Chapter Text
Someone is staring at him, Luka notes.
It’s odd, because usually no one spares him a glance, and Luka hasn’t done anything out of the ordinary to warrant being stared at. He’s where he always is; under that specific tree, knees bent and arms folded on top of them, cheek rested on his forearm. Apparently zoned out, apparently watching nothing.
Whoever is watching him isn’t even trying to disguise their presence. Whatever. They’ll lose interest soon enough. When he’s not being anybody else, they always do.
It’s cold.
...
That person is staring at him again. Luka knows who it is now: one of the newcomers that came in yesterday. A boy with brown hair and a female twin that is currently asleep.
He wonders when he’ll stop staring; he wonders why he is staring.
Luka does not let the boy know that he is aware of him. He does not glance over. He stays exactly as he is, breathing at regular intervals, so far in a daze that drool escapes from his mouth and starts to seep into his sleeve.
He wants the boy to come. Luka wants him to take interest in him. Luka wants to see what he’ll do.
If the boy is ever going to approach him, then he is taking quite the while. It’s strange. To want to approach someone but want to avoid them. It’s strange. He’s strange.
Eventually, the boy gets up and reluctantly stalks up to him, crouching at least a foot away from him and whispering “hey.”
Luka keeps his eyes glassy, glances at him, and goes back to his thoughts. An acknowledgement that should be sufficient to indicate that he has no interest in the boy. Something that has successfully kept the other children away for years.
Yet, all the boy does is drop down beside him. Luka pays him no mind. At least, he does not show that he is paying him mind. In reality, Luka watches the boy watch his sister before the boy tires of his self-inflicted guard duties and zones out.
Strange. He’s strange. Why watch someone, why approach them, just to do nothing? Why even approach someone you don’t want to get within a foot of? Luka doesn’t understand.
A light breeze sweeps through the garden. To any of the other children, it would be pleasant.
Luka can’t resist the shivers that rack his form, can't stop the clattering of his teeth. It’s cold.
So, so cold.
Luka can’t feel the tips of his fingers. It was one of the sensations he lost first, one that is only ever present during the most sweltering summer days but somehow never really there.
The boy notices. Luka knows he does by the way he is snapped out his daze and surveys Luka’s hands and fingers.
Luka holds himself still and pliant, does not shift his position in the slightest way. He does not look at the boy.
It is a question; it is a test. A test that matters to no one other than the boy and him.
No one approaches a person they do not care about. Even if it was only curiosity that drove the boy here, care is still present in curiosity. And Luka could use that care, as little as it is, to become someone this boy needs.
This is a test to see if the boy cares. A test.
A test that – Luka admits – most would fail. Luka himself does not know the correct answer to it.
The boy reaches out. He grasps Luka’s closest hand and squeezes and oh. Oh.
Something in Luka’s chest is unraveling the ice that was stuck right in his core. With the ice gone, Luka feels. Hunger, want, greed, and possessiveness, emotions that’s he’s only ever heard of, all being released within his chest, all festering and growing and taking him over like the disease that created the ice within his chest in the first place. Suddenly, Luka feels so empty. He’s always been empty but he’s never minded until now; now he’s devastatingly empty, and he doesn’t know what he wants but Luka knows that he won’t let go, that he can’t let go of this boy because it’s warm. He's warm. Luka is and isn’t cold, and the boy is warm, it’s warm, and it’s been so long since he hasn’t been freezing from the inside out.
Luka can’t stop himself from staring at their joined hands, does not want to bring himself to stop gazing at the sun-kissed skin covering his own deathly pale hand.
He stares, but he’s careful that no emotion bleeds into his eyes, that nothing colors his face. After all, Luka doesn’t know who he’s supposed to be yet and only a blank canvas can be painted.
Sooner than later the boy lets go of his hand, and grabs Luka’s other hand.
Luka lets him, gives himself to this boy a few years younger than him. Only watches as the boy does whatever he wants with him.
But, merely giving himself wouldn’t do, Luka realizes. It’s simply not enough for him. If Luka is giving himself to this boy, then it’s only fair that he should be Luka’s as well, if Luka wanted him. And Luka does want him, Luka wants this strange boy more than he’s ever remembered wanted anything.
“What’s your name?” Luka asks. He knows that’s the right way to start to get to know someone. Their name. Once he gets his boy’s name, a piece of him will be Luka's too.
His boy falters. “Hyun Woo,” he says. Hyun Woo.
Hyun Woo. Hyun Woo. Hyun Woo. His strange Hyun Woo.
Luka lifts his eyes to Hyun Woo’s, tries keeps emotion out of them, knows he couldn’t quite keep out the thrill of having him. Sees the shiver the Hyun Woo tried to hide. “Aren’t you going to ask for my name?”
Hyun Woo doesn’t ask. He just continues looking into his eyes, a strange emotion in his own gray ones. An emotion Luka knows of but has done nothing to warrant. Luka waits but Hyun Woo doesn’t say anything at all. It’s strange. Does he not want to get to know Luka? Doesn’t he want a piece of Luka too? Why do this if he doesn’t?
