(#2) A Heart Like a Crown [민용 | Mignon]

[elidelio]

Title: A Heart Like a Crown
Author: timegoesbyFandom: 민용 | Mignon (Cartoon 2023)
Rating: Teen
Category: M/M
Relationship(s): Mignon/Oh Young-One
Character(s): Mignon, Oh Young-One
Word Count: 2,897
Spoiler: Post Canon
Summary: Oh Young-One had to admit he still wasn’t sure that he’d made the right choice regarding Mignon, but what he feared the most was not that he’d made the wrong choice, but rather that Mignon would realise that, instead of the saviour he’d painted Oh Young-One to be, he was actually the man that dragged him down to hell.
Notes: Also written for insert_title_here and 100ships

Oh Young-One had to admit he still wasn’t sure that he’d made the right choice.

It was far too late to change his mind now, he knew, but still he couldn’t help the pang of doubt he felt whenever he caught sight of Mignon’s crimson eyes, knowing it was his fault they were no longer blue and bright. When he had to teach Mignon to keep his urges in check, to avoid the light, and to hide himself from humanity, he couldn’t help but wonder if the young man wouldn’t have been better off having never met him.

Even though he knew, logically, that Mignon was doing better now than when the two of them had first met, part of him still thought that perhaps he would’ve had a better future ahead of him had the two of them not gotten involved in the first place— as comparatively short as that future might have been.

However, if he had to do it all over again, Oh Young-One wasn’t sure he would have done anything differently. Mignon was a treasure he’d been lucky to find, lucky to reach out to and pull from the brink before all was lost, lucky to keep by his side even after everything that happened.

Mignon’s heart was like pure gold, brilliant and precious, yet also highly malleable: instead of tarnishing due to hardship, it simply bent and twisted into the shape it needed to be to survive. The shape others had moulded him into, with no regard for his wants.

Wasn’t Oh Young-One the same?

He pushed Mignon away when he had no need for him, used his naïve offer of help when it suited him, and then bound him to his side with no regard for how he might feel about the matter. Sure Mignon seemed happy now, but who was to say this would continue to be the case fifty years from now, or one hundred, or even more? Would Mignon continue donning his golden heart like a crown, sat atop his now-raven hair in a proud show of power, or would his head grow heavy from the burden that had been placed upon it? Was it even a golden crown, or was it more like a chain?

Oh Young-One supposed the thing he feared most was not that he’d made the wrong choice, but rather that Mignon would realise that, instead of the saviour he’d painted Oh Young-One to be, he was actually the man that dragged him down to hell.

---

On a night of work like any other, Oh Young-One opened the door to the fighting ring’s clinic, surprised to find it already lit, but empty. Mignon had set out ahead of him, so he should be there, but while Oh Young-One could see Mignon’s bag in a corner by the door, the man himself was nowhere to be found.

He ignored the slight twinge of concern that crept up and began getting things ready for the night, figuring Mignon was just busy doing his own thing for the moment.

A few minutes passed, and then a few minutes more, and just when Oh Young-One was actually starting to get worried, the door opened and a familiar figure bounded into the clinic.

“Sorry I’m late, doc,” Mignon smiled.

“What were you so busy with?” He returned the smile as his shoulders finally relaxed.

“I got caught up talking with Master Woo.” Came the explanation.

Oh Young-One raised an eyebrow at that, “Master Woo? He talks to you?”

Mignon shrugged. “Sometimes.”

“What about?”

“Oh, you know,” he spoke as he walked towards a locker and pulled out his long white coat, “vampire stuff, mostly.”

“Mignon, are you in trouble?” With that vague response Oh Young-One was sure there was something Mignon didn’t want to tell him, though the what or why of the matter was a complete mystery to him, so naturally his mind jumped to the worst conclusion.

“No!” Mignon was quick to reassure him. “I promise I’ve been good, doc. Honest.”

Oh Young-One simply scrutinised him for a moment, unable to discern much from the young man’s face, before replying, “Alright, I was just making sure.”

Mignon smiled and walked towards him, reaching his side in a few long strides and wrapping his arms around Oh Young-One's waist.

“What are y—” Oh Young-One’s words were interrupted as Mignon leaned down for a kiss. Oh Young-One was startled for a second, but soon gave in to the young man’s demands and leaned into the kiss for a few seconds, placing his hands on Mignon’s shoulders for support.

When they parted, Mignon stared into Oh Young-One’s eyes and, as if knowing what he was about to ask, answered with a slight twinkle in his eyes: “I like it when you worry about me.”

“We have work to do,” Oh Young-One could only clear his throat and look away as he chastised.

Mignon simply nodded and let Oh Young-One go, practically wagging his tail as he walked off to get ready for the night.

---

The second time Mignon wasn’t where he was supposed to be, Oh Young-One remembered their previous conversation and went to look for Master Woo.

However, when he got to the front desk, Master Woo was sitting there alone, smoking as he listened to the late night radio.

“Have you seen Mignon?” Oh Young-One looked around as if the young man could pop out of a corner at any second.

