Archive of Our Own

It was a cold day in the dead of winter when Danny Johnson died.

For two years, he attended university, and for two years, he tried to avoid Jed Olsen. Jed was frustratingly intelligent, always scoring perfectly on exams as though it was hardly difficult for him. Meanwhile, Danny was barely scraping by on each test, and grew resentful of his ease with the classes that he struggled so much with. Still, he managed to largely ignore Jed’s constant presence and simply chose to study on his own.

Then, in his sophomore year, he was assigned to share a dorm with Jed, and it got considerably more difficult to ignore him. Jed always seemed to know exactly when he’d get home, almost every single day, right down to the minute. It definitely got weird after that point, and Danny was on the verge of begging for a different roommate, but tried to just push through until the end of the semester.

Well, it was anything but easy. Danny fell behind in classes, so bothered by Jed’s odd behavior, he could rarely concentrate with him around. At the insistence of his professor, who was lax enough to offer him remedial labs, he agreed to be tutored twice a week to appease her. And, of course, who else but the student with the very highest marks would be trusted to tutor their peers?

Like torture, Danny felt as though his sessions with Jed would go on forever, time seemingly slowed as he tried to focus on his work and not the creepy asshole sitting across from him. That was all he could muster up to describe him. A fucking creep.

Jed only began to enjoy the tutoring even more. Always suggesting Danny stay later, or more frequent sessions. And his professor took to the idea so much, she made it mandatory if Danny wanted to keep his opportunities for make-up labs. And, out of options, he grit his teeth and followed her conditions and tried to finish them as soon as possible.

On a Tuesday like any other, Danny carefully unlocks the door to the lab and sets his bag down, immediately going over to the microscope on his bench. He pulls the cover off carefully, making sure not to knock anything over, and sets it down beside his bag. Gloves are next, tugged down to his wrists, and he begins picking through slides to find the correct specimen for the lab.

The door opens behind him. Danny turns, ready to explain himself to the staff on their way out, but immediately freezes.

The Ghostface locks the door behind himself, brandishing a knife in the other hand, his stride leisurely as he steps forward. Pressing himself back against the bench, Danny begins fumbling with the drawer as he narrowly avoids falling backwards.

“Hi, Danny,” the Ghostface says sweetly. “You’re up past your bedtime.”

His eyes dart down as the Ghostface draws ever closer. A scalpel stares up at him, silver glinting in the harsh light of the fluorescents overhead. There isn’t so much as a sound when the Ghostface comes closer, almost as if his movements have been silenced.

“What could you be doing up so late? Besides waiting for me, of course.”

Danny’s hand darts down into the drawer and the Ghostface tilts his head at him.

“That was the wrong answer, Danny,” he whispers.

A scream tears out of Danny as the knife sinks into his shoulder and he nearly drops the scalpel, but gets his hand around the Ghostface’s throat under the edge of his mask. He lifts his arm just enough to give himself room as the blade slashes across his neck.

The Ghostface grasps at the gash in his skin and his knees threaten to give out. But he can’t let Danny win, of course.

He grabs the knife buried in Danny’s chest and rips straight down, gouging into his ribs, and he gasps, so far past the point of pain, all he can feel is his blood gushing down to his hip. It doesn’t need to hurt for him to know he’s going to die right along with him. In his last moment of strength, he tears the mask off of the Ghostface and sees the face of his roommate as he collapses.

Pushing Jed off of him, Danny stumbles towards the door, reaching for the emergency phone mounted above it and managing to press the call button just as he begins to fall. He goes face-first into the linoleum and he feels, with stunning clarity, the exact moment his nose breaks. All he can do is sob in agony, holding his side to staunch the bleeding, but he knows it’s far too late for him.

The operator asks Danny what’s happening. He strains up towards the microphone, struggling to get his finger back on the button, but all he manages is a gut-wrenching cry as he sinks back to the ground. Again, she prompts Danny on the situation and tells him first responders are on dispatch.