It’s strange. Baffling.
Luka gives Hyun Woo his name anyways. “It’s Luka.”
When the boy besides him stiffly nods, Luka gently turns his lips up in a gentle smile. He knows how this makes him look. Innocent, they tell him. Angelic. Safe.
Luka also knows he is none of those things. But the boy who sits next to him, Hyun Woo, he is all of the things and so much more. That’s why he knows that Hyun Woo would not deny him if he were to ask.
So he does. “Won’t you please say my name, Hyun Woo? You’ll remember it better if you say it aloud.”
Immediately, it comes. “Luka,” Hyun Woo breathes. There is emotion put into the word – his name – that Luka doubts Hyun Woo himself knows if the tremble in his irises is to be believed, so he rewards him with a smile. One filled with praise this time, because normal children like to be praised.
Hyun Woo drops his hand, and Luka stares down at his fingers, a paler shade of blue than they were before.
That smile didn’t work then.
A moment passes.
“My face is cold,” Luka remarks. Another test. Luka must know how far his boy will allow him to go, needs to know how far Hyun Woo is willing to go for him.
His boy sighs and rubs his hands together and Luka knows that Hyun Woo has passed already. Or that Luka himself has passed. Hyun Woo gently places his hands on Luka’s cheeks, and the warmth from those small hands spread across his face.
Luka relaxes in the hands of his boy, lets his eyes go half-lidded in pleasure. And it does feel nice, Hyun Woo giving Luka his warmth. Hyun Woo holding his head up for him. Never before had another given up their warmth for him. The world simply isn’t that kind to people like him. To people in general. Now that he’s found someone that is, Luka won’t let him go.
He’ll be whoever he needs to be to keep him. Hyun Woo will warm him up and Luka will be his special loved one. Just the two of them. It’ll be perfect.
“Made a friend?”
A voice that is neither Hyun Woo’s or his own speaks out, and Hyun Woo jumps away from Luka and snatches his hands away as if he’d been burned.
As if guilty for approaching Luka, or if he was embarrassed by him. Or maybe it’s not about him but the person. As if Hyun Woo hadn’t meant for them to meet.
Strange.
The voice came from a masculine girl almost the spitting image of his boy and Luka automatically knows that it’s Hyun Woo’s twin; the one that had been sleeping before Hyun Woo left her to approach him, and the one he’d been guarding before they’d started talking.
Luka watches her. He glances between Hyun Woo and his sister, cataloging the few differences between them. They seemed about the same size, though he thought that she had a few centimeters on Hyun Woo. They had the same cat-like gray eyes and thick brows; the same tanned skin and brown hair. The girl’s hair was longer.
He hears Hyun Woo’s response, a tentative, dismissive “I guess,” to the question of them being friends. He hears how unwilling Hyun Woo was to give that answer, how he only answered for the girl.
Luka’s notices his chest growing colder, the warmth Hyun Woo gave him fading.
Luka has the answer to his last test. He knows Hyun Woo’s limit now: this girl. He knows because when she smiled, Hyun Woo immediately beamed back, as if seeing her happy was all that he needed. A wide, playful, and fond smile.
A beautiful smile. A smile Hyun Woo only showed to the girl. A smile Hyun Woo didn’t give him when Luka smiled at him. A smile Luka couldn’t get. A smile he wants. Luka wants to be the one that smile was directed at. He wants to be the sole cause of any smile Hyun Woo has.
The ice that had been melted before quickly reforms, stronger and sharper than ever, tipped in poison and poking his insides, because now, Luka hates.
That girl, that made his boy smile like that, he hates her. He wants her gone. He hates her so— Hyun Woo glances at him. He’s still smiling.
It leaves Luka transfixed. He wants it. He wants it so bad.
Maybe the girl is not as bad as she seems. Maybe he should keep her around. Maybe she could help Luka lessen Hyun Woo’s reluctance towards him. Maybe she could help him have Hyun Woo smile at him like that. Luka wants Hyun Woo to smile at him like that so bad.
Maybe she’s who he needs to be. He’ll keep her around a bit longer, just to study her.
He watches. He decides. He must make that girl want him. He will make her want him. She’ll be able to help. She’ll be useful. For now. So, Luka turns to the girl, smiles at her the way that made all the aliens coo at him and fight for him.
It didn’t work on Hyun Woo, but it works on her. Quickly. Luka can tell she has close to no inhibitions towards him.
And Luka can tell that Hyun Woo can tell. Really, his boy's sister is not strange at all. She’s common, boring.
But if she can be used to make his boy want him like Luka wants him, then he’ll be whoever she wants for him to be.
The ice is there. It’s in his chest. It’s cooling his blood.
Its icy tendrils spread and capture and completely freeze over his heart, the one he wasn’t sure he had, the one that is now Hyun Woo’s.
Luka exhales and watches as the puff of air condenses and fades.