Sophia

you’re being annoying. 

his words, not yours — but to be fair, you’re also definitely doing it on purpose.

you don’t even remember how it started. something stupid, probably. the wrong ramen flavor. a teasing comment about his laugh. maybe the fact that he took your charger again and claimed it was his. it doesn’t matter. what matters is that you’re on the offense now — sulking dramatically, pacing around the dorm like a cat with its tail in the air, tossing petty little jabs over your shoulder just to see if you can make soobin crack.

he doesn’t.

he’s sitting at the kitchen table, one elbow resting lazily on the wood, his long legs spread too far apart and one brow raised like he’s watching a mildly entertaining drama. the other boys are around too — beomgyu on the couch watching with a bag of popcorn like you’re the newest episode of TXT’s to-do, yeonjun passing behind you once with a muttered “oh, it’s one of those nights,” and taehyun shaking his head from the armchair like he wants to be surprised but simply isn’t.

you and soobin. five weeks into your very new relationship and already obnoxiously comfortable with each other. you bicker, you flirt, you get on each other’s nerves in a way that somehow just makes the boys trust you more.

they’re over it. they love you, but they’re over it.

especially when you declare — very loudly — “i am going home,” and march straight toward the hallway with your hoodie half-on and your dignity half-gone.

“you’re not going anywhere,” soobin says.

“watch me,” you shoot back.

you grab the doorknob. twist. pull.

it doesn’t open.

you frown. tug harder. nothing.

then, a slow creak as the door swings halfway back inward — just enough to reveal soobin’s tall frame standing directly behind it, one hand pressed flat against the wood. his expression doesn’t change. he doesn’t even look winded.

“you’re not leaving until you apologize,” he says, voice low, measured, like it’s the easiest thing in the world to hold you hostage with one goddamn hand.

you blink at him.

“soobin—”

“use your words.”

“i am using my words—”

you throw your whole body into it now, pushing against the door with everything you’ve got. and he just stands there. one hand. one hand. he might as well be leaning on a counter, the way his weight doesn’t shift an inch. the smirk playing at the corner of his mouth is barely there — but it is there.

somewhere behind you, beomgyu mutters, “this again?”

“last week she locked herself in the bathroom,” yeonjun adds. “he carried her out like a bag of rice.”

taehyun doesn’t even look up. “bet he’s using his left hand too.”

but you don’t hear them. you’re too busy panting, pushing harder, because this is now a matter of pride. the audacity of him. the ease. the way your feet skid back on the floor while he just… watches you.

then, without warning, the resistance drops.

you stumble forward as the door swings open freely — and before you can crash to the ground, soobin catches you. two hands this time. one at your waist, the other at your wrist. steady. warm. still way too calm for someone who just flexed every muscle in his upper body like he wasn’t born to do it.

you glare up at him. “you let go on purpose.”

“you’re welcome.”

“you’re a jerk.”

“you’re cute.”

you blink. then stare harder. “you can’t just— compliment me after— that’s manipulation.”

he leans in. very close now. his hands haven’t left your waist.

“would it work?”

you hate how fast you go quiet. hate the way your heart trips in your chest. you hate him. you want to kiss him so bad your brain shuts down for a full second.

then, from the living room, kai calls out, “can you two kiss already so i can finish this game in peace?”

you nearly jump.

soobin doesn’t even flinch. he just steps back, finally — smug, victorious, insufferable — and offers you a soft little shrug like what can you do?

you stomp past him into the hallway. but you don’t leave.

and later — after you’ve cooled down and shared your stolen hoodie with him on the couch, pressed into his side while the movie plays — beomgyu throws a pillow at your head.

“you’re lucky we like you,” he mutters.

you grin, unapologetic. “i know.”

soobin just pulls you closer.

and maybe — just maybe — next time, you’ll test him again. just to see if you still can.

sunghoon first drank a person dry when he was seventeen — back when the world still lived with vampires walking down your street and the politics was ruled by his species. 

no secrecy, no masquerade. just power in daylight.

it was an unknown woman. someone he’d never seen before. he was freshly turned, barely aware of his own body, teeth still foreign in his mouth. and he felt horrendous. but she wasn’t a person to him then. she was food. not in a poetic, tragic, immortal thirst kind of way — just literally something to quench his throat.

he didn’t think. didn’t hesitate. just lunged. no bloodlust. no rage. just a single, selfish instinct: survive.

she didn’t scream. not that he remembered. just dropped her bag and blinked at him like maybe she recognized what he was. and maybe she did. back then, everyone still knew what vampires looked like. he drained her in minutes. no name. no face. just blood on his hands and the realization that there was no going back.

he tried to bury that memory. didn’t work. six hundred years later and she still showed up in his dreams sometimes. not to haunt him — just to exist. like a marker in time. like a before.

as the years passed, and as his human family faded into names and gravestones, the edges of his morality blurred. at first, the guilt lingered. the disgust. the need to justify. but the horror dulled with time, like anything else. he got used to it.

something that once made him sick became familiar. acceptable. survivable. humans killed too — just not usually for survival. 

sunghoon stopped feeling guilty. he stopped trying to be good. he grew stronger. he crossed the hundred-year mark still feeling seventeen — still haunted by the same impulses, still cautious around mirrors, still careful not to breathe too deep when blood was near.

he drank every day. animals. humans. bags. whatever worked.

he moved constantly — cheonan, busan, seoul. he collected names like coats. wore lives for a while, then shed them when they grew tight. he had his firsts over and over. first love. first enemy. first time someone called him a monster and meant it with kindness.

he watched his species disappear — not with fire, but with time. they stopped ruling. stopped showing up in stories. stopped walking freely under moonlight. the world modernized. vampires faded.

the old families either went into hiding or died off. the politics fell apart. the bloodlines fractured. and those who survived did so by staying quiet.

sunghoon didn’t mourn the loss. not of his species, not of the hierarchy, not of the golden era they all used to whisper about like it meant something. he didn’t care enough to. the rise and fall of vampire dynasties bored him. power came, power vanished, and no one stayed alive long enough to deserve the reverence. even those who did were too obsessed with their own myths to notice the world had moved on without them. 

sunghoon didn’t hold onto anything. not names, not allegiances, not bloodlines. he adapted. that was what kept him alive. he shrank into smaller lives, traded castles for concrete, survival for silence. learned to be quiet. learned to be still. learned to find comfort in disappearing. and it worked. for a long time, it worked.

he met sunoo first. sharp smile, sharper mind. one of the few vampires who didn’t seem to care about reverence or legacy or dramatic soliloquies on immortality. sunoo had the kind of presence that felt both impossible and familiar — like someone you dreamed about once but never met. there was something beautifully fake about him, something deliberately crafted. he wore his charm like a tailored suit, always too much, always too precise. he was born in the early 1800s, bitten at sixteen, and made the transition into darkness like he’d been preparing for it his whole life. there was no tragedy in him. no guilt. no hesitation. 

it was sunoo who brought him into the rest of the group. 