On an ordinary Tuesday in December, Danny Johnson bleeds out on the floor of a cold lab with his killer not five feet away.

The next morning, the detectives review the tapes, but the footage cuts out just before the Ghostface enters the room. When it resumes, there is a puddle of blood by the lab bench, and then another by the emergency phone where Danny’s sitting against the wall, almost as though he’s simply asleep. Strewn across his lap is the mask of the Ghostface, splattered with blood, tattered from the scalpel’s edge.

There’s too much blood to only be Danny’s. Smears in the puddle suggest that the killer must have fallen down and yet, there is no body and no tracks leading away. There are two weapons, two students missing, and Danny is the only one found dead.

The detectives conclude that the Ghostface killer, who went inactive, must have been Jed, and that Danny was his final victim.

Jed Olsen’s body was never found.

Danny wakes sitting in the corner of a dilapidated bedroom.

Against the wall opposite to him, a boy sleeps. He can’t be older than eighteen, with a soft face and limbs that are just a touch too lanky, head rested back against the wall with his knees pulled up to his chest. His breaths are slow and even, eyes lightly closed, and he’s got brown hair and freckles across his nose and Danny stares at him in utter confusion.

After a moment, the boy shifts. His lids flutter open, a little unfocused if anything, and his eyes wander around the room for a moment as he takes everything in.

Then, he startles terribly and begins crawling to the other corner of the room, further from Danny where he sits cross-legged. Danny tries to come closer and the boy begins inching up towards the windowsill, looking very much like he’s nearly about to put his knee on it and jump to the ground below.

Something in his heart seizes up and he lurches forward as he pleads, “Wait.”

The boy freezes and obediently lowers himself down from the window. When his feet touch the ground again, Danny relaxes slightly.

“Don’t run. Don’t use the window. Walk downstairs,” he says. “I don’t want to go back under.”

Not even he knows what the words mean. He’s lost, feeling as though he’s not in his own body. Like he’s watching through someone else’s eyes, maybe even living in their memories. Like he’s crawled out of his own skin. But the boy cautiously steps past him to get to the door, watching Danny’s every move as he does so, and does exactly what he had instructed him to do.

He feels a shudder in the ground. A noise like a siren sounding, screaming out into the darkness beyond the windows, a night sky without any stars. Danny stares at the clouds rolling past, far too quickly for the utter lack of wind in the trees he can see just off to either side of the window. It’s beautiful, in its own way.

Sleep tugs at him as the siren grows louder, more urgent, and embers float in through the window. The wood doesn’t catch fire, though. The sparks die out before they can land, leaving nothing but ash to litter the floor.

Danny rests his head back against the wall, feeling entirely too comfortable for the spot he’s in, and thinks that he could fall back into the pull. A quiet voice in his ears tells him how much better he’ll feel when he sleeps. And Danny listens, allowing his eyes to fall shut. The siren climbs to the peak of its crescendo and he slumps over, but a single black tendril catches him before his shoulder can hit the ground.

The second time Danny wakes, he’s getting kicked in the chest and the point of a high heel stabs into him and he breathes in as though he’s been pulled from water.

He stumbles backwards, holding onto his collar as pain radiates through it, and the woman hanging before him shrieks out in agony. And that’s when Danny sees the hook protruding from her shoulder, razor sharp at the end and she grasps at the metal, but it’s futile. Her cry makes his heart ache and Danny freezes, staring up at her as she begins to sob and gasp in the throes of her pain.

A feeling like dread falls over him, eating right down to the bone, and Danny feels himself losing his balance, unable to steady himself on his feet. His vision rolls, distorted sounds reach his ears, he tries to catch himself but only falls back on his elbow. Pain shoots up his arm and that familiar voice is in his ear again.

Let go, it whispers. You need rest.

And Danny’s eyes fall shut.

The third time Danny wakes, he’s got a man backed up against a sink and he’s staring back at his own reflection. He belatedly realizes his hand is wrapped around a handle and the man screams, hand flying up to hold around the edge of the blade and Danny staggers backwards, red eyes locked on himself in the mirror.

