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The first time, caught beneath a flickering street lamp that gave of a sinister, almost eldritch, impression, Thomas Andre glimpsed the man, he thought he must have imagined him. Because the man standing in the dim light wearing the shadows wrapped around him like a favourite cloak, not at all concerned by the sun’s descent and the rapidly expanding darkness –
(Even then, Thomas should have known that the darkness grew with the man.)
– was a painting of whites, greys and blacks, accompanied by eyes of somewhere in between the battling blue and purple – and instantly, Thomas wished to lean closer and decide it for himself – with straight and sharp lines and an ethereal beauty embedded within.
The man reeked of danger, adventure, power and a promise of something beyond. What exactly lay there –
Thomas needed to know it all.
The stranger, named Sung Jin-Woo as Thomas later learns, agrees for a night of drinks and it already feels like an accomplishment. Like taming a wild beast and have it in your control, like standing at the edge of a cliff and knowing that you will sink, but the sea will embrace you still, like –
Like making a risk while your very heart trembles for an unknown reason, afraid of the expected, but the unknown only graces you a smile.
And Sung Jin-Woo’s smile, Thomas thinks, is the prettiest of all.
They sit down in a small bar, cramped in a narrow street. Nothing fancy, nothing to cause amazement, but cosy and perfect for what Thomas has in mind.
(Not that he knows what he has in mind, the alcoholic buzz already settled in – yet, it’s easy to relax and shut down his brain and let himself be swept away by Jin-Woo’s soothing voice.
It stirs something akin to a memory long forgotten, but Thomas couldn’t be sure. He isn’t sure of anything lately, but this meeting feels like it could maybe wipe away those worries and insecurities that crowded his head and caused endless headaches that just didn’t seem to want to disappear.)
Thomas tips his head back and downs another shot, the liquid burning down his throat, but it’s nothing he isn’t used to. He smiles as he places the cup away on the table separating him from the black-haired man and asks, “So, you said you’re from South Korea? Did you move here or just on a vacation?”
Jin-Woo watches him in amusement – evident in the curl of his lips – and leans closer, nodding, “Vacation with my family. My sister’s got a weird obsession with America so we decided to travel here.”
“You traveling for celebration, then?” Thomas rightly concludes and receives a nod from Jin-Woo. “What for?”
“She just finished high-school,” Jin-Woo tells him with a small, proud grin. “And got accepted into the university she dreamt of so …” he trails off and shrugs, picking up his shot and downing it as quickly as Thomas had. “Besides, we don’t get to spend that much time together and this is to make up for it.”
For a moment, Thomas wonders if it’s normal to tell those things to a stranger – but then reminds himself that they’ve had a lot to drink and neither will remember the conversation in the morning. At the very least, not fully.
Still, there’s something Jin-Woo has said that made no sense.
“Then why are you here?” Thomas asks, not worried or confused, but purely curious. He’s always been – secretly – a drama freak and gossiping and sharing secrets was just one small portion of it. “If this trip was to connect more with each other, I mean.”
The look in Jin-Woo’s eyes when he glances up to study his expression is full of secrets left unsaid and Thomas wants to unravel them now.
(It’s weird, really. No one has ever attracted – what even held – his attention for long enough to let Thomas become curious, but there was something in the way Jin-Woo spoke, laughed and acted that oozed mystery.
And in this world, normal and depressing and boring, it was the most exciting oddity in Thomas’s life.)
Jin-Woo shrugs, his shoulders trembling and glances away in an attempt to hide a vulnerable look that passes over his face. It’s lighting fast and disappears in the same moment that it had appeared, but Thomas’s eyes don’t miss it. His mind, however, does, forgets about it instantly as Jin-Woo smiles once again to hide whatever the hell he’s been feeling.
“I don’t know,” he finally mutters, still not breaking eye-contact. “Would you like to guess?”
Thomas can’t help the whistle that escapes past his lips. Jin-Woo’s playing a dangerous game and it’s just so very lucky that it’s one Thomas revels in.
(Like he had known exactly how to enthral Thomas in. Like a siren singing a beautiful song only to lure men to their demise.
