He’s curled up in the single armchair, laptop balanced on his knees, earbuds in. From teen emo fantasy to domestic dream, he’s all fluffy ash-blonde and clear skin, freshly washed loungewear and warmth. Make-believe boyfriend. He’s also content to let you dominate the television, taking an earphone out when the drama peaks; it’s never in short supply where Christine is concerned. You rather like that Crishelle doesn’t take her shit lying down. The jury’s still out on Mary.

Much of the morning passes in comfortable silence, his humming and occasional dance ticks catching your attention when the lives of the disgustingly rich and famous fail to.

“Oh,” he suddenly emotes, blinking at his phone.

“What?”

“Jisung texted me.”

You drop the duvet thread you were fiddling with. “What?”

“Han Jisung. Texted me?”

Struggling with the weight of the duvet, you manage to sit upright, stoked enough to mostly ignore the way your head smarts in protest of the movement.

“3racha?”

He nods.

“What did he say?”

He squints at his phone, purses his lips. “He’s, uh...” He cocks his head. “He invited me to a show tonight.”

“A show?”

“Their show.” His phone buzzes again. “They’re playing Sinner’s.”

Huh. It’s not quite jealousy. You don’t think, anyway.

“That’s awesome. Look at you going up in the world. Remind me to ask for your autograph.”

He flicks a gaze to you, dark and unimpressed. Your tummy throbs.

“What?”

“You’re coming with me.”

You wave a dismissive hand. “I wasn’t invited. Besides, I’m not feeling well. I’m better off staying—”

Before you can finish, he tosses his phone to the pillowy mass of duvet. “Read.”

The screen displays Jisung’s thread of texts.

>> yooo it’s jisungie. last night was lit. not feeling so hot today though lol

>> we’re doing sinners tonight. u and hot roomie should come

>> be awesome to see u again

“Oh.”

Minho hums.

“Hot roomie?” you ask.

“That would be you.”

“Naturally. And they think I’m hot because...?”

He catches his phone when you toss it back to him. “Because I told them so.”

Something in your frontal lobe implodes.

“Oh.”

“I have seen you naked.”

Right. That happened. Apparently? Fuck.

On your stunted silence, he puffs a breath. “I thought you hyped them,” he says.

“Bitch, please. You know I do.”

He laughs, a smirk lingering on his mouth. He rises from his chair and moves to you, veined, strong hands resting lightly on your shoulders. Warm. If only they weren’t so wide of your throat, you could be wearing them as a necklace.

He stares at you. The world is white noise and pixels.

“You know they’re fucking, right?”

“I— What? The fuck?”

“You didn’t?” He blinks, all feigned innocence. “They told me. Kind of had my suspicions anyway; they triggered my queer-dar to no end.”

“3racha...” You fall to silence, the mental images conjured so disgustingly salacious even the little black box struggles to contain them, because it’s the stuff of delirium made tangible and that simply isn’t—it can’t be—safe for consumption. There’s not enough room in the little black box. Nowhere near enough with what already lives there to comprehend the three of them. 3racha. Them. So beautiful and untouchable and all over each other in the aftermath of a concert or in the back of their tinted transit or in the steamed-up studio or—

Hysteria bubbles at the back of your throat; Minho giggles, thumbs a stray strand of hair from your face.

“Sorry. Probably shouldn’t have dropped that on you,” he says. “Some confidant I am.”

“N— No, it’s…”

Fine? Because it’s not fine. You’re so far from fine you’re no longer sure how to spell the word. Minho searches you, the weight of something unreadable behind his eyes. He wets his bottom lip, swallows and steps back.

Everything screams.

“So, you’re coming, yes?”

𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚, 𝙧𝙚𝙗𝙡𝙤𝙜, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙞𝙣 𝙖𝙣 𝙖𝙨𝙠 ♡ 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙨𝙪𝙥𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙢𝙚 𝙤𝙣 𝙠𝙤-𝙛𝙞 ♡

Your routine was different from most people. 

There were days you went to work where everyone was either getting ready to sleep or party hard. There were days you came home as people were just about to start their day. You worked insane hours and your social life was mostly nonexistent, but you weren’t really complaining.

Those were the commandments of being a healthcare professional, and you knew all about it going in. How rewarding your job was a big enough pro to endure the cons.

If you could whine about one little, tiny, minuscule detail, that would be the fatigue of your on-call days, on which you worked 24-hour shifts. The following two days would always be blocked on your calendar to achieve obnoxiously-expensive-spa-level relaxation—you wouldn’t even answer the phone since you needed absolute tranquility, only did zen things to properly recharge yourself, and even occasionally went to the said obnoxiously expensive spa for a fatigue-killer massage.

Thankfully, the universe got you covered. Unlike the rest of the residents in your building, you didn’t have a neighbor problem, so you got to chill on the shared terrace of your floor all by yourself.

Because nobody ever rented the place across yours. 

Apartment 31 had been empty forever for a reason you found hilarious—apparently, a murder had taken place there in the ‘80s. While you understood why it would give people the creeps, not only was it literally forever ago, but the neighborhood had changed for the better. You even had concierge services by the lobby now, for fuck’s sake!

But no. Ghosts and whatever. Just in case.

The landlady eventually decided to renovate the entire place to make it more appealing. She was even kind enough to consult with you so that the construction would happen on the days you weren’t home.

“The place looks fantastic already, Ms. Greene!” you exclaimed one morning as you were headed to work, “If you don’t mind me asking, how much will you ask for rent once the renovations are over?”

Then she uttered a price so ridiculously low that your eyes popped out of their sockets. It wasn’t that you were struggling financially, but living in this neighborhood in an apartment this nice for this price?

You could book massage appointments twice a month with that money!

You made a mental note to visit Ms. Greene maybe like a week after she put up an ad and failed miserably yet again, only to appear as if you were doing her a favor. Why yes you would take such good care of her fresh-out-the-oven hardwood floors, the amazeballs kitchen, and the hot tub she put on her side of the terrace which was now divided by a fake moss-covered fence. Didn’t you already have a great relationship? Didn’t you have a stable income? You would make the perfect tenant!

However, on a Tuesday evening, you witnessed the one sight you had been dreading. Someone was moving in already.

The ad had disappeared literally on its first day up.

Goodbye, the quiet terrace nights. Farewell, the hot tub I never got to use. It’s been real.

All good things had to come to an end someday, right?

“Anybody home?” you peeked through the open door.

You let yourself in to allegedly say hello and introduce yourself when in fact you wanted to know who the fuck had the audacity to take your extra massage appointments away from you.

“Yes?”

From the right side of the living room, a tall guy in a slender frame appeared. Slender but quite chiseled features, sharp as fuck eyes drilling holes into wherever he was looking. Definitely had one of those colder exterior, quiet type auras to him. He was indeed an eye candy despite looking younger than you, so you could maybe forgive him for ruining your plans. 

Well, you would at least consider it.

“I live across the hall. My name is Y/N,” you extended your hand for a shake, “Welcome to the building.”

“Jeongin. Pleasure,” he slightly nodded and reciprocated your greeting.

He wasn’t smiling and looked a little aloof. It could very well be the lethargy of moving in, but this Jeongin guy didn’t seem to be in the mood for socializing at all.

“Well, if you need anything, just knock on m—”

“JEONG! Where the fuck did you put the hangers? I can’t find them in my room!”

The sudden voice coming from the left side of the place gave you a terrible start, and then another guy appeared by the doorframe leading to the second bedroom. Very attractive, for sure. His voice actually had a very pleasant tone to it, reminding you of hot chocolate or burning cinnamon sticks for some reason. Nevertheless, even from the distance between you, you could see something dangerously flashing in his eyes. Trouble. Mischief. Catastrophe even. And judging by how he worded his earlier sentence, Jeongin wasn’t the only occupant of this apartment. 

There were two of them. 

You felt a falling sensation in the pit of your stomach all of a sudden.

“They are by your door,” Jeongin pointed at a box with a huge label that said ‘Hangers’ on it, then gestured to you, “This is Y/N. Our neighbor.”

Once the John Doe of the duo made eye contact with you, his lips parted. His eyes hastily traveled on you from head to toe as if making a quick scan, then he started walking towards you with long steps.

“Goddamn, we’re neighbors with a princess?” he extended his hand to you and introduced himself, “Seungmin. Is it okay if I knock on your door if I ever need anything?”

Despite the fact that it had been a hot minute since you were subjected to any kind of flirtation, let alone such a straightforward one, ‘The fuck kind of brazenness?’ was the first thing that popped into your mind. Compared to Jeongin, his roommate seemed more sociable. There wasn’t anything telling about the source of his overconfidence as of yet, but he was probably convinced he was a walking rizz machine.

“Uh… Sure.”

“I usually need things at night, though.”

“As long as it’s reasonable, it’s fine,” you faked a polite smile to mask the urge to slap this man into oblivion, “Once again, welcome.”

You closed the door behind you, and while fishing for your keys in your bag, Seungmin’s voice still managed to reach your ears through the barricade of their heavy front door.

“Good god, can you fucking believe how hot she is?”

You had to admit—when he said it behind your back, it wasn’t as annoying, and you did catch yourself resisting the urge to smile, but it didn’t take long before your irritation came back stronger than ever.

Their noise pollution levels were fucking insufferable. 

It started with their gaming. Every once in a while, you could hear them loudly address other people, but the only voices audible were theirs. It was probably one of those online multiplayer thingies. Even Jeongin was occasionally yelling all mad, which surprised you to no end since you didn’t even know his voice could reach those heights, or that he could get angry for that matter. It was somewhat tolerable, so you swallowed your irritation. You blasted some ASMR through your earphones for noise canceling, and voilà! No harm, no foul.

Then it was the occasional weekend parties that overflowed to the terrace area.

Obviously, everyone was entitled to their Saturday fun, and you really didn’t want to be that person, but a long-ass shift ending close to midnight would take its toll on anyone. If this was a Sims game, your Energy bar would be the darkest shade of red, and you needed peace. Period.

Then again, it wasn’t a frequent occurrence, and you really didn’t want to be a buzzkill, so you swallowed your irritation. Again.

Then something so outrageous started happening that you were gonna get fucking ulcer if you shut up about it.

It was a night as calm as it could get. Finally. You came home very late that night and immediately crashed, looking forward to some hardcore sleeping. Right before you were about to drift off to the unconscious realm, you heard it. Out of nowhere.

Someone was moaning. Loudly. A woman. Then there were grunts. A man’s. It was him for sure. The guy who claimed to have invented flirtation. 

Seungmin.

At first, the surprise of  ‘Oh my god, they’re having sex!’ washed over you, but it stopped being erotic only mere seconds later, no different than the constant buzz of a phantom mosquito in your bedroom. Equally uninvited and unwelcome when you were craving sleep.

Sure, you could swallow it one last time. Again. Because you so didn’t want to be that person. This was probably a one-time thing anyway, right?

“Oh, fuck this,” you jumped from your bed and marched out of your apartment.

Not giving a shit about which dark AM hour you were currently in, you started banging on Apartment 31’s door nonstop as if you were the cops and they were hiding a cocaine stash from you. You didn’t mind if your knuckles bled; you were going to knock on that door until someone opened it.

“WHAT?” Seungmin finally appeared all disheveled, still slightly panting and covered in a sheen of sweat.

“Hi, remember me? Your neighbor across the hall!” you flashed a disgustingly sweet smile with clinically crazy eyes opened wide, “I just wanted to kindly ask you to FUCKING keep it down. This is not your private penthouse—there are other people residing in this building, jesus fucking CHRIST!”

Before he could produce a reply, you turned on your feet and slammed your door close. If you looked back for the briefest of seconds right at that moment, you were going to be able to see that a smirk had appeared on Seungmin’s lips, and there were several reasons for it.

He got to see you in your sleeping attire, for one. You had no bra underneath. He got to confirm his hypothesis that you would be so fucking hot when you were mad, which you were, and now you knew what he looked like right in the middle of sex.

Slowly but surely. Inceptions didn’t happen overnight.

“Seungmin, come back to bed!”

He took one look towards his bedroom door, then another at yours, and chuckled to himself while licking his lips. 

That night marked the beginning of a climbing curve towards something unexpected.

The next day you made it to your building at a relatively decent hour, yearning for the comfort of a warm shower. What you were not yearning for was a figure of Seungmin popping up like a ghost next to you out of nowhere.

“Good evening,” he greeted you with a grin, eyes flickering as mischievously as ever.

You grunted as a response, still hella mad about his complete disregard for shared living spaces. You rode the elevator in silence for five floors until he spoke again.

“How was your weekend?”

“Oh, you did not just ask me that!” you snapped way sooner than you expected, and your loud exclamation echoed in the lobby, turning the head of the concierge in your direction. Seungmin, on the other hand, wasn’t fazed one bit.

“Geez, grumpy much?” he mockingly creased his brows, “If you need me to slide your panties to the side and fuck the stress out of you just say so.”

“As if! Not everyone is as impressionable as your bimbos.”

“But you never let me impress you, princess.” 

“And I never will,” you gritted your teeth and stomped towards your front door, leaving him with a huge grin as he watched you walk away.

Two nights later, you ran into Jeongin in front of the elevator this time. Unlike Seungmin, he just nodded at you when he made eye contact without saying anything. He didn’t even attempt a greeting. Maybe he really wasn’t into human interaction after all.

As opposed to your escape attempt from Seungmin, you let Jeongin walk beside you until you reached your doors. The only sound heard was the clinking of the keys in the locks as you both turned them.

Until he talked.

“You look stunning in yellow, by the way,” he pointed at your shirt and tensed his facial muscles into a very faint smile, “You should wear this color more often.”

Then he walked away as if he didn’t say what he just said whereas you instantly blushed. 

Why the fuck were you blushing?!

Another two nights later, you chanced upon Seungmin a second time. He had that cheery grin on his face again.

“Good evening,” he greeted you.

“Good evening,” you deadpanned with even deader eyes.

“How was your day?”

Why was he trying to strike up a conversation with you though? Wasn’t a simple ‘Good evening’ enough?

And how the fuck did these guys somehow manage to catch you by the elevator around these hours every time?

“Tiring,” you curtly answered as you walked into the elevator cabin.

But then immediately regretted it.

Sure, he might have done some things to irritate you, but you were the one who didn’t address it sooner when you could have. It didn’t mean you had the right to be a bitch—it wasn’t in your disposition to be one anyway. The least you could do was exchange pleasantries like a decent human being.

“Yours?” you eventually asked without looking at him.

“I’m pretty beat myself,” he answered with a straight face, looking genuinely tired, “but I always have time for you, Anytime you want to destress, just come over. Complete free use.”

He winked and walked away to his door with quick steps. Meanwhile, you were so dumbfounded that you couldn’t even move until the closing elevator doors brought you to your senses again.

The third time you saw Seungmin, you were trying to mentally prepare yourself for what kind of bullshit he was going to spew this time.

But he didn’t say anything.

You just rode the elevator in silence just like you did with Jeongin. The fourth time he didn’t say anything either. Nor on the fifth time.

On the sixth time, you felt so uncomfortable with the awkward silence that you were the one initiating the meaningless small talk while waiting for the elevator in the lobby.

“Good evening,” you uttered with your eyes fixated on the elevator door and swallowed thickly for some reason.

“Good evening,” he responded with a carefree smile as if you had been having pleasant conversations all along, “How was your day?”

“The usual. Pretty tiring,” you scratched your nape, “Yours?”

“Also the usual,” he shrugged, “Sleep, work, thinking about you. Same old.”

You bit the insides of your mouth to stop yourself from smiling, then accompanied him into the elevator.

“I hope it’s at least in a PG context.”

He got a little too close to you while pressing the number of your floor, his gaze locked into yours as if he had another pair of eyes on the side of his head.

“How would that even be possible when you’re like some fucking tantric goddess?” he almost whispered as his stare glided towards your lips.

You didn’t answer, but your smile was apparent. Silence again. You started thinking about what it could possibly be that he seemed to obsess over about you. The last time you checked, you were just a regular person. You snapped hard when you were angry and you dressed for comfort for work, so you didn’t particularly have the amount of sex appeal that would cause him to react this way.

“I’d sell my soul to spend one night with you,” he let out a dreamy sigh out of nowhere.

WHY WERE YOU LIKING THIS???

“Did anyone ever tell you you’re coming on too strong?” you sandwiched your enjoyment between two large buns of snark, hoping he wouldn’t notice it. 

“My brain shuts down when I hyperfixate. I can’t help it,” he declared matter-of-factly, “Guys my age are more inclined to wear a simp badge very non-ironically. Do whatever you want with this information.”

You finally looked at him with as much confidence as you could fake.

“Are you saying I should fuck guys your age more often?”

“I’m saying you should fuck me more often,” he replied urgently.

He took your silence as the perfect opportunity to make a compelling case, and you were… letting him.

“Have you ever thought about what a perfect match we are?” he followed you like a puppy trailing after its owner, “I have monster stamina but no hard no’s, and I eat pussy for my own pleasure. It doesn’t get any better than this.”

“You should really learn to put your money where your mouth is,” you chuckled sarcastically while looking for your keys.

“I can, actually, if you’re offering.”

You turned the key in the lock and met his eyes right before closing your door.

“Good night, Seungmin.”

“One of those nights, it will be,” he brazenly checked out your chest area and bit into his grin, “Good night, princess.”

Then all of a sudden, he disappeared.

You didn’t see him by the elevator at all, and it genuinely made you wonder where he was. He was basically on payroll to annoy the shit out of you, no? 

Then why were you feeling like your day was missing something?

Days passed by thinking about this. One night, as you were making a simple dinner for one, you caught yourself thinking about both of them. The occupants of Apartment 31 you had no information about. Why Seungmin was the way he was, why Jeongin didn’t smile much, why two guys with such starkly different personalities were even roommates with each other. You thought about it until you finished your plate. Then you decided to take a shower to wash the haunting thoughts away.

When you walked out of your bathroom, however, you got such a violent whiplash from a sound you heard that it momentarily made you question if you were dreaming awake.

“JEONG!!!”

A woman. She was moaning so loudly that she might as well have been getting murdered there. In none of the alternate realities you could come up with would you imagine Jeongin being so vocal, but he was. Commanding. Demanding. Dangerous.

And hearing the things he uttered flat out stunned you.

“What are you gonna say? What are you gonna say if you want to cum?”

“PLEASE! PLEASE!! I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!”

It… did something to you. You briefly considered taking another freezing cold shower to send away the urges that started to infest your mind, but eventually opted for getting into your bed. You could maybe listen to some soothing tunes. Some audiobook. Something to make you think about literally anything else.

But shortly after, the sounds changed keys.

“Ready for me now?”

It was Seungmin’s voice this time. Confident tone, but not his usual brash one. It was calm. Serene. Beguilingly so. He actually sounded like he knew what he was talking about.

“Shh, behave, Y/N. Is this what we agreed upon?” Jeongin chuckled behind several walls.

You felt your entire body getting shocked.

The fact that they were having a fucking threesome was no longer the most intriguing detail. Did you hear that right just now? Did you hear your goddamn name being thrown around? Did a person currently being shared in their bed really have the same name as you?

What the damn hell?!

You couldn’t fight your lizard brain anymore. You just couldn’t. Your body was moving completely on its own, forcing your fingers into your mouth first to get them properly wet, then on your clit, touching and touching and touching yourself with gradually more pressure. You listened to these two gorgeous men play with a hologram of you, chuckling contently at how they were obliterating her, wishing it was really you. 

The idea of being sandwiched between them, consumed out of your mind in pleasure sounded like the best idea in the world even after you came. Even in your sleep. Even for the following couple of days.

You were going to take this secret to the grave with you.

Oddly enough, all the radioactive noise waste magically stopped after that questionable night. No gaming, no parties, no fucking someone into oblivion. None. You didn’t see either of the guys; not when you left for work, not when you came back home. Nothing. 

Did something happen? Did they leave for someplace all of a sudden?

There was no way they actually… moved out, right?

Several days into the unprompted radio silence, you were looking for a legitimate excuse to satisfy your curiosity. Well, you could always just knock on their door to see how they were doing. It was a very humane gesture after all, wasn’t it? It wasn’t like there was any more meaning to it. Just a friendly neighbor, saying hi.

You were only three steps away from their door when it suddenly opened, and Seungmin’s greeting blared like a loud horn in your ears.

“Hey, you’re back!”

You felt like you got caught red-handed. They were both standing at their doorframe, and you automatically blushed seeing them in the flesh after what felt like forever, but at the same time, an instant feeling of relief spread throughout your body.

Wait, what?

“Hi,” you replied as nonchalantly as you could manage, “Were you looking for me?”

“Actually, yes,” Seungmin pointed his thumb inside their apartment, “We wanted to ask you if you would come hang out with us tonight.”

It would be a lie to say you weren’t even slightly scandalized remembering their partnership in crime, but for once Seungmin didn’t have that damn obnoxious tone to him. It actually sounded like a legitimate, humane invitation. Almost friendly.

“Doing what?” you creased your brows, “I’m not exactly a gaming type of person.”

“We’re just gonna chill at the hot tub. The weather’s awesome and Jeongin makes killer cocktails,” he explained, “Haven’t you been saying you’re constantly tired?”

You thought about it. Hot neighbors you may have started seeing in a different light. Drinks. Chilling in a hot tub when you finally had some time off work. It didn’t sound like a half-bad idea honestly. You actually wanted to spend some time with them, but you figured your first time would be watching a movie or something.

Not a literal steamy night in some hot tub.

“Cocktails,” you squinted your eyes and scanned Jeongin’s face, “What can you make?”

“Whatever the princess wants,” he stretched his arms to the side.

“My vacation starts today,” you crossed your arms over your chest, “I want to turn off my brain. Can you promise to make it worth my time?”

“I’d rather put my money where my mouth is.”

He was smiling. Not in a wholesome fashion. Not even in a way that could be dubbed as charming. This was straight up dangerous.

You smiled back.

“I’ll take a shower first. I’ll come over in a bit.”

“Perfect,” Seungmin broke into his familiar smirk again, “Please wear your sexiest bikini for me?”

“Shut up, will you?”

His chuckle got louder as you closed your door. You took a quick shower, then went over all the options you had regarding what you could throw on top of the swimsuit. A loose t-shirt? Too casual. Just walk over without anything else? Too bold. You eventually decided on a kimono you usually wore to the beach and headed over to their place.

You were nervous when you knocked on their door.

“Long time no see,” Jeongin welcomed you inside and gestured towards the terrace door, “This way, princess.”

You knew for a fact their side of the terrace had the better view, but you weren’t aware what a fucking great job they did with the atmosphere they created. They had installed some lights in different shades of violet, making the place look like some classy strip club. Jeongin followed right after you with a tray of drinks as well as a sizeable pitcher as the balmy weather caressed your face, and you saw Seungmin lounging on one of the sunbeds.

“Long Island Ice Tea,” Jeongin informed you as he poured the contents of the pitcher into an ice-filled glass, “Hope you like it.”

“Love it.”

“Shall we, then?” Seungmin threw his phone on the gray cushions he was resting against and took his top off in one go, urging Jeongin to do the same. You just hoped your amazement was not so blatantly obvious because god—damn.

They were quite handsome guys as it was, but they were fine as hell half-naked.

Nevertheless, your internal yelling was actually nothing compared to their reaction, which they made no effort to hide. You took off the light fabric hiding you as if you were casually stripteasing for them, and the two guys watched you a bit too intently, checking out every inch of your bare skin their eyes could land on. Once you climbed the steps, Seungmin helped you get into the water and the warmth under your feet started spreading a pleasant relaxing sensation all over your body. Jeongin handed you your drink and raised his glass.

“To our first night as a threesome.”

A soft breeze of laughter blew all around, and you gulped half the drink in one go, partly to quench your thirst, partly to calm your inexplicable nerves.

“Oh wow, these motors work better than my vibrators,” you briefly closed your eyes, then looked directly into Seungmin’s eyes, “Can I get a key to your apartment? I promise I’ll only come over when you’re not home.”

“You can also come over when we’re home. It’s preferred actually,” he leisurely threw his arm over your shoulders, then pointed at Jeongin, “Or you can directly ask him to help you out. People can’t walk straight after getting head from him. It’s fabled, really.”

You almost choked on your drink. Granted, you had some idea after that monstrosity you heard, but… seriously?

“Your head game is legendary?” you questioned in disbelief.

“Never judge a book by its cover,” Jeongin argued then stealthily scooted closer to you, “I have a horrible case of oral fixation.”

“Oh, you thought he’s the decent one?” Seungmin erupted into a heartfelt laughter, “Did you mention your toy collection to her at all?”

“It’s always the quiet ones, I swear,” you shook your head and extended your already empty glass to Jeongin.

“There’s no shame in admitting that aids are useful. It doesn't make me any less of a man,” he refilled your glass with his infinitely tranquil voice, “If anything, my partners appreciate it a lot.”

“I second that statement, actually,” you confessed, addressing Seungmin, “The more, the merrier if you know how to properly use them.” 

The two men shared a knowing look in silence that dragged on forever. Maybe it was due to what you just said, maybe due to the drinks he was downing one after another, but Seungmin found the courage to brush his fingers down your bare shoulder.

“Would that be something you’re interested in?” he asked with a voice as calm as that time you heard through the walls, “With us?”

You involuntarily swallowed. Well, would it? Would getting crushed under their body weight be something you’d be interested in? Would you like to get Jeongin’s infamous head, or have Seungmin blow your back out maybe?

Would you?

“What do you mean?” you asked, feigning complete ignorance.

You fucking knew what he meant of course, but you needed him to elaborate just in case. To say it out loud. To paint you the picture you were dying to hear from his lips. Again.

