Fallen StarJake Sim

Fallen Star┃Jake Sim

seventeen- can't you see the human in my being? warning: suggestive all over other than that enjoy yn+jake bonding!! and grab some snacks cus this is a long one

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The feeling of cool water surrounding you is celestial to say the least, albeit the smell of chlorine that cuts through the small space sharply, it meshes with the fragrance of your shampoo. It’s a dizzying scent if you focus on it too much. You hum to yourself, the enervation that has been clinging to your body amidst your busy schedule for the past couple of days, slowly dissolves, becoming one with the droplets trickling down your skin.

From seemingly long and dreadful red-carpet interviews you watched Jake go through, a couple of runway shows accompanied by your messed up sleeping schedule thanks to the time difference. This relaxing time was much needed.

With the pool having an open rooftop, the moonlight seeps in, illuminating the dark, reflecting against the water as if tiny million diamonds are swimming alongside you. The sight brings a silly smile to crawl up your face. In this moment, your life doesn’t feel as tangible as the warmth spreading throughout your chest.

Your tranquil silence is heckled by the sound of a door sliding open, footsteps following. You swivel your head around, a startled expression overtaking your smile at the sight of Jake. An amused arch of an eyebrow coaxes forth his own surprise upon seeing you.

“Hey?” You speak, swimming closer to him. Your hair slicked back, your face bare of anything and a natural flush settling upon your cheeks. It’s a sight he was not prepared enough to behold stumbling from between his cold sheets.

Hence why it takes longer than essential for your words to penetrate his brain, stretching seconds for him to compose himself.

“I was wondering who the fuck is crazy enough to be swimming at 12 am. Of course it’s our precious bunny.”  He teases, a smile curling at the end of his lips as he sits on one of the lounge chairs, by the edge.

Precious

It’s unfortified, a scarce display of a sentiment that settles right atop your heart, evoking beats mellowed down to a mere hankering for him. It’s simply serendipitous despite the knowledge that you know he doesn’t mean it endearingly, not one bit. Not with the way mischief colors his grin. Yet, your cheeks obliterated with a darker flush, foolishly you could only pray it’s not visible enough for his eyes to catch it.

“I couldn’t sleep.” An all too adorable of smile spreads across your lips, Jake blames it on his lack of sleep as he eyes you wading to him, till you’re close enough to rest your arms upon the side of the pool, a sparkle matches the light emerging from the moon swims in your gaze, your sweet scent invisibly travels all the way to him.

“So, you decided to take a swim in the middle of the night?”

“Mhm.” You relax your chin in the palm of your hand “I had to call Niki as well. I haven’t talked to him ever since we landed in Paris.”

“How is he doing?” he asks, leaning back on the chair and his eyes growing half-lidded as he tips his head back, they’re growing unabashed, lowering over the length of your slender neck.

A knot forms in your stomach at the ferocity.

“He’s alright.” You breathe out, softly.

“Is it morning in Korea?” he asks, chewing on his lower lip and you, with enormous exertion will enough self-control not to let your eyes wander.

“Yeah, I think I called him in the middle of class but oh well.”

“You miss him?”

“a little bit. Is that too loser of me?”  you breath out a giggle, diffidently brushing a strand of your hair away from your face, even though it never moved out of place.

“it’s cute.” He replies, with integrity fettering his words. Your breath hitches ever so slightly, stolen by the fondness coating the air.

It’s a stillness that is unfamiliar yet welcome, twirled with the warmth of your chest and his peace of mind.

“You’re calling me cute?” he rolls his eyes playfully, a smile forcing its way on his face and your giggles turn discordant, evoking the air to sparkle with your effulgence.

“I’m saying you missing your brother is cute.”

“So, I’m not cute?” you push your lips into a pout, a strive to capture fallen praises from his mouth. He leans forward, pressing his index finger into the skin of your forehead, tipping your head back and you follow with ease, a lazy smile climbing up your lips.

“You’re annoying.” He jokes, leaning back in his chair.

“You said it so fondly I’m taking it as a compliment.”

Jake doesn’t say anything back to that, only tilts his head to the side with an enticing simper and you fall into tune with an amicable song. It’s plaited with stares brimming with desire, curls of his smile and the fluttering of your lashes. Induced with your cheeks glowing pink, your heartbeat remains abiding.

A silent movie that unfolds right amidst your eye contact.

“Why aren’t you asleep?”  you ask, a venture in tries to dissipate the tension daunting on you, you tell yourself it’s out of nowhere, yet the look in Jake’s eyes has been as transparent as ever.

Push and pull, a servant to overflowing lust.

It’s instantly deemed a failure when his silence stretches, his eyes are too busy watching you, too patently diverted with how inviting your lips look.

“I don’t know. I just couldn’t sleep for some reason.” he shrugs.

Perhaps it’s the way his pale skin almost glimmers under the moonshine that has your breath hitching. As if stars traveled for years only to disintegrate with enough force upon his first breath into the universe. Amassing atop his skin, in the flickers of shades in his eyes and in-between the black strands of his hair. Even with fatigue staining his undereye, evidence of his tossing and turning in the mess atop his head. Jake remains the most dazzling star you got the chance to behold.

Not dancing along to this all-too-familiar song of allure is impossible. You fall into step way too easily, it’s embedded with the way your own eyes cloud with desire, a bite to your lower lip as you attempt to push your breasts together with an innocent grin, induced with charm. His eyes flit down immediately, tongue darting out to wet his own lips.

“There’s gotta be a reason. Weren’t you pretty tired earlier?”

“Mm.”

“You should relax.”

“Oh? How do you think I should relax?”

“There’s a lot of ways to relax.”

“Like what baby?”

Ah fuck. You don’t expect it and it shows in the way your eyes widen, crushed rose petals traverse across your cheeks and triumphant blooms upon his just as strong. The endearment goes straight to your core. A fire slipping down your folds.

You avert your eyes for a moment in futile attempts to collect your thoughts, to not turn into putty under his stare. He remains ruthless with his intensity, your body growing impossibly hot.

When you look back at him there’s newfound seduction coating your lips, tilting them upwards.

“I don’t know,” you start with a shrug “Maybe you’re just hungry Jake?” Your words spill like candied sweets, melting his tiredness away and rendering his senses awake. His brows raising in pleasant surprise, galvanizing him into leaning forward.

“Famished.” He answers, quickly, no sense of hesitation.

“You should eat then.”

“I should.”

You smile with your eyes before your lips, even with air tinted red with lust. A hue of brightness surrounds you. It does nothing to the way he watches you with undevoted attention as you amble out of the water. You take your time, dawdling past him to grab your towel. The minutes ticking by agonizingly slow as you dry yourself.

His eyes run wild, in their own race against his sinful cravings, trailing all over your body with no shame to hold him back, submerged with ripples of heat, it’s in the fire setting a trail form him to you ablaze. Surging up with beguiling invitation. By the slowness of your hand’s movement, it’s clear you’re holding back your cards, leading with teasing batting of your lashes, darting stares and giggles.

However, tonight Jake has no time for premeditated moves.

He already bared them all on the table.

“Come here bunny.” He says lowly, an order lacing his tone.

“Where?” you ask, faux abstinence has your eyes widening in pureness. He sees past them all, pulling on his own end of desire with a raise of brow at you. Colored with lead that makes your mouth water.

Yet he still lets a chuckle slip, overtaken by merriment. He pats his thigh silently; it is more than enough for you to follow. You trudge towards him, his eyes growing heavier with each step, darkening with a daze of lust.

As soon as you’re within distance, his hand wraps around your hip, his thumb brushing over your tattoo with tenderness that has you exhaling.

“I forgot about this little guy.” He comments, eyes fixated on your hipbone.

“You hurt his feelings.” You retort in a hushed whisper, albeit impishness, you’re closer to stifling on the mere idea of him.

Keeping his gaze interlocked with yours he leisurely inches forward, his other hand curling around your waist and tugging you towards him and you allow it with adroitness dripping from the softening of your fingers pushing through his hair. His lips part marginally, just enough for him to place an open-mouthed kiss right over your tattoo.

“Sorry.” He murmurs halfheartedly, the twitch of his lips should annoy you like it always does and yet you don’t find it in you the same way you don’t find an answer to give back.

You’re mutilated, particles that only ever come together under his diverting touches of adulation.

At your silence, he kisses it again, closing his eyes as if to savor the flavour of your skin, as if decades have managed to mesh within the negligent hours of his workdays since the last time he felt your skin on his lips. It feels closer to that when you let a whimper out, your fingers tightening in his strands as his lips slowly travel up. With bruising kisses akin to infatuation seeping into your skin, whizzing with your blood. he leaves a trail of stardust behind, seared onto your skin with electricity that will surely remain for days.

“Jake.” You moan, overtaken with debility that has him groaning.

As if a coil that snaps, a tempest of lechery he cannot hold back anymore, his hold on you consolidates, his fingers pressing into your flesh as he pulls you to straddle his lap, your arms find his neck naturally and the proximity is enough for him to wave his vanquishment haughtily

“I want you.” He whispers wantonly right atop your lips, his breath reeking of mint and your legs tremble with his honesty.

“You can have me.” you press your chest into him, lust erupts from between your words all the way down to your core.

You collide with feverish force, your lips unfurling almost promptly as his tongue invades your mouth. Your kiss turns messy and wet sinfully quick. His hands are all over your body, on your ass one minute and then your waist only to end up on your breasts, kneading them with the same yearning unfolding within you, it has you grinding down on him.

With desire coating your hands, they slip down his body with their own purpose, slipping past the constrictions of his undergarments, your palm wrapping around his shaft, he groans against your lips and the sound is enough to have your hand moving up and down languidly. It is ample for pleasure to seep into him, breaking from your kiss with a moan. A sound so melodically profaned, your own core shakes all the same.

“fuck” he whispers, resting his forehead against yours and you kneel into reverence with force, kindled with adoring eyes lingering on every expression that passes by him.

Every twist on his face, crinkle of his brows and then the way his eyes catch yours, not stumbling by a blunder but rather with intention. Akin to butterfly wings grazing the softness of petals. Entranced by their beauty and you, with one another, sweetness manages to mesh within all the fissures of ambivalence between you. He manages to stay the prettiest even with pleasure fogging his essence.

His hand encircles your wrist, halting your movements with a bite to his lower lip and you exhale, not realizing you were holding yourself back from breathing in all along.

“Let’s go to my room.” He says, voice a mere whisper with your lips almost touching, your chest heaving. As your eyes dart between his darkening orbs and his mouth, you nod.

Your appetency to feel his body against yours, and his greed for your mewls to spill into him overwhelm every other sensation with vigor, painting the inside of your mind with emptiness, induced with echoes of need for him. It all unwinds between his sheets and his hips moving against yours, with lust drunk kisses and stares that stretch way too long to be deemed appropriate for the relationship you two have.

You don’t allow yourself to dwell on it, even when Jake kisses trail from your lips to your cheeks with delicacy dusting them before he rolls off you.

After the both of you are showered, you learn on the doorframe of his bathroom, in a bathrobe and watch as Jake gets dressed in alleviated movement. He turns to face you, no usual disquiet etched onto his features. Instead, his skin glows brighter with city lights from his window.

“You wanna eat together?” you open your mouth to answer, yet before your words even manage to exist, your stomach grumbles, the sound cutting through the air forcefully.

He chuckles and your cheeks grow warm, with adorable discomfiture.

“I’m really hungry.” You smile.

“Me too.”

Jake ends up ordering room service, despite the late hour you’re guessing it’s one of the privileges you get when you’re the most famous person in Korea. With a table full of food separating you. Your chatter fills the room, with gleaming eyes and a beam on your face, your words unraveling parts of your past with funny situations and random pictures you had of your friends. Jake listens fastidiously, with seemingly uprunning attention and nods when it’s imperative.

“This was at Niki’s last birthday party. Wonie got so drunk there’s a not a silly thing that could cross your mind that he didn’t do,” you explain with a soft laugh, showing him the video, you took a few months back, falling into the warmth of nostalgia.

“Wait who’s that? Next to Ryujin.” he asks, fingers pointing at your screen.

“Oh, that’s Heeseung.”

“He looks different in everything you show me I swear.”

“Really? I feel like he looks the same.” You retort with an endearing giggle, one that has him clearing his throat as you scroll through your cameraroll “Maybe it’s the hair. He dyes it a lot.” You murmur, more to yourself as you tilt your head at the screen of your phone.

“Is he the one who gave you the alien tattoo?”

“Yes.” You groan, covering your face with your palm. It has a fond smile spreading across his face.

“What’s all that about anyways?”

“It was a stupid fucking bet.”

“Mm. tell me. I’m intrigued.”

You stare at him with dewy widened eyes, pulling your lips into a pout saturated with desires to run away. It does little to nothing to grate through his façade, it stays unwavering as he arches an eyebrow at you, scuttling gaze and you sigh. Knowing you’re cornered.

“I don’t want you to laugh at me.” You whine, a glisten takes place between your lashes, it evokes his fondness to enlarge.

“I won’t.”

“you’re already smiling,” your pout deepens, and his smile only stretches.

“Tell me.” you sigh with defeat.

“Basically, there was this guy I was obsessed with back in highschool. So, me and Heeseung made a bet that if I confessed to him in front of everyone, he’s gonna give me money.”

“How much?”

“Like 300$.”

“Damn. And the tattoo?”

“He said if I lost, he’d tattoo that stupid toy story alien on me. I thought there’s no way I’m losing so of course I agreed. Besides I had heard stuff about how the guy also likes me so I thought this should be easy.”

“Okay? What happened then?” you sigh, bracing yourself for the heat already crawling up the length of your neck with immense speed.

“I ended up confessing to the wrong guy.” You admit, looking at him through your lashes, Jake’s expression drops, crossing his arms atop his chest.

“You confessed to the wrong guy?” you nod, and he lets out an exhale of a chortle, crossing all the way to your chest and spreading just like you imagine an angel’s wings to unbosom “How?”

“They looked the same from the back. And I just went up to him and spilled the contents of my heart and you know what’s the worst thing about it?”

“Yeah?”

“It was during lunch time and in the middle of cafeteria, so everyone heard me.” you grouse, the embarrassment of the situation clambering over you all the same.

“So, you humiliated yourself and managed to get a shitty tattoo all at once?”

“Pretty much.” You answer with a chuckle.

A short silence settles, not twisted with excruciating awkwardness but rather a pleasant warmth, like the feeling of sunrays upon your skin after a dreadful cruel winter. It’s in the way Jake’s freshly clean hair falls over his eyes as he looks at you. It’s seraphic, enough to have you falling breathless, yet you don’t find the urge to run away from his gaze in you. Conjuring up enough gallantry to envelope his atoms with the affability of your smile.

His eyes dart down to your plate, a frown taking over his face at the sight of it being empty.

“Eat bunny. Who do you think I got this food for?” He berates with a tsk, adding pieces of steak onto your plate and you watch with amusement clinging to your features.

“You didn’t need to order this much.” You comment, digging into your food regardless.

“I told you I was hungry.” He replies, adding steamed vegetables onto your plate as well “Your diet is so shit. Have some veggies.”

“Excuse me? my diet is not shit- oh my god stop adding so much I can’t eat all of this Jake!” Giggles erupt from between your lips, amid bites you cover your mouth with the back of your hand.

“It is shit. All you have is sugar and coffee.” He falls back into his seat, bestowing you some mercy and leaving your plate alone.

“I have other stuff.”

He hums, resting his chin upon the heart of his palm. Watching as you indulge into your food with a smile of joy overriding your antecedent stubbornness.

“Why do you love sweets so much?” he asks after a while, after he has given you enough minutes to chew a good chunk of your plate.

“I don’t have a specific reason. It’s like my comfort amidst the chaos of life.”

Comfort. It tumbles out your mouth so easily, unrestricted by the shackles of hardship yet it reverberates with crudeness throughout the nooks of his brain, tastes pungent on his tongue. Nevertheless, it swirls in his mind with prodding questions. It translates into his gaze fogging up. Nebulous with conjectures if comfort were in the cards for him.

Surprisingly, you seem to be catching on to his telltales of running eyes and busy brain, as you pretend to pick your fork, your hand brushes against his briefly, akin to the feeling of Forget me nots on the tips of his finger. Like spring, warmth on the contrary to the coldness of his soul. It’s enough to bring him back to you. Eyes focused as they flit between your hand and your face.

“Do you have something like that?”

“Like that?”

You look out the huge window and Jake’s eyes stay on you, the marvelous city lights reflect upon your face, a sparkle manifesting in your eyes that is just as bright. As if every speck that is meant to shine only ever does so for you. it’s only evoked by the smile knitted with the rapture of existing on your face. It’s a little unjust – Jake feels, the realization that no matter what city he ends up in, no matter what roof he’s under and what kind of flavors on his tongue you’ll remain extravagant.

“Something that brings you comfort. when the world gets too loud, where do you find your silence?” You continue after a few seconds of quietness.

“I don’t think I have that.” He answers honestly.

There’s a rare vulnerability coating his words, cladding his being, it’s in the way the words fall from his lips, in the way he looks at you and it’s enough for you look back at him with similar vulnerability. The softening of your gaze does not summon his impulses to the surface. He doesn’t feel like running, instead he settles, right under Sakura petals. with a bated breath and you with a stirring heart that comes to life with emotions twinging into something much deeper than sexual attraction.

“Do you believe in hope?” you’re acutely aware of the confusion that fills his being at your question, raking through his mind for an answer that would make enough sense, deemed sane enough to give.

Please let me in you want to tell him don’t hide yourself from me you wish to speak yet you’re aware of the vow you’ve made. Of keeping yourself in check, never too far in. not this time.

“I don’t remember what hope feels like.” He starts, eyes flickering between yours and your chest tightens, not necessarily out of pity but rather as if a mirror had metalized and you’re looking at yourself. Relics of a human who has been too scratched up to recall anything else. There’s nothing as heavy as carrying around a bruised heart and more than anyone, you have memorized the weight.

“What is your hope like?” he asks, tilting his head at you with full attentiveness and your lips tilt up into a gentle smile, one that feels like soothing waves of comfort upon his heart.

“My hope is a lot of things.” You breathe out a chuckle “My hope is seeing Niki happy and healthy. My hope is seeing people’s worries flee their eyes when you help them with something or seeing the flowers I’ve been watering finally come to full bloom right under my gaze.” You trail off sheepishly, your smile growing the more words spill from your mouth “My biggest hope remains in Japan.”

“Japan?” he asks, and you nod along.

“I want to open a bakery in Japen. A cute little, small one where I sell my baked goods and I get to witness people’s smile upon their first bite.” Jake sees it all in your face and in your words – the pure euphoria that comes solely from dreaming. Not in desperate attempts to find happiness in melancholic hours of your everyday life but rather while floating away alongside the clouds, elicited by what could have been and what could be.

It is a little foolish, he finds it to be. He had long given up on looking for what cannot be tangible, what he cannot sense between the grasp of his fingers. Yet within his dark sky a singular gleaming star is born, sparkling into life and it is merely coaxed by the way you’re looking at him right now.

“That sounds magical bunny.” He comments and it’s genuine, coloring every letter yet for unascertained reasons you find yourself longing to give him touches of your magic.

Though deprived of unbridled happiness. You don’t recall moments when you got to enjoy crumbs of gaiety without worries of tomorrow or the future invading your mind. Hence dreaming, hope remains a taste of joy amidst the bitterness that comes with living and growing older.