His clothes are dark, covered in belts and fasteners, and when he raises his hand to look down at it, he finds it covered by soft black leather. Flexing his fingers carefully, he looks back up and sees the mask of his killer, the Ghostface mask, hanging loosely in the man's grip. Everything hits him and he stares at the man, lost.

Danny grabs him by the shoulders and the man punches him in the jaw, trying to press himself back further against the sink to get space between himself and Danny, but it’s useless. He’s far stronger than the man and pulls him from the corner. Yelling as Danny hoists him up by the waist of his pants, the man tries to struggle as he throws him onto his shoulder with an ease that frightens him.

The movements nearly feel instinctual, as if he’s done it a thousand times over and perfected it well enough to do it quickly. It terrifies him. But it feels like all he can do is walk in the direction of a blaring alarm.

Danny finds a gate, and a girl standing by its switch. In fear, she opens it and begins sprinting away from him, but when she sees the man on her shoulder, she stops short and watches him as he walks into the pathway just before he can see fog rolling in the distance. Again, he feels his muscles tensing and his heart pounding as he remembers the woman on the hook that kicked him.

Kneeling down as he does so, Danny puts the man down and stumbles backwards, feeling like his legs have gone numb. He leans against the wall holding him back, black spikes that stretch up to the ceiling of the structure, high above his head. The girl drags the man up with one arm around his shoulders and runs past Danny, seemingly unaffected by the wall he sees.

At the last moment, the man lurches back and tries to grab Danny’s hand, but misses by mere inches.

The last time Danny wakes, he’s sitting up and he can feel waves of heat washing over him every so often.

He opens his eyes and finds himself staring down at a gently rolling fire. Seated on a wide log, the thick hoodie he’s found his way into helps to fight the cold as well. A girl sits beside him, with auburn hair pulled back into a few braids and blue eyes that seem to soften a bit when they meet his.

“I’ve never seen you before,” she says and smiles sadly. “You must be new. I’m sorry.”

Danny can’t quite speak yet. He blinks at her, taking in her features and the bloodstained clothes she wears, and she rests her hand on the space between the two of them.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to answer. But you’re not alone in this, we all look out for each other. We’re here when you’re ready.”

Warmth bleeds into his shoulder as she passes by, her scarred hand resting there briefly before she’s walking up to another girl who has stumbled to the edge of the campsite. Her hair is soft blonde and her eyes are haunted, she barely manages to lift her arms and return the hug the taller girl gives her. Cries that nearly edge into wails escape her, weeping into her shoulder and she opens her teary eyes after a few seconds.

Past her shoulder, the blonde haired girl stares at him, and she rips herself away from her friend and is on him faster than he can react.

Danny goes backwards as the girl knocks him to the ground. Both her knees cage him in by the ribs and he doesn’t so much as think to fight her as she punches him in the nose, her other fist connecting with his cheek, and he stays still because it’s her.

The girl at the gate.

She pulls her hand back to strike him again and Danny weakly lifts his arms, trying to cover his bleeding face, and the hit doesn’t come.

The auburn haired girl has picked her up under her arms, dragging her off of him, she swears and struggles and sobs as she yells for her friend to let her go. She kicks and screams and tries to break free and another three people come over to her, two men and one woman. Danny recognizes the man from the same trial and, with a horrible shock, he realizes the other three are the people that he’d seen when he was awake.

Shaking, the blonde spits out, “He’s a killer! He’s the Ghostface!”

All of them stare, shell-shocked, at Danny and the girl tries to yank herself loose, but it’s useless. One of the men—not a man, Danny realizes. A boy. The boy from the bedroom—has gone over to help hold her still.

“She’s right.”

Danny’s voice sounds wrong. Too rough, as though he hadn’t spoken in months, scratching his throat as he confesses.