they weren’t a coven. they never said that word out loud. they didn’t swear oaths or drink each other’s blood or hold hands in the dark. it wasn’t like that. it was looser. stranger. more real. just seven vampires who understood each other well enough to stay in orbit. they didn’t pretend to be a family, but sometimes it felt like one — the dysfunctional kind, the kind where everyone was too ancient or too damaged to pretend things were normal. they watched each other’s backs. they left each other alone when it mattered. they fought, disappeared, reappeared, and didn’t explain themselves. and somehow, that was enough.

when the world got louder — faster, smaller, harder to disappear in — they found places like seonghyeon jaega. places built for ghosts. cold towers with private greenhouses and reinforced windows and high-tech silence. and they stayed. not together, not always. but close enough to feel it.

sunghoon had built his life on distance. distance from his instincts, from his past, from people. and they’d all respected that. even sunoo. even heeseung. no one ever questioned it.

sunghoon was the strongest, after all.

not just in theory. not just in the way people threw that word around like a compliment. but in the literal, biological, almost unbearable sense of it. strength seeped into his bones over centuries. sharpened with every decade he endured. the longer he existed, the more his body adjusted to the weight of time.

his senses were merciless. scent, especially — far beyond what the younger ones understood. he could isolate the copper tang of a paper cut from three floors away. he could tell what someone had eaten that day by the way their skin warmed. he could smell heartbreak if it lasted long enough.

his body, too, had changed with the years — became something more than fast, more than agile. he didn’t run anymore. he glided. his reactions came before thought. his hands moved faster than intention. his strength didn’t flex, it simply was. he carried it like breath — unspoken, constant.

and then came the others abilities. the ones that only surfaced after enough time passed that you forgot what it meant to be normal.

telekinesis came first. subtle, at first — a shift in the air, a vibration in his fingers when he wanted something without reaching. then flight, eventually. not graceful, not winged — just weightless. effortless. a quiet undoing of gravity when he wanted out. and shapeshifting, too. nothing dramatic. just mist, mostly. shadow if he focused hard enough. escape routes. distractions.

for sunghoon, taste had always been amplified — the good, unbearably rich; the bad, violently sharp. sweetness lingered longer. bitterness cut deeper. everything he consumed left an imprint, a truth he couldn’t ignore.

they weren’t powers he used often. not anymore. they were reminders. consequences. the price of age and hunger and survival layered over centuries.

feeding wasn’t necessary anymore.

not really. not in the way it used to be. the sharp, relentless hunger that once carved through his body had dulled somewhere around his five-hundredth year. it didn’t disappear — it just… faded. softened. like an instinct that no longer demanded center stage.

he still needed to live, of course. but the urgency was gone. the chase, the thrill, the aching pull beneath the ribs — all replaced by something quieter. something colder.

now, he fed out of habit. sometimes for convenience. sometimes for the novelty. rarely for the need.

going outside to hunt had become an unbearable task in the modern world — too many lights, too many cameras, too many people with opinions and phones and a tendency to notice things. it wasn’t like it used to be, when the dark belonged to him.

so sunghoon stopped pretending it did.

he drank from bags — neatly sealed, government-sanctioned, barcoded and chilled like a health product. they came once a month, delivered to the building with no name on the invoice. courtesy of the korean government, and their quiet, terrified need to keep certain residents content.

sometimes he shared prey with sunoo — the real kind, not the processed version. usually when they were bored, or irritated, or just wanted to feel something sharp again.

and sometimes he fed from partners. not often. only when the silence got too loud and he needed a body to remind him he still had one. but even that had grown rare. none of it made him feel more alive. just less human. 

sunghoon hadn’t fed for pleasure in decades.

it was too messy. too loud. too close. the intimacy of it — the weight of someone’s pulse under his hands, the vulnerability — none of it appealed to him anymore. he’d outgrown the romance of it. outgrown the myth of it. now it was just routine. bags in the fridge. a few shared moments with sunoo when the craving aligned. nothing worth remembering.

so when it happened, it caught him off guard.

not the hunger — that came later. the awareness.

it started quiet. like a wrong note in a familiar song.

he’d been tending the camellias, trimming the older petals, half-lost in the rhythm of it — when something shifted. the air. the scent. the feel of the room. subtle, but immediate. it wasn’t a change he could name, not right away. just a disturbance. a flicker of something alive in the greenhouse where nothing new was supposed to happen.

and then she spoke.

just a voice. soft. cautious. human.

it was stupid, how fast everything inside him turned. the stillness cracked. the control fractured. the distance — the one he’d spent centuries cultivating — shortened with one exhale.

he could taste you.

not literally — not yet. but it was there, hovering behind his teeth, pressed into the roof of his mouth like a memory he hadn’t earned. like instinct. like déjà vu in his blood.

and it was the same taste.

the same one he remembered from that night at seventeen, when he drank his first kill dry and realized what desperation really was.

the same taste from when he was thirty-two, tangled in the arms of a woman who claimed not to be afraid of monsters but still flinched in her sleep.

the same warmth that haunted him at fifty-five, when a stranger in lyon stroked his hair in a moment of kindness and something in him ached — deep, low, unfamiliar — because it reminded him of the mother he couldn’t picture anymore.

you carried all of it.

the echo of his first vampiric partner — the one who taught him how to survive without apology.

the sweetness of the man in busan, who kissed him like he wasn’t cold. who knew what he was and didn’t care.

the pull of that forbidden love in cheonan, quiet and soft-spoken, who whispered poetry into his collarbone and died too early.

you tasted like the chaos of his lover in the 1700s, all fire and rebellion and blood on the cuffs of her coat.

you were all of it. none of it. new, but terrifyingly familiar.

and in the greenhouse — in that too-warm air, among the bloom and steam and scent of earth — all of it came back.

too fast. too much.

he told himself it was nothing. just his mind, playing tricks. some leftover instinct bubbling up from boredom. that was the only explanation. because something so atrociously delicious — something that burned so sweet — couldn’t possibly be living just steps from his door.

he hadn’t felt hunger like that in a century. not real hunger. not the kind that started in the chest and reached the throat before he even knew he was reacting. not the kind that called to him.

so he blamed the air. the stress. the isolation. maybe the new batch of blood bags was going stale. maybe he needed to go out again. hunt properly.

he considered asking jay to take him next time — a rare gesture, since jay preferred to be left alone on those nights. but sunghoon thought, maybe, just maybe, if he fed on something live and strong, it would quiet the noise. dull the edge of it. replace you with something else.

it was logical. clinical. smart.

but it didn’t work. because every time he imagined it — fangs sinking into warm flesh, blood rushing to the surface — it wasn’t anyone else he saw.

it was you.

and that’s when he knew: this was something worse.

because this wasn’t just hunger — the kind he could soothe with a bag, or drown in routine. it wasn’t just scent or instinct or that sharp, familiar prickle at the base of his neck when prey wandered too close. it wasn’t even just the unbearable sweetness of your presence — that rare, full-bodied taste that lived somewhere between memory and desire. it was something else entirely. something he didn’t have words for, because he’d buried the language centuries ago.

it was interest. it was thrill. and it was annoyance so sharp he could feel it under his skin.

sunghoon didn’t believe in love anymore. hadn’t for a very, very long time. to him, love was a decaying superstition — overused in stories, romanticized in war, commodified by humans who lived too briefly to understand permanence. love was what people chased when they didn’t want to be alone. sunghoon chose to be alone. it was cleaner. safer. quiet.

