Work Text:
Failing at Jeju Island is bad enough. Losing Eunseok is worse. Byung-gyu won’t talk to him, is hyperfocused on healing everyone and anyone he can, till he drops, and Yoon-ho doesn’t need healing, so Byung-gyu doesn’t want to see him.
He doesn’t mean to stumble into Jong-In, but he does. He’s stripped down to a sweater and slacks, missing his usual suit and cape, he looks smaller, looks like he might be as fragile as Yoon-ho feels.
“You look like you don’t want to be alone either,” Jong-in says, rather than giving any kind of normal greeting.
But he said either, and exhaustion that’s far more mental than physical has put bags under his eyes.
“What do you suggest?” Yoon-ho asks. Mostly because Jong-in’s right—he doesn’t want to be alone. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees ants… and he sees Eunseok.
Jong-in is not shy about what he wants, and he hooks fingers into Yoon-ho’s belt loops. “I think some… intimacy might be welcome about now.”
Intimacy might be what he said, and sex may be the obvious play to him, but something in his eyes begs for more. Humanity.
Yoon-ho can do that. “Sure,” he says.
Flashing him a smile that looks so brittle it might break, Jong-in uses the finger still threaded in Yoon-ho’s belt loop to drag him back to his room on the ship. They’ve both been given their own—some of the best on the ship despite their failure—but Yoon-ho is relieved for the privacy now.
The moment they’re behind the closed door, Jong-in is reaching up for him, pressing against him, begging to be kissed. Yoon-ho can do nothing but comply, stroking his hands down Jong-in’s back, down to his surprisingly thin waist, pulling him in tight even as he bends down to kiss him.
The first kiss is soft and exploratory; the second is desperate and needy. Without meaning to, Yoon-ho tears Jong-in’s sweater, and for a heartbeat, he thinks that this is over.
But Jong-in smiles at him, steps back, pulls the sweater off, and says, “Strip and lie down for me.”
It should break the mood, but in the low lighting of the room, Yoon-ho goes with it, taking care not to rip his own clothing—he remembers after he first awakened how awkward it was to suddenly be so strong, how careful he had to be with people for a while—and otherwise keeps his eyes fixed on Jong-in as he strips down as well.
“Get on the bed,” Jong-in says, going to a bag and pulling out something.
“You travel with lube?” Yoon-ho can’t help but ask even as he obeys the command and gets onto the bed, his cock standing tall and proud.
Jong-in gives him another smug smirk, climbs onto the bed, then straddles Yoon-ho’s thighs. “I like to be prepared,” he says, reaching out and stroking Yoon-ho’s cock. It makes him gasp, the surprisingly soft hand—a hand that wields magic not weapons—and the cool of his rings a contrasting feeling. Jong-in seems to know that, because he grins down at Yoon-ho as he strokes him. He grabs the condom in his other hand, brings the packet up to his mouth, and uses his teeth to tear it open. “Big boy,” he says, like it’s a compliment, as he slides the condom down over Yoon-ho’s cock. Tossing the wrapper aside carelessly, he grabs the small bottle of lube and pours it over Yoon-ho. The coolness of it makes Yoon-ho hiss, but Jong-in’s watching him with hunger.
“Let me prepare you,” Yoon-ho says, letting his own eyes rake over Jong-in. Like this, he almost looks fragile, slim, like someone Yoon-ho needs to protect. He forces the image of Eunseok—another S-rank mage—away from his mind, forcing himself to focus on Jong-in. On the red of his hair, on the glimmer of gold he ears not only on his hands and wrists, but also around his neck—usually hidden beneath his suits—on the shape of his glasses, the burgundy of his eyes that matches his hair. Yoon-ho needs to touch him, needs to feel him.
He puts a hand on Jong-in’s waist, lets it slide down to cup Jong-in’s ass, lets his fingers drift down between his cheeks. Before he can even tease over Jong-in’s hole, though, Jong-in is kneeling up, shifting forward until he’s kneeling over Yoon-ho’s cock.
Meeting Yoon-ho’s eyes, he says, “I want you to split me open and fill me up.”
Without waiting for a response from Yoon-ho, he guides Yoon-ho’s cock to his hole as he begins to lower himself.