“You’re different from the others,” the woman says. Her purple hair glints in the light of the fire, washing it a soft white color. “Something changed. The rules of the game remain the same, but you do not.”

Staring up at her, eyes wide, Danny pants slightly from the blonde’s punches and curls in on himself, trying to hide from her and the others standing behind her. He presses his cheek into the cool earth, hardly soothing the ache blooming there and the sting from where her nail cut just beside his nose. It’s undoubtedly broken, he can feel the blood seeping down to his lips and all he can do is bring his hand up to cradle it and try not to cry as he remembers the achingly cold floor of the lab. Danny hears the sound of dirt and leaves crunching underfoot and he ducks his head.

A hand touches his upper arm lightly. Risking a peek, he sees, through blurry eyes, the man he carried to the gate.

“Hey,” he starts, voice unsteady. “I remember what you did. You saw yourself in the mirror, right? Right, um, right after you caught me.”

Slowly, Danny nods.

“You had your mask off. Was that the first time?”

“I’m not the Ghostface,” he rasps out. “He killed me.”

It’s another long trial.

Danny can feel his heart about to beat out of his chest, pounding against his sternum as he runs around a corner. The halls of the school are linoleum, wet with blood in some spots, and he barely keeps himself from slipping as he goes through one of the open doors, sprinting across the classroom and feeling his muscles tense up as he gets closer to the window.

Knives bury themselves into his shoulders and he nearly falls from the pain. He grasps at his back, gasping as his vision blurs and he has to throw himself forward to make it to the pallet in time.

Just as he yanks it down, a bat swings around the broken desk it was leaned against and the Trickster misses him by mere inches. He makes a noise in the back of his throat, aggravation clear on his face as he pushes his hair back out of his eyes and recovers from the stun. Twirling the bat twice, he brings it down and breaks the pallet in two as though it’s easy for him. Danny doesn’t wait a second longer and dashes for the vault.

A hand lands heavy on his shoulder and he’s pulled backwards. His back hits the ground hard, knocking all the breath out of him, and he has no time to react as the Trickster gets one knee on his chest and a blade up under his throat. Danny squirms in pain, the knives lodged in his back digging in deeper with the pressure, he tries to strain away from the edge that threatens to gouge into his jugular as he bites back a noise. Refusing to give him the satisfaction of it, refusing to let himself show that fear he knows the Trickster wants to see, he allows his head to drop back onto the floor.

One hand on his shoulder and the other flipping the knife as he smiles down at Danny, washed in his red light, and he seems intent on taking his time with him. In a way, he’s grateful. He knows every second that ticks by is another second for his friends to make their way to the exit gates, even if it means leaving him behind. It’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make. A sacrifice he’d make a thousand times over if it meant taking the pain away from someone else, the pain he once inflicted just the same.

They’re not so different. Before he’d been ripped from the hold of the Entity, he thinks he’d taken just as much pleasure in it.

A light flickers on overhead, electricity shot, haloing the Trickster’s hair in white. Danny squints in the brightness, so unlike the usual dark of the Fog that advances endlessly, always surrounding them at every turn. He feels that hand pressing down on his collar tighten and he meets the eyes of his killer, all gold in the dark, and takes one last breath. It hurts so much less when you know it’s coming.

The Trickster’s grip goes lax.

Staring up at him, Danny nearly thinks that he’s playing some sort of cruel joke, giving him some false sense of hope that if he fights hard enough, he might escape. But the Trickster’s eyes dart back and forth between his own, chest heaving from the exertion of running—

Wait.

That never happens.

He can’t remember a single time he’s seen any of his killers out of breath. It’s as though they’ve got endless stamina, single-mindedly chasing them down without ever breaking a sweat, pushing to fulfill their only purpose. Frozen, Danny looks right back at him and watches as his pupils contract, as though he’s just been blinded by the glaring beam of a flashlight. Face going blank, he blinks at Danny as the dark washes back over them.