he didn’t feel attraction, either. not in the way the younger ones still did — with their flings and fleeting obsessions, their need for touch and novelty. he’d outgrown it. or maybe it had withered. the need for someone else’s presence — their heat, their voice, their heartbeat — had dulled over time, eroded by too many years of watching everything he cared about rot or disappear.

so when you moved into the apartment across the hall — all warm blood and curious glances and too many layers of clothing — he didn’t think twice. he didn’t feel pulled. he felt tired. and every time he passed your door in the hallway, he waited for you to vanish from his awareness. for your scent to fade. for you to just become another tenant — faceless, nameless, unimportant.

but you didn’t.

you lingered.

not just in the air. in him. and he hated that.

he started avoiding you. sidestepping your presence. changing his routine so he would focus on anything else. he flinched at the echo of your voice behind elevator doors and held his breath when your perfume — subtle and frustratingly pleasant — drifted under his doorway. 

he didn’t say a word about it. didn’t ask if the others noticed. didn’t dare to ask. he kept it to himself like something shameful. a sickness.

and for the whole first week you had moved there, he believed it was working.

until niki started talking.

he heard it one evening — a quiet conversation in the kitchen when the others thought he was still out feeding. jake and niki, laughing under their breath, trying to be discreet. 

niki talked about your voice first. said there was something magnetic in the way you made silence feel like a choice, not an absence. he talked about your sarcasm — how you never laughed at your own jokes, how sometimes you didn’t even realize you were being funny. he mentioned the way you dressed like someone who had more opinions than money, and how somehow, it worked.

he didn’t say anything about your scent. nothing about the weight of your presence or the blood moving under your skin. he didn’t mention how the air changed when you walked by.

he just talked like a boy. about a girl. like it was simple. like it was normal.

and that’s when sunghoon knew something was wrong. not because niki noticed you — that was inevitable, niki noticed everything, but because he didn’t.

niki didn’t feel what sunghoon felt. didn’t hear the blood singing in his ears or taste the sweetness of you on the back of his tongue long after you’d left the room. didn’t freeze when you got too close. didn’t panic.

and sunghoon… was panicking.

at first, he told himself it was impossible. that the universe wouldn’t be cruel enough to tie his eternity to someone born in the 2000s. someone with a chipped bear mug and a towel on her head and a habit of walking into greenhouses like she owned the place.

and then there was the concept itself — the one he never believed in.

soulmates.

ridiculous. sentimental. dangerous.

and yet — completely normal in the supernatural world.

soulmates weren’t some rare, mythical occurrence like humans liked to believe. in their world, they were common. at least, they used to be.

before the silence. before the erasure. back when supernatural creatures still roamed openly, before treaties and hiding, before blood was something you stored in fridges and rationed like guilt — soulmates happened all the time. like instinct. like gravity.

wolves found theirs by scent. witches felt theirs in magic. banshees heard them in dreams. but vampires… vampires were different.

they were cursed with choice.

vampiric soulmates didn’t always arrive the way you expected. sometimes it was another vampire, older or younger, someone who understood the ache of eternity. that was easy. manageable. sustainable. other times, it was a witch, or a shifter, or something else born with power under their skin.

but sometimes — cruelly, unfairly — it was a human. and that’s when things got complicated.

because when the bond chose a human, the vampire did not remain unchanged. the body noticed first. the blood stirred. the senses sharpened to the point of madness. the human’s scent became an aria that clung to the throat. their heartbeat a metronome echoing through the vampire’s ribs like a drumline of need. their skin, their breath, their presence — all of it turned into a feast. and the vampire? they starved.

it wasn’t love. not at first. it was hunger. it was obsession. it was the frantic animal urge to claim, to taste, to own. vampires who prided themselves on centuries of refinement, of control, of superiority — they cracked like porcelain. they stopped feeding on others. they stopped sleeping. they stopped thinking. because the human was there, near, just a wall away, just a hallway down, just breathing, and that was enough to undo the very nature of their existence.

and the shame of it — oh, the shame — came in the way they enjoyed it.

the bond made them stronger. faster. lethal in a way no age or training ever had. the moment they touched their soulmate, truly felt them, the vampire became a weapon without mercy. not for conquest, but for protection. not to dominate the world, but to shelter one fragile life from it. they became beasts with only one commandment: keep them alive. keep them yours.

and what made it worse — what twisted the knife — was that the vampire knew, in the deepest, most ancient part of themselves, that the human would never truly understand. that they would never feel the full gravity of what they were holding. because how could they? they bled. they aged. they forgot things. they broke.

and still, the vampire craved them.

not just their blood — though that alone was euphoric, enough to knock centuries of memory into silence — but their laugh. their thoughts. the way they frowned when concentrating. the way they cried during movies they’d already seen. the way they didn’t realize they were powerful now — that they owned something ancient and merciless.

vampires were gods, once.

and humans soulmates turned them into worshippers.

sunghoon hadn’t even tasted you, and yet he already knew: it would ruin him.

because soulmate blood wasn’t just a metaphor. it wasn’t poetry. it wasn’t some romantic nonsense about desire and devotion. it was real. measurable. chemical. old-world biology twisted into something unholy and precise.

sunghoon had studied it once, long ago, when he still cared about knowledge more than survival. soulmate blood showed different under glass. more viscous. warmer. magnetic in a way even witches couldn't explain. the pheromonal imprint changed. the plasma shimmered differently under fluorescent light. some vampires said they could see colors in it — taste seasons, hear songs, dream in languages they didn’t speak.

and the taste? that was the part no one could put into words.

it didn’t just satisfy hunger. it rewired need. 

to drink from a soulmate was euphoric. addictive. like swallowing starlight or touching the divine. for some, it drove them mad. for others, it made them human again — briefly. terrifyingly. because it reminded them of what they could no longer be.

in yang jungwon’s coven, they didn’t talk about soulmates.

not really. not openly. but the silence spoke loud enough. and sometimes, in the late hours — when the halls of seonghyeon jaega were too still, and someone had drunk a little too much, or remembered a little too sharply — the whispers came.

the stories starts to spill from their lips: sunoo had fallen once. a witch, born in the 1900s, with eyes like stormlight and a voice that could lull even the most vicious hunger into sleep. her magic was soft — never explosive, never aggressive — just constant.

she made him laugh in ways no one else could. she loved him without fear. but she didn’t have what he had. no eternity. no second chance. and so sunghoon watched as his closest friend loved her through her aging, her illness, her final breath. sunoo never let anyone see him cry, but after she was buried, he didn’t speak for three years. sunghoon used to curse their species for it. curse the gift of forever. it wasn’t kindness. it was cruelty — to outlive love like his friend had.

park jongseong treated love like it was entertainment. a game to be played, to be won, to be discarded. he had centuries of admirers — humans and otherwise — who fell too fast, too hard. he let them. but once, long ago, even jay had a weakness. a girl. small, bright, unbearably soft. she adored him. never questioned what he was. loved him like he was a boy, not a monster. and jay, terrified of what he might do to her — of what loving her back would turn him into — left her in the winter of 1932. sunghoon remembered the exact date. jay never said her name again.

