Ria grabbed your hand. “She wants a piercing.” Soo looked at the sky. Hana was already moving toward the door.

The club outfit had been Ria’s fault entirely. The top was small — that was the only word for it, small and black and doing everything a top could reasonably be asked to do. The skirt wasn’t much better. You’d spent the whole night at the club feeling like the main character, which was the intended effect, and the cold air outside had done nothing to make you feel less exposed.

You pushed the door open and the warmth hit you first. Then the smell — ink, clean soap, something faintly chemical underneath it. Black walls covered in flash art. Low red lighting that made the whole place feel like a deliberate secret. Something slow playing from speakers you couldn’t locate.

Two guys inside. One in the back with his head down over a drawing tablet. One at the front counter. The one at the front counter looked up.

He was tall even on the stool, long legs stretched out in front of him, forearms resting on the desk like he owned the surface and everything past it. Full sleeve on his left arm. Silver rings on most of his fingers. Dark hair pushed back slightly. One earring. The kind of face that got you in trouble if you looked at it for too long — sharp jaw, dark eyes, a mouth that was currently sitting in the very early stages of a smirk.

He took in all four of you in about two seconds. Then his eyes found you and the smirk finished forming. “We’re open,” he said. “Barely.”

Ria and Hana peeled off toward the flash wall immediately. Soo planted herself near the door with her arms folded. Which left you walking up to the front counter alone, bare legs, tiny skirt, heels clicking on the concrete floor.

You watched him watch you walk over. He didn’t pretend he wasn’t watching. Didn’t do the polite thing where you glance away and back. He just watched, easy and unhurried, the way someone looks at something they find genuinely worth looking at, and when you got to the counter and leaned on it his eyes moved — slowly, and with complete lack of apology — from your face down to your chest and back up again. Held eye contact like nothing had happened. You’d been looked at before. This was different. This was a man who had decided he wasn’t going to pretend. “Hi,” you said.

“Hi.” His voice was low. Even. The smirk hadn’t moved. “Can I help you?”

“I want a piercing.”

“Yeah?” He leaned back on the stool, arms folding across his chest, the sleeve shifting with the movement. His rings caught the red light. “What are you thinking?”

“Tragus.” You reached up and tapped the outer ridge of your ear, which meant your arm lifted and your top shifted and you watched his eyes drop again, briefly, before they came back to yours like he wasn’t the least bit embarrassed about it. “I’ve been putting it off. I’m in a decisive mood.”

“Decisive,” he said.

“Very.”

“I can see that.” He said it like it meant something else. Then: “How much have you had tonight?”

“Enough to be excellent company.”

He looked at you. Really looked — quiet and thorough, taking in your face, the flush across your chest, the way you were leaning on his counter in that top — and then his tongue pressed briefly against his cheek like he was trying not to smile properly. “Can’t pierce you with alcohol in your system, baby.”

Baby. Like he’d been calling you that for years. Like it was already established. “That’s a rule?” you said.

“That’s the rule.”

You leaned further onto the counter, closing some of the distance between you. His eyes went exactly where you expected them to go and stayed there for a beat longer than was professional before dragging back up. His expression didn’t change. He was completely comfortable with being caught, which was — honestly — impressive. “What if I promised to be very good?” you said.

“I’m sure you would be.” His voice was smooth, unhurried. “Still no.”

“What if—”

“You can come back tomorrow,” he said. “Sober. I’ll pierce your tragus.” A pause, his eyes dropping once more, quick and deliberate, before landing back on yours. “Or whatever else you want.”

The air between you did something. “That sounds like more than a professional offer,” you said.

“I’m a professional.” The smirk was fully settled now. “The offer’s professional. What you do with it is up to you.”

You held his gaze. He held yours back without any effort at all, completely at ease, like this was just how Tuesday night went for him. It was annoying. It was also working. “I don’t know where this place is sober,” you said.

He was already reaching under the counter. He slid a card across the desk with two fingers — didn’t look down to do it, kept his eyes on you the whole time. STUDIO 13. NISHIMURA RIKI. PIERCING.

You picked it up. “Your personal card,” you said.

“Goes straight to me.”

“Bold.”

“Efficient,” he said.

You looked at the card. Then at him. “I’m Y/N.” His eyes went down again — unhurried, completely unapologetic, a slow look that started at your face and made its way south before coming back up — and then he said, “Y/N,” like he was just trying the name out. Like he’d be using it again. “You gonna remember that?” you said.

“Yeah,” he said simply. “I’m going to remember that.”

The way he said it made it about more than your name. Behind you, Ria made a noise she covered poorly with a fake cough. You didn’t turn around. “Come back sober,” Riki said. “I’ll take care of you.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because I’m going to do it.” He picked his phone back up, easy as anything, like the conversation was filed away now and he was done performing — except the smirk stayed. “Get home safe, Y/N.” Dismissed. Warmly, cockily, with complete confidence that you’d be back.

You picked up the card, slid it into your bag, and let Soo steer you to the door because your own legs had made a decision to co-operate with his energy and you weren’t going to give him the satisfaction.

Outside Ria grabbed your arm with both hands. “Y/N. The way he looked at you—”

“Ria.”

“He looked at your tits like—”

“Ria.” Hana was fanning herself. Even Soo was quiet, which was its own verdict. The Uber was three minutes away and you looked at your phone and felt your face doing something warm that you were crediting entirely to the alcohol.

Inside, Heeseung finally looked up from his drawing tablet. He’d watched the whole thing. Ten feet away. Nobody had noticed. He looked at Riki.

Riki had his phone in his hand but he was looking at the door — at the space where you’d just been standing in that top, leaning on his counter, letting him look — with an expression Heeseung couldn’t quite name. Something had landed and settled behind his eyes.

“Who was that?” Heeseung said.

Riki looked down at his phone. “Some hot girl.”

“Some hot girl,” Heeseung repeated.

“Wanted a tragus piercing.”

“Uh huh.” Heeseung looked at the counter. At the space where Riki’s personal card had been sitting ten minutes ago, now somewhere in your bag on the way home. “You give clients your personal card often?”

Riki said nothing. Heeseung looked back at his tablet. “Right,” he said quietly, and said nothing else.

Three weeks later you were standing outside Studio 13 again and this time you were completely, annoyingly sober. “I don’t know why I’m here,” you said.

“Because Riki said come back sober and you kept his card for three weeks,” Ria said, pushing the door open.

“I kept it by accident.”

“In your purse.”

“That’s where cards go.”

“You don’t keep any other cards in your purse, Y/N. I’ve seen your purse. It’s a graveyard of receipts and one lip liner.” You followed her inside because the alternative was standing on the pavement arguing with her and you’d already lost this argument six times on the way over.

Ria had a tattoo appointment. That was the reason you were here. You were just here for moral support. You were going to sit in a chair and look at your phone and not think about the guy who had looked at you like that and said I’ll take care of you with complete sincerity and a smirk that should have been annoying.

The door swung shut behind you. Same as before — black walls, flash art, red light, the slow dark playlist. A different energy in the daytime though, busier, more lived-in. Jay was at the side counter doing something with ink caps, talking loudly to no one in particular. Jake was sweeping near the back. Heeseung was visible through the half-open door of the back room, head down, working.

No one at the front desk. You relaxed slightly. Ria was already at the counter, checking in for her appointment, and you drifted toward the flash wall and started looking at the art because it was genuinely good and also because you needed something to do with your eyes.

You heard the door from the back open. Heard footsteps. Heard someone say, “Riki, someone’s here—” You turned around because you were a person with normal human reflexes and not because your body had already clocked the name.

Riki came through the back door with a pair of gloves half-on, looking down at the appointment book, and then he looked up.

He saw Ria first. Then his eyes moved — one smooth, unhurried slide — and found you standing by the flash wall in your jeans and your jacket looking like someone who was absolutely only here for moral support. “Hey,” he said.

“Hi,” you said. There was a pause that lasted slightly too long for two people who didn’t know each other.

“You came back,” he said.

“Ria has an appointment.”

“Right.” He looked at you. “And you’re just here for Ria.”

“Correct.”

“Nothing to do with the card.”

“I forgot I even had it.”

“Uh huh.” He pulled the second glove on, still looking at you, and the smirk had settled into something warmer now — less performance, more genuinely pleased. “How’s the tragus feeling? Still decisive?”

Ria made a sound from the counter that she turned into a cough. You didn’t look at her. “I’m considering my options,” you said.

“Good answer.” He turned to Ria, professional now, easy switch. “Ria, yeah? Heeseung’s got you, he’s just finishing up. Five minutes.”

“Perfect,” Ria said, and then immediately looked at you with an expression that meant she was storing everything and you would be debriefed extensively later.

Riki came around the counter. Didn’t go back to the desk — came and stood near the flash wall, close enough to talk, far enough to be plausibly looking at the art. “You look different,” he said.

“I’m sober.”

“That’s probably it.” His eyes did the thing — a brief, easy drop and return, taking in the jacket, the jeans, the way you were standing — and then he was looking at your face again like that was just how he operated. Open about it. Unbothered. “Still good though.”

“You’re very confident,” you said.

“I’m accurate,” he said. You looked at Riki. He looked back. This close you could see the bar through his tongue properly — silver, subtle when his mouth was closed, noticeable when he talked — and the ring in his ear and the way his rings shifted when he crossed his arms.

“So,” he said. “You actually want the piercing or did you come all the way here just to tell me you forgot my card existed?”

“I could still want the piercing.”

“You could.” He tilted his head slightly. “Do you?”

You held out for three more seconds. Then: “Yeah.”

His smile did the thing again — the slow, settled version, the one that looked like satisfaction and something warmer underneath it. “On the house,” he said.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.” He was already moving back toward the piercing station, unhurried, like it was decided. “Come on.”

The piercing chair was in a partitioned section near the back — semi-private, its own mirror, a tray of tools laid out with the kind of precision that told you he took this seriously. He snapped a fresh pair of gloves on and gestured to the chair and you sat down and tried to look like you were not thinking about the last time you’d been in this general vicinity, considerably less sober, telling him he had criminally pretty eyes. You were thinking about it.

He adjusted the chair height without asking, tilted the light, and then stepped in close to look at your ear. His fingers were gentle when they touched the outer ridge — thumb pressing lightly to test the cartilage, professional and careful — and he was close enough that you could smell whatever he was wearing, something dark and clean. “Tragus is a good choice,” he said, still examining your ear. “Suits you.”

“You can tell that from my ear?”

“I can tell from your face.” He stepped back, reached for the marking pen. “You’ve got good bone structure. Something small here draws attention without being loud.” He met your eyes in the mirror. “You’re already loud enough.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

“It was one.” He marked the spot with the pen — quick, precise — and then held up a small mirror so you could check the placement. His hand was steady. Everything about him was steady, which was both reassuring and slightly irritating. “Good?” he said.

“Good.”

He put the mirror down. Reached for the needle. And then paused, looking at you in the main mirror with an expression that was more direct than the smirk — more level. “You nervous?” he said.

“No.”

“Your jaw is doing something.”

“My jaw is fine.”

“Y/N.”

“I’m a little nervous,” you said. “About the needle. Not about—” You stopped.

“Not about?” he said.

You looked at him in the mirror. He looked back. The smirk was quiet right now, just his face, just the question sitting there. “The needle,” you said. “I said what I said.”

He let it go. Looked back at your ear, positioned his hands. “Breathe in,” he said. You breathed in. “Out.”

You breathed out and he moved — quick and precise and over before you’d finished processing it. A sharp bite of pressure, brief, clean, and then his hands were already switching out the needle for the jewellery, smooth and practiced. “Done,” he said.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” He stepped back to let you see in the mirror. Small flat-back stud, exactly where the mark had been, sitting perfectly. “What do you think?”

You looked at it. Turned your head slightly. It was — actually exactly right, the placement, the size, the way it sat. “I think you’re good at your job,” you said.

“I know.” But he said it lightly, without the edge, and when you looked at him in the mirror he was looking at the piercing with something that read like quiet pride. Like he actually cared that it was right.

He peeled his gloves off. Started going through aftercare — saline spray, what to avoid, how long to leave it — and you listened and watched his hands and thought about how he’d looked at you when you walked in. That slow, settled smile. You came back. Like he’d known you would. “Any questions?” he said.

“No.”

“Good.” He handed you the small aftercare card. His fingers brushed yours when he passed it over and he didn’t move his hand immediately, just let the contact sit there for a second before stepping back. “You should come back in four weeks so I can check it.”

“Is that standard?”

“For you it is.”

You looked up at him. He was close still, leaning against the counter beside the chair, arms crossed, completely at ease with the proximity and what he was saying and the way he was looking at you. “That’s a very smooth way to make a follow-up appointment,” you said.

“I’m a smooth guy.”

“You’re a cocky guy.”

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.” He smiled properly. “Four weeks, Y/N. I’ll be here.” From the main floor, very clearly, you heard Jay say to Jake in a voice that carried: “Twenty says she’s back in two.”

