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“Oi, Thunder Beast, hold still so I can stitch this up properly. You keep squirming and I’m going to end up sticking the needle in your eye.”
“Couldn’t we just leave it alone? It’ll heal by itself eventually.”
“Head wounds bleed more than normal ones, genius, so unless you want to be flat on your back with anemia for the next couple days…”
“Ouch! For God’s sake, can’t you be a little more careful?”
“It’s your fault for getting cut in the first place—”
Hak groans and fights the urge to yank his face out of Yoon’s grasp. The taste of bile is thick is his throat, and seems to rise with each tug of the needle, guided by the healer’s deft hands through the ugly, jagged gash in Hak’s forehead.
Yoon is looming over him, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, while one hand holds Hak’s chin and the other wields the instrument of torture. The pulling sensation on his skin somehow simultaneously burns and nauseates, so instead of watching Yoon work, Hak watches the camp instead.
The clearing where they chose to settle this afternoon is cupped in small, secluded clearing, surrounded by dense forest. The sky is overhead pale blue, light filtering golden through the canopy of leaves overhead, gentle wind ruffling playful fingers through Hak’s hair. The air smells like lavender.
Shin-ah and the freaky yellow kid are hanging laundry on a line. Yellow is bouncing enthusiastically, jabbering away about something, while Shin-ah listens silently, nodding every once in a while. The White Snake is carrying firewood from the forest to the center of the clearing.
Hak doesn’t see green hair or red, and he tries not to let it bother him.
“How did this even happen?” Yoon asks, almost absently. “Those kingdom officials are pushovers, you said so yourself. How did one get close enough to actually cut you?”
Hak shrugs and says, “Don’t really know. Pretty sure I managed to pay him back for it, though.”
(He doesn’t say he’d been distracted because he thought he heard a feminine scream in the distance. He doesn’t say that he stayed motionless until he spotted a crown of hair like a sunrise, perched on the roof of a hut and loosing arrows into the crowd. He definitely doesn’t say that he narrowly missed being decapitated because of the moment of weakness.
That’s all best kept to himself, he thinks.)
“Shit,” Hak hisses when Yoon gives the thread a sharp tug. “Watch it—”
“If you’d just stop moving—”
“I’m not moving, you’re just—”
“Hak! Yoon-kun!”
Hak’s head jerks up, and, yeah, honestly, the bolt of pain that flashes through his skull is probably his fault that time. Two figures are emerging from the woods to their left, one jogging and waving enthusiastically, the other strolling and carrying what looks like a basket full of violently purple flowers.
“You found it, then,” Yoon says, a note of satisfaction in his voice. He uses his teeth to cut the thread he’d been sewing Hak’s forehead with, then gets to his feet and dusts grass and soil off his leggings. “Good job.”
“Princess,” Hak says, evenly. “Droopy-eyes. Going to decorate the camp, or something? Make a bouquet?”
Jae-ha sniffs and pushes the flower basket into Yoon’s arms. “I’ll have you know that these are very important medicinal flowers. Which we got for you, by the way. You’re welcome.”
Hak raises an eyebrow and drawls, “Wow, a word more than three syllables long. Impressive. Careful, though, it’s a bit dangerous to use your entire vocabulary in one sentence.”
“You lookin’ for a fight, bro?”
“Sure, I’m game—”
Hak is half-standing when a small hand closes on his shoulder and shoves him back down into a seated position. There is a flash of red, and suddenly Hak’s senses are full of her, the smell of her skin and the feeling of her hand, gentle but insistent, grabbing his chin and guiding his face up to look at her.
“No fighting,” Yona commands. Hak’s pulse is in his throat and her eyes are all he can see.
It’s so frustrating, because Hak has always considered himself a fairly patient man. In battle, the ability to wait for openings and act with caution, discretion, can very often end up being the difference between life and death. An opening here, a feint there, a twitching finger or a flickering eye. Hak knows how to anticipate them all, how to watch quietly and let his opponents dig their own graves. He’s a warrior, born for violence and conflict, and patience is what keeps him alive.
Off the battlefield, it’s more complicated.
There are no enemies to be cut down right now. He is not surrounded. His Hsu Quando is not gripped between his sweaty palms. The taste of blood – copper and soil – is absent from his mouth. There is no danger. And yet, adrenaline still thrums through his veins, keeping pace with his heart. His hands shake and his body burns with energy, the need to flee, and lots of other needs, too.
Hak is no stranger to the feeling. He knows both the cause and the name. It has been like this for years, a sickness inside his chest. His greatest challenge, the worst of his shortcomings.
In this arena, he is not patient. In this arena, he is deplorable, a greedy bastard. He counts touches, no matter how small and inconsequential. When his hands brush hers, he lets them linger; he lets his eyes trace patterns on her skin when he knows nobody’s watching; he lets himself breathe in the scent of her when she’s sleeping near him. And he hates this side of himself (hasn’t she said the same?), but it is pressed into his soul, tattooed across his mind, constantly, constantly, a perpetual reminder of his own weakness.
