(no) Strings Attached

This Time Gently

They aren't touching. But they're close. One shift and they would be.

Wooyoung lies on his back, staring at the ceiling. Listening to the quiet sound of San breathing.

He hates that he knows that sound.

Even after everything. He still knows the rhythm of San's lungs when he's trying not to fall asleep too fast — like he's waiting, just in case something happens.

San turns onto his side. The futon rustles. "You used to talk in your sleep," he murmurs.

Wooyoung snorts. "I still do."

"I know," San says, soft. "Last night you told me to stop hoarding the blankets."

"I meant it," Wooyoung says, turning away slightly. But his voice isn't sharp anymore. Just tired. Just real.

A soft blanket of silence follows before San restricts it from being the end of Wooyoung's replies to him.

"You always slept warm," San adds, almost like he's talking to himself. "Like you were made for winter." Wooyoung doesn't answer. But he doesn't shut it down either. Then—

There's the tiniest shift. The gentlest pressure near his shoulder. Not a touch — not quite. Just the ghost of San's presence, closer than before.

"I miss you," San whispers. "Even here. Even now. I miss you like I never stopped."

And Wooyoung feels it — the ache of it. The weight of being missed so honestly, so quietly, without expectation. His throat tightens. He doesn't roll over. Doesn't say anything.

But after a long silence, he reaches down, pulls the edge of his blanket, and tosses it towards San's futon. A clumsy half-offering.

"If you're gonna talk about feelings," he mutters, "you might as well not freeze. And San smiles in the dark. Not because he's forgiven.

But because that — that small shift, that shared warmth — is something. The kind of something he'll spend every night earning.

When they fall asleep, their bodies almost immediately find each other, a roll closer, an unconscious arm wrapping around slim waist.

Wooyoung wakes up to the smell of barley tea again.

But this time, there's something else.

Warmth. A steady, calm kind that isn't his own.

He blinks, bleary-eyed, and realizes somewhere in the night, their blankets tangled. Somewhere between silence and sleep, San's arm ended up across his waist — loose, not gripping, but there.

Like a promise whispered between dreams.

Wooyoung freezes.

But he doesn't push it off.

He just lies there, heart tripping over itself, staring at the ceiling with San's breath fanning warm against the back of his neck.

He should move.

He doesn't.

A minute passes. Then another. Until San stirs behind him, soft and slow, pulling his arm back like he knows he's overstepped, even half-asleep.

"Sorry," San mumbles, voice thick with sleep. "Didn't mean to..." But Wooyoung just says, quiet, before he can finish, "It's fine." San goes still.

Wooyoung doesn't turn around. But something unspoken settles between them. Not peace — not yet. But a crack in the wall.

He gets up first. Stretches with a yawn that's a little too loud. Doesn't look back.

"Come on," he mutters. "She'll kill us if we're late to breakfast."