Heeseung appeared in the doorway of his room as you were walking back out to wait for Ria. He looked at you. Then at Riki, who was cleaning up the station behind you. He said nothing.

When you were out of earshot, he leaned in the doorway and looked at Riki with a level expression. Riki didn’t look up. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.”

Heeseung was quiet for a moment. “She coming back?”

Riki stacked the packaged jewellery back in the tray. “Four weeks.”

Heeseung looked at the ceiling. Looked back down. “Right,” he said, and went back into his room.

Riki looked up once — just once — at where you’d gone back to sit with Ria, talking and laughing, your hand coming up to touch the new piercing gently like you were checking it was real. He looked back down at the tray. Picked up his phone. Set it down again. Four weeks was a long time.

You were back in two weeks. You told yourself you had a legitimate reason. The piercing felt slightly tender on one side and the aftercare card said to come back if anything felt off and this was a medical concern, essentially, and had nothing to do with anything else. Ria, when you told her this, said “uh huh” in the exact same tone Riki had used and you’d hung up on her.

You pushed the door to Studio 13 open at four on a Thursday afternoon.

Jay was at the front counter this time. He looked up, recognized you, and his whole face did something delighted. “Y/N,” he said, like you were a returning champion.

“Hey.” You unwound your scarf. “Is Riki—”

“In the back.” Jay was already leaning back in his chair, tilting toward the hallway. “Riki.”

“I could have just—”

“RIKI. Your girl’s here.”

From the back, a pause. Then footsteps. Riki appeared in the doorway with a black coffee in one hand and his phone in the other and when he saw you something moved across his face — quick, controlled — before it settled into the usual. “Two weeks,” he said.

“I know.”

“I said four.”

“The piercing felt off.”

He looked at you. You looked back. He took a slow sip of his coffee. “Come here,” he said. Back in the piercing section again. The chair, the mirror, the tray. He set his coffee down on the counter and snapped gloves on and tilted your chin to the side with two fingers, turning your head so the light hit the piercing properly.

He was quiet while he looked. Close, the way he’d been last time, close enough that you were aware of exactly how tall he was and exactly how little space existed between you. “Looks fine,” he said.

“It felt tender.”

“New cartilage piercing. It’s going to feel tender.” He turned your head a fraction more, examining the entry and exit points. “You sleeping on it?”

“Sometimes.”

“Don’t.” His thumb pressed gently just below the piercing, checking the tissue. “You’re not rotating it, are you?”

“The card said not to.”

“People do it anyway.”

“I follow instructions.” He made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. His fingers were still at your jaw, light but there, and in the mirror you could see him looking at the piercing with that focused, careful expression he got when he was working — like the rest of him went quiet and it was just this, just the task, just making sure it was right.

“It’s fine,” he said again, quieter this time. “A little irritated but nothing bad. You’re cleaning it?”

“Twice a day.”

“Good girl.” He said it the same way he said everything — even, unbothered — and went right back to examining the piercing like he hadn’t just said it, like it was nothing, like your entire nervous system hadn’t just done something embarrassing.

He stepped back. Pulled one glove off. In the mirror you watched him look at you — your face this time, not the piercing — and the focused work expression shifted back into something more personal. His eyes moved down briefly, back up. Unhurried. Unapologetic. “You didn’t just come for the piercing check,” he said.

It wasn’t a question. “I was in the area,” you said.

“Y/N.”

“I was.”

“Okay.” He pulled the second glove off, dropped them both in the bin. Leaned against the counter beside the chair with his arms crossed, looking at you with that steady, patient expression. Like he had all the time in the world and was fully prepared to wait you out.

The rings on his fingers caught the light. The bar through his tongue was visible when he spoke and sometimes when he didn’t, a small flash of silver that your eyes kept going back to without your permission. “Can I ask you something?” you said.

“Go ahead.”

You nodded toward his mouth. “Does it affect anything? The tongue piercing.”

The corner of his mouth pulled up. He knew exactly what you were asking and you both knew you both knew it. “Depends what you mean by anything,” he said.

“Talking,” you said. “Eating.”

“No,” he said. “It doesn’t affect talking or eating.”

The way he said it made the implication sit in the room like a third person. “And what about—” you started.

“Yes,” he said simply. You looked at him. He looked back at you, completely relaxed, the smirk at about thirty percent, like he was letting you sit in the answer rather than pushing it.

“That was going to be a different question…” you said.

“Was it?” It wasn’t.

You looked away first, which you were counting as a tactical retreat rather than losing, and he made that almost-laugh sound again and pushed off the counter. “Come out front,” he said. “I’ll get you the saline to take home.”

Jay was now pretending to organize a drawer he had clearly already organized when you came back out. Jake had appeared from somewhere and was leaning on the wall near the door with his phone out. The effort to look casual was extraordinary.

Riki went behind the counter, got the saline, slid it across to you.“Stop sleeping on it,” he said.

“I’ll try.”

“Don’t try. Just don’t do it.”

“You’re bossy,” you said.

“I’m thorough.” He leaned on the counter. His forearms were right there, the sleeve on full display this close — you’d been trying not to look at it properly but it was a lot of work. Intricate blackwork, something that looked botanical near his wrist, darker geometry climbing toward his elbow. “Like the sleeve?” he said.

You looked up. He’d caught you. “It’s good work,” you said.

“Heeseung did most of it.”

“Heeseung tattooed you?”

“First one when I started here.” Something shifted slightly in his face — not closed off, just more considered. “Kind of a thing between us.”

You wanted to ask what kind of thing. Something in how he’d said it made you not push. “You do your own piercings?” you said instead.

He tilted his head so you could see the earring. “This one.”

“Doesn’t that hurt more when it’s yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“And you did it anyway.”

“I do most things anyway,” he said. He said it lightly but there was something under it, something matter-of-fact about pain being a variable he’d simply accounted for. You looked at him for a second longer than you meant to. “Four weeks,” he said, quieter now, just to you. “Come back in four weeks and I’ll check it properly. And if you’re in the area before that—” he held your gaze — “you know where we are.”

“Very smooth,” you said.

“You keep saying that.”

“You keep proving it.” He smiled. The real one — not the smirk, not the performance, the actual smile that did something to his whole face. You’d only seen it once before, the night you came in drunk when he laughed at something Ria said, and it was worse up close and sober.

You picked up the saline. Shouldered your bag. “Thanks for checking it,” you said.

“Anytime.”

You were halfway to the door when Jay said, loudly, to no one: “Two weeks. Called it.”

“Jay,” Riki said, flat.

“I’m just saying—”

“Jay.” You pushed the door open and let it close on whatever Jay said next. On the pavement you breathed in cold air and stood there for a second. I do most things anyway. You thought about that the whole way home.

You texted Ria that night.

you: the piercing was fine btw. just irritated.

Ria: sure

you: it was a legitimate medical concern

Ria: how did he look

you: that’s not relevant

Ria: how did he LOOK

You stared at your phone. Put it face down. Picked it up again.

you: good. he looked good. go to sleep.

Ria: 😭😭😭 Y/N YOU ARE SO DOWN BAD

You put your phone on the charger and lay on your back in the dark and stared at the ceiling. The bar through his tongue caught the light when he talked. Yes, he’d said. Like it was nothing. Like he said it every day. You put a pillow over your face.

Across the city, Studio 13 was closing up. Heeseung was cashing out. Jake was wiping down surfaces. Jay was retelling the afternoon to Sunghoon, who had come in for his evening shift and was listening with the specific expression of someone enjoying information they could use later.

Riki was at the piercing station. Cleaning the tray. Doing the same task he’d done a hundred times. “She came back in two weeks,” Jay said.

“I heard,” Sunghoon said.

“I called it.”

“You did call it.”

“Riki,” Jay said. “You owe me twenty.”

“I don’t owe you anything,” Riki said. “We didn’t make a bet.”

“Spiritually we did.” Riki said nothing. Put the tray away.

“She’s coming back in four weeks,” Jay told Sunghoon.

“Or two,” Sunghoon said.

“Or two,” Jay agreed.

“Both of you,” Riki said, without heat, “can shut up.”

They did not shut up. He let them talk and went back to the tray and thought about the way you’d looked at his mouth when you asked about the piercing. The way your eyes had gone somewhere specific and come back and you’d tried to cover it with a different question.

He’d watched the answer land. Had watched you process it and look away and call it a tactical retreat when it wasn’t. He was good at reading people. He’d had to be, for a long time, for reasons that had nothing to do with tattoo shops or piercing chairs.

You were going to come back before four weeks. He put the tray away and picked up his coffee and didn’t say any of that out loud.

You were back in ten days. You didn’t have a reason this time. You’d run out of reasons. You showed up at three on a Wednesday with two coffees and the vague awareness that something had shifted from I’m in the area to something you didn’t have a word for yet. Jay opened the door before you reached it. “She’s got coffee,” he announced into the shop.

“Jay—”

“Is one of those for me?” He was already holding the door open, looking at the cups in your hand with genuine hope.

“No.”

“Y/N.”

“I brought two.”

“There are multiple people here who drink coffee.”

“There are two coffees,” you said. “Do the math.”

Jay looked wounded. You walked past him into the shop and he let the door close and called after you: “I’m telling Riki you were mean to me.”

“Please do.” Riki was at the front counter. Actually at the counter this time, not coming through from the back, sitting on the stool with his forearms on the desk and his phone in his hand. He looked up when you came in and his eyes went straight to the cups. Then to your face. Then he smiled — not the smirk, not the performance, just a real and immediate thing that he didn’t seem to think about first. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” You put one of the coffees on the counter in front of him. “I didn’t know how you take it.”

He looked at the cup. Looked at you. “Black is fine,” he said.

“Lucky guess.”

“Is it?” He picked it up. His fingers overlapped yours on the cup for a second before you let go — brief, probably accidental, neither of you addressed it. He took a sip. Put it down. “Ten days.”

“I know.”

“Getting closer to two weeks, not further.”

“I’ve been busy,” you said. “This was the first chance I had to—”

“Y/N.”

“What?”

“You don’t need a reason,” he said simply. You looked at him. He looked back, completely even, like he’d just said something neutral about the weather. “Sit down.”

That was how it started. Not with anything dramatic. Just you sitting on the other side of the counter on a Wednesday afternoon with a coffee while Riki worked through his admin, and the conversation that happened around it — easy and unhurried, drifting from one thing to another, the kind of talk that didn’t feel like it was going anywhere because it didn’t need to.

You learned things without asking for them. That he’d been at Studio 13 for two years. That he and Jay had met here. That he had opinions about piercing placement that were borderline philosophical and he’d share them unprompted if you let him.

He learned things back. That you were in your final year. That Ria had been your best friend since you were sixteen. That you had three other piercings already and had done two of them yourself, which made him look up from his phone with an expression that was equal parts impressed and horrified. “You did your own helix,” he said.

“With a kit.”

“A kit.”

“People do it.”

“People also do a lot of things I have to fix,” he said, and leaned across the counter to look at your ear without asking. His fingers found the helix piercing, examining it with the same careful focus he brought to everything, and you sat very still. “It’s crooked,” he said.

“I know.”

“I can fix it.”

“I know.”

He was still looking at your ear, close, his thumb light against the cartilage. “Why haven’t you?”

“I kept meaning to.” You paused. “And then I found Studio 13 and I figured I’d—”

You stopped. He pulled back just enough to look at your face. His expression said he’d heard the end of the sentence even though you hadn’t said it. “Figured you’d what?” he said.

“Come here eventually,” you said. “For things.”

The smirk appeared. “For things.”

“Piercings.”

“Right.” He stepped back, let you breathe, picked his coffee back up. “I’ll fix it whenever you want.”

“Add it to my tab.”

“You don’t have a tab. Everything I do to you is on the house.” He said it completely straight and then looked at his phone, leaving you to sit in the everything I do to you by yourself.

Jay appeared from the back at that exact moment, looked at you both, looked at the counter between you, and went directly back the way he came without saying anything, which was somehow more powerful than if he had.

Hana came with you the following Wednesday. She had been angling to see the shop since Ria had described it in approximately four hundred texts and the second she walked in she stopped in the middle of the floor and looked around with wide eyes. “Oh,” she said. “Oh this place is cool.”

Jake, who was at the side counter, looked up. Hana looked at Jake. Jake looked at Hana. You filed that away.

Riki was with a client in the piercing section — you could see him through the partition, gloved up, talking the client through something in that low steady voice. You hadn’t told him you were coming. You weren’t sure why, except that you’d wanted to know what it felt like to walk in and see him before he saw you. It felt like something, as it turned out.

He was focused on his client, head tilted, hands precise. He’d pushed his sleeves up and the full length of the tattoo was visible now — blackwork that climbed from his wrist to somewhere past his elbow, detailed and dark. He was saying something that made the client laugh. Patient and calm and completely in his element.

You stood there and looked at him for maybe four seconds too long.

“Y/N,” Hana said quietly beside you.

“What.”

“You’ve got a face on.”

“I don’t have a face.”

“You’ve got a very specific face.” She looked at Riki. Looked at you. “Oh you are done.”

“I’m looking at the flash art,” you said, and turned to look at the flash art.