“Fine, I’ll play,” Seungmin smiled with hooded eyes and spoke directly into your ear, “Do you have any idea how hard it is to have self-control around you?”

You liked it. You liked the attention so much. You liked how hardcore he was about his simping even though you were quite literally doing nothing to lead him on. It masturbated your ego so hard, and it was so obvious that he knew.

“I’m not even doing anything,” you countered, extraordinarily calm.

“You breathed,” Jeongin answered instead of Seungmin, “One look at you is enough to seduce a man out of his mind.”

He was faster than Seungmin in cutting to the chase, and you felt the outline of his soft lips on the left side of your neck, which led you to briefly close your eyes. Then you felt Seungmin’s hand caressing your thighs underwater.

“How much clearer do I need to be so you finally get it?” he placed the softest of kisses on your right earlobe, “You have two guys here at your disposal who have it bad for you.”

“Bad for me,” you chuckled to yourself, but not because you were tickled, “Doesn’t quite explain the one night stands I keep eavesdropping on.”

When you finished your sentence, they shared a look again as if to ask each other ‘You wanna tell her, or should I?’.

“Very well,” Jeongin started providing you with the reasoning you were genuinely curious about, “We knew we didn’t have much chance with you, but we needed to get your attention. I think it’s fair to say you did get curious about what was happening here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” you creased your brows.

“We put it to a test, and it worked,” Seungmin continued, then slapped a shit-eating grin on his face, “You came pretty hard that night, didn’t you?”

You were absolutely mortified. How the fuck did they even know?!

“A fun fact,” Jeongin went on as though to answer your silent question, “If you can hear us, we can hear you, too.”

“Let’s not play any games anymore,” Seungmin caressed your face before giving you a chance to think, adoration dripping from his eyes, “One night. I promise it’ll be the best you’ve ever had.”

“And if it’s not?” you derisively asked, “What compensation do I get?”

He shot one look at his roommate, and Jeongin answered on Seungmin’s behalf.

“We’ll move.”

“What?!”

“You hate it when we’re loud, don’t you?” he smiled almost sinisterly, then sneakily made his way to your neck once more, “There. You have your guarantee now.”

Your eyes closing again at the contact was Seungmin’s chance. He pulled your face into his, and you let him kiss you. Unrushed. Exploratory. With careful movements of his lips, scared to let you slip away. Nothing was allowed to ruin this moment. He’d been fantasizing about kissing you for the longest fucking time, and not even the most lucid scenarios he could imagine came close to the real thing.

You were simply magnificent.

When Seungmin finally pulled away, you asked the one question that had the potential to make him cum untouched.

“Can I see his toy collection?”

He broke into a content smile and nodded at Jeongin to lead the way. You followed the owner of the said collection to his room with your hand in his, warm water trickling down your body like a foreshadowing of what was on the horizon. Once you reached the premises of Jeongin’s bed, Seungmin was the first to climb on it, not wasting any time to pull you close from your waist and immediately kissing you. While you were getting your lips devoured, Jeongin pulled on one of the soaked strings keeping the top of your bikini in place, and unapologetically exposed your chest for them to admire. 

He didn’t believe in keeping beautiful things hidden.

“Which one would you prefer more?” he asked as Seungmin pulled you close until your back was flush against his chest, “Raspberry, peach, or honey?”

“For what?”

“Edible lube,” he flashed three little plastic tubes in bright colors for you, “For me to eat your pussy.”

“Isn’t that a bit redundant? Considering…” you trailed off, somewhat confused.

“Shh, don’t question. Just trust me.”

“Fine. Peach,” you pointed at the soft-colored container.

Seungmin rid you of your bottoms as carefully as he could manage considering how badly he had been itching for you and spread your pussy lips for the gorgeous beast between your legs, offering him the first look. Jeongin sighed deeply with his whole chest, as though he was hypnotized, studying every inch of your folds with a blistering, pensive gaze and sinking his teeth into his bottom lip. 

“Just look at this beauty,” he stopped the urge to kiss your clit at the last second, “Fuck.”

He squeezed the bottle to extract a generous amount of luve, and you felt the thick density of the liquid dripping down to your entrance. A cold but refreshing sensation in stark contrast with how feverish you were feeling. His slender fingers smeared the peach aroma all over you and massaged you to his heart’s content, smiling contently every time you throbbed.

“Can I eat it until I’m full?” he looked up at you with inquisitive eyes.

“Go ahead.”

“Here’s the trick. You’re supposed to lick right here,” he gently pressed his thumb right under your clit like he was instructing a crowd, “Not the entrance, nor the clit. It’s gonna make you want both.”

When his gaze met with yours again, you could clearly see how much his eyes had darkened.

“Which works to our benefit, so…”

The way Jeongin licked you with just the tip of his tongue sent multiple jolts of pleasure through you, causing you to gasp for air. The cadence at which he lapped at that specific spot was precise, yet not rehearsed per se—it felt more like he was reacting to your moans and your writhing rather than you reacting to his slow ministrations. It started as little stutters of your legs, but soon enough, you found yourself rolling your hips into his mouth, seeking more, much much more friction. 

It surprised you when he abruptly pressed his hands over your thighs to keep you in place, but you found yourself loving the way it felt, too. Behind you, Seungmin held you a little tighter, leaving wet kisses on your nape. You moaned again when Jeongin’s tongue returned to your peach-flavored pussy.

“He doesn’t like it when you interfere. Just let him do his thing,” Seungmin let out a soft chuckle and trailed his hand on your neck, using two fingers on your jaw to turn your head in his direction, “Play with me in the meantime.”

He kissed you. And then he kissed you. Deep. Wet. Warm. Seungmin was a great kisser, taking his time to make sure he was giving you the sloppiest, most sensual make out session known to mankind. He knew how to match his kisses not only to Jeongin’s relentless rhythm on your soaked folds, but also to the way his large hands massaged your breasts. Careful but firm, like he was trying to undo the knot in some sore muscle. 

You felt yourself sink in the deeper end of this heated pool of bliss accompanied by the lewd sounds coming from Jeongin slurping on you and Seungmin inhaling your lips. He pulled away from your mouth to let both of you breathe, and while was addressing Jeongin, he did not look away from you and your lips, already raw from being kissed so hard. 

“How does she taste?”

The wet caresses between your legs came to a halt, causing you to let out an embarrassing whine. Seungmin was loving how much you seemed to need it and broke into a satisfied grin. When Jeongin hummed, you felt his soundwaves reverberate inside you. 

“Fucking delicious,” he commented with the tone of a man reviewing some famous meal at a Michelin restaurant, “See for yourself.”

Your eyes trailed down as Jeongin retreated a few inches back, allowing Seungmin to collect your slick on his fingers to sample your taste. When that first drop reached his tongue, Seungmin’s eyelids fluttered shut. He shoved his fingers into his mouth, sucking on them eagerly. You watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed you, and the sight of it made heatwaves crawl under your skin. He dragged his tongue all over his lips, leaving not a single drop of your essence behind.

“Why didn’t you tell me you tasted so sweet? I would have been a fucking doormat for you long ago,” he cupped your face and caressed the corner of your mouth with his thumb, “You’ll taste so much better creampied, you know? I’ll fill you up over and over again just to eat it out of you.”

The more he spoke into your ear, the more you were moaning, and the harder Seungmin was getting behind you. Nevertheless, Jeongin’s tongue on your cunt was moving so faintly that it was barely perceptible.

“Stop teasing!” you threw your head back in frustration.

“Oh, you thought you were getting your pussy eaten?” he looked at you with zero dismay in his eyes, “I’m just tasting.”

You started writhing under him, but Jeongin gave no fucks, resolute to tease you until you went insane. You had no choice but to seek a bit of solace in Seungmin’s kisses and his scorching touches all over your body.

“Don’t you feel empty with just a tongue on your pussy?” he kissed your cheek, “He’s gonna eat better if you let me fuck you. Shall we fill you up?”

You nodded so eagerly that he almost lost his mind.

“You’re the sexiest fucking thing, god, just look at you,” he hissed and pumped himself to full hardness before giving you what you desperately needed, “Can’t believe I’m about to fuck you. He’s got you so wet.”  

You felt his tip prodding your entrance, and the promise of finally getting something more than a tease was simply exhilarating. His grunts getting more guttural as he was pushing in gave you a twisted feeling of satisfaction. You felt desired. Animalistically so. Once Seungmin finally started moving inside you, he shoved his fingers in your mouth to get them wet, and you melted into him when he began drawing circles on your nipples.

“Like that. Just focus on the pleasure,” he spoke in almost a pacifying voice, “We’re going to have the time of our lives tonight, princess.”

Noticing his teasing session came to an unannounced end, Jeongin stopped, and the loss of contact instantly grabbed your attention. You watched him tower over you and bring his cock to your lips.

“Don’t try to finish me. Just enjoy it,” he firmly instructed, then flashed a diabolical smile, “Enjoy how you’re getting your holes stuffed.”

Every time he disappeared into your mouth, his moans got deeper. A part of you wanted to get back at him for the torture he put you through, but you couldn’t do anything other than let him have his way with you.

“We should play more often,” he licked his lips, eating you alive with his eyes, “You sound fucking fantastic when your moans are muffled.”

He had no plans on finishing in your mouth, of course. After pulling out, you got peach-flavored kisses from him first, then he went back to where he belonged between your legs. You were so drowned in the pleasure high Seungmin was pumping into your veins that it caught you completely off guard when Jeongin swallowed your pussy whole. 

“Oh, FUCK!”

Now you fucking knew why the man had a rep. He was making out with your pussy so intensely that there was no way you would be able to stop yourself from cumming. You started throbbing around Seungmin in much more frequent intervals, and once Jeongin started moaning into you, you snapped hard, almost pushing Seungmin out of you.

“Stop. Please!”

“You said I can eat it until I’m full. I’m not full yet.”

“Play nice, Jeong, this is only our first time,” Seungmin caressed your hair as you were coming down, “I’m sure she’ll let you next time, right?”

“N-next time?”

“Of course. You didn’t think we’d stop after one night did you?”

He kissed your lips, but with an amount of lust twice removed. It was almost… innocent.

“Why don’t you let me watch you suck your cream off of me now?”

You gathered whatever strength you could and turned around to nestle between his legs. In the meantime, Jeongin’s hands traveled on your hips.

“My turn to feel you,” he rubbed his palms on the soft flesh, then squeezed it to his heart’s content, “Arch your ass for me.”

You did as you were told, and courtesy of the heavy gloss you were coated with, Jeongin slipped inside so easily as you were working Seungmin.

“Fuck, you’re so wet,” he hissed through his teeth, “You’re asking for it.”

He was rougher with you than Seungmin, but the change of pace felt good. Not only for you, though, since Jeongin’s sharp thrusts were making you take all of Seungmin in your mouth.

“God, you’re fucking killing me with this,” Seungmin tangled his fingers into your hair, and demanded, “Fuck her harder. She moans more on my cock when you do that.”

“Don’t clench. Stop trying to make me cum,” Jeongin landed a delicious smack on your ass, “Do as I say or I’ll eat your pussy until you cry.”

You let Seungmin go with a loud pop and looked back at Jeongin with fire shooting out of your eyes.

“You’ll do it if you got the balls,” you spat almost maliciously.

And he snapped.

He quickly pulled out of you and hurriedly picked up a toy from his nightstand. Then he promptly laid down under your legs as if you were facesitting him and latched onto your clit while fucking you fast. You were inadvertently ascending Seungmin with the way Jeongin had you screaming. You should have been careful with what you wished for since you actually started crying from overstimulation but he didn’t stop. He wasn’t going to stop. You should have watched what you said to him. You shouldn’t have dared him like that. 

“Switch with me,” Seungmin urged Jeongin in panic, scared your sobs were about to make him cum, “I wanna fuck her again.”

He snuck behind you as Jeongin traded places with him, his mouth completely drenched with your slick, not even bothering to wipe it off.

“Suck,” he offered his flushed cock to you again.

“Get him back for it,” Seungmin spurred you on, “I wanna see his eyes roll back.”

Why, he didn’t have to say that twice. You were resolute to wipe that smug grin off of his fucking beautiful face anyway, so you shoved his cock as deep down your throat as you could, solely focusing on the ways you could get him to blow hard. 

And when his eyes indeed started rolling back, Seungmin knew Jeongin was close.

“Tsk tsk, no, Turn around,” Seungmin demanded your attention, “You’re gonna look at me.”

He briefly pulled out, allowing just enough time for you to settle into Jeongin’s chest, then promptly slid inside you again. The younger’s attitude had changed for some reason—he was giving open mouth kisses on your neck, tilting your head to the side to look at him so that he could share your taste with you on his tongue. As a completely instinctive move, you tried to pull him closer to you so that you could feel his cock growing bigger on your ass.

“So fucking hungry, one cock is not enough. She wants two,” Seungmin mockingly chortled, “I’m cumming in her pussy.”

“I’m cumming in her pussy,” Jeongin shot daggers at him, “You’re forgetting who made her cum in the first place.”

“Just fucking share!” you whined, not having any patience for bickering in the middle of this, “I can take you both.”

Incredulous of what you just said, Seungmin abruptly stopped, but you watched his features snap back into a smile again in slow motion. 

“Have you no shame corrupting two guys like that?” he groped your thighs, “You’re so much fucking hotter than all of my wet dreams combined.”

The two men shared a look again. While it was so fucking hard to restrain themselves, they did their utmost best not to break you in half. You felt both their tips pressing against your entrance, seeking a way to sneak in.

“Breathe for me,” Seungmin soothed you, “We’ll make it feel so good, I promise.”

At long last, you finally felt them paving their way into you. Slowly but surely. Taking up all the space inside you.

You had never felt this full before and it was making you go dumb.

“Let’s finish with a bang,” Seungmin nodded to Jeongin, “Give me your clit sucker.”

Jeongin pulled something up from under his pillow, and Seungmin covered your clit with the silicone head of the toy perfectly.

“You’re getting creampied tonight like you’ve never been before, princess,” he turned it on and started moving, “Let’s see whose swimmers are faster, shall we?”

You were having a hard time processing all the stimulations you were receiving—your cunt full, your clit getting sucked, your breasts being fondled, your neck being kissed… The amount of pleasure was reaching an overwhelming threshold.

“Let me watch you suck on her tongue,” Seungmin voiced his last request desperately like a death wish, “God, I’m so fucking close.”

The intensity of the suction on your clit doubled first. Then tripled. Your breathing turned staccato and that was the telltale sign that you were about to cum. When Jeongin started fucking you faster, Seungmin followed suit, and you clenched around them so hard that you milked the life out of them as you came screaming. You could actually feel how heavy their loads were inside you. The two gorgeous men rode their orgasms until the last drop of cum was out, then carefully pulled out, collapsing on either side of you, hugging you, kissing you as if they were thanking you for their lives. 

“The curiosity’s gonna kill me if I don’t ask,” you eventually pierced through the silence, “Did you really have someone named Y/N in this place some time ago?”

They both let out an exhausted laugh in unison. Jeongin buried his face in the crook of your neck whereas Seungmin aimed for your lips.

“Don’t ask questions you already know the answers to, princess.”

© 2022-23 cb97percent. Translations & reposts of any kind are prohibited.

Silence follows; Minho closes his eyes to it. The hunger grows still, an omnipresent influence that taints his every thought to distressing effect. She appears less so a person the longer this goes on, more so a tempting meal that would bring around an altogether different type of despair when consumed.

“I don’t know what to do, Lix.”

He opens his eyes, turns his gaze to his friend. Felix’s lavender irises scan the afternoon panorama of the city, flitting down to Minho on his admittance.

“I said I wouldn’t look in on her dreams, and I did. I said I'd stay away from her, and I couldn't. I said I'd put distance between us and make it so the end of this won’t be so painful when it comes time, and I failed,” Minho says, voice strained.

Felix blinks, his dainty pink wings iridescent in the fresh sunlight.

“I’m going to hurt her. I’m going to lose her. And I just... I don’t know what to do.”

The sex faerie stands elegantly, padding along the lip of the balcony, stepping off the edge and descending a graceful glide to the ground floor. He rounds the sofa, lifting Minho’s outstretched legs and assuming their spot, wings retracting as he settles comfortably now with legs on his lap.

“You really care for her, don’t you?” he eventually sighs.

Minho’s silence speaks to the truth of it.

“All of this started with an accident. It wasn’t your fault that she got cursed, Minho.”

“It’s explicitly my fault—”

“Humans value intention; you know that. You didn’t mean to curse her, you weren’t trying to eat her soul, therefore you’re not as much at fault as you try to make out. Have you ever considered just telling her the truth?”

Minho shakes his head immediately. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” Felix scoffs. “She already suspects something, she’s already dreamt about you being something other than human—which I would argue means she’s probably down for it—and she’s already given you an ultimatum. At this point, what do you have to lose? Like, really?”

“Her, Felix. I have her to lose.”

“But that was never not a possibility, man. You knew this was going to end with you losing her.”

Felix pats his calf, as though the contact may be a small comfort. Minho draws a heavy breath, tension in his limbs that he can’t shake off or relax through.

“We’re not looking to change the ending here,” the blonde continues softly, “but maybe we can make the present a little better. You have a week left, right?”

“Felix—”

“I know you hate it. I really do. But refusing to talk about it is only going to make things worse. You might think you’re protecting her, sparing her from a world she wants no part of, but a lie of omission is still a lie. Humans are strange creatures, man. They value truth and honesty just as they do intention; above all else and no matter how brutal it is. She wants to feel like you respect her enough to give her that. And she deserves it, frankly.”

Minho sits upright. “How the fuck am I supposed to tell her that she’s got a week left on earth because of me?! Because I'm going to consume her soul?! Riddle me that, Lix—”

“I didn’t say it was going to be easy, but you can either spend this final week having her resent you until the time comes or spend it trying to make things right. Make it worthwhile. Tell her the truth, tell her you’re sorry, tell her you love her—”

Minho sags in place, head in his hands.

“— and that you’ll make it as painless as possible.”

Perhaps the worst of it all is that he knows Felix is right, on every count with every word. None of this is revolutionary by any stretch, the suggestions having crossed his own mind frequently and with increasing strength each time.

But that is just what he lacks: strength.

“I know you don’t want my advice—”

“I do,” Minho interrupts on a shaky breath. “I do want it, Felix. I always did.”

The faerie’s expression softens, his lips purse in sympathy. He offers a gentle squeeze of Minho’s calf once more; quietly soothing.

“Would you...” Minho hesitates. He’s not used to showing this kind of vulnerability—any kind of vulnerability—and so doesn’t really know how to approach it. Felix cocks his head, lavender eyes curious.

“Would you, maybe... be my plus one to the party tonight?”

His face lights up, a grin of sunbeam and pure delight accompanying his dramatic gasp. “Me? Really?”

“I’d feel better with you there.”

“Minho...”

“You’d have to tame all this down,” the elder gestures to him, ostentatious frills and glitter galore.

Felix rolls his eyes. “Please, I love cosplaying an emotionally repressed, middle-class, beta male. I’ll fit right in, don’t even worry about it.”

“And no bewitching anyone I work with.”

“Naturally.”

“If things go wrong... if she won’t talk to me, or loses it, or—”

“I’ll keep a close eye on things. Promise.”

Minho already feels somewhat relieved with this; even the knowledge of having his friend nearby will make this easier.

“Thanks, Lix,” the elder mumbles.

“My pleasure.”

Tonight will be the worst of evenings; Minho only wishes for it to be over.

***

There’s nothing so grating as the cheer of others when one is drowning in a whirlpool of their own misery.

Minho is convinced now more than ever that his mask is a sine que non; if his true emotions were to show in any way, not a single one of his colleagues would have dared approached him with polite greetings thus far. He smiles amicably, he shakes hands, he bids welcome and does his part to tow the company line. Located in the wealthy part of the business district, the Constellation Hotel is an establishment known for its upmarket clientele and equally as upmarket rates. Host to weddings, special occasions and all manner of exclusive events, the place is usually booked out months in advance and is nigh on impossible for the average person to afford. Minho happens to know that Constellation Group were recently signed on as clients of Help, Heart and Justice; he wonders if this was part of the deal.

Glitz and glamour is the name of the game, black and gold the concept. The event hall is decked out with gilded decorations; low hanging bunting and busy flower arrangements, streamers and chiffon curtains. Round tables and dainty chairs are arranged symmetrically over one half of the vast hall lit warmly by crystal chandeliers, the other half (where the stage sits) is left bare, no doubt to be used as a dancefloor later, Minho supposes. He hopes to be gone by then. Chic pop-up bars have been erected at either end of the room, each manned by a voguish bartender that dramatizes their service with bottle tricks and witty quips. Oval windows stretch impressively from floor to ornate ceiling, French double doors open to a high veranda beyond, offering a better view of the hotel grounds and glittered city. There’s room enough for all the colleagues of Help, Heart and Justice and a handful of other firms, Minho thinks, but he supposes he can forgive such gratuitous extravagance on this occasion; the majority of people here won’t ever have experienced something like this. It’s a change from the mundane usual, and it’s on the company bank.

Situated near the French doors, Minho has a good view of the hall. It’s still fairly early—he imagines the true partygoers won’t put in an appearance until later—and so people are dispersed across the space, in chatting groups and quiet couples. Most he knows by face, if not by name, having crossed paths with them at some point or another. All have made an effort though; hired suits and floor-length dresses fit the tone.

A tap on his shoulder calls his attention.

“Good evening, darling.”

“F— Felix?”

The elder hardly recognises him. Fitted to shipshape inch in a two-piece Gucci suit, coloured soft white and chequered with grey, the faerie is the very image of a modern gentleman. Blonde hair is slicked back, the piercings in his ears are toned down to subtle studs. Even his eyes—usually a swirl of mischievous violet—are now an unassuming brown; though not even coloured contacts can entirely negate the mischief.

“Wow,” Minho gasps, taking his friend in a hug.

“Is that approval?” the younger laughs.

“Yeah. Yes, it’s approval. You should play human more often.”

“It’ll do for the night. Listen, I have someone to introduce you to.”

“You do?”

The faerie nods. “Though I suppose it’s more of a reintroduction? Technically?”

A heavy weight sinks Minho’s gut as Felix ducks out to the veranda, gesturing for someone to enter. When a person he swore he’d never see again rounds the corner, Minho immediately starts for him.

“Woah, hey, just wait a second—” Felix stops him by a hand to his chest.

“What the hell is he doing here?”

Minho stabs an accusatory finger at Hyunjin, the young ex-attorney standing perfectly unphased by the happenings around him. He doesn’t smile; he doesn’t react much at all, the absence in his eyes attesting to a certain state of mind induced by the bewitchment of a sex faerie.

“He’s my guest.”

“Your guest? Felix, this isn’t a fucking game, I told you—”

“Let me explain,” the blonde appeals, “outside, before you cause any more of a scene than you already have. Please?”

Minho shrugs him off, storming through the doors to the veranda proper. The chill of the night does something to relieve him of the shock, as does his impatient pacing back and forth. Felix joins him, towing Hyunjin along by suit sleeve.

“You said he wasn't my problem anymore,” the elder seethes.

“And he’s not,” Felix reassures, “I didn’t bring him here to throw anything in your face.”

“Then why did you bring him here, Felix?”

“To show you that you don’t have to feel guilty anymore.”

Minho ceases his pacing, the words settling uncomfortably on him. The faerie approaches him.

“Do you hear me?” he asks. “You don’t have to feel guilty for the way this turned out. Hyunjin is just fine, with me.” He turns to the other man. “Right, baby?”

Hyunjin nods, smiling dreamily as he sighs, “Yes, love. I’m fine.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You can stop pretending, Minho. That you don’t feel the weight of cursing people, that you don’t tear a little more with every soul you consume. It might be nourishing you physically, but mentally, you suffer. I know that. I feel it.”

Minho pinches the bridge of his nose; he didn’t account for this particular brand of emotional turmoil tonight.

“Felix...”

“I’m trying to ease your burden, man. Even if it’s just by one soul that I can put in front of you. I want you to stop persecuting yourself. For him, for her, for all of them.”

Persecuting himself? Is that what Minho does? He knows he has a penchant for brooding when left alone and in the aftermath of a meal but has never thought it to be more than the—one would argue, natural—downer that comes from snuffing out a life. He lives with the omnipresent remorse as comfortably as he does his two legs and two arms; it is a part of him, has always been, for as long as he’s existed. Is that what Felix sees? Is that what he’s trying to expunge him of?

Amidst trying to form a response out of the confusion, their conversation is interrupted by a figure entering the veranda.

“Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t realise there was—”

When he meets her eyes, his throat constricts.

“Minho...?”

***

You’ve never known the kind of company Minho keeps, for the inner details of his private life—family, friends, ex-lovers, acquaintances—are kept famously private. He’s never of a divulging mood, and you’re not so brazen as to push him.

Yet tonight is a night made for details, you suppose, and his presence at the party provides an answer to the ultimatum you cringed to speak but were left little choice in issuing.

He’s here, and he’s beautiful; dressed up in a warm tan, two-piece Armani suit. The colour deepens and compliments his skin tone, the honey tones of his neatly styled hair, the chiselled structure of his flawless features. He’s here, and that’s a good thing. It has to be.

“Is this her?”

Delayed is the realisation that the blonde man beside Minho is talking about you, to him. He is striking—almost as much as Minho himself—his pale features delicate but betraying a strength of character. To your left is another figure; this one you recognise.

“Hyunjin?” you start towards him. “What are you doing here? Where the hell have you been? You just dropped off the face of the earth!”

