Wooyoung and San had made a fire out of some pieces of dry driftwood they found buried halfway in the sand. San's fire-making skills never got rusty as he ignited the flames and sat down together with Wooyoung in the sand. To dry off, Wooyoung had stripped from his tunic and cloak, only sitting in his pants. When San had noticed him shivering despite the warming flames, he had called over their horses and got a blanket from one of his bags. Wrapped into it and with the heated skin of their naked torsos leaned against each other, they sat at the fire.
Through the open V of their blankets in front of Wooyoung's chest where his body leaned against San's shoulder, Wooyoung dug around in the ashes with a stick. Every so often the wind turned and had the smoke bite into his eyes, but he never minded it.
The light of their fire permeated the nightly air. The shine made it hard to see the reflection of the moon on the water as it rippled with the waves.
"What did you think of Leonardo's and Seonghwa's theories on immortality?"
San shifted his arms that were wrapped loosely around Wooyoung's frame. His cheek squished against Wooyoung's dry hair when he leaned their heads together.
"I thought it interesting. It carried a lot of scientific logic compared to what we are used to hearing. I see the modern time spirit in their theories."
"Did you find them believable? That you may have become immortal through a strike of chance by tumbling over a potion?"
"If the opposite of that is becoming immortal out of someone else's will, then yes, I find that theory more believable. I didn't seek to become immortal. But neither could I imagine someone else attempting to prolong my life on purpose," San replied. His voice was soft in the night. Wooyoung enjoyed listening to it over the noise of crackling wood and the rushing waves.
"I thought of another theory while we listened to Seonghwa."
San dipped his head to Wooyoung's shoulder. Gentle lips left kisses on Wooyoung's fire-warmed skin. Wooyoung shuddered when they travelled over his sensitive neck and poured San's devotion into him. It was sweet, like the ambrosia San had fed him in Rome. Wooyoung couldn't get enough of it.
"What is it?"
Wooyoung felt the movement of San's lips on his skin, tried to predict what words they would form.
"I wondered if immortality might be hereditary. You said you couldn't have children... I thought if maybe that has to do with your condition, then maybe those rare children get it from their parents."
San was silent for a while. His kisses had faded out and he merely rested his forehead on Wooyoung's shoulder. Tense and ready to apologise for the intrusion, Wooyoung rested in his arms.
"I barely remember my parents," San muttered after long minutes of them listening to nature around them. "I spent only a few years with them. Ten? Maybe fifteen? Far too short for me to remember who they were in the grand spectrum of my life. I wouldn't know if they were immortals. But I also never met them again."
Wooyoung's head throbbed with memories from his biology classes. About dominant and recessive genetics and whether that immortality might be an ultra-exceptional occurrence, much more extraordinary to achieve than any genetic uniqueness the modern world knew.
"Did you have siblings?"
"Not that I know of."
Wooyoung didn't want to dig around in the man's mind too much. The time he spent as a child was far from the past. If San remembered it, those memories might have been the most precious ones that he didn't want to share.
He was so different from Wooyoung, who visited his parents and siblings in Salerno at least twice a year.
"But I believe if it were hereditary, I would have met someone else from my family afterwards. Or maybe heard of it back when I first started to search for an answer. But my family tribe died out all except me within a couple of years." San hooked his chin over Wooyoung's shoulder again to stare into the fire. In a silent gesture of comfort, Wooyoung turned his head to press a kiss against the man's temple.
San carried such precious blood. Ancient, and the last of his people. A one of his kind through all of time.
"That makes sense, yeah," Wooyoung agreed. He stared with San into the flames.
"I didn't get to be with my parents for long. My family was a humble group of farmers that lived in wooden huts near the forest. We harvested our own food and barely had contact with the surrounding people. There was no larger town nearby, so most of the strangers we saw only passed through."
Wooyoung flattened his breath. He didn't want to give his excitement away about San talking about this. Quiet and intrigued, he listened to the man's voice over his shoulder.
"I was too young to ask them whether they had trouble conceiving me. By the time I was old enough to understand life and work, both of them died of sickness similar to the plague. Back then, I was lucky not to catch it as well. Maybe I had an affinity to health even before finding eternal life."
Wooyoung tried to picture it. San was from the area of China, on the mainland, as it sounded. Maybe even Korea or the north of Vietnam or Thailand. He had probably grown up surrounded by the ocean, high mountains, and bamboo forests.
How must he have looked when he was younger? Wooyoung bet his slanted eyes were his most striking feature even back then.
"I travelled for a while. Seeking food and shelter as I went. Somewhere along the line, when I did that, I must have achieved this immortality of mine. While I was still near my home area."
It made sense. So far, the European Time Travel Institute had always been a step behind to their rivals in China with things like ancient medicines and undiscovered plants. San might have stumbled over something that Wooyoung could never find in Europe, no matter how long he searched might have been over there.
