Jinki wanted to forget.

He wanted to forget the life he had lived before he met Jonghyun, the person he was before he had met him.

Brought up in aristocracy, taught to think and act a certain way since he was a child, it had taken a lot for him to realize what cruelty he was causing, and what a sham of a life he was leading.

Jonghyun had shown him that.

Originally he’d been planning on stealing from the aristocrat, but there was something about the way he’d seen Jinki playing hide and seek with his cousins in his garden, the way Jinki had bandaged one of his cousin’s wounds himself when she fell instead of calling for a servant that make Jonghyun give him a second glance. The first second glance he had ever given someone of Jinki’s position.

Jonghyun had hated the aristocracy since he was a child. They had ruined his parents’ lives and ensured that he grew up with next to nothing. Once he became old enough he made it his mission to steal from the rich and to give the poor what was rightfully theirs. The poor were the ones toiling away all day and not having an extra penny to show for it. It was the rich, those filthy people that sat around all day, treating their servants like mud, living lavishly and never lifting a finger to help people like Jonghyun or his parents.

But Jinki was different. He had struggled at first, but this was only natural. He’d been taught his whole life to never trust someone like Jonghyun. To never trust someone that dressed in torn clothes, flashed crooked smiles, and tried to tell him that things weren’t as they seemed.

After he’d learned the truth Jinki felt as if his whole life were a lie. He felt abandoned, betrayed, and guilty. The guilt was the worst. It took a lot of Jonghyun calming him down to stop him from going mad. How could he have thought that things were one way for so long when in fact everything was completely different? The society he had lived in existed to please and nurture only one type of person, the aristocrats. No one else had a chance at happiness.

And so he thought. He thought and he thought, and he tried to make a difference. He talked with Jonghyun deep into nights over campfires, under the stars, and in the branches of trees. He listened to other’s stories, tried to fully comprehend the problem before fully joining Jonghyun’s cause. He wanted to be sure this time around that he knew what he was getting himself into.

As time went on, as the two of them and Jonghyun’s band of followers continued to steal from the rich, to spread information about the social injustice of their time, and to help the poor meet their basic needs Jonghyun changed as well. Jinki helped him to be a better version of himself. He helped him to stay rational in stressful situations, to choose the safer route, to not blow his top whenever someone insulted him or challenged his way of life, and to be a kinder person in general. He’d lived so long being driven by hate and bitterness, and Jinki showed him that he could live his life by being driven by kindness and compassion instead.

These were things that came natural to Jinki. They made up for his inability to be stealthy or to cook.

A couple months later Jinki realized that he liked Jonghyun’s crooked smile a lot more than he had let himself admit, and Jonghyun realized that as frustrating as Jinki’s clumsiness could be it was also incredibly endearing. One night when they were talking over the fire and everyone else was asleep Jinki gathered up the nerve to lean in and kiss Jonghyun. It was sudden, and quick, and bumbling, and so Jinki. What surprised him the most was that Jonghyun didn’t want to stop. He didn’t want to think anymore. Jinki made him want to forget everything and just run away so they could spend all of their time together.

He wanted to treat Jinki to nice presents and see his face light up they way he did when he saw small animals. He wanted to have a place that was truly their own, instead of being constantly on the move and having to change where they slept every night in fear of being caught. He wanted stability for the first time in his life after having wanted freedom for so long. And Jinki wanted it too, he just wasn’t sure if this was attainable with their type of rebel lifestyle.

They struggled for a while, each yearning for something they couldn’t have. It wasn’t until the two of them announced their relationship to the other men they worked with and were accepted with joy, and love, and acceptance that they realized that as much as they might want a ‘normal’ life everything they needed was already all around them, and they wouldn’t change that for the world.