maneuvers his way under the covers carefully. “Don’t pay attention to him Eunha-yah, okay, he’s a bad example, very rude.”
“I think she’s a little young to be worrying about that,” Hansol laughs, and Seungkwan blows out the candle casting flickering orange light between them before Hansol can see the smile on his face.
Seungkwan sleeps as well as can be expected while curled around an infant in a bed just a little too small for the number of people currently using it. He can tell that it’s the same for Hansol, even with his face mostly obscured by the thick blanket of night, by the flash of his teeth when he smiles across the narrow bed at Seungkwan. At some point Hansol reaches out to curl his deft fingers through Seungkwan’s, and Seungkwan lets it happen like always.
Still, he feels more well-rested than he thinks is possible when the weak radiance of predawn starts seeping its way through the cracks in the curtains and he yawns, sits up, stretches, careful of the miraculously still sleeping Eunha.
“Will you come with us to the river?” Hansol asks, and Seungkwan feels warm down to his toes at the way Hansol is looking up at him, cuddled close to Eunha and pouting cutely. Seungkwan’s not even sure if he’s aware of it.
“I don’t have a shift until noon,” Seungkwan says, instead of yes, of course, I’ll go with you anywhere, and Hansol nods, satisfied at his answer.
It’s only fifteen minutes of steady walking to the mouth of the river, but they can hear it before they see it, the thundering current pulsing through the swollen banks like a raging stampede because of the recent heavy rains.
Hansol is carrying Eunha in a makeshift sling, one soft cheek nestled against his broad chest as they make their way determinedly to the place where Hansol found her.
The light continues to grow, wheat and peach melting into petal pink and lavender and the open blue of morning.
“What do we do?” Seungkwan asks. Hansol has stopped walking, is watching the river roar irrepressibly down the space it has carved for itself over the past who knows how many years. He sits down in stages, kneeling first, slowly, both arms holding onto Eunha like something fragile until he’s sitting back on his thighs. He wiggles around until he can sit cross-legged on the ground, and then he carefully unwraps the makeshift sling and deposits her in the vee of his crossed legs.
“Well, I’m going to call on-” Hansol starts, but doesn’t finish because the riotous clamor of the river grows somehow louder, drowning out his words and Seungkwan feels a moment of terrible certainty that this was a mistake, that for all of Hansol’s abilities he could easily have been dazzled by the sweetness of Eunha, a wolf in sheep’s clothing or a trap set by someone who would do them harm.
Seungkwan draws his sword, because he never leaves home without it, even if the sight of him strapping it to his waist this morning had made Hansol stop making silly faces at Eunha to look at Seungkwan reproachfully instead.
No amount of Hansol’s quiet disapproval was going to make him wander out in the crisp air of pre-dawn with a baby and a Hansol and no weapon to protect them.
The years of grueling training he suffered through have Seungkwan springing into action almost before he can think, moving swiftly in front of Hansol and Eunha still sitting quietly on the ground, planting his feet wide, balancing on the balls of his feet.
The bank of the river is only a few steps away and Seungkwan watches with grim horror as the rushing water stops abruptly and then explodes up, a tree spiraling up and up, growing in fast forward until it towers ten, fifteen, twenty meters above them.
Seungkwan tightens his grip.
“Hyung?” He hears Hansol call from behind him, and he blinks, startled, because he might be older than Hansol but he’s not a hyung.
The column of water in front of them seems to quiver at his words and then, slowly, it shrinks down down down until it’s about the height of a person. When Seungkwan squints he can see a face, half human and half something else, obscured by the air bubbles and frothing current.
“Oh, hyung, it is you!” Hansol says and he sounds delighted, joyful and vibrant. Seungkwan keeps a hold of his sword but he lets himself stand up a little straighter, backs up a step until one of Hansol’s broad shoulders brushes the outside of his thigh. When he looks down he sees that Eunha is grinning sleepily up at the water, making grabby hands and trying her best to wriggle out of Hansol’s grip.
“Hansol-ah, what have I told you about taking things that don’t belong to you?” The voice is wry but warm, a little watery, and when Seungkwan looks up he sees that the column of water has been replaced by a person. Long hair the color of moonlight, a devilish grin that would make Seungkwan nervous if Hansol didn’t seem to know them.
“Sorry Jeonghannie hyung, it just seemed like she needed some help.” Hansol is getting to his feet now, using Seungkwan to pull himself up and offer Eunha out to Jeonghan.
“Yah, I should have known. She was supposed to be a little trick but you’re always ruining my pranks,” Jeonghan sighs as he takes Eunha carefully into his arms, and Seungkwan doesn’t realize he hasn’t put his sword away until Jeonghan’s narrowed eyes land on him, deep as the ocean and just as terrifying.
“Excuse me Jeonghan-ssi,” Seungkwan says quickly, sheathing his sword and bowing politely. “I’m Seungkwan, one of the Flowering Knights to Crown Prince Seokmin.”
“Whatever,” Jeonghan dismisses quickly, and Seungkwan flushes, embarrassed. He’s proud of his position, but he knows creatures like this don’t care for human titles.
“Be nice, hyung,” Hansol admonishes, stepping back into Seungkwan’s space and interlocking their fingers. His hand is soft and comforting against the roughness of Seungkwan’s palm. “This is my Seungkwan,” he continues, and Seungkwan flushes again, warmth filling his chest and making him feel almost weightless.
Jeonghan rolls his eyes but dips his head to Seungkwan, still holding a quietly babbling Eunha. “Nice to meet you Hansol’s Seungkwan,” he says. The petulant tone makes Seungkwan stifle a laugh, which Jeonghan notices but doesn’t respond to other than to grin at them mischievously.
“She’s awfully sweet,” Hansol offers after a moment of awkward silence, the river raging on in front of them the only sound in the gentle cradle of early morning.
“She gets that from Soonyoungie,” Jeonghan laughs, poking at Eunha’s belly and smiling brilliantly when she squeals. “I’ve got to get back to him actually, he keeps trying to figure out a way to keep a pet tiger. We’re river spirits! I keep telling him a tiger shark would be better but you know how he is.”
Hansol nods seriously at this, and Seungkwan is overcome all over again at Hansol’s heart, the softness of his soul that lets him befriend people and creatures and spirits, to know them and love them and talk to them about their families, their friends, their problems that Hansol will do everything in his power to help them with.
He squeezes Hansol’s hand as Jeonghan waves goodbye, swan diving gracefully into the frothing water and disappearing out of sight.
“You’re impossible,” Seungkwan says ruefully as they start walking back towards town. The sun is beginning to rise in earnest now, bathing the two of them in golden light and warmth.
“I am?”
Seungkwan thinks about it, the impossibility of Hansol, the things he can do, his visions of the future (of a future with Seungkwan, of all people), and he shakes his head, brings their entwined hands up to press a kiss to the bone of Hansol’s wrist.
“No,” he says, finally. “Not at all.”