You can’t help but grow a want to give him the same hope.

“If you could do anything you want do right now, without consequences and without worries,” you start, voice much quieter than before “what would it be?”

He is silent for a moment, his eyes drifting to the window and this time it’s you with a lingering gaze at him, overtaken by the glaze of his irises.

“I want to be able to love music like I used to.”

Aleit the months you have spent by his side, beholding the facets he likes to wear and witnessing the rare moments where it’s just him. Right at this moment, it’s just Jake and his grief. Tinted with a glacial agony that only comes from forcibly letting go of love. For them to pull your heart out from the unrelenting clutches of your hands, and yet you’re empty handed.

A glacial agony that runs through your bloodline just as deep.

“Can’t that be your hope?”

“No.” he laughs swiftly, but it’s void of emotions, not a spark of humor can be distinguished, no happiness “Music can never be my hope. Not again.”

“Why?” you ask, tentatively “Why can’t you love music the same way you did?”

Jake never gives you an answer, he isn’t unkind in any way, not vicious in any sense. He is as placid as still waters, nowhere near as wild as your heartbeat as he smiles at you, it’s benign.

can't you see the human in my being? the same one clad with agonizing torment? the one with scars that are deeper than i could ever show?

“Should we go to sleep? We have a long day tomorrow.”

Your conversation with Jake haunts your mind for much longer than you anticipated. When you lie your head on your pillow you don’t drift to sleep like you had hoped. Instead, you stay awake for a little longer while thinking about his words. They all lead you to more questions. After seeing the amount of crowd that had been waiting for him at the airport you realize he is truly Korea’s biggest celebrity so what exactly happened for him to leave Paranoia? How did he end up here with clear longing for music? What is stopping him? And why does everyone around him seem to be ignoring his clear symptoms of OCD?

Nothing makes sense to you, not him or the people you’re working with. Most importantly the ache that has nestled in your chest at the way he smiled at you stays the most confusing.

You tell yourself you should look up Paranoia, yet you end up falling asleep with your phone between the clutches of your hands.

The next morning comes with a gentle breeze swirling the streets of Paris, taking your thoughts away with the passing wind and the ache that was present last night is long perished, eluded by Jake’s mitigated face that greets you as soon as you’re downstairs. Your sleepiness long forgotten as you lock eyes. His warmth traverses through all the space you create between you as you settle two chairs away from him. Right next to Sunghoon who greets you with a fist bump.

Albeit the unfamiliarity, you find yourself smiling down at your plate.

You and Jay go through Jake’s schedule together. With him not having anything till a Prada event that is set later that evening, it feels more like an off day than anything. As the team gathers to eat breakfast Jennie tells you’re free to do whatever you want all morning.

Sunghoon and Sunoo decide to go back to sleep while Jay grumbles about promises he made with Soojin. It’s only you and Jake. Despite Jennie’s assurance to you that you could spend the day alone if you wanted to. You deemed that to be way too lonely, and boresome for you.

And so, you end up sticking to Jake’s side as he strolls through the city, with an undeniable joy woven into his features, in the steps he takes. It’s a refreshing sight to behold. Has the same joy nestling into you, overtaken and completely dismantling any negative thoughts you had. You never imagined a day to come like this one. Where you’ll able to see him so carefree, smiles find home onto his lips easier, laughs escapes him candidly.

Albeit the couple of bodyguards and a cameraman following you around - something about filming a vlog for Hype’s youtube channel – he looks the happiest you’ve ever seen him. You keep your distance, not wanting to disturb or get caught on camera on accident.

Never too far in. you remind yourself.

It’s only after you pass by a couple of bakeries that the small group of his team stops moving, therefore halting your steps as well. You, overtaken with confusion watch as slowly they separate, as if drawing a path for you and at the end Jake is standing there, waiting for you with a lopsided smile, induced with charm as he beckons you with a wave of his hand.

“Come here, bunny.”  With a racing heart, limbs traced with chagrin at everyone’s eyes on you, you walk to him.

As soon as you’re close enough, his palm envelopes yours with a tug, it is so abrupt, you don’t get enough time to settle into the feeling. Of having him this close to you outside the realms of his bedroom before he pulls you into one of the bakeries. It is so unexpected, and that is solely why your heartbeats are so loud it rings in your ear. Or at least that’s what you tell yourself, even after Jake had ordered three different kinds of pastries and urges you to try each one.

“How does it t taste?” He asks, as you’re standing outside, and his eyes are pasted onto you.

A dark flush seems to have found perennial refuge upon your cheeks, an exposure to all the clamorous beats coursing through your chest, as if your heart is about to ooze through your blush, you chew slowly on the cream cheese Danish, it feels like an explosion of flavours in your mouth. The cream cheese balances the sweetness and the berries on top give it freshness.

It has your eyes widening with an all too known gleam, excitement courses through your body and you hop your feet in place as you face him.

“It’s really yummy!” You reply with evident enthusiasm tinting your voice, awakening his own.

“Let me try.” He tells you, lips curling up into a grin, an underlining endearment at your reaction.

You nod eagerly, just as you’re about to cut the piece of goods in half with the assumption that he probably doesn’t want to eat from the same place your mouth has touched, his hand encircles your wrist, a phantom of gasp scurrying out your lips as he guides your hand with the Danish in it to his mouth, you’re forced to stand on your tiptoes as he takes a bite.

Your heart pulsates against your ribcage, watching him with incredulity all over your face.

Unlike you, Jake is completely nonchalant to the way he acts, instead his eyebrow only raises slightly at the taste.

“y-you don’t like it?”

“It’s okay.” He shrugs and you snort playfully, shaking your head as his grip loosens around your wrist.

“I forgot you’re like impossible to please.”

“It’s not that. I just think yours taste better.”

“Mine?”

“Yeah, the stuff you make taste so much better.”

His words shatter through your vow with facility. Dispelling the promises you repeated to yourself as if they’re mere specks of dust. You don’t have enough of stability to focus on what fact first, the one where he admits he has been eating your baked goods that you bring to work all along or the one where he spills compliments into you as if they’re meaningless, as if their sentiment doesn’t overwhelm your being.

“Stop lying.” You whisper, eyes fixated on him.

“I never lie, you know this.” He says, effortlessly “try a different one.” He urges, pointing at the leftover pastries.

Absentmindedly you nod, with flushed cheeks and an increasing heartbeat. A heat seared with a circle around your wrist as if his hand is still around you. Despite his touches that you have felt upon your skin, in ways deeper than you’d ever admit outside the walls of his bedroom. Unwittingly your body makes room for one more sentiment to nestle into you. Not with force, but rather serene.

The same one that fills the tips of your fingers as you this time extend your hand to him, he leans down, eyes locked with yours as he takes a bite from the dessert, right over where your lipstick stained.

“This one taste better.” He hums, and you swallow around nothing, deeming yourself closer to demented with the way you keep staring at his lips.

“I like the other one more.”

“Probably because it’s sweeter.” He chuckles, swiping right at the corner of your lips with his thumb, you almost shriek with an itch to curl onto yourself “Your lipstick was a little messed up.”

“Thanks.” You mumble, inadvertently bringing your fingers to your lips right where he touched.

The following hours unfold with you two going in and out of stores. With notorious intentions like buying gifts for your friends or simply to check out something that managed to catch your attention. Jake follows with a small smile gracing his face, mainly at your overflowing exuberance as you drag him from one place to another.

“What do you think?” you ask, looking into the mirror, a light brown coat draped over you.

Jake hums, crossing his arms over his chest as his eyes trail over your figure. At the lack of appease in his gaze, you face him, grinning at him and twirling around “So?” You urge, and he could only shake his head with a soft laugh, amused by the way you seem to pull it from him unequivocally.

“It’s cute bunny,”

“But?”

“But I think the baby blue would suit your skin tone so much more. This brings a gloomy and serious aura to you.” He adds.

“But I wanna be serious.” You mumble, turning to the mirror with a pout adorning your face.

Jake tips his head to the side, hands in his pockets as his eyes focus on you. primarily you end up trying the baby blue one and just like he said, it suits you so much better, bringing out the colors in your eyes rather than dim them.

“I like it!” you clap your hands diligently, perked up compared to when you tried the one before.

“Get it.” He encourages and you would have nodded eagerly if not your eyes have shifted in the mirror, your attention stolen by a pair of earrings, a different type of gleam takes place onto your face, one that is never directed at yourself.

“Oh my god Niki would love these earrings!”

Jake watches as you shrug off your coat, long forgotten as you make your way to check out the jewelry that had caught your attention. Aleit disappointed he isn’t surprised; he had noticed this tendency of yours coming to the surface all day. Managing to find something worthy to buy for your friends in every store the two of you had stumbled in. anyone but yourself it seems.

Putting yourself as the last resort appears to come to you naturally, constantly at the back of your mind is your own enjoyment, finding it elsewhere and it merely exists in spending your money on other people. Truthfully it did infuriate him more than he’d ever admit. For some odd reason something akin to disillusionment curls into the bit of his stomach each time he watches you casting aside a piece you originally were enthralled with.

Abandoning yourself then leaving with the waves with no intention of coming back.

He strolls behind you leisurely, eyeing the pieces of jewelry and pauses in front of a certain necklace. A sliver chain with a bunny to be specific, it’s rather simple yet the pure design of the bunny has a small smile stretching upon his face. It’s uncanny similarity to you has him purchasing the necklace without much thought and it isn’t until he’s at the cashier paying, he realizes he foolishly followed his impulses.

Who is he to gift you something as endearing as a necklace that reminds him of you? it’s absolutely ridiculous.

“What did you get?” you ask once you’re out the store, eyeing the small bag between his hands.

“Nothing important.” He replies, averting his eyes as he attempts to hide the bag behind his legs. It’s a clear indication of running, an avoidance that you allow. Nodding to yourself.

Never too far in.

It’s only a bit later when you’re both drawn in by a crowd that you catch yourself too far in, Jake stops, with a wandering gaze pasting onto a busker, playing in the middle of people with immense enthusiasm, it’s the passion coloring his gaze and the smile stretching upon his face as if the sun has only rose today for his music to fill the streets. You’re not taken away by his tunes rather by the man standing next to you.

Involuntarily your eyes dart over Jake’s face earnestly to find answers, His eyes are softened, tinged with longing, yearning. One like missing an old friend that you have spent countless nights with, or a soul crushing longing for an old lover that you cannot longer see, touch. The ache a soldier feels for one day to come back home.

Despite the love, pain remains a constant in every single one and you see it in his gaze.

Silently you walk to place money into the busker’s hat, and he throws you a thankful grin. Jake watches you with a gentle smile, a foreign warmth engulfing his being as you walk back to him, you with a craving dripping from your fingertips, one to disassemble his intricate sorrows and him for the veneration infiltrating his bosom at how effortlessly kind you are.

“Should we go back to hotel?”

“Yeah. let’s go back.” You reply with a smile of your own, adoring your face.

The Prada event, unlike the last one, goes by fluidly with Jake’s glamour taking by the cameras and you stand close by, with a hushed secret curled into the palms of your hands. One stroke of glimmer amid the silence in your mind as you watch him. It’s akin to privilege at knowing no lens, no matter the price could ever capture his beauty the way your eyes do. like given the pleasure to behold the flutter of colorful butterfly wings for the first time, you smile faintly to yourself.

The afterparty that follows goes just as lithely, alongside the buzz in your system due to the couple of shots you took. You feel great, dancing with Sunoo and Sunghoon to the blaring music. It’s only an hour later, when a thin sheen of sweat covers your neck that you take a seat right next to Jay. Your eyes heedfully searching the place for a glimpse of your boss.

“Where’s Jake?” you finally ask, turning to face the latter.

“He went back to the hotel.” He answers, “He also told me you should enjoy yourself and don’t worry about going back early for him.”

“I forgot he doesn’t really like parties.” You comment, your fingers picking at your red latex dress. A vague disappointment blooms ever so slightly in you, tracing your veins merely driven by the fact that Jake isn’t here to see it.

“Yeah, not really his scene.” Jay answers with a breath of a chuckle.

At that you perk up, your disappointment is momentarily pushed to the side as an idea swirl in your mind. Coming to life by the questions that have haunted your mind the previous night

“I never would have thought that an ex-rockstar hates parties.” You comment, clearing your throat as you side eye him.

“He’s gone to enough parties to last a lifetime. Now he’s like an old man when it comes to late nights. He’d rather sleep early or stay home.” Jay replies with a shrug.

“Was he that wild in Paranoia?”

“I wouldn’t say wild but more like normal rockstar wild, you know?” He answers vaguely and it only feeds your confusion, filling you with even more prodding questions.

You chew on your bottom lip, contemplating on what to say next. Perhaps it was the alcohol in your system, blurring your filter into nonexistence or it was the curiosity invoked in you by your conversation last night. Or maybe it was the grief haunting Jake’s essence, as if skin draped upon his bones and he cannot seem to take it off.

“Can I talk to you about something?” you ask, and as he leans closer to you to hear you clearly, amidst the chimes of music you ponder for a second if this is the suitable place for you to obtain answers.

“Anything.” He replies right away, and you inch closer, your shoulders touching.

“Throughout my stay with Jake these past few months I’ve noticed some things.”

“Okay? Like what?”

“I’ve been with him almost every second of his everyday life and I’ve noticed that he has some serious OCD symptoms,” Jay falls into a nerve wrecking silence for you, it’s ample for the seeds of doubts in your mind to grow horrendously brisk “I’m sorry if I’m overstepping or perhaps saying something I shouldn’t. my concerns only come from worry for him.” You continue, your eyes darting over his features rapidly in search of a sign.

“It’s okay yn, I know.” he responds.

“You know?” you question, a frown taking over your face quickly.

“Yeah,” He sighs, as if it’s a secret that have finally broke into the world although it’s only you who listens, its existence hangs heavy “It’s pretty obvious if you know him well enough that he has undiagnosed OCD or something along those lines. He probably even knows it at this point.”

“At this point? If you had doubts, why didn’t you suggest he goes to therapy? Surely that would make everything easier for him.”  Your frown is only enhanced by your growing questions.

“I have. But he doesn’t want to so I’m not gonna make him.”

“But why?”

“Because he would have to talk about what he doesn’t want to relive yet. And I cannot blame him for that or take it away from him.”

But what is it that he doesn’t wish to relive? What kind of misery has been casted upon his soul for his wish to flee to remain? An inexorable desire draped with facet of darkness.

“doesn’t that make it harder for you as well?”

“yn he’s not incompetent. You’ve noticed how he deals with and alters his triggers so he’s able to function normally,” he starts, eyes pouring into yours with conviction, a strive to plug out your doubts with vigor “I’m his manager but I’ve been his best friend for years. I trust him and when he does eventually deem himself ready to see someone about it then good for him.” His lips swiftly curl up into a gentle smile as if trying to dismantle your worries “right now he’s handling it really well considering everything and we could only have his back throughout it all.”

Your words wither at the tip of your tongue, not with incentives like contentment but rather with realization that what lies in front of you is something much more tremendous than you thought. It isn’t solved by scratching the surface or a few shared words of comfort between souls. It is attempting to free your closet of skeletons but to cower in fear every time your fingers graze the doorknob. It’s to spend every breathing moment in searching for light only for night to persist, for tears to descend upon your cheeks even after swearing to find happiness in the trivial things.

It’s an anomaly, constantly growing the need to abandon your heart, merely because it bears too heavy, too much.

You understand more than anyone.

So, you stay quiet.

With an ache dragging through your limbs, you make it into your room with a sigh. You immediately throw yourself on the bed as soon as your heels are off. Yet you don’t get to settle into the softness of your sheets before a thud captures your attention. With a furrow you peak at the ground and notice a small bag that you surely didn’t buy has fallen.

You forthwith sit up recognizing it as the bag that was between the clutches of Jake’s hands earlier. your tiredness replaced with an intrigued gleam as you open the bag.

What greets you is not something you have prepared for, not with a hazy mind and surely not with a heart as fragile as yours, it trembles with the scent enveloping the box. His scent. it courses through your being with vivacity, one that has your eyes widening as a necklace with a small bunny pendant stares right back at you.

Your fingers caress the bunny softly, the same way your eyebrows drop and interchangeable from the feelings creasing your being, running alongside your blood is nothing far from adoration. It’s in the way your chest warms with magnificent vehemence. As if the sun has finally shone after years of unwavering cloudiness, sunrays sundering through and it all translates into a smile dispersing across your lips, mostly uninvited.

Taking note of the card hiding in the bag, you take it out and read it.

For whenever your hope wavers

May this bunny help liquidate all your worries.

Your lips curve up in a smile induced with the magnitude of his words, albeit they’re not long they still touch your soul with warmth, evident with the way your irises shake with your heartbeat as they trail over the words over and over again. Placing your palm upon your heart you feel it reverberate, and you let yourself sink into the feeling. Abandoning the confines of the past, of what’s morally correct and what you should do. For tonight and maybe tonight only you allow yourself to feel, for your frail heart to find purpose in such minuscule words and for Jake’ scent to invade every fiber of your being with serene.

You allow yourself to reach for your phone, your fingers scrolling through the contacts, and you call him.

Jake answers on the third ring.

“Hello?” his voice is a tad deeper on the phone, enough to have you sucking in a breath “bunny?” he calls after your silence has lasted.

“Thank you.” you whisper softly.

“Mhm?”

“For the gift. It’s so pretty Jake, I love it.” Despite the fact that he can’t see your face, he can discern your sincerity through the cadence of your voice. It is enough for him to fall silent for a couple of minutes, listening to you breathe.

“How was the party?” he finally asks, evading your previous conversation.

“Really fun!” your usual liveliness is sneaking back into your voice and it has him smiling “I’m a bit tipsy I’m gonna be honest.” You continue, throwing your head back onto the pillows with a sigh.

“Yeah, Sunghoon sent me a video of you dancing.”

“What? Oh my god!” you exclaim, burying yourself into the pillows with a whine, albeit a bit childish, strangely it doesn’t annoy him, growing accustomed to your antics.

“You got some sick moves yn.” He quips.

“I’m gonna kill Sunghoon.” You grumble, words muffled by the pillow but audible enough for him to chuckle, the sound goes straight to your tummy, breathing life into butterflies to flap their wings “I probably looked like a mess too.” You trail off, turning on your back.

“You always look beautiful.” He retorts, softly and despite giving permission for your feelings to unfold, your being isn’t ready for his first words of flattery to fall upon your ears.

It has your breath hitching audibly, a shift in the air as you squeeze your thighs together.

“Don’t let it get to your head though.” He taunts, taking note of your lingering silence.

“I won’t don’t worry. I’m not Jake Sim.”

“I’m the humblest celebrity to exist what are you on about?”

“You just called yourself a celebrity you’re not humble in any way.” You reply with a snort.

“That’s just facts.”

“Just like how you’re full of yourself is facts?” you muse, rolling onto your side and yet finding yourself squeezing your thighs together at the chuckle he lets loose.

“Since when were you allowed to tease me this much, mhm?” he replies, tone dropping lower with volume, his playfulness is still apparent, it feels closer to warning, one that is whispered before his teeth sink in to you.

“My apologizes boss.” You say, with an evident irony coloring your tone.

A tranquil silence follows, woven with your placid mind yet raving heartbeat. It’s a paradoxical state to be in, especially with how hazy your thoughts are coming out to be. It doesn’t give you room to decipher the reason behind lust climbing up your spine and taking over every coherent sentence you could mutter. It is absolutely unhinged how even the sound of his breathing reminds you of his mouth pressed against your ear as he’s buried deep inside of you.