Hyunjin blinks, cocks his head at your entreating, the glaze of unfamiliarity crossing his dark eyes. But before you can press much further, the blonde man bounces into your path, hand curling into the one you had outstretched for your ex-colleague.

“I’m Felix,” he beams bright white, the intense warmth of his touch an unexpected shock. “It’s lovely to finally meet you.”

“It is?”

“Oh yes. I’ve heard so much about you.”

He has? A sceptical look over your shoulder to a stiffly presented Minho tells of an element of truth to Felix’s claim.

“He never shuts up about you. Like, really. I feel like I know you already—”

“Okay!”

Minho’s interruption is swift: by an arm around your waist he removes you from the man, escorting you back through the French doors, whereby he says, “Will you excuse me for just one second? Felix and I have something to discuss.”

You grab his sleeve before he can leave. “Wait. Felix is... a friend?”

Minho nods.

“A good friend?”

“I’ve known him a long time, yes.”

He steps back towards the veranda; you release your hold on him.

“We have things to talk about, too, Minho.”

“I know. I’ll find you.”

With that, he ducks out of the doors, closing them after him in finality. Left alone, you suppose there’s not much more to do than enjoy what the evening offers; you’ve been looking forward to this since its announcement, after all. Besides, you’ve made the effort to polish up in an evening dress befitting the occasion, the price tag of which demands exposure to every damn person in attendance; maybe even a few who aren’t, depending on how the night goes.

Ordering yourself a glass of house white from the pop-up bar, you linger on the corner of it, enjoying the crisp liquid on your tongue. Wine has a way of going straight to your head, and if this were any other evening you’d probably abstain in favour of pacing yourself. Tonight, Dutch courage is part of the dress code.

Turning back to the main space of the hall, where more colleagues have trickled in and gathered, you pace a few slow steps around it. Several people you recognise make small talk, polite conversation, nothing so deep as to distract from your constant lookout for Minho. Indeed, the only thing that does stick a pin in your concentration is the hollering of your name from across the floor.

“Damn girl, you scrubbed up well!”

The nasal drawl of Kim Seungmin is nails down a chalkboard. Unfortunate that he spotted you before you saw him; you’d have made yourself scarce had you the chance. Making an erratic beeline in your direction, he apparently detects your chagrin from a distance.

“What, you’re not even remotely happy to see me?” he exclaims, wounded.

“I’m ecstatic, actually.”

“You could try showing it. Anyone would think you hated my guts or something.”

“Mhm. Anyone would.”

Your sarcastic grin is managed by another gulp of Sauvignon Blanc; you turn away, already done with entertaining him.

“Where are you going?” he whines, trotting after you.

“Somewhere else.”

“Hey, wait,” he rounds you quickly, putting himself in your path. “Just, stop for a second.”

“Seungmin—”

He holds a hand up to you. “I have something to say. Something important. I’d like it if you would hear me out.”

“I’m really not interested in anything you have to say.”

“Please?”

There’s a note of sincerity in his voice; you surmise it must be that because it’s entirely unfamiliar, a manner of soft speaking you’ve never heard from him. He scratches his nape, shifts his weight from right to left foot. Whatever this is, it clearly means something beyond the usual clownery you’ve come to expect from him.

“Fine. Quickly, then.”

His face lights up, he immediately reaches for your wrist. “Not here. Come with me.”

“Seungmin—”

Unable to voice your protests, you’re led through the main hall and out a side door, into a lavishly wide connecting hallway of the hotel. You barely manage to keep your footing as you’re dragged several yards down it. Seungmin ushers you quickly into a dark room that, as soon as you enter, accosts you with the strong sting of bleach and disinfectant.

Light flickers around you after a second in the darkness, harsh fluorescence stilling to illuminate metal shelves crammed full of cleaning equipment, a wall mounted row of mops and brushes, stacks of cardboard boxes sporting various ominous labels that warn of corrosives and toxins. The room is barely larger than a cupboard; the stench of concentrated chemicals makes your head spin.

“What the f—”

“Sorry,” Seungmin offers immediately. “Not the most elegant of places to do this, but I want to make sure we’re not disturbed.”

He’s hardly two feet from you, the space is too cramped.

“We shouldn’t be in here. I can’t be in here, Seungmin, let me out.”

“J— Just wait, please. Let me say what I need to say—”

He doesn’t come any closer, but neither does he budge. Positioned in front of the door, it’s nigh on impossible for you to make any path around him, to shove him out of your way by force. You’ve no choice but to listen, which you suppose is exactly what he intended.

“I’d like to apologise, firstly,” he begins, “for the way I am with you. The way I have been. I know I can be a bit difficult. Especially when it comes to those rumours...”

You recall the conversation you were unwitting witness to in Minho’s office; when Seungmin interrupted your long-awaited returning of the sexual favour. It doesn't sting any less that your affections for the senior attorney appear still to be a topic of conversation amongst your colleagues (or at least for Seungmin). You’d rather thought they might be over it by now, for as far as they’re concerned, your crush remains pathetically unrequited.

“... But that’s only because I...” He hesitates; a chill fear stirs inside you. “... I don’t like hearing people talk about the two of you. I hate it, actually.”

“But you’re the one that—”

“I know. I know I keep bringing them up,” he sighs, “I can’t help it. I guess I wanted to see if there was any truth to them.”

You cross your arms, patience running thinner the longer you’re forced to stay in this horrid room and listen to this nonsense.

“I know now that there’s not, though. I know you’re not into Minho, not that way, and that’s good because I wanted to tell you that I—”

“They are true.”

Seungmin falters, his dark eyes narrowing. “What?”

“The rumours: me being in love with him, wanting to fuck him, being obsessed with him. Whatever they’re saying, it's all true.”

Amusement mingles amongst the disbelief on his face; he backs up a step, jaw locking on a tense laugh. “You don’t mean that.”

“Oh, I mean every word of it. I find Minho to be the single most attractive person I've ever met. I respect him as a man, I admire him as a colleague. He’s everything I could ever want,” you state, calm and collected.

A vein throbs in Seungmin’s forehead, his teeth grind to rigidity. You sensed well enough where his soliloquy was going, telling from his entirely uncharacteristic nerves. You’d rather be forced into a confession with potential to ruin your career than have to accept a confession of feelings from a man whose idea of adult courtship apparently equates to that of playground bullying.

“Why?” Seungmin eventually seethes.

“Why?”

“Why him, and not me?”

You scoff incredulously; the arrogance of this man.

“He’ll never want you that way, you know that, right?” he presses, desperation rolling from him. “He lords over us, thinks he’s so much better than us—”

“That’s because he is.”

“I can be a good partner to you, I can take care of you!”

“I don’t need taking care of, Seungmin. I just need to be let out of this goddamn room.”

You move to shove past him; his arm blocks the path, a barricade between you and the door.

“Seungmin—”

“You won’t even give me a chance?” he leans in closely, the stale heat of his breath tinctured with alcohol. You recoil from it, turning your cheek to him as you reach once more for the door.

“You always were an uptight little b—”

In a merciful intervention, the door swings open abruptly, the intruding gush of fresh air sweeping away the thick, rotten atmosphere. Seungmin startles, drops his arm from the wall, which is opportunity enough for you to squeeze through and make your escape. You hope the smile of gratitude you afford the thoroughly perplexed, smartly dressed cleaner is understood, but don’t wish to stick around to find out.

Back in the main hall, the space is now distinctly fuller than before. You’re less able to see through gaps in the mass of bodies, can’t quite hear over the mood music that’s ramped up in volume. Supposing that Minho must assuredly be looking for you by now, you head for the place you last saw him. Navigating around a few groups of people and returning polite nods that are sent your way, you step through the open French doors, out to the veranda. There’s a little relief comes from discovering it empty, the quiet solitude doing something to ease your jittered nerves. Hands on the cool ornate railing, you take in a deep lungful of the wintry night, centring yourself, packing away all that just happened to be compartmentalised at a far more distant date.

“There you are.”

Minho's voice through the silence is its own elixir. Were your relationship not in such a state of limbo, you’d be running into his arms and seeking solace there. Indeed, you start towards him with that in mind, stopping yourself short.

He closes the French doors carefully, the gentle clack of his suit shoes approaching you. An updraft of breeze catches him, strands of hair falling loose across his dark eyes. He gestures by motion of his head to the white metal bench, a baroque structure nearest the ivy-covered wall. You join him there, the space allowing hardly much room; your knees touch when he settles beside you. The mood music from the hall can be heard faintly, the chatter of colleagues a muted comfort to what would otherwise be stoic silence. The hotel grounds stretch on in blotted darkness; flower beds and leafy hedges are arranged in geometric patterns, a natural distraction for your eye to trace. Beyond the walls of the hotel, the city glows iridescent in the evening bustle, skyscrapers stretching to cloudy heights, basking in the caress of the low hanging moon.

Minho inhales softly, lets out a gentle breath.

“You really want the truth?” he asks.

“Either that, or we stop this,” you shrug, the defeatist in you speaking.

“Right.”

The lull in conversation precedes the summoning of his courage; your heart flutters, curiosity manifesting as trepidation.

“You probably won’t believe half of what I'm about to tell you,” he says slowly, “and I'm only doing so because I care for you a great deal. You... mean a lot to me.”

A tightening of emotion restricts your chest, but you're loath to speak just yet. Any interruption might veer him from his course, and he’s only just embarked. Better to let him bear it all.

“I suppose it’s best to start with the facts.” He flicks a glance to you, assessing what’s to come of his next words.

“I... I’m not human.”

And when the assessment yields nothing much more than your silent acceptance, he continues.

“I was born a demon. I am a demon. For more than two hundred years, I have lived in the mortal realm. I consider it—this place—my home, but I was born in the immortal one; the Underworld, if you like, though I suppose it has many names.”

What he’s asking you to believe is an impossibility, and it is precisely that impossibility that inclines you to believe it. Would a man in need of a lie forge one so asinine?

“Go on,” you whisper in encouragement. You need it all; every scrap of information to even begin putting the pieces of this together.

“You were right. I am pretending to be something I'm not. This form I'm in—what you see when you look at me—it isn’t real. It’s a disguise keeping my demon nature hidden; one that I've worn for so long I suppose I forgot it was even an illusion.” He wrings his hands, fingers intertwining as he speaks. “But I can only conceal so much of myself, is the thing. No matter how thickly I cover it up, there’s a part of me that is demonic in function, that always will be. I can’t change that. I require... souls. To sustain myself. Human souls that are ripe with lust, specifically, for it is that state of existence—that emotion—that nourishes me.”

You swallow heavily, holding all the questions at the door of your sensibilities.

“I know how this all sounds...”

“The souls,” you clear your throat, keen not to diverge from the topic, “how...?”

Minho sighs. “I choose them. People that won’t be missed, people that can’t be saved.”

“So, the people... what happens to them? After you...?”

“They wither away. Dust and ashes; for dust you are and to dust you will return,” he mumbles. “I don’t like playing judge, jury and executioner, but I have to. I manage it as best I can. I’ve whittled my meals down to the bare minimum required to survive. I don’t enjoy this.”

Something turns in your gut on his use of the word ‘meals’; a primal fear that, up until now, you’ve been shunning from the forefront of your emotion with willpower alone. You don’t want to be afraid of him.

 “There’s more,” Minho says quietly.

“Oh, good.”

“If you don’t want to hear it...”

You shake your head. “I do. Sorry. It’s just—”

“A lot. I know.”

He takes your hand, holds your palm in his on his knee, the caution in the act so clear it makes your chest ache. You offer him a reassuring squeeze; a sign to continue.

“I told you that I manage it as best I can,” he says, “to ensure minimal damage. Part of that involves making sure the souls are... as ripe as possible. I could consume any human soul, and it would do a little towards sating my hunger, but then I'd be looking at a body count in the double digits every other week. So I let the soul I select... marinate? For want of a better word? I slip them a drop of my blood, and that’s enough to curse them.”

“Curse them?”

Minho nods slowly. “Their dreams.”

Something in your mind snaps sharply, and slips; a fragment of your responsible subconscious, held together so far by the flimsy duct tape that was your persistence: the dreams couldn't possibly be attributed to anything cognizant; they were dreams. Icy foreboding sinks into your bones, painful and immobilising. Minho won’t meet your worried gaze. He can’t.

“Their dreams turn on them, bombard them with the most realistic of scenarios concerning their deepest fantasies. They’re made to feel real; so real they can’t be distinguished from their waking states. The soul is steeped in lust, drip-fed intravenously on eroticism of their own making that eventually brings them to such a state of frenzy, they balance on the precipice of losing their humanity. Just before that happens, I do my part. I... consume them.”

Deepest fantasies. Made to feel real. Lose their humanity.

Your hands tremble, the weight of fear blanketing you. “Minho...”

He hangs his head, hunched over himself he clutches your hand tightly. You want him to tell you that you’re wrong. That he didn’t do this to you. That you’ll be okay.

“I’m so sorry.”

A wrenched sob of disbelief slips through your lips, the cutting sting of tears welling in your eyes. Like an insect stuck in amber, you can neither breathe nor move.

“It was an accident,” he despairs, holding your hand yet tighter, closer to his chest. “I swear, it was. I never meant to curse you. It was never supposed to be you.”

That eases a little of the terror, you suppose, as does his clear remorse. To know he doesn’t hold any malcontent for you, to know this whole thing was no deliberate wicked gulling; it’s a minor relief.

“How...?”

He lifts his head, lashes damp as he whispers. “The coffee.”

Yet another jigsaw piece locks into place.

“That’s why you got so mad,” you blink through tears.

Minho nods.

“Why you distanced yourself from me.”

“I didn't want to,” he says quietly, “I just... I hoped to protect you from the end I knew was coming. From me. I guess, in my head, it made a sort of sense.”

The end. Such an anticlimactic, insignificant term for what represents such doom. You rather think it should be more poetic than that: ‘the grave dissolution of a mortal story’, perhaps.

“I didn't feel I deserved to be with you. I’d done such an awful thing to you. I'd condemned you, and you didn’t even know it. You just... kept dreaming about me. You kept dreaming about me, and I kept trying to resist it, and every day it got fucking harder, because I always wanted you,” he turns to you, carmine irises unapologetically bright against the pale radiance of the moon. “Every time I touched you, I was ridden with guilt. I still am. But I couldn't stop.”

He brings your hand to his lips, speaks in reverence against your chill skin. “I’ve never craved anything the way I crave you, my sweet thing—”

But you withdraw yourself from his grasp, standing from the bench and seeking the clarity of space. Moving to the bedizened metal balustrade of the veranda, you let your hands rest on the cool steel; grounding, refreshing. You can’t bring yourself to find surprise in any of it; rather there is catharsis. His (surely accidental) professed knowledge of your dreams now makes sense, as does his emotional absence, coloured over by his self-reproach.

“You mentioned ‘the end’,” your voice rings clear once you’re composed enough to speak. “You mean my death, yes?”

Elbows on his knees, Minho says nothing. Confirmation enough, you suppose.

“There’ll come a point where my soul will be...” you recall the words he used, “... steeped in lust?”

You turn back to him; the gentlemanly image of every courtship fantasy you’ve ever indulged in. His beauty strikes you at the very core of your being, his tenebrous features wracked with regret, with tangible sorrow. How cruel it is that such a beautiful creature should believe himself a monstrous, wicked thing.

“And you’ll consume me?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ll return to dust and ash.”

“Please...” he laments, able to hear no more of it.

“How long do I have?”

On this, his head snaps up, he rises from the bench. You sidestep his attempts to reach for you; indeed, the fact that his immediate response is to embrace you in comfort speaks to a grim estimation.

“How long, Minho?” you press.

He falters, raking hands through his hair before he sighs the admittance. “About a week, maybe.”

As you thought, you think to yourself, and for the same reason you forwent speculating as to the truth of his story: the dreams—your very first ones—started three weeks ago, as was the inciting coffee incident. It all adds up, his words quantifiable by the events that occurred and his resulting behaviour.

No, there is no question of truth. Rather, the question is one of action.

“So, you’re telling me I have a week to live.”

Minho sags in place, defeated. The still night is heavy with quiet; even the bumbling of the party inside seems mute now.

“I don’t accept that.”

Tears and tantrums will do no good here. To slather him with blame and take to resentment would only be to injure both of you—to wound him deeper, to fracture you further—and it seems to you there has been enough hurt for a lifetime. Again: the question is one of action, and where there is will, there are ways. You turn to him, taking his hand in appeal.

“I intend to see this week through, Minho, and the week after that, and the week after that.”

Minho blinks, brows crimping as he says, “I wish you would, but there’s no—”

“You could just not.”

“What?”

You hold his hand tighter. “You could just... not. You don’t have to consume me. You don’t need to take my soul.”

“That’s...”

“That’s entirely possible. Isn’t it? I mean, you said so yourself: you could consume any human soul. It doesn’t have to be mine.”

Minho stares, bloody pools of crimson assessing your face for the answer you clearly have a grasp on that seems to escape him.

“Before me, you only took souls from people that wouldn’t be missed. Souls from people that had nobody, that weren’t loved. But I am. I have you.”

“I... I don’t understand—”

“Look at me, Minho.”

You stand back from him, holding your arms open as though exposing yourself, encouraging him to see beyond the shell of your appearance. Your youthful glow, your warmth, your life. Your coherence—emotional distress notwithstanding—and your sound state of mind. Yet Minho just stares, flabbergasted.

“Do I look like I'm ‘balancing on the precipice of losing my humanity’?” you jeer.

He flounders; you return to him, steal both his hands in yours.

“I don’t, do I?”

“N— No...”

“And that’s because I'm not. All the lusty dreams and fantasies and things that come to me during the night are of pale insignificance to my waking life...” You search his handsome face; hold his otherworldly gaze. “... Because when I wake up, I know I have you. The real you. Human, demon, whatever you are, whoever you try to be. You make the dreams reality, Minho, quite literally. They might make me a little insane, of course—I'm not arrogant enough to pretend they don’t—but when you touch me my soul feels lighter, my heart feels fuller... I’m not stewing in unreciprocated desire.”

“But...”

You tell him again: “I have you. How could I ever succumb to those figments of my imagination when you tether me so firmly to reality?”

He squeezes his eyes shut; a tear streaks his cheek, his full lip trembles as he gasps in a deep breath. Had he really been so fettered with his guilt and stress that he couldn’t see the simple solution staring him in the face?

“It’s your hunger that demands a soul, right? That’s what’s making things hard?” you continue.

He nods.

“So we’ll find you a soul. Someone that won’t be missed, just like you used to.”

“No. It’s been too long; I’d need half a dozen at least,” he chokes. “I can’t.”

“It’s either them or me.”

A harsh truth to be presenting him, perhaps, but a truth nonetheless. If your reading of his feelings is true—and you like to think by now that it is—you know he’ll do the right thing. The only thing.

“But it might not even work. There’s no guarantee you won’t deteriorate, no way to remove the curse entirely.”

“We have to try,” you reassure him. “Don't you think?”

He relaxes a margin; his shoulders slack, his posture appears to soften as he drags you closer by the arm, into his embrace. His chin rests on your crown, the thundering of his heart drums against your ear.

His voice is gently muffled when he presses a kiss to your head. “I’ll try anything if it means keeping you safe.”

Secure in his arms, warm and close, you look out at the distant city, reposing in tranquillity. Soft grey clouds roll over lustred black, tucking the silver disc of the moon away, revealing it again. Clarity is granted to the night, as to your own circumstance, and there is peace.

You hope always, for there to be peace.

***

Felix often wonders if he would have preferred being born a human.

Mortal lives are a mere fleeting blink in the grand scheme of time and the Cosmos, so tragically ephemeral it makes Felix’s heart ache. He used to pity them for it: how miserable a thing to know they’ll never see a century through, some of them even less than that!

But the more time he spent in the realm, the more his mind changed. He came to understand that the transitory nature of mortals was exactly what made them so determined; in some ways, resilient. They move with an urgency, pack their days and nights with things, people, places, never allowing a moment to be dull or unfilled. They seek meaning in everything; the what, the why, the how, for it is those questions that bring about purpose, and a human with purpose is far more daunting a force than any malevolent creature of the Underworld.

Thus, the pity Felix once felt morphed into a sort of admiration, and so he asks himself: would he have preferred being born a human? His time would be profoundly shorter, yes, but mortality seems to him to be a motivator like no other, so then perhaps he would be less passive in his existence. More prone to stress, certainly. As a human, Felix supposes he would be entirely different.

But Felix likes being Felix, and so he concludes: no. He doesn’t think he should like to have been born a human. Felix is a sex faerie, and he embraces himself with as much love as he affords others. He respects humans, venerates them in his own way; the way a sex faerie does best and as is expected of them. There might be nothing especially unique about being a sex faerie, nothing woefully poetic or beautifully futile, but Felix is fine with that. His kind are high in number, saturating the Underworld so that individuality from the legion is near impossible, and aside from that being part of the reason Felix absconded to the mortal realm at all, he also finds comfort in it. No doubt he’d be mocked for that if his kin ever found out, but still; he thinks it’s not so daft to imagine one of his own is never too far away, and in turn, a connection to home.

Unlike demons, faeries do no active harm. In truth, they’re a closer relation to imps than Felix would ever admit; irritating things, as he finds them. Regardless, sex faeries are—as their namesake suggests—more inclined to erotic pursuits than those of overt mischief (though Felix has his fair share of that). He is inherently appealing to humans, as are all of his kind. In his presence even the coldest of them will become wonderfully ingratiating, the most miserable will belly laugh and find a sincere smile. He doesn’t truly understand it—the logistics or the science, if indeed there is any—but he has heard others call it a form of ‘bewitchment’. Nonetheless, sex faeries are compelled to give the very best of themselves, to forage from humans the keys to their individual utopias, for no two are ever the same.

In short: he lives to fuck. Waxing poetic about it is just part of the fun.

Even so and with compulsions set aside, Felix does a stalwart job of keeping himself in check. He gives himself away, willingly and with no expectation of return, because that is who he is. It is his purpose to make love, yet within that lies the most crucial of caveats: it is his purpose to make love, it is not his purpose to love.

His attachment to any human lasts only for as long as it takes to see them to their Elysium, after which he keeps the experience with him—avid collector that he is—until the next such rendezvous. He respects humans, loves them in the way an owner would love their bedraggled and weary old pet; life wouldn’t be the same without them. But again: Felix does a stalwart job of keeping himself in check.

Until he met Hwang Hyunjin.

He only wanted to mitigate the guilt Minho would inevitably come into if he were to see through his plans for the young attorney, for as much as the lust demon pretends otherwise, Felix knows he feels it all. More fool him for getting involved. Though in fairness to his reasoning at the time, it’s not like this has ever happened before. That is, falling in love.

The plan was simple: Felix was to track him down, (a simple case of following him home from work), introduce himself by usual way of flattery, and bewitch him. He knew it wouldn’t be a typical ‘in-and out’, so to speak; his influence needed to be stronger this time, enough so to convince the man never to return to work, perhaps move out of the city if he knew what was good for him. Felix considered that it wasn’t so ethical, to manipulate someone that way, but when also considering the alternative—that being the removal of his mortal soul at the hands of an aggrieved lust demon—he supposed he would ultimately be forgiven. Either way, all of this just meant that he would have stick around longer; expose the man to his appeals for an extended period to ensure his instructions stuck.

Hyunjin had taken the bus home that night. Felix rode in the very back row of seats, toned down in both appearance and attitude in order to blend in seamlessly with the commuters; though that still didn’t spare him from the occasional double take. He examined Hyunjin as though he were a specimen; in a way, he was. The back of his dark, silky head, the broad expanse of his shoulders, the way he nodded gently along to whatever was bleeding through his earphones.

“His background check pulled up some shady stuff,” Minho had said. Felix struggled to imagine it, and he spent the whole bus ride trying. Drugs? Not likely; his skin was too clear for a user and if he were dealing he’d have no need of a low-level job like the one he was in. Robbery? Perhaps, Felix thought. He was tall, looked strong; there was potential to intimidate if a balaclava was pulled over his kind eyes and plush pout. Murder? Felix laughed inwardly at that one.

After twenty minutes of introspection, the bus stopped. Felix recognised the area as being mostly residential, home to old and new build apartment blocks packed closely together and the occasional well placed corner shop. It was far enough away from the city centre that it felt quiet, but close enough to be a desirable location. Hyunjin rose to get off; Felix did the same. Careful to maintain a respectable distance between them, Felix followed him through the shadowy streets, bundled in his big hoodie both to protect from the frigid night chill—Felix never did enjoy cold climes—and to disguise his presence. The more unassuming, the better. Lit by pools of fluorescence from the tall streetlamps, the occasional crunch of dried leaf underfoot, Felix swallowed down his trepidation. He wasn’t usually so furtive as this, preferring to be more direct in his approach to and dealings with humans, but he reminded himself that this was necessary: Hyunjin might be dangerous, after all.

Some minutes of walking passed, Felix easily kept visual track of the man as they ventured further from the main road, to a side street and then to a path that cut through the park. Hyunjin must live in the complex on the other side, Felix supposed, and so quickened his pace as the tall man disappeared through the park gates, into the blackness beyond.

It was unnaturally sudden, the way Hyunjin managed to lose him. In the next moment Felix could see nothing but the gravel path stretching out ominously, the gently swaying bushes and foliage hedging either side. Lavender eyes wide and absorbing, Felix felt he couldn’t have gone far, and so jogged down the path. Distant footsteps crunched ahead of him; lanterns impaled to the grass lawns did little to illuminate anything, woefully dull in their gleaming, but still, the faerie persevered.

