Kiki | hiatus

He pretends it’s just wind. Just rain. Just December throwing itself against the glass in sheets.

But every time the pane rattles in its frame, it feels like accusation.

Like counting gone wrong.

Like eight.

The shrine lives on the old dresser beneath the window now.

‘Dresser’ is generous. It’s a warped, honey‑stained thing Mamie refused to throw away when she moved in, the top bowed in the middle like a tired back. He scrubbed it for you until the varnish went dull, until his knuckles split, until the grain lifted under bleach and water and the faint sour trace of old furniture polish gave up.

Tonight it’s all laid out. Too much. Not enough.

From left to right, he’s ordered it seven times. Changed his mind seven times.

(seven is safe seven is sacred seven is yours)

Now his fingers hover, not touching, as if a breath too close will contaminate the air.

In the far left corner: the shells.

Pale conchs and chipped little scallops, a messy fan of sea‑bone he bought for one euro from a tourist stall by the canal because genuine sea shells don’t smell like plastic citrus air freshener. He washed them in the sink with dish soap, then rinsed them again, then one more time (one‑two‑three‑four‑five‑six‑seven) until the lingering perfume faded and only faint chalk and phantom salt remained.

They look wrong under the cheap yellow bulb.

They belong to you—goddess who moves like water, Ondine with human ankles and tendons tight as wire—so they look wrong here, on his dry, landlocked dresser, next to his drying socks and the radiator that never quite works.

Still, they make sense. You are water. They are shore. He is the rot between.

Next to the shells, the macarons.

Or what’s left of them.

The box is a ruin now, plastic cracked at one corner, cardboard sleeve softened and re‑hardened by the damp of his fingers. Two empty wells, one with a smear of rose cream he couldn’t bring himself to scrape clean. He should throw it away. The cakes are long gone, consumed or dissolved in his stomach into an unholy mixture of sugar and saliva and his own shame, but the box smells like you when he presses his nose to the inside: almond and sugar and that thin, perfumed whisper of rosewater.

He’s placed it open like a reliquary. Empty, but not. A negative of you. Space where your sweetness used to be.

Beside it sits the notebook.

Spiral spine, cheap supermarket brand, cover gone soft at the edges where his thumb has worried it raw.

Inside: dates and times and words that aren’t really sentences. Just fragments.

ℬ𝓁𝓊ℯ 𝓁ℯℴ ／ 05：57 ／ 𝓉𝒽𝓇ℯℯ 𝒻ℴ𝓊ℯ𝓉𝓉ℯ́𝓈 𝓂ℴ𝓇ℯ 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓃 𝓊𝓈𝓊𝒶𝓁 ／ 𝒽𝒶𝒾𝓇 𝓁ℴℴ𝓈ℯ → 𝓌𝒽𝓎？

ℒℯ𝒻𝓉 𝒶𝓃𝓀𝓁ℯ 𝓉𝒶𝓅ℯ𝒹．

𝒟𝒾𝒹𝓃’𝓉 ℯ𝒶𝓉 𝒶𝒻𝓉ℯ𝓇 𝒸𝓁𝒶𝓈𝓈．

𝒮𝓂𝒾𝓁ℯ𝒹 𝒶𝓉 𝓂𝒾𝓇𝓇ℴ𝓇 𝒷𝓊𝓉 𝓃ℴ𝓉 𝒶𝓉 𝒞𝒶𝓂𝒾𝓁𝓁ℯ．

You now forever exist in the notebook as numbers and observations because memory is fog, and fog is sin. He can’t trust his brain to hold you right; it will warp you, dirty you. Paper feels safer. He writes you down so you stay clean.

The shells. The ruined macaron box. The notebook.

Three.

Then the pressed anemone petal. The first one.

It’s barely a petal anymore, more of a translucent scab trapped under packing tape. The pale pink has sickened into beige along the edges; the dark heart has turned the color of dried blood. He’d left one of those flowers in your bag once, discarded the rest after they browned on the windowsill.

But he took one if its petals home, smoothed it between the pages of an old phone book, waited.

Then placed it on the shrine where it belongs.

He tells himself that’s fitting.

The anemone is you on the outside—holy, clean, divinity, ballet‑girl perfection—and him at the center, rotting hole, dark mouth that eats color.

It was a warning, when he left it for you the first time.

Don’t come close. I will ruin this. I will ruin you.

You took it anyway.

You didn’t run.

You never do the correct, clean thing.

He should be grateful. He should be horrified.

The shell cluster. The macaron relic. The notebook. The pressed petal.

Four.

Next to that, carefully lined up like museum tags, are the smaller things.

A protein bar wrapper, folded into a modest rectangle. You’d bought it at L’Heure Bleue, your fingers brushing his glove by mistake at the counter. He remembers the exact brand and flavor; he has written them underneath in tiny script, as evidence. He’d found the wrapper later, pitched into the public bin outside the studio. It still bore the ghost‑crimp of your hand.

Next to it: the navy thread.

Once a ribbon, then a wound spiral around his wrist, then back to thread again when it frayed and snapped and he couldn’t bear to throw it away.