Jay materialized at your shoulder. “She does this every time,” he told Hana, like you weren’t standing right there. “Comes in, looks at him, then looks at the wall.”

“I can hear you,” you said.

“I know.” Jay smiled. “Coffee?”

Riki’s client left at half past three. He came through from the partition still pulling his gloves off and stopped when he saw you and Hana at the counter with Jay. The gloves came off slower. “You didn’t text,” he said to you.

“Spontaneous visit.”

“Hm.” He dropped the gloves, came around to the main counter. His eyes moved to Hana briefly, assessing, friendly. “Friend?”

“Hana,” you said. “She wanted to see the shop.”

“Welcome.” He said it to Hana and then his attention came back to you in that way it always did — like you were the fixed point and everything else was peripheral. “How’s the piercing?”

“Fine. Good.”

“You sleeping on it?”

“Mostly not.”

“Y/N.”

“Mostly not. I’m a side sleeper, it’s a process.”

He leaned on the counter. His coffee was cold by now but he picked it up anyway. “I’ll fix the helix today if you want. While you’re here.”

“Yeah?”

“Chair’s free.” Hana’s elbow found your ribs with surgical precision. You ignored it.

“Okay,” you said.

The helix took ten minutes. Precise, careful, the same focused quiet he brought every time. Afterwards he checked the tragus — habit, he said, like that was a normal thing, like of course he was checking it — and you sat in the chair and let him and looked at his face in the mirror while he was looking at your ear.

Up close like this you could see things you couldn’t from the other side of a counter. The small scar through his left eyebrow, barely visible. The way his jaw set when he was concentrating. The rings on his fingers — he took them off for client work and put them back on after, and watching him slide them back on was a thing you were apparently noticing now.

He caught you in the mirror. Didn’t call you out. Just held your gaze for a second and then looked back at the piercing, and the corner of his mouth moved slightly. “Good,” he said. “Helix looks better. You’ll need to re-do the aftercare cycle.”

“I know.”

“You actually know or you’re saying you know?”

“Riki.”

“I’ll write it down.”

“I literally work a piercing counter in my memory called things Riki has told me,” you said.

He went still for a half second. Then: “Yeah?”

“You’re very thorough,” you said. “It sticks.”

He looked at you in the mirror. Steady, quiet, something behind his eyes that was more than the usual easy confidence — something that had weight to it. “Good,” he said, quieter.

He stepped back. Started cleaning up. Normal, routine, the way he always moved through the shop like everything was exactly where it was supposed to be. “Same time next week?” he said. It wasn’t really a question.

“Sure,” you said.

In the main shop, Hana was sitting on the counter watching Jake explain the difference between traditional and neo-traditional tattooing with the energy of someone who had found religion. Jay was watching this with profound satisfaction. When you came back out Hana looked at you and then at Riki behind you and then at you again. “We should go,” you said.

“Should we,” Hana said.

“Yes.”

“Jake was just explaining—”

“Hana.” She got up, reluctantly, and said goodbye to Jake in a way that suggested she was also going to be back before four weeks. Jake watched her go with an expression that Riki clocked and then looked away from like he hadn’t seen it.

At the door you turned back. Riki was at the counter, already on his phone, or pretending to be. “Thanks for the helix,” you said.

“Anytime.” He didn’t look up. “Wednesday?”

“Wednesday,” you said. Jay made a noise. Riki didn’t look at him. You pushed the door open and the cold air hit you and behind you you heard Jay say, quiet and satisfied to no one in particular: “Regular.”

The Wednesday visits became a thing. Not every week, sometimes every ten days, but consistent enough that Jay started having your coffee order ready. Consistent enough that Jake stopped looking surprised when you walked in. Consistent enough that Heeseung, who said little and noticed everything, started nodding at you when you arrived like you’d passed some quiet assessment he’d been running.

Riki never texted first. You did sometimes — nothing significant, a meme about piercings, a question about aftercare that you probably knew the answer to. He always replied. Never with much. But always.

The counter between you was becoming a problem. Not the physical one — the metaphorical one. The distance that was exactly the right size for this isn’t anything yet and felt increasingly inadequate for what was actually happening in the space between you every Wednesday afternoon. He looked at you like you were a decision he’d already made. You were starting to think you had too.

Daniel texted on a Thursday.

Daniel: hey, haven’t seen you around much. you ok?

You stared at it. You and Daniel had two seminars together and a loose group chat and approximately nothing else, and this was the third text this week.

you: yeah all good, just busy

Daniel: we should get coffee sometime

you: I’m pretty slammed rn, sorry

You thought nothing of it. You mentioned it to Riki the following Wednesday — offhand, in the middle of a conversation about something else, not thinking. “This guy in my seminar keeps texting,” you said. “It’s starting to get annoying.”

Riki was writing something on the appointment book. His pen slowed.“What guy?” he said.

“Daniel. We’re in the same module. He keeps asking for coffee.” Riki’s pen stopped. You looked up. His face was the same — neutral, easy — but something had shifted underneath it. Something had gone very still in the specific way of a thing that was actively being held still.

“You said no?” he said.

“Obviously. I’m not interested.”

A pause. He looked back at the appointment book. Wrote something. “Good,” he said.

Just that. Good. You looked at him for a second. “Riki.”

“Hm.”

“Are you—”

“Helix check,” he said, and stood up from the stool. You let him redirect you. Sat in the chair. Let him check the helix he’d fixed two weeks ago and didn’t need to check again. His hands were as steady as they always were. His voice was as even.

But when you looked at him in the mirror his jaw was set in a way it wasn’t usually and his eyes, when they met yours in the reflection, had something in them that was more than the usual warm certainty. Something that looked a lot like mine with nowhere to go yet. You looked away first. Neither of you said anything about it.

Daniel was waiting outside your seminar on Tuesday. Not accidentally. He was leaning on the wall opposite the door with his phone out, and when you came through he pushed off and fell into step beside you like it was coordinated, like he’d timed it. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” You kept walking.

“Good seminar?”

“It was fine.”

“I thought Professor Kim made a good point about the—”

“Daniel.” You stopped. Turned to face him. He was decent looking, objectively — tall, friendly face, the kind of guy who probably did well in situations where persistence read as flattering. “What’s going on?”

He smiled. Easy, practiced. “I was thinking we could grab that coffee.”

“I said I was slammed.”

“You’re not slammed right now.”

“I have somewhere to be.”

“Where?”

You looked at him. “That’s not really—”

“I’ll walk you,” he said. Like that was a reasonable response. Like the answer to I have somewhere to be was I’ll come.

“Daniel.” You kept your voice even. “I appreciate it but I’m not interested. Okay? Not trying to be harsh, just being clear.”

Something moved across his face — not anger, more like recalibration, like he was filing this away as a temporary obstacle. “Maybe just as friends,” he said.

“I’m good. Thanks though.” You walked away. Heard him say something behind you — see you Thursday — and didn’t respond. You texted Ria about it on the bus.

you: the Daniel thing is getting annoying

Ria: what happened?

you: he waited outside my seminar

Ria: ew

you: I told him straight I’m not interested

Ria: good. are you telling riki?

You stared at that.

you: why would I tell riki??

Ria: because you tell riki everything now??

you: I do not tell riki everything

Ria: you told him about your mum’s cat

you: that came up naturally and I’m not telling him, it’s not a big deal

You put your phone in your bag. You didn’t tell him.

Wednesday came and you sat at the counter with your coffee and talked about other things — Hana and Jake’s ongoing situation, which was developing at a glacial pace that was driving Ria insane. A new flash piece Heeseung had drawn that you’d been looking at for twenty minutes when you came in. Whether you should get a second tragus on the other ear. “Yes,” Riki said, without hesitation.

“That’s a very immediate answer.”

“It’s an obvious answer.” He looked at your ears, both sides, that assessing look. “Symmetrical double tragus. Come in next week.”

“Maybe I want to think about it.”

“You don’t need to think about it.”

“Riki.”

“You came in drunk wanting a tragus piercing,” he said. “You knew then. You know now.”

You looked at him. He looked back with the patience of someone who was completely certain and was willing to wait for you to catch up. “Fine,” you said.

He smiled. “Next week,” he said.

The following Tuesday Daniel was outside your seminar again. This time you saw him before he saw you and you changed direction, took the long way to the exit, added seven minutes to your walk. Small, manageable.

On Thursday he was in the coffee queue behind you. “Coincidence,” he said, and smiled at you, and you smiled back tightly and paid for your coffee and left.

On Friday he messaged. Again.

Daniel: hey saw you in the queue yesterday, why’d you leave so fast?

You didn’t reply. And he messaged again on Saturday.

Daniel: did I do something wrong?

You showed it to Ria over the phone that night. She was quiet for a second. “He’s not taking the hint,” she said.

“I didn’t hint. I said directly I wasn’t interested.”

“Then he’s not taking the direct statement.”

“Yeah.”

Another pause. “Tell Riki.”

“Ria—”

“Y/N I’m serious, tell—”

“It’s fine. I can handle it.”

“I know you can handle it, that’s not the—” She stopped. “Just tell him. You know you want to.” You didn’t answer that.

Wednesday came around, you’d been at the counter for forty minutes. Jay had come and gone twice. Jake had shown Hana something on his phone that made her laugh and Riki had looked at that for approximately one second before very deliberately looking elsewhere.

You were mid-sentence about something — your dissertation, probably, you’d been complaining about your dissertation — when the door opened.

Sunghoon came in from his afternoon off, still in his jacket, unwinding his scarf. He was unfairly attractive and moved through the shop like he knew it, dropping his bag behind the counter and immediately coming over to where you were sitting. “Y/N.” He leaned on the counter beside Riki’s stool, friendly, easy. “How’s the tragus?”

“Good.” You touched it briefly. “Riki’s doing the other side next week.”

“Nice. You should let me draw something for you. Little custom piece, just here—” he touched his own collarbone— “would suit you.”

“Yeah?”

“Hundred percent.” He looked at Riki. “Right?” Riki was looking at his phone. “Riki,” Sunghoon said.

“Hm.” He didn’t look up. Sunghoon looked at you with a small what’s his problem expression. You looked back with a I genuinely don’t know expression.

You talked to Sunghoon for twenty more minutes. He was easy to talk to — funny, straightforward, the kind of person who filled a room without trying. He showed you his portfolio on his phone, talked you through a couple of pieces, asked about your university course with actual interest.

Riki stayed on his stool. He wasn’t on his phone. You could tell because you kept looking over and the screen was dark. He was just sitting there in the specific stillness of something being actively held in place, forearms on the desk, jaw set. When Sunghoon went to the back to change into his work clothes you turned to Riki. “What’s wrong with you?” you said.

“Nothing.”

“You’ve said four words in the last twenty minutes.”

“I’ve been busy.”

You looked at the dark phone screen. Looked at him. “Riki.”

“I’m fine.” He finally looked at you. His face was even, controlled, the expression he wore when he was putting effort into the expression. “You want more coffee?”

“No.” You kept your voice low. Jay and Jake were across the room but still. “Talk to me.”

Something moved behind his eyes. For a second you thought he was going to — actually going to, drop whatever this was and say it. His jaw shifted. His eyes moved over your face and then away. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Forget it.”

“Riki—”

“Forget it, Y/N.” Quiet. Final. Not angry — worse, flat. Decided.

You looked at him for a long moment. He looked at the counter. You picked up your bag. “I’m going to head,” you said.

He looked up then. Quick, like he hadn’t expected it. “You don’t have to—”

“I have stuff to do.” You stood up. Your voice was even, you’d made sure of it. “I’ll see you next week for the tragus.”

“Y/N—”

“Bye, Riki.” You said goodbye to Jay on the way out. Waved at Jake. Pushed the door open into the cold.

Behind you, through the glass, you heard Jay say something. Heard Riki’s voice, short and clipped. Didn’t hear the words. You walked to the bus stop and stared at the road and felt something hot and frustrated sitting in your chest that you didn’t have a clean name for.

He texted at nine that night.

Riki: I’m sorry about today

You stared at it.

Riki: I get like that sometimes. I don’t like it.

Another one, a minute later.

Riki: It wasn’t about Sunghoon. It wasn’t about you.

Riki: ok it was about Sunghoon.

You sat on your bed with your phone in your hand and read that three times.

you: do you want to tell me what “getting like that” means??

A pause. Longer than his usual response time.

Riki: Not over text. Wednesday?

you: yeah

you: Riki, Sunghoon was just being friendly

Riki: I know. I know that. It doesn’t always

The message cut off. Like he’d deleted the end of it and sent what was left.

Riki: Wednesday. I’ll explain.

Riki: night Y/N

You got there at three. Jay handed you your coffee without being asked and then found somewhere else to be, which meant Riki had said something to him beforehand, which meant he’d been thinking about this. Riki was at the counter. He looked up when you came in and the usual ease wasn’t fully there — not gone, just quieter, like he’d dialed something back. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” You sat down. Wrapped both hands around the coffee. “So.”