He followed the footsteps, held his own breath. A gelid breeze swept through the nature, carrying the scent of human like the wafting aroma of a tempting treat. Felix shivered, both from the chill and the reminder that he was soon to indulge should all go as planned. He wondered what Hyunjin would sound like; would his voice be as pleasing as his aesthetic?

Yet Felix was allowed little time to speculate.

It happened too quickly for him to react: a rustle of movement from behind him, his throat clasped tightly by a forearm that yanked him back into a strong embrace. Less fearful was the attack than the something cool that pressed to his temple; metallic on his skin. Felix swallowed the scream erupting in his throat with the large hand that slapped across his mouth. A voice, menacingly calm, spoke in his ear:

“You’re following me.”

Huh, Felix thought. That’s what he sounds like.

“I— I wasn’t—”

“In case it was unclear,” Hyunjin interrupted, “I’m holding a gun to your head.”

He removed the pressure from Felix’s temple and waved a sleek, black 9mm Glock in front of his eyes, putting it back in position. Point made; Felix supposed.

“So how about we try that again?” Hyunjin asked softly.

“Alright,” the faerie croaked, “maybe I was following you, but it’s not what you think.”

Hyunjin’s grip around his throat tightened, forearm near crushing his vocal cords. “Who sent you?”

“W— What?”

“Who fucking sent you?” Hyunjin seethed, applying more force to the barrel of the Glock.

“N— Nobody! Nobody sent me, let me go and I'll just explain—”

“Was it Ahearn? How did he find me?” the man pressed frantically.

Felix thought it was pointless to keep pleading his case; every word he said only seemed to rile him further, and he didn’t know him nearly well enough to be sure of what might bring him down to a level where they could engage in actual conversation.

And so, Felix supposed he was left only one option. An unpleasant one, but his only one.

With a concentration of will and focus, Felix embraced his true self. The world expanded exponentially as he abruptly shrunk down to the size of a thimble, the change so swift it made Felix’s head hurt and ears pop, his coherence spinning on an axis of dangerous change. He preferred slower transformations where he could afford them; it always took some time to acclimatise to the new proportions, both mentally and physically. Hyunjin stumbled backwards amongst the puff of glittery mist that often accompanies the sprouting of Felix’s wings, cursing indiscriminately.

Felix took to upwards flight, perching on the lowest branch of the nearest tree, hugging the divots of the bark as closely as he could. When the mystic dust settled and Hyunjin was well enough within sight, the faerie stole his chance. Springing from the branch and with all the finesse befitting his tiny size, he swarmed the man in erratic paths, drawing his eye to where it couldn’t quite focus.

“What the fuck—” Hyunjin swore furiously, arms flailing.

With him adequately disoriented, Felix dove from a height, straight towards the arm that held the gun. The intent was only to disarm; to make it safe enough so that a conversation could be had (in addition to some serious explaining). Yet with Hyunjin’s panic his grip on the gun only tightened, Felix’s weaving and calling for his attention having much the opposite effect.

A gunshot rang through the night, alarmingly clear. Though the bullet missed him by a mile, Felix felt the force of reverberation in his small bones, the ripple through the disturbed air and the pungent stench of frazzled gunpowder knocking him off balance. His head throbbed, as did his entire body when his wings retracted in fright and he plummeted towards the ground, bouncing from the gravel path. Dazed and in every imaginable kind of agony, Felix could only submit as he was scooped up in large hands.

Hyunjin seemed so much bigger like this, and indeed, he was. The man could have swallowed him whole and not so much as felt a tickle, and Felix would have been powerless to stop it. This is what you get for interfering, the faerie thought as two large, brown eyes inspected him with unabashed curiosity.

“What... are you?”

Felix sighed. This was not how he’d wanted tonight to go. “Does it matter? Just get it over with.”

Hyunjin blinked at him thoughtfully. “Get what over with?”

“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”

“And why would I do that?”

Felix stopped short, stuck for a response. There was no reason the man should like to kill him, he thought, with all notion of threat now removed.

“Put me down,” the faerie demanded, scrambling to his feet, balancing on the ridges of Hyunjin’s palm.

“Are you going to swarm me again?”

“Depends. Are you going to try and shoot me again?”

Hyunjin’s face contorted uncomfortably. “I wasn’t trying to— That was an accident.”

Slowly, Hyunjin bent down to the gravel path, holding his hands flat for the faerie to hop off and gather himself. Unstable underfoot and still a little groggy, Felix composed himself as best he could, once more gathering concentration; focusing.

When the world was right again, and his proportions readjusted to a size more fitting the circumstance, Felix supposed this couldn’t have gone much worse had he actively tried to make it so. Whether out of necessity or not, he’d shown his hand in the first round, and now the man he was supposed to simply bewitch into doing his bidding was staring at him openly, inquisitively, expectantly. With dainty wings retracted and hair smoothed back into place, Felix rubbed his scuffed hands on his jeans.

He approached the waiting man with the right one outstretched and said quite plainly, “I’m Felix. I’m a faerie. I was following you because I need you to leave Help, Heart and Justice and possibly the city altogether. I was going to make you do that. With my powers. I guess.”

Hyunjin balked, eyes rounding into saucers and jaw slacking. Felix anticipated one of several reactions: disbelief, certainly. Anger, maybe. Hysteria, if Hyunjin was the kind of person whose mind rather melted when faced with the impossibilities of the supernatural.

Yet there was none of that. Hyunjin took a moment or two of comprehension, and as they passed, Felix was quite mystified by the ornery grin that crossed the man’s lips, the light of excitement that flickered in his previously heavy eyes. The man opened his thick coat and sharply tucked the Glock inside the leather holster strapped to his chest, concealed by a bigger suit jacket. He stepped forward; Felix faltered. Something about the sudden confidence seemed to overshadow his own, making him feel inexplicably smaller. Felix had never felt small before—never in the psychological, inferior sense. Hyunjin loomed; he slipped his hand into the faerie’s.

“I’m Hyunjin,” he said coolly. “I’m ex-mafia. I carry a gun because I'm eternally paranoid about my old life catching up with me. I've no intentions of leaving the city; I only just got here. The job I could maybe stand to lose.”

Hyunjin stepped forward once more, in the same motion bringing Felix a measure closer by a gentle tug on his hand. Felix’s chest lurched and swelled with giddy jitters; he was very aware Hyunjin was not a typical human; this was not a typical encounter.

The man leaned down to Felix’s sensitive, slightly pointed ear, eliciting the tenderest of whispers, “But I'll hear you out, little faerie Felix.”

Hyunjin said Felix’s name like his tongue invented the very sound. Creatures of the Underworld are often sensitive to their names—they hold power, after all, in all things—but this felt like something new. Something the faerie couldn’t contain in a single thought. Warmth rolled about in Felix’s stomach, and as the two of them shook gentle hands on the gravel path in the chilly, badly lit park, he quietly considered that he might have bitten off more than he could chew.

And he was right.

Just over two weeks later, and here he dances with him. In the elegant main hall of the Constellation Hotel, held close to Hyunjin’s warmth as he leads them in a slow, lazy sway to the smooth jazz.

Felix knows how he got here; he can sequence the events, the words, the reasons that led him to this very moment in this very room with this very man. Yet still, it feels so removed from reality. Coasting in a sea of formal dancers, they bob along as though they are one of them; as though they’re normal. Felix supposes they’re anything but.

He looks up at the man that turned his life inside out; he’s dashing in a two-piece Gucci suit, his dark hair slicked back smartly, the ends sitting barely above his broad shoulders. He's thoroughly relaxed, rocking back and forth with his hand secure on Felix’s waist, eyes distant and focusing only when he catches his partner’s gaze.

He smiles softly. “What is it, love?”

Felix shrugs. He hasn’t the words to adequately explain how he’s feeling, though he knows Hyunjin would love him to try.

“Still feeling guilty?”

Felix scoffs gently. He’d be startled if it were anyone else, but Hyunjin seems to read him with an uncanny adeptness; one that would have Felix assuming the man is of otherworldly origins himself if he didn’t know better.

“I’m trying not to,” the faerie sighs. “I wanted tonight to be fun.”

“It is fun.”

“You’re having fun?”

“I’m with you, love. That’s plenty fun for me.”

Felix rolls his eyes, but can’t deny the way his heart clenches. Hyunjin chuckles quietly, drawing the faerie closer into his arms.

“You’ve nothing to feel guilty about,” he murmurs. “So long as Minho believes I’m out of his team and out of his way, that’s all that matters.”

“It’s not all that matters, Jin. I lied to him.”

“You told a white lie to protect me, and to make him feel better. I really don’t think that counts as such a gratuitous sin.”

“But he—”

Hyunjin pulls back a measure, taking Felix's chin by thumb and forefinger. “He believes you bewitched me, yes? That I'm no threat now?”

“You never were—”

“No, I never was, but I can see how a few cautions and an old arrest warrant might raise some red flags with someone who cares as much about their job as he does. I can’t run from my past, love. No matter how I try. His opinion of me won’t be changed, you said so yourself. Better to have him believe that I'm subdued, that you have me, that I'm a problem solved.”

Felix sags under the weight of it all. He knows Hyunjin to be right, of course, but even that knowledge doesn't seem to alleviate him of the frustration. Minho is his good, dear friend, but so deep do his prejudices run where criminality is concerned that not even Felix can see a way they could ever reasonably coexist; Minho will never accept Hyunjin as Felix’s lover. Only as his victim.

“Must we pretend forever?” Felix mumbles dejectedly.

“No,” Hyunjin shakes his head. “Only when we’re around him, and only for as long as you want me.”

“For as long as I want you?” the faerie repeats incredulously. “Are you suggesting there’ll be a time when I won’t?”

“Maybe. You never know. You are a sex faerie.”

Felix clutches Hyunjin’s lapel tightly. “I do know. I want you beside me always, sex faerie or not. Don’t make me actually bewitch you.”

Hyunjin grins, bright and free. “You're adorable when you’re possessive.”

Felix melts inside; he draws closer to his lover, resting his cheek on his chest, quietly counting the strong thuds of his heartbeat. They sway slowly, once more adrift in the sea of dancers that surround them. Felix supposes it’s not all so bad; it can’t be, when he’s allowed moments of tranquillity like this.

“I’m glad you found me,” Hyunjin sighs softly, pressing a kiss to Felix’s crown.

“My precious little faerie.”

***

Rainy nights are truly among your favourite things.

The unforgiving downpour streaks the windows of the twenty-fifth floor, slicing the panorama of the city to odd distortion, reflecting the red and white of traffic, the amber of the street. Puddles ripple far below, gathering high in the gutters of the kerbs, spraying to the pavement when cars tread through them at high speed. It’s quiet inside, the distant tip-tap of a keyboard is a pleasant accompaniment to the sound of the exterior elements; though perhaps it is the tip-tapper of the keyboard that brings you such warmth as opposed to the tip-tap itself. 

Your name is called. “Can you come in here please?”

Several minutes shy of eight o'clock in the evening, and your esteemed team leader calls for your assistance.

His office door stays open now; from the minute the office empties out until the hour has grown too late to justify overtime; and there is plenty of that these days. Never has business been so lucrative, never has there been more to do, and with such a ramping up of cases across the board comes the inevitable extra hours.

But you’ve never particularly minded those; not then, not now. Especially not now. Not when he leaves his door wide open, just in case. Not when he always stays, just as long as you do. Not when he grows impatient and demands you finish up tomorrow, just because he’s dying to take you home.

Strolling to his office and popping your head through the open door, you expect to see the usual scene: Minho surfacing from a pile of papers and documents, discombobulated but with not a hair out of place.

“What’s all this?” you ask, stepping over the threshold.

The office has been rearranged: the shallow table has been dragged from its corner position to in front of the sofa, covered with a makeshift cloth made from... A4 paper and staples? You chuckle quietly, intrigued. Plates fashioned from cardboard document wallets have been rudimentarily cut into shape and placed on the table, yellow post-it notes stuck to the paper, intended for use as coasters for flimsy plastic cups from the water cooler. A collection of crisps and snacks is gathered in the centre of it all: Walkers, Wotsits, two Snickers bars and a packet of Maltesers. Minho stands proudly beside it, a smarmy grin on his face.

“It’s dinner.”

You quirk a brow at him. “Dinner, huh?”

Minho nods, looks down at his display. “You like it?”

“I mean, am I fifteen? Because that was the last time I think ate a vending machine dinner.”

“We’re reliving your youth,” he shrugs, approaching you.

You shudder exaggeratedly. “My youth is not a time I'm immediately keen to relive, actually.”

Minho hums softly, gathering you in his arms. You’re quick to acquiesce; as you always are. Being so close to him all day yet unable to touch, or kiss, or do much more than pine is a unique brand of frustration.

You look up at him; at his plush lips, his gently smouldering eyes. He doesn’t bother to hide the crimson in them now; arguably, he can’t. You’re glad of that. He presses a tender kiss to your lips; chaste, lingering. Wanting.

“I promised I’d take you,” he whispers when he reluctantly pulls away.

“You did?”

“Mhm. Don’t you remember?”

You cast your mind back twelve weeks; to a sandwich destroyed, to a doughnut refused, to a coffee mistakenly drunk. To a dinner invitation, lost among the chaos.

“Oh,” you sound in realisation. “That?”

Minho nods, arms clasped around your waist, taking to a gentle sway.

“I mean, technically you didn’t promise anything.”

“My word is as good as my promise,” he scowls softly. “Besides, I want to take you out properly. Show you off a little.”

You suppose you can’t argue with that too much.

“Just maybe... after?” he adds.

You sink into his arms, winding your own around his warm middle, ear to his broad chest. After is fine, you suppose. Things are so hectic—have been since the office party—neither of you had much of a chance to breathe, let alone make your continued affair official. The difference being, of course, that it feels official now. Minho isn’t distance, nor is he careful. He’s all in, just for you, and you’re happy to keep him like that.

He squeezes you gently. “I was hoping this would do in the meantime.”

“I love it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’re adorable.”

“You think I'm adorable?” he scoffs, the dusting of blush on his cheeks betraying his true thoughts on the endearment.

“Of course. I wouldn’t be fucking you if I didn’t think I could coddle you,” you shrug.

Minho mumbles something incoherent, drawing you close.

“Speaking of dinner,” you poke him gently, “have you eaten?”

He nods, grimacing on your raising of the subject. He never likes talking about it; you make sure he does anyway, if only to remind him that you’ll never hold it—any of it—against him.

“The criminal?”

“Sweetheart—”

“I want to know,” you press firmly. “Please.”

He sighs a surrender, nodding again. “The criminal. Just like the last time, and the time before that.”

“So, you’re good for a little while?”

“Four weeks. Like always.”

“Did Felix...?”

“Yeah. He helped.”

“Good. That's good. You need to learn to ask for that.”

Minho softens; his eyes crease gently; his lips turn up in a smile. “I’m trying, baby.”

You crane up on your tiptoes, gift him a gentle kiss; one that deepens with heat and longing. “I know.”

Twenty minutes later, and the dinner remains untouched. Held close in strong arms and with the clammy stick of glass to your naked back, Minho drives a deeper form of love inside you, thick and fast. Unrelenting even when you cry a desperate, straining groan under his momentous size, his pulsing release, for Minho loves to hurt you in just the right way; the pleasurable way, the way that reminds you of his true nature and all the things you have in this world, the real world.

Indeed, the harder and truer he fucks you, the more distant a memory the dreams of the night seem to be.

The lashing rain pounds against the window of Minho’s office, reverberating soundlessly. Protected from the droplets that would otherwise seek to chill your exposed spine as Minho uses you to his own relief, it is the droplets from the front—his sweat, his exertion, the saltine tears of delirious pleasure he blinks through—that claim your state of mind.

Indeed: rainy nights are truly among your favourite things. Even more so when spent with one you love.

“You’ll always be cursed with the dreams, sweet thing,” Minho once told you.

“That’s fine,” you curled into him, you smiled.

You felt the radiance of love make you sure and certain.

“So long as you’re always here to make them come true.”

𝙙𝙚𝙙𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙢𝙮 𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙧 𝙢𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧-𝙛𝙪𝙘𝙠𝙚𝙧 𝙨𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙨𝙝 𝙣𝙤𝙢, 𝙬𝙝𝙤𝙢 𝙞 𝙖𝙙𝙤𝙧𝙚 𝙗𝙚𝙮𝙤𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙤𝙣. 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙧𝙩 (𝙗𝙮 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙨𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙤 𝙢𝙮 𝙩𝙮𝙥𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙝𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙧𝙚𝙙-𝙠 𝙢𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨) 𝙨𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙝𝙖𝙨 𝙗𝙚𝙚𝙣 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙢𝙮 𝙛𝙖𝙫𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙚 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙨𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙝𝙤 𝙩𝙤 𝙬𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙚, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙖𝙧𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙛𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙭 𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙮𝙚𝙙 𝙞𝙣 𝙞𝙩, 𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙖 𝙙𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩. 𝙗𝙤𝙧𝙣 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙮𝙚𝙩 𝙖𝙣𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙗𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙛 𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙖 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙨𝙥𝙞𝙧𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙙 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙡, 𝙞 𝙩𝙤𝙤𝙠 𝙜𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙩 𝙟𝙤𝙮 𝙞𝙣 𝙗𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙩𝙤 𝙡𝙞𝙛𝙚 𝙖𝙨 𝙗𝙚𝙨𝙩 𝙞 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙. 𝙞 𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙝𝙤𝙥𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙬𝙨. 𝙖𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙧𝙞𝙨𝙠 𝙤𝙛 𝙨𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚 𝙖 𝙘𝙡𝙞𝙘𝙝é 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙤𝙣, 𝙞 𝙨𝙪𝙥𝙥𝙤𝙨𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙗𝙞𝙜𝙜𝙚𝙨𝙩 𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙖𝙬𝙖𝙮 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙚 𝙬𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙨𝙞𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙮 𝙗𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙨𝙚𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙬𝙝𝙞𝙘𝙝 𝙞𝙨 𝙧𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙣𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪. 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙢𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙟𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙙 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙨𝙚𝙚𝙠. (𝙤𝙧 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙢𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙙 𝙖 𝙡𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙙𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙣 𝙢𝙤𝙤𝙣𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙨 𝙖𝙣 𝙖𝙩𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙣𝙚𝙮; 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙖 𝙙𝙞𝙨𝙘𝙡𝙖𝙞𝙢𝙚𝙧!) ♡

𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚, 𝙧𝙚𝙗𝙡𝙤𝙜, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙞𝙣 𝙖𝙣 𝙖𝙨𝙠 ♡

Minho doesn’t startle, because nothing much gets to him anymore. He simply sighs, swilling the remnants of aged Lagavulin around the short crystal glass in his free hand.

“Drinking too?” Felix coos, crossing the office to pick up the tall amber bottle, nose wrinkling as he reads the label. “Who died?”

“Stick around and you’ll find out,” the elder grumbles.

Felix tuts. “Now, now. Let’s not forget which sex faerie did the mean old lust demon a big favour. You should be a little nicer to me.”

Minho supposes he’s right, even if said favour was unsolicited. “Sorry,” he acquiesces. “I’m just... tired.”

“Mhm. The girl?”

Minho’s silence speaks for him, his forehead finding the cool glass. He feels Felix’s warming presence, the faerie reclining at his side, back to the window as he swigs the expensive liquor straight from the bottle.

“You know, my previous idea still stands,” he says roughly. “You should just take a peek.”

“At her dreams?”

Felix nods, lips pursed in an assessing pout.

“And in what way would that help anything?” the elder sighs at the repetition of advice.

“Well, for one, it’ll help you stop pining.”

“I’m not pining—”

“It seems to me like you’re majorly disillusioned with this chick. Seeing what it is she truly lusts after might just pop that bubble, you know? She could be into some insanely freaky shit that turns you clean off.”

Minho highly doubts that; he’s not sure there's anything could put him off that way. Kind of comes with the territory.

“It’ll also make you feel less shitty about having to eat her,” the blonde adds nonchalantly. “Invading her privacy, discovering all her darkest secrets, consuming her earthly soul to forever trap her in the Underworld; once you’ve crossed one line, the others are irrelevant, right?”

“Felix,” Minho turns to him, gently takes the bottle from his hand. “I am incredibly fucking tired.”

“Oh, okay, so what? Is my advice no good to you anymore?”

Minho’s head throbs, his jaw is tight with stress from the dull day and of overthinking every little thing. Pair that with the grating discomfort of his growing appetite, and he’s not sure how much longer is fraying self-control will hold out.

“Don’t you have an elsewhere to be?” he asks, as polite a sign to ‘fuck off’ as he can manage in his mood.

Felix huffs in displeasure, his stamping of feet and indignant shaking out of shoulders giving birth to fragile wings that puff out amongst a glittery pink cloud.

“Fine. I’ll remember this,” he marches over to the openable window, unhooking the latch to invite a momentous gust of wind inside. “Don’t come running to me when you’re too ridden with guilt to get it up!”

And with that, the faerie disappears, a fanciful exit made just in time to avoid Minho’s launching of the liquor bottle his way, the strong glass thumping uselessly off the wall to land on the carpet. As the bottle rolls back and forth, expelling its strong contents in a feeble trickle, Minho deposits himself in his desk chair.

“Fuck.”

Closing his eyes brings no relief from the aching nag; the one that whispers Felix’s suggestion might just be one to consider.

But he can’t, he tells himself. He’s gone all these decades, so many victims without ever being tempted to do so and is quietly proud of that; others of his kind don’t practice nearly so much restraint, are thrilled by the active involvement in the preparation of their victims. Minho rejected that path a long time ago, is annoyed that now he’s even thinking about it, but if he’s being entirely truthful with himself and his wants...

It’s just that he’s never been desirous of one of his victims before.

This situation he finds himself in is unprecedented, and therefore perhaps calls for equally as unprecedented an action. To do the usual when the circumstance is explicitly unusual seems an irrational way to approach things; is he not a creature of adaptation? Has he not had to do just that over the centuries to keep up with mortals and their ephemeral world?

Felix might be on to something, he quietly reasons. Looking in on her dreams might be the thing to expunge him of the guilt he bears for cursing her, for allowing their professional relationship to morph into something too awkward to fix whilst shutting down the budding of their personal one.

Minho’s not used to making bad decisions. He doesn’t know what they feel like, and so supposes that the foreign way his gut tightens and skin prickles as he resigns himself to what he’s about to do must be indicative of just that; a bad fucking decision.

He’ll take just a peek. The briefest, most insignificant of glances. It’ll count for nothing, probably yield nothing, breach nothing that he should seek penance for.

Before he can put further thought into it, he’s going about the motions of shifting, the initiation of which comes from nothing more complicated than a desire to possess the freedom of flight. From the image of a man to that of blackest raven, his form shrinks and skin sprouts feathers, wings bulge and fan out to carry him through the window Felix left open, though his exit be for an altogether different purpose.

Soaring through midnight sky, between buildings and amongst wisps of faint cloud, Minho knows his destination well enough. With beady eyes that see monochromatically, the city below is a fisheye distortion; a good thing then that his reflexes are equally as transformed as his appearance, for he navigates with no issue.

Some moments and miles later when the city cluster has dispersed to more suburban appeals, Minho sights her apartment. He knows which window will allow him the best view—this isn’t his first foray—and so perches atop an outcropping branch not too far from it. A hop and readjustment of stance allow him to keep his balance, taloned feet wound tight around the wood, and so he focuses once more.

Her curtains are wide open, as he hoped they’d be. Indeed, her drawing of the fabric would have spelled the end of this venture altogether, for seeing her is of the utmost necessity if he wishes to see beyond her.

On the other occasions he’s done this—of which there have been a dozen or so—the intention was only to watch over her. To give him the chance to ascertain the nature of his feelings for the girl, the hope being that observing her in moments of complete vulnerability would stir the truest of his urges, and he found them to be ones of affectionate desire.

She is usually well kept for bed; tucked in tightly and of peaceful composure, but tonight seems different. The book in her hands has fallen slack and to the duvet with the encroaching call of her weariness, her bedside lamp remains lit to offer the room an amber hue of warmth. She sleeps propped up with chin tucked to her neck, and Minho wishes he could her situate her the way she should be; the way he desires to.

The wintry night air kicks up a breeze that billows through the treetop, jostles the branch he sits on. Haste is of the essence, he’s reminded, and so he engages in exactly what it is he came here for.

He observes her slumbering state, brings her physical image to the forefront of his mind. A moment of concentration with raven eyes held shut tight attunes him to what lies within the physical, beyond it, to the soul that exists in a dreamlike dimension; the soul tainted with his demon blood and thus easy to detect.

When Minho opens his eyes again, he is a bystander. A being of incorporeal presentation, a visitor to the realm he invades with no more impact on it than a passing breath would have. The space he finds himself in is familiar; this is the office of Help, Heart and Justice, yet it is different, as such places are when distorted by the impossibility of dreams. The walls slant at uncomfortable angles and the floor beneath his feet—for he has returned to form of man here—peaks and troughs to hilly, grey carpeted terrain. The desks are supported on stilts that twirl quietly in place, like the red and white attractive cane of a barber’s shop, they rise easily to Minho’s height. The office is both light and dark, surrounding windows reveal a fantastic cityscape beyond, the left-hand side caught in the rapturous orange and pink of a summer sunrise, the right-hand diminishing of colour to welcome sunset’s grey gloom.

There is no one around that he can detect, yet the shadow of movement across the frosted glass of his office door catches his peripheral vision. He is drawn to it, is certain in the knowledge that she is here somewhere, for he wouldn’t be if she weren’t. Over a steep incline of carpet he treads towards his office, careful with his footing until he is on level ground. Hand poised over the knob to step inside, he pauses, picking up the faintest of sounds from beyond it. There is a woman’s voice; her voice, and another that replies, and it is this voice that gives rise to quiet panic.