And, suddenly, dying at the mercy of Jin-Woo doesn’t seem all that bad.)
Thomas leans closer, taking up an absurdly large amount of space with his big frame and light hair curling around his face and down his neck. To his delight, Jin-Woo meets him half-way as he turns his head only slightly, exposing his left ear for Thomas to whisper his guess in.
“I think,” Thomas murmurs lowly, so much it painfully scrapes against his throat, but the shiver it sends down Jin-Woo’s spine is well worth it, “that you were searching for something.” Jin-Woo doesn’t react, not yet, so he corrects himself, “Someone.”
Jin-Woo turns again to face him, face serious but woven with hidden amusement and expectancy for more.
Thomas gives it to him with a single question –
“Did you find them?”
The smile on the raven’s lips turns sincere and his expression opens up for Thomas to read and dammit, if only he hadn’t drunk so much –
“I think,” Jin-Woo mimics him, still in his personal space and his breath passes over Thomas’s lips like a familiar ghost that has been haunting his mind. Thomas’s head spins and he’s so confused and the only thing that makes sense it that this, whatever it is, somehow isn’t strange at all, but at the same time, so very peculiar, because he doesn’t know this man yet his memory speaks of hundreds of same touches that have passed between them.
When, Thomas doesn’t know.
Jin-Woo tips back a little, giving Thomas some needed space as if hearing his racing thoughts. He can’t blame him, not really, not when he’s the cause of them. “I think,” he says again, his happiness obvious in the laugh that slips out, “that I did. But you already suspected that.”
Because the weird dull headache disappeared. Because he felt relaxed. Because he knew that everything he ever loved was now again his.
His to take, his to claim and his to love.
(And he wouldn’t even have to take it forcefully, because Jin-Woo was offering himself on a silver plate, ready to be devoured.
It just so happens that Thomas has been starving all his life.)
“Well,” Thomas grimaces when he sips on another drink with an unfamiliar taste. Something Jin-Woo ordered, probably. “I do have to admit that despite the weirdness of this all, no alarming bells are going off or whatever.”
Jin-Woo laughs at his silliness – and god, he’s missed this. Missed Thomas. “And you don’t find that alarming?”
“No,” Thomas mutters, craning his neck back to cast his gaze on the ceiling. A serene expression falls upon his face, eyes pleasantly closed, as he adds, “Somehow, I get the feeling that with you, nothing is labelled out of the ordinary.”
-
They stumble through the door of Thomas’s apartment only because Thomas lost his footing for a moment and pulled Jin-Woo along with him. Thomas swears he’s going to fall, but a strong hand catches him inches before his face plants into the ground. At the moment, it doesn’t seem strange, but Thomas does marvel at the display of incredible strength.
(He hasn’t seen the half of it.)
Jin-Woo’s accompanying laugh vibrates inside Thomas’s chest, almost lulling him to join and he chuckles, carefree for the first time in a while. The alcohol has left his mark on him and his brain spins for something to say, for a way to charm the black-haired man to stay, even if he knows that he’d never allow for something to happen between them, not when Thomas is drunk out of his mind.
A minute later, a glass of water is nestled in his hands as Jin-Woo forces him to lay in the bed. Jin-Woo doesn’t even have to tell him to drink it up before Thomas is already chugging it down with a satisfied moan and Jin-Woo laughs at him, too amused to cover it up.
“Don’t laugh … at … me,” Thomas mumbles, mostly into his pillow and already half asleep.
“I’m not,” Jin-Woo tells him gently, sweeping a palm over his forehead to brush Thomas’s hair from his face, “I swear.”
Not for the first time, he wishes that his body wouldn’t erase the alcohol from his body the same moment he drinks it up. It’d be pleasant, Jin-Woo thinks, lying next to Thomas and waking up in the morning, all memories lost but ready to make new ones.
Though, maybe that’s just him, who already harbours memories of a previous life Thomas can’t yet remember.
“Goodnight,” Jin-Woo whispers into the night and the dark room, standing up to leave. The bed creaks as Jin-Woo’s weight is lifted off of it and he grimaces, worried it’d wake Thomas, but a quick glance down the sleeping bundle calms his nerves.
