Work Text:
Mingyu finds him under the same willow tree in front of the lonesome cottage they first met at that summer of twenty years ago. Their first words exchanged still echo in his mind with no thought of retreating into a mere memory, Wonwoo’s hushed plea of “Please don’t hurt me” behind surrendered hands framing his chest.
He glances up to the porch, to the rickety steps where Wonwoo had asked why he would ever come here and his meager answer of “I like to wander around.” He still remembers Wonwoo’s unmoving fingertips on his cup of iced tea, unwavering gaze to the lake, the stillness in his voice when he dropped like a deadweight between them, “You stopped wandering, Mingyu.” He remembers saving his wanderings to himself, that he wanted to wander around Wonwoo and for reasons why no one else wanted to wander here.
Deep in the trees, even after twenty years, gossips of the monster by the lake still live in the village as if time refuses to move on, as if everyone else refuses to move on.
Wonwoo smiles, bitter at the ends, when his eyes flicker up to him from where he leans on the willow tree. Relief touches the corners of his eyes, but knits of his brows afterwards warn him otherwise. “How did you know I'd still be here?”
“I just thought…” Mingyu barely returns his smile out of courtesy.
There isn’t much of a reply he can conjure up together. Because while the hair on his scalp threatens to white out too early, brushstrokes of gray at his periphery, he scans above Wonwoo’s eyes, to his fringe resisting into black and skin around his eyes stilling smooth. Mingyu’s own hands have allowed age to hollow him out from the inside and bury its markings, deeper than flesh and digging into bone. Yet Wonwoo’s hands perched on his bent knee escape every touch by the second hand. Like porcelain, only showcased without a shatter, without a wear and tear of life’s passing. If someone told Mingyu this is tapestry of the day he discovered this forbidden part of the forest, blinding him from the present, he would never have the guts nor the desire to part it.
He wants to ask the possibility of this, but tears well his eyes in overlays of their past. When he catches the falter of Wonwoo’s lips for a word, Mingyu’s eyes burn, can’t stop the blur as his heart plummets to piece together why no one comes here, why everyone spits Wonwoo’s name, engraving into verbal tombstones.
He turns away from Wonwoo’s voice barely grasping the syllables intact enough to be heard, to the lake he remembers venturing out to with Wonwoo, “Do you see why no one comes here, Mingyu?” Mingyu lets the sound of his heart break into the wall of his fingertips over his mouth, but he shakes his head. The breeze almost steals his voice when he continues, “Do you see why everyone is scared of me?” His voice falls apart between the gasp drowning in the sob, “Are you scared of me now, Mingyu?”
How can he fear Wonwoo when he has been nothing but gentle and forgiving to him, even when he left him here two decades ago?
Mingyu’s knees rust on his way down to kneel in front of him, joints sinking into dirt and twigs not too far from Wonwoo’s side. He swallows hard but not enough to shove the cruelty of the village just kilometers away. “I could never.”
____
When the sun bids them peace the next morning, he delves into the blanket of Wonwoo’s hand under his head and across his face, ghosting a thumb back and forth over his cheek. Morning sunlight flees from calming the uncovered skin on his shoulders, and shivers rise up all over his body before he does. At the deep swing of an inhale, forcing the shaky exhale out, he barely cracks an eye open. He blinks the sleep hard and away from his eyes as Wonwoo overtakes his entire vision.
From the trespassing sunbeams at curtain-sides, awe paints Wonwoo’s face quiet. It’s different this time. It's stark against last night when Wonwoo switched the lights off so that “we can’t tell our hair color in the dark.” The slight rise of his eyebrows in worry or in speculation, parted lips that beg a sound out but nothing comes through, he ponders what Wonwoo is staring at and why he’s so focused on him.
“Mingyu,” his name wrapped in Wonwoo’s voice snaps into a cry, and the tears begin to pool at the rims of his eyes, into a slow stream down his cheek and into the pillow and into Mingyu’s palm across his face now. “Mingyu, Mingyu, Mingyu,” and he wonders what Wonwoo is praying for.
“Wonwoo,” he croaks, but it’s only met by silence and sunbeams painting the tears in his eyes brighter than before. “Wonwoo,” he tries once more to strike something else between them, desperate for something that isn’t a name.
He whispers, eyes exhausted at each futile swipe of the tears dry, “You look like I just met you yesterday.” Mingyu scowls at that. Yesterday has allowed them to steal their first time meeting each other in so long, in twenty years exactly. The whisper crumbles as Wonwoo’s fingertips trickle down his face, almost cursed from touching him anywhere, and he questions if this should burn him, “Like I met you for the first time yesterday.”
He holds onto Wonwoo’s hands over his face this time before they can leave his skin. He anchors himself to the reality he tries to keep close. “What do you mean?”
Wonwoo’s eyes flit up, and his own eyes flutter shut when Wonwoo takes extra time at his hairline, running digits through his hair. He opens them up to Wonwoo’s gaze emptying into fear and falling into dread above his eyebags. “Your hair is the same color as mine.”