All the weight on his chest disappears as the Trickster stands, taking one step back, then another, and another until his back hits the doors of a closed locker. His eyes are still stuck on Danny, like he’s in some sort of shock that he can’t shake.

Scrambling to his feet, Danny runs for the doorway and doesn’t so much as glance behind himself. His footsteps echo in the halls of the preschool and he catches the edge of a wall as he turns the corner sharply, and it’s only then that he feels his heartbeat picking up again and the sound of a second set of steps. As though he’s right on his tail, like he’s in armsreach.

His gaze stays locked on the exit, he can see Meg and Feng breaking into sprints as they try to get themselves between Danny and the Trickster, but his footsteps slow to a stop behind him.

Danny makes the stupidest decision of his life and risks looking back over his shoulder as Meg gets her arm around his waist and pulls him through the threshold. Feng is right beside him, but he can see past her, see the way he stands motionless just before the gate.

His bat is gone, hands empty of his knives.

The next time he sees him, he supposes there’s something to be said about irony.

Eyes sharp on him, the Trickster moves ever closer, dancing one of the neon blades over his knuckles and Danny can’t risk looking behind himself. Nearly slipping on the wet tile, it only takes him a split second to recognize where he’s being backed into.

The bathroom. The same bathroom he had cornered Dwight in.

His hip clips the edge of the stall and he stumbles backwards, but just before he hits the ground, a hand snaps out to grab him. The collar of his jacket threatens to choke him as he’s dragged up by hood and he gasps for breath. His knees scrape the tile hard for a moment before fingers go tight around his neck and Danny coughs as he’s slammed back into the wall, feet completely off the ground as he’s held up to the Trickster’s eye level.

They’re that same gold as before, blown black pupils threatening to swallow the last of it, and Danny writhes, so far under his thumb, he can’t so much as breathe. Weak, his hands come up to claw at the Trickster’s wrapped tight around his throat, pressing him back into the wall with all his weight. Tilting his head a little, he studies Danny as he thrashes, steadily losing strength as he begins running out of air.

The bat clatters to the floor loudly, sound bouncing off the walls, and he flinches at the sudden noise. With a quiet breath, the Trickster leans in, pressing his chest right up against Danny’s. His lips are nearly brushing over Danny’s ear as he speaks and it takes him a moment to even process it.

It’s not English. It’s Korean.

Jerking away, he catches the Trickster’s eyes and some of the gold unfurls as his pupils shrink again, just as they had in the preschool. Confusion, another hint of that agitation he’d seen, they flash across his face as he apparently comes to the same realization.

Immediately, he drops him and Danny gasps in a breath, one hand coming up to grasp at his throat that will undoubtedly bruise. But he makes no move to escape, merely holding onto the wall as he stares up at him, bathed in the dim light of the bathroom and it finally clicks.

His red stain is gone, leaving nothing but the shock-blue of his hair that falls into his face and the line of yellow that cuts through his eye. Danny can hear his breaths through the mask over his face, just as unsteady and ragged as his own, and he can only watch as the Trickster’s shoulders drop. If he were any closer to going completely off the deep end because of this shit, he might think it was out of disappointment.

Before he can really commit to either one, risking the attempt at getting through the door and out of sight or staying where he is, the decision is made for him. The Trickster drags him up by his upper arm, a dull ache blooming through it, and he tosses Danny over his shoulder as though he weighs nothing at all.

By all means, he should be struggling. Fighting against the solid hold on his back, trying to get loose, but all he can see is himself carrying Dwight in the same path.

Meg goes still, her hand only an inch from the gate’s switch when she sees the Trickster set Danny down, but he can’t seem to find his feet as he loses his balance. She rushes over, sliding both her arms beneath his and allowing him to lean his weight on her front, taking the pressure off his numb legs. Her breaths are shallow and quick against his chest, but all he can focus on is the gentle rhythm of her heart.

It’s utterly calm in the face of the Trickster.