He barely takes a step before long and strong fingers wrap around his wrist in an unshakeable grip. From the bed, Thomas’s voice sounds, “Stay.”
Jin-Woo can’t help the loving smile that graces his face. “Alright,” he agrees and bows down to place a soft kiss, lingering for just a little too long, on Thomas’s forehead, “but only for a minute.”
-
The next morning, as Thomas wakes up, completely alone in the silent apartment, there’s no usual headache. Not the one caused by the alcohol, not the one that has been a product of his own traitorous mind.
The weirdest fact of all is that despite the many rounds of drinks, his memory couldn’t be clearer.
And his mind fells almost full, because not only he remembers yesterday, meeting Jin-Woo and every little bit of conversation they shared, but also remembers that yesterday wasn’t their first meeting at all.
The laugh he lets out to be muffled into his pillow is soaring on contentment and joy. There’s no phone number written on a piece of paper on his drawer, nor anything, but Thomas, deep down, knows that this meeting wasn’t their last.
Thomas has never believed in coincidence, not ever and now even less as he comes face to face with Sung Jin-Woo and his family as he leaves his office for a break.
Whatever it was that pulled them together (even if it’s Jin-Woo himself and that’s an unrealistically believable theory which somehow succeeds in scaring him), Thomas wants to thank it. Maybe even drop down on both of his knees and worship whatever being he’d be offering a prayer.
He can’t contain the shout, too excited at seeing him again.
(And he craves to see him again, again, again and for every day they are destined to live.)
“JIN-WOO!”
It’s Jin-Woo’s mother who looks up first and meets Thomas’s blazing gaze, a huge wave and a searing smile. On her face, though –
Only confusion rests.
(Jin-Woo has sensed Thomas’s presence long before the man exited the building, but that stays his little secret.)
Park Kyung-Hye turns to her son and says something – Korean, by the likes of it and most probable, if Thomas’s sharp ears had heard correct, but the brain couldn’t catch. Jin-Woo grins lopsidedly, half of it for his mother and half of it for Thomas, and says in English for everyone – including Thomas who has caught up to them – to understand, “Mom, this is Thomas. He’s the guy I had a drink with a week ago. And Thomas, this is my family.”
As you are, his expression seems to add, the words spoken only in his thoughts, but Thomas hears still. On his mind, like Jin-Woo’s words have, a smile imprints.
“Oh!” she exclaims, face suddenly beaming. Her expression is warm, warm like sitting next to a fireplace in the cold winter and absorbing every bit of warmth it has to offer you. Her hand is suddenly outstretched, gripping Thomas’s in a light shake – and even her hands are welcomingly mellow, even if incomparably small in Thomas’s own. “My son had told me about you. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Kind of suspicious,” Jin-Ah remarks with narrowed eyes that cut flesh. “Did you tell Oppa where you work?”
“If I did, I don’t remember it,” Thomas answers, suddenly suspicious as well. In the corner of his eye, he sees Jin-Woo send him a quick wink and that’s when he knows that the prayer he’d whispered had gone to Jin-Woo after all. “ … I somehow doubt it, though,” he adds with a gulp, but a stretch to his lips, “but whatever the reason, it’s nice to meet you as well.”
Jin-Ah’s eyes still haven’t left his face and Thomas’s begins to – not that he would ever admit, but that woman is scary – sweat and fidget just a little, hands nervously clamping down on his pants. Jin-Woo notices immediately, expression melting into something Thomas now knows is an illustration of the way he looks at people he loves.
“Jin-Ah, cut it out,” he says, tone softer than the words’ meaning and takes Thomas by the hand, tugging him away. “Let’s meet back in an hour. I have to talk to Thomas first.”
“Talk,” Jin-Ah repeats while rolling her eyes and from the way she says it, it’s obvious she thinks talking isn’t their intention. “Only an hour?”
Thomas blushes crimson, but is saved from having to talk to Jin-Woo’s family any further with that innuendo in mind by Jin-Woo glaring at his sister – and she sticks out her tongue in retaliation – and his hand, still wrapped around his wrist, dragging him in the opposite direction.
