Work Text:
“Young-ah? I’m home.” San enters their modest little apartment with the basket tucked in the crook of his arm, making sure not to tilt it as he slides the locks back in place. “I brought some leaves back for you, I figured the ones you have aren't that crunchy anymore. I think there’s been a rabbit digging around in the garden? The flower bushes were ransacked when I stopped by...”
He catches sight of the living room just as he’s leaning down to undo the laces of his shoes: the couch and coffee table that had been shoved out of the way that morning to make room for the swirl of sheets and pillows in the middle of the floor, the autumn-touched leaves strewn about, San’s shirts — significantly fewer of the shirts than he remembers leaving that morning — and, most importantly, no Wooyoung.
“Wooyoung-ah,” he calls again as he slips off his coat. He leaves his gloves on, hands still heavy from his last client of the day, but once only left in his cotton turtleneck, he notices the chill in the room. It’s definitely colder than he remembers leaving the apartment, too.
He checks the thermostat as he kicks his shoes off; the AC isn’t on, but he wasn’t expecting it to be. An open window’s his next guess, but it doesn’t seem likely given how much Wooyoung hates the cold.
Frowning, he turns on the heat. He steps carefully past the set-up in the living room and into the dining room. All six seats of their wooden dining table are empty, but there are two placemats and two plates in his and Wooyoung’s usual seats. No sounds or smells of cooking though, even though Wooyoung had mentioned something about waiting for him for dinner so they could bundle up and eat together.
“Wooyoung-ah,” he tries one more time, stepping past the table to the kitchen island. It’s colder here.
He spots the door to the fire escape first, hanging half ajar, swaying lightly with the autumn breeze outside. He sees the mud tracks on the tile next and a few damp leaves stuck to the tile, fluttering weakly from the wind. Rubbing his arms with a small shiver, he walks over to shut and lock it, then turns to assess the mess.
The mud tracks lead to the open cabinet beneath the kitchen island: once it was for Wooyoung's pots and pans, but then San bought him a hanging rack for Christmas and they started displaying them all proudly, so these days it's usually empty. Today, though, he recognizes the unmistakable shape of Wooyoung curled up in it. He's fast asleep, head tucked against the inside wall and his legs tucked to his chest, and the cabinet's absolutely overflowing with sheets and pillows and San’s clothes and, most importantly, those leaves Wooyoung likes so much.
For the first time since he left the apartment, San takes a breath, and it feels like a real one. A smile finds its way across his face as he kneels by the cupboard door, reaching for the shape of Wooyoung’s arm. San can see his neckline a little, and it looks like he’s at least back in the sweater that San put on him that morning. San rubs him gently. “Baby? Can you wake up for me for a second?”
Wooyoung shifts a little, making a small noise. San sees his eyelids flutter in the dark before Wooyoung blinks them open slowly, turning with the same sluggishness towards San. “Oh. Sannie.” He untucks his arms from his chest and reaches for San, soil-stained fingers sliding over the back of San’s leather gloves. “You’re home.”
“I am,” San hums, catching his fingers with a small squeeze. “What happened to using the living room?”
Wooyoung’s head lolls, his eyes staying shut for a little too long on the close of a blink. He’s scratching a finger lightly on San’s glove. “It was too big. Not tight enough. Sorry.”
“It’s okay, as long as you’re comfortable. Are you cold? The back door was open.”
“There was a bird,” Wooyoung says by way of answering, sounding fuzzy on it. “I think it was trying to break in, so I had to go outside and scare it off. I got some more leaves too.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” There are a few in his hair right now, and it would explain the burrows he saw. San chuckles, picking them out and dropping them into the basket before he brushes his knuckle against Wooyoung’s cheek. He can’t really gauge how cold he is with a layer between them, but he does feel Wooyoung shiver.
“How’d work go?” Wooyoung rasps.
San smiles wanly, tapping his cheek in a silent request not to worry. “It went. Everyone got what they wanted.” It’s worth however exhausted he comes home after—knowing he’s helped bring some ease to people for even just a day. Sometimes he wishes he can do more, wishes his magic could conjure or transform or transmute things like the powerful witches he always looked up to, but wishing has never really done him good. This is what he knows he can do for now.
Wooyoung nuzzles into his hand, and San smiles. This, too. This, he can do.
“I’m glad, Sannie. Take your gloves off?”
San pauses, glancing him over. “Are you sure? You look tired.”
“So do you. We can be tired together.” Wooyoung scratches a little more firmly now. “Off.”