He can tell Meg is staring at him over his shoulder, and he can decently guess where her mind is at, racing just as quickly as his is. The Trickster is silent, unmoving as she begins walking Danny closer to the exit, but her steps are staggered as though she’s fighting against herself the whole way. When he finally does come closer, he merely wraps one arm around Danny’s back and tugs him along, taking some of his weight off Meg.

Danny feels her breathing spike again, but her heartbeat remains just the same. That steady, even pace that by all means should be picking up, but never seems to. Spikes rise up as the Trickster draws closer to the threshold, but Meg passes through as though it’s not even there. Just like with any other survivor.

All he can remember is Dwight’s hand, straining back towards him as the Fog rolled over him and Cheryl.

At the last second, Danny pushes back against Meg and his hand catches the Trickster’s wrist, yanking him through the wall, and he nearly falls forward as he crosses through it.

The moment Yun-Jin sees him, her eyes go wide and her grip on the fallen tree she’s seated on goes so tight, her knuckles turn white and her nails crack the bark.

She stands on unsteady feet, her hands balled into fists by her side, and it’s not three seconds before she’s in the Trickster’s face. Danny steps back, a dozen explanations at the back of his tongue, but he can’t even begin to imagine how she’s feeling. It’s not his right to stop her, just as it wasn’t his right to stop Cheryl. As though she’s been snapped from a reverie, Meg releases him and instead pulls him further away by his forearm.

Yun-Jin’s voice is dangerously quiet as she says something in Korean, staring up at the Trickster without so much as a hint of fear in her face. Her hands twitch by her side, fingers flexing sporadically, but she listens when he answers and gives him time to finish his sentence. Yet, she only seems to grow more hurt by each word he speaks. Sharp, she steps closer to him and glares at him in silence.

In full honesty, Danny expects her to smack him across the face with the way her hands are trembling, but the strike never comes.

Tears fill her eyes and she snatches him up into a hug, her arms squeezing him hard around the waist, and he carefully rests his chin on the top of her head as he returns it. His eyes go unfocused, as though he’s looking far away, but Danny can see the way he holds her just as tight. It’s confusing, sure. Everything Yun-Jin had said about him was filled with bitterness, hatred, nothing but anger and barely repressed rage, and he’s beginning to think that they go much further back than he’d originally thought.

She was always avoidant of questions about her past, closed off from everyone apart from Claudette who is, at least to him, the most reasonable person to open up to. Gentle and kind, everything warm eyes and careful hands, he can understand it. Understand the way Yun-Jin looks at her, and the way she looks right back.

Eventually, Yun-Jin eases away from him, her palms on either of his shoulders, and he allows his arms to drop back to his sides. They go back and forth for a few moments, the Trickster shaking his head at most of what she says, and she nearly seems to crumple.

By the end of it, she pulls him to sit down and some of the tension bleeds from his shoulders as the others surrounding him relax.

“I thought Yun-Jin was going to kill him,” Meg mumbles under her breath.

Danny nods, hardly hearing the words.

Across the fire, the Trickster’s eyes meet his and Yun-Jin follows his gaze.

“Danny,” she says.

The rest is in Korean, but he doesn’t so much as think to listen. He’s stuck in place, distantly feeling Meg guiding him to sit down, saying something about a bruise on his throat and deep cuts on his knees. Cool fingers pick at the loose threads caught in his split skin, but Danny’s only got eyes for him.

And, as far away as he feels, he doesn’t miss it when Yun-Jin whispers, “Ghostface.”

When the Trickster finds him again, Danny’s half-asleep sitting against one of the wider oaks, arms crossed loosely over his chest as he tries to fight the exhaustion threatening to overwhelm him. Twigs snap somewhere to his left and he startles, eyes flashing open, but the panic recedes when he sees exactly who is standing over him. Settling himself down across from Danny, he studies him carefully in the dark and follows the movement as Danny brushes the hair back away from his forehead.

“Hey.” Then, belatedly, “Sorry. I don’t even know if you can understand me.”

“Little.”