The feeling, the touch – it’s so familiar, so easy to follow without a word uttered between them – leaves Thomas breathless. He stares at Jin-Woo’s frame all the way to whatever place he’s following him to, remembering every single detail he used to know, every single spot he loved to kiss and every single night he spent mapping out Jin-Woo’s body, knowing it was all his. That knowledge –
It drives Thomas crazy.
(He could blame Jin-Ah, partially, but most of the blame falls into his own lap.
Not that he would complain.)
They finally stop in a vibrant coffee shop and Jin-Woo sits them at a table far into it, right in the corner and even that points out that whatever conversation they’re about to have, Jin-Woo doesn’t want to display it to the public.
(Thomas doesn’t mind that, either. He can get kind of possessive, especially if it’s over Jin-Woo.)
They sit opposite each other with their heads bent forward, the space between them minimal, like neither can stand the distance for even a second longer and that’s the undeniable truth behind it.
Thomas doesn’t waste any time –
“At the pub. You could have at least told me I was talking to my husband.”
Jin-Woo’s answering grin is wide, telling, ‘Would you have believed me?'
Thomas’s shrug, however, says, ‘I don’t think I would have minded if a beautiful stranger told me we’re married.’
It draws a laugh out of Jin-Woo, ecstatic that their connection, even now, holds strong. Like it never died out.
(And it never has.)
“We aren’t husbands in this timeline,” Jin-Woo comments heartily, eyes shining with tears full of fears forever left unsaid. “Yet.”
It takes Thomas by surprise – it’s only a good one, though, and his heart skips a beat to match the person’s sitting before him. “Why does this seem like a messed up proposal where I have to take a hint?” he murmurs, his smile wickedly sharp and one only Jin-Woo can bear the cut of.
“Well,” Jin-Woo drawls, “you took the hint so now it’s on you. Besides, you proposed in the last timeline. It’s only fair I get to do it now.”
Their eyes meet for a heated moment, something, but never sure what, passing between them through looks alone and it draws a smile of another kind – simpler, lovelier, kinder – onto Thomas’s mouth. “Cheeky bastard,” he laughs, earnestly, “It’s only the second date and we’re already engaged.”
“I didn’t know the drinking session was a date,” Jin-Woo smirks at him, almost sultry, just the way he knows makes Thomas melt, “but thanks for letting me know.”
And Thomas, by now and very reasonably, can’t take the strain of holding back any longer.
He surges forward, closes the little existing gap between them, so small yet so very large, tilting his head to the side. Jin-Woo mirrors him and they accidentally bump noses, both laughing awkwardly, but Jin-Woo quickly leans the other way, makes the final step and presses his lips to Thomas’s in a way that brings back reminiscences he has to hold back, albeit unsuccessfully, so he grins into the kiss.
Thomas swears he feels the curve of it.
And adores it unconditionally. Like anything else was ever a possibility.
(It wasn’t.)
“This …” Jin-Woo mutters, feeling Thomas’s crooked nose under nimble fingers the next time they meet up, ten days from their ‘initial’ meeting and snuggled on the big couch in Thomas’s apartment, “… is new.”
Thomas grins bashfully from behind him, Jin-Woo’s back pressed to his stomach. Jin-Woo’s arm is reaching over his shoulder to lither soft touches all over Thomas’s face, steadily going downward to graze at the other’s neck. Thomas sighs blissfully from the contact, already memorizing the feeling of his skin meeting Jin-Woo’s and wishing for more. On the other hand, he can’t stop thinking how awkward it must be for Jin-Woo to have his arm bent at this angle, but no complain comes, so Thomas lets him be.
“It’s from three years ago,” he says, craning his neck forward to let Jin-Woo gain better access. “Got into a nasty fight. The guy was puny, but he got a lucky hit in.”
Jin-Woo snorts in his hold and retracts his hand, suddenly turning himself around so they’re face to face. “What happened?”