“Saw him come in,” Master Woo answered as he took a drag from his cigarette.

“After that?”

Master Woo shook his head, then released a thick cloud of grey smoke.

“Thank you.” Oh Young-One walked away, frowning as he thought about where else Mignon could be.

He walked around for a few minutes, trying to stay on the edges of the corridors as more and more people poured in for the night, until finally catching sight of Mignon, who seemed to be coming in from the direction of the fighting ring.

“Mignon!”

The young man looked up at the sound of his voice, appearing startled for half a second before his usual smile returned and he crossed the distance between them

“Hey doc, miss me?” He asked with a teasing smile.

“Where were you?” Oh Young-One looked him up and down, but found nothing amiss. “I thought you might be with Master Woo again, but you weren’t there when I went to look.”

“'Again'?” Mignon titled his head in confusion.

“Weren’t you with him last time you got here before me?” He probed.

“Oh, right, yeah,” Mignon nodded, but it was clear to Oh Young-One that he was lying. “No, I was just taking a walk.”

“A walk.” Oh Young-One repeated in a tone somewhere between a question and a statement.

“Yeah, to stretch my legs.” Mignon grabbed him by the shoulders and began walking once again. “Shouldn’t we be getting to work already?”

Oh Young-One let himself be led away, trying to ignore the uncomfortable twisting of his stomach.

“Sure, let’s get back to it.”

---

The third time Mignon was nowhere to be found before their shift at the infirmary started, Oh Young-One had an idea of where he would find him.

It was early enough that the night crowd had not yet begun to gather, and there were still a few boxers up in the ring putting in some last minute reps before they cleared the space for the first fight of the night.

Oh Young-One walked, slowly but surely, around the perimeter of the room, scanning the faces of coaches and athletes one by one until he spotted a pair of familiar crimson eyes under the brim of a black cap and froze.

Mignon stood there, unaware of his presence, head tilted up towards the raised ring as he watched the fighters with rapt attention, looking almost as if he wanted to reach up and join them.

The two stood there for what felt like an eternity. So long that the steadily trickling-in crowd began to block Oh Young-One’s view, but still he continued standing there, staring at the young man through the thick crowd until the fighters made way for the MC, who began to announce the bets of the night over the loudspeakers in the room, and Mignon finally moved from his spot.

Oh Young-One lowered his head and scurried back to the clinic, correctly guessing Mignon would be joining him shortly.

That night, he didn’t mention what he saw. He didn’t mention how Mignon looked almost lost as he stood in the shadows of the light-bathed fighting ring, nor how his feet had shifted ever so slightly as if itching to take off running. Oh Young-One didn’t ask Mignon if he resented him for having chained his feet to the ground forever, for having made it so that he could never have that freedom— or even the choice of it —ever again.

He didn’t ask, but he did think about it.

He thought about it a lot.

---

A few days later, when they finally made it home just as the first rays of sun peeked over the horizon, Oh Young-One couldn’t help but notice the way Mignon began hovering around him as soon as the front door closed.

After a few moments of this hesitation, he watched out of the corner of his eye as Mignon finally finished gathering his courage and walked up behind him, wrapping his arms around Oh Young-One’s waist and resting his chin on his shoulder.

“Hey, doc?” He muttered.

“Tired?” Oh Young-One reached up to stroke his hair.

“Not really,” Mignon nuzzled into the touch and pulled him in even closer. “It’s just… you’ve been a little weird lately.”

“Have I?” They couldn’t see each other’s faces very clearly from this position, but Oh Young-One still tried to keep his expression neutral as he replied.

Mignon nodded, tickling Oh Young-One’s face with his hair, before continuing. “Is it something I did?”

“What?” Oh Young-One tried twisting out of Mignon’s grip to get a better look at him, but the young man seemed unwilling to let go, so he sighed and tried again. “You haven’t done anything. What makes you think that?”

“It’s stupid, but…” Mignon mumbled as he leaned into his neck, “I feel like you haven’t been looking at me. Like you’ve been avoiding me.”

It could hardly be called avoiding when they’d been spending almost every second of every day together, but Oh Young-One had to admit that he’d been having too many unnecessary thoughts lately, so he may have been averting his gaze more than usual.

“I’m sorry,” he spoke soothingly into Mignon’s soft black hair.

Mignon stood in silence for a few seconds, simply breathing against Oh Young-One’s neck.

Then, he spoke, still firmly pressed against Oh Young-One's back. “You haven’t gotten tired of me yet, have you?”

Oh Young-One wasn’t sure if Mignon had meant those words to sound so heart-wrenchingly pitiful, but either way he finally twisted free of Mignon’s grasp and turned to face him, grabbing his face with both hands and staring right into his worried eyes.

“Never.” He held Mignon’s gaze. “I told you, didn’t I? You’re my one and only, forever.”

“Then, why?” Mignon clearly didn’t feel completely reassured.