He reminds himself he is no more important than a ghost in this place; no matter what his anxieties tell him, he can intrude with no risk, and so he enters the room.

The immediate scene is more disconcerting than that of the one outside, for there are no discernible differences between this office and the one he knows to be reality. Indeed, it is identical in presentation and feeling, which is in itself a conundrum Minho can’t fathom. The realistic, the logical, the sensible are out of place here, which can only mean its existence is deliberate; she dreams of this, specifically, as it is.

He steps inside to close the door behind him, assesses the space with some trepidation. He knows well enough to do away with expectations when venturing like this; he can’t possibly predict what he’ll find.

Yet he was so certain it wouldn’t be this.

She sits at his desk; in his chair, in a state of utter dishevelment. Her workwear is ragged, blouse torn loose at shoulder and breast to reveal skin beneath, as though a rabid wolf has done its part on her. Though she herself seems far from distressed, reclining comfortably, complexion flushed a shade of fluster that makes Minho feel inappropriate for even seeing it. He follows the line of her body; her legs are parted, her heels braced against the sturdy edge of his desk, her pencil skirt drawn up to higher part of thigh.

And she breathes out on a salacious groan, “Oh, Minho, fuck—”

The man’s heart all but stops.

While taking in the scene one fragment at a time, on her slip it appears to come together as one technicolour image playing out before him. She draws tight and squirms in place, her hands finding grip amongst a head of soft honey-toned hair that sits neatly between her thighs.

Minho knows it by the way every one of his nerves fire off with white-hot zeal at once; this man on his knees in deep, delicious cunnilingual worship of her, is him.

She's dreaming of him.

He can't deny it, for it’s right here in front of him. Can’t speculate as to what it means or read between the lines to find some vague inference, because the lines are so melded together they form a fucking wall that shows the message in neon and capital, bright and clear.

He watches as dream-Minho devours her, brings her to orgasm, delights in the sounds she makes and the way she entreats him for more, please God, more. Dream-Minho is exactly as the man himself is; in stature and character, appearance and voice, for Minho knows he would undertake such a lustful task with the same level of enthusiasm as this product of her subconscious want.

Pulse thundering through his ears to debilitating effect, Minho can feel nothing much more than the blood rushing south. He supposes this confirms that the petty office rumours concerning her affections were neither petty nor rumours at all, and now he can be sure that his feelings are reciprocated, that he wasn’t of delusional mind to think that her lingering looks were reflective of more than vague interest. He wonders how long she’s wanted him this way for; since their working together started? For only the last few weeks? Since he asked to dinner, even? Doubtful, he thinks, for the magnitude of the desire he bears witness to could only be the product of such long simmering yearning.

He gets closer, the irrelevance of his presence allowing him such an indulgence. At the other side of the desk he stands, the repositioning granting an uninhibited view of her. This is a dream, he mantras, and in dreams we manifest the most physically perfect version of ourselves; he is careful to bear in mind that while he sees her, this isn’t her. Soft, beauteously wet and delicate as dream-Minho opens her up with his tongue.

Fuck. Minho hasn’t felt the true spur of sexual want in an unthinkably long time. Nothing is ever enough, and when it is he deems it too much, thereby gratuitous, and so doesn’t feel the need to entertain it. But this?

This is everything. She is everything.

Yet everything is also changed.

What is Minho to do with this new information? Regardless of want, their fate is sealed, her demise at Minho’s hand already guaranteed. To act on anything he’s learned now would be purely selfish. Even if he desires to make her carnal dreams a reality (for ability was never in question, Minho could show her things that would melt her mortal mind), even if she wants it, it would surely be bad form when he knows their end to be so bleak. There is no future for them, no chance at anything more. He is going to consume her, one way or the other; to play with his food so basely would be truly demonic.

Felix would probably encourage it all the same. He’d claim that the demon would be making her last days of life a dream in and of themselves by engaging in her fantasies, and perhaps there would be some truth to that.

All of this to say that Minho now knows one thing beyond any doubt: he accidentally cursed the girl he craves.

Little did he know, she craves him too.

***

You dreamt against last night.

Just as strongly did you feel it, just as vividly do you remember it. Even the subject was the same; Minho, though the events were decidedly more involved than the first. So involved, in fact, a cold shower took place of your usual warm one this morning, its chilling effect a welcome salve to the want that burned hot under your skin.

Purging the memory of Minho between your thighs won’t come quite so easily, you feel.

“Hey.”

Jisung’s approach is relatively welcome, which if nothing else, is a change from the usual. Pre-Minho fallout you were so bogged down with work you hadn’t the time or patience to entertain his ramblings, but following the abrupt redistribution of work, you find yourself with time to spare.

“What’s up?” you turn to him, closing the digital game of solitaire.

The blonde attorney is run ragged, that much is clear from the state of him. He could hardly have slept, you speculate, telling from the dark bags under his eyes and the knots in his hair, normally so fluffed and pristine.

“I know I'm not supposed to ask you for help, but—”

“You’re not supposed to?” you repeat incredulously. “Why not?”

Jisung blinks, lids heavy. “I just, uh... it’s just that Minho said not to bother you, so—”

Irritation kicks in your chest; you wonder if he’s instructed Seungmin the same way. A few days ago you’d have thought it wildly unlike him to be capable of such petty office politics, but it seems your run-in with the man has yielded more pernicious effects than you could have known.

“I can help, Jisung. What is it?” you reassure him, sans the attitude. Visibly relieved, Jisung clumsily hands you the leather binder in his arms; one of four he’s juggling.

“Could you give this to him for me? It's the case notes for that anti-harassment injunction, he wanted me to mark them up for him—”

“He asked you to do that?”

“Yeah.”

A stroke of annoyance locks your jaw; you resist the urge to take it out on the young attorney. It’s not his fault Minho apparently desires to actively do you out of a job.

“I’ll sort it,” you take the binder from him, flicking open the cover to examine the contents. Casting a quick eye through it, you determine that Jisung’s notes are a far cry from your own; there’s no colour coding, no tabbing or the indexing Minho likes. Rather, it’s a chaotic gathering of post-it notes and highlighted lines, a veritable jumble of organisation done by someone who explicitly has no time to organise.

“Thanks, man.” Jisung sighs, already heading off elsewhere.

You consider for all of several seconds redoing the damage to the binder, before reminding yourself that this is Minho’s doing, therefore his mess to suffer. If he wanted a proper job of it, he’d have asked you in the first instance.

Gathering yourself and walking to his office, you suppose it’s inevitable that you should be uneasy. Your last encounter was more than stiff, and to top it off, you’ve the added stress of actively trying not to recall how his plush pout feels on you. A warm throb between your legs accompanies your knocking on his door to a subsequent invitation of entry.

Positioned at his desk in black Armani—a change from the usual, you note—with gold-rimmed glasses balanced on his sharp nose, Minho appears thoroughly absorbed in whatever is on his monitor. He barely acknowledges your entrance, lips pressed tight and brows crimped.

“Is... this a bad time?”

It’s your question that sparks his attentions, head snapping your way. The focus falls from his face to give way to pale discomfiture, as though you’re the very last person he expected—or even wanted—to see.

You cross the room nonetheless, waving the binder as the reason for your intrusion.

“Jisung asked me to give you this.”

Placing it on his desk, Minho does nothing much more than stare. It’s been more than a full day since you were last in his immediate vicinity, and on closer examination, he appears to be a shade removed from his usual pristine self; the whites of his eyes are tinged pink with fatigue, shadowed bags hang under them. That he isn’t the picture-perfect presentation of professionalism is cause for concern enough, yet in nearing his desk you’re brought to even further worry.

“Have you... been drinking in here?” you grimace, hit with a wave of what smells like stale whiskey.

Minho blinks, appears to remember himself as he takes the binder. “Jisung gave you this?” he asks, voice hoarse.

“Yes. Why? Wasn’t he allowed to?”

You appreciate you’re coming at this from a somewhat combative angle, but the deliberate avoidance of your question in addition to his blatant avoidance of you all serve to thin your waning patience.

And again, the man appears to forgo an answer as he simply says, “Thank you. That’ll be all.”

That’ll be all?

No, you think.

That won't be all.

***

“Thank you. That’ll be all.”

Even as Minho says the words, he knows the agitation they instil. Her stance is stiff, defensive, the glare in her eyes is one of resentment that Minho takes full responsibility for. It’s there because he wished it to be; because limiting her duties and thus their interactions was the easiest way to absolve himself of the guilt he feels every time she looks at him.

He thought it might be a relief to have her regard him with contempt for all that, and prior to last night’s discovery, it probably would have been.

Now, it’s not.

She lingers in front of his desk, aggravation rolling from her in warm waves. There is more she wants to say, he feels it, and so when she speaks next, he despairs.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

He can’t entertain this. Not now.

“Please go back to work—”

She interrupts immediately. “You're avoiding me. You’re doing everything possible to make sure we don’t have a reason to speak to each other. You’re telling the others to leave me be—”

“That’s only because I know you're tired,” Minho responds thoughtlessly, his desire to defend himself of that particular observance taking over.

“What?” she balks. “Why would you think that? Do I look tired? Have you heard me saying I'm tired? Because I haven’t, not at all, and I don't think it’s your place to assume anything.”

Minho sags under his own idiocy; he can’t possibly tell her it’s because he knows her dreams of late are of the restless kind. Though, to her credit, she certainly looks well rested.

She sighs, casting a thousand-yard stare out the window, squinting at the clarity of the endless sky.

“Look. The other day, I overstepped. I’m sorry.”

Minho drags his glasses off, pinches the bridge of his nose; an apology from her couldn’t be more extraneous.

“I shouldn’t have pressed you on the coffee thing, or the dinner invitation, or... any of it. I overreacted, and I made things difficult,” she continues. “I want to be a valued member of the team, not an... inconvenience.”

“You are a valued member.”

“Okay, but right now, it doesn't feel like it, and I know that’s probably my fault.”

Part of Minho wishes she’d simply stop talking; the other part wishes to re-enact that which he witnessed the night before; to deposit her in the very chair he sits in, to hike her skirt up her thighs and taste the sweetness of her centre—

Fuck.

“So, can we just...” she gesticulates vaguely, as though incapable of phrasing it, “... I don’t know. Go back to how we were before?”

But there is no going back, and Minho knows it. He made it that way.

Shoving up from his chair, the pace he begins is partly intended as relief from the tantalising scent of jasmine and rain she unknowingly exudes that threatens to drive him even madder, though it also serves as a distraction from his wandering thoughts. Gentle arousal boils inside him; usually able to ignore it in favour of being content in her presence yet knowing what he does now only makes it that much more impossible to combat, because he could.

He could have her. He could just give in. He could cross the line he drew between them so long ago and she wouldn’t push him back.

He could, and she would let him.

“Sir?”

Minho ceases his step, frantic want surging over him at the address. “Do not call me that.”

She blinks, taken aback.

“You’ve never called me that before, why start now?” he presses, exasperated with her, with himself, with it all.

“O— Okay. Sorry?”

“And stop apologising, Jesus.”

The carefully constructed façade of professionalism is dissolving with every second he remains near her. Running his hands through his hair he tugs at his roots, inhales deeply as though to dispel the irate itch.

“What is the matter with you?” she outright asks. “I’m stood here apologising and you’re acting like... I don’t even know, like I've done something awful.”

“But you haven’t done anything!” Minho snaps, the cord on his temper pulled taut. “That’s the whole point! Don’t you see that?!”

“I don’t understand—”

“And there’s nothing I can do to make you understand,” Minho despairs, aware now that he has breached the wall of appearances with her. He looks insane, primarily because he feels fit to be.

“You’re not making any sense,” she exclaims, stepping towards him; by instinct the man recoils, but this doesn’t seem to perturb her any. She frowns, deep set and genuine, a puff of irritation escaping her.

“Enough is enough, Minho.”

He’s inclined to agree, though perhaps not in the same way. It’s in direct spite of the urges that have a vice grip on him that he mutters, “I... I have a meeting. If you’ll excuse me—”

“No.”

He gets a single stride from the door before she positions herself in his path of escape, for make no mistake, that’s exactly what this is. He’s escaping, running away, doing anything he can to remove himself from the situation as opposed to facing it head on. She’s close; closer than he would have her be for the sake of his sanity, floral tones and sweet warmth addling his already diminished state of mind.

“Something’s not right here. With us,” she states, not so much malice in the observation as there is simply sadness. “Please, tell me what’s going on.”

Minho shakes his head, words lingering on the tip of his tongue. She steps closer still, a mere inch of distance now between them. Much like their previous encounter, she curls a gentle hold to the sleeve of his black Armani; Minho recognises the gesture as both an attempt to keep him from fleeing again and a show of desperation. He braces his palm against the door of his office, his body half-turned away from her in preparation of flight; a direct contradiction of what his body—his demon soul—is telling him to do. Screaming at him to do.

“Please.”

He’s unsure what he’s even pleading for; perhaps a respite from the throb of desire that pulsates in his groin, in his veins, as though she’s directly able to stop it, because she could.

She could step away from him yet refuses to. She could release his sleeve, yet instead she slides her hand from wrist to forearm to bicep as she closes in. She could take a calming breath and return to her senses, yet instead she wets her plump lips by dart of small pink tongue and...

The air shimmers with eroticism, tension and wanting and long buried yearning amalgamating to a fucking delirious peak in the moment of nearness. Both feel it, both crave it, and as Minho sees the flicker of surrender in her eyes, something inside him snaps.

She draws closes, cranes to tiptoe and tilts her chin back to whisper on a breath:

“Don’t reprimand me for this.”

Fuck.

Minho becomes the lust, the demon, the monster that craves as she is swept up and slammed against the nearby wall for the breath to rush from her in a longing gasp. Lips and teeth and tongues are ferocious in their greed; she arches against him yet liquifies with molten desire, Minho presses and crushes with his need to crawl into her skin and make a home for himself, subconsciously aware that this is breaking every fucking rule he ever set for himself yet too drunk on the taste of her tongue to give much more thought to it than that.

It has been more than two centuries since he last indulged himself with a human, yet that experience was a mere flicker in the dark compared to the raging inferno this girl ignites.

When she hitches right leg to his hip and Minho reaches around the swell of her ass to appreciate the flesh, she groans and grinds, his thick erection straining enough that she might find relief in the friction of it. Minho allows it, relishes in it, imagines how good it’ll feel when he finally gets to impale her; if she’ll even be capable of taking it, for his size is incomparable to human men.

“I dreamt about you last night...”

Minho grins against her mouth, wicked and reckless. “I know.”

She pulls back violently, in spite of everything. Breathless, wracked with the heat of such intense lasciviousness, she scowls. “What?”

Minho blinks himself to comprehension, a second or so required to appreciate what it is he’s just confessed to.

“What do you mean; you know?”

Shit.

He’s too far gone to think about this rationally. Peeling away all the layers of everything he’s doing, of what it all means, is too impossible a task in this moment, and so he doesn’t. He lowers her from his arms, from the wall, rakes his hands through his hair, swipes her residue from his mouth with his palm and rearranges his suit jacket.

“I have a meeting.”

A deep breath, and he exits the office, leaving his thoroughly wrecked colleague to her private devices.

He hears the subsequent curses of his name and nature from across the office, and supposes they’re deserved. She's right, after all.

He is a fucking monster.

***

Coming to the realisation that your boss lusts after you just as you do for him is a strange experience, to say the least.

Perhaps you should be awash with pride on the discovery, triumphant and relishing in the victory. Indeed, the ache between your legs and soreness to your lips are evidence enough of the event that just took place, but you’ve never been arrogant enough to assume you ever stood a chance with him anyway, and so don’t think it’s unreasonable to be lagging in acceptance.

Besides; there are too many other confusions surrounding it all. Desire notwithstanding, you require explanations for all the oddities, not least of which includes a reason as to why he thought it appropriate to respond to your confession of dreams with ‘I know’; how could he possibly know? You’d anticipated a reaction of shock, perhaps embarrassment or disbelief, but ‘I know’? Even if he intended it as a turn of phrase or metaphor for understanding how deep your cravings for him ran, it seems a strange way to validate such a thing.

Maybe he wasn’t thinking straight; possible, considering the context. People are known to say things they don’t mean or haven’t thought through in the heat of the moment, which admittedly seems unlike Minho, but you don’t know him that way. Yet.

In any case, his abandonment of the moment has left you with an altogether different problem compared to those usually encountered in the workplace: you are incomprehensibly horny.

Seungmin and Jisung are so embedded in their work they’re oblivious to how you slip away; out of the office and down the hall. The nearest bathroom is five floors down, but in the middle of the building they’re subject to high amounts of traffic, which is precisely not what you need.

Crowding into the elevator alongside two other members of staff, you punch the button for the thirty-fifth floor; a space comprised of board and stately conference rooms. You know there to be a small bathroom there, used only by guests and those with good reason to be on the seldom visited floor.

On arrival, the corridors are empty, rooms quiet. Interior glass walls allow you unhindered views inside the neatly prepared conference rooms as you go; polished oval tables of rich mahogany in each are circled with symmetrically positioned leather chairs. Scurrying through the hallways, you pass only one room that appears to be mid-meeting, several suited persons are seated inside. You pay it no mind, pacing briskly past it. The distant whir of a hoover becomes less so distant the further you go; rounding a corner reveals an elderly janitor going about his business, headphones tight to his ears as he vacuums the lighter grey carpet. The bathroom is just beyond him, and so you approach nonchalantly, confidence in your step and a polite smile offered when he nods in your general direction.

Shoving through the bathroom door and, finally out of sight, you take a breath. It feels not unlike engaging in some form of secret mission; the objective of which is to achieve as much satisfaction as is possible with your hands and whilst at work. The bathroom is well presented, neat and clean. Aqua wall tiles are chequered with pristine white; the laminate floor mocks the pattern and texture of marble. Three sinks are fitted to a beige bathroom unit below a mirror that stretches the length of all three; plastic soap dispensers are bolted to the wall. In matching fashion, three cubicles make up the far side of the room, their doors swung open; three urinals are tucked away in a cubby opposite them. It’s not the place you’d choose for engaging in such an act as you’re about to, but that’s the whole point, you suppose: you’re explicitly lacking in choices. You’re beholden to a primal urge that demands immediate succour; your only purpose is to, in this moment, find a way to facilitate that.

Not stopping to give it much thought, you hurry to the row of cubicles, shutting yourself inside the furthest one. The toilet seat is down, as is the lid, and riding up your skirt to get at your underwear is a job not so elegant. Kicking them down to your ankles and freeing your right one of the garment, you perch on the edge of the lid. Legs spread as far as your skirt allows—which isn’t much—you attempt to feel yourself out and find the angle desperately lacking.

“Fuck it,” the skirt is made surplus to requirement; you unzip and remove it, folding it over and depositing it on the cistern shelf. Now with freedom to touch at your whim, you sit back on the seat, leg hitched up to the toilet paper dispenser. At least somewhat content in the knowledge that you’re alone—if a little uncomfortable in terms of position, place and amongst the sting of clinical lemon disinfectant—you don’t delay any further. Indeed, there’s no need even for foreplay of any kind, for the tryst with your boss has left you more than primed for the touch you crave.

Your fingers enact the ministrations against your wet, soft heat, sparks of pleasure flitting through mind and body. Recalling the visions of your dream is no task; they come to you willingly, whisk you away in a storm of sensation that hazes you thoroughly to the real world. An illicit moan slips from your lips when the pulse of pleasure aches so deliciously; were you alone, you’d surely be whimpering his name to your own delusions.

Time is of the essence, discretion of the utmost importance.

You just need to come.

***

Minho’s not paying attention.

It’s unlike him in every sense to be so inattentive during a meeting, but the reason for it he knows well enough.

He crossed the line: he kissed her.

And God, it was electrifying. Perhaps it’s true that the higher the risk, the more sumptuous the reward, for that was easily the riskiest thing he’s ever done, but never has anything felt so good.

He replays it over in his mind as the division manager drawls on about KPI’s and quarterly targets, mentally drifting from the confines of the polished conference room back to the heated space of his corner office, where he had her so close, so fiercely, he almost lost himself. He did lose himself; at least by a measure. He still hopes he’s able to play off his confession as to knowledge of her dreams as just that: he was worked up, confused, too horny to think straight, et cetera. Maybe she’ll buy it.

Maybe he's just kidding himself. All she’s done the last few days is demonstrate an uncanny intuition as to the state of things, apparently able to detect bullshit from a mile off. She knows when she’s being lied to, taken for a fool, and doesn’t suffer it.

So instead, Minho does. That is, suffer.

Indeed, the suffering is now so great that when he spies her hurrying past the conference room, he believes it to be an apparition. Great, he thinks to himself. Now he can’t even trust his mind; it manifests her everywhere and in the most unlikely of places.

He wonders what it says about him, then, that he is compelled to follow her; it. Perhaps the ghost might take pity on him and lead him to some secret Nirvana whereby he doesn’t have to face the reality of his circumstance. That would be nice, he supposes.

He excuses himself from the mundane meeting with a “I have somewhere to be”, (an entirely unacceptable way to remove oneself, he knows, but he’s a little past professional etiquette at this point). Starting down the hallway after the apparition, he wonders briefly if this makes him insane. Like, officially. If it doesn’t, it probably should.

Turning the corner and a little further down, a janitor hums to a cheerful tune, headphones hang loosely around his neck. He’s unplugging a hoover, winding the thick cord around his withered hands. As Minho passes him, the man chuckles, “Well, I don’t get no visitors in hours, then two in two minutes!”

Minho stops.

“Excuse me?”

The elderly janitor turns to him, a grin forming under the grey scraggles of beard. “First the lady, sir, and now you!”

“Lady?” Minho repeats. “A lady just came this way?”

“Sure did,” the janitor pulls the hoover cord tight. “S’pose she needed to urgently powder her nose or somethin’, if you’ll be catchin’ my drift. She was in all kinds of a rush!”

 Minho leaves the hearty cackles of the janitor behind him as he rushes the rest of the way down the hall. Pausing outside the bathroom door, he considers what he’s about to do; why he’s even doing it. Ambushing her here is not the classiest way to go about approaching her again; lines crossed notwithstanding, there is an element of privacy about bathrooms that is to be respected. So he’ll wait, he reasons. He’ll just wait outside, and when she’s done, he can... he can what?

Shit. He didn’t think this through at all. He can’t just approach her like he could have before; things are different now.

Letting his forehead drop to the thin wood of the bathroom door is only partially intended to hurt; maybe it’ll drum some sense into him, he hopes. Yet nothing much more occurs than it swings open a feeble inch or so, but that’s enough for him to hear what permeates beyond: the echo of a dream.

Minho’s pulse spikes at the vulgarity of his name being groaned in such a way, much as it did the first time. Despair gives way to hope; perhaps she finds tolerance for him yet, perhaps their tryst did more than just give her reason to despise him. He holds the door open that same inch, listens intently. The groans don’t stop, neither do they ease in desperation, acting instead as a siren’s song that draws Minho into the room. What was it he thought about privacy, earlier?

He surveys the empty bathroom; she must be in a cubicle. Minho’s mind races with thoughts too jumbled to arrange, the ones concerning danger of voyeurism and public indecency diminishing under the weight of his growing desire. He smells her; jasmine and fresh fucking rain are magnified by her eroticism; every stifled moan she surrenders to addles him further of decency and respect and rationality and—

***

You’re so close.

Soaked through and totally hazed of the world outside this cubicle, your sole thought is only one of relief. Your body burns, the pressure swelling in your core is on the verge of exploding to blissful release.

“M— Minho...”

His name is its own aphrodisiac; you’re going to come to it, you need to come to it, you just need a little more...

“I’m here, sweet thing.”

The echo of a dream; so lifelike and close it kicks strong panic in your chest. Your foot slips from the paper dispenser, an unceremonious crash of heels kicking, legs closing and world returning to clarity brings your impending orgasm to a frustrating hover.

You pause a moment, catching your breath, listening. How foolish you feel when there’s no sound from outside; so deep in your delusions were you that they manifested at the peak of pleasure!

“Idiot...” you mumble softly, repositioning quickly. This orgasm is a necessity, and you’re reminded now of the need for haste.

Fingers return to where they’re needed most. A few gentle strokes ease you back into relaxation, and just as you’re sinking into the chase:

“Open the door.”

This time, the panic is justified. You fly from the toilet seat, make a mad rush for your clothes, heart pounding.

“Don’t do that.”

“What... what the fuck are you doing in here?!”

“Just open the door.”

“But I... I’m in the bathroom, this is a bathroom, Minho, you can’t just—”

“Please.”

There’s something definitive in the way he doesn’t even acknowledge your fragile attempt at an excuse; you could pretend you were using the bathroom as intended, and you might even feel better for it, but the end result would be the same regardless: you’ve been caught, quite literally, with your pants down.

Unclasping the lock and opening the door a crack, you can’t bring yourself to look at the man that stands before it, hands pressed either side of the frame. Even without seeing his face, the tension that rolls from him is palpable; his stance is stiff, black suit drawn tight to his figure.

“I don’t need you to explain,” he speaks first, voice thick. “I just need you to tell me one thing.”

You swallow, tongue feeling too big for your mouth.

“Have you wanted me as long as I've wanted you?”

On this, you find the will to look at him; his hazel eyes are tinted sanguine, his sharp features shadowed by the honey strands that fall free.

“Since we met?”

Your head spins dangerously, the confession seeming so far removed from everything you’ve believed thus far. The office tryst was some indication of his feelings, yes, but it was too easy to assume they were fleeting, a simple response to your advance made in a bold moment.