Panic spikes through Yoon-ho, and he grips Jong-in’s waist, holding him while his cock presses hard at Jong-in’s entrance. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he says. It’s so painfully true. After losing so many hunters—so many friends—seeing so many so badly injured, the last thing he wants to do is cause a new lover pain.
Leaning forward, Jong-in puts his spare hand on Yoon-ho’s chest. “I’m an S-rank,” he reminds. “Just like you.”
But you’re not like me. I’m a tank, and you’re a mage, and one of these things is not like the other.
“And I want to feel this magnificent member open me up, feel it fill me, and I want to feel it for days. You’re not going to hurt me. You’re giving me exactly what I want. Am I clear?”
With an established lover, Yoon-ho might take a little bit of smug pride about making them walk a little funny for a day or two, but he and Jong-in are not lovers. Not yet. Maybe they won’t be. Maybe this will be a one-off—Yoon-ho doesn’t know. They’re acquaintances by virtue of being some of the few S-rank hunters in the country, but they aren’t in the same guilds, and they aren’t really even friends—certainly not like Eunseok and Byung-gyu are—were—fuck.
The way his mind keeps spiraling when he literally has a beautiful naked man in his lap makes his temper flare.
“Fine,” he growls, tugging Jong-in’s hips down till his cock is forced past the guard muscle. He almost immediately regrets the momentary tantrum when Jong-in straightens, back arching, mouth falling open, eyes fluttering closed. Then he moans—a filthy, chest-deep sound that Yoon-ho feels all the way down to his dick.
“Fuck, yes,” Jong-in pants, opening his eyes again and meeting Yoon-ho’s as if in challenge, and demands, “Give me more.”
His own competitiveness surging to the front, Yoon-ho presses down on Jong-in’s hips harder, forcing him down, forcing his cock to open him up, to carve its own space inside of Jong-in. Yoon-ho’s large, and he doesn’t take lovers without prepping them, so the intensity of a body that hasn’t been relaxed even a little adds a new edge to sex, one that’s nearly painful. But seeing the way Jong-in embraces it, relishes it, feeling his body tremble even as it grudgingly accepts Yoon-ho inside of him… it’s the connection and grounding that Yoon-ho desperately wanted, desperately needed.
When Jong-in’s ass meets his lap, Yoon-ho sits up, wrapping an arm around his waist, tilting up his chin with his other hand—still so much taller than Jong-in that even being in his lap doesn’t make them even—and Yoon-ho claims his mouth. Mirroring how his hips kip up, fucking up into Jong-in, he drives his tongue into Jong-in’s mouth, claiming it, pressing deep enough to tickle at the back of his throat, drinking down the whimpers and whines and moans he makes as though they’re fine wine. Jong-in grips his shoulders, riding him with equal abandon.
The small room fills with the wet slap of their bodies and the growls, pants and gasps made between their kisses. At some point, Yoon-ho reaches between them, stroking Jong-in’s cock in time with his thrusts, not letting him pull away as he comes between them, nipping at Jong-in’s mouth till he knows it’ll be red and swollen. As Jong-in’s body tightens around him, Yoon-ho only needs a few more thrusts to fall over the edge himself, and he growls into Jong-in’s mouth, as if feeding his new lover his own ferocity.
Jong-in drives both of his hands into Yoon-ho’s hair and holds him in place as Yoon-ho’s body shudders through his own orgasm.
They continue kissing as Yoon-ho softens, and it only takes Jong-in shifting for him to slip out, but Jong-in doesn’t stop kissing him.
When they finally separate, Jong-in makes no move to get off his lap, his fingers massaging Yoon-ho’s scalp in a way that makes Yoon-ho want to roll over and bare his throat.
“I have a question for you,” Jong-in says.
Still riding the high of excellent sex and particularly relaxed because of how Jong-in is basically petting him, Yoon-ho asks, “What?”
“Do you get… bigger… in your beast form?”
Yoon-ho is not sure he’s ever blushed so hard, and Jong-in’s laugh makes him wrestle the man to his back, between his legs still, his cock growing hard again.
“Do you really want to know?” he asks.
Utterly shameless, Jong-in reaches down between them, finding his hole, hooks two fingers into it, and opens them wide, showing how stretched and loose he is after taking Yoon-ho.
“Don’t you want to see how far I can stretch?” he asks.