“So.” He exhaled. Looked at the counter for a second, then at you. “I get possessive.” He said it straight. No build up, no softening — just put it on the counter between you like something he’d decided you should see.

“Okay,” you said.

“I don’t like it,” he said. “It’s not — I’m not trying to make it your problem. I know Sunghoon wasn’t doing anything. I know you weren’t doing anything. It just—” He stopped. His jaw shifted. “It sits wrong. Someone else in your space. Being the thing making you laugh.”

You looked at him. His eyes were on the counter, which was unusual — Riki who held eye contact through everything. “Has it always been like that?” you said.

“Yeah.” Simple. “Better than it used to be.”

“What was it like before?”

He looked up. “Worse.” A pause. “I dealt with it badly. I’m not—” He stopped again. “I’m not like that anymore. I don’t act on it. But I feel it and sometimes it makes me go quiet and disappear into my own head and that’s not fair to you.”

You sat with that. “Why are you telling me this?” you said.

He held your gaze. “Because you asked.”

“People don’t always answer when you ask.”

“I know.” Something in his face. “You should know what you’re—” He stopped himself again, and you heard the end of that sentence clearly even without the words. What you’re getting into. What I am.

“Riki,” you said. “If Sunghoon had been doing something—” You held his eyes. “Or anyone. I’d handle it. That’s not— I’m not someone who needs protecting from other people’s attention.”

“I know that.”

“But I’m also not—” You paused. Chose the words. “I’m not interested in other people’s attention. Okay? That’s just—” You shrugged. “That’s just where I’m at.”

The silence that followed had weight to it. Riki looked at you. Really looked — the way he did sometimes, like he was reading something underneath the surface of what you’d said, like he was checking if you meant it.You meant it. “Okay,” he said quietly.

“Okay,” you said.

He exhaled. Something in his shoulders dropped slightly — barely visible, but there. “Tragus,” he said.

“Tragus,” you agreed. He stood up from the stool. And as he passed behind the counter his hand came down briefly on yours where it rested on the surface — just for a second, just his fingers over your knuckles, warm and solid — and then he was moving through to the piercing section and the moment was gone.

You sat there for a second. Then you followed him. Across the room Jay looked at Heeseung in the doorway of his office. Heeseung looked back. Neither of them said anything.

It happened on a Friday. Not a Wednesday. Not planned. You’d come in with Hana at five because she’d finally committed to a small piece on her ankle and wanted moral support, and by the time Jake was finishing up the linework the shop had emptied out — Sunghoon’s last client gone, Jay heading out with his jacket half on, Heeseung locking his office with his keys already in his hand. “You good to close?” Heeseung said to Riki.

“Yeah.” Riki was wiping down the front counter. “Go.” Heeseung looked at you. Brief, unreadable. Looked back at Riki. Said nothing and left. Jay pointed finger guns at you on his way out. You ignored him.

Jake finished Hana’s piece at half past six. She sat up and looked at it in the mirror with the expression of someone who had just made a very good decision, and then she looked at you and at Riki and made a different kind of decision entirely. “I’ll get a cab,” she said.

“I’ll come,” you said.

“You don’t have to.” Serene. Innocent. Absolutely deliberate. “I’m fine on my own.”

“Hana—”

“I’ll text you when I’m home.” She hugged you, said goodbye to Jake, said goodbye to Riki with a smile that communicated volumes, and then she was gone and Jake was heading out behind her and the door swung shut and the shop was quiet.

Just you and Riki. He was at the front counter. You were near the piercing section. The red light was low and the playlist had shifted to something slower, something with bass underneath it, and the flash art on the walls looked different when there was no one else here — more intimate, like the shop had exhaled. “You can head,” Riki said. He wasn’t looking at you. Wiping the counter, routine.

“I know,” you said.

You didn’t move. He stopped wiping. The silence lasted four seconds. You counted. Then he looked up. The expression on his face wasn’t the smirk. Wasn’t the work focus. It was something stripped back — something that had been running underneath everything for weeks and was apparently done waiting. “Y/N,” he said. Low.

“Yeah,” you said. Like you were answering a question he hadn’t asked yet.

He put the cloth down. He came around the counter and crossed the floor and he didn’t stop until he was right in front of you, close enough that you had to tilt your chin up slightly, and his hand came up to your jaw — not grabbing, just his fingers along the side of your face, tilting you toward him — and he looked at you for one more second like he was making absolutely sure.

Whatever he saw made his mind up. He kissed you and it was nothing like the slow build you’d been expecting — it was immediate, certain, his mouth on yours like he’d been thinking about it for weeks because he had been, and you got your hands into his shirt and kissed him back and the sound he made low in his throat did something catastrophic to your ability to think.

His hands moved — jaw, then your waist, pulling you in until there was no space left between you — and you felt the rings on his fingers through the fabric of your top and his body was solid and warm and there, fully there, nothing held back.

You bit his lower lip without planning to. He pulled back half an inch. His eyes were dark, his breathing had changed, and he looked at you with an expression that rearranged something in your chest. “Do that again,” he said quietly, “and we’re not stopping.”

“Good,” you said. And you did it again. He walked you back until your shoulders hit the wall beside the piercing partition — not rough, controlled, one hand flat against the wall beside your head and the other at your waist, and he kissed you deeper this time, slower, like he had you exactly where he wanted and wasn’t in any rush now that he did.

His tongue — god, his tongue, the bar was there and present and you felt it and made a sound into his mouth that you would have been embarrassed about if his hand hadn’t tightened on your waist the second you did it. “There it is,” he said against your mouth.

“Shut up,” you breathed.

“You’ve been thinking about it.” Not a question. His lips moved to your jaw, your neck, unhurried. “Since I told you.”

“Riki—”

“Yes,” he said, quoting you back to yourself, and you felt him smile against your throat.

“You’re so—”

“I know.” He pulled back to look at you. His hair was slightly wrecked, his eyes were very dark, and he looked at you with the kind of focus he usually reserved for his work — total, precise, like you were something he intended to get exactly right. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want you to stop talking,” you said.

“No you don’t.” He was right. You didn’t.

“I want—” You stopped. His thumb had found the hem of your top, tracing the skin at your waist, barely moving, just there. Your brain was doing something unhelpful. “I want you to keep going.”

“Keep going,” he repeated. Like he was logging it. “That’s not very specific.”

“Riki.”

“I want to hear you say it.” His voice had dropped, lower than usual, and there was something in it — not a demand exactly, more like an invitation with weight behind it, like he already knew and wanted you to catch up. “Tell me.”

You looked at him. He looked back, steady, patient, his thumb still tracing that small arc at your waist.

“I’ve wanted you for weeks,” you said. “You know that.”

“I know.” He leaned in, his mouth at your ear. “I wanted to hear you say it.” His hands moved — both of them, finding the hem of your top, sliding underneath to your bare waist, warm palms spreading across your skin — and you exhaled shakily and his mouth came back to yours and the patience dissolved.

Somewhere on the walk from the counter to the wall you got his shirt off and you put your hands on his chest and then his stomach and then lower and found the waistband of his jeans and his breath caught — actually caught, an involuntary thing, the first crack in the steady control — and you looked up at him.

His jaw was tight. His eyes were dark and fixed on your face. “Keep going,” he said. His own words back. Low and rough. You undid his jeans. Your hand found him and he was — there was a Jacob’s ladder — you stopped. He watched your face process it.

“Riki,” you said.

“Yeah.” His voice was rough now, the evenness wearing thin at the edges.

“When were you going to—”

“When it came up.”

“It’s come up.”

“It has,” he agreed, and something in his expression was almost amused except he was too far gone for amused, too focused, his hands gripping your waist with more pressure than before. “Still want to keep going?”

You looked at him. “Are you serious right now.”

He laughed — real, brief, surprised out of him — and then his forehead dropped to yours and you felt him exhale and then his mouth was on yours again and the laughing was done. Your jacket off your shoulders and it hit the floor and his mouth was on your throat before it landed — open, hot, his tongue against your pulse point and the piercing bar cool against your skin and you made a sound that echoed off the black walls. “Riki—”

“I know.” His hands were at the hem of your top, shoving it up, impatient in a way that cracked the usual control wide open. “Off.”

You got it off and his hands were on your tits and his mouth came back to yours.

He walked you back into the wall beside the piercing partition — not slow, not careful, just direct — and pinned you there with his body and his hands were everywhere and yours were too and it was nothing like the slow careful thing you’d half imagined. It was desperate. Both of you. Weeks of it.

“You have no idea,” he said against your jaw, your throat, lower, his mouth on your collarbone, “how long I’ve—” He stopped. His teeth grazed your skin. “Fuck.”

“Tell me,” you breathed.

“Since you walked in here in that dress,” he said into your skin. “Since you leaned on my counter and looked at me like that. I’ve been—” His hands found your jeans, the button, the zip. “Since then.” He shoved your jeans down your hips and you kicked them off and his hand pushed between your thighs and found your pussy through the thin fabric still there and pressed and your hips rolled forward hard.

“There,” he said. Low, rough, satisfied. “There you are.” His fingers moved — slow, deliberate, feeling the heat of you through the fabric — and he looked at your face while he did it. Watching. Taking everything. “Soaked already,” he said. “Were you like this the whole time?”

“Don’t—” you started.

“You were.” He pushed the fabric aside and his fingers touched your folds directly and you choked on a breath. The rings were cold, the contrast of it shocking and good and — “Riki—”

“Good girl,” he said quietly. Like it meant something. Like you’d done something right just by responding to him. His fingers moved through your folds and found your clit and you grabbed his shoulders and held on. “So wet. So fucking — look at you.”

“Please—”

“Please what.” His fingers kept moving, unhurried despite everything, despite the fact that you could feel how much he wanted this — felt it against your hip, hard, his own breathing gone ragged at the edges. “Say it.”

“I need—”

“Say it, Y/N.”

“I need you to fuck me,” you said. “Now, Riki, please—” He made a sound low in his throat and his fingers disappeared and he was shoving his own jeans down, just enough, barely, one hand braced on the wall beside your head — and then he looked at you, dark eyes and wrecked hair and jaw set hard.

“Here?” he said. Rough. “Right here?”

“Yes—”

His hand found your pussy again, two fingers pushing inside, testing, and you made an embarrassing sound and he groaned at the feel of you — “fuck you’re—” — and then his fingers were gone and he was there, the head of his cock at your entrance, and you hooked your leg over his hip. He pushed in. Both of you went still. His forehead dropped to yours. Your nails were in his shoulders. The Jacob’s ladder — you felt every single one and your mouth fell open and you heard him exhale shakily above you. “Riki—”

“I know.” His voice was barely there. “I know, just — fuck — just give me a second—”

“Don’t stop,” you said. “Don’t stop, keep—”

He moved. There was nothing controlled about it. That was the thing — Riki who was steady and certain and always in possession of himself — gone. Completely. He fucked you against the wall with his jeans half down and yours on the floor and his rings cold against your thigh where he’d hooked your leg higher and the bar of his tongue in his teeth when he looked at you and it was overwhelming, the closeness of it, the sound of it in the empty shop.

“Good,” he said, rough and low, his hips rolling into you, setting a pace that had your head dropping back against the wall. “Good girl, just like — yeah, just like that—”

“More—”

“Yeah?” He shifted his angle and you cried out and he did it again, deliberate, watching your face. “There?”

“Yes — yes, don’t stop—”

“I’ve got you.” His mouth found your throat. “I’ve got you, you’re doing so — fuck, Y/N, you feel—” He broke off. His rhythm stuttered and recovered. “You feel so good. So fucking good.”

The praise landed somewhere it had no business landing, warm and devastating, and your hips were moving to meet him and your clit was grinding against him with every thrust and you were already… “Riki I’m going to—”

“Do it,” he said immediately. “Cum for me. Come on.” His hand moved between you and his thumb found your clit and pressed and you shattered — your whole body going taut, his name in your mouth, your nails breaking skin on his shoulders — and he fucked you through it, relentless, not letting up—

“That’s it,” he said against your ear, rough and wrecked. “That’s it, good girl, god you’re—” He followed you over the edge not long after — his rhythm breaking, his breath gone, his forehead hard against the wall beside your head — and the sound he made when he came was low and helpless and you felt it everywhere.

There was silence that followed apart from the playlist over the shop speakers. The red light under the door still illuminated. Both of you still against the wall like butter of you planned to move soon, his weight partly on you and partly on his arm and neither of you in any hurry to fix that.

Your leg slid down from his hip. He pulled back enough to look at your face. His hair was completely wrecked. His mouth was slightly swollen. He looked at you with an expression that had nothing performed in it — just open, just him, something that hadn’t had a name all this time and still didn’t quite yet. “Hi,” he said.

You laughed. Surprised out of you, real. He smiled — the real one, the one that changed his whole face — and pressed it briefly into your hair.

You found the back room couch eventually. His shirt on your shoulders. The rings back on his fingers because he’d put them on out of habit and then looked at his own hands like he hadn’t noticed himself doing it. You lay on your back. He sat with his back against the couch, forearm on his knee, looking at the floor. “So,” you said.

“So,” he said.