“Yes.”

Your whispered response is dry—anticlimactic even—but Minho wets his lips by dart of tongue. The moment stills, comprehension is met as much as two souls steeped in ardent lust are able to, and in the silent beat that follows, he advances.

Shoves into the cubicle to gather you in his arms, the door crashing painfully to rattle the frame. Weak to the display of strength you’re putty in his hands, already naked from the waist down he finds no difficulty in giving you his—much more satisfying in comparison—fingers. Hot and heavy he consumes your mouth, holds you strong against the cubicle wall, his presence a cage of sensation you never wish to leave. It seems no different from the dreams to hear him utter the sweet words he brands sore to your lips: a slip of his digit inside you to the praise of, “So wet, my sweet thing,”, a tender nibble of your neck to the confession of, “Smell so good, God,”, a firm squeeze of your ass by large hand to the sultry curse of, “Fucking beautiful.”

You curl a grasp into the lapel of his Armani, tight as you’re able to muster on the precipice of orgasm.

“D— Don’t leave me this time. Please.”

Minho drives his fingers in slow, breathes against your chin. “I won’t. I shouldn’t have.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise. I couldn’t if I tried. Not now.”

Coming to violent orgasm on Minho’s fingers in the guest bathroom of the thirty-fifth floor isn’t quite what you foresaw for this day.

Surely now; it’ll be on the daily agenda.

***

There’s something to be said for the joy of a new relationship.

Something indeed, but it's apparently not for you to say.

Despite all things pointing to the beginning of a new life chapter and hopes of something more, you remain somewhat sedentary. Work is still work (though your role has returned to its previous weight), and home is still home, and over the last two weeks you’ve found yourself wondering more than once just what it is prevents Minho from fully committing to anything official, from wanting to say something about the joy of a relationship.

Granted, there have been changes, small ones, in the way you interact with one another at work and how time is spent; the thirty-fifth-floor bathroom has become something of a regular meeting spot, which while inelegant, is a well-kept secret. You try to see the romantic side of it; the spot where you first fooled around is fit to be the place where you continue fooling around, if nothing else. Stolen kisses in his office and in the elevator add to the excitement, and you suppose it’s a good thing you’re thrilled by such danger, for it would be easy to wallow in his refusal to take things further without it.

But Minho’s refusal isn’t one of words; he’s not so cruel as to outright tell you there’s no chance of a bona fide relationship, and that’s to be expected of the man known for such virtues as he holds. Rather, his refusal is in the distance he maintains, his withdrawal when you mention an evening of dinner or a night at your place. He smiles and tells you he’ll think about it, but his faraway eye and indifferent touch tell you he’s already made his decision, and it’s not one to your liking.

Indeed, it’s only when caught in moments of private lust you feel that he’s at ease with you, the boundaries between you are opaque and his mind—his wonderfully overactive mind—seems at peace. Even if he continually refuses your returning of the sexual favour, bafflingly spurns your attempts to touch him where he strains every time on the insistence that he doesn’t need it, that he’s fine; he is at least, himself.

Night after night, you’re accosted by rampant dreams of him; a plague you thought you might be cured of when such fantasies became reality, but rather they seem exacerbated: more extreme is the subject matter, more lifelike are the sensations. Your days are propelled by the afterglow of their visits, your nights fearful of them, for by their current trajectory you might not survive the peak, should it ever come. You used to tell Minho of them; he listened, appearing none too bothered by the acts you detailed or the feelings you described, until on one such occasion he grimaced and asked you gently to stop; he prefers what is real to what is imagined.

There are questions to be answered still, and you would push if you thought you stood a chance of getting them. You considered briefly that your intimate involvement with the man might be enough to defer your seeking an explanation for all the oddities thus far; you have him, after all and at least in part, and you’re loath to look a gift horse in the mouth. Yet your proclivities are neither ignorant nor heedless, and so you suppose the day will inevitably come where you are forced to challenge him; even should that day spell the end of your arrangement.

Until then, you think it's not so wicked to enjoy it.

***

Half days at the office are as good as days off; thoroughly unproductive things.

Even Minho, for all his stalwart work ethic, finds summoning motivation on days like this difficult. He stares at his monitor, reading the body of an email for the third time, still unable to make sense of the words.

Outside, the office is abuzz. The chatter of the hyperactive teamis a distraction in of itself; Jisung details what he’s wearing tonight, Seungmin reels off what he intends to drink to gluttonous excess, she laments how they’ll all feel tomorrow as a result of their gleefully anticipated poor choices. The tip-tapping of keyboards is interspersed with giggles and exclamations of excitement, made worse when the e-mail bomb from HR arrives: ‘FAO all staff, annual office party reminder!’

The entire company has been granted a half days’ additional leave for the event. Minho would think it a graceful gesture of goodwill if it didn’t effectively nullify his leverage over Seungmin: the man had wanted the day off, had been on his best behaviour for it. The moment the announcement was made, he fell straight back into roguish conduct. Minho only wishes he wasn’t so painfully predictable.

Sighing heavily, Minho sags back in his chair, letting the seat twirl aimlessly towards the window. Just after ten o’clock and the chill of the morning is easing, fluffy clouds of white glide a snail's pace across the lucent canvas of the city skyline. It’s a view familiar to him, one that usually reminds him his decision to settle in the mortal realm was a wise one, for the Underworld offers no such spectacle as this, but Minho feels much the same as he has for a fortnight now: guilty.

It’s a bizarre thing, to find both comfort and distress in a person, and Minho never finds more of each than when he’s with her. Touching her, holding her, bringing her to repeated climax behind closed doors (and occasionally against them) is more transcendental an experience than he’s thus far found. So, he supposes that it’s natural he should now fear to lose it, and hence comes the distress, for he knows one day he will. Her lustful soul continues to ripen; he had hoped his efforts to relieve her of that tension would do something to prolong said ripening, and for as long as the day shines bright, it does, yet when night falls whatever work he has done is only undone by the curse; the dreams that deteriorate her satisfied state.

And all of this is without even considering his own dilemma: his appetite grows by the day, throbs at the edges of his discipline, exacerbated by the affair. Indeed, Minho would challenge any man or demon to enact even a speck of the same restraint he does, for it is solely by his refusal to indulge in his own wants with her that he retains his self-control, clutching at it like a child might do their mother, fearful of letting go and falling.

When Minho falls, it’ll be at the cost of her life.

There’s a gentle knock at his door.

“Come in.”

He smells the floral notes of jasmine before he sees her; it does something to lighten his mood. When the door cracks open, Minho swivels around in his chair, greeted by a warm smile that makes his stomach twist.

“Sorry to bother you,” she steps inside, lets the door fall shut behind her. “I just wanted to run these past you.”

Minho likes that about her; that she maintains professionalism at the office, still reports to him as she did before he knew what her orgasms sounded like. It was never discussed that they should keep their affair secret, but rather expected on both sides, if only for ease of a quiet life.

“You’re still working?” Minho quirks a brow.

She shrugs. “Trying to.”

“I think I'm giving up.”

“What? The terminal workaholic is giving up on working? Is tonight a full moon or something?”

Minho chuckles softly, holds his hand out to receive a sheaf of paper from her. He casts an eye over it—it’s an affidavit for one of the newest cases—but quickly loses interest. Rather, his attention is drawn to the way she stands by the window, hands clasped behind her back, her gentle swaying in place as she admires the crisp city view. Her dark pencil skirt hugs the line of her figure, and Minho finds an all too familiar urge crawling over him.

He tosses the affidavit to his desk.

“Come here.”

She turns to him. “What?”

Minho pushes out from his desk, stretches his long legs out and pats his thighs. “Here.”

“But—”

“I know. Quickly.”

There’s madness in this. Madness that Minho probably wouldn’t entertain were he his usual put together self, but the influence of his appetite now overpowers that of his rational mind.

She glances at the door, eyes trained to it as she cautiously rounds the desk and once near enough for Minho to reach, is in his grasp. The initial intent to have her in his lap is changed; he parts his thick legs and positions her between them, sitting upright to hold her standing. Like this, he is level with her cleavage; greedily he undoes three buttons on her blouse, exposing black lace. He noses the swell of her chest, inhales of her the scent that drives him so desperately frantic, her gentle carding of his hair an encouragement. Blunt nails scrape his scalp; Minho shivers. There needs not even be much more than this, he thinks, for to have her close and feel her warmth is decent enough a dose of serotonin for him to get by.

Yet she appears to have other ideas.

From his crown to his nape and shoulders, her hands mould him gently, squeezing and caressing as she cranes down. The chill tip of her nose nudges his lobe, the erogenous zone beneath, her warm breath a dizzying spell to his coherence. Lips skim his cheek as she sinks down further still, she clutches his lapels to urge him nearer. Minho chases her; he must, but she denies him the kiss he so craves to instead nose along his jaw, an open-mouthed exploration of his skin that pricks goosebumps over Minho’s flesh. She leads the show of passion: she draws the chair nearer the desk and Minho knows he should regain control before the inevitable escalation (if this is not already it), yet she is on her knees before him, her hands are making elegant work of his belt, button and zipper, and Minho’s tired of fighting it. His cock throbs, his head spins, his veins are flaming under his skin. He sits back, watches her slide inside his trousers to the strain beneath; she gasps as her small hand falls wildly short of wrapping around him, his girth as inhuman as his lineage.

“You’re...”

A part of him, conceited and blatantly superficial, wants to hear her say it. He crooks a brow at her, heat rising across her cheeks as she manages—by two hands—to free him. Removed from confinement, he watches her glazed eyes trace the length of it; her jaw slacks, her thighs tense and squeeze. Minho has always considered the boons of his ilk to be no such things at all; save perhaps for the physicality. He is more than well equipped to perform as his namesake suggests.

But he should put a stop to this; he has to.

She swallows an excess of saliva. “Wow.”

And before Minho can surf the tide of delight such a small non-compliment inspires, she’s taking him in her mouth. As much as she is able, she sinks wet warmth around him, and Minho draws tight.

“Oh, fuck—”

She hums on hearing the curse—history has demonstrated her preference for his less-than-pleasant mouth—doubling her efforts to take an inch or two more of him. Minho avails her of the act; long fingers in her hair draw her back, guide her gently, for her sake and his. When she tightens lips and hollows cheeks Minho grinds his teeth. Intrusive thoughts arrive: he could use her to brutal capacity, he could fuck her throat savagely, he could taste the saltine tears of her travail, he could devour her whole with his encroaching crisis and feel not a single fucking shred of shame for it.

He's losing himself; all he can smell is jasmine, all he can feel is the pulse of arousal, each one a drum that thunders to the tune of his heartbeat, his vision tinted crimson. He grasps the leather arms of his chair, the woven seams threatening to tear as he rolls into her motions, hips loose and high quickly approaching. She salivates and moans soft encouragement; Minho is fucking famished. He can’t think straight, can’t breathe properly, craves the sweet ambrosia that is her lust-fattened soul—

There’s a knock at the door.

She startles, pops off Minho’s cock and scrabbles deep under the desk. It's a brutal pin to the bubble of lasciviousness, but one that Minho thinks might just be a small mercy.

He clears his throat, straightens his tie and tucks himself as close to the desk as his chair allows. “Come in.”

The door opens to Seungmin, his smug countenance a potent mood killer.

“What is it?”

“Just need you to sign off on these,” the younger man waves a document folder at him, crosses the space and tosses it carelessly on the desk; Minho goes about the motions as thoroughly he would were he not harbouring a sexual fugitive under his desk.

“Will we see you at tonight’s event?”

Minho grimaces. “Not likely.”

“Come on, man,” Seungmin smarms, “you’re the face of the team, it’d be good for morale.”

“It’ll be plenty good for morale whether I'm there or not, Kim.”

“That’s not true. Some would argue it won’t be the same without you there.”

Minho scrawls a signature on the last page, jots down the date. He knows where this is going by a country mile; clearly his warnings have been forgotten.

“Like our litigation secretary, for example. I’m sure she would miss you terribly.”

There’s a sharp movement from under the desk, a warm, gentle hand encloses his knee. Minho clutches his composure, slams the folder shut. “Do we need to have another conversation, Kim?”

Seungmin startles, eyes wide.

“Because we’ve been over this. Or is your short-term memory as abysmal as your time management?”

“No,” the other man shakes his head. “No need for that. I was just saying, you know.”

“Well, perhaps you should refrain from ‘just saying’ anything. I’ve told you this before but clearly it warrants telling again: she is a valued member of the team. Nothing more.”

The words are ostensibly defensive; a shield to conceal the bone-deep affection that anyone with more sense than Seungmin would easily detect. ‘The gentleman doth protest too much’, Minho thinks with resolute certainty. He also thinks there’ll be retribution for what he’s just said: her hand slips from his knee.

“Yeah, I got it,” Seungmin nods, taking the folder back. “Sorry.”

Minho only grunts in response, dismissing his colleague. When alone again, he slides out from the desk, aided by her hasty push. She scrambles out from her hiding place, lips puffy and cheeks dusted with the warm longing of the earlier encounter. She smooths down the creases of her skirts, draws her shoulders square, plucks the affidavit from the desk.

“Are you—”

“I’m a valued member of the team,” she snaps, voice hoarse. “Nothing more.”

Minho groans. “You’re not seriously holding that against me? It was for his benefit, the guy has been spreading rumours about us since—”

“And God forbid anyone hear them, right? God forbid anyone picture us together, because that would be a total fucking disaster.”

“Is that you think?”

“That’s what you think, clearly,” she counters, heading for the door.

Minho stands, buckling his trousers and tucking in his shirt. “Wait—”

He grabs her by the arm, as gentle as he can manage given the tight knot of hunger that sits inside him. She acquiesces, though only slightly, turning back to him with brows set firm and lips pressed thin.

“I don’t think anyone seeing us together would be a disaster,” Minho admits softly.

“But you think our being together would be.”

A hard lump forms in Minho’s throat. If ever there was an opportunity to inform her of the truth of things, he thinks this would be it. He’s almost tempted; the sad weight in her eyes speaks to a misconstrued truth: he does think being with her would be a disaster, but not for the reasons she’s convinced herself of.

“It would be nice if you actually came out and said it, you know,” she whispers. “This distance you keep between us... I can take a hint, Minho. That was the first time you’ve ever let me touch you. Something tells me it’ll be the last.”

“I... there’s a lot that you don’t know—”

“And whose fault is that? I’ve asked you for answers, time and again, and you keep them from me every time. Do you honestly think I haven’t noticed? Your mumblings in the dark? Your insistence on never staying the night?”

Minho takes a deep breath, despair coiling around him.

“You know your eyes light up when you’re horny, right?”

“W— What?”

She shakes her head, pulls her arm free of Minho’s grip. “I know you’re something other than what you pretend to be, Minho. And it makes sense, because someone as perfect as you could never exist in the real world. I dream of you being this... monster; this crimson-skinned creature with wings that whisks me away to all kinds of places.”

Minho stiffens, his bones appearing to seize at once on the pinpoint accurate description of his true form.

“Maybe I'm crazy,” she centres herself, chest puffed out and determination set in her features. “Part of me wishes I was. But I somehow know better than that, and you should do me the courtesy of knowing it too.”

For once, Minho doesn’t know what to say. In keeping the truth from her he intended to protect her just a little longer, but in giving in to his lust he entertained her affections and planted the seed of hope that something tangible may blossom between them; something resembling a future. He knew this might happen, yet selfish want outweighed it all.

She stands taller as she sighs, “If you’re ready to tell me the truth, I’ll be at the party tonight. If I don’t see you there...”

An ultimatum?

“... Well, that’ll be it then, won’t it?”

There’s a weighted sadness in her eyes as she shrugs; an acceptance of what she knows will come to pass.

“The final hint.”

𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚, 𝙧𝙚𝙗𝙡𝙤𝙜, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙞𝙣 𝙖𝙣 𝙖𝙨𝙠 ♡

< 𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙫𝙞𝙤𝙪𝙨 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙚𝙧

Thoughtless is your response, instinctive is the way your hand slips into his, for wherever he’s going you wish only to be with him.

And within a second of the touch, the highly gleaming sun is snuffed out. The warmth is gone and the sting of brilliant white is vanished and there is only plunging darkness, empty and cold.

Still, you feel his hand in yours, and while robbed of all other senses his touch is the only you can rely on. Your pulse thunders through your ears and you clamour for breath, the sudden chill leaving you giddy.

“Minho?”

“I’m here, sweet thing.”

His voice is velvet, dark and tempting. The endearment goes straight to your core, a throbbing want blooming deep that you would normally persecute yourself for, yet here, in this place, there feels no need to.

“Open your eyes.”

“They are open...”

“No,” you hear him laugh softly, a rumble of delight, “open your eyes, sweet thing.”

The darkness fades from your peripherals, a slow allowance of crimson tinting everything. It grows and shimmers until all is bathed erotic red, a musk so familiar flitting over you in passing. You turn with it, eager to chase the sense of the man when a flicker of movement catches your eye.

“Where are you?” you call, voice an infinite echo.

“Right here.”

A shriek of fright is quickly silenced by a large hand over your mouth, for the address in your right ear was too close to have predicted.

“I’m right here, sweet thing.”

Hand gently removed to allow you the mercy of breath, you can only whisper, “You scared me.”

Minho scowls, deep set and severe, as though the sentiment causes offence. The crimson hue plays off his complexion, and only when you find the will to truly focus do you realise his nakedness. From the waist up he is bereft of clothes, the slopes and ridges of his deliciously carved torso reason enough for you to balk. Your first instinct is not to question it, but rather to appreciate, and reaching out to him amid unusual confidence you find he makes no attempt to stop you.

Because in this place, here with him, you set the rules.

The firm bumps of his abs, the smoothness of his skin. The strong curve of his chest and pert buds of his nipples. Minho watches, irises flaring a shade of red that intrigues rather than terrifies, for the incarnadine whirl is utterly mesmerising.

“You lust for me.”

His statement is just that: a statement of fact, offered without judgement or pressure. It is a truth that he sees, a truth that you feel, one that would be foolish to dispute.

“I do.”

He hums, abs drawing tight as he asks the next question, “You would give yourself to me?”

“I would.”

“Even though I'm a monster?”

The sentiment settles uneasily, you’re about to voice your displeasure with it when from behind him, there is movement. A flurry of deep sound, like wind through a billowing sail, tense cracks and pops as a shadow of darkness sweeps out from his back, stretching until fully unsheathed and two giant, leathery wings hover in proud display. Thin veins run their segments, the bones are tipped with sharp horn. Minho stands taller, his stature looms and you’re left to feel unfathomably small, insignificant, would wish to shy away if not for how he takes you in his arms to crush your form to his.

“Do you see me, sweet thing, for all that I am?”

“What... are you?” you manage to rasp, head spinning and chest bursting with adrenal want.

Minho smirks piteously, condescension in his flaring eyes. He brings a hand to your chin, holds it by thumb and forefinger as he leans in to whisper over your dry lips, “I am your worst nightmare, sweet thing, and I will undo you until nothing is left but the dying echo of my name from your mouth.”

Then, he kisses you.

Minho kisses you, and it is raging fire through open forest.

You are engulfed in destructive lust and swept away in his torrent, the sweet tang of his lips a poison you will willingly swallow down for the softness, the plush moulding, the depth of sumptuous indulgence that is the way he feels on you.

An encompassing of darkness surrounds your person, Minho’s wings close on you, on him, to cocoon you so the moist smack of tongues and quiet groans of pleasure are sealed in the vacuum, hot and heavy.

You know beyond doubt that you’re dreaming, that you’ll wake up eventually and be all the worse for it when reality demands you face your boss and be presentable. It's in spite of every logical neuron you possess that you should mistake this as anything more than your overactive subconscious, yet you struggle to explain why it all feels so real: why you can map out the texture of his skin under your palms, why you can shudder when he grips your hips with fervent need, why you can feel the trickle of sweat cascading down your nape, why you can taste the muted notes of coffee on his tongue.

Breaths and hands and desperate desire amalgamate into an undefinable spiral of eroticism, where your chief want is to feel him, have him, crawl under his skin and own him or be owned. When the great wings part and Minho pulls back, the scene again has altered. No longer in a space of nothingness, no longer removed from rational geometry or time and thus not so easily able to call it a dream with resolute certainty, you find yourself in your bedroom. Minho is Minho again, his countenance kind and appearance familiar, the wings long gone to leave behind caramel skin and soft tresses, quiet confidence in his stature. Naked and open he stands before you, as are you already positioned on the bed, and while entirely unsure how you got there at all, to question it would be more asinine than to deny the man that crawls up the mattress in predatory fashion, eyes weighted with wicked intention and lips slick with salivating need.

So close to where you need him, so close to having him in ways you’ve only fantasised about. So close...

And then he stops. Frozen as though seized by time itself, poised on hands and knees mid-crawl. His lips part but form no enunciation as words bleed from them:

“Let me take you to dinner.”

You sit up, reach out to touch him and—

***

Minho knows he’s good at what he does.

When selecting a human vocation to step into it was with nary a second thought that he took up the mantle of law and justice, for the enforcement of such order is a thing unique to humans. Indeed, no such facet exists among the ranks of his own kind, where chaos is celebrated and malevolence encouraged.

It might have begun as simply a means to an end—that end being to blend in seamlessly with humans and their ways of life—but it certainly didn’t stay that way. He committed himself to the vocation with more gusto than he’d ever had for anything (which over two hundred years of existence amounted to an impressive array of jobs and pastimes), quickly developing a keen fascination for the judicial system and the strict punishments humans bestowed on one another for deeds considered too far from the wider moral compass.

So yes; he is good at what he does, and such adeptness is a clear by-product of his enjoyment of the profession. He’s never needed to engage in any forced theatrics when demanding the attention of a courtroom; such showmanship comes naturally to him. He even wishes he could enact such judgement on his own kind given half a chance, for there are several creatures he can identify off the top of his head in need of some serious belittling.

Yet Minho is also starkly aware of the fact that he isn’t one of them; that is to say, human. He was born demon and no amount of show and fancy will detract from the fact that demonic blood runs through his veins, grants him immortality, strength, speed, the ability to shapeshift at will and several other boons that he doesn’t quite consider such. Minho doesn't resent his lineage; that of the ‘sexus daemon’. Rather, demons of his ilk are considered among the highest ranks of the Underworld, rare in existence and therefore treated with such reverence befitting their station. Yet it has been more than a century since Minho last set foot in the hellish realm that constitutes his home, preferring to spend his time in the mortal realm, where he finds things make more sense. And while most of his abilities go unused (and have done for some time), there is but one stipulation he cannot so easily ignore.

In order to survive, Minho must consume. It is the inclination of his ‘type’ to crave lust-addled souls that will nourish him in most every way; appearance, mental function, physical capability and—perhaps most importantly—his penchant for self-control. So long as he remains fed, he can keep the baser depraved urges that simmer within him at arm's length, can ensure his true face remains unseen, can continue to live as he has been for the last hundred years in relative peace.

Once a month: through experimentation and no small amount of trial and error, that’s what he’s whittled it down to as a bare minimum. Once a month, he must feed, and do so in utmost secrecy. He can admit to having such need for discretion in mind when he decided to pursue law, for the vocation brings him into contact with all manner of people from all walks of life, some of which coincidentally won’t be missed. The criminals, the vagrants, the recipients of his occasional pro bono work that never get much further than the initial guilty plea, because they’re simply not worth the time or resources. Those are the ones Minho makes a point of choosing. A surreptitiously administered drop of his demon blood is all that’s required to spike their libidos, their dreams subsequently plagued by every facet of sex and eroticism until their souls are fat, bursting with concupiscence, enough so to threaten madness amid the heat. That’s when Minho strikes. Consumption comes in the dead of night, when risk of being spotted is minimal, for there can never be a tangible connection made to him, no implication of any kind. With their souls removed and his temperament sated for another four weeks, what’s left behind of the victim amounts to no more than a husk, gradually given to wither away to ashes.

Usually, it’s flawless. Until now, it has been. Much like in his job, he’s never set a foot wrong, having perfected the process down to a fine art.

But Minho made an unthinkable mistake. He was careless, lacked attention, tried to manipulate circumstances within his orbit on the discovery that a close, new colleague wasn’t as innocent as he made out to be, and now he’s paying the price.

“Fuck!”

She had been right; cursing makes him feel a little better, if nothing else.

“It’s really not the end of the world.”

Just once, Minho wishes Felix was a little less relaxed. While it’s true that sex faeries are notoriously horizontal in their approach to most things, he would very much like someone else to appreciate the magnitude of the fuck-up, if only so he didn’t feel quite so alone in it all.

“What am I going to do?” Minho groans, runs hands through his hair to rake at his scalp.

“Well, there’s nothing you can do, is there?” Felix offers, outstretched on the two-seater in the elder’s office, a sultry vision of pastel pink, sequins and glitter. “She’s been cursed now, that’s it.”

“But I should be able to un-curse her, right? I can’t do that?”

“Never heard of it being done.”

Minho huffs into his palms. “I am so screwed.”

Felix shoves up from the sofa, sauntering across the small space to lean against the cool glass wall beside Minho’s desk. “I told you it was an awful idea.”

“Told me what was an awful idea?” Minho snaps, glaring at his friend.

“The girl. Getting involved. Giving her the time of day, even.”

“I’m not involved, and I’m pretty sure you’ve never said anything of that sort to me.”

“No? Shit. Maybe I hallucinated it then. Still, my opinion stands.”

“I don’t recall ever asking for your opinion—”

Felix holds a manicured hand up in interruption. “Hey. Don’t go slathering me with that attitude just because you couldn’t help yourself with this one. Two minutes ago you were begging me for a solution, which; news flash, there isn’t. She's cursed, you’ll consume her, that’s the way it goes.”