“You should get some sleep, or you’ll probably feel like shit in the morning,” his voice cuts through your quietness with vigor albeit its lower tone, settles deeper into your being, painting the inside of your brain dark with desire.

“Probably.” You reply breathlessly, eyes dropping, heavy lidded.

“you okay?”

Snapping yourself out of a daze is a strenuous task, one that you are too fatigued for and yet you try, clearing your throat.

“Yeah, just got a lot on my mind. You’re right I should sleep.”

“What are you thinking about?” his voice no higher than a whisper, as if he also could read the contents of your mind, take a look into all the aberrant fantasies manifesting.

“Nothing. You should go to sleep as well.”

“What’s on your mind bunny?” It’s no longer a question rather an order, induced with his stern tone and it has you falling apart in all the same ways he knows, all the same ways you hate.

“You.” you admit with a whisper, as if your embarrassment will subside yet your blush remains.

“What about me baby?”

“You can’t call me that.” You whine, unwittingly burying your face into the pillow yet again, your thighs rubbing together with hopes to relief some of the heat crawling over your being

“You hate it?” he asks with a bated breath, a small victory in knowing you’re not the only one affected by this.

“no.” your voice fades out, overtaken by your heaving chest “Do you like it?”

“Jake.” You don’t mean to be as whiney, yet they spill uncontrollably.

“Tell me.” he demands, oozing with paramountcy there’s no other possible way for you not to fall into him with submission.

“..I like it.” You breathe out, your underwear drenching with your arousal unfairly fast, it has you chewing on your lower lip, your fingers trail an invisible path on your thigh.

“What were you thinking about bunny?” he asks, the same arousal flooding his being, persevering in tainting you both.

“Just you, all over me.” you reply, your words falling with hushed whispers, bated breaths.

“What do you want all over you?”

“Your hands.”

“Where do you want my hands?” his questions stay persisting, It has you squirming upon your sheets unsure if you’re looking for an escape or for his voice to seep into you. He hums when you’re too quiet, urging for your words to follow and you swallow around nothing.

“Want them inside of me.”

“Yeah? what about my mouth?” his own voice grows strained, evidence of his fingers trembling against the rails of control.

“Want it too. Want it so bad.” Your confession falls boundlessly, no time for them to straggle by your deepening blush

“I wanna taste you too. Want you to come all over my tongue.” The mewl you let out at his words is unanticipatedly sinful, enough to have him groaning. A myriad of pictures flash in your mind, each one of them has him in it, infused with deviant touches and lustful kisses.

“Are you touching yourself?” his tone is gentle, a muzzled mutter in contrast to the situation you both found yourself in, you shake your head vigorously even though he cannot see you, you aren’t sure how is it possible for something as trivial as the lilt of someone’s tone to permeate your being this diligently.

“No but I want to.” Your filter is long shattered, your desires spill with nothing holding them back now.

“Don’t” he warns, and you bite back a whimper, swallow it down with vigor “I’m coming to your room. Wait for me.” He ends with a promise, snapping you out of your dazed enjoyment.

“Hurry.”

Is your last request before your call ends. With an itch in your fingers, you hold back with an immense force you don’t know how you manage to find. That is until ten minutes pass with no sign of Jake and soon after the ten minutes turn into fifteen, you roll off your bed with a huff, mind running a little wild with worry at his absence and an underlining exasperation at your lust being unattended to.

And so, you make your way to his room, albeit the throb of tiredness still evident in your bones, you knock on his door with too much of a force to deemed discreet. You don’t get to linger for hope, one like praying you didn’t disturb anyone else. Before the door opens, a somewhat disheveled Jake comes into view. The first few buttons of his white dress shirt in unattended to, exposing the top of his chest and perhaps you spend way too many fleeting moments staring.

“Bunny- fuck” he breaths out with a draining groan.

“Is everything okay? You said you were coming but- “before your sentence could fully come out your mouth, your eyes shift, darting to the figure behind him and your expression melts off vastly unexpected.

“Jake! Come back!” Soojin yells with a whine, kicking her feet on the ground as she trashes around the bed, discernibly drunk.

“Is she okay?” you ask, eyes fliting between the two.

“She’s just drunk and a little troubled.” He explains warily, running his hand through his hair “I’m sorry about this I’ll make it up to you later, okay? I- “

“Jake!!” Soojin whine cuts into your conversation once again and your smile curl up with force “I’m coming” he retorts, turning his head at her for a moment before facing you once again “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Is there anything I could do to help?” you ask, concern etched upon your face and the sight warms his chest the tiniest bit.

“Not really. It’s something between me and her so you don’t have to worry about it.” He explains.

Between me and her.

It’s unjust, how hastily a couple of words can founderwith your confidence with so little effort, for them to dispel every emotion that was flowing through your veins and an abyss to comes to life in the middle of your chest instead. Your star unceremoniously plugged out from between the grasp of your fingers only for you to recognize it was never your star to begin with, your sky is not yours either, it is one everyone was looking at all along, inscribed with the same longing twirling in your eyes.

Your paralyzing idiocy remains a part of you and your insecurity stares right back at you with derision, how stupid to ever think of yourself worthy enough of anything ever fluorescing scarcely for you.

“I’m sorry bunny. I promise to make it up to you.” he pledges, and your eyes soften despite the heaviness weighing your heart.

“it’s okay. I’ll leave you to it then.” Just as you’re about to turn around to leave, Jake’s palm envelopes yours, halting your movement and you look at him in question.

“Can you please keep this a secret from Jay as well? I don’t want him to know about this.” His words twist the knife deeper into your heart, a puddle of your misery lies beneath your feet.

“I get it. It’s between you two I won’t tell anyone.” Your smile is strained, and your nails dig into his palm unwittingly.

You return to your bed heavier than you left. Heeseung’s comfort from a couple of weeks ago swirls around your mind and you manage to find solace in them. Albeit momentarily it’s ample for you to doze off, head plagued with thoughts of Jake and Soojin. As your interest has seemed to grow immensely in him during this trip you can’t help but let your thoughts wander. Evoked by what kind of past the two must have. You can’t help but feel like Jake has some sort of affection towards her, one that he cannot seem to let go of. An old flame that you always end up crawling back to although the burns adoring your skin.

The next morning comes with a minor ache forming in your head, not too bothersome and it slowly wears off as you shower and get ready for your day, it’s only when you’re in the middle of your make-up that a knock on your room door halts your routine. Surprise sneaking into your expression when you open it, and Jake is standing there. You invite him in after he greets you and he ends up sitting on your bed as you finish the last bit of your make-up. Eyes dark as they assess your body appreciatively, watching with devoted concentration as you apply your lip-gloss on.

“Can you help me?” you ask coyly, catching his eyes in the reflection of the mirror, your bunny necklace between your fingers.

“Of course.” Jake replies instantly, voice doused in emotions as he walks towards you.

“How’s Soojin?” you ask once he’s close enough, handing him the necklace.

“She’s all good now don’t worry.” He answers, although his tone is massively void, clearly uninterested.

you move your hair to the side and out of the way, his fingertips delicately brush over the skin of your neck, causing shivers to erupt upon your skin as he gently clasps the necklace, you could sense something unfurling in the depths of your stomach. You feel his chest against your back, every inhale, exhale vibrates through your being all the same. You lock gazes in the mirror, and you wither away, akin to dried autumn leaves, easily crushed by the force of his eyes as he slowly leans down, placing feather light kisses on the nape of your neck.

“Did you guys figure out whatever it was between you and her?” you breath out, tilting your neck further to grant him better access, his hands sneaking to your waist as he pulls you flush against him.

“Mhm.” His kisses turn unforgiving, melting your thoughts.

“W-what is it that you guys were talking about anyways?” your curiosity in unrelenting, pushing at the roof of your mouth with force.

“I don’t wanna talk about Soojin right now bunny. It’s nothing of importance.” He grumbles against your skin, dousing you in arousal as his lips trail up, kissing behind your ears and you shiver “I promised to make it up to you remember?” he whispers against the shell of your ears and you shiver, your palms tracing the veins on his arms.

“Yeah,” you reply breathlessly.

Evidently your doubts leave momentarily, overtaken by the pleasure he inflicts on you, and it all translates into you two both giggling over breakfast, throwing teasing remarks at each other and unaware of the way Sunoo and Sunghoon are staring at you both with evident bewilderment etched onto their face.

“What the fuck?” Sunghoon speaks, tone laced with shock as his eyes flit between you two “Is Jake fucking chuckling?”

“Pussy is really one magical thing.” Sunoo murmurs, shaking his head with now disgust climbing over his face.

“Amen.” Sunghoon replies with a snort.

→ taglist : @slutforsjy @wonwoos-wineparty @nxzz-skz @piripurora

@vousty @realrintaro @slut4hee @chartrucewhore @iveivory

@hearteyesforseungsung @jooniesbears-blog @hee4lifer @babrieeee

@mandoscyare @stayyyyyyyyyyyy21 @softieluvsyou @seunghancore

@chaewonshoney @beommii

@fuxktaekook @antonsgirlfriend @nessas-archive @lukeys-giggle

@arikazu @pochamocharoll @chlodavids @jakeyverse @belovedsthings

@vveebee @duhgurl @niniissus @dreamiestay

@hmusunoo @lhspeachie @illvding @not-very-slay-of-you @luvrseung

@tanisha2060 @enhabun @sngleehee

(bold cant be tagged)

everybody moved on, help im still at the restaurant

---

𑈴 ❀ ͙𑱢 ♡ཽ⃕ ︎ ︎EVERYDAY RELATIONSHIP THINGS WITH ENHYPEN (HYUNG LINE)

pairing: hyung line!enhypen x reader, genre: fluff, non idol! au, warnings: mentions of food, kissing

— heeseung

likes giving kisses to catch you off guard. teases you because he thinks you’re too cute. gets flustered when he sees you wearing his clothes. sends you memes he found on twitter. lets you rest on his arm, even when it starts feeling numb after a while. never wants you to carry anything heavy, and if he sees you trying to he’ll take it right out of your hands. always asks you to pick what pictures he should post (you know best ><). “i think i’d fall in love with you in every lifetime”.

— jay

makes you a cup of coffee every morning, just the way you like it. writes letters to you saying how much he loves you. hates aegyo but would do it if you asked (he’s so down bad for you LMAO). tip toes when you’re sleeping to not wake you up. likes drying your hair after you shower. if you lost a game, your punishment would be a shower of kisses from him. yaps about random things that fascinate him while you lay in his lap. “you turned my world upside down, but i like it that way”.

— jake

leaves little notes around the house for you. likes cuddling and kissing in bed on sunday mornings. gets oddly competitive when playing board games with you. tells you random science fun facts. likes painting your nails. insists you get the last piece of food when sharing. spams “i love you” over text when you’re away from each other. loves to keep his hand on your waist. plays with your hair and makes a mustache with it. “we’re fated to be together, don’t you think?”.

— sunghoon

gets pouty for no reason and you find it adorable. likes to carry you princess style. remembers even the littlest things about you. likes making inside jokes only you two understand. asks you to check his fit before leaving for work. comforts you with the warmest hugs. makes you paper rings using straw wrappers whenever you go to restaurants. saved you as his number one emergency contact and makes sure you saved him as your number one too. his ears always turn red after kissing you. “you’re mine and i’m yours”.

ONE NOTE

SYNOPSIS > When you turned 18, you heard your best friend’s favourite song. Turns out, it was just one of the various signs to finding your soulmate. However, you couldn’t bring this up to jake. Not when he was in a happy relationship with your other best friend! Would you choose heartbreak or sacrifice your happiness for the sake of keeping the friendship?

ONE – wingwoman

*takes place 7 years ago*

MASTERLIST | START | NEXT

a/n: LETS GO FIRST CHAPTER🗣🗣🗣 also if you're confused. this is before jake and aria dated and before (name) or you realised that you liked jake. in other words, take the first few chapters as a flashback into the past😁 before finding out you were jake's soulmate

taglist[open]: @sumzysworld @mitmit01 @moon3verland @baribaaari @byty2k @alex-is-sleeping @viagumi @txtlyn @belovedsthings @woninluv @dreamiestay @niniissus @kyutiepeachy @yoongisbaguetteshoes @squiishymeow @jjaammm @enhaz1 @illvding @woniejjang @bee-the-loser @laurradoesloveu @ckline35 @ningx2stan @hoonlvly @clampclover @xyzyx01 @victoriasimm @eneiyri @nshmrarki @woorcve @bubblytaetae @i03jae @soobieboobiedoobiedaboobie

(bolded can't be tagged!)

MC: I can't believe we're stuck in this room together!

Sylus, feeding the key to Mephisto: Truly unfortunate.

sacred monsters: part three

pairing: lee heeseung x f reader

genre: academic rivals to lovers, vampire au, slow burn

part three word count: 22.3k

part three warnings: swearing, blood and other vampire-y things — you know the drill, plenty of tension (of both the general and sexual sort), still nothing explicit but we’re getting a little ~sexier~, a kiss 😈

soundtrack: still monster / moonstruck / lucifer - enhypen / everybody wants to rule the world - tears for fears / immortal - marina / supermassive black hole - muse / saturn - sleeping at last / everybody’s watching me (uh oh) - the neighbourhood

note: my favorite chapter yet. I hope you love it too. happy reading ♡

⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖

A literature student in your third year of university, you’ve been dreaming of having your writing published for as long as you can remember. With a perfect opportunity dangling at your fingertips, the only obstacle that stands in your way comes in the form of a ridiculously tall, stupidly handsome, and unfortunately, very talented writer by the name of Lee Heeseung. Unwilling to let your dream slip out of reach, you commit to being better than the aforementioned pain in your ass at absolutely everything.

But when a string of vampire attacks strikes close to your city for the first time in nearly two hundred years, publishing is suddenly the last thing on your mind. And, as you soon begin to discover, Heeseung may not quite be the person you thought he was.

⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖

PART THREE

⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖

Biting your lip, you stare at the screen of your phone. The email you’re currently trying to draft has been completely blank for the last eight minutes. Other than the addressee line, that is. 

Despite the elapsing time, Professor Kim’s email address is the only field you’ve been able to fill out. 

Not without good reason, of course. It’s a delicate balance you’re trying to strike. After all, the last time you saw him, he was covered in blood. Fully deranged. Convinced of whatever motive spurred his actions enough to throw a dart at you. Inject vampire poison directly into your veins. 

Fleeing from the scene of his supposed crime with a strange look in his bloodshot eyes. 

Beyond that, there are other obstacles to consider. The only contact information you have for your professor is his official university email address. You doubt it’s monitored regularly, but you’d rather not have a paper trail of damning accusations in your wake stored forever on a public server. 

Sighing, you let your phone fall to your lap for a moment. You’ve been awake for nearly an hour now, and you haven’t quite worked up the courage to leave the confines of Heeseung’s bedroom. 

It could be beneficial, you suppose, to ask him for help. He’s more than proven his discerning eye for matters like this. But that would involve leaving the safety of your current location, even if it is illusory at best. And it’s not like Heeseung has shown any support for your plan to contact your professor. 

Besides, if you can’t handle something as simple as a well-crafted email, how are you ever going to manage profiling an unusually cognizant vampire without raising suspicion? No, this is something you need to do on your own. Even if only to reassure yourself that you can.

Bringing your phone back to eye level, you type:

Dear Professor Kim, 

 It’s cordial. A standard greeting from a student to their professor. Nothing that would raise a red flag, warrant further investigation. 

I apologize for not being able to attend our scheduled draft meeting on Wednesday afternoon. There have been quite a few unexpected events in the last few days…

You frown, backspacing through that last sentence. 

Something unavoidable came up, and I was not able to provide prior notice. 

You don’t love it, but it will have to work. 

If possible, I would love to reschedule our meeting. I am still thrilled about the opportunity to discuss my draft with you in person. I took the liberty of previewing several of New Haven’s recently published works, and I believe that my work will make a fitting contribution to the existing canon. For your convenience, I have attached a copy of my current draft for your review.

Regarding the internship, I am still highly interested in pursuing that opportunity as well. I believe that my personal interests are well-suited to New Haven’s core beliefs and values. I would love to find another time to formally tour the New Haven Publishing facilities. I believe that you have a great capacity for mentorship and would be honored to work alongside you in the coming months. 

You read over your message once. Twice. Deciding that it will only sound worse the more it lingers in your mind, you add your signature to the end. Then you close your eyes, take a deep, steadying inhale, and press send before you can change your mind. 

The small whoosh sound as the message leaves your inbox and slides into his feel almost anticlimactic. You’re dealing with vampires and careful allusions in subtext. Things that seem more suited to a quill and parchment than an email typed on a smartphone. 

With the message sent, your mind is suddenly free to wander to other things. Despite the strange, frantic jumble of events that have occurred in the past handful of days, you’re still tethered to your mortality. Now, that manifests as a grumble in your stomach. 

Although you’re sure the bag next to the nightstand truly is the result of Jake’s best efforts, the rather lacking grocery run he did hasn’t been doing you many favors nutritionally. 

For a fleeting moment, the idea of only needing to feed once a year is almost something that inspires envy. It would certainly make things simpler. 

While you’re contemplating the merits of peeling yet another clementine, a knock rings out against the door. Three firm raps that have you nearly jumping out of your skin. 

It’s another unfortunate side effect of humanity, your infallible skittishness. Distantly, you wonder when that will start to fade. If it will. Fear these days has a way of feeling etched to your bones, painted against the backs of your eyelids. A shadow that never strays far from your footsteps, no matter how quiet they are. 

It’s not unexpected, given the things your mind has been subjected to as of late, but it is starting to wear on you. 

Most of all, you miss feeling safe. Not so constantly, painfully aware of your own mortality, your capacity for injury. For death. 

For now, you force yourself to breathe. One deep inhale followed by a long exhale. It’s just one of the boys, you’re sure. 

But you can’t even linger on that too long. If you do, they stop being boys in your mind and start becoming five-hundred-year-old immortal, blood drinking beings with supernatural powers. It’s a lot to handle, especially at nine in the morning. 

Shoving your fear to the side the best that you can, you force your voice into something steady. “Come in.”

It’s Heeseung that enters. Tentatively, on slow footsteps, as if this space doesn't belong to him. It’s strange, you think, how out of place a person can look in their own room. And it’s not that he doesn’t fit in with his surroundings as much as it is that he appears to be brimming with unease. A tension that sits just below his skin and won’t let him relax. 

Eyes that can’t decide where to land, that flit around the room as if he’s seeing it for the first time. Hands that war between resting at his sides versus making themselves busy. Pushing at his hair, tugging at his shirt. 

If you didn’t know better, you’d think he was nervous. 

Finally, after a moment of stilted silence, his gaze lands on you. 

And it’s all too much like time you spent in an empty classroom at adjacent desks, reading each other’s words. The moments you stole under moonlight after he insisted on walking you home. It’s not that the discomfort fades. But when he looks at you like that, it has a way of becoming irrelevant. An afterthought. 

Eyes meeting across the room, the only thing that exists between the two of you is the gentle fragility of the moment. A blip in time that extends until it’s stretched too thin. Until it snaps, forcing you back to reality. 

“I came to check on you,” he finally says. “To see how you’re feeling.”

“I’m fine,” you tell him, averting your eyes. It’s a cop out, yes, but it’s also the truth. You are fine. Even if it sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself of it as much as you are him. 