“What happens now?” you said.

He was quiet for a moment. “What do you want?”

You thought about the card in your bag. The Wednesdays. The way he’d looked at you across the counter every single time like you were a decision he’d already made. “I don’t know yet,” you said. Honest.

“Okay,” he said. Easy. No pressure in it. His hand found yours in the dark. Didn’t make anything of it. Just held on. You stayed on the couch until the playlist rolled over twice. At some point the I don’t know yet became irrelevant because his mouth found your throat again and his hands were back under his shirt on your skin and the question got buried under something more immediate.

You left at nine. He walked you to the door. Held it open, leaned in the frame. The cold air hit you and you turned back. He looked wrecked and unbothered about it. Shirt on, jeans done up, rings on every finger. Hair a disaster. Looking at you with that expression — the settled one, the certain one. “Wednesday,” he said. You nodded.

Neither of you said anything about what it was. That was the agreement, unspoken, the way most things between you and Riki were unspoken. You came in on Wednesdays. Sometimes other days. Sometimes he texted at ten at night — nothing explicit, just you up or studio’s empty — and you went, and nobody named what that meant. It worked. Mostly.

The sex was — there wasn’t a word for it that didn’t sound inadequate. Compulsive was close. Inevitable was closer. Like once the wall had come down neither of you had any interest in rebuilding it, like your bodies had been having a conversation for months and were now just speaking plainly.

He learned you fast. Faster than anyone had. What made you gasp versus what made you come apart completely. The difference between what you asked for and what you actually wanted. He paid attention the way he paid attention to everything — totally, precisely — and used it with a focus that should have been illegal.

You learned him too. That the control was real but thin in the right circumstances. That his jaw set right before it cracked. That he made sounds he didn’t seem to know he was making. That he said your name differently when he was close — shorter, sharper, like he didn’t have room for the full shape of it. That he always, always pulled you back when you tried to move away after. Not possessive. Just — unwilling to let the warmth go yet. You were trying very hard not to think about what that meant.

Three weeks after the first time, on a Tuesday night, you were in the back room of Studio 13 with Riki’s shirt on the floor and your jeans somewhere near the door and his mouth on your throat and his hand between your thighs and the playlist coming through the walls and everything was fine, everything was exactly what it was, unnamed and manageable —

And then he said I’ve got you in that low rough voice right against your ear and something in your chest did a thing it wasn’t supposed to do. You filed it away. Dealt with it later. Later didn’t come because he did something with his tongue that made later completely irrelevant.

Wednesday afternoon. Counter. Coffee. Normal. Easy. The same as it had always been except for the part where it wasn’t because now you knew exactly what his hands felt like and what sounds he made and what his face looked like when the composure cracked and sitting on the other side of a counter from him in the middle of the afternoon was — a different experience than it used to be.

He was telling you something about a client — complicated custom piece, back and forth for weeks on the design — and you were listening and also watching his hands move when he talked, the rings catching the light, and thinking about those hands on your waist last night and… “Y/N.”

You looked up. He was looking at you with the quiet knowing expression. “I was listening,” you said.

“You weren’t.”

“I was. Custom piece. Back and forth on the design. Client keeps changing their mind.”

He tilted his head slightly. The corner of his mouth. “What were you thinking about?”

“The flash art.”

“Hm.” He leaned on the counter. His forearms right there, the sleeve on full display, and he looked at you with that unhurried certainty. “You were looking at my hands.”

“I was looking at your rings.”

“Y/N.”

“They’re interesting rings.”

He held your gaze for a long moment. Then he looked down at his hands, turned them over slowly, looked back up at you with an expression that was doing something to your ability to function. “Come back tonight,” he said.

“I was here last night.”

“I know.”

“And the night before.”

“I know.” He didn’t look remotely apologetic. “Come back tonight.”

You looked at him. “We should probably — this probably shouldn’t be—”

“Probably,” he agreed, like the word meant nothing.

“Riki.”

“Tonight, Y/N.”

You looked at your coffee. At him. At the rings on his hands that you had been thinking about and were now not admitting to thinking about. “Fine,” you said.

He picked up his own coffee. Satisfied. Like there had never been any other outcome. From across the shop Jay said nothing. He had learned, over the past three weeks, that saying things got him absolutely nowhere and had adapted accordingly. He simply made eye contact with Sunghoon across the room and they had an entire conversation without words.

That night after Studio 13 closed, which had become its own specific thing — the red light, the quiet, the shop breathing differently when it was empty. Riki had barely locked the front door before you were crossing the floor toward him and his expression when he turned around and saw you moving like that— “Hi,” he said.

“Hi.” You reached him. Your hands went to his chest, his jaw, pulling him down, and he came without resistance, his hands finding your waist immediately, already knowing where to go.

He kissed you slow this time. Deliberately slow, like he was making a point, like the urgency of the last few weeks had shifted into something that wanted to take its time. That was somehow worse. “Riki,” you said against his mouth.

“Hm.”

“Stop going slow.”

“No.” He kissed your jaw. Your throat. Slow and deliberate, his hands sliding under your top to your bare waist. “I spent all afternoon thinking about this.”

“So did I, that’s why—”

“That’s why we’re taking our time.” His mouth at your collarbone. “I want to—” A pause. His lips against your skin. “I want to take you apart properly. Not fast.”

Your hands tightened in his hair. “That’s not fair,” you said.

“No,” he agreed, and kept going. He got your top off and looked at you in the low light the way he always did — that slow, unapologetic assessment that moved over you like you were worth looking at carefully — and then his mouth found your tits and your head fell back.

His tongue. The bar of it, cool and present, circling your nipple, and you made a sound and his hands tightened on your waist. “Good girl,” he said against your skin. “Just like that.”

“Riki—”

“I’ve got you.” He moved to the other side, same slow attention, his hands holding your waist like you might float away. “I’ve got you, just — yeah, just feel it.” You were going to lose your mind. Your hands found his shirt and he let you get it off and then he was walking you back to the couch in the back room and laying you down and looking at you from above with dark eyes and that expression — the open one, the one that had no performance in it.

He got your jeans off slow. His hands running down your thighs as he pulled them, his mouth following, pressing to your hip, the inside of your knee, and by the time he got back up to your folds you were already soaked. “Riki, please—”

“Please what.” His breath against your inner thigh. Close, not close enough.

“Please—”

“Tell me what you want.” His lips brushed your folds, barely, just the suggestion of pressure. “Tell me.”

“Your mouth,” you said. “Please, your mouth—” He gave it to you. The bar of his tongue against your clit and you grabbed the back of the couch and held on. He ate your pussy like he had nowhere else to be — thorough, focused, the same attention he gave everything — and the sounds he made against you, low and hungry, like he was getting something from it—

“God—” your hips rolled and his hands held them down, firm, keep still, and the loss of control of that made it worse in the best way. “Riki I’m — don’t stop, don’t—”

“Not stopping,” he said against your clit. “Cum for me. Come on.”

You did. He worked you through it until you were pulling at his hair telling him too much, too much and he pressed one last kiss to your inner thigh and came back up your body and looked at your face with an expression that was — satisfied wasn’t the right word. Reverent was closer, which was a thing you were absolutely not processing right now. “Good girl,” he said quietly.

“Stop calling me that,” you said, breathless.

“No,” he said simply, and kissed you.

When he finally pushed inside you both exhaled like something had been solved. Slow, this time. Deep. His forehead against yours, his arms bracketing you, his rings cool against the side of your face where his hand was. “Okay?” he said.

“Yeah.” Your voice wasn’t working right. “Yeah, keep — please keep going.”

He moved. Slow, deep rolls of his hips that had you feeling every ridge of the ladder on every stroke and your mouth kept falling open and he watched it happen. “You feel it,” he said. Low, not a question.

“Yes—”

“Good.” His hips rolled deeper and you gasped. “That’s good, you’re so — fuck, Y/N—” His composure was fraying at the edges, the rhythm getting less controlled. “You take me so well. Every time. Like you were—” He stopped himself.

You looked up at him. His jaw was set, his eyes dark, something moving behind them that he’d just pulled back from saying. “Like I was what,” you said.

He looked at you. For a second — just a second — something was right there on his face, unguarded, something that went past the physical and landed somewhere neither of you had named yet. He kissed you instead of answering.

You let him. Filed it away. Pulled him closer and let the question dissolve into the drag and heat of him moving inside you and his mouth on yours and his hand sliding between you to find your clit— “Riki—”

“I know,” he said. “I know, come on, cum for me again, you can—”

“I can’t—”

“You can.” His thumb on your clit, his cock deep, his voice at your ear. “You can, good girl, come on, let me feel you—” You came with his name in your mouth and your whole body shaking and he followed you with his face pressed into your throat and the sound he made was low and broken and yours.

After his thumb moving slow at your hip. The ceiling. The playlist. You were thinking about like you were— and what came after it. You were thinking about I’ve got you and how he said it every time, always, like a reflex, like something that came from somewhere deeper than the moment.

You were thinking about the fact that you knew what his laugh sounded like — the real one, the surprised one — and that you’d been collecting these things without meaning to and the collection was getting heavy. “Riki,” you said.

“Hm.”

“What are we doing.”

Silence. His thumb stopped moving. Then, carefully: “What do you want to be doing.”

You stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

He was quiet for a long moment. You could feel him thinking — that specific quality of his silences, weighted, considering. “I’m not good at this part,” he said.

“What part.”

“The—” A pause. “Saying things.”

“You say things to me all the time.”

“Not these things.”

You turned your head to look at him. He was looking at the ceiling, jaw slightly tight, the expression of someone navigating something carefully. “What things,” you said quietly.

He turned his head. Your faces close in the dim light. His eyes moved over yours. “I don’t want you going anywhere,” he said. Finally. Quietly. “That’s — that’s what I’ve got right now.”

It wasn’t everything. You both knew it wasn’t everything. But it was Riki, who didn’t say things, saying a thing, and it landed with the weight of something much larger behind it.“Okay,” you said.

“Okay,” he said. His thumb started moving again. You looked back at the ceiling. The unnamed thing stayed unnamed. But it was there, in the room with you, and you both knew it.

The thing about not naming something was that it didn’t stop it from being a thing. It just meant you had no language for it when it started to matter. Four weeks into whatever this was, Ria staged an intervention.

Not a dramatic one — she didn’t have people over or make a presentation, she just showed up at your flat on a Saturday morning with coffee and pastries and sat across from you at your kitchen table with the expression of someone who had been patient for a very long time and was cashing that in now. “Talk,” she said.

“About what.”

“Y/N.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Ria.”

“I want you to say what’s happening with Riki.”

You picked up your coffee. “We’re—”

“If you say friends I’m leaving and taking the pastries.”

You put your coffee down. “It’s complicated.”

“Is it? Or is it simple and you’re making it complicated because you’re scared?”

You looked at her. She looked back with the patience of someone who had known you for six years and had seen every version of your avoidance. “We haven’t put a name on it,” you said.

“Why not.”

“Because—” You stopped. Because he’d said I don’t want you going anywhere and you’d said okay and neither of you had pushed past that. Because every Wednesday and every late night felt like building something and neither of you would say what you were building. “It’s working the way it is.”

“Is it.”

“Yes.”

“You like him.”

“Obviously.”

“Like like him.”

“Ria—”

“Y/N.” She leaned forward. “You went back to that shop every week for two months before anything happened. You know his coffee order, his schedule, what makes him laugh. You’ve met his friends. He checks your piercings as an excuse to be close to you.” She paused. “That’s not complicated. That’s you being terrified.”

You stared at the table. “He’s not easy to read,” you said. Finally.

“He gave you his personal card the night he met you,” Ria said. “Heeseung told me he’d never done that before.”

“When did you talk to Heeseung?”

“Jake texts me sometimes.”

“Jake texts you.”

“That’s not the point.” She pushed a pastry toward you. “The point is that boy is absolutely gone for you and you both keep dancing around it and it’s making everyone at Studio 13 insane, apparently.”

“Everyone?”

“Jay’s exact words were if they don’t sort it out soon I’m locking them in the back room.”

You put your face in your hands. “I don’t know how to do this with him,” you said, muffled. “He doesn’t say things. I don’t push. We just—”

“So say something first,” Ria said simply. “You’re not someone who waits, Y/N. That’s not you. You’re doing it because you’re scared he won’t say it back.” You lifted your face. Said nothing. She was right and you both knew it.

You didn’t say anything that Wednesday. You came close — sitting at the counter, coffee in hand, Riki talking about something, his rings on the desk, his eyes finding yours every few sentences the way they always did — and the words were right there, and you looked at his face, and you thought about Ria’s voice saying terrified, and you said nothing. He looked at you at one point like he knew something was moving behind your eyes. “What,” he said.

“Nothing.” You smiled. “Keep going.” He held your gaze for a second. Let it go.

The following Saturday Sunghoon texted you. Not unusual — you’d exchanged numbers for shop-related things, flash piece ideas, scheduling. He was easy to talk to, straightforward, the kind of person whose texts read exactly like his voice.