Minho drops his head to his desk, forehead thumping against the oak. Maybe if he knocks himself out, all this will have fixed itself by the time he comes to.

“What were you even trying to do, anyway?” Felix asks, attention turned to the night view of the city.

“I don’t even know anymore. I just... I wanted the new kid off my team. His background check pulled up some shady stuff.”

“Background check?” Felix balks.

“What? It’s routine.”

“Sure it is. So, cursing him was the only way you could think to remove him?” Felix scoffs. “You couldn’t have just, I don’t know, had him fired?”

Minho mumbles into the wood, “Firing him would have brought attention on the team. On me. I didn’t want that. I just wanted him gone quietly. Cursing him would have killed two birds with one stone, so I figured I'd just do that, and... yeah. Shit. I mixed the coffees up. Fuck.”

“And having him inexplicably disappear definitely wouldn’t have warranted some kind of investigation that would trace him back here or anything.” Felix rolls his lavender eyes.

“Listen,” Minho sighs, propping up on his elbows, “I appreciate, in hindsight, it was a dumb thing to do, but I literally do not need the sass from you right now. You said it yourself; I need solutions.”

Felix crosses his arms over his chest, unimpressed. “And I told you; there aren’t any.”

It might be a truth that Felix is presenting him, but all the same, Minho can’t entertain it. She doesn’t deserve this fate, not by any justification.

“Okay, look. I know you like the girl, but I really don’t see what the big deal is. Another will come along just like her. They always do. You know how reincarnation works.”

Minho feels the itch of irritation crawl up his spine. “So, what, I have to wait another hundred years for her to come back into existence? Just so I can fuck it up again? No.”

It’s not even that he ‘likes’ her. Indeed, he thinks the sentiment to fall wildly short of describing how taken with her he is, how taken he has been since meeting her a little over seven months ago. If asked, he doesn’t think himself capable of identifying a single obvious point of fascination about her; it’s more than that. It’s something that compels him to take flight of raven and perch outside her bedroom window at night until peaceful slumber finds her. Something that urges him to maintain a boundary of respect and professionalism if only so he can indulge in the addictive sting of quiet yearning that sits in his chest. Something that drives him to stay to the very darkest hours of the evenings until she’s done with work, because God forbid she ever be left alone.

He knew the risks, when he decided to step over the line he had so solidly drawn between them. There was (and still is) potential for risk in countless ways; her discovery of his true nature, the question of her safety simply being in his presence, her mortality a doomsday clock over whatever relationship he could hope to build with her.

But he had to try; the desire ran too deep. In getting to know her he hoped even to quell said desires to a manageable level, for idols are often found unworthy of their pedestals when rose tinted glasses are removed and reality is allowed to show. But, of course, he found instead that the opposite was true. She was just as kind as he thought her to be, just as amicable as he believed, even more beautiful up close than he dared to entertain. Saving her from the path of a rogue moped was, he thinks, the final nail in the coffin of his affections. To hold her in his arms and feel her fragility under palm; Minho’s never known such visceral want, and it was only through centuries of practiced masquerading that he was able to untangle himself from the embrace at all.

“I mean, how do you even mix the coffees up? It’s like, you had one job, my guy,” Felix comments nonchalantly, inspecting his nails.

“I was... distracted.”

“Distracted how?”

Perhaps it’s cowardice that stops Minho outright being able to tell his friend the truth of it; that he was mid-way asking her to dinner and had been preoccupied with thoughts of doing just that when he issued the coffees incorrectly. It was his own mistake, his own involvement and desire to be involved that wrought said mistake.

He’d never hear the end of it.

His silence must say it all as Felix eventually sighs. “Fine. Well, if nothing else, you know she’ll have an eventful night. I wonder what it is makes her tick that way.”

Minho draws tight, tension in his limbs. To sit and speculate on all the illicit things she might be dreaming about seems a solid way to drive himself to further insanity.

“I really don’t want to know,” he deadpans.

“Really? You’re not curious? I thought you wanted to dick that—”

“Felix,” the elder demon warns.

The dreams of his victims are personal to each one. Highly unique, born from their respective subconsciousness's, thus rendering them at the mercy of their own fantasies, no matter how deeply they’re buried. With the addition of Minho’s demon blood they are magnified to an uncannily lifelike degree, leaving the victim unable to distinguish them from reality. Indeed, the ‘realer’ it feels, the more effective the result. Yet such personal reliance means the length of time it takes for a soul to swell with lust can vary from victim to victim, and while Minho can sometimes glean from their lifestyle how long he might expect to wait, it’s far from fool-proof. Even so and despite the uncertainty, he’s never tempted to look in on them; that is, the dreams. He makes a point of keeping himself stalwartly segregated from the wants of the souls he intends to consume, in doing so ensuring minimal involvement on his part and perhaps, if he were to look a little deeper, to uphold a level of respect. He consumes because he has to, not because he wants to, therefore sees no sense in further invading that which he will eventually claim.

All the same, he must admit to the rampant curiosity that hovers around his sensibilities. What is it that she dreams of when her inhibitions are lowered? What is it that she craves to feel when driven to desperation? And most importantly, who is it that she lusts after when unable to hide; if anyone at all?

“You are curious,” the faerie drags himself from the wall, slides himself to perch on the edge of the desk. “Why don’t you just take a little look?”

Minho shakes his head. “I can't. It’s not right.”

“Are you worried you’ll get jealous?”

“What?”

Felix leans over the desk. “Are you worried you’ll get so turned on by what you see you won’t be able to control yourself?”

Minho inhales a slow, deep breath. “Do you honestly think I'm that weak? Me?”

“For any other human, no, but you’ve been nursing a major hard-on for this girl since you met her, so...”

“I’m not going to look, end of discussion.”

“But you could.”

“Yes, I could, of course I fucking could, but I'm capable of exercising more restraint than that,” Minho seethes.

“More restraint than me, you mean,” Felix adds, hopping from the desk. He strolls over to the window, popping the latch and throwing it open for a bluster of chill air to soak into the room. Minho would chide him for it on any other occasion—they’re on the twenty-fifth floor—but tonight, he simply hasn’t the strength.

“I’ll come see you again tomorrow,” the blonde faerie quips, shuddering through the wisp of iridescent shimmer that engulfs him as dainty chiffon wings peel from his back.

“Don’t bother.”

“Aw, you don’t mean that babe. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I've an orgy to attend.”

Fucking sex faeries.

“Take my advice,” his trilling lingers as he shrinks to the size of a thimble quicker than a flash, “go look in on her! It'll make you feel less bad about ruining her life!”

“Ruining her...?”

And with that, he’s gone, out the window to flit elegantly across the dark horizon, no bigger than a firefly and often mistaken for one.

Minho slumps into his chair. Defeated, annoyed, exhausted now that the prospect of what he’s done is catching up to him. He wonders if a solution is perhaps staring him in the face, if he’s just too immersed in the mortification to see it. Either way, for now he supposes that Felix is right. There’s nothing he can do. The deed is done, and accidental or not, it doesn’t discriminate.

And so he must prepare himself for the inevitable.

***

You’re surprisingly rested, all things considered.

Getting ready for work with a spring in your step and carrying the glow of positivity all the way to the office building, you wonder if this feeling of ecstasy comes after all dreams had by all people, for indeed, last night’s was the very first you’ve ever experienced.

Do all dreams feel so real? Do they all linger so vividly in memory? Is it normal to dream of such wild impossibility as monsters? All questions bearing moot answers, you suppose, for the truth of it is one that you’re knowingly misconstruing to your own selfish benefit; now you know what it feels like to be in his arms, caught by his lips, the object of his desire, even if entirely imaginary.

“Good morning, everyone!”

Your beaming greeting is met with bleary stares over monitors and coffee cups.

“What the hell has gotten into you?” Seungmin snipes from his disorganised desk.

“Nothing,” you shrug. “Aren’t I allowed to be chipper in the morning?”

“No. You’re not. You’re supposed to be miserable, like the rest of us.”

“Too bad!” you sing-song. “Today’s going to be a good day. I can feel it.”

Seungmin gags. “God, it’s like she woke up a Disney princess.”

“Lay off, man,” Jisung tuts, “a bit of positivity in here will do us good. Morning!”

“Morning,” you grin at him, sinking into your desk chair with a flourish to fire up your computer.

“Did you get dicked or something?"

You scoff out loud. “That kind of question will land you in HR, Kim.”

“So answer it, make it worth the punishment.”

“No way, I'm not giving you ammunition to fire off around the water cooler.”

“Ammunition?” he repeats. “Are you accusing me of spreading gossip? About my colleagues, no less?”

The stern look you afford him over your monitor says it all, the man cracking his façade of offense with his inability to remain stoic. “Yeah, alright, fine,” he caves. “But the fact you’re withholding makes it all the more suspicious.”

“Seungmin, seriously—”

Jisung’s complaints are ignored as the man continues, “I mean, you didn’t deny it, right? And if it was some random hook-up, you wouldn’t be so secretive about it, which can only mean you’ve got something to hide.”

You roll your eyes, shoving up from your chair. You’re in serious need of caffeine if you’re going to be subjected to cutthroat Kim’s interrogation all day.

“Or maybe it's just none of your business? I’m honestly touched you’re so bothered about me but you’re reading way too much into this. I just woke up in a good—”

“Did you finally fuck him?”

The question is a proverbial punch to your gut, both the audacity of it and the blunt nature striking twice over.

“Seungmin!” Jisung hisses, starting up from his desk. “That was way out of line.”

“Relax, Jesus. It’s an innocent question.”

But it isn't, and you know it. There’s no trace of innocence, but rather vitriol in his voice and in the calculating stare he’s giving you, heavy with judgement. Indeed, it’s the use of the pronoun as opposed to the name that is perhaps the most wounding thing of all; the implication that he knows of your affections for the man you dreamt of the night prior, has probably always known, and worse than that: it’s apparently common knowledge amongst the team.

Tight panic winds around you, restrictive and sobering. Whatever traces of content your dream had left behind are firmly thrashed, leaving behind the bleak reality that your unrequited yearning has likely been a topic of much amusement for those you work so closely with. No doubt they pity you. Mock you. Prefix your name with ‘poor’ or ‘stupid’ in hushed conversation, because they assuredly know—just as you do—that the chances of your workplace crush ever seeing fruition are non-existent.

The creak of the main space door cuts through the tension. Heavy, familiar steps cross the office, stopping their abrupt pace on walking into the blanket of silence.

“What’s going on?”

Minho’s voice is a knife to your chest; after the events of yesterday and those just passed you suppose it makes a bleak sort of sense.

Seungmin straightens up in his chair, clears his throat. “Nothing. You’re late.”

“I had to stop somewhere on the way.”

You catch a glimpse of his form through your peripherals, his lingering presence at your side demands that you meet his eyes. The moment you do, you wish never to have had such a dream as you did. Every inch of him is composed and collected, yet your gaze is drawn straight to the lips you were so consumed by.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

“Y— Yes. Yeah. Of course. Good morning.”

He hovers a moment, poised as though he wishes to say something, yet seems to think better of it and instead heads to his office. No doubt in small part due to Seungmin’s critical eye from across the space, though surely in larger part due to the air suspended between you. You reason that, on his part, the awkwardness must be residue from yesterday’s outburst, and that perhaps, after rest, he feels less importantly on the matter.

You decide it best not to broach the subject until he does. You’re loath to put yourself in any further situations with potential to be misinterpreted. Besides, maintaining distance from him until the remnant memories of your illicit dream have passed is assuredly sensible; you’d rather not be reminded of what he looks like underneath the charcoal Armani.

At least, not in public.

***

Minho’s surprised by how good she looks.

Not in the misogynistic sense; he doesn’t consider himself important or relevant enough to dictate what makes a woman (or person) look good on any particular day, and he’d never dare to impose his own imaginings of what constitutes a ‘good look’ on anyone else, ever.

She always looks Minho’s kind of good, even on the days he hears her complain of difficult sleep or uncooperative hair days. He wonders sometimes if perhaps she’s hard on herself that way, conditioned by a patriarchal society to meet beauty standards that she exceeds anyway through simply being herself. Minho supposes she wouldn’t want to hear that. Probably wouldn’t believe it. That’s partly why he keeps it to himself.

Indeed, it’s not that Minho’s surprised by how good she looks because she rarely looks good—that’s simply not true—but rather he’s surprised because her looking good is in direct spite of what must have been a testing night for her, the first of many following her cursing.

He thinks it must have been a testing night, because he doesn’t know for certain. Despite Felix’s encouragement and general bad influence, he ultimately resisted the urge to look in on her dreams, and therefore was able to face her just now with relative composure. In truth, he doesn’t think he can shoulder the guilt of invading her privacy as well as that which he feels for cursing her at all: even lust demons have their limits, apparently.

Sinking into his desk chair, he shakes the wireless mouse atop the pad, the monitor subsequently flicking to life. He pulls up his calendar and scans down the agenda for today: a typical morning meeting with the other seniors and division manager to delegate cases; a lunchtime appointment with his newest client, Mr. Bang, to discuss his defamation case; a witness interview in the afternoon for the aforementioned case, and finally, a late conference call. Nothing too exciting from what he can tell, though a good percentage of the work is firefighting and thus any standard working day rarely allows for total and complete planning, despite his attempts.

There is one thing, however, not listed on the agenda that he knows he must address. As senior attorney and—far more importantly, designated head of the small team working under him—it is his responsibility to watch out for them inasmuch as professional boundaries call for. He is obligated to monitor their workloads, and by extension their welfares, therefore they are both things he keeps an eye on, albeit quietly. If someone needs a break, he’ll act accordingly. If someone can stand to take on more, he’ll delegate. But therein lies the issue he mulls over; professional boundaries, the obligations of his job role. There is only so much care he is expected to give from an occupational standpoint, and so to interfere beyond his remit is to land himself in all sorts of potential hot water. He can’t be seen to be too involved, too caring, too invested in the relationships of his team.

But still... Kim Seungmin. Minho’s not ignorant to the nickname the man has earned himself as a result of his sharp tongue and ruthless wit. Neither his vast experience nor impressive track record in the courtroom are things to be sniffed at, and Minho would never contest that, but neither does he feel that either of those things excuse the way he lets his ego run away with him. In fact, he imagines them to be rather the cause of the attitude. In particular, Seungmin seems to have painted something of a target on her back over the last few months, giving her an especially hard time both in relation to her performance (with which Minho finds less than no issue), and her private life. Minho supposes that alone is ample reason for him to discipline the man, and had planned to do just that, but having overheard their conversation only minutes prior to his arrival, he now finds himself unsure of how to proceed.

“Did you finally fuck him?”

The question echoes around Minho’s thoughts like bellowed words from a town crier, accompanied by blistering copper bell that makes his head hurt. He guesses himself to be the subject of the statement by sheer process of elimination; Jisung was present during the exchange and Seungmin himself surely wouldn’t be asking had he been on the receiving end. But finally? For it to be final implies that the assumed desire to fuck has been present for some time and therefore prolonged to bring a sure feeling of relief when fulfilled, and therein lies Minho’s bewilderment. Are his feelings perhaps reciprocated, after all? Moreover, if this is as common knowledge amongst the team as it appears to be, how didn’t Minho catch on? Clearly there were signs, moments, perhaps even something she said or did that alluded to such desire, yet he missed them?

Putting his quiet excitement aside, Minho surmises that if all this is true and her interest in him does equate to something less than professional, it can only mean further complication. If he were to proceed and discipline Seungmin for the way he berates her so relentlessly, would he be validating the suspicion? Would his involvement be seen as coming from a place of affection as opposed to in official capacity? For once, he can’t make out the correct course of action.

All of this is stress enough without even considering that he has inadvertently cursed the one person whose potential feelings actually mean something, for there have been many with them over the centuries of his life, yet none have mattered.

And so, he decides that burying himself in his work is best. Perhaps he’ll take on an extra case or two during the morning meeting. Keeping himself occupied so his thoughts don’t wander is the safest immediate way to ensure his sanity, and if he loads the team up with tasks of their own, perhaps everything will simply blow over. Besides, if Seungmin continues the way he has been no doubt he’ll end up in HR’s orbit (again) before too long anyway, which would be the problem effectively solved.

A gentle knock on his office door brings Minho back to the room.

“Come in!”

As the door opens, Jisung’s blonde head of hair appears, his countenance always pleasant. Minho likes dealing with him, for it’s never a task.

“Sorry to bother you, I just wondered if you’d heard from Hyunjin at all?”

Minho fishes for his phone from his inner jacket pocket, taps the screen to a void of no notifications.

“No, why?”

Jisung nods. “Okay. It’s just that, he’s not here, and it’s not like him. I tried to call him but he’s not picking up, so...”

Icy disquiet washes over the elder, the itch of foreboding nagging him amongst a realisation he can only hope isn’t on point.

“I’ll deal with it. Thanks, Jisung.”

The blonde waves it off, ducks out of the office quickly. Minho flicks his phone to life once more, unlocks it and dials a particular contact. A few rings later, and a voice bleeds through the other end.

“Good morning, darling. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“What the hell did you do?”

There’s a second of silence, a huff of breath. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Cut the shit, Felix. I’m not in the mood.”

“Damn, alright. I assume you’re referring to the kid?”

“Of course I'm referring to the fucking kid. He didn't show up for work this morning and he’s about as religious with his timekeeping as you are with your waxes.”

Felix chuckles high and airy, before evening out into a sigh. “He’s alright, if that’s what you’re wondering. He’s just not your problem anymore.”

“Yeah, no, I'll need more than that.”

“Why do you even care, Minho?” the faerie hisses. “Not even twelve hours ago you were planning to literally eat him—”

“Do as I say, not as I do, how about that?” the elder retorts.

“Such a damn hypocrite. Maybe you should get involved with the human chick, you could do with a reason to unclench.”

“Felix—”

“Fine! Fine. Let’s just say he’s tucked up safely in my basement boudoir waiting patiently for my return. And maybe he has a newfound penchant for pegging, but that's neither here nor there.”

“You bewitched him.”

“I did no such thing. I simply introduced myself, and what happened after that was out of my control.”

Fucking sex faeries, Minho thinks for the second time in as many days. While it’s true they have no abject control over who falls under their bewitching auras in total servitude, it’s not entirely true to say they don’t use it to their advantages.

“He’s happy, Minho. Trust me. And far more importantly, he’s off your team, just like you wanted.”

Minho supposes he can’t complain too much. It was a problem, and now it’s solved, and better yet he didn’t have to lift so much as a finger for it.

“You’re not about to tell me I owe you, right?” Minho slumps back into his chair. “I don’t like being in debt.”

“Not at all. I was in desperate need of a new service top, anyway.”

“Okay, alright, less detail, please.”

“Honestly, it’s the ones you’d never suspect that turn out to be the most pliant—”

“Hanging up now!”

It’s to Felix’s airy laughter that Minho does just that, ending the call. While still a little uneasy about it, he supposes there’s nothing he can do now. His hands are tied, the decision was made for him, though it does highlight a certain helplessness as to the bleak state of his biggest problem; now she really was cursed for nothing.

A quick glance at his wristwatch confirms he has ten minutes until the meeting. Just enough time to get a coffee and compose himself. He moves to go and do just that, when an email pings in amongst a shrill tone, the subject line of which he catches via the desktop notification: ‘FAO all staff, annual office party!’

Minho’s heart sinks. He doesn’t even need to open it to tell the contents, for it’s the same every year: a party organised and hosted by the HR department, the intention to appreciate the ‘hardworking staff of Help, Heart and Justice Limited’ by offering them free booze and a variety selection of vol-au-vents. It’s the board’s way of getting around bonuses every year, and in truth, is largely effective. People let their hair down (and often much more than that), drink too much and eat on the company bank, content to work themselves ragged until the next such event comes along. Almost like an annual purge, now that he thinks about it; one night during which the most debauched acts of drunken embarrassment and scandalous involvement are allowed and are subsequently the subject of much office gossip for months afterwards.

It’s not Minho’s scene; never has been. Up until now he’s been able to get away with making a brief appearance, and he intends to do the same this year. Putting in polite small talk with the people that matter to ensure said appearance is noticed is key, he finds, allowing him to surreptitiously slip away before things really ramp up and he’s tainted by association.

He can already hear the turbulence from outside. Raised voices and exclamations of excitement; Jisung declaring his intentions concerning copious amounts of booze, Seungmin expressing this will be his chance to get in the knickers of the new girl from reception. Minho’s jaw ticks; he makes a mental note to request with HR this kind of email be sent at the end of the working day next time.

Collecting himself and pasting on the face of composure, he shoves up from his desk and strides to the door, exiting into the main office.

“Minho, did you get the—”

“I got it, Jisung, thank you,” he interrupts the chipper blonde. “Let’s not have it get in the way of our days, okay? Lots to do.”

He can’t help but notice that she appears to be impervious to the electric atmosphere, absorbed in a stack of documents, skimming them and flicking to the next page with her brow furrowed.

“Hey, I'm going to need that day off, by the way,” Seungmin pipes up.

Minho turns to him, immediately irritated. “What day?”

“Friday?” the younger replies incredulously. “The day of the party. I’ll get me a fresh cut, maybe pick up a new suit—”

“Well, you know the procedure, Seungmin. Fill in a request form and email it to me, I'll review it for approval.”

“Review it?” Seungmin scoffs, stands up from his chair to saunter towards the senior. He puts a hand on his shoulder, meant in a fashion of comradery that Minho feels is wildly misplaced as he drawls, “Come on man, you know how important this party is to me. Can't you just make an exception this one time?”

Minho shrugs him off, readjusts his Armani suit jacket. “I don’t make exceptions. Frankly I'm surprised you’d even suggest it.”

“I’m not— I wasn’t— I just mean that, it can take you a while to get to those approvals, like, a long time, you’re so busy—”

“Did you get a promotion?”

Seungmin blinks, dumbfounded. Minho squares his shoulders, and asks again, “Did you get a promotion, Kim? Are you my boss now? Do you pay my wages?”

“I... No?”

“No? Alright. I wasn’t sure for a minute there, seeing as you’re so apparently concerned with my workload and what I do with my time.”

A quiet chuckle comes from the other side of the office; too quiet for Seungmin to have heard it, but Minho does. A surreptitious glance in that direction reveals that she’s watching intently, ears pricked and eyes wide.

“Man, come on,” Seungmin sighs, hand back on Minho’s shoulder, “you don’t need to be like this, I was just asking for a favour. It’s not a big fucking deal.”

Something deep within Minho throbs unforgivingly; not the usual itch of irritation that might unsettle, but a heavier, hotter urge that he recognises as usually preceding a more extreme form of ‘communication’. He draws tight, reminds himself where he is, speaks to Seungmin with a quiet breath: “In my office. Now.”

Ever aware of the person he’s supposed to be, doing this behind closed doors is assuredly the best way to shut it down. Once inside and with Seungmin following close behind, Minho perches on the edge of his desk, noting the attitude still written all over the younger’s features. He’s determined to do this calmly.

“Let me make something crystal clear, Kim. You keep addressing me like we’re friends, like we know each other beyond our roles at work, which we don’t. Funnily enough it’s only something you do when we’re in the company of others, which leads me to believe you’re fishing for some sort of clout amongst the junior staff, as though people thinking the existence of a friendship between you and I will somehow advance your status in this company.”

Seungmin balks. “Excuse me? That’s not what I—”

“Furthermore,” the elder continues, “it’s come to my attention that you’re behind with your admin. We have an administrative assistant on the team to assist with that kind of thing, her expertise in all forms of litigation is precisely what we took her on for, so I advise that you consult her if you’re struggling.”

“I am not struggling—”

“This leads me to my next point; the way you conduct yourself at work, Kim, is frankly appalling. You continue to demonstrate a total lack of respect both for your colleagues and yourself, and while I'm far from qualified or motivated enough to advise that you do something about the latter, I am in a position to inform you that if your conduct around the office doesn't improve, you’ll be placed on a poor performance and capability plan and escorted down the disciplinary route.”

Seungmin stutters, his jaw agape. For once, it appears the man is speechless.

“And while we’re on the subject,” Minho sighs, tone a shade gentler if only to ease some of the pressure, “I am aware of the rumours.”

“R— Rumours?”

Minho nods. “The ones concerning a particular member of staff and I. The ones you alluded to this morning in front of her.”

Colour drains from Seungmin’s face as he wrings his hands. “I... I didn’t start it. I mean, it’s not even really a rumour. People don’t talk about it, I mean. It’s just... it’s like something we just know about, you know?”

Something we just know about. As though the question of her feelings is no question at all, simply a statement of fact that Minho feels a fool for never having noticed.

“I don’t want to hear it, Kim. I’m not about to entertain it either way. All I ask is that you refresh yourself on Help, Heart and Justice’s zero tolerance policy to inappropriate office relations and kindly stop circulating such nonsense around the team.”

Seungmin nods amicably, before Minho thinks to add, “And lay off her. She has enough on her plate as it is. We all do.”

“Of course, sir. I can do that.”

Minho supposes that’s point made well enough, and probably better than it would have been had he gone down the official route.

“Fine. Good. That’s all, then.”

Seungmin backs up, offering polite bows never before seen until he’s out of Minho’s sight, and the senior attorney feels a weight removed from his shoulders; like a substantial measure of the tension has evaporated with the confrontation, if one could call it that. He’s even somewhat proud of himself for exercising such control. The closer he draws to requiring his monthly feed, the less of a hold he has over his urges and emotions, and he knows it’s fast approaching that time.

