??????
Withoutanother word, Haneul unstraddled him, slid off as if cleaning up a mistake. Gone. Just like that. Just like every damn time he seemed to be about to step into something intimate… leaving Seungho shaking with restraint.
He vanished behind a curtain, a cabinet, a dimension. There was a crash, a clang, what sounded like a cook cursing the gods.
Then Haneul reappeared, triumphant, smug, holding a jar of pickled radishes in one hand and a rice biscuit clamped in his teeth like a wolf with a kill. He dropped back into the pillows like a star falling to earth, braid swinging, eyes narrowed, still chewing.
His cheeks puffed, full of secrets and grenades both. He prodded Seungho’s thigh with his foot—imperious, commanding, as if Seungho was a failed servant.
“Stop talking like a lovestruck fool—” munch, munch “—and tell me something I should know about you.” Munch. “Now.”
Seungho blinked, then smiled—wide, helpless. Haneul was chaos and war and fear of warmth, and all Seungho wanted was to feed him radishes until he was allowed to kiss his knuckles without being bitten.
Seungho leaned back, legs crossed, head tilted, voice low. “All right. Something you should know.” A pause. “I don’t dream much. Not since the war.” He met Haneul’s eyes. “But when I do… lately?” A beat. “It’s always snowing.”
WHAP. A half-munched rice biscuit smacked Seungho in the chest, stuck, slid, landed in his lap.
Haneul’s glare could curdle milk. Cheeks still puffed, eyes burning, soul crushed by the lack of gossip.
Seungho sat there, legs folded, biscuit on his lap like the carcass of dignity, as Haneul bellowed from his throne of pillows,“Give me something juicy, Fire King! Not some poetic crap!” He threw his arms, crumbs flying. Nearly spilled his jar but didn’t care. “I didn’t need to be yours for THAT—whatever it was!!”
Seungho blinked. Leaned forward, picked the biscuit with two fingers like it might explode, and, with regal dignity, ate it.
Crunch.
A beat.
“…You’re impossible.”
Haneul pointed at him with a radish spear. “JUICY.”
Seungho sighed, relented, dropped his voice rough and low. “Alright. When I was fifteen, I nearly married the warlord’s daughter from the Northern border. It was arranged. I wasn’t given a choice.”
Haneul’s eyes narrowed, radish forgotten mid-air.
“She tried to gut me with a ceremonial hairpin during our first night alone together. Claimed she’d rather die than lie beneath a ‘fire demon.’” He shrugged. “She missed. I took the pin. Stabbed her pillow. We called it a draw. Marriage cancelled. Never spoke again.”
Haneul blinked, slow—then grinned. Bright, manic, utterly his. “…Okay,” he said, pleased. “That’s better.”
Haneul scooted closer, all sharp knees and lethal mischief, a bomb with legs. His knee bumped Seungho’s—sharp, unrepentant—like his body was just another weapon in that frostborn arsenal. He was already munching his third radish, loud, wet, entirely unbothered. The braid slid over the lacquered floor like a silk whip. His eyes—too tipsy, too wild—glittered with the kind of giddy, deranged joy that onlyappeared when he was about to either fall in love or start a tavern fight. Possibly both.
He leaned in, eyes gleaming like twin moons eclipsing the last sense left in the room.
“Are you gonna try to stab me if I marry you?” Haneul asked, perfectly serious—vibrating with delight.
Seungho opened his mouth, but Haneul steamrolled right over him, voice rising with every new disaster he conjured:
“Where? In my chest? My eye?” Haneul panted a little from enthusiasm, brandishing his chopsticks aloft, trembling with glee. “With chopsticks? Your hunting knife??”
That grin—Seungho had seen it before, on battlefields and rooftops and over spilled wine: a YESSSS let’s stab and marry and bleed and build a house out of chaos together grin.
Then—voice dropping to a dangerous purr, eyes dark and bright as a winter moon: “Also… give me the address of that bitch—” Meaning, Seungho’s would-be bride. “—so I can pay her a visit sometime…”
He shrugged. Like this wasn’t a declaration of vengeance from a man who once bit Seungho’s ass and wrote a war song about it. “Nothing personal.”
Seungho’s mouth fell open. A breath. Then—laughter. Not polite, not restrained. A full-bodied, throat-ripping, absolutely-doomed laugh. He fell back against the pillows, arm thrown over his eyes.
“Gods,” he wheezed, “you’re going to kill me before the wedding, aren’t you?”