“If you fight too soon after losing that much blood, you’ll get sick,” Yona announces, in a voice dripping with authority and confidence. Then she glances at Yoon and adds, “Right, Yoon-kun?” a little hesitantly, and Hak is forced to fight back a smile.
Yoon is digging through the flowers, snipping leaves off and tossing them onto a gently rounded bowl. “Right, Yona. Thunder Beast, make yourself useful and mash this into a pulp for me.”
Hak accepts the bowl without complaint and tries to focus on regulating his heartbeat. Yona isn’t moving away nearly as much as she should be; her eyes are on his forehead while Yoon explains to her the process of stitching, and her lips are inches away from his skin.
(He can feel her breath, warm and even and sweet, and it makes his chest feel tight and enclosed, so he turns his attention to mashing the leaves with more vigor.)
“All right. That poultice should act as a numbing agent on the pain.” Yoon dips a finger in the bowl of leaf pulp and sniffs it. “It’s pretty much done, but I need to get started on supper. Jae-ha, if you’ll come with me… Yona, are you willing to put that on Hak for me? Just spread it on the area around the cut.”
Yona nods aggressively, straight-backed and alert. “You can count on me!”
Yoon looks like he very much doubts that, but he scoops up his healing supplies anyway and heads off towards the fire. Jae-ha hesitates and looks like he’s about to say something, but Hak raises an eyebrow at him and he just smirks and strides off.
Yona takes the bowl out of Hak’s hands. Their fingers brush and sparks erupt in Hak’s skin and he hates himself for it, because what’s the point in feeling this way when she’ll never feel it back? Stupid, stupid, he’s so stupid.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” she asks.
Hak rolls his eyes. “No.”
“I thought you said kingdom officials—”
“Are pushovers. They are. I just wasn’t on top of my game today—” His voice breaks off with a hiss when she dabs the first glob of paste on his forehead and pain, white-hot and serrated, shoots through him at the pressure. His hand comes up and catches her wrist before he can stop himself. “Gently,” he reminds her through clenched teeth.
Her eyes are wide open, lavender, like the smell of the camp. “Sorry!” she gasps, and is he imagining it, or is there color in her cheeks?
He drops her wrist and she presses her fingers to his forehead again, more softly this time. She glances down at him and he nods sharply, so she keeps going.
“You should be careful,” she says softly.
“I am careful.”
An angry furrow forms between her eyebrows and Hak is seized by the desire to smooth it out with his thumb.
“More careful, then,” she amends, a hint of a whine in her voice. “If you’d gotten hurt—”
“It’s just a scratch, Princess,” he reminds her. “I’ve gotten them before.”
Her fingers stop moving on his forehead, so that they’re just resting on his skin, just the lightest of touches. She frowns at the ground, crimson hair tumbling into her face, and there’s definitely a flush to her cheeks now. Hak beats back the bubbling sense of elation rising in his chest.
“I can’t lose you,” she mutters finally, and Hak’s heart stops.
They sit there in silence, and Hak is close enough to be able to count each of her individual eyelashes, close enough that a tiny tilt forward is all it would take for his lips to be pressed against hers. His eyes are wide and his pulse is pounding and when he finally says, “You won’t lose me,” his voice breaks a little bit. “I promised his Highness I’d take care of you—”
“No, no, you don’t understand. I can’t lose you, but not because you’re my bodyguard. And not because you’re the last person left from my childhood I can trust. I can’t lose you because you’re you, because you’re Hak, and I need you, all right?” She huffs and her eyes stay trained on the ground and Hak is dissolving, unraveling, falling apart. “Idiot.”
He should make a joke. He should lean back and end the tension by making some rude comment about her concern or the face she’s making. But that feels wrong, it sits wrong in his chest, so instead he says, “Command me.”
Yona looks up at him, surprised, and the connection between their eyes when they finally meet feels like a physical touch.
(She is so vibrant and he is so lost.)
“What?”
“Command me. To never leave you. If that’s what you want, that is.”
She hesitates, and for a second he thinks she’ll run away, but instead she says, “Hak, this is an order. You’re to stay by my side. And not leave. And… and not die before me either. We’re to die together. You have to wait until the exact moment I go before—”
Hak sniggers. Then he chuckles. And then he’s laughing, quiet but hard, the sound vibrating in his chest. Yona flushes an angry red and opens her mouth – to yell at him, probably – but he reaches out and captures the hand she’d been applying the medicine with, and before she can protest, he presses his lips to her open palm.
He hears her intake of breath. He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop hearing it.
“As my princess commands,” he murmurs against her skin and the pain in his forehead is nothing more than a distant memory.