Yoon-ho doesn’t show him then, but he does run to Jong-in’s bag, finds more condoms, brings them back to bed, exchanging his used one for a new one, then fucking back into Jong-in without any further warning. The way Jong-in arches off the bed, his cock immediately refilling, makes it worth it.
By the time they make it back to the mainland, they’ve broken the bed, exhausted Jong-in’s supply of condoms, and have promised to meet up again.
They’re not really dating as much as they are sex friends. That… isn’t really what Yoon-ho prefers—his nature tends to want a mate, someone who is his, but they are exclusive, so Yoon-ho will take what he can get.
Byung-gyu retires. After Jeju Island, he’s in therapy, on antidepressants, and is on the verge of a panic attack any time he thinks of going near a gate again. Yoon-ho sympathizes, but as much as he—and Jong-in—are struggling with Jeju Island, and they are, the thought of never entering a gate again is just… unthinkable. Like it’s against his very nature.
But things with Jong-in are good, but not perfect. They meet a lot—spend a lot of nights at one another’s places, especially because they’re not actually dating—but there are a lot of rough nights too. Nights when—at least for Yoon-ho—waking up beside one another makes it hard to remember they’re at home and they’re safe, not back on Jeju Island. But they’re still doing pretty well anyway.
At least, they are until Chairman Go asks to see Yoon-ho on his own. It’s a big deal—Chairman Go doesn’t meet with just anyone—but he meets with Yoon-ho and asks Yoon-ho if he’s considered starting his own guild.
It’s… something that S-ranks pretty much have the right to do as a matter of course. When he’d first awakened as an S-rank, he hadn’t known enough about the work to run a guild of his own to really want to do it, hadn’t felt ready, but after Jeju Island, well, it changed things. Changed them because Yoon-ho had kind of known that he was stronger than Lim Tae-gyu, but Jeju Island had really brought it home. And maybe being a guild master wouldn’t have changed anything—but maybe it would have changed everything.
“Where are you at?” Jong-in asks him, flopping into his lap after finishing up a dinner. Well, Jong-in finished dinner; Yoon-ho’s brain had been elsewhere.
Shaking himself all over, Yoon-ho wraps his hands around Jong-in’s waist and bends to put his face in the join of Jong-in’s shoulder and neck, breathing in the scent of him. It’s grounding, soothing. Jong-in smells like a campfire and incense. He makes Yoon-ho think of comfortable things, calming things.
“I was teasing before, but what’s going on?” Jong-in asks him, rubbing a hand through Yoon-ho’s hair in the way he knows Yoon-ho loves.
Inhaling again, Yoon-ho says, “I told you I had a meeting with Chairman Go?”
Jong-in’s fingers curl, scratching, and Yoon-ho lets a little more of his weight rest on Jong-in’s shoulder as he leans into the touch. “You may have mentioned it. What did he want?”
“He told me if I wanted to start my own guild, he’d be happy to help me.”
In his arms, Jong-in goes completely still, stiff, and not in the fun way. After a moment, he says, “If you’re considering leaving the Reapers Guild, why didn’t you tell me?”
Yoon-ho pulls back a little, wanting to see Jong-in’s face since there’s something odd in his voice he can’t read. “Why would I?” he asks.
Eyes narrowing, Jong-in gets off his lap, dodging his hand when Yoon-ho reaches for him. “Why wouldn’t you consider joining the Hunters Guild?” Jong-in demands, and there’s no questioning the tone in his voice now—he’s angry.
Honestly, Yoon-ho had barely considered that an option. “I don’t want to be the Guild Master’s lover,” he says. “And I don’t want to get work tangled up in our relationship.” He really didn’t want people thinking he was just there because he was Jong-in’s boy-toy, and he didn’t want to risk them having a fallout and having to leave—if he wasn’t kicked out.
“You’re an S-rank!” Jong-in snaps. “Literally any guild in the country would be ecstatic to have you!”
Getting to his feet, Yoon-ho says, “I know that! That’s not the point!”
“Is the point that you’d rather start your own guild than be my partner?” Jong-in demands.
Annoyed, Yoon-ho says, “You know damn well I wouldn’t be your partner, I’d be your subordinate.”
“At work!”
“And when it bleeds over? What then?” Yoon-ho shoots back. “What then? What if we have a fight?”