Heeseung worries at his bottom lip with his teeth. Smooth, flat, even teeth. You wonder if he has control of it, when his fangs come out. If there are moments when he doesn’t, when control passes from his careful grip to the whims of his fading inhibitions. 

But for now, at least, he’s as guarded as ever. 

It doesn’t detract from his consideration. “I thought you might want to go to your apartment,” he offers. “Get some of your own clothes. Spend a little time in a familiar place.”

Sensing an opportune moment, your stomach grumbles audibly. 

Heeseung suppresses a grin. As if he’s charmed by it, you and your undeniable humanity. “Get some real food in you.”

It’s hard, at first, not to feel like he’s trying to kick you out. And it’s stupid, probably, to be in a vampire’s house feeling insecure about the space you take up, the effects of your presence. The fragile hope that something in him wants you there. 

But you’ve gotten better at reading his intentions, even when he does his best to keep them under lock and key. You’ve traded too many secrets to feel shunned. It’s concern that he wraps his offer in, not contempt. 

And you really are hungry. “I could go for some food.”

It’s sweet, the way he asks if you have a favorite restaurant. A spot for take-out that you frequent on busy nights when you’re too tired to cook anything. 

And it gives you a good excuse to drag him along to your favorite coffee shop. You’re the one that’s stunned into silence, though, when he tells the barista that you’ll take the food to go. And when he hands her a small wad of cash before you can get a protest in edgewise. 

You don’t press him on it, but the look you give him is question enough. 

“There’s something I want to show you,” he explains as you wait for your food. “We, well, you can eat there.”

It hits you then, in the middle of a cafe you frequent, that you don’t even have to think about it. You’re nodding before his words have time to fully process. For some reason, placing  small bits of trust in him feels like second nature. 

But now, a handful of minutes later, staring up at a very tall ladder with your takeout bag in hand, you’re having second thoughts. 

It’s not that you’re afraid of heights particularly, but…

“I don’t know…” you trail off, gaze still fixated on the top of the ladder. The longer you look, the further away it seems. When Heeseung said he wanted to show you something, you didn’t think the local water tower would be involved in any capacity. “Is this even allowed?”

Next to you, Heeseung just shrugs. “I’ve never gotten in trouble.”

“You know,” you glance at him sideways, “that’s really not all that reassuring.”

“C’mon,” he urges, and he has that glint in his eye. The one that would probably have you following him off a cliff if he asked nicely enough. “The view is worth it. I promise.”

Eyes squinting against the glint of winter sunlight and the prospect of scaling a water tower, you swallow audibly. “It better be,” you grumble. 

Heeseung, like you, has gotten better at picking up on the little details. He doesn’t need to hear you say it to know that he’s won. 

“You go first.” He nods towards the ladder. 

That you are about to argue against when he adds, “I’ll catch you if you fall.”

So with one final exhale and hands that tremble slightly, you walk until you reach the first rung of the ladder. 

“Wait,” Heeseung calls from behind. You turn to find him walking towards you, hand outstretched. “I’ll carry the bag.”

Wordlessly, you slide the takeout bag off of your wrist, handing it to him. At this point, you don’t care if it's chivalry or concern for your ability to scale a ladder that motivates his offer. You’re reeling either way. Despite his promise to catch you, you can’t shake the feeling that the odds of you plummeting straight to the ground from some awful height are greater than zero. You’ll minimize all the risks that you can. 

So, with a steady breath and a racing heartbeat you’re sure he can hear, you start your shaky ascent. 

Only once, during the entire climb, do you glance down. 

It’s not like you ever suspected Heeseung of breaking a promise prematurely, but the sight of him a few rungs beneath you is reassuring all the same. Even if the distance between you and the ground as your gaze shifts over his shoulder is decidedly not. 

And a few, hard earned minutes later, you have to give it to him. You hate to admit that he was right, but the view is absolutely breathtaking. 

The golden glow of late morning winter sunlight cascades over the city that raised you, now just a tangle of lights and roads and tiny buildings in the vast expanse far beneath you. It’s an entirely new perspective on the place where all of your first dreams were realized, where the plans for your future have started coming to fruition. 

In the distance, traces of snow dust the tops of the mountains. You’re nearly eye level with them now, those peaks that have always seemed so unreachable. It’s a vantage point that has you tilting your head, wishing you could capture it forever. 

Beneath you, the city teems with life. The hustle and bustle you’re usually caught up in suddenly feels far away, removed from you. Signs of life feel like something you observe, admire with curiosity but don’t belong to yourself. 

Fleetingly, you wonder if all of Heeseung’s years have passed in a similar fashion. If the sight of a million headlights in the distance makes him feel closer to his humanity or further from it than ever. 

You exhale, breath visible in the frigid air. 

Next to you, Heeseung remains silent. Lets you take it all in without so much as a word. But his presence is something your attention never strays far from. The sound of his breath, the space he takes up in your periphery and in your mind. 

Once you start looking, it’s hard to tear your gaze away. But after another moment, you turn to face him. The winter wind plays with your hair, skims across your cheekbones. The distance between you and him feels almost as much like a ravine as it does nonexistent. 

“It’s beautiful,” you tell him. But your eyes are dancing in dangerous territory. The curve of his jaw. The bridge of his nose. The deep hues of his eyes. The sudden memory of what it was like to be inside his mind, to occupy a space so intrinsically him it felt like an invasion of privacy. 

For a moment, you don’t think he’ll respond at all. But your predictions have never been solid where he’s concerned. 

“I thought you might like it.” Reaching out, he offers you your food again. “Here. I also thought it might be nice to eat with a view. Some fresh air.”

You move to take a seat where you stand, but Heeseung isn’t satisfied yet. He’s braver than you. It may be an unfair assessment, given the nature of his established perpetuity. 

Still, your heart seizes a bit in your chest as you watch him inch closer to the edge of the water tower, slide down into a seated position with his legs dangling off of the side. 

Deciding that you’ve had enough reminders of your mortality this morning, you slide down where you are. Setting the takeout bag down beside you, you pull your bagel out. Grateful that it’s held onto its warmth, you unwrap it, taking a bite. 

It’s almost good enough to have you groaning out loud. Thankfully, you’re able to tamp that urge down before it comes to fruition. 

After another handful of equally delicious bites, your eyes land on Heeseung’s back. Frowning, you remember the first essay from that strange book you found in the library nearly two weeks ago. 

Sacred Monsters, it was called. The Taste of Blood. 

A sudden question pulls at your lips. You’re not sure what the proper etiquette is, of asking vampires about their personal cuisine preferences. Swallowing, you decide far more invasive truths have already passed between the two of you. 

He’s still looking out over the city, still a few feet in front of you. But you keep your voice quiet, as if he were seated at your side. You know he’ll hear it all the same. 

“Can you eat?” you ask the silhouette of his back. “Human food, I mean.”

Turning to look at you over his shoulder, Heeseung pauses for a moment. He must decide that standing is preferable to responding, because with the grace of a trained dancer, he rises to his full height. Takes a few even steps before he’s right next to you.

Then, he slides back down into a seated position at your side, this time separated from you by only scant inches. 

“I don’t know,” he finally answers. “I’ve never tried. But everything about it,” he glances at your bagel, “the smell, the texture, the look, is very… unappetizing.”

You wonder if that’s why he chose to sit away from you, if it’s causing him any grief to be so close now. But he doesn’t seem all that perturbed. 

“That’s too bad.” A tone of light teasing playing at the edges of your voice, you nod toward what’s left of your bagel. “I was going to offer you a bite.”

You don’t miss it, the way his eyes fall to the side of your neck, just under your jaw. The place where your wound is still healing. The bite mark he left there. It’s covered by a bangade now. The thought of walking in public with such an obvious injury felt reckless, like an invitation for unwanted attention. But you’re still painfully aware of its presence. As is he, it would seem. 

“Hm,” he muses, gaze sliding back to your eyes lazily. “Tempting.”

You know he can hear it, the way your heart skips a beat at the implication. The undeniable hint of something that clouds his words. You’re not sure how to identify it, the emotion that has heat flaring beneath your cheekbones. Thrill, maybe. The kind you get in your stomach just before the roller coaster drops. 

But there’s a sensation that pools deeper, tugs at you from just below your naval. Something lost in translation as your struggle to sort the feelings memories of that night inspire. 

Whatever it is, your body betrays you all the same. There’s a flush in your heat and a thrum in your chest and something else entirely gathering at the base of your spine. You decide that taking another bite is the best method of defusal. It takes a concentrated effort not to choke on it.

“Did you have one before?” You’re suddenly desperate to shift the direction of the conversation. “A favorite food, I mean.”

For a moment, Heeseung is quiet. You’re suddenly worried that you’ve overstepped, landed on a sore subject. 

But then he reaches out his hand, letting it hover right above your wrist. “Can I?”

He’s asking for permission, you realize, to paint more images for you with his mind. 

Tamping down on the flicker of surprise that rises, you nod. And then his fingers, gentle as the fleeting kiss of a butterfly’s wings, are once again encircling the curve of your wrist. 

You’re more prepared for it this time, the way the city, nestled in the valley of snow-topped mountains, begins to disappear. As it does, a decidedly warmer image takes its place.

You’re in a kitchen, one lost to the centuries. A woman in a long, plain dress and an apron tied around her waist leans over the fire fueled oven, pulls out a tray of delicious looking pastries. 

Her careful actions are infused with love as she sprinkles a fresh coat of sugar on top of the baking tray, as she meticulously places a handful of fresh raspberries in the center of each perfect pastry. 

In the vision, a boy appears. You feel your heart melt a bit at the sight of him, at this version of Heeseung that can’t be older than twelve. He’s brimming with boyish energy, laughing as he’s admonished for taking a bite before the pastries have properly cooled. Fanning his burnt tongue with a frantic hand. 

Grinning ear to ear when he sneaks another as soon as the woman’s back is turned.  His emotions are as plain as day, in the way children’s always are. The honesty of his joy is painfully apparent in the way his eyes crinkle in amusement, the way they hold no traces of melancholy, no weight from the world. 

And then, just as surely as it came to you, the scene begins to dissolve. As it fades, you turn to Heeseung. His eyes are the same, as that boy from his vision’s, but there’s more depth to them now. The end result of a gaze that bears the brunt force of five hundred years of weight.

“Fresh raspberry cakes,” he tells you, some kind of distant sorrow for a long lost memory outlining his words. “Those were my favorite.”

Hoping to ease some of the heaviness, you offer him a small smile. “You have a good memory. I can barely remember what I ate for breakfast last week.”

But your words don’t have their intended effect. His focus is on the mountains in the distance when he tells you, “We remember everything. In excruciating detail. It’s different from humans, I suppose. Our minds don’t shift to make room for new memories. They just… expand. Hold more.” He sighs, and it’s lost somewhere in the wind. “Things from the past, no matter how distant, never blur. They never fade.”

He can paint hallucinations with his mind. He drinks blood. And still, as you gaze at his profile, you think this might be the most horrifying thing he’s told you yet. 

You can’t imagine it, having all of your past stored so fully in your mind. All the ebbs and flows, the pain, joy, sorrow from your life. 

And he has five hundred years of it. 

It strikes you then, at the top of a water tower, at the precipice of a debilitating revelation, just how insignificant this will all be for him. Your lifetime that will be nothing but a blip on a radar. A moment, never forgotten perhaps, but lost to time all the same. 

You’ll grow, age, change. You’ll graduate university and find a way to support yourself into early adulthood. You might move to a new city, learn a new language, pick up a new hobby. All of the ways people find to fill the limited time that they have, to make the most of the finite days they’re blessed with. 

You might even fall in love. Start a family. Sit on a porch one day, surrounded by grandchildren. Smiling as they laugh at your inability to understand the ways the world is changing, grinning at their disbelief as you explain how different things were in your childhood. 

And then, inevitably, it will end. The community you’ve found, the family you’ve built, will mourn you. Your life, like so many that came before yours, will fade into the background of the cosmos, surviving only in the memory of those that knew you. 

And for him, nothing will change. He’ll look the same, sound the same, be the same. Constant. Unwavering. Immune to the whims of time and the insignificance of something as fragile as humanity. 

You wonder, for a fleeting moment, how you’ll be committed to his everlasting memory. What shape the imprint of you will take. 

When he looks back, five hundred years from now, and can still recall this moment in excruciating detail, what will he think? What will he feel?

Heeseung must sense your sudden melancholy. The temperature hasn’t dropped. In fact, it’s only gotten warmer as the sun continues its steady trek across the late morning sky. 

Still, he turns to look at you. “It’s getting cold up here.” Jerking his head back in the direction of the ladder, he adds, “Why don’t we head to your apartment?”

For now, it’s enough to bring you out of your swirling thoughts. Right back to the current moment. Oh right. You may have gotten up here without much of a hitch, but you still have to get yourself down. 

Luckily, Heeseung offers to go first. And he only laughs once, a bright, airy sound you wish you heard more of, when you threaten to kill him if he lets you fall. 

…..

The lock on your apartment door has always been finicky. It takes a few frustrating tries for you to find the right angle. Finally, you hear the telltale click of the lock giving in. Sighing in relief, you push the door open. 

As you step inside and flick on the light, everything looks just as you left it. Mostly organized, save for the throw blanket you forgot to fold and the coffee mug you left next to the sink. But now, overly aware of the presence just over your shoulder, you’re suddenly looking at your space through discerning eyes. 

It’s not that you feel some immense need to impress him. It’s just that you’re suddenly very aware of everything, all the little pieces of yourself scattered across your apartment. 

You don’t know why, but you realize that it matters to you, what Heeseung thinks of your space.

As you turn to gauge his reaction, you find him still standing just outside your doorway, hands shoved in his coat pockets. A polite gesture maybe, but it feels out of place among the moments that have passed between you. The intimacy garnered over the last few days. 

“What are you doing?” You eye him warily. “Are you going to come in?”

“I’d love to,” he says evenly. His feet don’t budge an inch. “But I… I can’t.”

What? Your brow creases in confusion. What does he mean he can’t—

Oh. 

Oh. 

You figured there was no awkwardness left between the two of you in this regard. After all,  you’ve slept in his bedroom, in his bed, for the last handful of nights. You’ve been inside of his mind. But you suppose this is different. 

Besides, he’s from another time. Another century Despite the fact that he seems to be quite well adjusted to modern life, maybe he still holds some age-old reservations about entering a woman’s home. About being alone with you behind closed doors without six other people with supernatural hearing lingering nearby. 

Tucking a strand of hair behind your ear, you suddenly find it a bit difficult to match his eye. 

Where has his mind spun to, exactly, as he grapples with the thought of entering your apartment? After all, immortal or not, he is still a guy. And university aged one, at that. Well, kind of. 

“It really is okay,” you tell him once you find your voice again. “I mean, if you think about it, I was in your house for the last few days. I know it’s different, since you have roommates, but it really is fine. And my couch is actually pretty comfortable, so—”

“___.” He interrupts you with the sound of your name, intonation flat. “I’m not worried about how comfortable your couch is.” You do glance at him then, and a patient sort of exasperation is written across his features. “Jay was right. You really do need to brush up on your facts.”

Your eyes pull down in confusion. 

Heeseung sighs. 

“I — We — can’t enter into places we haven’t been formally invited into.”

“Oh.” The realization settles, and this time brings with it a white hot flash of embarrassment. You find yourself more grateful than ever that he projects thoughts instead of reading them. What a nightmare that would be. “Well, I officially invite you into my apartment.”

“Thanks,” he says dryly, crossing over your doorstep. “I thought you were gonna make me wait out there forever.”

For a moment, it’s all you can do to watch, still basking in mortification, as he enters into your apartment. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t give any indication as to whether he likes it or hates it or doesn’t think much of it at all. 

And then he takes a few more steps, settling down on the couch you’d mentioned earlier with an appreciative nod. You weren’t lying about it being comfortable. 

You track his movement with evasive eyes. As he gets comfortable, a realization occurs. “Wait.” You freeze, suddenly feeling self-conscious again. “You have to be invited in. So the vampires that have been attacking people…”

Heeseung shakes his head. “They wouldn’t be able to get in here either.”

“Oh.” The single syllable is all you can manage. All you can think about is the fact that you insisted on sleeping an extra night at their house, in Heeseung’s room. Practically speaking, you would have been just as untouchable here. 

You sneak another glance at Heeseung. 

For some reason, though, you don’t think you would have felt quite as safe. 

“There are still risks, though.” Heeseung’s looking at you like he understands where your mind has gone, like he wants to put it at ease. “The second you leave, you’re entirely unprotected.”

Until recently, vampires haven’t made an appearance in your city for nearly two hundred years. Only the overtly superstitious bother with any sort of precautions. Now, they seem like the logical ones, everyone else foolish.  “Garlic charms and things like that,” you wonder. “Do those actually work?”

“No.” Heeseung shakes his head. “The only real substance I know of that’s detrimental to vampires is moonflower. The dose has to be quite high, though. And there are certain forms of distilling it that make it more potent. Otherwise, it mostly just has a strong sedative effect.” 

You frown, his explanation spurring another question. “Why do you think Professor Kim shot me, then? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to inject you directly?”

Heeseung explains, “Moonflower is most effective on vampires when it’s consumed. Only the really strong stuff, specially distilled like I mentioned earlier, would be effective by injection. I don’t know how Professor Kim prepared the thing he shot you with, but it’s unlikely he knows how to properly distill moonflower to make it potent enough to hurt me directly.” 

“So he injected me…” you trail off. 

Heeseung fills in the blanks. “It’s likely that he was hoping it would be a strong enough deterrent for me not to bite you altogether,” he meets your eye, “or that it would kill me if I couldn’t find it in myself to resist.”

You’re finding it difficult to look away from him now. “How did you know? That it wouldn’t kill you?”

His silence is answer enough. 

Part of you wants to curse him for being so careless, so reckless with his own life. Another part of you is afraid that your pile of growing gratitude towards him will soon be too tall, too heavy to bear. 

Another part, small but insistent, wants you to thank him. To get on your knees and beg for forgiveness, for absolution of crimes you never meant to commit. 

“It was a calculated risk,” he tells you, as if he can see the gears whirring in your mind. As if he’s just as afraid of them as you are. “Which reminds me, I have something for you.”

You arch an eyebrow, not sure you can take any more of what he offers. 

But he stands from the couch anyway, walks towards you on steady feet. “I thought about giving it to you on the water tower, but I didn't want to take any chances.” His eyes sparkle with something that looks almost mischievous. “Just in case you got to the top and decided the view wasn’t worth it.”

That piques your curiosity enough to abate any lingering guilt at the thought of him giving you anything more than he already has. “Don’t tell me it’s distilled moonflower.”

It’s meant to land as a joke, but the look he gives you is entirely serious. 

“Close enough.” Reaching into his bag, he pulls out a small, rectangular box. It’s wooden, you think. And it’s beautiful. Ornate in a subtle way, the dark wood is inlaid with hints of a pattern, soft edges that turn and wind and curl in on themselves. 

Like many things he’s shown you, it feels like a relic of the past, a gift from another century. Something that belongs in a museum, not the worn but undoubtedly modern expanse of your apartment. 

“What is it?” you breathe, the air suddenly fraught with something delicate. 

Heeseung reaches for your wrist, opens your palm and places the box in your outstretched hand. “Open it.”

You’re not sure what to expect. The last few days have been anything but predictable, and the box between your fingers is no exception. Despite its solid weight, it suddenly seems fragile in your grip. As breakable as the moment between you. 

