A/N: I just really loved their friendship. And Yeo Wool's grief broke my heart.
Yeo Wool learns early the power of sly smiles and clever words. He is beautiful, he is charming, and he has enough noble blood running through him to make his path easy, if never quite interesting enough for him.
He can set hearts aflutter by the slide of his gaze. He has wrapped the hopes of many around his fingers like rings.
Before Hwarang, he was infinitely bored.
.
Hwarang is anything but boring.
Even before the rumors of a hidden king, the little wars are like wildfire. Somehow, it warms him. He is clever enough to keep out of trouble (most of the time), but the more he comes to know his comrades the more their troubles are his.
More—not always enough.
.
Ban Ryu and Soo Ho are ever at each other's throats, and something darker still runs between Seon Woo and Ji Dwi. It is not that they are never happy, never joined together. It is only that Yeo Wool cares little for power and less for any kind of war.
What surprises him is how much he cares for Han Sung.
.
He has a hundred fathers, so the joke goes—but he has never had a brother. Han Sung pouts and whines and somehow manages to have brothers aplenty. He chases after Seon Woo adoringly. He finds his place at the table. He has the loyalty of his hyung, who nobly loves even though no one else counts him as noble.
Yeo Wool traces the flat wooden planes of his fan, and wonders it would be like to always feel the light of the sun.
He can charm, and he can whisper clever nothings when he needs to; he does not wish for power but he still remains too cold.
.
In the flurry of politics, and suicide missions, and the growing heat that is stoked like embers within the Hwarang, he finds that Han Sung is by his side more and more.
Even you are brooding, he says, one day, with a lazy laugh. Even you, Sung-ah. Are you the secret king?
I only want everyone to be happy, Han Sung answers. It has been raining; Han Sung is shaking droplets from his sleeves, with a thundercloud of his own across his brow. Yeo Wool tilts his head and waits.
Why can they not be happy? Han Sung asks.
Because, Yeo Wool answers, they forget to look at the sun.
It is behind the clouds, Han Sung tells him, confused.
Yet you find it, somehow, Yeo Wool answers, and then sweeps away, fearing that he has said too much.
.
The thundercloud never hangs over Han Sung for long. Even in the days that are most taut, when whatever tentative friendship was growing between Ban Ryu and Soo Ho has been broken again, when Seon Moo's eyes are darkening with anger, when Ji Dwi is pale as death—even then, Han Sung brings them light. He can break up a fight by walking into a room.
Yeo Wool marvels; for all his winning ways, for all his smiles, he has never brought light.
When the sun shines, he watches it. If its light never smiled on him before, it smiles on him now, when Han Sung falls into step with him.
.
He has a brother. This is what it feels like, but he does not truly understand it until the day Han Sung is dead.
.
Yeo Wool spent long years and longer secrets never showing what he held in his heart on his face. But he breaks slowly and surely and finally when Han Sung's coffin is still and closed before them all, the one Hwarang who deserved it least paying for them all. Yeo Wool shakes with sobs, and he keeps shaking, because the light is gone.
The light is gone.
.
Time passes. The king returns. And one day in the shop he used to frequent like a bored poet who no longer dreams in rhyme, he finds the spangle of glass. He holds it, as though he will never let it go, and for the first time in a long time, Yeo Wool smiles.
My friend, he whispers, you would have kept looking at the sun.