jungwon came from bloodlines. royal ones. one of the last remnants of the ancient vampire dynasties, before the fall, before secrecy. he’d been introduced to a partner at an early age — one chosen by elders, meant to preserve power, keep legacies intact. but jungwon never settled. never loved. he preferred chaos. death. the rush of power over the burden of tradition. his soulmate, if he ever had one, was lost to the flames of his own defiance.

niki — niki was different. too wild. too fast. too full of hunger for life in all the wrong places. love didn’t interest him. not in the eternal sense. not when there were clubs and rooftops and neon lights. he didn’t need anyone to complete him. he had himself. and that was enough.

and then there was jake.

jake had found his soulmate.

six years ago, he left for busan and came back with a girl — soft-spoken, bright-eyed, her pulse loud in the quiet. she followed him everywhere. touched his wrist when she spoke. called him “angel” like it was his real name. and jake… jake melted. he didn’t feed around her. didn’t hunt. he carried her bags and kissed her hands and swore he’d never turn her unless she begged him to. and even then, he wasn’t sure. they were still deciding. the idea of taking eternity from her — or forcing it onto her — made his voice shake.

heeseung had a soulmate too, once. long before sunghoon met him. he never said much about her. just that she was gentle. curious. loved painting. she grew old beside him. wrinkle by wrinkle. white hair. slower steps. he didn’t stop her. he didn’t turn her. he let her choose. and she chose time. chose humanity. sunghoon never asked why. only knew that when she died — when she was just bones in a silk dress — something in heeseung went with her. he was never the same.

so no, they didn’t talk about soulmates. but they all knew what it meant.

and sunghoon, for the first time in centuries, was beginning to suspect he had one.

and she lived across the hall.

he wasn’t about to ignore all the signs. sunghoon was tired, but not stupid.

he knew exactly what was about to happen the moment niki crossed the threshold, all casual arrogance and thinly veiled delight. heeseung barely looked up from his book, but sunghoon clocked it immediately — the way niki’s hoodie smelled different, the way his steps dragged with satisfaction, the way his eyes flicked to sunghoon a second too long.

he had disappeared for half an hour. no warning, no real excuse. left with a half-broken cable in his hand like he was on a righteous tech mission, like any of them gave a fuck about that printer anyway. sunghoon didn’t ask where he was going — didn’t have to. he had heard him go.

he had counted each step niki made to your door. heard the hesitant knock, your voice on the other side — sweet, amused, a little annoyed. a voice that didn’t match the heartbeat he could now recite from memory. your pulse had been steady. bored, even. like niki’s lies weren’t working this time.

sunghoon scoffed in the dark, the sound barely a breath. it didn’t matter what niki said. what mattered was the way your presence lingered in the hallway now — your scent soaked into the fabric of niki’s sleeves, the warmth of your laugh echoing against stone and glass. you hadn’t laughed like that for him. not yet.

he hated that he cared.

he hated that he was standing in the middle of their shared living room, staring at the threshold like something sacred had just been defiled. and most of all, he hated that part of him wanted to be the one defiling it. not with lies. not with excuses. but with something real. something sharp and final.

at that moment, sunghoon didn’t react. not with words. not with a glare. just stood there, quiet and cold, as the younger vampire disappeared into the hallway with a lazy wave announcing he was about to take a shower.

sunghoon didn’t move. didn’t breathe. didn’t even responded the boy.

the air in his lungs felt stuck, like smoke in a sealed room. it curled up his throat and clung to his tongue. the scent hadn’t faded yet. it was stronger now, fresh — clinging to the sleeves of niki’s hoodie, his fingertips, his neck. your scent was alive in the room. too alive. like a pulse under his skin.

sunghoon didn’t acknowledge the coldness spreading through his fingers at first. didn’t allow himself to look at the door or trace the last place your voice echoed in the hallwayy. he stood still, spine straight, gaze blank — because if he moved, even a little, he was going to shatter something.

it had only been two weeks. not even a full month since you entered their lives like a joke. like a trick of fate. like a test.

you were a human, for fuck’s sake.

fragile. absurd. beautiful in a way that made his hunger ache. you walked around their building like you didn’t belong to anyone. like the air didn’t follow you, like your blood wasn’t loud in your veins.

he made himself still for a whole minute. exactly sixty seconds, counted like a punishment — each one pressed down into his bones as if restraint could be measured by silence alone. his spine stayed rigid against the back of the sofa, arms locked to his sides, legs twitching just barely beneath the faded blanket thrown across him. he could hear the others still moving in the apartment — water running, a faint door closing, jake’s voice low through the wall — but none of it anchored him.

he tried to count past the ache, to focus on the ambient hum of the building — electricity in the wiring, the gentle creak of the heater, even the uneven rhythm of niki’s too-heavy steps heading into the shower — but none of it drowned out the sound of you. not in his blood. not in his head.

he curled his fingers once, twice, then exhaled a long, cold breath.

then he moved.

pulled a hoodie over his shirt. didn’t bother checking the time. didn’t think about what he’d say if someone saw him. his body moved on instinct — one step, then another, across the polished floors of seonghyeon jaega. no hesitation. no excuses. just silence and purpose and something sharp curling inside his ribs.

he told himself it was a walk. nothing more.

a breath of air. a reset. he told himself the greenhouse was still his — technically. and if you were there… well. that was just coincidence.

he was lying, of course.

but he crossed the threshold anyway.

his hand on the glass door. your scent already thicker than the oxygen. and still — he stepped inside.

knowing exactly what he was doing.

—— 

you were already there.

of course you were. tucked between the vines like you belonged. standing in front of the floor to ceiling glass, completely unaware of the storm you’d just invited in. the glass above you fogged faintly from the cold — january pressing soft breath into the air — and the plants around you seemed to lean in, conspiratorial, as if they too were listening.

sunghoon didn’t move at first.

he stood in the doorway, jaw tight, breath shallow, watching the way the light brushed your cheekbones. it was the soft kind of light — golden, filtered through the greenhouse glass and filtered again by the pale warmth of the moon outside. it kissed your skin like it knew you were loved.

and you smelled like everything he wasn’t supposed to want.

not just blood. not just a craving. you smelled like memory. like heat. like something that had always belonged to him, even if he hadn’t known it until now.

sunghoon hated it, this feeling, this neediness. he found it ridiculous, weak. it made him scoff and go insane because of the fact that these feelings even belonged to him in the first place. he hadn’t exactly ignored you before, but this felt like the first time he was seeing you. 

your hair was healthy, untouched by bleach or heat, the kind that held shine even in cheap lighting. your skin looked like it had never met stress — no deep lines, no breakouts, no strain. but there was something else too. something more honest beneath the surface.

you moved like someone who’d known work. like someone who’d carried weight too early. your body held the kind of tired grace that came from long days and quiet sacrifices — not the aesthetic kind, but the real, human kind. melancholy clung to you in places only someone who had known wars could notice. the corners of your mouth. the pause between your jokes. the softness behind your sarcasm.

you were healthy. he noticed that first — in the flush of your skin, in the steadiness of your breath, in the light pressure of your footsteps next to him. it hit him in strange, unspoken ways: the kind of observation that should’ve passed as mundane, but didn’t.