“Because,” Oh Young-One sighed and freed Mignon’s face, letting his hands drop to rest by Mignon’s collarbone. “I was worried.”

“About what?”

“Worried that maybe you would…” He bit his lip. “Resent me.”

“Resent you?” Now Mignon seemed more confused than sad, which was a partial improvement. “Why would I resent you?”

“I saw you at the ring the other day, watching.” Oh Young-One couldn’t answer the question directly, he really envied the way someone as young as Mignon could so easily speak his mind even in circumstances such as these.

Mignon’s expression stiffened. “I wasn’t trying anything, I didn’t get in any trouble, no one even saw me there, really—”

“It’s not that,” he interjected before Mignon could continue his explanation. “Don’t you miss it?”

“The ring?”

Oh Young-One nodded.

“I…” Mignon lapsed into a moment of thought. “Guess I miss fighting a bit, but I can still train if I want.” Then, as if suddenly understanding his question, he added, “I’d never resent you for that, though.”

“Not even a little bit?” Oh Young-One knew he was being immature, but he couldn’t help himself.

“Never!” Now it was Mignon’s turn to grab his face with his hands as he responded, “The only reason I started fighting was because Coach was giving me a place to stay, and the only reason I kept fighting was to see you, Young-One.”

“Then why didn’t you want to tell me you were watching the fighters?”

“I was just curious! I overheard one of the guys in the infirmary talking about a new style they were trying and I wanted to see what it was,” he defended himself. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry about me getting spotted or something, not because I secretly wanted to jump back in the cage to fight.”

“Come on,” Oh Young-One grabbed one of Mignon’s wrists, trying to ease the pressure squishing his face. “You’re telling me you never think about going back? I saw you up there more than once, you know? You looked like you were having fun. You were the best fighter in that ring.”

“I know,” Mignon grinned. “I was showing off for you.”

“Be serious.” Oh Young-One cleared his throat and tried not to blush.

“I am!”

“What about everything else, then?” He tried getting them back on track.

“Everything else? Like what?” Mignon tilted his head.

“Look out there!” Oh Young-One turned and pointed towards the mostly-closed curtains, where slivers of golden sunshine could be seen seeping through whichever crack they could find. “The sun’s coming out and you’re stuck in here with me, in the dark, forever. I took the sun from you, Mignon. I took the world from you.”

“You didn’t take anything from me,” Mignon answered slowly, moving in to close the distance Oh Young-One had once again opened between them with his sudden actions. “You gave me everything I have.”

“I dragged you to hell with me.” Oh Young-One stood where he was, looking down at the ground, and let Mignon brush a finger across his cheek.

“Maybe I like being in hell.”

“You’ll grow tired of it eventually.”

Mignon placed his hand under Oh Young-One’s chin and gently lifted it upwards, until he was staring into those glittering crimson eyes and seeing his own reflected back at him.

“Not possible,” Mignon smiled. “If this is what hell is like, then I have no desire to go to heaven.”

“You don’t know that.” Oh Young-One had lived long enough to know Mignon had barely lived at all, how could he know anything?

“All I know is that my life before I met you was hell.” He brought his other hand to the back of Oh Young-One’s neck and stroked the soft skin there. “Now you’re telling me it was the other way around?”

Oh Young-One couldn’t respond, knowing full well that Mignon was in the right this time.

“If this really is hell, at least it’s ours. We’ll do whatever we want with it.”

Oh Young-One smiled, “You can’t actually do whatever you want in hell, that’s the whole point.”

“I don’t care,” Mignon cupped his face with both hands again, but softly this time, like he was holding a priceless treasure. “I’ll beat the devil in a cage match if I have to.”

“Be serious.” He let out a small laugh.

“I am.”

Mignon bent down to kiss him, and Oh Young-One reached up to meet him, melting into the feeling of their lips against each other and their noses rubbing together as their breaths became one. Their gentle kiss lasted a few seconds, then Oh Young-One nipped at Mignon’s lip hard enough to break skin, and the intoxicating taste that spread through their mouths from the spot caused Mignon to muffle a groan as he pulled back from the embrace and looked down at the man in his arms.

“Young-One?” He asked tentatively.

Oh Young-One stared up at Mignon, the crimson dripping from his mouth perfectly matching the one of his eyes, his black hair alight with a golden crown as the glow of the sun’s rays intensified through their curtains, and smiled.

“Hurry up,” he reached up to lick at Mignon’s mouth, dragging them back towards the room as he did so. “We don't have all day.”

Mignon smiled and picked Oh Young-One up, locking their lips back together as he carried him the rest of the way, then placed him down gently on the mattress before melding their bodies with one another until neither could tell where one began and the other ended.

Behind their curtains, the sun continued its journey through the sky, the golden rays filtering through to the inside of the room giving way to brilliant white, then dim yellow, and finally blood-tinged orange as night fell upon the city once again.

Oh Young-One still didn't know if he'd made the right choice back then, but at least he knew that this— him choosing Mignon now just as much as Mignon was choosing him —was the only thing that mattered after all.