Sunghoon: hey, you said you were thinking about a collarbone piece right

you: yeah still thinking

Sunghoon: I drew something. wanna see

He sent a photo. Small, delicate, blackwork — something botanical, two thin stems crossing, minimal and precise. It was exactly your taste and you had no idea how he’d known that.

you: sunghoon this is gorgeous

Sunghoon: right? come in monday, I’ll show you the full size version. riki’s off monday so it’ll be quiet

you: sounds good, see you then

You didn’t think anything of it. Sunghoon was your friend. He’d drawn something for you. You were going to look at it. You didn’t mention it to Riki because there was nothing to mention.

Monday the shop was quieter without Riki in it, which was a thing you noticed and filed away as information you didn’t love having. Sunghoon had the drawing laid out on the counter when you arrived — full size, done properly on transfer paper, and it was even better than the photo. You stood over it with him pointing out the details, his hand close to yours on the paper, talking through placement and sizing and whether to add a third stem.

Jay was pretending to do something at the other counter.bHeeseung was in his office with the door open. “Here,” Sunghoon said, and pressed the transfer paper lightly to your collarbone to show you the placement. His hand steadied it against your skin, professional, and you looked in the mirror and thought yes, that was exactly right. Your phone lit up on the counter.

Riki: you at the shop?

You looked at it. Jay looked at it. Sunghoon didn’t see it.

you: yeah, sunghoon drew something for me. just looking at placement

The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

Riki: k

One letter.

Riki: looks good?

you: really good actually. he’s talented

The dots again. Then nothing. No reply. You put your phone down. Sunghoon was still talking about the third stem. You looked at the transfer in the mirror and tried to pay attention and felt something uneasy settle in your chest.

Riki was at the counter when you arrived Wednesday. You knew within ten seconds that something was wrong. Not visibly wrong — he looked the same, said hey the same, had your coffee ready the same. But his eyes when they met yours were flatter than usual. The warmth was there but dimmed, like something had been turned down. You sat. Picked up your coffee. “How was your day off?” you said.

“Fine.” He was looking at his phone.

“Did you do anything?”

“Not much.” Jay appeared from the back, clocked the atmosphere in approximately two seconds, and disappeared again.

You watched Riki scroll his phone. His jaw was set. Not dramatically — just tight, controlled, the way it got when he was holding something still. “Riki,” you said.

“Hm.”

“Look at me.” He looked up. The flat quality was more visible face to face. Something was moving behind his eyes that he was keeping on a very short leash. “What’s wrong?” you said.

“Nothing.”

“You’ve said twelve words since I got here.”

“I’ve been busy.”

You looked at him. He looked back, and you could see the effort of it — the effort of sitting in whatever this was and keeping it even. “Is this about Monday?” you said.

Something shifted in his jaw. “No.”

“Riki.”

“It’s not about Monday.”

“So it is about Monday.”

He put his phone down. Flat on the counter. He looked at you with an expression that was very controlled and also not controlled at all if you knew what to look for, and you knew what to look for now. “You went in on my day off,” he said.

“Sunghoon drew something for me. I told you.”

“I know what you told me.”

“Then what—”

“His hands were on you.” Quiet. Final. Like he’d been sitting on it for two days and it had compacted into something very small and very dense.

You stared at him. “He was showing me placement. For a tattoo. That’s his job.”

“I know that.”

“Then—”

“I know that, Y/N.” His voice was still even but something was pushing at the edges of it. “I know it doesn’t mean anything. I know Sunghoon wasn’t — I know.” He looked at the counter. “It doesn’t stop it feeling—” He stopped.

“Feeling what,” you said. He was quiet for a long moment.

“Wrong,” he said. “It feels wrong. Someone else’s hands on you feels wrong and I don’t know how to make that—” He stopped again. His thumb pressed against the counter. “I’m trying to be rational about it.”

“You went quiet for two days,” you said.

“I know.”

“That’s not — Riki, you can’t just go quiet every time something—”

“I know.” He looked up. His eyes were direct now, no flatness, just the real thing underneath — something frustrated and raw and tired of itself. “I know it’s not fair. I’m telling you I know that. I just—” A breath. “I don’t know how to feel it and not do that. I’m working on it.”

You looked at him for a long moment. “You went quiet instead of talking to me,” you said.

“Yes.”

“And you’re telling me now because I pushed.”

“Yes.” He held your gaze. “I would have told you. I just needed to — I needed it to be smaller before I could say it without it being—” He gestured vaguely. “A lot.”

“Is it smaller now?”

“Somewhat.”

You picked up your coffee. Looked at it. Put it down. “You know that there’s nothing—” you started.

“I know.” Immediately. “Y/N, I know. This isn’t about you. This isn’t about Sunghoon. It’s mine, it’s a me thing, and I’m not trying to make it your problem.”

“It becomes my problem when you disappear.”

“I know.” His jaw shifted. “I’m sorry.”

You looked at him. He looked back, steady, the thing behind his eyes open now in the way it only got when he’d pushed past the control on purpose — when he was giving you something deliberately. “Don’t disappear,” you said. “Whatever it is — just say it. To me. Not in your head for two days.”

“Okay,” he said. His hand moved across the counter and covered yours briefly — the rings cool, the weight of his palm familiar. “Okay, Y/N.”

The touch lasted a few seconds. He didn’t make anything of it. Just let it be there and then pulled back. From the back room, completely audibly, Jay said to someone: “finally.”

“Jay,” Riki said flatly.

“I’m just saying—”

“Jay.”

That night, late. He was in your flat, his idea — he’d texted at nine, not you up or studio’s empty but just your name, which was new. He was on your couch with his legs stretched out and his head back and his eyes on your ceiling and you were beside him close enough to feel the warmth of him and neither of you had moved toward the other yet. Just sitting. Existing in the same space. “Can I ask you something?” you said.

“Yeah.”

“The possessiveness.” You kept your voice even. “Where does it come from.”

A pause. He was quiet long enough that you thought he might not answer. “Control,” he said finally. “Or — fear of losing it. Things I care about.” His thumb moved against his own knee. “I spent a long time in situations where things got taken. People I — things I couldn’t protect.” He stopped. “I don’t talk about it.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know.” A pause. “I want to. I just — not yet.”

Not yet. Not never. Not it’s not your business. Not yet meant there was a timeline. Meant he was thinking about it. Meant you were someone he was moving toward telling.

You leaned your head against his shoulder. He went still for a second — surprised, you thought, by the smallness of it, the casualness — and then his head dropped against yours and you felt him exhale. “The collarbone piece,” he said eventually. “Let me do it.”

You lifted your head. Looked at him. “You do tattoos?”

“Heeseung taught me. I’m not on the books for it but—” He met your eyes. “I want to do it. If you want.”

Sunghoon’s drawing. Riki’s hands. “Yeah,” you said. “Okay.”

Something settled in his face. Quiet and satisfied in a way that had nothing to do with the smirk. “Okay,” he said.

You put your head back on his shoulder. His arm moved — slow, like he was checking it was allowed — and settled around you. The unnamed thing pressed closer. Neither of you named it. But his arm tightened slightly and you let it, and that was something too.

The collarbone piece took two sessions. Riki had been clear about that upfront — small piece, delicate linework, he wanted to do it right and doing it right meant not rushing. You’d sat in the chair in the back room of Studio 13 on a quiet Tuesday morning with his hands on your collarbone and his face close and his full attention on the work and tried very hard to be normal about it. You were not normal about it. “Stop tensing,” he said, without looking up.

“I’m not tensing.”

“Your shoulder is up by your ear.” You lowered your shoulder. He glanced up briefly — dark eyes, the focus in them softening for just a second when they met yours — and then back down. “First line’s the worst,” he said. “Then you’ll settle.”

“I’ve been tattooed before.”

“Not by me.” He said it simply. Like it was just a fact. Which it was. But the way he said it landed like something more — like not by me was its own category, its own distinct experience, and he was right, as it turned out, because when the needle touched your collarbone the small shock of it dissolved almost immediately into the warmth of his hands steadying you and his voice saying good, just like that, breathe — and you settled.

You watched his face while he worked. This version of him — the work version, focused and quiet and completely present — was one of your favorites. All the usual energy went inward. The smirk was gone, the easy confidence was still there but different, channeled into precision. He moved the machine in small careful arcs and his free hand was always on you, always steadying, always aware of exactly how much pressure to use. “You’re staring,” he said.

“You said that to me once before.”

“You were staring then too.”

“Maybe I just have a specific staring problem.”

The corner of his mouth moved. He didn’t look up. “Maybe you do.”

He kissed you after the session. Not immediately — he’d finished, stepped back, examined the work with that quiet critical eye, declared it good. You’d looked in the mirror and felt something warm move through your chest at the sight of it — the two stems, thin and precise, sitting exactly right on your collarbone. “It’s perfect,” you said.

“I know.” He was already at the sink, washing his hands, and you could hear the smile in it even without seeing his face. You got up from the chair. Crossed the small space between you. And when he turned around you were right there and his expression shifted — from satisfied work-focus to something more personal, more immediate — and you put your hand on his jaw and kissed him.

He kissed you back with his damp hands at your waist, careful not to touch the fresh tattoo, and it was slow and unhurried and tasted like coffee and something that was just him and when you pulled back his eyes stayed closed for a second. Opened. Looked at you. “Hi,” he said quietly.

“Hi,” you said. His thumb moved at your waist. The rings. The warmth of his palms through your shirt.

“Come back Thursday for the second session,” he said.

“I know, you told me.”

“Just making sure.” He kissed you again before you could respond — quick, soft, his mouth on yours for just a moment — and then stepped back and handed you the aftercare sheet and was professional again, mostly, except for the way his eyes followed you to the door.

Thursday’s second session was longer. More detail, more shading on the stems, a small shadow that made the whole thing lift off the skin. You sat in the chair and he worked and you talked — properly talked, the way you did at the counter but quieter, more contained, just the two of you in the partitioned space.

He told you about growing up. Small things — not the things he kept locked, but around the edges of them. A younger brother. Moving schools twice. Being good at things with his hands from early on, carving things, taking things apart to see how they worked. “Is that why the piercing?” you said.

“Partly.” He shifted the machine slightly. “Partly because it’s — immediate. You do it right and you see it right away. No waiting to find out.”

“You like knowing things work.”

He glanced up. “Yeah.”

“Control thing.”

A pause. “Yeah,” he said again, quieter. You let that sit. Didn’t push.

“Tell me something else,” he said, after a moment. Deflecting but not — more like redirecting, like he wanted the conversation to keep going just in a different direction.

So you told him things. About your course, your family, the flat you’d moved into two years ago that still didn’t feel completely yours. The way Ria had been your anchor through everything since you were sixteen. How you’d wanted to study abroad and hadn’t and sometimes still thought about it. “Why didn’t you?” he said.

“Felt like running away from something.”

“Were you?”

You thought about it. “Probably.”

He looked up. His eyes on yours, level. “What were you running from.”

“Someone,” you said. “It doesn’t matter now.”

He held your gaze for a moment. You watched something move through his expression — something careful, something that might have been jealousy at its very distant edges but was mostly just — paying attention. Storing it. Like everything you gave him went somewhere it would be kept.

“Their loss,” he said. Simply. Looked back down. You looked at the top of his head and felt the unnamed thing press against your ribs from the inside.

He finished the piece in two hours. You both looked at it in the mirror — his chin near your shoulder, your reflection side by side — and neither of you said anything for a moment. “Well,” you said.

“Yeah,” he said. It was exactly right. Better than right. The kind of thing that looked like it had always been there, like your skin had been waiting for it.

You turned. He was right there, closer than you’d clocked, and you put both hands on his chest and looked up at him and he looked down at you and the moment expanded slightly. “Thank you,” you said.

“Don’t thank me.”

“Riki—”

“It was for me as much as you,” he said. Quiet. Direct. No smirk in it. “I wanted to put something on you. That’s—” He stopped. His jaw shifted. “That’s a me thing. Don’t thank me for it.”

You looked at him. He looked back, steady, and the naked quality of what he’d just said sat between you — I wanted to put something on you — and neither of you moved for a second.

Then you kissed him. Slow, deliberate, your hands spreading on his chest. He made a low sound and his arms came around you — gentle because of the fresh tattoo, careful, his hands at your back instead of your waist — and he kissed you back like he had time, like he wanted to use it.

When you broke apart he kept his forehead against yours. “Stay,” he said. Low. “Tonight. Just—” A pause. “Just stay.”

“Okay,” you said. You ate takeout on the floor of the back room because the couch was small and the floor had more space and Riki sat with his back against the couch and you sat between his legs with your back against his chest and it was so domestically comfortable that it was almost alarming.

He ate with one arm around you. His chin occasionally dropping to your shoulder to look at whatever you were showing him on your phone. His thumb making that small absent arc at your hip that he did when he wasn’t thinking about it.

“Ria thinks we need to define this,” you said, at some point. His arm didn’t tighten. Didn’t loosen. He was quiet for a moment.

“What do you think?” he said.

“I think Ria is right about most things.”