He imagines, to an onlooker, the way he gawks at him must be at least a tad bit funny.

“A little?” Danny repeats.

Something like a grin tugs at the corners of the Trickster's mouth. “Yes. Slowly.”

Cautiously, he asks, “You need me to talk slowly?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Danny says. Trying to keep it at a reasonable pace, he continues, “You must have a name, right? I keep calling you the Trickster in my head and it’s kind of weird.”

He must have caught at least some of it, because his smile widens. “Ji-Woon.”

“Ji-Woon. Cool name.”

A giggle escapes him, but it’s so much different from what he remembers. Before, it’d been almost sinister, outwardly threatening, but that’s all but disappeared. Even his voice sounds as though it’s changed. Interestingly enough, it’s dropped an octave, rather than the other way around.

He doesn’t respond to that, maybe because he doesn’t quite know how to answer. Or, maybe he’s just choosing not to.

Gesturing to himself, he says, “Danny.”

Ji-Woon tilts his head at him, not unlike the way he had in the bathroom at Midwich.

“비명.”

Danny stares at him. “Sorry, what?”

“비명,” he repeats. “Scream. The mask screams.”

For a long few seconds, he’s just looking at Ji-Woon in utter confusion, almost beginning to think that maybe he’s getting his words mixed up. Or maybe that Yun-Jin had given him a poor translation, but that doesn’t seem very likely. But he ends up pointing at Danny’s face and it finally clicks.

“I don’t wear the mask anymore!” he argues. “I’m Danny!”

But Ji-Woon only seems to find it funnier, leaning back as he laughs even harder than he had before.

“비명.”

In a moment of perfect maturity, Danny stubbornly turns away and puts on the very best disgruntled face he can muster up. Beside him, Ji-Woon’s laughter finally subsides, still clearly having trouble holding it in, and he frowns very disapprovingly at him.

Resting his elbow on his knee, Ji-Woon props his chin up on his hand and gazes at Danny with an unreadable expression, only tinged by his residual amusement. Relenting, he glances back at him and his face returns to something more neutral. Quiet stretches between them, only disrupted by the ambient sounds of the forest around them, and Ji-Woon just continues on looking at him. He’s about halfway to asking what’s so interesting when he speaks again.

“Danny.”

Oh, god damn it. Immediately, the bridge of his nose and the tips of his ears go uncomfortably warm and he doesn’t need a mirror to know his face is getting redder by the second. Even in this realm, it seems that he’s retained possibly the only trait he would literally pay to be rid of. Just his fucking luck.

Ji-Woon smirks, like he knows exactly what’s going on in Danny’s head. He scowls back at him, trying his very best to ignore the blush sitting heavy on his face, but he can’t imagine it’s working very well.

“Shut up,” he says, but it doesn’t come out half as firm as he wishes it would. “That did not happen.”

“Dan-ny,” he teases.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Danny pulls the collar of his hoodie up to his nose and thunks his forehead down on his knees, trying to scrape up anything else but the sound that seems intent on repeating in his head until it explodes.

Unfortunately for him, the second best thing his stupid brain can offer is the very clear feel of Ji-Woon’s hand around his throat, and the third best is the low murmur of his voice, lips just barely touching his ear.

Letting out a very loud groan, Danny brings his arms up and scrubs his hands over his hair. He decides that blocking out his sight isn’t particularly doing him any favors, so he goes back to pointedly staring at one of the trees opposite to him. As old as it looks, the tree doesn’t offer any wisdom.

“You are hurt.”

“Huh?” Danny says distractedly, but immediately remembers. “Oh. Yeah, scraped my knees up on the bathroom floor.”

“No. Your—” he stops, and he glances back over at Ji-Woon as he motions toward his neck. “Red.”

“You have a pretty solid grip, man.”

Ji-Woon looks at him blankly.

“Hard,” Danny explains, squeezing his hand into a fist. “You grabbed me hard.”