It’s with a silver of hesitation that you remove the lid, revealing—

“A knife?” The look you give him is incredulous. 

Because that’s what it is. At first glance, you can tell that it’s not a weapon built for brute force. It’s small, delicate, even. It feels strange to describe a blade as such, but it’s also undoubtedly beautiful. 

You look down at it, each time discovering another detail. A striking silver blade meets a handle even more ornate than the box that houses it. A series of intricate vines wrap around each other, come to full bloom just where the blade kisses the hilt. 

“A dagger, actually,” he corrects. Heeseung just watches as you examine his gift. He must decide that an explanation is necessary. And not just for the weapon between your fingers. 

“I know I wasn’t exactly… enthusiastic about you wanting to continue working with Professor Kim,” he starts. There’s a hint of strain in his voice. It’s not an apology, but you hear the tinge of regret all the same. “It’s not that I don’t trust you or that I don’t think you’re competent. It’s just that—I mean, he’s a…” Across from you, he can’t quite bring himself to say it. 

“A vampire,” you finish the sentiment for him. His expression is unreadable when you match his gaze. But you think there’s something there, something in his eyes that begs for forgiveness you’re in no position to give. Acquittal from crimes you never bore witness to. Difficult decisions lost to the passage of time, their lingering effects reverberating around the two of you now, holding you in their unyielding grip. 

“I understand,” you tell him, because you do. Because you know that his reluctance was never commentary on his faith in you. Because even when he told you, on a night that feels lost to some distant past, that your writing was awful, it was only because he knew you were capable of better. Of more. “And I’m not angry with you. So much has happened these past few days.”

Nestled in your grip, the wooden box and the dagger within feel more like an apology than something with any practical use for you. You’re not woefully unathletic, but the only knives you’ve ever held have been in the kitchen. 

“It’s beautiful,” you tell him. “Although I do have to say, I’m not sure how much good a dagger will do me. Especially since Professor Kim is, y’know, a vampire.”

“You’d be surprised,” he counters. “A potent dose of moonflower is one way of killing a vampire, but this is far simpler.” He matches your gaze. “You just need to aim for the heart.”

Nodding towards the weapon in your hands, he encourages, “Try it out.”

You arch an eyebrow. “You want me to stab you?”

“Not particularly.” That same glint is back in his eye. The one that spells trouble, but not for any of the reasons you would have predicted when dealing with an immortal creature of the night. “But it’s a calculated risk. And we’ve become rather used to those, have we not?”

He’s taunting you, you realize. Still, your uncertain gaze flickers between him and the object in your hands a few more times. Relenting, you set the box down on the counter behind you, pulling the dagger out with no confidence left to your name. 

It’s terrible, but the thing you’re most concerned about now is just how embarrassing this is about to be for you. 

Against your fingertips, the cool kiss of metal feels foreign, invasive. Warily, you test its weight within your grip. And then you turn around to face him again. 

Heeseung wastes no time, pulls back no punches. “You’re holding it wrong.”

“Sorry,” you retort drily. “I must have slept through the day in class where we learned about proper dagger grips.”

He sighs, but there’s a trace of amusement in his eyes. “Here,” he beckons you closer. 

Reluctantly, you close the distance between you. As soon as you stand directly in front of him, you stretch out your arm, offering him the dagger. You expect him to take it from you, to demonstrate a proper grip. 

There’s a comment brewing on your lips, one about how if you had five hundred years of life under your belt, you’d probably be an expert in hand-to-hand combat too, when he catches you off guard. 

Because he doesn’t take the dagger from your outstretched hand. No, instead you feel the warmth of his fingers as they wrap around your own. Gently maneuvering your grip, arranging it into one he finds acceptable. 

Hand still covering yours, he squeezes. It’s light in pressure, but insistent in nature. 

“You have to keep a strong grip,” he whispers. You feel his breath dance across your cheekbone. “Or your hand could slip. You’d only injure yourself.”

Close. When did he get so close? 

Before you can make sense of it, his hand is sliding from your fingers to the skin of your wrist. It’s instinct, at this point to brace for another vision. Maybe he’ll show you, you think. A memory of him learning, an image of proper technique. 

But the mirage never comes. Your apartment stays firmly in view as he catches you by surprise for the thousandth time within the span of days. 

With the practiced agility of a supernatural being, he spins you. Flips your wrist in his grip so that the rest of your body is forced to follow. 

Suddenly, you’re no longer facing him. Instead, you see the counter where you left the old, wooden box. Your front door just beyond it. 

And somehow, at this new angle, the space between you has only grown smaller. Your back, each and every notch of your vertebrae, lies scant inches from the expanse of his chest. You can practically feel the steady rise and fall of his breath. 

It makes yours seem all the more frantic in comparison. 

Your legs feel like jello beneath you, wobbly to the point you’re afraid they might buckle. You try to regain your sense, to get a solid grip on something, anything that will tether you to reality. 

But you’re too aware, so painfully aware of him behind you, wrapped around your wrist, tangled in your thoughts. It’s all too much. 

He doesn’t relent. “Your stance is crucial.” His whisper floats like a caress down the shell of your ear, has you suppressing a shiver in his grip. One that starts at the base of your spine and ends somewhere beyond your body, outside this plane of existence. 

Your body feels molten, less than solid. Something devoid of bones and marrow and muscled. Composed of nerves and flutters and a submission to sensation in their wake. 

The hand that comes to your hip does little to steady you. Again, his pressure is light. But there’s no question that it’s a demand just the same. “Avoid letting your weight sink here.”

Is it? You don’t know. You can’t tell. You can’t think. 

All you can do is feel as his open palm traces a steady line from the curve of your hip to the expanse of your stomach, settling in the space just above your navel. “Brace here,” he breathes against your ear. 

It dawns on you, after a handful of shallow breaths, that this is an instruction. That he won’t let up until you follow it. 

Your stomach tightens in response, just below his hand. 

“Good,” he praises, but his touch doesn’t subside. “Better.”

His other hand, the one still wrapped around your wrist, begins to adjust your grip again. Angles it so that the dagger points away from you, towards an unseen target. “And this,” he moves the dagger slightly, “think of it as an extension of your arm.” Drawing a small circle with the tip, your entire body shifts in response. The palm splayed across your stomach moves with you. “Your body is one moving piece. It’s all connected.”

You suddenly find breathing something you need to focus on. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. 

“When you shift to the left,” he adds lowly. The hand against your stomach guides your movement to mirror his words. “What happens to the dagger?”

You hope his question is rhetorical. Even if you had an answer for him, you doubt your voice would be willing to cooperate. 

“It follows,” he answers a moment later, and you’ve never been more grateful. “Just like the rest of your body.”

The hand on your stomach begins to slide towards your hip again. It follows an agonizingly slow path, pauses for a moment, before he removes it completely. The hand around your wrist falls to his side again. 

“A good weapon,” he says from behind, heat lingering, burning against your skin in all the places he touched you, “is one you can control. It doesn’t need to be flashy. It doesn’t have to look impressive. It just needs to be yours. Completely under your command.”

This time, it’s him that moves. You’re grateful. You still feel frozen in place. 

He walks, circling your immobile figure, until he’s in front of you again. “If worst comes to worst and you do need to defend yourself, don’t lead with the dagger. Lead with your back foot. Let that be what generates momentum through your hip. Brace through your core again, and let your power, your control, come from there. It’s all connected,” he reiterates. “It all moves together.”

He’s not touching you, not anymore, but the sight of him, the memory of it, makes you feel unsteady all over again. 

“Root through your feet,” he instructs. You’re not sure how well you obey the instruction. It feels like all of your energy is dedicated to not collapsing to the ground in a puddle, a horribly undignified heap. 

“Okay,” he continues, “Adjust your grip again, but this time—”

The sound of an incoming notification rings out from your phone, discarded on the counter along with the box the dagger came in. 

You could almost cry with relief at the opportunity to diffuse some of the mounting tension, to have his gaze anywhere but on you, even if just for a moment. 

Relaxing your stance, you do your best to hide the tremble in your legs as you walk to retrieve it. Reading the notification once, you turn back to where Heeseung is still rooted to the spot. 

You suddenly feel unsteady again, but for a completely different reason this time. 

“Professor Kim read my draft.” You hold your phone up, facing the screen towards him even though he’s too far to read the reply you’ve just received. Voice slightly wobbly, you add, “He wants to meet with me.”

…..

The coffee shop you arrive at twenty minutes later is nondescript. Full of office workers on a late lunch, families on a winter outing, and couples enjoying a quiet moment together. It strikes you as odd, almost, how normal it all seems. Despite the way your world has shifted on its axis completely, despite the city’s recent uptick in death toll, people are just… living. Going about their day as usual. 

You find your professor waiting for you at a table in the far corner. He hasn’t ordered anything for himself, and for a moment, you wonder how long it’s been for him. How many years he, like Heeseung, has found human food rather repulsive. 

Regardless of what you now know, Professor Kim looks every bit the well-organized, put together version of himself you saw during morning lectures this past semester. Gone is the crazed, ravaging, consumed by bloodlust being whose path you crossed three nights ago. 

“I appreciate you meeting me here,” you tell him as you slide down into the seat across from him, voice guarded, expression carefully neutral. 

“I’m glad you were able to find it,” Professor Kim agrees. You don’t know why you expected him to sound different. More monstrous, somehow. He doesn’t. It’s the same even, slightly gravely tone he’s always had. “You’ll have to forgive me for not inviting you back to the publishing house. I thought a more public location might serve both of our interests better.”

Witnesses, he means. Whether they’re for your comfort or his, you’re not entirely sure. 

You didn’t come here to beat around the bush. And Heeseung, four blocks away where you forced him to wait for you, is surely anxious to hear the end result of this conversation. “Did you have the chance to read my draft?”

Professor Kim’s expression betrays nothing. “I did.” 

“What did you think?”

He waits for a moment, weighing his words. “I agree with your email. It seems that your interests are… aligned with New Haven’s mission. As you may already know, it’s a rather small publishing house with quite a niche audience. Our tastes are more specific than most.” There’s a hint of distrust when he adds, “It’s rare to find a young person these days who has the experience necessary to publish something that will entice our readers.”

And this is where you have to tread lightly. Make your story believable. Subtle, but foolproof. “I’ll admit,” you start, “my interest in your subject matter has been a fairly recent development.” Slowly, intentionally, you brush hair from the side of your neck. The bandage still covers the worst of the damage, but the fading bruises are still visible. As are the implications of your wound. “But believe me when I say that I am fully committed.”

Professor Kim appraises the side of your neck, eyes widening for a fraction of a second. 

“The woman in my story,” you continue, “the one whose dreams are stolen. I believe I’ve thought of a better idea for the ending.”

He pauses, leans forward in his chair. “Which is?”

“Originally, I thought it would be most fitting for her to die. After all, she was powerless against her enemy.” You meet his eye. “Had no way of defeating him as he grew stronger the weaker she got.”

Professor Kim nods. “A reasonable expectation. But you said your ending has changed.”

Nodding, you continue, “I think I’d like to incorporate a new plot element. A special plant, maybe. Something that makes her dreams toxic to her husband. Something that makes him ill every time he tries to steal them from her.”

Your professor’s gaze is still tight, but his eyes are beginning to relax. Glossing over with the realization of your implication. 

“In my story, the person who introduces her to this plant is a mentor of hers, and ultimately, someone she decides to work with. Someone whose mission she strives to fulfill. To protect her dreams and everyone else’s.”

“An interesting thought.” Your professor leans back in his chair. You can tell that he’s still not fully convinced. “But what if this mentor of hers turns out to be a dream stealer himself. Wouldn’t it be only natural for your heroine to be wary of him, to fear him?”

“She does,” you admit. “But fear won’t save her from her husband. And between the two of them, her mentor is not the one that has ever attempted to harm her. To steal her dreams. Between the two of them, she has no confusion about where to place her trust. Even if it is hesitant.”

Your professor considers for a moment. Then, after a second that seems to stretch infinitely, he nods. “I’d like to hear more about this story of yours. At the publishing house, if you’re able to meet me there.”

Your heart gives a traitorous lurch, but your voice is steady when you affirm, “I am.”

“Can you be there in an hour?” He’s already standing, as if this was a business meeting, a simple transaction, and he’s back to the office now. 

You confirm that you can, and he offers you one last nod.

Then, with little in the way of fanfare, he buttons his long coat closed, retreating through the front door of the coffee shop without so much as a backward glance. 

…..

The metal is cold against the skin of your leg. Biting, it demands all of your attention, even as Heeseung pleads for it where he kneels in front of you. 

“Are you sure about this?” he asks, not for the first time. “Because you don’t have to—”

“Heeseung,” you interrupt, and he looks up, his hands pausing in their ministrations. Beneath you, he’s adjusting the second part of his gift. Because not only did he give you a dagger in a wooden box pulled from a lost century, but also a holster. One that wraps around your thigh. One that he’s currently securing into place as he tries to convince you not to meet your murderous professor at New Haven.

But that’s the least of your worries at the moment. Right now, you thank whatever cosmic forces must be on your side that you wore loose fitting pants today. First because they will help to conceal the shape of your hidden weapon. And second because they’re roomy enough to pull up over your knee, so that you’re still clothed while Heeseung helps you adjust the dagger and holster into place. 

The mere thought of the alternative is too mortifying to consider, has another spark of heat gathering on your cheeks. 

Then again, it’s not like this is much better. Just as you were in your apartment, you’re painfully aware of each brush of his fingers against the skin of your thigh. You have to suppress the urge to sigh, and not in exasperation, every time he opens his mouth to tell you how bad of an idea this is. Mostly because it sends soft whispers of breath over your flesh, goosebumps following in their stead. 

“Heeseung,” you try again. The sound of his name makes him look up at you through long lashes. In front of you, on his knees, his attention has never belonged to you more. 

“We’ve been over this.” He’s had his chance to share his woes, voice his worries. You’ll never make any progress if he pitches this much of a fight every time a new opportunity comes about. “I’ll be fine. It’s just a meeting.”

Heesung frowns. “I don’t like that he wants you to meet him all alone. Why couldn’t you have your meeting at the coffee shop?”

“Right, because I’m sure you’d want to tell me all about your vampire history while a group of twelve-year-olds down caramel frappes a few seats over.”

Heeseung’s lips flatten. “Don’t compare me to him.”

“I’m not.” It’s the truth. Similarities between the two of them have yet to cross your mind. Despite the obvious similarity, your professor and Heeseung exist in entirely different planes as far as you’re concerned. On opposite sides of a vast spectrum. “I’m just saying, it makes sense that he would want to meet somewhere with a little more privacy.”

Heeseung slides the last strap into place, giving it an experimental tug. The holster and the dagger within it hold strong. Wordlessly, he rises back to full height. You release your pant leg, skin and weapon disappearing in one fell swoop. 

“At least let me come with you,” he pleads. “I’ll stay out of sight.”

You’re shaking your head before he can even finish the request. “You and I both know that’s a terrible idea. If he could detect you before, he can do it again. Let’s just consider ourselves lucky that he can’t tell we’ve been together.”

Because what a disastrous nightmare that would be. 

“I can barely do that,” Heeseung counters. “We don’t have to worry about that.” The concern in his gaze doesn’t ease, though. 

You get it, you really do. And you empathize with it. It’s only natural, you suppose, that he would feel some sort of responsibility for you. Even though it was your own volition, your own actions that led you here, he was a part of the catalyst. 

But you don’t want him to feel any guilt where you’re concerned. 

“I’ll be fine,” you reiterate, trying to placate him. “He’s convinced that I’m convinced that he saved me that night.” Looking for Heeseung, begging for a bit of his permission, you add, “This is the first step in getting the answers we need. Besides,” you lift your leg slightly. “he won’t be able to hurt me even if he wants to. I’ve got a secret weapon.”

Heeseung’s lips only thin further. “And no idea how to use it,” he retorts under his breath.

“Hey!” you protest. “I have some idea how to use it.” You’re lying through your teeth. You don’t think you retained a single thing from Heeseung’s rather unorthodox lesson in your apartment.  But in your mind, any fight that comes down to physical strength was always doomed to be a losing battle. “And you said it yourself, I don’t have to be perfect. I just have to wait until he’s distracted. Catch him off guard.” You point right at Heeseung’s chest, finger hovering a few inches away from his skin. “And aim right for the heart.” 

But now you’re thinking of your apartment again. Of hands on your hips, covering the expanse of your stomach. Warm, steady, grounding. And so goddamn distracting. 

“I can tell that you’re nervous,” Heeseung says, voice tangled with worry. “Your heartbeat just jumped.”

You’re too mortified to correct him. 

“Of course I’m nervous. But I’ll be careful.” You meet his eye, hoping your false confidence will reassure him. For the third time, you promise, “And I’ll be fine.”

Heeseung just looks at you for a moment. Inhales. Exhales. 

And then he says, “Keep your phone on you the whole time. Leave it open to my contact so that you can message or call me faster if you need to. And if something, anything feels off, get out of there.” He glances toward your thigh, where your concealed weapon rests. “That dagger is a last resort, but don’t be afraid to use it.”

You nod. After opening your phone to his contact, you check the clock. See that it’s time. 

It feels wrong to leave without any parting words, but you’re not sure what you would say. If there’s anything left to be said. 

You turn on your heel, surprised when Heeseung falls into step beside you. Again, the two of you agreed he would wait a considerable distance away to avoid detection. “What are you doing?”

“I can walk with you a little further,” he insists, stubborn.

“No, you can’t,” you argue. “We’re only a few blocks away, and you don’t know for sure how far his senses extend.” 

“I wouldn’t even be able to—”

“Heeseung.” You stop in your tracks, turning to face him. “Remember how you told me that you trust me, just a few hours ago?”

You need him to dig deep, find some of that faith again. Or else this is just going to be miserable for the both of you.

“You’re not the untrustworthy variable in this situation.”

You sigh. “Then just…” you trail off, not sure how to put him at ease. “Just trust me to be okay. Wait here, and I’ll be back,” you plead. “Soon. I promise.”

Heeseung is nothing but serious when he tells you, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“I’m not planning on it.”

A moment passes. Another. Then—

“Fine.” But his shoulders don’t release their tension. 

Again, you turn to walk away. To leave him behind. You feel his eyes on your back, and you’ve barely made it a few feet before he says your name again.

“What—”

“Be careful,” he whispers, so low it’s almost lost to the breeze. “Please.”

Something in you softens at the tenderness in his voice, the worry in his eyes. But you don’t have time to linger on it now. You nod, only once, before turning away from him again. 

The distance between you and New Haven feels short fades quickly. As anticipation begins to settle uncomfortably in your stomach, you replay your fabricated story in your mind, the one you’re about to feed Professor Kim. The one you hope is convincing enough to earn a bit of his trust. Tight enough that he won’t be able to poke any holes in it. 

You’re at the door of the publishing house before you know it, before you have the chance to fully collect yourself. Pausing on the porch, you look around for a moment. It’s just as deserted as it was last week, just as eerily quiet. But this time, at least, you think you see a light in the window. 

Knocking with a hand that’s steadier than you feel, you will your heartbeat to maintain an even rhythm. 

It takes Professor Kim less than ten seconds to open the door. He glances over your shoulder, surveying the area with no small amount of suspicion, before he ushers you inside. 

The layout is just as strange as you remember it, but the hallway doesn’t feel so ominous now that the lights are on, the faint hum of electricity buzzing in the background. Then again, standing face to face with a vampire has a way of being unnerving all on its own. 