A quiet knock on the door is followed by its immediate opening, a face he’d hoped to avoid directly presenting itself. Being in her presence is a test of his self-control at the best of times; never mind when he’s this hungry.

She smells like jasmine and fresh rain; no matter what she’s wearing or the perfume she masks it with, always, that’s what Minho picks up. Humans are unique that way, each of them carrying a scent undetectable to them that tantalises those of the Underworld. It’s what first piqued Minho’s attention, he’ll admit.

He gets off the desk. “I was actually just on my way out—”

“What was that about?”

The question is direct, and Minho would gladly tell her if not for his professional responsibilities.

“Nothing. We just had a few things to discuss,” he says instead, a half-truth.

She crosses her arms tightly, the subsequent swell of her cleavage beneath her blouse a demonic temptation that Minho tears his eyes from in the milliseconds he registers them wandering.

“Fine. If you won’t tell me that, tell me what happened yesterday instead.”

“Yesterday?”

“The coffee. Your... freakout,” she hesitates, though the term is surely accurate. Minho freaked out, and he knows it, yet it’s just another thing he can’t divulge the truth of.

He scratches his nape. “I’m sorry about all that. I don’t really have an excuse. I suppose I just... was embarrassed?”

She doesn’t believe it; Minho sees in her eyes that she doesn't believe it. But she wouldn't believe the truth either, and so what else can he do? She sighs, drops her arms to her sides. There’s resignation in the action, and Minho’s glad.

“You also asked me to dinner,” she states.

Minho’s chest aches. A moment of foolish weakness never to be fulfilled. Felix was right; trying to get involved was a bad idea.

“Did you mean it—”

“I really do have to go. I’m already very late for a meeting. If you’ll excuse me.”

Taking several long strides across his office, he walks past her, about to make his exit when a weak grip on his arm compels him to stop. There’s no force behind the gesture, just a silent plea to wait, to speak, to meet her halfway because she knows there’s so much more to be said. Meeting her gaze evokes the swell of arousal he’s usually so adept at concealing, but this time she’s simply so close.

And she steps closer still, maintains her grip on the sleeve of his Armani. She speaks softly, “If there was something else, you could tell me.”

Minho hears her very breath, the way it forms around her lips when it escapes her mouth.

“I would listen,” she adds. “Whatever it is.”

“There’s nothing else.”

“You’re lying to me. I can feel it. You asked me to dinner before... whatever that was, and now you’re acting like it never happened. Like you didn’t mean it.”

Minho debates, in that moment, simply being honest. Even without the context she knows she’s been fed a lie, and furthermore is so certain of it that she would risk potential embarrassment by direct approach, making a demand for answers. He admires it. Admires her. Would that he were less of a pessimist, he might find it in himself to trust that she means it when she says she’d believe him.

“Go back to work. Please.”

With a gentle movement he removes her grip from his sleeve, her crestfallen demeanour an extra kick to the teeth that he can only walk off as he strides through the main office, a destination of nowhere in mind. He’s already criminally late for the meeting, too late to justify turning up now. He’ll just have to make his excuses later and make do with the cases nobody else wants.

Fucking office party.

***

Going the rest of the day in deliberate avoidance of your boss is relatively easy, all things considered.

Probably because he’s actively doing the same of you.

Tasks he’d normally have you do are instead assigned to Jisung, the blonde attorney being run ragged from one moment to the next. Things he’d usually call to you from across the office space are instead communicated by email, your inbox a perfect demonstration of what happens when two people simply can’t bear to look at each other for any prolonged period. Even Seungmin has been unusually astute, buried in the case files he’s had on his desk for weeks, removing himself only to take a call here and there.

Now approaching five o’clock, you’re gearing up for heading home. You've no desire to stay late and arguably no reason to with the sudden easing of your workload. Minho will probably be here for many more hours, cooped up in that office until either hunger or need for sleep demand he takes a break. Thinking back on what occurred earlier—your misplaced attempt at an appeal for the truth—you’re naturally somewhat nonplussed. While unsure what kind of response you were going to be met with, you had hoped at least to be granted the decency of acknowledgment; recognition that he had, in fact lied to you, that he is indeed keeping something from you, even if you can’t begin to speculate on what that might be. That he had meant it when he asked you out.

But you were bold with him, perhaps overly so, and now he’s avoiding you like you’re patient zero.

Fine, you suppose. If that’s how he’s going to conduct himself, so be it. You made your play, put your cards on the table, and he chose to turn from you. It’s not the answer you wanted, but the answer you have all the same, and you’d be even more an idiot to ignore it in the hopes he might still come around.

Though come around to what, you’re not even sure. There’s still every possibility that his invitation to dinner was meant purely as he made it out; a form of apology for the failed lunch with no romantic connotations attached whatsoever, in which case you have wildly misunderstood his intentions.

A sharp vibration from your handbag interrupts the spiral of doubt; checking your phone quickly reveals a text message from Gina.

>> drinks tonight?

You respond immediately:

<< you read my fucking mind bestie

***

Three cocktails deep and fully apprised of the tea, Gina stares you down from across the dimly lit table.

Despite the length of time you’ve been friends for (which by now feels ten times longer than the three years it actually is), you’ve never found it all that easy to read her. Perpetually poker faced, it’s notoriously difficult to tell how she’s feeling from one moment to the next. Unlike you, she’s controlled and composed, has full reign over her emotions. She reminds you a little of Minho in that respect.

Though perhaps not so frustrating to deal with.

“You should just ask him to dinner,” she finally states, as though it’s a dead obvious solution.

“Are you crazy?”

“Are you?” she shoots back, stark green eyes narrowed. “You’ve had a wide-on for this guy for the longest time, he finally asks you out, and you botch it?”

“How the hell did I botch it; he’s the one that threw a tantrum about the stupid coffee—”

She shakes her head, holds up a manicured hand, “Men are hacks, my friend. Their tiny peanut brains are too susceptible to distraction, it’s up to us to bring them back on track.”

You roll your eyes. “I tried, I told you. He didn’t even acknowledge it all, just acted like he hadn’t heard me and told me to get back to work.”

Gina taps the screen of her phone, pulls up the cocktail bar’s ordering app and flits through the screens with practiced ease, finishing the last of her pornstar martini while doing so.

“Maybe he’s just too scared to make a move. He’s your boss, right?” she muses when she’s done, checking her lipstick in her front-facing camera.

“He’s the head of the team, so yeah, I guess,” you shrug.

“See, there you go. He asked you to dinner, remembered who he was and had a momentary freakout over it, now he’s backpedalling all the way to the starting line.”

“Why would him being my boss matter? We’re just people, we work together, our positions don’t mean anything.”

“Maybe not to you, but I mean, you only have to look at someone the wrong way in a workplace these days, right? He’s in a position of power. He’s a man. You’re a subordinate woman—” she holds her hands up on your glare, “—in theory, you’re a subordinate woman. Shit, he’s basically guilty already.”

“That’s ridiculous,” you huff.

“That’s the world we live in, honey. With all due respect he doesn’t know you’re not going to go all ‘hashtag me too’ on him.”

The conversation is interrupted by an approaching waiter, his depositing of two more pornstar martinis and two accompanying shots of Prosecco met with thanks of gratitude. You take yours eagerly, sipping the top layer of sweet foam around the floating pomegranate slice.

“That’s why I think you should just make the move. Make it clear that you want him, and he won’t be so worried about jumping your bones,” she shrugs matter-of-factly. “Either that or just approach him outside of work hours. Didn’t you say there was a party coming up? Do it there.”

You hum around the lip of the cocktail glass. “Nah, he probably won’t go to that. Besides, I don’t think that’s it. It just... it feels like there’s something else. Something he’s not telling me, and not because he doesn’t want to. More like he can’t?”

Gina twirls a strand of silky black hair around her index. “I think you’re too dickmatised to see past the red flags, if I'm being honest.”

“Red flags?” you repeat, exasperated.

“He’s a workaholic,” she holds one finger up, “doesn’t take good enough care of himself,” a second finger goes up, “hasn’t dated in at least the last seven months—”

“— That I know of,” you interrupt.

“Whatever, he’s still freakishly celibate for a hot guy,” and flicks up a third finger. “He’s also loved by everyone.”

“Oh come on, being liked is a red flag now?” you scoff amongst another sip.

“No, but being so perfect that you’ve never given people a reason to say a single bad thing about you is. That kind of perfect is cultured perfect; he’s trying too hard.”

Perhaps there’s a line of logic somewhere in Gina’s reasoning, but getting swept up in her self-righteous propaganda has landed you in trouble before. Just because she sounds like she’s making sense, doesn’t mean she is.

“I had my first ever dream last night.”

“Oh, good,” Gina blinks. “Do tell.”

“It was about him.”

Your friend takes a drawn-out sip of her cocktail before muttering, “Dickmatised.”

“Shut up. Like I can help it,” you chortle unceremoniously,

“Saucy, or?”

“Oh my god. Heinz saucy. Kind of weird though.”

“Weird, like, kinky weird?”

“No. I dreamt that he was this... monster, or something. Demon, maybe? I don’t know. He had these huge wings and—”

“Is this your way of trying to tell me you’re a monster fucker, honey?”

You stretch over the table, swat at her arm in playful scolding. “You’re just jealous.”

Gina sighs, her full lips pouted. “Damn right. It’s a drought over here, I can hardly even remember what dick feels like. At this point I'd take anything; monster included.”

“And she calls me a monster fucker.”

“Needs must baby,” Gina laughs.

The fourth pornstar martini goes down almost too nicely, the fifth and sixth following closely behind.

Before Gina can make suggestions for the seventh, you bid her goodnight and call yourself a taxi, stumbling in through the front door of your apartment and engaging in a hunt for the frozen pizza you know you bought sometime in the last month.

It’s not a particularly elegant way to end the night; naked from the waist up eating burnt pizza in bed while you watch (and yell at) Instagram reels, but it’s times like this you suppose company wouldn’t be so bad. A warm body to come home to and have dote on you, take care of you the way you sometimes neglect. Indeed, it’s only through sheer stress at the thought of working tomorrow under a hangover that you remember to take a milk thistle capsule and chug down a pint of water.

Tonight, there’s no feeling of unease as you set your spinning head to the pillow.

Tonight, you surely won’t dream.

𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚, 𝙧𝙚𝙗𝙡𝙤𝙜, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙞𝙣 𝙖𝙣 𝙖𝙨𝙠 ♡

< 𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙫𝙞𝙤𝙪𝙨 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙚𝙧

You’d never had a first meeting like it; where such connection had been established so soon and with such certainty. But Hyunjin had said he was confident about this one. Rarely did his intuition fail him, and where sex partners were concerned, he possessed an almost uncanny foresight. Still, it was in your nature to be pessimistic, mostly for the sake of avoiding disappointment if they turned out to be—as one or two had—in it for all the wrong reasons. Curses of using the apps to find hookups; you can never be sure which ones are truly up for being the sexual filling of a committed and loving open relationship, the idea appearing an oxymoron to many before they even see it in action. 

But Hyunjin had said he was confident about this one. He’d told you trust him; he’d done the groundwork, after all. Been clear on intentions, on the arrangement you and he had, on the things a potential third party should both possess and be open to should they choose to meet and involve themselves.  

Jeongin chose to meet. Jeongin chose to involve himself. Jeongin understood that he was to be the third party of a threesome organised by a loving couple, and consented to what that meant. All that remained was to decide perhaps the most important thing: did he find you both fuckable enough to go through with it? 

The answer stares you in the face under club haze and adrenaline. Jeongin dances at your front, your arms around his neck by his guide as your boyfriend, a pillar at your back, encloses you with hands on Jeongin’s waist. The man’s face is sharp, almost foxlike, yet still with that boyish edge to it that betrays his innocence; something your boyfriend is no doubt keen to corrupt. As you move to the music with the consistent prod of Hyunjin’s arousal at the base of your spine, you suppose you won’t be here much longer. Hands are keener than they were before, eyes are wanting, lips itching— 

“Can we get the fuck out of here now, baby?”  

You grin into Jeongin’s shoulder, turning to your boyfriend. “Thought you’d never ask.” 

The journey home is as rife with anticipation as any you’ve had. Hyunjin drives—there’s never any drinking on a first meet, just in case—and is rather more reckless in getting all concerned back to the apartment, gambling on the amber lights and running a stop sign or two. Attribute it to the view of his rear mirror, perhaps; it’s not your fault Jeongin appears to enjoy making out in the back seat so much. 

Back on home ground and with the comfort of familiarity now hovering between you and Jeongin, you suppose it’s only fair the other two become equally as acquainted. You offer to mix drinks—Hyunjin wants a bourbon, Jeongin joins you in a white wine—and give the two a moment alone as you retreat to the kitchen. If you know your boyfriend at all, he’ll make use of it. Soring drinks takes perhaps two minutes more than it would by deliberate design, and with two glasses of white carried by the stems in one hand, a short of bourbon in the other, you return to the living room.  

Times like this you lament never having been chosen as one with a photographic memory, when God was lining up the humans and making them so. On your entrance, Jeongin is midway disposing of his shirt, your boyfriend’s eager gaze spurring him on. The former is straddled comfortably over the latter’s lap, their mouths enacting a lazy exploration that has thick, hot arousal curling around you. Hyunjin detaches himself, looks to you with heavy lids. 

“Sorry, baby. Couldn’t help it...” 

You shake your head, grinning. “By all means, carry on. I’m good to watch for a while.” 

Jeongin turns to you, his complexion flushed an endearing pink. “Well, I’m not,” he complains. “Come here.” 

“My. You were right about this one, darling,” you scoff, drinks on the coffee table and making your way to them. Jeongin takes your hand when you’re close enough, pulls you to sit at Hyunjin’s side. 

“Told you to trust me.” 

“I know.” 

Jeongin clambers from Hyunjin’s lap, the latter looking on as the young man slides over you, encouraging you to lay on your back. A groan slips from you when an eager mouth finds your neck, your jawline, the crook of your shoulder. Keen hands make quick work of popping open your blouse and rucking up your skirt, and as disheveled as you may be underneath him, he looks at you with an adoration more fitting a relationship of years. 

He puffs strands of faded pink from his dark eyes so he might see you properly. You curl a hand over his shoulder, his frame lean and deceptively strong. He’s so warm. His calves are still over Hyunjin’s lap, your boyfriend still sitting and watching. 

“May I...” Jeongin hesitates, falling silent. 

“May you...?” 

“Ask for what you want, babe,” Hyunjin says. “This only works if we communicate.” 

Jeongin nods resolutely. “May I eat your pussy?” 

You blink, momentarily stunned. Somewhere between his beaming grin of white and his slinking down your form to nuzzle your inner thighs, you must have nodded. Your legs are spread and your wetness exposed, and Jeongin does the work of God. His enthusiasm is matched by his hums of delight with every kitten lick and fluttering stripe across your throbbing clit. He tunes into your pleasure threshold with the intuition only one man before him has managed, and that man is currently observing with a smouldering intensity. His arm is doing something; you can’t quite see for laying down, and with the onset of your blistering orgasm, you suppose you simply have to trust his pleasure is in his own hands.  

And then Jeongin whimpers. 

He whimpers, and it reverberates through you, tightening the knot of pleasure that wants so badly to unravel. You prop yourself up by elbows, curiosity piquing, and register what’s happening on Hyunjin’s lap with something of a delay (blame tongue on clitoris). Jeongin’s jeans and boxers have been shucked down, his knees are at a slight bend. He’s now fully over Hyunjin’s lap—the man must have slid closer during your own endeavours—and is writhing with such subtlety you’d never have noticed your boyfriend was two fingers deep in him had he not whimpered to his own delight.  

“Oh, God,” you sigh, orgasm looming. You drop a hand to thread through Jeongin’s silky strands. “Do you like that, baby? Like what my boyfriend is doing to you?” 

Jeongin breathes hot over you, panting illicitly. Fuck, you’re going to come. “F— Feels good. Feels so good.” 

Hyunjin spreads the man’s thick cheeks gently, purses his lips and lolls out his tongue, allowing a thin trickle of warm spit to coat the hole he’s fingering. Jeongin trembles with wanting.  

“Fuck—” 

“Sounds like a great idea,” you sit up as best you can, urging Jeongin to his hands and knees. Confused, he stops, and your orgasm teeters on the brink of release. You grab his face by both hands, kissing him softly. “Want to come with you inside me. Would that be okay?” 

Jeongin moans and bites his lip. “Yeah. Shit, yeah, that’d be okay.” 

“And Hyunjin can fuck you, too?” 

“Please.” 

Hyunjin snorts a gentle laugh. You quirk a brow at him over Jeongin’s shoulder. “You’re sure he’s never done this before.” 

Jeongin answers for you. “This is my first time.” 

“Good,” you kiss him again. “Let’s move this to the bedroom.” 

Whatever clothes remain are discarded on the short tumble to the bedroom, where positions are taken up accordingly. You position on the bed, on your back with legs spread for Jeongin to firstly admire, then to ravish. On his knees, he hunches over to kiss you as he enters you, keen on the connection being felt to his core; and it is, on both sides. The thickness that sinks inside to be fully sheathed, the impressive girth you cannot help but squeeze around for desire of friction; Jeongin curses under his breath, holds your thighs apart. His own penetration comes only seconds after, as he stills inside you and gets accustomed. 

“Such a pretty little ass for me to fuck,” Hyunjin muses, mid-lube application. Jeongin flushes a shade of crimson that would be concerning in any other circumstance, but in this, you share the sentiment. Hyunjin’s always liked to talk, and his penchant for filth is unparalleled.  

When your boyfriend impales him, you feel it. The way Jeongin draws tight and how his cock twitches inside you, how his chest caves with his desirous heaves for breath. The clammy scent of sex that hovers is to be exacerbated, and as Hyunjin holds the man in his embrace from behind to fuck him, Jeongin too gives you yours.  

The steady creak of mattress springs accompanies your litany of whines and pleas for more, and at first, as with any new threesome, it’s a little clumsy. Paces are outmatched until Hyunjin is left to set it, a steady hand on Jeongin’s svelte hip guiding his driving thrust and timing with his taking of Hyunjin’s throbbing length.  

“How does my baby feel?” Hyunjin pants. “She’s a fucking rocket, right?” 

Jeongin nods desperately. “She’s like heaven.” 

“Yeah she is. Tell her for me. Tell her how good her wet cunt feels.” 

“Your cunt feels so good, so wet—” 

You whine pathetically; God, Hyunjin’s mouth. 

“Tell her I love her.” He pounds a thrust into the man. 

“He... Hyunjin loves you... Fuck—” 

“Ask her if she’s happy with your dick inside her, darling,” Hyunjin breathes. 

“Are you... are you happy with my—” 

“Yes,” you groan, “God, you’re doing great, baby. Fucking me so good.” 

Hyunjin licks Jeongin’s jaw, holds your hazy gaze over-shoulder as he whispers to the man’s ear, “Good boy.” 

It’s a sight that should be seen only once in a lifetime, for any more frequently might shave dangerous years from the lifespan. Hyunjin’s taller, stronger, bolder frame behind Jeongin, his shoulder-length blonde matted with sweat that coats the man’s neck and chest; he always does sweat so slick. His thrusts are a fluid art and his muscles contract in stunning dips and waves as he mouths at the neck in front of him, thumbs the swollen nipples that pinken for more, fucks the greedy hole that wants him never to stop. The younger—but equally as beautiful—man adores you as much as his coherence will allow, for being subject to both giving and receiving is no easy task. His hands cup your breasts and trace your navel to your sopping core, the attention to your clit perhaps a near overstimulation with the glide of his length so snug over your g-spot, your hips lifted to allow such an angle. His faded pink is mussed, his neck blotchy with colours that will bloom darker tomorrow, his high-pitched whines a staccato accompaniment to yours. 

“I’m coming—” 

Jeongin is the first, the stiffness with which he finds his crisis and pumps you full to leaking (a pre-negotiated requirement) inspires yours. Both plummeting down a chasm of lust and floating to peaks never before reached is a wildly bizarre sensation, made all the more insane by the sight of your boyfriend breeding the young man that, only two hours before, you were dancing with for the first time. 

Boneless content is the guest of warm silence, and when it passes, there will be cleanup to do. New sheets to find, too. Jeongin, spent on his front between you and your boyfriend, grins lazily and sighs heavily. Of all the partners you’ve had, separately and with Hyunjin, he’s been the undisputed best. 

Huh. 

How you’d been dreading this day.

“Thanks,” you said.

Stepping into the house you once shared with the man that now only regarded you with cold disdain felt like entering a graveyard. In the entrance hallway, all pictures had been taken down; their frames imprinted by dust on the wall. In the front room—a space in which you spent many a late night with takeout and wine and laughter aplenty—there was no trace of you left. The ornaments you’d picked out, the décor you’d arranged, the sofa throws and the cushions and the plush faux-fur rug you’d made love on in the early days: all of it.

A lump of emotion rose in your throat, testing your composure. You’d known this would be hard, but—

“I think that’s everything,” Chan said from behind you, gesturing to the three cardboard boxes stacked high and taped tightly. “If there’s anything missing, you’ll have to let me know.”

You blinked through the sting in your eyes and nodded. “Right.”

Approaching the tower of your belongings, your attention was caught by a scrawling of black marker on the side of the topmost box. Someone had written something, then had scribbled over it erratically. Clearly not well enough, for you could just about decipher it.

“Witch?” you read it out loud, heart sinking.

Chan grimaced. “Sorry. Seungmin was helping me pack everything...”

“I see.”

“Thought I’d coloured over it enough.”

“It’s fine.”

It wasn’t fine, actually, but hashing it out with Chan would achieve precisely nothing. His friends’ opinion of you was now muck; you could almost hear the shit they no doubt slung around and about your name. There was no way Chan hadn’t contributed to it.

You lifted the first box from the stack, surprised by its hefty weight. Chan looked on as you lumbered it to the front door and out to the street, where your car waited.

“Need a hand?” he called from the door.

“No. Thanks.”

Popping the boot and hauling the box inside, you panted through the burn in your arms, rubbing them as you headed back to the house. Chan stepped aside for you to enter.

“I can help, you know,” he said.

“I don’t need your help.”

Chan scoffed. “Right. You never did.”

Your stomach churned uncomfortably. “Don’t start, Chan. Please. I’m just here to get my stuff, then I’ll leave.”

“Get on with it then.”

You turned to glare at him, and in the afternoon light of the bare front room, saw how gaunt he looked. Chan was always on the slimmer side—had been for as long as you’d known him—but this wasn’t the product of any sort of health kick.

Anger suddenly dampened, concern came to the forefront.

“Are you eating enough?” you asked.

Chan’s eyes narrowed under his snapback. “Really?” he snapped.

“What?”

“You’re pretending to give a shit?”

“I’m not pretending, you look like you’ve lost weight—”

“Right, because I’m not fucking eating, but what concern is that of yours? You forfeited any right to check in on me when you destroyed our relationship.”

Rage and upset gathered tightly and brought you to a tremble, tears boiling up before you could hope to quell them.

“Destroyed our relationship?” you repeated, voice breaking. “You really think that’s what I did?”

“I know it is. Look at where we are, what we’re doing. None of this would be happening if it weren’t for you.”

You took a deep breath, blinking tears to their escape. “Suggesting that we open our relationship was not me trying to destroy it. I just wanted something new for us, something that we could explore together—”

Chan held his hands up. “And that’s where we’re different. I never wanted anyone else. I didn’t want anything new.”

“You’re a liar!” you started towards him, emotion now spilling over in waves of hopelessness. “I saw the way you were with that girl from the café; how you two flirted and texted all the goddamn time.”

Chan’s face went pallid with mortification. “What?”

“I never resented you for it,” you said, “I didn’t want to be the kind of delusional that believes her boyfriend is planning to cheat, so I thought opening things up would be easier. It would have taken the thrill of secrecy away, would have taken the pressure off, given us room to breathe a little. But you just... you didn’t want to see it that way.”

“Because it’s not right,” he seethed, taking a step towards you. “I was never going to do anything with her—”

“How could I have known that, Chan? How was I supposed to interpret things when you never communicated with me?”

“You were supposed to fucking trust me.”

“No,” you shook your head, swiping tear-streaked cheeks with your palms, “that’s not fair. It’s not fair to throw that at me now. I trusted you with every fibre of my being. I wouldn’t have even suggested opening up if I didn’t.”

Chan yanked off his snapback and raked a hand through his curls. Pain wrote all over his face, pulling his brows together, thinning his lips.

“Did you... want to see other people?” he then asked.

“In that moment, not really. But if you had agreed, I’d have tried. Seen what’s out there.”

“So I would have had to watch you dating other people? Watch random fucking guys trying to get you into bed?”

“No. Not if you didn’t want to, and if that were the case, I would have wanted boundaries between you and the café girl instead. If you chose monogamy, I was going to ask you to respect that. Opening things only would have worked if we were in it together. But you just... you called everything off. Ended it.”

Chan sagged against the wall. Tears dampened his thick lashes, his cheeks blotched pink with stress.

“I tried to tell you all this. You didn’t want to hear it.”

“Because you were supposed to be mine,” he said. “Just mine.”

Your chest throbbed warm and with a pain of yearning you’d never felt. The simple truth of things was so much bleaker when cards were played and hands shown.

“You don’t own me,” you said. “You never did.”

He nodded, slow and controlled. Then he looked up at you, your eyes meeting across the skeleton of your once shared life.

“But I love you,” he whispered.

You crossed the small space and, without a second thought, embraced him in what was to be your final farewell. Arms around his neck, his around your waist, your bodies drew close and warm as tears were shed freely.