He actually looks guilty, which is definitely not an emotion he’d ever seen on Ji-Woon’s face before today. Then again, today hasn’t been what he would call a very normal day, dying and trials aside.

“Sorry.”

Waving him off, he shakes his head. “Doesn’t hurt.”

“No?” He looks curious.

Fucking shit, it’s happening again. Danny clasps his hand over his face before it gets too hot, but it’s too late. Ji-Woon has already seen it and that look is back, the look that says he would eat Danny alive.

“Again?”

Spluttering, he buries his face even further into his palm. “No!” Danny exclaims.

He hums quietly, deep in his chest. For a moment, he doesn’t say anything and the only thing Danny can hear is the faint sound of his breathing, slow and even as he observes him. He doesn’t need to see to know that Ji-Woon is looking at him. Gooseflesh rises on his nape, undoubtedly the weight of eyes, benign as they are.

Danny startles badly as something comes to rest on the back of his neck, exactly where he’d been feeling those prickles of awareness, vision blurry from the pressure of his knees.

“Sorry,” Ji-Woon says, pulling his hand away.

“No!” he insists. Then, lowering his voice a little, “No, it’s okay.”

“Okay?”

Swallowing thickly—why does it feel so difficult?—Danny’s fingers find his wrist and Ji-Woon pauses, glancing over at it before his eyes return to his own. They haven’t lost their color, not at all, brilliant gold that glows beneath his full lashes, and he can imagine that his own must have stayed the same, too. His face is still a little warm, but he leans close enough to let Ji-Woon touch him again.

Hesitantly, he brushes his hand over Danny’s hair, nails barely skimming over the very edge of his ear, and Ji-Woon pauses upon feeling the cold metal there.

“Oh, here.” Danny holds back the pieces that frame his face, revealing the silver rings hanging from his cartilage. “I got them when I was like, seventeen. Kinda forgot about them and never took them out.”

He’s probably talking too fast for Ji-Woon to keep up, but he still nods as he lightly traces his fingertips over the earrings. It makes him want to squirm in the strangest way, but he refrains and tries to keep this situation from turning weird. Still, he can’t quite suppress the shiver that works its way down his spine when his fingers card through the hair curling around the other earring, the one in his lobe.

“Pretty.”

Danny leans into the touch. It feels like he’s been numb for so long, a stranger in his own body, and it begins crumbling away with each faint stroke down to his nape again. He can’t even find it within himself to try and hide his flushed face. Clearly, Ji-Woon already knows how flustered he makes him. After a minute or two, he smooths his hand down one more time, then leaves his palm in that same spot.

His grip is barely there, gentle on his skin, and Danny goes all-too willingly when he’s pulled in. Fumbling for Ji-Woon’s other hand where it rests on his thigh, their fingers lace together clumsily. Danny exhales shallowly through his nose, feeling his teal hair tickling his lids as he inches closer, and his eyes fall shut as he holds his breath.

Ji-Woon kisses him as softly as he thinks he can possibly manage, the hand in his hair sliding down his collar and back up to curve around his jaw. The tip of his nose is cool on Danny’s face, in stark contrast to the warmth bleeding from his palm, thumb rubbing along the length of his cheekbone and he melts a little. Danny’s other hand comes up to mirror him, holding his cheek just as carefully.

He moves away first—mostly because he forgot to breathe—but Ji-Woon doesn’t let him go very far and Danny’s happy to stick close.

Pressing his lips against the thick layers of his bangs, Ji-Woon wraps his free arm around his shoulders and squeezes and lets out a breath as he relaxes. It almost feels too good, like he could even fall asleep, and he can’t really find much of a reason not to. The opportunities are few and far between and he’s unreasonably comfortable.

Danny leans them both back against the tree, his cheek pressed to Ji-Woon’s chest and one of his arms tight around his waist. Apparently, he hadn’t been alone in his idea, because Ji-Woon lets out a sigh and leans right back into Danny, eyes closed.

Everything goes rather quiet, and sleep settles over them.