Beckoning you forward, you follow your professor past the same closed, unmarked doors before arriving in the open space at the end of the hall. Again, like the rest of New Haven, it looks different in the light. Warmer, more welcoming. Even if it still doesn’t look like much of a publishing house. Even if it still carries with it a distinct sense of unease.

This time, at least, Professor Kim has pulled out two chairs and a small side table,so the room isn’t completely barren. Sitting in the first chair, he gestures for you to join him. You do, eyes only darting towards the door marked with his name once. 

The blood is gone, you realize. 

“Thank you for meeting me here.” Professor Kim is all cordiality where he sits across from you. Again, you struggle to reconcile this version of him with the vampire who shot you full of poison just a few nights ago. “I trust you understand that this conversation is too delicate to have in a more public space.”

“Of course,” you nod. 

“Since we’re here,” he continues, “let’s not speak in riddles any longer. I’m sure you have questions about the last night you were here.” He pauses, passing you a meaningful look. “As do I.”

You inhale, reminding yourself that as far as he’s concerned, you don’t know anything about vampires other than the usual, superstitious lore. “The last time I was here, there was blood on your clothes. Your mouth.” The shiver that traces your spine is not forced. Even now, you think it’s one of the most chilling scenes you’ve ever witnessed. Finally, in a small voice, you breath, “You’re a vampire.”

Professor Kim doesn’t try to hide it. “I am.”

You force confusion into your eyes. “But you didn’t try to drink my blood. You’re not trying to now.”

He nods at your observation. “I have ways of managing my hunger,” he explains, frustratingly vague. “You do not need to fear me.” You hadn’t expected him to spill all of his secrets within the first minute of your conversation, but that only leaves you with more questions than answers. And it certainly won’t give Heeseung or the rest of the boys much to work with. 

“But you… you threw something at me.” Again, you don’t have to try hard to put fear in your gaze. “Something that stuck in my neck.”

“Yes,” he nods again. “That was an injection of moonflower. It’s a substance known to be poisonous to vampires. I believed that injecting it into your blood would prevent you from being preyed upon.” It takes a concentrated effort for you not to show any smugness. Your hypothesis had been right. He was trying to protect you. “I’m pleased to see that it seems to have worked, although I do apologize for the bruising.” 

You realize then that the bandage on your neck covers the bite mark, the place Heeseung left a scar of his own making just next to Professor Kim’s. 

Your professor, you realize, doesn’t know that you were bitten. Doesn’t know that the moonflower was beginning to have an adverse effect. That Heeseung took it right back out of you. 

Internally, you debate. You don’t want to reveal any more cards than you need to, but you don’t know how long the scars will last. Don’t know how much longer you can wear the bandage without raising suspicion. And if he discovers later that you lied to him, it could be disastrous. 

Slowly, you reach for the bandaid on your neck. Removing it, you explain, “What you did that night saved me. I was—”

Professor Kim cuts you off. Leaning forward in his seat, his attention is honed on the twin puncture wounds on your neck. “You were bitten.” Something flashes through his eyes. Confusion. Suspicion. He looks you over again. “But you haven't changed.”

Too late, you realize your mistake. Heeseung’s words come back to you. 

“No, that’s another difference. The seven of us can’t create new vampires.”

Shit. Shit. 

Scrambling, you try to come up with some sort of explanation. 

“Barely,” you correct, doing your best to maintain an even tone. “I was barely bitten. I don’t think he consumed any of my blood.” Trying to create a sense of false wonderment, you ask with wide eyes, “Do you think that’s what prevented me from transforming?”

“Perhaps,” your professor muses, but doubt lingers in his gaze. He appears more guarded when he conjectures, “Or perhaps moonflower has more qualities that even I didn’t know about.”

You’re curious about it, the way he makes it seem as if he’s quite familiar with the substance. Based on what you’ve learned from Heeseung, it’s rare. Difficult to come by. 

But with that suspicion still in his eyes at the potential hole in your story, you’re desperate to change the course of the conversation. Pushing forward, you poke at another one of the boys’ questions. “Did you know that… that he was a vampire?” Your struggle to say Heeseung’s name out loud is not entirely fabricated. It’s to your advantage that it makes sense now. What university student wouldn’t be horrified at the prospect of a classmate being a monster? 

“I had my suspicions,” your professor confirms. “But I wasn’t certain. Not until that night. I apologize for leaving you there with him.” There is sorrow in his eyes. He seems genuinely regretful. “But I was afraid that he would follow me after he realized I’d poisoned your blood. That he would seek his revenge on me.” Looking at you with a newfound curiosity, eyes honed in on the mark on your neck, he levels your with a question of his own. “If I might ask, what happened?”

The best lies are always wrapped in truth, and this is one you were prepared for. You start, “He bit me. But he stopped immediately, before drinking anything. I think he was confused for a moment. He couldn't tell what was wrong with me, with my blood. To be honest, I was quite disoriented as well. I remember him leaving, although I couldn’t say for sure how long he stayed.”

You also have no way of knowing if Professor Kim returned to New Haven. You can’t tell him that you spent the night there, not if he came back at any point and found you gone. 

Instead, you tell him, “I was weak, confused. But I think I remember getting into a taxi, going back to my apartment. I slept for over a day. When I woke up, I couldn’t remember anything. My entire body was exhausted, sore. But after a while, my memories started to come back. That’s when I reached out to you.”

He frowns. “So you don’t know then, if Lee Heeseung is alive or dead?”

You meet his eye. Shake your head. Do your best not to think of the boy waiting for you a few blocks away, sick with anxiety. “I don’t.”

Professor Kim considers for a moment, lets your words settle into the air. Eventually, slowly, he nods, accepting your warped version of events. “If he really didn’t consume any of your tainted blood, it’s likely that he’s still alive. But it’s no matter now.” He shakes his head. “I’m glad that you reached out to me when you did. And I’m glad you survived, that the moonflower had its intended effect. I do apologize for the memory loss you experienced,” he adds. “That is an effect moonflower has on humans.”

You display your palms in a sign of gratitude. “There’s no need to apologize.” You try to mean it, at least a little bit, when you say, “You saved my life. I’d rather lose my memories a thousand times over than succumb to a vampire.”

Professor Kim nods. “You said earlier that you were interested in working here, in aligning with New Haven’s cause.”

This is it, you think. This is your way in. This is how you play your part in preventing any morme unnecessary bloodshed. “I am.”

Professor Kim doesn’t smile, but he seems pleased with your answer. “I know that this was originally meant to be an opportunity to look at how a publishing house functions, but in light of recent events, I have another task in mind.”

It shouldn’t catch you off guard as much as it does. You try not to let any traces of dread imbue your tone when you ask, “What kind of task?”

“We would still publish your original fiction, of course,” he assures you, “but with the recent attacks occurring, this city needs someone willing to report on them.” He speaks with the fervor of a madman when he continues, “To share the truth that other news outlets are afraid to publish. To remind the public how evil vampires truly are. To encourage their support and convince them to join in the fight against these monsters and all of the suffering they bring.” 

You’re silent for a moment, his vitriol settling with a chill into your bones. “You want me to work here as a journalist?”

“If you’re willing to,” he nods. “I know that your background is not in journalism, but your words hold power. The ability to convince people, to hold the truth in front of their eyes and force them to see it, to understand it. I won’t pretend that there are no risks involved. Although blood is their ultimate priority, vampires do have a sense of self-preservation. Those that are sentient enough may be angered by what you write. If you accept, I will offer you as much protection as I can. Including, of course, a steady supply of moonflower.”

Moonflower. You can’t help the shudder this time. Memories come back to you unbidden. You, suspended in a terrible place between consciousness and unconscious. You, waking up in an unfamiliar room, afraid and without any recollection of how you got there. 

You could go your entire life without seeing that damn plant ever again. 

“It would be difficult to write,” you point out, trying to tamp down on the panic, “without my memories, even if they’re only lost temporarily.”

Professor Kim nods. “I believe that was due to the potency of the moonflower you were given, along with the fact that it was injected directly into your bloodstream. But there are other ways of consuming it. The petals of the flower itself can be made into a tea. I have other ideas, too. I’ve been wanting to create a salve out of it. Something applied topically to the skin.”

That you do find interesting. Again, Heeseung made it sound as if moonflower is quite rare. Hard to come by, difficult to obtain information about. He did also mention that it is sometimes consumed as a tea. You make a mental note to tell him about the professor’s seemingly extensive knowledge of it later. 

You might be pushing your luck, but you have one more question. If you leave here without at least trying to get an answer, you know you’ll regret it. “Forgive me, Professor, if this is untoward, but why did you help me that night? Clearly you’re different from other vampires, but…”

“But why do I hate them so much?” he finishes for you. 

You nod. “I’m sorry if it’s not something you’d like to share. But I’ve been having a hard time wrapping my head around it since my memories started to return.”

At your explanation, he says nothing. For a moment, you don’t think he’ll give you any sort of answer at all. 

But then, he begins, “It’s not a very happy story. I was turned just over twenty years ago. It was around this time of year, actually. I was visiting my family for the holidays. My parents had an old cabin, way out in the countryside. Far from the city.”

A flash of sorrow crosses his eyes, as if it causes him pain to remember it. 

“By then, vampire attacks were as rare as they are today, but we both know by now that doesn’t mean much. It must have been a group of nomadic monsters that came across our cabin that night.” 

He looks at his hands, gaze full of agony. “They massacred my family, every last one of them. My parents, siblings, cousins. My wife and daughter.” 

The small gasp of horror you let out is genuine. 

“It was an accident, I’m sure, that my blood wasn’t completely drained. That I was left alive, even if just barely. Alone, in a cabin that was meant to be a place for celebration, I spent long, agonizing days turning into a monster.”

“And then,” he concludes, looking at you, “I vowed to spend the rest of my immortality hunting down every last one of those wretched creatures that took everything from me. That stole my life and everything I love and made me into a demon.” Determination is etched into his features when he tells you, “Lee Heeseung isn’t the first vampire I’ve come across, and my only regret from that night is that he left it alive. I plan to remedy that failure. Especially now that he’s leaving bodies in his wake.”

“You think that it’s him, then?” you breathe. “The one that killed the humans at the river? All the other deaths?”

“Of course it is.” There’s no question, no room for argument in your professor’s assertion. “There hasn’t been any vampire activity in this city for two hundred years. And then, suddenly, I find him trying to drink your blood the very same day the first attacks occur. It’s not a coincidence.”

“But you’re able to see past your desire for blood. What if—”

“I am the exception to the rule.” He strikes your argument down before you can finish it. “Not once, in the last twenty years, have I ever seen a vampire that’s capable of empathy. As I warned you before, the only emotions they have are driven by instinct. Self-preservation on occasion, but above all, vampires are consumed by hunger. The constant need for blood.”

It’s similar to what Heeseung told you. Variations on the same theme, the same devastating truth. But you still don’t feel any closer to discovering what it is that makes Professor Kim different from the other descendants of the eighth lord’s son. And you can hardly reveal to him the truth of Heeseung’s nature. 

Instead, you ask him, “How many people have died? Since the first attack.” You want to know how current his information is, if it differs from what the boys told you. 

“Eleven,” your professor confirms. “Eleven too many. Which is why I need you. The city needs you. Your words could save lives, prevent tragedies before they occur.”

You’re silent for a moment, pretending to be lost in thought, to be considering his offer. Weighing the pros of his words over the cons of your potential endangerment. After a quiet minute, you inhale, as if steeling your resolve, finding your courage. Against the skin of your thigh, you feel the cool kiss of the metal dagger Heeseung gave you. “I’ll do it.”

His face remains stoic, the gravity of the situation far too heavy for him to be truly excited at the prospect. But you can tell that he’s pleased. “Good.” He nods to himself. “Good. This could change things. You could change things.” 

He looks around the space, as if realizing for the first time just how strangely empty it is. “I know that there’s not much here. I prefer to do my work in other places, but if you’d like for me to set up an office for you here—”

“That’s okay.” You shake your head. “Thank you, but I have places I like to write, too.” The thought of working here, of spending more time in this odd, dilapidated building, in the immediate vicinity of Professor Kim is reason enough to decline. Never mind the protest Heeseung would surely wage.

“Very well,” he nods. “I’m sure you understand the gravity of the situation. Typically, I wouldn't put a student on such a difficult schedule, but the truth is not something that can be delayed. I’d like you to have your first article prepared by tomorrow afternoon.” 

It’s a tight turnaround, but you’ve done more with less. For his class, even. Your ability to write in a short amount of time, at least, is something you’re truly confident in. “I can do that.”

“Good,” he says again. “Send me your piece by three p.m., and I will have my edits back to you within the hour. I want it published as soon as possible. The following morning would be ideal.”

“Are there limitations?” you ask. “Things I shouldn’t share or write about?”

Your professor considers for a moment, then he shakes his head. “The only thing I care about is that people understand why they need to be afraid of these attacks. Why they need to join the fight against them. Obviously your reporting needs to be factual, but do what it takes to get that message across, loud and clear.”

“I will,” you assure him, trying to be as much the frightened, determined girl he thinks you are. 

“I’m going to start reaching out to some of my connections,” he tells you. “Finding ways to promote this as much as we can, to get as many people reading as possible. But for now, I’ll get you some moonflower to take with you.”

Standing, he motions for you to follow him towards the door marked with his name. His office. The same place you heard strange noises emanating from the last time you were here. 

It’s confirmed as you approach. The bloodstains are gone. 

He opens the door, ushering you inside, and still, none of your questions are answered. It’s a normal office, nothing out of the ordinary. Similar to his office back at the university, in fact. Clean, orderly, meticulously organized. 

The sounds you heard that night… you swear they had seemed distant, far away. But this office is as cramped and impersonal as any other. 

In fact, the only touch of personality you can find is the large painting that hangs on the far wall, opposite from the door you entered through. Glancing at the scenery it encapsulates, you pause. There’s something strangely familiar about it. Like it’s something you’ve seen before.

It does strike you as almost comical, too, that the balance of it is off. It hangs slightly too far to the left, one side dipping lower than the other. 

You spent a semester reading Professor Kim’s lecture presentations that all had the same uniform Times New Roman 12-point font. You watched as he publicly criticized students for turning in work with nonstandard margins. And yet, it appears that he couldn’t be bothered to make sure the one painting in his entire office is level. 

It’s odd. Entirely out of character.

But you don’t have long to dwell on it before he reaches for a small bag on his desk. 

“Here.” He hands it to you. “These are moonflower petals, crushed into small pieces. You can brew a pinch at a time with boiling water. Don’t let them seep longer than five minutes, and there should be no negative effects on your memory.”

“Thank you.” You take the bag from him, doing your best to appear grateful even if your hand shakes slightly as you receive it. “I’ll use it well.”

“I’ll look forward to reading your article, then,” he tells you. “Three p.m. tomorrow.” The two of you leave his office, walking back into the large, empty, open room. You sneak one last glance at the painting before he closes the door. Frowning, you shake your head. In the grand scheme of the day’s revelations, it’s certainly not something worth fixating on. “Do you need any help getting home?”

“No.” You shake your head, already turning towards the hallway. “I’ll be fine.”

So with your bag of moonflower in hand and unused weapon still cold against your thigh, you bid your professor farewell. 

Heeseung is pacing when you find him. Wearing down a path in the grass next to the abandoned building you left him at just over an hour ago. 

He hears you before he sees you. Detects the sound of your heartbeat or your footsteps or maybe even the smell of your shampoo. Whatever it is, it has him stopping in his tracks, turning towards you with something desperate in his eyes. 

He makes quick work of scanning you head to toe, and you watch as tension drains from him visibly. 

“You’re okay,” he breathes as soon as you’re close enough for conversation. “You’re not hurt?”

“I’m fine,” you confirm, suppressing the urge to run a hand through his hair. Just to soothe him a little. But you don’t know if it would calm him down or make things so, so much worse. You offer him a small smile instead. “Just like I promised I would be.”

Heeseung spots the small bag you’re carrying, the gift from your professor. “What’s that?”

“Moonflower.” You hold it up to the light. “He gave me some. I was right. He shot me with it that night to try to protect me. He…” You trail off, remembering his story. The blame he is now mistakenly laying on Heeseung’s shoulders. “He has a reason for hating vampires.” 

As you recount the details of your conversation, it’s hard not to feel a distinct stab of sympathy for your professor. He’s honing in on the wrong target, yes, but his life has been informed by a deep, profound tragedy. He lost his family. A wife. A daughter. 

When you finish, Heeseung frowns. “He wants you to write articles about the attacks?”

You nod. “He thinks it will be a way to rally people together, to generate enough momentum to stop the attacks and drive out the vampires. Similar to what happened two hundred years ago.”

Heeseung is already resigned to your commitment to seeing this through. No matter how resistant he is to the fact that you’ll be spending more time with your professor, there’s no fight in his voice when he asserts, “And you’re going to do it.”

Again, you nod. “It’s a way for me to keep getting close to him. Maybe I’ll learn how he’s able to keep his bloodlust under control. And I know it’s more complicated than good and evil, but these attacks are horrific. If this helps to stop them, or at least to make people more aware of them, that could help save lives.”

That, at least, Heeseung understands. “The others are out right now,” he tells you. “Spread throughout the city near the places where the attacks occurred. We’re trying to stop what we can, too. And maybe get an idea of what’s going on. Where this vampire came from. Stop them before more are made.”

You think of Heeseung’s story, the painstaking steps they’ve all taken to allow themselves to get involved in matters like this. The sacrifices they’ve made. The dreams of a normal life they’ve all had to grieve, to give up entirely. “Have they found anything?”

Heeseung shakes his head. “Not yet. But we’ll keep looking. Vampires aren’t known for being careful. They can’t be, not with their head so full of bloodlust. They’ll make a mistake eventually, and then we’ll find them. I’m surprised they haven’t already.”

For the sake of your city, you can’t help but agree. Your only wish is that no one else will have to get hurt to finish this for good. “I hope so.”

Heeseung turns to you again. The bag of moonflower is still in his hands. It strikes you, just how close he can be to poison without feeling any of the fear that seems to find you so easily these days. “Are you sure there wasn’t anything that seemed… I don’t know… strange about him? About New Haven?”

You shake your head. “I mean, the building itself is still really odd, but it seemed less sinister with the lights on and the blood cleaned up.” Remembering that Heeseung sat through his lectures too, that he’ll understand just how odd it is for Professor Kim to have a painting hanging askew, you add, “Honestly, the only weird thing was this painting in his office. You know how meticulous he is, but it was super tilted to the—”

Your words die on your lips. It hadn’t clicked, then, what was so familiar about that painting. But here, now, in the aftermath, you put two and two together. 

Heeseung’s eyes flick to yours, finding them wide. “What?” he questions, suddenly urgent as he takes note of the odd expression on your face. 

“The painting.” Your mind is racing, willing things to make sense. “There was a painting in his office. I thought it looked familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why.”

Heeseung’s brow draws together. “What was it?”

“The field.” You match his gaze, eyes brimming with a million unanswered questions. There’s nothing believable about it. It sounds ridiculous, an absurd lie, even to your own ears. “The painting in his office was of the field from the vision you showed me.”

…..

Jungwon isn’t answering his phone. 

“C’mon…” Instead of sitting on the navy couch in his living room like Jake was when you found him here, Heeseung paces in front of it. A few feet away, you stand, still reeling at your realization. 