"As I got older and noticed I stopped ageing in between, I retraced my steps. Tried to find out what happened. Back then, I was thrilled about my immortality since many people died early in wars or from illnesses. I felt invincible."
Wooyoung laughed with him. He could imagine that well. A smug San who barely became an adult and already went around testing his limits.
Idle, San's fingers drew circles on the skin of Wooyoung's stomach.
"I found nothing. So I went on my search and broadened the area that I knew gradually. That's how I ended up in Babylon a while after."
Both of them smiled at the memory. Wooyoung's was far more vivid and fresh, but San remembered something he liked as well.
"By then I knew I couldn't have children. I tried after a while with a woman I learned to appreciate and since the trot of my life became confusing and boring. But as it turned out, my seed is worthless. I wouldn't know if I always was like this, or if my immortality took that opportunity away from me. Either way, it plagued me for a long time. In a society where children and bloodlines decided upon hierarchy and success, I felt outcast."
Frowning, Wooyoung nuzzled closer to San. San nudged back with a distracted smile.
"I hit the type of depression people in the past naturally assumed I would have with my immortal life when I was around two or three hundred years old. Because I felt the most important opportunities got taken away from me: family and growing old with someone. For a while, I moped around. Until I got to Babylon. And for the first time, my youth got appreciated. I could be the pretty jewel for a few years and regained my happiness through the attention of strangers that loved me, no matter my lacking capabilities. Maybe even more because I could endanger none of their precious women."
Wooyoung listened serenely. San's story was so different from those he would hear from modern people. And yet an infinite time more fascinating.
"After Babylon fell, I went to war for a few years. Honour and fame were my new methods of feeling accomplished. Soon I noticed I couldn't do as much as I wanted, however, since people wondered about me not ageing, and not all of them could hide their fear and jealousy. And thus, I wandered. Throughout Europe and Asia, searching for explanations of why I am and what my purpose is. Until a fool on a Viking ship told me he recognised me. A fool I didn't imagine seeing again after a lifetime."
Wooyoung snickered when San kissed his shoulder reverently. His lips rested there for a moment before he pulled away.
"The rest is history. I found many new things to busy myself with. Studies and skills, languages, people... I tried many things and new ones keep coming up. The boredom is over and I believe you were part of getting me more excited about life. Because there was always something I could look forward to."
His devotion was... too much for Wooyoung to comprehend. His regular human brain couldn't fathom the time San spent waiting for him, full of anticipation of seeing him again. Or how short their time always was. For waiting so long, San was always patient with Wooyoung. He never pressured him to stay, either.
"I'm glad I can be that. Even if my life was nowhere as spectacular as yours."
"Isn't you being here spectacular? How many of your people share this story? I never met another one of your kind."
Charmed, Wooyoung melted into his lover.
"Next time we meet, I will tell you where to find me in the time I live in. It's not far now. And then I will be there every day for however long I may live."
"When will we meet next time?"
Wooyoung shifted until his head came to lie on San's lap. The man's fingers found his hair and carded through it gently. The combination of warmth and the man's tenderness made Wooyoung sleepy.
"England, near where Nottingham was. It's an old city called London. The year is 1869. A long time, I know."
"I heard of London before. I will be there. When and where?"
"The town square on the last day of March?" Wooyoung smiled up at him. In the dancing light of the fire, San's face was cast in amusing shadows.
"Sounds like a good idea."
They smiled at each other. Wooyoung picked up San's hand that tapped on his chest to hold it pressed against his heart. The combined thumping of their heartbeats soothed him.
"Where will you go until then? It's a while."
San looked at the ocean with a hum. His eyes were directed at the distance, at something neither of them could see with the naked eye. The length of the vast ocean was too far. In the night, the water looked to be bathed in black.
"There." San nodded his chin at the sea. Curious, Wooyoung turned his head.
"The new world Seonghwa and Leonardo mentioned. The land beyond the sea. I'm sure it holds many secrets. I will explore them while you are gone and return when it's time to."
It would be the best time to go. Before the Frontier, San had a good chance of finding the secrets he sought. He still had a couple of years before the colonies would become an unfriendly living space. But San would do well even then. Wooyoung trusted him.
"When we meet again, you have to tell me what you found there," Wooyoung smiled. San nodded and rolled Wooyoung's hair pearl between his fingers.
"I will. And then let's meet again in what will presumably be the last exploration we do in the past before we can meet in your time."
Wooyoung agreed.
They sat in the night at the beach until exhaustion pulled their bodies down to sleep. Curled up around each other, they spent their night at the chilly beach while their fire warmed them.
In the morning, they saddled their horses again to ride north along the shore. They found a building near the ocean soon that belonged to a kind fisher family. San suggested he would spend his evening there and eat. He would write his letter back to Florence and then pick out his travel plans while Wooyoung was on his way.
They parted with a lingering kiss and longing in their eyes before Wooyoung had stepped through the door first and returned to his time.