An ugly, angry flush colors Jong-in’s cheeks. “You have so little trust in my professionalism!”
“It’s not your professionalism, it’s just a bad idea for us to work for the same guild!”
“Then maybe it’s a bad idea for us to sleep together at all!” Jong-in says, and the words hit Yoon-ho in a tender place.
Clenching his fists and doing his best to keep his temper from completely going off, but he can feel his claws growing, his fangs elongating, and he’s sure that his eyes are transforming. “If you feel that way, then you should leave,” he says in a rumble that is just short of a growl.
Jong-in glares defiantly up at him, then his expression smooths out to the smug mask Yoon-ho knows is a mask, but it hurts all the same to have Jong-in look at him with that haughty, untouchable Guild-Master look on his face. “You’re the one who said it,” he says, and the finality rings in his voice. Tucking a hand into the pocket of his suit, Jong-in turns and heads towards Yoon-ho’s door. He barely pauses when he opens it to look back and say, “I wish you luck, President Baek.”
The door shuts with a terrible softness. Yoon-ho turns his rage on the kitchen table they’d just been sitting at and smashes it into pieces. He manages to contain the damage to that tiny act of destruction, but it’s a close thing.
Rather than trying to sit in one of the chairs, he lets himself drop heavily to the floor, burying his face in his hands.
Yoon-ho starts his own guild. Considering the mere idea already cost him Jong-in, he may as well. The idea of staying with the Reapers—under an S-rank he knows he’s stronger than—rankles. With Chairman Go’s help, it’s an easier transition than it would otherwise be, and Yoon-ho is both liked and popular among the Reapers. It’s almost pitifully easy to poach enough hunters to get off on the right foot.
When he sees Jong-in next, they’re coldly cordial, all President Choi and President Baek, as if they haven’t had sex so many times they’ve lost count. As if they don’t know what one another looks like sleeping. As if they were never lovers. They’re cordial in front of the media, and a little snippy in private, but neither makes any move to try to mend wounds, try to heal things over.
Maybe they’re both too proud. After all, Yoon-ho doesn’t try to fix things either.
There is Sung Jinwoo. There is Jeju Island yet again.
There is carrying Byung-gyu’s body back, something he hadn’t been able to do for Eunseok. At least he can bring Byung-gyu home.
It hurts in a way that he can barely articulate. He’s so out of it, he doesn’t even notice Jong-in following him home until he’s literally at his own door and realizes there’s another aura close by.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, too exhausted to keep up the walls they’ve put up the past several years.
Tucking his hands in his pockets, Jong-in moves forward, not pretending he’s doing anything other than following. “You shouldn’t be alone right now.”
“What if I want to be alone?” Yoon-ho asks with a snarl in his voice.
“You and I both know you definitely shouldn’t be,” Jong-in says, but it’s gentle rather than demanding.
Somehow that almost makes it worse.
Snorting, Yoon-ho lets himself in. “Do what you want,” he says, leaving the door open behind him let Jong-in in if he chooses. Of course he follows. Yoon-ho barely pauses to take off his shoes before making a beeline for his kitchen and the soju. He doesn’t wear rings, but removing a lid is no challenge, and since he’s at home, he just drinks straight from the bottle, ignoring Jong-in as he comes up near him, finding that the cupboard Yoon-ho keeps his liquor glasses in hasn’t changed, and pulls out two out.
“Pour some for me?” he says.
Yoon-ho considers pointing out that he just drank from the bottle, but they’ve shared things more intimate than spit, and he knows what Jong-in is really trying to do. He pours them both their drinks, and they throw them back together.
“Got anything to eat?” Jong-in asks.
There is no way in hell that Yoon-ho is cooking anything tonight.
“Fried chicken sound good?” he asks, pulling out his phone and pulling up the menu of a local place that’s his go-to.
Taking the soju bottle, Jong-in pours them both another drink and says, “Sounds great.”
They end up eating a pretty impressive amount of fried chicken—they’re both drained after the last few days and could use the calories—and drink more than half the alcohol in his house. They end up watching bad dubs of pre-Hunter-era movies, migrating together onto the big couch at some point. Jong-in can’t hold his liquor as well as Yoon-ho, but at some point, Yoon-ho does realize they should move to the bed, and picks up Jong-in, bringing him with him to the bedroom.