“Don’t remember the details, but it was definitely about cake,” Thomas mumbles, placing his head on Jin-Woo’s shoulder. With his eyes closed, he stays there for a second, taking in the calmness of it, then scoots closer to place a tentative peck on Jin-Woo’s neck like the lightest caress of a feather. He hears Jin-Woo laugh above him, tickled by the blonde’s beard, and Thomas smiles as well, presses it into pale skin and lets it imprint. “I’m guessing I didn’t have it before, then?”
Because all he remembers from the previous timeline is Jin-Woo. Anything else is just a blurry mix of colours, sounds and tastes swirling together in a harmony no one can untangle.
Not without help.
“No,” Jin-Woo answers him. “Even if you had gotten into that fight, which I highly doubt, you’d get healed up in an instant because of your Hunter powers. If the punch would do any damage in the first place.”
Right – he was a powerful national-rank Hunter. It’d sound absurd if it’d come from any mouth other than Jin-Woo’s.
As if sensing his thoughts, Jin-Woo pats him on the shoulder with a light ‘hey’ said on a calming tone – painting a picture of the smallest of waves gently crashing into the shore and the sound of the foam left behind frizzling with the motion. Thomas looks up only to see a small, but determined smile carefully put into place on Jin-Woo’s face, lightning it up like the sun itself has touched it with its grace. Jin-Woo puts both of his palms on either side of Thomas’s face, his cheeks encompassed, and says, “I’ll help you remember. I promise.”
“Even the bad stuff?” Thomas wonders, voice breathless and soul singing.
“Even the bad stuff,” Jin-Woo agrees with a nod then kisses him senseless.
Jin-Woo helps him retain the memories, bit by careful bit, rightfully afraid that releasing them at once would do more harm than help soothe Thomas’s nerves. It was three years’ worth of work, but now, looking back on it, Thomas can say that it was certainly worth it as he cradles them gently in his palm, almost hypnotized by the feeling of them all.
Seeing who was in his Guild and meeting them all over again. His assistant, Laura, making him feel better on the worst days. The thrill of fighting monsters, the energetic buzz of stepping through the Gate. Spontaneous dates and dinners with Jin-Woo’s family, Jin-Ah as much of a menace as she is now.
All of it, golden, shining and hopeful, all his. He cherishes them, like he cherishes Jin-Woo.
There’s the bad he’s been afraid of, too –
Jin-Woo dying in his arms, the terrified screams of the onlookers as the Monarchs attacked with no one strong enough left to protect them. Visiting families of the fallen comrades, all of the funerals. Numerous betrayals and fake words, all only trying to gain his favour.
It’s useless to think about them now, fruitless to even let those get to him, but Thomas cares for all of them. It’s his past, his former timeline, his former self and –
And he wouldn’t be where he is now without every single one of them.
“You know,” he whispers on a quiet night as he and Jin-Woo lie in their bed, limbs intertwined, “maybe now’s a good time to act on those words.”
Jin-Woo lets out a prolonged exhale, twisting on the mattress to face Thomas. He’s expecting to see a frown, maybe worry, but not …
Not the radiant beam he gifts him.
“What words?” Jin-Woo mumbles, half dead with drowsiness despite not needing to sleep at all.
“In the café, all those years ago,” Thomas clarifies with shaky fingers making their way to Jin-Woo’s. “The proposal and all.”
Jin-Woo chuckles, faint blush starting to rise on his cheeks. It makes him look adorable and Thomas has to steel himself not to reach over and pinch them all over. “Ah,” his fiancé says with faint stutter, “how could I forget?”
“I’d certainly hope you didn’t,” Thomas adds, “It was the highlight of my day. Or life, probably. Or is it timeline?”
Laughter erupts from Jin-Woo and he tries to stifle the giggles into Thomas’s chest, bare from any clothes. “Cheeky bastard,” he remarks with a smirk, lightly tracing the tattoos on Thomas’s skin with his thumb.
“Hey, now,” Thomas notes sternly – but actually quite lovably with all that starlight in his eyes – and it doesn’t escape Jin-Woo’s notice, so he looks up to meet his gaze, eyes just as starstruck by Thomas as Thomas is by him and he ducks closer to kiss him on the lips, but Thomas evades, “don’t repeat insults after me.”
Yeah, he thinks, watching Jin-Woo playfully punch him in the chest, certainly worth it.