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Sungchan's hand is cold. Wonbin's burns. When Sungchan pulls back, he's hasty, singed from the touch, and Wonbin grimaces. Seared onto Wonbin's entire being is this: the morose reminder that he was not born a child, not exactlyㅡHe was pulled straight from the hearth, charred and scorched in all the ways that matter, skin to bone, down to marrow. Ash clings to his skin inexorably, and yet, Sungchan's hand claws out to find his again. Over, and over, and over.
Prometheus, Wonbin learns, was not lost to the ancients. His spirit was melted down, and poured into a mold of limbs longer than life, of laughter, and kind eyes that take up more space in Wonbin's mind, body and soul than any God had surely intended. Prometheus breathes through the touch of Sungchan's fingersㅡhesitant, reverent. With each brush of hands, and knocking of knees, Sungchan meets the sun, and asks it to stay longer, longer, longer. He does not know what he's doing, Wonbin thinks to himself. Sungchan does not know. Sungchan does not know that existing too close to him is communion and sacrilege in one. To touch him is to sear, to burn a million times over. That Wonbin is an ever-consuming flame, never sated, never gentle.
(After all, he was never taught otherwise.)
Wonbin sees himㅡof course, he does. Sungchan is the cynosure of his life, the epicenter to which Wonbin's leash is tied. A leash of his own longing, of horrid, incessant desire, shaped like the hands of a boy more mythos than boy at all. And Wonbin? He will let his ribs split open if it means holding on to him, let the flames spill out from the cracks and fissures, and burn and burn and burn until the fire takes the both of them with it. This is what Sungchan has done to him, he thinksㅡThis is the primogeniture of such want, a flimsy, chalk-drawn line separating self-divination and sacrifice. Wonbin leaves a trail of gasoline as he treads across that line, waiting, waiting, waiting for the fire to catch.
The room is dimly litㅡit always is. Their bodies meet underneath Sungchan's blue, alien-dotted covers. They exist in one another's space, but don't quite touch. Not yet. A movie drones off idly in the background, but Wonbin doesn't hear a word coming out of the busted-up laptop speaker. Instead, he is consumed with a single voice in his head, pleading. Silent so to speak, but loud and desperate enough that he hopes Sungchan will hear. It cries: Gnaw on me, lover. Bring me to slaughter. Burn me at the stake. Kiss the gash on my flesh, and let me name it love. Let me burn against you till you are tender, like a loverㅡNo, not quite. Like a bruise, left too long to fade.
Summer heat clings to their skins, slow and syrupy, until even the air feels molten. The fan spins uselessly with a bone-like rattle, but under the covers, Wonbin knows he cannot superimpose the real heat to the weather. Where their arms press together, there is a sizzle. The hiss of myth-made flesh on flame. Solar sin, he realises, does not come with warning. It's sudden, the tilt of a head, the sensation of breath on skin. It comes as a forest fire. Ember finds dry woodㅡcautious, curiousㅡand lips find each other. Light breaks, not from the sun, but from the cracks in Wonbin's skin. The match has struck his ribs, and a fire has started the way all fires start: One spark, one touch. Somewhere in the wild, a tree burns. Here, on Sungchan's bed, there is a boy in its place.
"You're warm," Sungchan says, whispers against Wonbin's mouth like a sacrament.
Eagle-hour is upon them. The trees have fallen, the plagues unleashed. Zeus seethes. But Sungchan laughsㅡmore an exhale than anything elseㅡand it echoes through Wonbin's entire being, louder than the screech announcing Aëtos’ arrival. He thinks of burnt offerings, of smoke curling up to the heavens, and, consequently, of sacrilege, and Gods unrelenting.
You don't know the half of it, he thinks. You have kissed the pyre. You have called it home.
And we will burn. Will burn. Will burn.