Finally, on the fifth ring, Jungwon picks up. 

“Jungwon,” Heeseung breathes. “How close are you to the professor’s house? Could you get eyes on him?”

You hear the muffled sound of Jungwon’s indecipherable response from the other side of the line. 

After a moment, Heeseung says, “Okay, that’s fine. Just have him text me.” 

Ending the call, he turns to look at you, phone falling limply to his side. 

“Niki’s closer,” he explains. “Jungwon will check with him and have him message me when Professor Kim is confirmed to be back at his house.”

Because now that you’ve connected the dots, Heeseung insists that he needs to see this painting for himself. Which means the two of you need to wait until you’re certain Professor Kim is nowhere near New Haven. 

“I mean,” you try, grasping at straws to find a way for all of this to make sense, “is it possible that he’s been to that field too? Or knows someone that has?”

“You don’t understand.” Heeseung shakes his head. “That field is—was—in Celedis. It hasn’t existed for four hundred years.”

Your eyebrows furrow. “What do you mean, it hasn’t existed? I know you said that people forgot about Celedis, but—”

“They didn’t just forget.” Heeseung sighs. After a moment, he stops his pacing to take a seat on the couch. He looks at you from where he sits. “The blood moon I told you about, the one that comes every hundred years.”

You nod, remembering that piece of his story, of his visions. 

“It has certain powers,” Heeseung explains. “It’s a night when old magic is the strongest. And four hundred years ago, one hundred years after the seven of us stopped aging, the eighth son went back to Celedis. It was mostly empty by then. Had been so ravaged by vampires that everyone was either dead or had fled to other kingdoms.”

He doesn’t accompany this story with narration, but you see it all the same. The devastation. The vast emptiness. The tragedy of a kingdom lost to destruction of its own making.

“But he went back, and he found the oak tree where the seven lords, the seer, and his father had all cast their wishes. He didn’t understand old magic, but he was so consumed by his own bloodlust, his thirst for more, that it didn’t matter.”

Heeseung looks at his hands, turns his fingers over in the light as if the lines in his palms contain unknown answers. Explanations for sins past.

“Fueled by his selfishness, he wished for ultimate control over everything, to be the most powerful being in the world. Old magic took his wish and interpreted it as old magic does. It is said that moments after his wish was cast, the kingdom of Celedis collapsed in on itself, destroying hundreds of years of architecture, history, culture. All gone in a single second. And it took the eighth son with it. Returned his body to the land. After all, what could be more powerful than the earth itself? The very source of the kingdom’s magic.”

Heeseung looks at you with something fierce in his eyes. “No one alive today should know what that field looks like.” 

His assuredness sends a chill into your bones. How could it be true? You know what you saw, or at least you think you do, but how on earth would Professor Kim have any connection to a kingdom lost centuries before his birth?

Heeseung pauses for a moment, something suddenly occurring to him, the same idea crossing his mind. “You’re sure that Professor Kim said he was turned only twenty years ago?”

“Yes,” you nod. “And I think that makes sense, actually. New Haven was founded shortly after.” The publishing house he created to spark a literary revolution against the monsters that consumed his world, ruined his life. It follows logic that he would establish it in the wake of his tragic changing. 

Heeseung accepts this, prodding at the other variable instead. “And you’re sure it’s the same field that you saw?”

The more he tells you, the more you doubt your own eyes, your own fallible memory. But— “I mean, my memory isn’t perfect, but I recognized it instantly. I just couldn’t remember where I had seen it until I was outside again, with you.”

Heeseung is quiet for a moment, contemplating. An incoming message from Niki sounds out with a quiet ping, breaking the silence.

Glancing down at his phone, Heeseung’s lips tighten. He looks back to you. “The professor is home.”

A handful of minutes later, you’re back at the publishing house, this time with Heeseung at your side. 

The two of you stand on the front porch, trying to shroud yourselves in the shadows as much as possible. The whole area still seems uncannily deserted, but erring on the side of caution has never hurt. Heeseung reaches for the door handle with a firm grip, but despite his efforts, it doesn't turn.

“It’s locked,” he whispers to you. “Do you have a bobby pin or anything similar?”

“No.” You shake your head. Did the two of you seriously get this far to be thwarted by something as simple as a locked door? After a moment of contemplation, you realize that you do still have something narrow and sharp holstered to your thigh. For a handful of seconds, it seems almost too ridiculous to consider. But your pride is not the most pressing issue at the moment. Slowly, you ask, “Do you think the dagger might work?”

Heeseung pauses, turns to look at you over his shoulder. “Maybe, actually.”

Again, you pull up the fabric from your left pant leg, retrieving the weapon in question. Sliding it out of the holster, you hand it to him wordlessly. 

You watch as Heeseung struggles with the lock, letting out quiet curses every time the knife slips. And then, after a few frustrating attempts, a quiet click signals his success. 

Who would have thought? The dagger did actually come in handy at New Haven. 

Despite Niki’s confirmation that the professor is far away in his home, the two of you enter quietly, carefully. The hallway remains dark as you forgo turning on any of the lights. Instead, you let the dim light of the dying day outside guard your path. You’re not even sure you would need that. At this point, this place is starting to become familiar.  

Plunged in darkness, the publishing house is nearly as eerie as it was the first time you visited, but with Heeseung at your side, at least some of your nerves are abated. 

In the open room at the end of the hall, your two chairs from earlier still sit, now empty. 

Moving past them, the two of you approach your professor’s office. As you get closer to the door, you wonder if Heeseung will have to pick the lock again. But when he reaches forward this time, the knob twists without a hint of resistance. 

Heeseung waits until you’re in the office next to him, shutting the door behind the both of you before flicking on the light. It’s another precaution. Just in case a passerby were to look in through the window from the open room, they wouldn’t notice any usual movement or light. 

But the world outside now feels like a distant concern. 

Because the painting, illuminated by artificial light, hangs in front of you just as surely as it had an hour ago.

For a moment, Heeseung says nothing, just frowning at the scenery. 

“Well?” you prompt, desperate to hear his appraisal, “what do you think?”

“It’s similar,” Heeseung admits, eyes narrowing. He exhales, and you can’t tell if it’s in disbelief or acute relief. “Really similar, but it’s not exactly right. Those flowers there,” he points to a small cluster of bright red tulips at the edge of the painting, “there were never any like that.” 

The most prominent of your emotions is relief. At least you won’t have to add this to the growing list of mysteries surrounding your professor. 

But then, another thought creeps in. Again, you wonder what life must be like with a perfect recollection. Glancing sidelong at Heeseung, you suppose it certainly comes in handy at moments like this. Although you’re not sure the price he pays for eternal memory is worth it.

“It must just be a place that looks similar,” Heeseung concludes, as eager as you to leave New Haven far behind. “Let’s—”

“Wait.” Frowning, you take a step forward, closer to the painting. “Earlier today, the reason I thought it seemed so out of place, it was hanging off center.” But the painting in front of you is perfectly level. “He fixed it.”

Heeseung follows your gaze. “Do you think it got knocked around that night we found him here? Maybe he didn’t have a chance to fix it until today.”

“Maybe,” you agree, “but the rest of his office was perfect.” Nothing else was out of place. 

Taking a few more steps forward, you stand directly in front of the painting. It’s beautiful, but the closer you look, the odder it gets. Looking at the brush strokes, it seems almost… amateur. The scene is strikingly realistic in the way only a practiced artist could manage, but the individual lines are messier the closer you get. As if unrefined hands put it together. 

An idea comes to you, along with a sinking suspicion that settles heavily in the pit of your stomach. Looking at the painting again, your eyes are assessing now.

It’s large. Heavy, probably. You’ll need his help. 

Turning to face Heeseung, you request, “Help me move it.”

Heeseung frowns at you. “Why?”

You shrug, but the last thing you feel is nonchalance. You’re thinking of voices behind this door. Too far away to possibly be coming from an office this small. “Just a hunch. If I’m wrong, we’ll put it right back.”

Heeseung still wears an odd look on his face, but he does as you ask. On the count of three, the two of you lift the painting off of its mount. Set it down. 

And reveal a small, circular opening in the wall, just large enough for a person of Professor Kim’s size to squeeze through. 

A glance passes between the two of you, composed equally of shock and dread. 

Still, you force yourself to get closer. Despite the light from the office, it’s dark when you peer in. The only thing you can tell for sure is that it goes down. Which is confirmed by the ladder that’s attached to the side of the wall. 

God, you’ve had enough of goddamn ladders today to last you a lifetime. 

Heeseung sends another message to Niki, once again confirming that Professor Kim is still far, far away. And then he hoists himself up through the opening. 

Or at least, he tries to. 

Feet back on the ground, very much still on your side of the wall, he shakes his head. “I can’t go in.”

You balk. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of the dark.”

The look he gives you is withering. “No, I physically cannot go in. Vampires can’t enter into places they haven’t been invited to, remember?”

“What?” It’s not new information, and with moonflower out of your system, you have all the ability to retain it. But suddenly you’re confused. That particular restriction seems like something that should have been causing him a lot more strife. “How did you get through the front door then? Or into this office?” Another realization dawns. “How did you get into class?”

“The rules are a little blurry,” Heeseung explains. “Public spaces like businesses and universities that don’t really belong to someone are usually fine. Even offices, since they still lack that true sense of personal belonging.”

You arch an eyebrow. “That is ridiculously convoluted.”

“I told you, old magic is finicky.” Looking back at the opening in the wall, he adds, “Either our dear professor feels a particularly strong attachment to the secret chamber attached to his office, or that hunch of yours must have been right. This is more than just a publishing house.”

The admittance does make you a little smug, even if you’d never tell him that. Turning towards the opening, you move past him. With a large inhale, you start to hoist yourself up. A hand around your wrist keeps you firmly planted on the ground. 

You turn to look at Heeseung over your shoulder, brow pulling in confusion. 

“This was a good plan,” he tells you, “and a good idea. We’ll just have to figure out another way to come back and—”

“Wait, what?” You frown. “Why would we go back? We’re right here.”

Heeseung looks at you like you’re missing something blatant. “Yeah, with one small problem.” After a moment of extended silence, he gestures to himself and says, “I can’t go in.”

You return his gaze, equally incredulous. He’s the one that’s missing the obvious here. “But I can.”

“No.” His lips flatten, reminiscent of when you told him you’d be seeing your professor again. “Absolutely not.”

But you don’t have the time to waste on his misplaced sense of guilt-ridden protection over you right now. “This might be the only chance we get!” you insist. “You’re willing to waste that?”

Heeseung doubles down, equally stubborn. “I’m willing to wait for another option that doesn’t include you disappearing down a ladder into a dark room alone. We have no idea where it leads. Or what could possibly be waiting down there.”

“Fine,” you concede, shoulders slumping. “I guess you’re right. Maybe Jungwon will have an idea how we can—”

Cutting off mid-sentence, you turn again, trying to squeeze yourself through the opening before he has the chance to realize what’s happening and put a stop to it. 

This time, your wrist is untouched. Instead, it’s an arm around your waist, just under your ribs, that pulls you back. 

Heeseung’s chest pressed along the curve of your spine, he whispers against the shell of your ear, “Did you really think that was going to work?” His voice is low, dangerous as his irritation makes itself apparent. “I can tell when you’re lying, you know.” With the hand not currently wrapped around you, he taps the base of your neck, right on your pulse point. “Right here.” He presses down, pressure light but insistent. “Your heartbeat. It races like crazy when you lie.”

You feel it in your throat now. 

“Heeseung,” you whisper, not trusting your voice to remain steady if you speak any louder. 

“Mm?” His breath ghosts along the sensitive skin of your ear. You suppress a shudder. The ghost of it traces your spine anyway.

“Let me go. I’ll be careful—”

“I’m starting to think you don’t know the meaning of that word.” But his grip relaxes anyway. Loosens until his arm is back at his side. 

Slowly, you turn to face him. He’s still close to you. 

So close. Too close. Not nearly close enough. 

Angling forward, he places the palm of his hand on the wall behind you next to your head, just below the opening. Effectively caging you in. 

“What could go wrong?” You’re breathless and you hate it. “I have a dagger.”

“Actually,” he corrects you, “I have the dagger.”

“Well,” you argue, “if you give it back, we won’t have a problem.”

He still doesn’t look convinced. “Do you even have a light?”

Shit. You don’t. Well, except for—

“I have the flashlight on my phone.”

Disapproval makes itself the most prominent expression on his features. 

Slowly, he lets his arm fall back to his side. Then, before you have a chance to make sense of his action, he sinks to his knees before you. With steady hands, he starts to lift the bottom of your left pant leg. 

Your first instinct is to relax into his touch. Your second, not trailing far behind, is to kick him in the jaw. You doubt either of those would serve you well.

Instead, you remain motionless, prone to whatever whim spurs him on as he continues his steady path upward.

The skin of your calf is revealed, inch by agonizing inch, until he reaches the juncture of your knee. Until he stops just above it. 

You understand, now, what he’s doing. Every inch of you hones in on the sensation of gentle fingers sliding the dagger back into place. The holster on your thigh gets a little heavier. You feel his exhale against your skin. 

Slowly, he guides the fabric back of your pant leg into place, weapon now secured. From beneath you, his gaze finds yours. He maintains eye contact while he rises to his full height. 

“Don’t do anything stupid.” It sounds like a prayer, and you have no idea what to do with that.

“When have I ever—”

“Please.”

It’s so damn vulnerable, the sound of him begging. Pleading with you to treat your life with care. As if it’s something precious to him, something he can’t stand the thought of losing. 

You breathe, your chest rising and falling, separated from him by only a handful of inches. Resistance feels futile. So, you muster all of your sincerity, and you mean it when you assure him, “I won’t.”

This time, he helps hoist you up. Makes sure you have solid footing on the ladder on the other side of the wall before letting you go with a reluctant grip that lingers a little too long.

“Be safe,” he whispers. One last request between the two of you. “I’ll be here.”

You nod once, committing the strange look on his features to memory, and then you’re descending. You do your best not to think about how tall the ladder might be, how far you might have to drop should you lose your footing. You couldn't see the bottom from the office, and you’re not about to risk taking a hand off of the ladder to activate your phone’s flashlight. 

Ultimately, it’s not as great a distance as you feared. You can’t have been going down for more than a minute when your feet hit solid ground. 

Still shaky from residual adrenaline and the lingering remnants of whatever just passed between you and Heeseung, you reach for your phone, turning the flashlight on. 

It’s not a very powerful light, and it only illuminates small sections of the darkened room at a time. Turning side to side, you get the impression that it’s a fairly large space. Crouching down, you place a palm against the floor beneath you. Stone, you think. The limited light of your flashlight helps to confirm this.

There’s a distinct sort of permeating cold down here, so far from the sun, so deep beneath the earth. You can sense large amounts of moisture in the air, too. It clings to your skin, making you feel more clammy than you already were.

It’s quiet. Eerily so. The only sounds you hear are the rhythmic drip of water somewhere in the distance and the furious thrumming of your own heart in your ears. 

Immediately, you think of the night you heard strange noises that sounded like they were coming from Professor Kim’s office. He must have been down here, you realize. Maybe with someone else. 

Or something else. 

That thought sends your skin crawling with a deep sense of unease. You don’t know the extent of Heeseung’s heightened senses, but you’re sure he’d be able to tell if there was another living thing down here. Or, at least, you try to convince yourself that’s the case in order to ease some of your rising nerves. 

Turning to your right, you can barely make out the shadowy shape of some kind of structure a few feet away. Again, Heeseung was right. A stronger flashlight really would have been better. But you’re here now, and you’ll have to make use of what you have. 

Slowly, you begin to walk towards it. But after a few steady steps, you’re nearly sent sprawling over the stone floor as your foot makes contact with a hard, heavy object in your path. Letting out a hushed curse, you shine your light down at the ground once again. This time, stone floor isn’t the only thing you see. 

Frowning, you bend to take a closer look. Shackles. You’ve stumbled across an old, rusted pair of iron shackles. 

The discovery sends a fresh chill down your spine. What on earth is this place?

You don’t have long to linger on it. Niki is keeping an eye on Professor Kim, but even that will only give you so much warning if he should decide to come to New Haven for any reason. And you have your promise to Heeseung to consider. Nothing stupid. 

Taking care to step around the shackles, you shine your light towards the ground this time as you continue pressing forward. 

As you get closer, the structure you could barely make out comes into clearer view. But with every inch that’s revealed, your horror only grows. It isn’t much of a structure at all, you realize, stomach dropping. It’s a cell. Thick, heavy metal bars that appear to be carved into the earth itself. 

You can’t quite bring yourself to step inside, but you do get as close as you can. It’s empty, but evidence of terror remains. There are more shackles. These ones are attached to the stone that forms the back wall of the enclosure. 

And that’s not all you see. There are other strange objects in the cell. Long, long metal instruments that you don’t want to imagine uses for. Old, faded blood stains that cover the stone floor. 

Forcing your breathing to even out, you angle your phone towards the enclosure, ensuring that your camera’s flash is on before taking a photo. If Heeseung can’t come down here, you’ll bring as much of it as you can to him. 

Turning away from the cell, you start moving in the adjacent direction, the one that will take you further and further from the ladder with every slow step. In the silence, the sound of your feet against wet stone rings out like gunshots. 

You suddenly feel vulnerable. A sitting duck, an easy target. Shaking the thought away, you force yourself forward. 

Continuing to walk, more horror lines your periphery. There must be a dozen of them, at least. These strange, terrible cells that line either side of the long room. After the first one, you don’t stop for long to examine the others. 

Instead, you continue until you reach the end of the room. Similar to the publishing house above you, it’s essentially a long hall that opens into a wider room. Your eyes have adjusted slightly to the dark, but you still squint to make out anything other than the solid expanse of stone. 

Shining your flashlight to the left, you can just make out the shape of two large objects. As you walk closer, they become more clear. 

The first is a desk. A simple wooden surface to sit and do some writing, perhaps. Nothing particularly strange or out of the ordinary, other than its location. 

It’s the object next to it that gives you pause, has you leaning closer with furrowed eyebrows. 

As you shine your light at it directly, it appears to be a large chest. The kind you would find at an antique store or see in a museum. Something people from past times would use to store clothes or books or other household essentials. 

There’s a lock on the front of this one, however, Complete with a large, heavy chain that makes you think its contents are less than ordinary. 

Crouching slightly, you reach down. Your fingers shake slightly as you tug at the lid. It doesn’t budge, the lock holding firm. You suspected as much, but the result is still frustrating. 

Setting your phone down for a moment, you reach for the dagger strapped to your thigh. You aren’t as well versed in the art of lock-picking as Heeseung seems to be, but you know you’d regret not at least giving it a try. 

It’s no use, you realize after only a few seconds. This lock is different from the one on the front door. It’s large, looks as if it can only be opened by an equally ancient key. One forged by a blacksmith in a lost century. The dagger slips in through the opening, but the shape is too different to gain any purchase. Your dagger can’t find anything to maneuver. 

So you settle with the next best option. As you did with the first cell, you angle your camera towards the chest, taking a photo of ir and its impenetrable lock. 

Frowning at the dead end, you stand back to your full height. You replace the dagger in its holster, reaching for your phone. It might be wise to message Heeseung for a quick status update, to ensure that you have time to keep looking around. In fact, you’re surprised he hasn’t been blowing you up since the second your feet hit solid ground. 

But as soon as your phone screen lights up, you check the top corner and find the reason for his radio silence. 