and he felt… giddy. embarrassingly so. at the knowledge that you were alright. that you weren’t frail. that your blood ran strong. that you didn’t smell like rot or fatigue or sadness.

he was happy you were healthy.

or at least it seemed.

and that alone was enough to make his mind spiral. because what kind of creature — what kind of predator — stood perfectly still in the hallway of his own greenhouse, hoodie half-zipped, smiling quietly to himself just because his neighbor’s pulse beat in the right tempo?

he should’ve been alarmed.

instead, he let the warmth settle. a selfish, possessive warmth. like he’d just discovered something worth guarding.

here you were, in an overused coat that looked two sizes too big, maybe not even yours. collar slightly torn. threadbare at the sleeves. probably something inherited or borrowed or stolen from a roommate.

you didn’t match the scenery — that luxury glass room, the curated flora, the eerie stillness — and yet you made it all feel like yours.

and that was what made sunghoon pause.

for the first time in centuries, he felt interested.

he saw you before you saw him. your silhouette cast in soft golden light, hunched near the orchids like you were afraid to break something, like you were trespassing in a church. it made something tighten in his chest. 

sunghoon opened the greenhouse door and let it fall shut behind him with purpose. not loud enough to startle, but loud enough to be known. to make himself visible. audible. present. you turned immediately. 

your eyes found him fast, then dropped just as quick. the wave of surprise on your face was quickly drowned in embarrassment, your posture straightening, hands suddenly awkward. like you'd been caught stealing something. like he had the right to punish you for it.

he hated that the thought made him feel powerful.

he should’ve left.

but he didn’t.

he stood under the arch of ivy with his hoodie sleeves rolled up and his eyes trained on you, and tried not to breathe too deeply. because even from here, he could already smell you.

"sorry that i’m trespassing again," you said. self-deprecating. lighthearted. all nerve and bravado. he didn't answer at first. not because he was angry. not even because he wanted to intimidate you. but because he didn’t trust his voice to come out human.

you turned your back to him like it was no big deal. like you hadn’t just stumbled into a landmine. like you weren’t carrying that scent.

he watched you pretend to care about the view — the skyline stretched beyond the glass panels, city lights blinking like tired stars, pale against the winter-dark sky. your arms crossed loosely, like you were trying to appear casual, but your fingers fidgeted near your sleeve, tugging at loose threads. he could tell you were stalling. buying time. saving face. and he let you.

you spoke again. softly. something about how you hadn’t noticed this side of the greenhouse the night before. how it was beautiful.

he agreed.

but not in the way you meant.

because the skyline didn’t make his hands itch. the frost on the rooftops didn’t make his throat dry. it wasn’t the curvature of the city that kept pulling his eyes back to you.

it was the way your heartbeat slowed as you talked — no longer startled, just steady, like a drum muffled under layers of warm fabric and fragile bone. sunghoon could hear it. could feel it. a muted cadence, too human, too easy to track. he didn’t need to see your veins to know where they ran; he could sense the trail of heat beneath your skin, each artery drawing delicate maps along your neck and wrists and the soft bend of your elbow.

again, his eyes locked on your neck — the dip just below your jaw where the pulse beat steady and exposed. it was the same spot he’d noticed yesterday, the same one that had tested his control ever since.

sunghoon noticed you trying to make small talk.

"you can keep coming here, if you like," he said, eyes flicking to the orchids. "it’s nice during winter."

you glanced at him over your shoulder, moonlight brushing your eyes like silver paint, catching just enough to make them glint — almost like a spark. "is this special treatment because i became friends with one of your roommates?"

he tilted his head, slow and deliberate. "are you talking about riki?" 

"riki? i swear it was niki." you said innocently.

god, even the sound of another name — even if it belonged to his little brother — sliding from your mouth made something primal stir beneath his skin. it was stupid, ridiculous, but his throat still tightened, jaw clenching with the effort not to react.

sunghoon laughed. a soft sound, almost accidental, but real. it cracked something in the silence — made the space warmer, brighter, like a sliver of dawn sneaking past blackout curtains. his canines caught the light when he smiled, sharp and white, and he didn’t miss the way a flicker of tension rippled down your spine. 

his first instinct was to pull it back, to school his expression into something safer, quieter — hide the very obvious reminder of what he was. but his stupid predator side? it liked the way you startled. liked it too much.

"yes, niki," he said. "he goes by that too. he’s… troublesome. don’t fall for his traps."

"thanks for the concern, but i think it’s too late. he literally invaded my apartment earlier today."

he raised a brow, all practiced nonchalance — pretending he didn’t already know. pretending he hadn’t counted the exact number of seconds riki stood outside your door. pretending he hadn’t listened to the entire conversation through the walls, his cursed hearing tuned perfectly to the sound of your voice.

"printer emergency," you added, like that explained everything.

sunghoon’s mouth twitched — the smallest shift, the closest he ever got to amused acceptance. "sounds like him."

you nodded, then hesitated. he noticed, of course. he always noticed. you were proud of something — proud of surviving the conversation, proud that he hadn’t told you to leave yet. 

again, all of your reactions were almot alluring to him. unbearably so. everything you did — the way your mouth moved when you talked, the rhythm of your breathing, the subtle raise of your brow when you got bold — it lodged itself somewhere beneath his skin like glass. 

sunghoon tucked his hands into the pocket of his hoodie, a quiet attempt at restraint, fingers curling tightly around fabric like it would keep him grounded.

he kept his distance — always. two feet, at least. just far enough that he wouldn’t feel the brush of your scent, the accidental graze of your plasma. just far enough that he could pretend he wasn’t seconds from falling apart.

and still, it wasn’t far enough. he could smell you. god, if he could smell you.

not just your perfume, or the soft shampoo that clung to your hair. he could smell your blood — rich, warm, devastating. he could feel the way it called to him, ancient and undeniable, wrapping invisible hands around his body and dragging. it settled into his ribs like a bruise. pressed against his shoulders like weight. coiled low in his stomach like something shameful. 

just standing here — just existing in the same space as you — was enough to make him crumble.

you didn’t even realize it. didn’t see the way his gaze followed the shift of your shoulders, the tilt of your head, the way your fingertips brushed against petals like you were asking them for permission. you walked slowly, aimlessly, but there was something reverent in it — a quiet grace, like you instinctively knew this place mattered. like the night recognized you. your hands ghosted over the camellias, the ones he’d planted in silence, one by one, over years that stretched longer than any human lifetime should. 

he didn’t move. didn’t even blink. the air between you stayed untouched, his body locked in place as if the slightest shift would shatter whatever fragile thing this was. he watched the way you crouched to smell a bloom he nearly lost to frost last winter. you looked at it like it was a miracle. like it was new. no one had ever looked at his flowers like that — heck, no one has even visited this place before before you.

sunghoon saw the way the moonlight hit your skin — soft and pale and impossibly radiant — like you weren’t part of this world at all. 

he watched the rhythm of your steps. the slight sway of your hoodie. he watched your pulse quicken as you spoke again.

"do you all live here? for how long?"

he didn’t answer immediately. the question felt too close to truth.

you turned slightly, just enough to glance over your shoulder, to check if he was listening — and of course he was. he hadn’t moved. still half-shadowed beneath the overgrown ivy, posture relaxed in that practiced way of his, like someone who knew how to stay unnoticed even while watching everything.

