For evangeline101

From Secret Santa

Prompt: Woohyun meets Sunggyu in a deserted alley and wonders why the male isn't wearing decent-enough clothes to protect himself against the bitter cold of Seoul‘s winter.

Pairing: Woogyu

Our names are all we need

It’s one week till Christmas. There’s a certain thrill in the air, and Woohyun’s cheeks glow red like roses despite the biting cold. His feet tap along to a tune he hums under his breath, the Christmas spirit bubbling from his toes to the tip of his nose. Work had been exhausting as usual, but the walk home always helped him clear his head and rejuvenate his mind. His shopping, scarce and cheap, had been done, and a small fake tree is already seated upon a broken table in his small apartment. Regardless of what nature has thrown at him, the man seems to find joy in existence, humility in life, and love in everything he can set his touch upon. He decides to make himself a warm froth of hot marshmallow chocolate once he gets back home, and he’s thinking of how many marshmallows to melt in his cup when he hears a loud shattering of glass in the alleyway to his right.

Woohyun panics slightly. The neighborhood isn’t exactly safe, but he knew of the hardships of people living in alleyways more than anyone else. His heart takes the best of him, and he hurriedly rushes to the source of the sound. He sees a man, in a thin white shirt and loose black pants, stumbling along the wall, knocking over everything in his way.

“Hey mister…” Woohyun’s breath fogs the air.

The man seems dazed, confused, and slightly off balance, his bare feet wobbling as he steadies himself up against the wall, grabbing his hair in fistfuls. There’s a rumbling in the pit of Woohyun’s chest—something was inherently wrong with this picture.

The man starts leaning sideways, bracing for a collision with the ground. Woohyun springs forward, catching the heavy weight of the man’s torso and stumbling down with him, easing the fall.

“Mister, are you alright? Should I call an ambulance or the police—”

“No, no—NO!”

The sudden outburst startles Woohyun, and he tries to step back, but the man’s hands are clenched in an iron grasp on him.

“Where am I? Who are you?”

Woohyun clears his throat, trying to pry the fingers out of his twisted sweater. “My name’s Woohyun. And you’re in Seoul. Are you drunk or something? Can I send you home sir? What’s your name?”

The man suddenly freezes up, his eyes boring into thin air, an unreadable expression on his face. Little tremors resonate to Woohyun’s body, the poor man shivering from winter’s ruthless grace. It sparks an image in the back of Woohyun’s head that he knew he could never forget. The feeling of being cold, the feeling of being left out alone, all of it opening a closed wound in his very own heart again.

“You look really cold. Let me help you. Just tell me your name,” And Woohyun tries to reason with the lump of frigid skin, pulling him up from the ground.

The man complies with him, still clamped onto his side. It comes out of the man’s lips faintly, tinged with fear and despair. “I can’t remember anything…”

.

.

.

It hadn’t taken much thinking in Woohyun’s brain that he needed to help the poor man he had found in the alleyway. Neither did it take much convincing to drag him back to his apartment, forcing him up the stairs one at a time, as he looked around frantic and paranoid.

“Maybe when you get some rest you’ll remember. We’ll figure it out, but now let’s just get you warm so you won’t get sick, okay?” Woohyun’s softly murmuring to him as he ushers him into the small apartment, turning around to lock the door. He catches sight of a rather tall man dressed in black passing by, but heeds him no attention. There were more pressing matters at hand now.

Woohyun hears a loud thud behind him, turning to find the stranger from the alleyway collapsed on the floor. He sighs, taking off his coat and raising his sleeves—a pile of work ahead for him.

When he does manage to get the stranger onto his bed, he dries him off with a towel, cautiously stripping him of his clothes and dressing him with dry ones of his own. With all the blankets he had, he covered the man and stepped back as he watched him sleep in his bed. He takes the wet clothes, turning the pockets inside outside. Inside he finds a wallet and two keys, and then takes the liberty to dig through the wallet.

“Kim Sunggyu…well at least I know what to call you now,” Woohyun half talks to the body in his bed and half laughs at himself for the mere idea of having a stranger in his bed. The license showed an address to an upscale part of the city, and Woohyun could only wonder how someone had managed to get to this dirty wasteland. He absent-mindedly places the wallet and keys into his front pocket, and heads over to the sink to make that cup of hot chocolate he had been craving all day.

After settling down on the couch with his warm cup, the exhaustion kicks in, the soreness of his

feet catching up with him. He lets his body melt into the couch, relaxing and slowly drifting off to sleep…

.

.

.

Sunggyu’s head was pounding like a rabid drum, throbbing in the left side of his brain in an uncomfortable way. But that wasn’t exactly what had woken him—it was the heat. He could feel himself sweating even in his sleep, and it bothered him to no end. Then there came that smell. A familiar smell of something burning…

He snaps his eyes open, instinct taking over as he throws the sheets off him, the fire blazing around in the room, the smoke starting to condense and thicken. He scrambles out of the room, heading straight for the door.

He jolts in his tracks when he sees the man from earlier on the couch, still fast asleep and oblivious. Without thinking, he simply grabs him, startling him and pulling him off couch.

“What in the hell—my apartment!! What—”

“Shut up and move or we’re both gonna end up dead,” Sunggyu growls back at him, and tugs him out of the apartment with him.