No signal. Your heart gives a sudden lurch. It makes sense, in hindsight. You have to be at least several feet underground, and cell service providers probably didn’t have secret underground prisons with strange locked chests in mind when they planned their coverage maps. 

But it also means that Heeseung has no way of communicating with you. That you have no way of receiving any messages he may have been trying to send. 

You’re sure you would hear him, if he yelled loudly enough from the opening in the office. 

But if there were any reason he couldn’t speak loudly, any reason he didn’t want to draw attention to himself…

Scenarios suddenly spinning through your mind, you turn back, retracing your steps. The hallway seems even longer now that you’re trying to move through it quickly. The cells seem even more ominous, shadowy silhouettes in your periphery. 

You give a slight start when you almost collide with the ladder, so consumed with hurrying that you almost missed the wall in front of you entirely. 

Grateful that you didn’t just break your nose from a collision with a stone wall, you shut off your phone flashlight. You slide it back into your pocket, and then you begin to ascend back up the ladder you came down. It’s a precarious balance, trying to be both swift and sure footed. 

After what feels like hours but is surely less than two minutes, you’re back at the opening. 

Heeseung, just like he promised he would be, is already there, waiting. 

“Oh, thank the skies,” he breathes as soon as you come into view. If the situation were any different, you might laugh at the turn of phrase. Another relic of his unnaturally long past, you suppose. “I’ve been trying to message you this whole time, but—”

“No signal,” you explain. Your words are slightly stilted as you ease yourself down from the opening, less gracefully than you hoped. “I didn’t realize it until I turned back.” You nod at his phone. “Does Niki still have eyes on him?”

“Yeah,” Heeseung nods. “The professor is still in his house.”

Tension drains from your shoulders. But as you begin to tell Heeseung what you saw, show him the photos you took as evidence, it slowly starts to creep back in. 

“Jail cells?” He frowns, echos of your own questions repeated back to you. “For what? For who?”

“I have no idea.” You shake your head. “But there was also a box, a chest of sorts.” You show him the photo. “It was locked. I tried to get in with the dagger, but it was no use. The key hole was too big for it to move anything around.”

“Can I?” Heeseung asks, gesturing towards your phone. You hand over the device in question. 

Eyes narrowing in concentration, he zooms in on the photo. 

“I can’t remember the last time I saw a lock like that.” It’s hard not to feel defeated, to feel like everytime you’re on the brink of a discovery, some new obstacle blocks your path. After a moment, you add, “I don’t even know if I ever have seen a lock like that. Other than in movies or museums.” 

Heeseung could get into it, maybe. Either by picking it or with brunt force alone. But he can’t get to the chest. And it’s far too big for you to carry back to him. Besides, you’re hesitant to move anything, even if Professor Kim is back at him home for the evening. You doubt you could get the chest back to its exact location without shifting something around. And if anyone were to notice something out of place, it would be him. 

Even if it was just a chest in a dark, cave-like room, shifted a few inches in the wrong direction. 

“I think…” Heeseung looks up, directly at you, interrupting your train of thought. “I think I may have seen this key before.”

“What?” you ask. “Where?”

Heeseung still sounds unsure, but the more he reveals, the more you start to wonder if he’s right. “I can’t be certain, but towards the beginning of the semester, I remember seeing Professor Kim carrying an old fashioned key in his briefcase. I’d been following him all morning, and I saw him take it out once he got to the university. He put it in his office. I think he might have left it there.”

You frown. “That makes no sense. Why would he leave a key to a locked chest in his secret evil cave prison at his very public university office?””

“I don’t know.” Heeseung looks equally as confused. “And like I said, I’m not completely certain.  He might not have left it there, but… it could be worth a shot.”

You want to say that it feels impossible, but the events of the past week have made that word hold very little weight in your mind. 

“That seems…” you trail off, searching for a semantic replacement, “improbable.”

“I know,” Heeseung agrees, “but it’s all we’ve got.”

“It’s still winter break,” you point out, moving past probabilities to logistics. Glancing at the time on your phone, you add, “And it’s almost sunset. How would we even get into the university?”

Heeseung just smiles. There’s no humor in it, but there is an air of self-assuredness. “Leave that to me.”

Half an hour later, you find yourself standing at the top of a third unnaturally tall height of the day. 

“You know,” you cross your arms, “when you said you had a way of getting into the university, I didn’t think it would involve breaking in through a window on the fourth floor. You may be invincible but a fall from this height could actually take me out, you know? And aren’t there cameras?” 

Heeseung wiggles the window frame for another handful of seconds, a self-satisfied smile crossing his features when he hears a telltale pop. “This is the liberal arts building at a public university. The only security cameras that have been updated since 2005 are by the stadium and the school of business.” He pauses his ministrations, suddenly serious when he turns to look at you. “And I wouldn’t let you fall.”

You’re not reassured. “Still,” you hiss, “we’re breaking in through a window. What if someone sees—”

“Like you said,” Heeseung interrupts, sliding the window open, giving the two of you just enough space to slide through, “it’s winter break and after dark. No one is around.” He nods his head toward the open window. “After you.”

Tossing him one more glare, you maneuver your body through the open window. Heesueng follows you, sliding into the fourth floor hallway of the liberal arts building with more poise than you could ever hope to embody. 

He pulls the window shut behind you, slides it back into place with a firm tug. Brushing his hands on his pants, he turns to face you, expression light as if the two of you have just walked through the front door of a bowling alley, not committed a federal crime by breaking and entering through a fourth floor window. 

It’s all you can do to stare at him blankly. What has your life turned into?

“His office is on the third floor,” is all Heeseung says, “at the end of the hallway.”

“I know where his office is.” You sound petulant even to your own ears. But the location of your professor’s office is not the problem. The fact that you’re breaking and entering into a public university to try and locate a key to unlock an ancient looking chest in the prison-esque secret basement of your vampire professor’s publishing house, however, is. 

Still, you match Heeseung’s pace as he begins to walk, following a steady path to the third floor offices. After descending the staircase, the two of you round a corner, turning down the long, narrow hallway that leads to your desired destination. 

“How likely do you think it is that he even keeps the key here?” You’re whispering. The two of you are alone, so it’s probably not necessary. But speaking at full volume in a situation like this would just feel… wrong.     

Heeseung shrugs as your footsteps erase the last of the distance between you and Professor Kim’s office. “Only one way to find out.”

“Wait.” You stop, now directly in front of the door as another thought occurs to you. A particularly annoying limitation of those afflicted with vampirism. “Are you even going to be able to get in?”

“His office at New Haven wasn’t the problem,” Heeseung points out. “Besides, I actually have been invited into this one.”

You arch an eyebrow. 

“What?” Heeseung shrugs. “I went to office hours once.” 

Office hours. You’d been a regular at those too. It suddenly feels like a lifetime ago. 

Reaching forward, you try the door handle. It’s locked. 

“I think we might need the dagger again.” You reach to retrieve it, a memory flashing through your mind. The last time you were here, you were armed with a first draft of a homework assignment and enough anxiety to make you nauseous. Now, with a dagger in your hand and a vampire at your side, the contrast is stark. 

Handing the knife to Heeseung, you watch as he methodically jiggles it for less than thirty seconds before you hear a soft click. 

“Thanks.” He hands the dagger back to you, waiting for you to secure it back into place. Then, he opens the door, and the two of you enter. 

It feels illicit. It is illicit, but the first thing that strikes you is just how similar this office is to the one at New Haven. Meticulously organized. Not a file out of place. The only thing missing is a painting that looks eerily similar to visions of Heeseung’s childhood. Oh, and the secret basement hiding behind it, of course.    

Here, however, there would be nothing to hide it behind. And no matter where your eyes wander, you can’t seem to find anywhere worth hiding a secret key, either. No glaringly obvious evil drawer of a file cabinet or particularly sinister potted plant. 

But Heeseung must see something you don’t. He approaches your professor’s desk slowly, a frown tugging at his lips. His gaze is fixated on the far corner of it, where the only indications of personality in the entire room are arranged in a neat row. 

Three small figurines. At first glance, they appear wooden, hand-carved. The first is a tree. The second is a rose. And the third is a startlingly lifelike human heart. 

They’re all relatively small, about the size of your closed fist. The closer you look, the more intricate they become. Details are carved with phenomenal precision. From leaves to petals to veins, the craftsmanship is remarkable. 

Heeseung is staring at them with a distinct intensity. 

“What is it?” you ask. 

“I’m not sure,” he admits, still fixated on the carvings. “I just feel strangely… drawn to them. The heart in particular.” But he still doesn’t do anything about it. 

Spurred by his inaction, you reach for the figurine, lifting it to eye level. It’s smooth to the touch, nothing particularly noteworthy about it other than the intricacy of the carving. 

But then you give it a slight shake. The two of you lock eyes when something rattles inside. 

“Do you think…” you breathe, sentence trailing into oblivion. 

Heeseung’s eyes flicker from you to the heart. “Does it open?”

From your current vantage point, there’s nothing obvious. But then you turn the heart upside down. Whatever’s contained inside follows the flow of gravity, settling heavily inside the upturned figurine with a small thump. 

And on the bottom of the heart, there’s a latch. Tiny, but unmistakable. Your hands are shaking, almost too hard for you to get a proper grip. But once you do, the latch clicks open without a hint of resistance. 

Turning the heart upright again, all you can do is gasp as a large, ornate, metal key falls into your open palm. 

Your gaze locks on Heeseung’s, jaw open in disbelief. “How did you know?”

He shakes his head, just as dumbfounded as you. “I have no idea.”

But now you have another dilemma. Do you take it with you? Go back to New Haven now? If Professor Kim were to make a stop by his office or the publishing house for any reason, the two of you could be in deep, deep trouble. For something far worse than breaking and entering. 

But you can’t just leave it here. Not when you’re nearly one-hundred percent certain you know exactly what it opens. Not when you’re dying to know what’s worth guarding with that much effort.  

You’re about to voice your concern to Heeseung when he beats you to it. Eyes flicking to yours, imbued with a sudden intensity, he whispers, “Someone’s coming.”

“What?” you whisper back. “Who?”

“I don’t know.” He listens for a second longer. “It’s not Professor Kim. I can tell by the footsteps. But whoever it is, they’re headed in this direction.”

“Do we stay in here?” It’s unlikely that whoever it is will check your professor’s office, but if discovery is inevitable, it would be better for the two of you not to be found not inside a university employee’s locked office.

Again, you glance around the room, this time frantically searching for somewhere, anywhere to serve as a hiding space for the two of you. You come up empty handed. 

Then, to your relief, Heeseung says, “They turned down a different hall,” It’s short lived when he adds, “Let’s go. I think we can make it back to the fourth floor.”

Making a run for it feels like the worst possible option. “Are you serious?”

“Do you want to be found in here?”

You don’t, but the sound of footsteps in an otherwise empty building will surely alert whoever it is to your presence. Staying put feels like a far better choice. “Can’t we just wait for them to leave?”

“We don’t know when they will,” Heeseung argues. “Or if they’ll come this way before they do.”

He’s right, you realize, something sinking in your stomach. You know he’s right, but staying in place feels safer to you somehow. Making a mad dash back to the fourth floor feels like a suicide mission. 

“Okay,” you agree, breath suddenly rapid as you slide the key into your pocket. “Okay.”

“Give me the dagger.” Heeseung holds out his hand. 

“You’re not going to stab—”

“Of course not! We need to relock the door.”

Mollified, you retrieve the dagger before handing it to him. 

As quickly and quietly as possible, the two of you tiptoe out of your professor’s office, key heavy in your pocket. Heeseung slides the door shut behind you, slides the dagger into the lock and maneuvers it back into place. 

As soon as it clicks, his hand freezes. 

When he turns to you, it’s with panic in his eyes. “The footsteps,” he whispers. “They changed again. They’re headed in this direction.”

Shit. 

Shit. 

Maybe making a break for the fourth floor is still an option. 

“Do we still have time to—”

Heeseung shakes his head. You know he’s telling the truth. Because now you, even with your mediocre human senses, can hear the footsteps too. The way that they’re getting louder. Getting closer. 

You’re frantic now. “Don’t you have super speed or something?”

“The only exit is down the hall,” Heeseung returns. “We’d just be running at above average speed towards the person.”

“Well, can you make yourself invisible?”

“I’m not a wizard!”

“Oh, well forgive me for assuming the immortal supernatural being who can project visions from their mind through physical touch might be able to do something useful in this situation.”

Arguing will do little to save you now. The footsteps are only getting louder. Even if you wanted to, there’s no way you’d have time to get back into Professor Kim’s office before you’re discovered. 

Heeseung confirms this. “We have approximately three seconds.”

You look up at him, his features soft in the low light of a nearly abandoned building. Panic etched across his face, eyes locked on yours. 

Panic still outlining your words, you whisper, “Do you trust me?”

He recoils an inch, obvious distrust written in his expression. “Why?”

You roll your eyes. You should have expected as much. “Never mind.”

But you reach for him anyway, before he has time to register what’s happening. His supernatural senses will do him little good here. They warn him when your heart starts racing, yes, but they don’t make your actions predictable. Especially not the ones you don’t feel entirely in control of yourself. 

And of all the improbable, impossible things to happen today, this just might be the most unexpected. 

He’s surprisingly easy to maneuver, you realize, when he’s caught entirely off guard. There’s no resistance when your hand wraps around the nape of his neck. Nothing but acceptance in the way his muscles give as you pull him down to your height. 

There’s a second, a fragmented splinter of time, in which his lips hover just above yours. A millimeter of distance. A chance to retract regret borrowed from the future. 

But like every moment you’ve stolen with him, it slips from your fingers just as surely. 

And then, with the steadiness of a sure thing, his lips are on yours. 

You won’t pretend to be privy to the extent of his knowledge, the experience the past five hundred years have afforded him, but all you can think is that it feels a little bit like a kiss you would steal behind the bleachers in eighth grade. 

Hesitation renders him all but immobile. It’s written into the way his eyes are still open in shock, mouth screwed shut, hands anywhere but on you. 

Despite his obvious reluctance, despite everything in you screaming that this was a bad idea, your mouth parts against his, a breath escaping between your lips. 

He swallows it, and for a moment, everything is still. Until it’s not. 

Hands on your waist are the first thing you feel. The first initiation in this dance between you that’s of his doing. The second is pressure returned against your lips, firm, insistent. 

A line is being crossed; a barrier is being broken. Desire that he keeps tethered on a firm leash is slipping through his fingers as they land on the base of your spine. 

This was always going to be something forged between the two of you. In response, you bring your second hand to join your first at the base of his neck, tangling in the hair you find there. 

He pushes forward, and you’re left with nowhere to go but the expanse of the wall behind you. Back flush against it, you can’t help the small noise of surprise that escapes. Somewhere between a sigh and a hum. 

Whatever it is, it has Heeseung doubling down. As if he wants to swallow every sound you make. As if he wants to earn them first. 

His mouth opens against yours, and suddenly, his hands are everywhere. Your spine, your hips, the hem of your shirt. He pushes further, crowding you against the wall. Until it feels like your desire, the feverish heat brewing beneath your skin, doesn’t belong to you anymore. 

Sensation is suddenly a shared thing, and you’re both chasing fleeting glimpses at a future neither of you thought you would ever have. 

Fingers tangling further in his hair, you can’t help the small, pitiful noises that escape now. Crawl up your throat and drip from your tongue with every give and take, every push and pull. 

Heesung is anything but immobile now. And he’ll give as good as he gets. 

It’s on an unsteady exhale that you feel it, a quick, sharp pain on your bottom lip. Hissing in pain, it’s nothing but a knee jerk reaction when you pull away slightly. 

Heeseung doesn’t let you get far. Mouth chasing yours, he hovers just a fragment of an inch above you. Whatever remains of his inhibition keeps him there, a hair's breadth away from you. 

Slowly, you raise a finger to your bottom lip. To the source of your gasp, the site of the small flicker of pain. When you pull it back to eye level, your fingertip comes away red. 

You’ve never seen his fangs before, as your eyes drop to his mouth, you realize that they’ve made an appearance. Sharp, predatory, destructive. All the things you’ve been told to fear, raised to run from.

His eyes, however, hold nothing but apologies. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. He’s still just as close, but you can feel the way he’s pulling away, retracting into himself even as he remains tangled in your embrace. “I didn’t realize I had—”

You don’t hear the end of it. It doesn’t take much to erase the space between you again. 

And where you expect to find that same resistance from before, where you expect to have to fight his hesitation, convince him to give into the sensations building between you, you find only a feverish desire. 

If you thought you were falling into him before, you’re surely drowning in him now. Consumed in your entirety. 

There’s no space for you to breathe, to think, against the sudden insistence of his mouth, the fervent exploration of his hands. Pretenses between you have been vitiated, and the only thing you crave now is the feeling of reciprocation, some kind of indication that he’s fallen victim to it, too. 

You don’t miss it, either. The particular attention he pays to your bottom lip. The way he bites at it, pulls at it. Careful of your injury and meticulous about using only the teeth of his that don’t double as weapons, yes, but it’s desperate all the same. 

“Fuck, ___,” he whispers, the taste of you on his tongue, sliding down his throat. You feel his words reverberate down the length of your spine, settle heavily in that space just behind your navel. It’s sharper this time, more poignant. You want to follow it, trace all the lines between you until you’re not sure where he ends and you begin. “Fuck.”

It’s slipping from him, that facade of aloofness, that pretense of detachment. It belongs to you now, all of it. His attention. His desire. His feverish lust for everything his inhibitions have always kept him away from. 

His tongue presses against the sensitive skin of your broken bottom lip just as his hand slides under the barrier of your shirt, traces a steady path up your spine until it finds a place to settle, just beneath your rib cage.

“I’m sorry,” he’s still whispering, because he hates himself for wanting this, loathes the way it feels like he’s stealing something from you. Your blood is on his tongue and your trust in his hands. He’s never felt more like a monster, never had such selfish prayers. 

But this was never transactional in your mind, and you feel the furthest from fear that you have since you woke up with his wound etched in the skin of your neck. 

You pull away, only slightly, breath forgotten as you look at him. Your chest heaves with it now. His eyes are cast downwards, as if he can avoid the reality of what’s passed between you by averting his gaze, by looking away. As if his hands aren’t still sitting on your skin. As if he can pretend nothing has happened between you.

It’s not a particular peace you’re willing to give him. And an apology was never what you wanted.

Sliding your hand to his jaw, you turn his chin upward, forcing him to look at you. Your touch, like his, is gentle but firm. Insistent. Again, despite the obvious mismatch in your strength, he lets you adjust him to your will. Allows himself to be manipulated. 

You don’t want his apologies. You don’t want his regret. You hate every unearned sorry he lays at your feet. “Don’t be.” 

Slowly, you bring your other hand, the one not tangled in his hair, up until it’s at eye level. Without breaking eye contact, you press the pad of your fingertip, still stained with a drop of your blood, against his mouth. He opens it under your insistence, maintains eye contact as his lips part, wrap around the tip of your finger. 

When you retract it, the night air feels cold against the wetted skin of your finger. 

It’s only then, when his lips descend on yours again, imbued with a sense of desperate urgency, that you realize you were never disturbed. That the footsteps have faded, lost somewhere that your mind has no use for now. 

The only thing you hear now is the mingling of sighs and the fervent thrumming of your own heartbeat. 

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TO BE CONTINUED...

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note: THANK YOUU for reading!!! I hope you enjoyed, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this chapter. all the best <3

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