"a while," he said. vague. distant. safe.

"like... years?"

"give or take."

"that’s not an answer."

he knew that. obviously. he wasn’t trying to lie — just stretch the silence in a way that would make you tilt your head like that. and maybe push you a little. he liked the way you challenged him without realizing. like you hadn’t decided if you were interrogating him or flirting. like maybe you thought you could do both.

"it’s the only one you’re getting."

he saw the way your mouth twitched before the smile broke through — a flash of amusement that pinched the corners of your eyes. you weren’t fooled. you knew he was dodging the question, and you didn’t mind. 

"you’re worse than niki at evading questions, god. are you all like this?"

he almost smiled. almost. you were tenacious. dangerously so — the kind of sharp that slipped in gently before anyone realized they were bleeding. his hands, finally, slipped out of his hoodie pocket, fingers flexing like he’d only just remembered they were there. he brushed a piece of ivy from his sleeve, buying time, trying not to look too entertained.

"maybe it’s a roommate requirement."

"what, like a quiz? ‘how mysterious are you on a scale from 1 to dramatic rooftop monologue’?"

this time, he let the smile come. small. subtle. but there. it didn’t reach his eyes — not fully — but it was real.

"you’d fail."

"rude."

"you talk too much."

"and you brood too much. balance."

he looked down, shaking his head like he didn’t know how you kept getting away with this — poking at the edges of him like it was a game. the tension that usually sat stiff along his spine eased, just slightly. your words untied it like warm fingers at a knot.

"actually, you’re the one who should be asking questions," you challenged, turning to face him completely now, voice bolder than before. "i got here first."

he blinked. caught off guard by your logic, your shift in tone. you bent down mid-sentence, plucking a dead leaf off the path and crumpling it gently between your fingers without even thinking. he noticed that. the softness in your habits. the strange, unconscious claim you were making on the space.

"trespassing doesn’t count as arrival." he said.

"semantics," you said. "i was emotionally distressed. that grants me squatters’ rights."

he exhaled — a quiet breath, not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. something in between.

"you’re unbelievable." sunghoon added.

"and yet, here you are," you said, waving a hand lazily between you. "still talking to me. maybe you’re the crazy one."

he looked at your hand as it dropped back to your side, then glanced at the distance between you — yes, he was the crazy one for sure. 

he didn’t answer. didn’t deny it. just watched you with that steady, unreadable look — the kind that made you feel like he was seeing things you hadn’t even figured out about yourself yet.

"do you always go out with your pink phone case?" sunghoon wasn’t exactly skilled at small talk — never had to be. most of the time, his looks did the work long before words were needed. but he wanted to try this out with you, to see how further you could go with bickering.

you frozed visibly and sunghoon found that cute, again. your body went still like a deer clocking danger, and for a second, he wondered if you’d bolt.

"wait, you noticed that?"

"hard to miss." his voice was calm, neutral — but there was something else behind it, something amused. he was, indeed, curious about your fashion tendencies and strange personality — he never met someone like this before.

your mouth opened, then shut again. the fluster was almost adorable. "it’s for the aesthetics. i like pink."

he hummed low in his throat, and the sound felt less like a judgment and more like he was filing that away. sunghoon was cataloguing you the same way he catalogued the orchids — by color, by softness, by how long they might last if left alone.

"don’t make that face."

"i didn’t make a face." he, in fact, knew he made a face.

"you did. very i-expected-black-but-of-course-it’s-pink."

he tilted his head slightly, eyes dragging down the length of you in an unhurried glance — not invasive, not flirtatious. just curious. deliberate. actually, a little flirtatious. sunghoon was having fun with your ridiculous attraction to bickering.

"i expected lavender, actually."

"do i give off lavender vibes?"

he didn’t answer right away. just kept looking — one slow pass over your frame, then back to your face, where his gaze settled like a weight.

"sometimes. but mostly… chaotic rose gold." he should’ve said red. the most beautiful red he’d ever seen — vivid, warm, almost fluorescent under moonlight. but he didn’t. he couldn’t explain that to you — not without unraveling everything. not without telling you what his eyes really saw beneath that old coat you wore like armor.

the way your blood moved, the way it pulsed — bright and alive and maddening. if he said it out loud, he was certain he’d scare you off.

you squinted at him. "that’s not a real vibe."

"it is now." god — he wished he could shut you up sometimes, make you stop asking stupid questions, put your mouth to better use. 

"you just made that up," you bickered, eyes narrowing with playful defiance.

"it’s a pretty color," he replied, quieter this time.

you blinked. the pause that followed was short but sharp. "are you calling me pretty?" of course that was your question. of course your brain went there. always halfway between a joke and something that might be real if said twice.

sunghoon almost laughed. not out loud — he didn’t do that often — but the impulse flickered in his chest like static. 

fuck pretty. you were beautiful in the kind of way that made language feel inadequate. he hadn’t yet found a color — or a century — that could match your particular brand of aphrodisiac ridiculousness. and still, instead of saying any of that, he did what he always did. he teased. because it was easier. because you were entertaining as hell. because the way you reacted was worth it.

"no."

"that’s rude."

"you should be at your apartment." he should’ve been in his too. should’ve walked away minutes ago, maybe hours. but he was too stubborn. too weak when it came to you. and entirely too invested in the way your mouth dipped into a small, exaggerated pout. like you knew what it did to him and were daring him to admit it.

"are you saying i’m ugly, then?"

he raised a brow, slow and deliberate — like even he couldn’t believe he was still making conversation with you. and honestly? he couldn’t. he was, in fact, in full disbelief.

“beauty is about preferences. you can think a flower is pretty, but someone else might think it’s not the best.”

you stared at him. unblinking. deadpan. the silence stretched long enough to be comical. "are you a walking inspirational monologue coach? is that your side hustle? why are you always showing up late at night like some poetic batman?"

he didn’t respond right away — just lifted his gaze, slowly, toward the ceiling above you both. the glass was fogged around the edges with condensation, the moonlight blurry and pale through it. it reflected faintly in his eyes. "plants prefer quiet," he said, almost like an afterthought. "and so do i."