“Hm.” His thumb kept moving. “What would you define it as.”

You turned your head slightly. His face was close — close enough to see the detail of the scar through his eyebrow, the silver of his earring, the way he was looking at you with that careful open expression he only had when there was no one else around. “I don’t know,” you said. “What would you.”

“Mine,” he said. Quiet. Simple. Like it was the most obvious answer.

Your heart did something inconvenient. “That’s very you,” you said.

“Is it wrong?”

You turned back to face forward. His arm around you. The takeout. The red light. “No,” you said. “It’s not wrong.”

You felt him exhale against the back of your head. Slow, like something had released. His lips pressed briefly to your hair. Not a kiss exactly — too soft, too absent, more like a thing he did without deciding to.

You stayed on the floor until midnight. Talked about nothing important. Everything slightly important. He told you Jake was obviously falling for Hana and was handling it terribly, which you already knew, and you told him Ria had started texting Jake directly to speed the process along, which he did not know and which made him laugh — the real one, sudden, surprised. You stored it.

“I should go,” you said eventually. You had a nine AM seminar and the responsible thing—

“Yeah,” he said. Made no move to untangle himself from around you.

“Riki.”

“Five minutes.”

“You said that twenty minutes ago.”

“Five more minutes.” You leaned back into him and gave him the five minutes. He pressed his mouth to the side of your head again — that soft, absent thing, lips in your hair — and you closed your eyes and thought about mine and the way he’d said it like it was just the truth.

When you finally stood up he walked you to the door the way he always did. Unlocked it. Held it open. You turned back. He kissed you in the doorway — unhurried, thorough, one hand cupping your jaw and the other flat against the doorframe — and you kissed him back and it went on longer than a goodbye kiss needed to, longer than was practical, until he pulled back and looked at you with dark eyes and slightly wrecked composure.

“Wednesday,” he said. His thumb traced your jaw once before dropping.

“Wednesday,” you said. You made it to the end of the street. You looked back. He was still in the doorway, leaning on the frame, watching you go. When he saw you look he didn’t pretend he hadn’t been watching. Just held your gaze across the dark street. You turned back around and smiled at the pavement the whole way to the bus stop.

Heeseung had told everyone to come to his flat for dinner on Saturday — no occasion, just food, just all of them in the same place — and you’d arrived with Ria who had told you she’d been waiting for this invitation for weeks, which meant Jake had told her about it before Riki had told you, which meant something.

Heeseung’s flat was calm and dark-walled like the shop, art everywhere, music at a volume that allowed conversation. Jay was already there and immediately pulled Ria into an argument about something. Jake appeared from the kitchen and the way his face changed when he saw Ria was something you were going to tell Riki about later.

Riki was on the couch. He looked up when you came in and the smile that happened was immediate and unguarded — no performance, no build up, just his face doing the thing it did when you appeared, the thing you didn’t think he knew it did. He moved over without being asked. You sat beside him. Close. His arm went across the back of the couch behind you — not around you, but there, present, the rings near your shoulder.

Sunghoon arrived twenty minutes later and dropped onto the armchair across from you and looked at you both with an expression of great satisfaction. “You two sorted?” he said.

“Sunghoon,” Riki said.

“What? Last month you were—“ He stopped. “I’m just asking—”

“We’re sorted,” you said. Sunghoon grinned. Riki’s arm moved from the back of the couch to actually around your shoulders, like Sunghoon asking had given him permission to stop pretending he wasn’t doing it.

Dinner was loud and easy and everyone talked over everyone and Jay told a story about a client that got more elaborate every time he told it and Ria fit in like she’d always been there and Heeseung sat at the head of the table and said little and watched everything with quiet satisfaction.

After dinner you ended up back on the couch. Riki beside you, your legs across his, his hand resting on your ankle. The conversation had split across the room — Jay and Sunghoon, Ria and Jake in what looked like an increasingly interesting exchange, Heeseung in the kitchen. “You good?” Riki said quietly, just to you.

“Yeah.” You looked at the room. “This is nice.”

“They like you.”

“Jay likes everyone.”

“Heeseung doesn’t,” he said. Simple. “He likes you.”

You looked at him. “How can you tell?”

“He invited you.” He said it like it was obvious. “He doesn’t do this for everyone. He did it because—” A pause. His hand moved slightly on your ankle. “Because you’re—” He stopped.

“Because I’m what,” you said softly.

He looked at you. The room was noisy around you but it felt like it had contracted to just this, just his face and yours and the thing he was about to say. “Important,” he said. Quiet. “Because you’re important.”

Your heart did the inconvenient thing again, harder this time. “Riki,” you said.

“Yeah.”

“That word—”

“I know what word I used.” You looked at him. He looked back, steady, not taking it back, not softening it. Just — sitting in it, the way he sat in most things, patient and certain.

Across the room Jay said something loud and everyone laughed and the moment breathed. Riki’s hand moved from your ankle to your calf. Warm. Present. “Stay tonight,” he said. Low enough that it was only for you. “Not at the shop. Mine.”

His. His flat, which you hadn’t been to, which was a different thing than the back room couch. A different kind of staying. “Yeah,” you said.

He nodded. Looked back at the room. But his hand stayed on your leg and his shoulder was warm against yours and you sat in the important and let it settle into something that felt permanent.

Later, when most people had gone and Ria was helping Heeseung with something in the kitchen and it was just you and Riki by the door putting your jacket on he turned you by the shoulders. Kissed you slowly, his hands on your face, thumbs at your jaw. The kind of kiss that had no agenda, no direction, just wanted to exist. When he pulled back he looked at you for a long moment.

The word boyfriend was right there in the room. Neither of you said it. But his hand found yours and held it, and he didn’t let go the whole way to his flat, and somewhere in the space between mine and important and his fingers between yours on a dark street — the unnamed thing finally had a shape. You just hadn’t said it out loud yet.

His flat was on the third floor of a building that had seen better decades, the kind of place that was held together by good bones and someone who actually cared about the space inside it. You didn’t know what you’d expected.

More of the shop, maybe — dark walls, flash art, the deliberate aesthetic. And there was some of that. Dark furniture, a few framed pieces on the walls, one large canvas above the couch that was either very expensive or done by someone he knew and you suspected the latter. But it was also — lived in, in a specific way. Books stacked in an order that made sense only to him. A record player in the corner with a small collection beside it. The kitchen clean in the way of someone who cooked properly and cleaned as they went.

It was a home. Actually a home. That surprised you and you didn’t know why it surprised you and then you thought about what he’d said — I spent a long time in situations where things got taken — and understood it. He’d built this. Deliberately. Piece by piece. “Stop analyzing it,” he said from the kitchen.

“I’m not analyzing it.”

“You have your analyzing face on.”

“I don’t have an analyzing face.”

He appeared in the kitchen doorway with two glasses of water and looked at you standing in his living room in your jacket still on and raised an eyebrow. “Take your jacket off,” he said. “You’re staying.” You took your jacket off.

You fell asleep on his couch. Not intentionally — you’d been talking, the record player on low, and somewhere between one subject and the next the warmth of him beside you and the late hour pulled you under. You were aware of it happening distantly, the conversation getting slower, your eyes getting heavy, and you didn’t fight it.

You woke up in his bed. He’d moved you. At some point while you slept he’d carried you — or walked you, half-conscious — to the bed and put you in it and the duvet was pulled up and his pillow smelled like him and you lay there in the early grey morning and stared at the ceiling and felt something enormous and inconvenient sitting on your chest.

You heard him in the kitchen. The quiet sounds of someone who knew how to exist in the morning without disturbing anyone. You lay there and thought about mine and important and the collarbone tattoo and his hand in yours on the dark street and the back room couch and two months of Wednesdays and the card he’d slid across the counter the first night like he’d already decided.

You thought about Ria’s voice. You’re terrified. You were terrified.

He was at the kitchen counter with his back to you when you came in. Making coffee, unhurried, still in the clothes from last night minus the jacket. Rings on his hands already. You didn’t know if he’d slept. He turned when he heard you. Took in your expression with one look. “Hey,” he said carefully.

“Hey.” You stood in the kitchen doorway. Your heart was doing something loud. “You moved me.”

“You were asleep on my couch.”

“You could have woken me up.”

“You looked tired.” Simple. Like it was nothing. Like carrying you to his bed was just a practical thing he’d done without thinking. “Coffee?”

“Riki.” He looked at you. Really looked — reading whatever was on your face with that careful focus, taking it in.

“What’s going on,” he said.

“Nothing. I just—” You stopped. Started again. “I woke up in your bed and it—” You pressed your fingers to your mouth briefly. “It felt like something.” He was quiet. Waiting.

“I think this is something,” you said. “I think it’s been something for a while and we keep not saying it and I’m—” You exhaled. “I’m tired of not saying it.”

The kitchen was very quiet. Riki leaned back against the counter. Crossed his arms. His expression was the open one — no performance, no control layered over it, just his face and whatever was behind it. “Say it then,” he said quietly.

You looked at him. “I want this to be a thing. A real thing. I want—” You. “I want the name.”

He uncrossed his arms. Crossed the kitchen in three steps and he was right in front of you and his hands came up to your face — both of them, palms at your jaw, tilting your face up — and he looked at you for one long second. “It’s already a thing,” he said. “It’s been a thing.” His thumb moved at your cheekbone. “I’ve been waiting for you to catch up.”

“That’s very smug,” you said. Your voice wasn’t fully steady.

“I know.” He wasn’t smiling. His eyes were serious, dark, right there. “Y/N.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not good at the words,” he said. “You know that. But this—” his thumbs traced your face, gentle and deliberate “—this is not nothing. This hasn’t been nothing since you walked into my shop.”

Your hands found his wrists. Held on. “Okay,” you said.

“Okay,” he said. He kissed you. Soft, slow, his hands still on your face like he wanted to hold the moment still. You kissed him back and felt the unnamed thing finally, finally settle into something with a shape and a weight and a name you’d figure out the exact word for later.

When he pulled back he pressed his forehead to yours. “Boyfriend is a weird word,” he said.

You laughed. Surprised out of you, real. “It really is.”

“But yeah.” His mouth curved. “That.”

“That,” you agreed. He kissed you again, brief and warm, and then stepped back and handed you a coffee and the domesticity of it — his flat, his coffee, his hands, the morning — hit you somewhere soft.

“Sit down,” he said. “I’ll make breakfast.”

“You cook?”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“Riki I’ve known you for months and I’ve never seen you eat anything that wasn’t takeout or coffee.”

“That’s at the shop.” He was already at the fridge. “At home I cook.”

You sat at his kitchen counter on a stool and watched him move around his kitchen with the same ease he brought to everything — competent, unhurried, knowing where things were — and drank your coffee and felt the warmth of the morning settle around you. “What are you making?” you said.

“Eggs.”

“Just eggs?”

“Good eggs.” He glanced back. “Don’t underestimate eggs.”

They were good eggs. You ate at his kitchen counter side by side, your shoulder against his, and the conversation came easy the way it always did — drifting, unhurried, one thing opening into another. He told you about the record player, how he’d found it at a market two years ago and had to carry it up three flights on his own. You told him about the flat you’d wanted that you hadn’t got and ended up in your current one instead and how it had turned out better. “Things usually do,” he said.

“Philosopher.”

“Just paying attention.” His hand found yours on the counter between you. Covered it. Not making anything of it — just there, warm and present. You turned your hand over and his fingers slid between yours. You sat like that until the coffee was cold.

He walked you out two hours later. Down the three flights and out onto the morning street, quiet at this hour, pale winter sun doing its best. He had his jacket on, hands in his pockets, walking beside you in the direction of the bus stop. “You don’t have to walk me,” you said.

“I know.” He walked you anyway. His shoulder bumping yours occasionally. Not holding your hand now — just beside you, present, taking up the right amount of space. At the bus stop he turned to face you. “Wednesday,” he said.

“Wednesday,” you said. Then: “Actually I might come Tuesday. I need to talk to Heeseung about extending the collarbone piece.”

Something moved across his face. Quick, then gone. “You want to extend it?” he said.

“Just the stems, maybe. One more.” You looked at his expression. “What?”

“I’ll do it,” he said. Immediate.

“I know you’ll do it—”

“I mean — the extension. Let me do it.” His jaw was doing the thing. “Not Heeseung.”

You looked at him. Understood. “Okay,” you said.

“Okay.” The jaw relaxed. A short exhale.

You reached up and kissed him — he leaned down to meet you before you’d fully extended, like he’d been waiting for it — and it was brief and warm and tasted like coffee. “Tuesday,” you said against his mouth.

“Tuesday,” he said. The bus appeared at the end of the road. He stepped back. Hands back in his pockets. Watching you with that settled, certain expression. “Text me when you’re home,” he said. New. That was new.

“Yeah,” you said, smiling. “Okay.”

You texted Ria from the bus.

you: we sorted it

The reply was immediate. She’d been awake, waiting.

Ria: WHAT

you: it’s a thing. officially.