To be honest, they probably more pass out than sleep, but at least they get some rest.
Waking up next to Jong-in is genuinely disorienting. Makes Yoon-ho remember back to the first Jeju Island raids, the first fails, feels like he’s lost a few years…
But there’s the beginnings of lines at the corners of Jong-in’s eyes that are there even in sleep, and are new and help ground him.
He’s got a little bit of a headache, but being a tank has a number of upsides, including a higher alcohol tolerance.
Reaching out, he can’t help but brush at Jong-in’s bangs back just to watch them drop back down. It must be enough to intrude on Jong-in’s sleep—or he was nearly waking up anyway—because his eyes scrunch up before opening to meet Yoon-ho’s.
“How are you doing this morning?” Jong-in asks, apparently remembering where he is and why more quickly than Yoon-ho did.
“Okay,” he admits. “You?”
Wincing slightly, Jong-in says, “In desperate need of coffee.”
“Coffee?” Yoon-ho asks. “Not tea?”
“You won’t have the stuff that has the caffeine quantity I require,” Jong-in says.
Jong-in stays till Byung-gyu’s funeral. Stays by his side, a surprisingly unobtrusive shadow as he gets through speaking to Byung-gyu’s parents, which is… awful. He hangs back when Sung Jinwoo shows up to pay his respects, and Yoon-ho’s heard all the mutterings about how Byung-gyu would still be alive if Sung had been there at the beginning—and it’s even almost certainly true—but Jeju Island wasn’t Sung’s monster to bear anymore than he’d been obligated to save Yoon-ho’s people in the red gate, or Jong-in’s people in their near-S-rank gate. At the end, he’d come. He’d come, and he’d called Byung-gyu back for a final bit of good that Byung-gyu would have certainly approved of—then released him. Yoon-ho tells himself it’s because he asked, because Sung respected him enough to abide by his will regarding his dear friend. He doesn’t know if it’s true, but it makes him feel a little better.
Somehow, he’s a little surprised when Jong-in disappears as he heads home. He’s less surprised when Jong-in shows back up—he still has a key that Yoon-ho had honestly forgotten he’d given him—and he has bowls of takeout noodle soup.
For a moment, Yoon-ho considers telling him to leave, but he really doesn’t want to be alone, and he thinks he’s not the only one who feels that way. Jong-in didn’t lose a precious friend, the way Yoon-ho did, but that doesn’t mean that Jeju Island hasn’t given them both new nightmares.
The soup is filling, and they chase it down with more soju that Jong-in had brought—but only a single bottle, split between the two of them.
When it’s gone, Jong-in fiddles with the cup in his hands and says, “I’ve missed you, you know.”
You’re the one who left. The words are on the tip of Yoon-ho’s lips. Followed quickly by, You took me starting my own guild personally. You didn’t trust me. Didn’t trust us.
But he’s buried his two best friends; he doesn’t want to fight with his old lover.
“Me too,” he admits.
Jong-in puts his cup on the coffee table, takes Yoon-ho’s from him and sets it down as well, then stands, holding Yoon-ho’s hands as he does.
“We were both proud and stupid,” Jong-in says—an admission that Yoon-ho honestly never imagined he’d get. “Life is too short, too uncertain for us to keep being proud and stupid. Things are moving, changing… I know you feel it too.” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to face it alone.” He rubs his thumbs over the knuckles of Yoon-ho’s hands. “I don’t want to lose more time with you.”
Tugging on Jong-in’s hands, Yoon-ho pulls him into his lap, and after a moment of surprise, Jong-in comes, straddling Yoon-ho. Yoon-ho takes his chin in gentle fingertips, and kisses him. He tastes of soju and salted broth, and Yoon-ho missed him. He pulls Jong-in deeper into his lap, making their crotches rub up against one another, and his body nearly immediately rises at the familiarity of Jong-in’s body against his own.
Breaking the kiss, Jong-in gasps, “Take me.”
Tempting as it is to take him here, on the couch, that’s not what Yoon-ho wants. Instead, he stands, effortlessly managing Jong-in’s weight, and takes them back to his room, laying him down on the bed, suit slightly rumpled.
“You’d better take that suit off if you don’t want me to tear it off,” he says.
Jong-in grins. “Do your worst.”
Yoon-ho intends to.