"you’re so weird."

he didn’t flinch at the word. didn’t take it as an insult. if anything, the edge of his mouth twitched — just enough to make you wonder if maybe he liked being called that.

you moved like you didn’t belong, and yet, like everything around you bent to accommodate your presence. sunghoon watched in silence as your fingers traced the rim of a ceramic pot, your steps soundless over the tiled floor, like the greenhouse had decided you were welcome. there was something deeply unsettling about it — how gently you treated the space, how you smiled at nothing in particular, how your eyes flicked from vine to orchid like you were cataloguing beauty for the first time. he’d lived here for decades, and still, he’d never looked at this place the way you just had in the past minute.

he tracked the way your coat swung with your movement — that oversized, frayed thing that should’ve made you look disheveled, careless. but it didn’t. it made you look soft. careful. something cherished. and in that moment, sunghoon hated that he noticed. hated the heat that pooled beneath his skin just from watching you exist. it wasn’t just attraction. not quite. it was deeper, quieter, more dangerous — a kind of reverence. he was memorizing the curve of your jaw, the hollow of your throat, the way the faint glow of a heat lamp kissed your skin like it belonged to you. 

you stopped to lean over a low bed of succulents, muttering something under your breath. maybe you were reading the labels. maybe you were talking to the plants. maybe you were just breathing. sunghoon had no idea — he couldn’t care to hear it, too focused on the way your pulse ticked softly under your skin. 

his eyes wandered upward, pulled by the shift in the air and the sudden realization that he was staring like a creep. 

outside, the night had thickened into a velvet navy, the moon hanging low and unbothered. stars dotted the sky in fractured patterns, and the light pollution did little to mute their defiance. he tilted his head, just slightly. 

he found himself walking toward the far side of the room, where the glass stretched from floor to ceiling, framing the city in one perfect, crystalline cut.

this was where you had stood when he first saw you tonight — silhouetted against the skyline, as if you’d stepped straight out of a dream. he reached the glass and stood there, hands in his pockets, staring at the cityscape below. buildings pulsed with neon veins, cars like blood cells tracing glowing arteries. it was alive in its own way. chaotic. overwhelming. and yet, for the first time in what felt like years, sunghoon didn’t feel like the outsider looking in.

sunghoon didn’t register the silence at first.

the city beyond the glass pulled at him like an old memory, something bright and sad and too loud for his thoughts. below him, seoul pulsed like a living thing — all light trails and blinking signs and buildings reaching up like they were trying to touch the stars. and there he stood, centuries old, hands buried in his hoodie, jaw clenched against a world that had outgrown him in a thousand ways. and still, he watched. still, he breathed. still, he remembered the curve of your voice as you spoke just minutes ago.

your words looped in his head, ridiculous and youthful. “semantics. i was emotionally distressed. that grants me squatters’ rights.” 

you spoke like you didn’t care who was listening. like you had nothing to lose. like the world had never tried to kill you for the way you laughed. you sounded like someone who still believed people were good. and for all his control, for all his hunger, that part — that unbreakable faith in your tone — made something crack in his chest.

you were young. not just in body — but in spirit. in rhythm. everything about you screamed 2000s baby. your banter came fast and offbeat, the kind of sarcasm that trailed internet culture and late-night jokes. sunghoon had been born in a time when people bled for less. when language was stiff and precise, when words were weapons. you, on the other hand, used yours like water — splashing around, not caring who got wet.

he tilted his head slightly, gaze still fixed on the glittering mess of lights below. it wasn’t fair, the way you got under his skin so quickly. talking to you wasn’t just conversation — it was a kind of test. you teased without cruelty. you challenged without threat.

sunghoon blinked slowly, the city’s lights still dancing in his vision like fireflies under glass. the silence had settled comfortably around him, thick and undisturbed.

he had been so deeply entangled in his own thoughts — in the skyline, in your voice echoing faintly in his mind — that he didn’t notice the shift in air. didn’t register your footsteps, soft and deliberate, until your presence was suddenly there beside him, pressing at the edge of his senses like a silent warning.

he inhaled. finally. deeply. and then stilled.

it hit him all at once.

your scent.

too close.

he blinked, startled, as if waking up from a deep sleep. his senses sharpened immediately — pupils contracting, spine pulling taut, fingers curling faintly. he hadn’t heard your footsteps. hadn’t felt your breath. you were still a whole foot away — not even brushing against him — and yet, it didn’t matter. the scent of you wrapped around his skull like smoke, like a perfume laced with venom.

copper and honey. lightning and softness. heat and blood.

it hit him like a storm — not the kind that screamed through windows, but the kind that crept beneath skin.

his pupils dilated instantly. not just with hunger — no, this wasn’t just thirst. this was desire. shameful and uninvited. it coiled in his gut like something ancient and unholy. his breath caught in his throat, like oxygen itself had become too thick to inhale. he tasted your blood on his tongue and you weren’t even touching him. 

his nose twitched. he winced. and then the worst part: the step back. one, two, three — four. fast and clumsy. like shame. like retreat. like he needed to put the world between your body and his instincts. he hated that he moved like that. hated how vulnerable it made him feel.

but it wasn’t pain he wore on his face. not really. it was something worse.

temptation.

you smelled like warmth. like heat under skin. like all the fairytales about vampires and their soulmates. blood moving fast through delicate veins. and it wasn’t just hunger clawing at him now — it was arousal, low and dirty in his belly.

“are you okay?” you asked — voice soft, unsure, but to him it rang like a bell through fog. it echoed in his head, ricocheting off the walls of his skull because his senses were heightened tenfold now. 

you should be worried about yourself — about your safety.

if you could see even a fraction of the things sunghoon was thinking, god, you’d run. not walk — run. you’d leave the greenhouse, the building, the city, maybe even the country. he wouldn’t blame you. because right now, his mind was split down the middle: half man, half monster. both wanted you.

he wanted to do things to you that had no business being thought about this close to midnight. things with his hands, with his mouth, with his teeth. he knew every way he could break you — every point of weakness, every place you’d shudder and sigh and cry if he so much as grazed the surface.

and the worst part? he could do it. right now.

he was stronger. faster. older than empires. and every part of him knew it. his muscles twitched with power. his fangs ached. his throat burned. you — soft, warm, real — were within reach. and all he had to do was move.

sunghoon didn’t answer your question right away.

he couldn’t. his mouth wasn’t ready to form words — not that kind of words. not the kind you deserved.

he was still staring. still breathing like he’d sprinted across the city just to get here. lungs full of fire, throat dry with restraint. his jaw flexed once, then again, the muscle ticking as if it might hold him together. but it didn’t. nothing could. not with you standing there like that — oblivious to the fact that you’d just shattered centuries of control with nothing but your scent.

he was trying to be still. trying to be good. but his body wasn’t listening. his tongue flicked out across his bottom lip, slow and distracted, the motion instinctive, like he was tasting the air — tasting you.

fuck, he could taste you right now.

his fangs had dropped without warning. he didn’t even need to check. he felt them. his irises, too — they must’ve flared, because your own expression flickered.

“you should go,” he rasped — but what he meant was: run.

because every inch of him was thrumming. wired. starving.

he was trying so fucking hard to be good. to stand there like a man, not a creature. to act like your blood wasn’t singing to him — not just calling, but begging.

you had no idea what you looked like through his eyes. skin flushed from the walk. pulse fluttering like a trapped thing beneath your throat. lips slightly parted in concern. the scent of your shampoo tangled with your warmth and that heat under your skin — god, the heat — and all he could think about was sinking into it. tasting it. claiming it.

you stood a single step too close, and it undid him. his hands clenched into fists at his sides, nails biting into his palms to keep himself still, to keep himself honest.

“did i… do something wrong?” your voice echoed in his empty chest. 

he could hear your heartbeat.

not just hear it — feel it.

a wet, rhythmic echo behind his teeth, and his fangs were already halfway descended. he could taste his own venom. it burned.

