Taemin knocked sharply four times on the door when he reached the dusky gray wagon, then stepped back, waiting.

It only took a moment for it to swing open, revealing a tall, dark silhouette, back-lit by what was presumably an oil lamp.

“I heard you have my knife,” Taemin said by way of greeting, willing his eyes to get used to lighting so he could better see Minho's face.

“And if I do?” Minho's voice was deep, deeper than Taemin had expected, especially for someone so thin, and it made his brain stutter a bit.

Stutter?

Taemin cleared his throat. “Then—then I want it back.”

“I have a lot of knives and you have a lot of lies, pickpocket,” Minho said, but he stepped back, waving Taemin into the wagon. “But I'm interested to see what you have to see. Come in, if you want.”

Taemin was about to step over the threshold of the wagon, out of the dark and into the warmly lit single room, when Minho stopped him. “Shoes off.”

“What!?” Taemin balked, eyebrows shooting up. “Shoes off? Why?”

“Why do you think I took your knife?”

Taemin snorted. “That has nothing to do with anything.”

“I know,” Minho said. “But this is my house and you're intruding and being rather rude to boot, so I wouldn't question too much. I do have a lot of knives, after all.”

They were all facts, Taemin had to admit, facts that were backed up by steel, so he removed his shoes and hoped that Minho didn't mind the smell of feet that had been on the road for several days without being washed.

Minho had settled himself into a chair at one end of the wagon. It was next to a table that was littered with various knives and scraps of wood and metal shavings. On the opposite end was a bed, a mattress low to the floor and made neatly with a quilt and twin pillows. The space between was bare, as were the wooden, white-washed walls.

The man himself was looking far more relaxed than Taemin felt. He was handsome, almost smugly so with his graceful, long limbs and fingers that fiddled absentmindedly. His face was angled and sharp, a contrast to the curves of his mouth and the soft set of his eyes.

“So?” Taemin asked after a second of uncomfortable silence ensued.

“I have it,” Minho said, and Taemin felt a rush of instantaneous stupidity rush over him when he recognized the black and silver weapon resting next to the other knives on the table. How had he missed it? And quickly following the humiliation was ire. That was his knife, and Minho had it.

“The question,” Minho continued when Taemin opened his mouth to spit angry words as the taller man's face, “is what you'll do to get it back. I'm not opposed to giving it to you right now, you know. It's just that I want something out of it since you were careless.”

He was manipulating him, Taemin realized. Minho, this tall stranger he'd never bothered to look at twice, was deliberately taking advantage of the situation, and there was nothing Taemin could do. He was living up to the laws of their community as far as being truthful went; when asked directly he responded with the truth. No one would side with Taemin here, especially since he was out of the code of conduct what with his non-jewelry thievery.

“This is somewhat ridiculous,” Taemin told him, unimpressed with the situation that he'd gotten himself into and with how easily he'd been thrown from anger to embarrassment to anger to...was this curiosity? Yes, it was. He was genuinely curious, the light-hearted emotion distinctly bubbling up beneath the ire.

“So?” Minho was mocking him, and the anger began battling with curiosity again.

Taemin threw caution to the wind. “Fine,” he said, stalking over. “Fine.” And before Minho could say anything his fingers were on the buttons at the taller man's throat, nimbly working them open.

“Wait, this...” his eyes were huge, suddenly vulnerable, and Taemin found himself feeling rather smug.

“Shh,” he whispered, leaning closer to kiss his neck

Minho's scent hit him harder than anything he'd ever experienced, literally knocking him forward so his intended-kiss ended up with a none-too-gentle knocking of teeth against Minho's jawbone. He smelled divine, a cross between outdoors and horse and bitter-sweet and dusty sunset, and Taemin—for one of the first times in his life—was thrown completely off balance.

The sudden jolt of pain was enough to jerk Minho back to his senses and shove Taemin off of him. “What are you doing!?”

“What are you doing?!” Taemin got to his knees, wincing. His tailbone was definitely going to bruise. “I was going to sleep with you.”

Minho's tanned face was flushed, a hand still pressed to his jaw where Taemin had accidentally bitten him. “I didn't ask you to...to...I didn't.”

“I wouldn't have minded, really. It's okay.” Taemin wasn't sure how he hadn't seen Minho before. There was something innately attractive about him, about his long hair pulled back in a loose, black braid, about his intoxicating scent. “And I want my knife, so--”

Minho grabbed it, shoving it back into it's holster and handing it over to Taemin without a moment of hesitation. “Here, take it. You're too much trouble. I don't want to have to deal with it. All I wanted was some help with the horses, but you're...”

“Wait,” Taemin said, standing up and frowning, knife clutched in his hand. “You wanted help with the horses?”

“Yes.”

“And that's it.”

Minho stood as well, and Taemin noticed again just how tall he was. The man was a giant. Taemin was no short boy, but Minho was at good hand taller than him.

“How old are you?” he finally asked, now contemplative. “Are you a ?”

“Eighteen, and no, not that it should matter.”

It was surprising, Taemin thought, considering his reactions to Taemin's advances. “You're two years older than me, not a , and you...oh, are you fussy?” It would be disappointing if he was one of the men who weren't open to relations with other men. Limiting, in Taemin's opinion.

He wouldn't have pegged Minho as one, considering the fact that he was rather beautiful, but if he wasn't attracted to Taemin he had to be fussy like that. In Taemin's mind there was no other way.

But Minho was looking mildly uncomfortable. “I—just, girls aren't...never mind.”

There was a moment of silence where Taemin realized both that he was holding the knife he'd spent the last hour searching for and that Minho was saying that he preferred men to women.

“Oh,” he said finally, at a loss for words.

Minho nodded, avoiding Taemin's gaze at all costs. “So it's not that you, that I don't, didn't, it's just that I wasn't asking you to...just so you know.”

Perhaps it was because Taemin was unused to people being flustered so thoroughly over ual relations like this, or perhaps it was because Minho had somehow managed to turn him inside-out completely thoroughly in such a tiny amount of time. At any rate though Taemin found himself patting Minho's stomach and smiling up at him, reveling in tensing of muscles beneath his palm. “I'll help you out sometime, alright? When I have time.”

The older boy waved him away, sinking down into his chair and turning back to the the knives and blocks of wood at his small table. “Go on. Go away. I want to sleep.”

“With me?”

The remark was studiously ignored, so Taemin left.

//

Taemin slept alone in his nest of blankets in the corner of his wagon that night, but only after strapping his knife carefully to his thigh. Someone would have to be close, very close, before it ever got stolen again.

And when he woke at sun-up with dreams of Minho's fingers trailing over its fine handle, smooth and long and slim and beautiful as the knife itself, Taemin knew without a doubt that he'd slept well.