“Sunggyu, what happened, we need to call the police—”

“Sunggyu??”

“Yes, isn’t that your name? It’s on your license I saw it.”

He’s stuck in his tracks, out in the hallway, the fire starting to range out of the door, the other tenants starting to panic, calling for help, dragging their children out. His name seemed so distant to him, but it pulls on a string of images that he couldn’t fathom, faces with no names and phrases with no meaning to him now. Through it all, he could tell chaos was about to ensue, and as if following a routine protocol of a soldier in the front line of fire, Sunggyu asks the man to tell him his name again.

“Woohyun..”

Woohyun. Why did it sound so familiar?

Sunggyu felt a pressing urge to leave, and he didn’t really know why. Every fiber in his being was just screaming at him to get out of the building. He pushes all the confusing thoughts to the back of his head, trying to focus on the matters at hand.

“We need to get out of here. Let’s go,” and off Sunggyu leads Woohyun, dragging him and running down the stairs, ignoring the protests and yells from the man behind him.

The police and firefighters are pulling up to the lot, and Woohyun’s telling him to stop, that they’re out now, that they’re safe, but for some reason it did not fit well with Sunggyu. There’s people around them, so many people already outside, and Sunggyu’s subconsciously scanning the crowd, his eyes wandering across each of their faces.

What was he looking for?

He couldn’t quite answer that. But when he sees a rather tall man wearing all black at the side of the apartment entrance, that urge to leave rebounds back in full force.

This Woohyun man next to him is saying something, and for a small second Sunggyu feels guilty. He feels like all of this is his fault, and it frustrates him to no end that he couldn’t figure out why. He feels like he’s running his hands through water again, trying to grasp something that isn’t quite there, and for the love of all creation he could not remember, he could not remember at all.

“Woohyun…” he says it softly, in a mellow undertone that caused Woohyun to stop and sigh.

“Look, I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but somehow my apartment just got lit up like a firework. I’m quite upset, and I don’t think it’s hit me completely yet, but how the hell did it even…did I forget the stove on…everything I have…”

“I can get it all back for you. I promise, but for now we just need to get out of here and find someplace safe where I can think.”

“You can get it all back?” Woohyun scoffs, but what does it matter now. Once the authorities find that the fire probably started from his apartment, he’s going to have a hefty fine to pay, and he’s going to probably end up back in those very same alleyways he worked so hard to get out of. He was falling back into the black never-ending void of hopelessness, and now with nothing left to lose, why should he even care.

“Fine. Go ahead,” and he throws his hands in the air, staring at Sunggyu, his face dubious and mocking.

To Woohyun’s surprise, the stranger smiles, looping his arm around Woohyun’s shoulder and pressing him forward as they move along, walking through the crowd.

“Don’t look back. Just show me the way to the nearest train station,” Sunggyu’s whispering in his ear now, the hand warm on the small of his back.

Woohyun nods slightly, walking step in step with Sunggyu, leading them to the nearest subway he knows. It was the same pavement that he walks across every day, the same path that he

takes every morning and evening, but this time, his world was very different. His chest was empty and cold, and there was nothing warm for him to come back to. It was all gone.

As if sensing the drop in Woohyun’s chest, or maybe he even heard the long sigh escaping Woohyun’s lips, Sunggyu found himself leaning into the man, trying to assure him.

“It’ll be alright. You helped me, so I promise I’m going to help you back.”

“How the hell is it going to be alright when you couldn’t even tell me your name an hour ago..”

“You said it was Sunggyu right? So there you go. I’m Sunggyu. And you’re Woohyun. And the rest will come with time.”

Woohyun stops in front of the station. This strange man was out of his mind. It occurred to him for a second to give Sunggyu his wallet and keys back, and then walk off in the opposite direction, back to his own world, to his own pitiful life shackled by the cold alleyways of his past. He’s shaking his head slightly, hesitantly, the warm feeling of a body next to him too endearing to weight against a rigid life that has crumbled.

He slowly worms his hand into his front pocket, taking out the wallet and keys that he had found.

“Here. I found them in your pockets. There’s an address on your license. I’ll take you there. Come on, we can take that train,” and Woohyun walks down into the subway, turning back to look up at Sunggyu on the top of the steps.

“You’ll have to pay for the tickets. I don’t have any money. There’s some in your wallet.” Woohyun tells him, waiting for him to move.

Sunggyu steps down, still staring at the wallet and keys in his hands.

Should he tell Woohyun now?

“How much do we need?” And they’re walking towards the ticket booth, getting their tickets and then onto the train, to an address on a fake license that was never supposed to exist.

He had remembered. He had remembered it all, but he never expected to meet this man along his way. He was going to keep his promise though. He’ll give it all back to him. Maybe he’ll even tell Woohyun once they end up in front of the empty lot.

“Why don’t you rest for a little. Here, you can sleep on my shoulder.” Sunggyu’s suppressing a grin, but his hands are tangles in Woohyun’s already, pulling him close, seeking that heat again.

Woohyun frowns, but lays his head down anyways, a headache obviously taking over him. The train rattles, zooming through the underground tunnel to a destination unknown. He closes his eyes to keep the light out, missing the way Sunggyu smiles like he’s found gold.

Maybe he’ll just let Woohyun tell him who he is.