“no,” he said, forcing a breath through clenched teeth. “it’s not you. it’s me.”

sunghoon could see you hesitating, your fingers curling slightly at your sides. “do you want me to call niki? or a medic? are you sure you’re alright?”

his name. he wanted to hear you say his name.

not because it would soothe him, but because it would break him completely — and god, wasn’t that what he deserved?

your voice echoed in his skull, soft and round with concern, and it only made things worse. did he want you to call niki? a medic? like you were the one worrying for him, when he was the thing you should be running from.

for a moment, sunghoon wanted to shove his hands into his own chest and claw the desire out.

but instead, he stood still — burning from the inside out — every sense tuned to you and only you. he could hear the blood moving in your veins like a river; he could see it, nearly, that strange fluorescence he’d always been able to conjure, glowing beneath your skin in hypnotic rhythm. you were illuminated from the inside, and fuck, it was unfair. you didn’t even know what you were doing to him.

was it like this for other vampires?

were they reduced to this? weak? delirious? painfully, achingly aroused over a single step too close?

because his desire was already straining in his pants, aching against the tightness of denim, and all because you smelled like jasmine and clean sheets and sugar-drenched blood. all because your concern made his stomach turn in a way he couldn’t define — like he wanted to hurt you and worship you in the same breath.

he couldn’t look at you anymore.

couldn’t bear the confusion in your eyes, the slight tremble in your fingers.

so his voice came out shredded, low and coarse, every word a forced exhale through sharpened teeth.

“please. you can leave already.”

“should i go find one of your roommates?” he saw you take a step forward. a small one. cautious. maybe kind. maybe stupid. and his body snapped.

the moment you moved, the moment your scent hit him like that — stirred and fresh and closer — it was like someone had struck a match inside his skull. his back arched slightly, chest tightening, fangs dragging painfully against the inside of his mouth. his jaw clenched so hard it creaked.

“fuck—” he spat, the word seething through his teeth. “just stay right there. don’t move.”

and god, the sound of it — the command in his own voice — it only made the fire burn hotter.

his hands were trembling. actually trembling. like a boy in a fever dream, like something shameful. his fingers twitched with the urge to grab, to press, to taste. to see if you were as soft and warm and wet as he imagined. and he hated himself for it. hated the way he looked at you like prey. like a puzzle. like an offering.

you froze — and for a moment, he wanted to thank you. for listening. for not pushing him over the edge.

but you just stood there, breathing, and that alone was too much. the rhythm of your pulse in the air. the curl of your fingers. the way your mouth parted ever so slightly — not out of fear, no, but confusion. like you were still trying to understand what kind of creature was unraveling before your eyes.

“please,” he said again, the word shredding in his throat. raw. needy.

it was the closest he’d ever come to begging in his entire immortal life.

and still, you didn’t speak. didn’t scream. didn’t run. you just nodded — slow, careful — and stepped back, one inch at a time, the door calling your name behind you.

he watched every second of it.

you nodded. backed away. left. finally.

sunghoon felt the slightest flicker of relief the moment he heard it — the soft, clean click of the door shutting behind you. then, seconds later, the metallic chime of the elevator. gone. safe. away from him.

he could breathe again. not well — but enough. his lungs filled too fast, too shallow, as if they weren’t made for it anymore.

but the relief was fleeting. already splintering.

because now that you were gone, now that you were out of reach, the hunger had space to speak. to scream. to ache.

it wasn’t just thirst. not anymore. this was something older, more violent. possessive. every fiber of his body burned with it — fingertips twitching, jaw tight, vision still full of the way your body curved under that stupid hoodie. his instincts coiled like wire in his spine. follow her, they hissed. don’t let her get far. prey doesn’t get to leave.

his hands curled into fists. fingernails biting into palms. palms sweating. chest cold. 

sunghoon stood there — motionless, wrecked — for three and a half goddamn minutes.

until he snapped.

not out of rage, not even out of panic — but need. raw, instinctive need. his legs moved before his mind could catch up, carrying him toward the back of the greenhouse like he could outrun the phantom of your presence. as soon as he knew the coast was clear, he shoved through the rear door and stumbled deeper into the structure. vines clawed at his sleeves; glass glinted too bright. he didn’t care.

he needed out. even if it was just in pieces.

his hands found the window latch, and he threw it open without grace. the winter air poured in sharp and cold, biting at his skin, slicing clean through the little heat in his blood.

he needed air. he needed space. he needed to not want you.

park sunghoon knew restraint. he had been taught discipline in another life — back when his heart still beat in earnest and his mother would scold him for eating too fast, for speaking too loud, for wanting too much. those memories were fragile now, dulled by centuries and dust, but some of them — the important ones — still clung to the corners of his mind like cracked porcelain. 

he remembered how to slow his breathing.

he remembered how to wait.

and more importantly, he remembered why.

he stood there, bent slightly against the greenhouse windowsill, letting the wind lash at his cheeks and the smell of damp soil cling to the edges of his clothes. his throat still burned. his gums still ached. but the feral pulse in his chest was no longer a roar — it had settled to something more manageable, something he could keep inside his ribs without destroying everything around him. 

barely.

his gums ached — raw and swollen from where his fangs had begun to cut deep into his lower lip. the taste of blood was subtle, metallic, but his own didn’t satisfy him. it never did. the venom gathering in his mouth numbed the edges, made the sting duller, but not enough to quiet the need. not enough to bring peace. his body pulsed with heat, with tension, with hunger coiled so tight in his gut it bordered on pain.

his vision — completely red now. not figuratively. literally. the world had blurred into hues of crimson and black, every shadow a threat, every light too bright. he couldn’t see the plants anymore, the glass, the faint outline of the cityscape. everything was filtered through the lens of thirst. need.

and his thoughts — god, they wouldn’t shut up. they echoed off the corners of his skull, each louder than the last: take. bite. taste. claim. over and over like a chant, like a prayer twisted into something violent and starving.

restraint was a thing he was used to clinging to. he had worn it like a second skin for centuries. but tonight…

tonight, park sunghoon knew the ache wouldn’t pass on its own. not this time.

his control wasn’t breaking — not yet — but it was bending, dangerously. and he knew, with a clarity that hollowed him out from the inside, that this wouldn’t stop until he sank his fangs into something. until blood — warm and real — hit his tongue and silenced the madness for a few precious seconds.

the moment the ache hit him — real, tangible, like fire in his spine and static in his teeth — park sunghoon did what he had done so many times before: he redirected. because if he didn’t, he’d lunge. and if he lunged, he wouldn’t stop. and if he didn’t stop, you wouldn’t walk out of here alive.

so he set his mind on something else. on someone else.

he summoned the memory of blood that wasn’t yours — colder, simpler, nameless. he let it coat the edges of his hunger like wax over flame, sealing the worst of it in, letting the image of you blur and fall away. he reached for impulse, for routine. for the safety of distraction. 

he stood from the floor with a grunt, wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, and began to move. out the back entrance. down the stairs. into the winter.

park sunghoon needed a distraction. something messy. something human. something that didn’t smell like you.

author's note: i am so sorry i ended this here, but as i was writing it felt so off to NOT let this moment breathe for a little hehe. next chapter we will have our lovely couple going crazy again and yes, i will make sunghoon feral because that is my favorite genre of men. also, sunghoon is a hot 633yo vampire, OF COURSE HE BAGGED MEN AND WOMEN EQUALLY. send me a request • my masterpost