San ruffles his hair before he sits back to tug the gloves off. His hands are warm from being encased in them since he left the last client’s house, but there’s a deeper-seated chill that always lingers after using his magic for so long, unsure how to stabilize now that its tendrils aren’t corded around somebody else’s emotions.
“Sorry my hands are dirty,” Wooyoung murmurs.
“You know I don’t mind, Youngie.” San purses his lips together. “Are you really sure?”
Wooyoung pokes his hand out properly from his blanket now. “Positive. Let me help.”
He offers his palm, and, after one last pause, San lays his on top.
Wooyoung’s touch reaches deep enough to unseat that chill. San imagines that he’s the keeper of some dam of San’s magic where it lashes and rallies against being kept in strict temperance all day. Usually, it’s easier to handle when Wooyoung comes with him to appointments, when he can have Wooyoung’s hand in his through the session and feel the magic flow freely between them, but nesting days never really allow Wooyoung to step out of the apartment with any peace of mind unless he’s shifted and trying to drag San into a burrow of some tree with him. San would have called off today’s appointments entirely if they weren’t important and if Wooyoung hadn’t insisted that he go.
He feels out the shape of Wooyoung’s hand in his own. Wooyoung’s palm is rough, nails slightly chipped and caked with dirt. As soon as enough of the chill has left his own hands, he feels just how warm Wooyoung’s is.
“Are your hands hurt?” He smooths away some of the soil, seeing more of the flushed skin underneath. He clicks his tongue, repeating the process on Wooyoung’s other hand and finding the same.
“Not hurt. Just sore,” Wooyoung mumbles.
“Did you shift?”
“For a while. I think I went digging too hard.” Wooyoung squirms, taking the opportunity to lace their fingers together and tug San’s hand towards his tight furl of blankets. “Can you be in my nest now?”
“In there, baby? I don’t know if we can fit.”
“Yeah we can,” Wooyoung says. He scoots over a little to spare a scant inch between his thigh and the edge of the cupboard, and then, when he seems to realizes that’s not enough, he starts promptly kicking the pillows out. “Don’t need these anymore, c’mon.”
“It won’t be a comfortable nest anymore,” San says with a small chuckle. “Why don’t you come out and we can rebuild the one in the living room together? That way you can keep me and the pillows.”
“But it’s too big,” Wooyoung repeats. “I feel like I’m going to blow away like straw.”
“I’ll hold you the whole time,” San promises.
He manages to coax Wooyoung out. It’s actually impressive how much Wooyoung had managed to cram in there with him, uprooting a whole host of sheets, clothes, and leaves once San finally helps him out.
“San,” Wooyoung whines.
“I know, I know.” San starts picking up the leaves with him. There’s too many to fit in San’s basket, which had already been almost full from the ones he’d picked, and Wooyoung whines again at it. San’s immunity to his whining and pouting is already pretty horrible to begin with, which means it’s completely nonexistent for a Wooyoung just recovering from being shifted, and San smooths him over with a kiss and another promise that they’ll make two trips to get the rest of his leaves.
He nudges him towards the sink before they go, pressing more kisses into Wooyoung’s disheveled hair while Wooyoung grumbles about it. San wraps himself around him from behind and joins his hands under the warm tap, lathering up the citrus-scented soap and gently washing between Wooyoung’s fingers and scraping the grime from his nails. San rinses them until their hands are pink and his are just as clean as Wooyoung's, his senses clearer once he touches their palms together. Soon he feels only Wooyoung and the comfortingly familiar whorl of his thoughts, radiating quiet happiness, which means that San is happy too as he leaves kisses into the back of Wooyoung's shoulder.
“My fingers are gonna get pruney,” Wooyoung says, and they can’t have that, so San tugs the faucet back down and wipes their hands off on the towel. It leaves his fingers freezing and probably Wooyoung’s too, who shivers and immediately shoves them back under his blanket robe.
San sees a flash of skin before the cloth settles back down. “Baby, are you wearing pants?”
“Uh huh,” Wooyoung says, at the same time San sees a familiar leg of the sweatpants San had lent him that morning discarded around the kitchen island.
San stifles a laugh. “Okay. Come on.” He tucks Wooyoung into his side and picks up both the basket and the pile of sheets and pillows to bring back with them.
Wooyoung darts away first as soon as they step foot into the living room, dumping the leaves unceremoniously into the small pit made in the middle of the sheets. He settles down immediately after and starts packing them against the edges of the nest with one hand, thrusting out the basket in San’s direction with the other without looking at him. “Get the rest.”
“Yessir,” San says, dropping off the rest of the sheets.