Ria: I KNEW IT I HAVE BEEN SAYING does he even know the word boyfriend???

you: he said it’s a weird word

Ria: oh my god he’s so him

you: he made me eggs

Ria: Y/N!!!

you: they were really good eggs

Ria: I am going to cry. IM SO HAPPY!

You put your phone in your pocket and looked out the bus window at the city going past and felt something settled and warm sitting in your chest where the unnamed thing used to be.

Daniel saw you get off the bus. You didn’t notice him. You were texting Riki — something small, a photo of a dog outside the coffee shop you were passing, the kind of thing you sent now because you could — and you walked past him without looking up.

He watched you go. Watched the way you were smiling at your phone. He knew about the tattoo shop. He’d heard you mention it. He’d put things together — the visits, the name that came up, the way you’d brushed him off every time since October.

He pulled out his own phone. Started looking. It didn’t take long. Public record. The charge, the conviction, the sentence. He read it twice. Read the name again. Looked up Studio 13. He sat with it for a long time. Then he texted Soo.

Daniel: hey, you’re friends with Y/N right. I need to tell you something about someone she’s seeing.

The thing about finally naming something was that it changed the texture of everything. Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just — small shifts, accumulating. The way he texted now, more often, nothing significant but there. The way he said my girlfriend to a client who asked about the collarbone piece, casual, not looking at you when he said it, and you’d had to look very hard at the flash wall for a moment. The way his hand found yours in public without him thinking about it first. Small things. Heavy things.

You were catastrophically gone for him and had been for a while and now there was nothing to hide it behind.

The first Tuesday after you came into Studio 13 at noon and Riki was with a client so Jay made you coffee and sat across from you at the counter with the expression of someone who had been waiting to say something. “So,” he said.

“Don’t,” you said.

“I just want to say—”

“Jay.”

“I called it.” He held up both hands. “First week you came in. I said to Sunghoon, I said that girl is going to wreck him, and I was right—”

“I didn’t wreck anyone—”

“In a good way.” He was grinning. “He’s different. He’s — I’ve known Riki for two years and he texted me last Sunday morning just to talk. Riki. Texting. On a Sunday. Because he was in a good mood and wanted to—”

“Jay.” Riki’s voice from the piercing section, flat. He’d finished with his client without you noticing.

“I’m just saying—”

“I heard what you were saying.” Riki came around the partition and looked at you and the expression on his face when it landed on you was the thing Jay had been describing without being able to name it — something unlocked, something that had been held tight for a long time and wasn’t anymore.

He came to the counter. Leaned down and kissed you hello like it was something he’d been doing for years. Brief, warm, his hand on your jaw for just a second. Jay made a noise. Riki sat on his stool without acknowledging him. Picked up his coffee. “How’s the collarbone?” he said.

“Good. I want to talk about an extension.”

“I know what I’ll doing with it.”

“I haven’t told you what I want yet.”

“I know what you want.” He met your eyes. Completely certain. “Trust me.”

You looked at him. Thought about the first piece — how right it had been, how it had looked like it had always been there. “Fine,” you said.

Jay, very quietly, said: “He’s so different.”

The extension happened the following Thursday. One more stem. Slightly longer than the others, curving toward your shoulder, a small bud at the end that he’d added without asking and that was so exactly right you hadn’t been able to speak for a moment when you saw it. “Riki,” you said.

“Hm.” He was examining the placement, focused.

“The bud.”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t ask for that.”

“No.” He glanced up. Brief, the focus breaking for just a second. “Do you like it?”

You looked in the mirror. The three stems, the new one curving outward, the small closed bud at its tip. Something that looked like potential. Like something about to open. “Yeah,” you said. “I like it.”

He looked back down. Said nothing. But his free hand, steadying your shoulder, pressed slightly. Small. Deliberate.

Three weeks in and the shape of things had settled. Wednesdays at the shop. Tuesday evenings at his flat, which had become a specific thing — you’d bring food, he’d already have the record player going, and you’d eat on his couch or his kitchen floor and talk until one of you fell asleep. Some Fridays at yours, which he’d come to twice now and moved through with the particular attentiveness of someone learning a space they planned to know well.

His things had started appearing at your flat. A hoodie, first — left behind, not retrieved. Then a phone charger. Then a record he’d brought over to show you something and hadn’t taken back. You didn’t point any of this out. Neither did he.

You had a key to Studio 13. That had happened without discussion — Riki had taken it off his keyring one night when you’d arrived before him and handed it to you and gone back to what he was doing. You’d stared at it for a full ten seconds.

This was how he said things. Not in words. In the key. In the bud on the stem. In text me when you’re home and Sunday morning texts and the way he always, always knew when something was wrong before you’d said anything. You were learning his language. It was quieter than most people’s but it was fluent.

Four weeks in, on a Wednesday night after Studio 13 closed as usual. But tonight the energy was different from the second you’d locked the front door behind you — something in the way he’d looked at you across the shop all evening, something that had been building since you’d arrived and had nowhere to go while there were other people present.

He kissed you against the front counter the second the lock clicked. Not soft. Not the hello-kiss or the goodbye-kiss or the slow deliberate thing from his kitchen. This was four weeks of officially named wanting, his hands in your hair and your hands in his jacket and both of you breathing differently inside ten seconds. He pulled back. Looked at your face. “Hi,” you said.

“Hi.” His voice was rough already. His hands moved from your hair to your waist, sliding under your top to bare skin, and you felt his rings and exhaled. “Been thinking about you all day.”

“I was here all evening.”

“I know.” His mouth found your jaw, your throat. “Worse.”

“Riki—”

“I know.” He pulled your top up and off and looked at you in the low red light the way he always did — that slow, deliberate sweep that moved over you like you were something he was committing to memory. The collarbone piece. His hands on you. “God,” he said quietly. Not performing it. Just — reacting.

“Come here,” you said. He came. He got you onto the front counter. Which was new. Which was — you looked around the shop, the dark windows, the closed door, and then his hands were on your thighs spreading them and he was standing between them and the location became very irrelevant. “Here?” you said.

“Here.” He kissed you again, deep, his tongue against yours and the bar of it doing what it always did to your ability to think. His hands pushed your skirt up your thighs, found your underwear, pushed it aside — and his fingers were there, at your folds, and you grabbed the edge of the counter.

“Riki—”

“Already.” His fingers moved through your folds, slow, feeling you. “Fuck, Y/N, already—”

“Don’t be smug—”

“I’m not.” He pressed a kiss to your jaw, your throat. “I’m really not.” His fingers found your clit and circled and your hips rolled forward. “That’s it. That’s—” A breath. “You have no idea what you do to me.”

“Tell me,” you breathed.

He pushed two fingers inside you and your head fell back. “This,” he said, low, watching your face. “Every time. Every fucking time you walk in here I want—” His fingers curled and you gasped. “Yeah. That. I want that sound.”

“More—”

“More?” He kept the pace slow. Deliberate. His thumb finding your clit while his fingers moved and the combination was devastating. “You sure? We’re not in a rush.”

“Riki I swear to god—”

He laughed — low, warm, real — and his fingers moved deeper and his thumb pressed harder and you grabbed his shoulder and held on. “Good girl,” he said against your throat. “So good. So wet for me, every time, like you spend all day—”

“I do,” you said, breathless. “I do, okay, is that what you want to hear—”

“Yes,” he said simply, and meant it, and his fingers moved faster. You came with your face pressed into his neck and his name in your mouth, his fingers working you through it, not stopping until you pulled at his hair and told him too much, too much—

He pulled his hand back. Pressed his mouth to your temple. Your cheekbone. The corner of your mouth. “Good girl,” he said again, softer. “You’re so—”

“Don’t you dare say something nice right now,” you said. “I can’t handle it.” He pressed his smile into your hair.

You got his jeans open. Got your hand on his cock and felt him exhale sharply against your neck —that involuntary thing, the crack in the control — and stroked slowly and felt every bar of the ladder and heard him make a sound that was almost pained. “Y/N—”

“Yeah?”

“I need—” His hips pushed forward slightly. “Fuck, I need you to—”

“Need me to what.” You kept the pace slow. His own medicine.

His forehead dropped to your shoulder. “Please.” The please from Riki — rare, wrecked, genuine — landed somewhere it always landed and you let go of him and pulled him forward by his waistband and he understood, got his jeans down, stepped between your thighs.

He pushed inside in one slow stroke and you both went still. His hands braced on the counter either side of you. Your hands on his chest. The shop around you, the red light, the flash art on the walls watching everything. “Okay?” he said. Rough. Always asked.

“Move,” you said. “Please, Riki, move—” He moved.

The front counter was cold under your hands and he was warm everywhere else — his chest against yours, his mouth at your throat, his hips rolling into you in a rhythm that started slow and deliberate and got less controlled as it went. “You feel—” He broke off. His jaw set. “Every time. Like the first time, every—”

“Don’t stop talking,” you said. “I like it when you talk.”

He made a rough sound. “You like it.”

“Yes—”

“Good girl for telling me.” His pace shifted deeper and you choked on a breath. “Good girl for always — fuck — for always telling me what you want—”

“Riki—”

“I’ve got you.” His hand slid between you, found your clit, and you arched. “I’ve got you, come on, cum for me, you can—”

“I just—”

“I know.” His thumb circled. “Do it again. Come on. Let me feel you cum on my cock, Y/N—”

The degradation and the praise all tangled together and his thumb and the ladder on every stroke and his voice at your ear and you shattered again — harder this time, your whole body locking up, his name loud enough that it bounced off the dark walls—

He followed you. His rhythm breaking, his breath gone, his hands gripping the counter so hard you heard his rings knock against it — and the sound he made when he came was the broken one, the helpless one, the one you collected and kept.

After the both of you on the front counter, you sitting, him leaning against it beside you. Still not fully dressed. The playlist had long since ended and the shop was quiet except for both of you getting your breathing back. You looked at the flash art on the walls. “We just did that on the front counter,” you said.

“We did.”

“Where clients sit.”

“I’ll clean it.”

You looked at him. He looked back with the wrecked-and-unbothered expression, his hair completely destroyed, his rings catching the low light. “You’re not even slightly embarrassed,” you said.

“No.” Simple. His hand found your knee. “Are you?”

You thought about it. “No.” He smiled. The real one.

You leaned your head on his shoulder and he turned his face into your hair and you sat on the front counter of Studio 13 at midnight and the warmth of it — the us of it — felt like something you could live inside. “Stay,” he said. Into your hair.

“At yours?”

“Here. Couch in the back.” His hand moved at your knee. “Don’t want you to go yet.”

You lifted your head. Looked at his face. “Riki. I’m not going anywhere,” you said.

His eyes moved over yours. The thing behind them — the possessive, careful, quietly terrified thing that drove the jealousy and the silence and the hand always finding yours — settled. “I know,” he said. Like he was practicing believing it.

“I know you know.” You put your hand on his jaw. “I’m telling you anyway.” He turned his face into your palm. Brief. Eyes closing for just a second.

Then he stood up, pulled you off the counter, kept your hand in his. “Couch,” he said.

“Couch,” you agreed.

You were asleep within minutes with Riki’s jacket over you and his voice low in the background talking to someone on the phone — his brother, you thought, distantly, the conversation too quiet to hear properly — and the red light under the door and the smell of ink and his hoodie under your cheek.

You were asleep and warm and his and the storm was three weeks away. It felt like nothing could touch this.

Daniel texted your friend Soo on a Wednesday night. She didn’t tell you immediately. That was the first thing — she sat on it for four days, turning it over, looking at the record he’d sent her, reading it and rereading it. The charge. The conviction. The length of the sentence. Assault. Grievous bodily harm. Victim: female.

She read those words and thought about you and made a decision she believed was the right one. She texted you on a Sunday.

You were at Riki’s flat. Sunday morning, late, the good kind of late — his record player going, both of you in the kitchen, you on the counter watching him make coffee with the focused competence he brought to everything. His hair was wrecked. He had a bruise on his collarbone that was your fault and he’d looked at it in the mirror that morning with an expression of complete satisfaction that had made you throw a pillow at him. Your phone lit up on the counter beside you.

Soo: hey can we talk today. it’s important.

Soo: it’s about Riki.

You looked at the screen. “What,” Riki said. He’d clocked your face without turning around. He did that.

“Soo wants to talk.” You kept your voice neutral. “About you.”

He turned. Read your expression. His jaw did the thing — the subtle set — but his voice stayed even. “What about me?”

“She didn’t say.”

A pause. He looked at the coffee. Back at you. “When?”

“Today apparently.” He nodded. Said nothing. Turned back to the coffee and you watched his shoulders and thought about the tension in them and didn’t ask.

You met Soo at the coffee place near yours at two. She was already there when you arrived. She had her hands around her cup and her expression was the one she got when she was about to say something she’d rehearsed — careful, prepared, slightly guilty around the edges. You sat down. “Just tell me,” you said.

She put her phone on the table. Turned it to face you. A screenshot. A public record database. The name — Nishimura Riki — and below it the details, dry and legal and devastating in their simplicity. Charge: Assault occasioning grievous bodily harm. Victim: Female, 28. Sentence: 14 months. Probation: 12 months.