Prologue
San wakes with his cheek stuck to the bedding and sweat cooling in the hollow of his spine. The air is thick with lamp oil and trapped heat, each breath catching high in his chest before it can fully fill his lungs. Medicinal bitterness coats his tongue and when he tries to move, his limbs answer only sluggishly.
Gathering what strength remains, he tries to push himself upright, but a warm palm settles against his chest and presses him back down with such care that, for one dazed instant, he mistakes it for tenderness.
“Don’t,” Wooyoung murmurs.
His hair has come loose, dark waves clinging to his flushed temples, and his robe hangs open where the collar has slipped, exposing the pale hollow at his throat. He’s kneeling astride San’s thigh, light enough to seem harmless. Then he shifts and the firm press of his body betrays the strength concealed beneath the silken sweep of his robe.
“What did you give me?”
“Medicine.”
San’s breath catches, anger scraping through the fog in his head. “Don’t play with me, Wooyoung.”
Wooyoung’s expression softens as though he’s the one being wronged.
He bends over San, planting one hand on the pillow beside his head while the other cups his face and holds him still. His thumb brushes along San’s jaw, then traces the sweat from his upper lip, lingering over its softness for a moment, before pressing against his lips and sliding inside.
San jerks beneath him, fingers twisting into the bedding, and for one disorienting instant, he can neither move nor look away. Wooyoung hovers above him with his mouth parted, lush and reddened at the center, his long hair spilling over his shoulders in dark, gleaming waves against the fevered flush of his skin. He looks less like a man and more like something conjured from a ruinous dream.
Wooyoung lowers his gaze to his thumb, warm and wet inside San’s mouth, resting against the slick softness of his tongue. Darkness has flooded his eyes, pupils blown wide enough to swallow nearly all the light. He presses down lightly into the heat, testing, feeling San’s breath catch against his skin, then slowly looks up to meet his eyes.
“You’re feverish,” he says. “Don’t say things you’ll regret.”
Shock flashes into anger. San isn’t used to another body holding him still, much less his younger brother’s, and the weakness in his own limbs only deepens his fury. When Wooyoung tries to press his thumb farther into his mouth, San closes his teeth around it and bites down. Hard.
One corner of Wooyoung’s mouth tightens as his flesh yields beneath the blunt pressure, but he smooths it away and lets his thumb rest steady between San’s teeth. A bright seam of blood wells rapidly along the crescent of the bite. It gathers there before spilling warm across San’s tongue, filling his mouth with the taste of metal.
Wooyoung watches him silently through lowered lashes as the red stains San’s lips, his dark eyes shining with hurt and betrayal that doesn’t reach the rest of his face.
Then he leans close, breath trembling against San’s mouth.
“You promised,” he whispers. “You said you’d never leave.”
Something inside San gives way. His eyes fall shut. The room tilts beneath him, Wooyoung’s voice thinning at the edges as he reaches backward through the years, searching for the moment when his promise to protect Wooyoung ended and all of this began…