“San,” Wooyoung complains when a pillow bounces right into his perfectly arranged chaos, and San stops to drop a quick kiss to his head and a, “Yeah, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” before he’s shooed away again to get the rest of the leaves and his clothes. He clicks off the kitchen lights as he goes.
When he gets back, his clothes have been laid artfully over the edges of the next and only Wooyoung’s head is visible from the somehow-even-thicker bundle of sheets he’s managed to wrap himself up in.
His ears are out.
Big for a fox, they twitch in the air when he hears San coming. There’s something wiggling around under the sheets around where his tail would be, too. Like his ears, San knows it’s soft, bushy, dark-tipped with the faintest hints of autumn orange towards the base, just like Wooyoung’s coat when he’s fully shifted.
“Comfy?” he hums, though the ears’ and tail’s appearance make it obvious.
“I will be once you’re in here,” Wooyoung says, rolling over to meet him at the edge of the nest.
“Where do you want these?”
“I’ll do it.” Wooyoung’s hands make a reappearance too to grab the basket. “Take your pants off.”
San snickers but he does as he’s told. According to Wooyoung’s sensibilities, denim is bad and itchy for nests. He watches Wooyoung pat the leaves over the little pocket he’s carved out for them in the middle of the sheets. The rest of San’s clothes go over the sides of the nest, an endearing concentration apparent on Wooyoung’s face while he decides where a specific sock has to hang, and San is happy to wait in his boxers and turtleneck until Wooyoung looks finished.
“Can I come in now?” he asks.
“Yeah, come here,” Wooyoung says, grasping for his shirt already and tugging him down. He scents San thoroughly, grumbling—probably at the traces of other familiars from the several witches that San visited that day—then tugs him further into the circle of his nest.
It’s clumsy. One of them — San won’t point fingers, but it’s not him — loses their balance, so they end up toppling into the mound of pillows and displacing Wooyoung’s precious leaves. Wooyoung makes a wounded noise, patting at San’s chest and hissing for him to stay still because we messed it up, and San’s happy to lie there and smile fondly at the sight of him trying to frame the leaves a certain way around San’s head.
When Wooyoung catches his gaze, he suddenly flusters, hands jerking away from San. “Sorry. I know this is stupid,” he says, mouth twisting into a tight, unhappy line.
“It’s never stupid, baby. I like spending this time with you.” San reaches for his cheek, gentle. “Is it good now? Can I do anything?”
“Kind of. Hold still.” Wooyoung’s lips remain tight together as he plucks a leaf from San’s shoulder and moves it to the precarious border around them. “There.”
“Okay, good.” San runs his thumb over his soft bottom lip until that unhappy line is all smoothed out and Wooyoung sighs and finally gives his fingertip a kiss. Good. But San raises an eyebrow up at him. “Am I supposed to just stay still now?”
“I think that’s impossible for you to do,” Wooyoung begins.
“Ow, where’s your faith in me?”
“You’re always moving, even when you sleep. You’re like a worm.”
San sniffles. “I’ve been demoted to a worm?”
“Or a tiny bird,” Wooyoung says, like a consolation. He finally folds himself back down next to San. “But mostly a worm.”
He opens up his blankets to wrap San up too, though, so San forgives him. Now that he has implicit permission to move, he shifts onto his side and seeks out Wooyoung’s waist beneath the covers to pull him closer. Wooyoung budges himself right up against him, bare legs hooking around one of San’s and arms sneaking beneath San’s to pull him closer too, and San sighs a little when it dislodges his arm from Wooyoung’s waist. A slight loss. He wraps it around Wooyoung’s shoulder instead, where he feels the safe and warm and good that rolls off of Wooyoung as San rubs the back of his neck.
“Better now?” San asks softly.
“Almost.” Wooyoung wiggles up a little, even though he was the one just telling San not to. “Kiss.”
Oh, right. San leans down to kiss his nose, then the freckle under his eye, then his lips. Wooyoung sighs, sounding so light that he really might be blown away by the air, so San makes sure to tuck him even closer as he lazily seeks out more kisses.
“Do you think the landlord will be mad about the bushes?” Wooyoung says, sounding pensive.
“We’ll replant them tomorrow,” San decides.
“But what if I just keep you hostage here tomorrow?”
“Oh.” He thinks about it. “Then I can’t help that.”
“Good answer.” Wooyoung kisses him back, and San feels him there too in sweet waves of happyhappyhappy, twining around San’s magic and welcoming him home. “Sleep?”
San hums and agrees, “Sleep.”