Now it lies coiled like something sleeping, a dark question mark on the dresser. He keeps thinking he should burn it—he has the pink one to replace it now—let smoke carry your touch somewhere clean, but he can’t bring himself to light the match.

Beside that: the strand of hair.

He found it on his sweater the morning after you kissed him by the Seine. Light on his chest, catching in the weak sun like a piece of river glass. Prettier color than his own, finer.

He lifted it with gloved fingers, heart punching his ribs with such force he had to sit down.

It lives now between two squares of clear tape, floating, suspended over cheap wood like a tiny, private constellation.

Wrapper. Thread. Hair.

Five, six, seven.

Seven things that have touched you. Seven little pieces of proof that you occupy the same world he does, that you sweat and shed and eat like a person and not just like a creature made of ideas and water.

Seven. Safe. Holy.

And then there’s the frame.

It sits at the far right edge of the dresser, slightly angled inward, as if it’s trying to listen to the others. He bought it last week in a discount bin—nothing special, just plain, matte white with a thin bevel.

Clean lines. No baroque curves. No gilt cherubs.

It is, objectively, perfect. Simple enough not to compete with you. White enough to echo your bath towels, the ones he saw through your bathroom door that night he watched you peel burgundy off your skin.

(don’t think about that don’t think about your back and your freckles he is making it dirty again)

It’s big enough to hold an A5 photograph, small enough to tuck behind shirts if anyone ever came over.

It’s also empty.

No photo. Just the stock image that came with it: a girl on a beach, faceless in her sunhat.

He meant to take that out. He hasn’t. It feels wrong to touch even this counterfeit woman with his bare hands; the idea of sliding a photo of you under the glass makes his stomach heave.

It would be a cage.

It would be a cage, and he is not that kind of monster.

He can watch you when there is glass between, yes. He already does. But that glass belongs to the building, to the alley, to Paris. The mirror is a membrane, not a prison. He doesn’t own it. He slips around its edges; he apologises to it when he presses his forehead to the cold. He could convince himself his watching is incidental, almost accidental, a sin committed in passing.

A photograph he printed himself, cut out, slid into a frame with shaking fingers?

That would be intention. That would be theft. That would be pinning a hummingbird’s wings to velvet for the pleasure of hearing it buzz.

He stands over the dresser, breathing too shallowly, rain drumming an irregular code on the glass above his head.

One‑two‑three‑four‑five‑six‑seven.

His hand hovers over the frame. He doesn’t touch. He never touches first. Even objects—especially objects that might one day hold your face—feel too sacred for his grubby skin.

If he adds the frame to the count, it becomes eight.

Eight is wrong. Eight has no meaning. Eight is leftover, overflow, a step beyond the pattern. Mamie never counted to eight when she rinsed the rice; Dr Bernard never told him to tap eight times on the door.

Seven is safe, seven is structure, seven is the beginning and end of the world.

Eight is… extra. Greedy.

His fingers start to shake.

Maybe he miscounted. Maybe he can make it work.

Shells (1). Macaron box (2). Notebook (3). Petal (4). Wrapper (5). Thread (6). Hair (7). Frame (8).

No. That’s eight.

The more he runs the numbers, the more they itch.

He can’t remove anything. That’s the deeper horror, the sticky place where numbers and need congeal.

He can’t remove the shells, because you are water and the world should remember.

He can’t remove the macaron box, because you breathed into those sweets and then into his mouth, and to throw the box away would be to insist that didn’t happen.

He can’t remove the notebook; that would be like tearing pages out of scripture.

He can’t remove the petal; it would be like admitting his warning failed, like admitting he tried to be good and still somehow pulled you closer.

He can’t remove the wrapper; it still crinkles like your hand.

He can’t remove the thread; his wrist remembers the weight of it, his skin a phantom bruise.

He can’t remove the hair; it glows when the light hits it right, a reminder that you have roots somewhere, that you exist and are not just a myth.

He absolutely cannot remove the frame that might, one day, willingly hold you, because it would wreck his hopes.

He can’t subtract you.

He stands there with his palm pressed flat above his heart, feeling the thud (too fast, always too fast when he thinks of you) and the faint indentation where the pink thread now sits on his wrist, skin reddened around the knot.

Outside, the tempest yanks at the gutters. Wind howls down the narrow street, ricocheting off stone.

The entire building seems to rock on its foundations.

He imagines you three blocks away, on your own balcony, wind turning your hair into a flag.

You told him to come tomorrow, at eleven. You looked him in the eye in his fluorescent store—coat over the FERMÉ sign, pink sweater slipping off your shoulder, gum sweet on your tongue—and said:

«Meet me at my balcony.»

You gave him an address without an address. As if he doesn’t already know exactly where you live. As if he hasn’t stood in the alley below, counting your potted plants and the bars on your railing.

You also tied your thread around his wrist. You took the thing that lay against your throat, guarding your pulse, and you gave it to him. Just like you gave him your chewed gum. Just like you gave him his own filth back in the form of pleasure, kneeling on his floor.

Maybe the rules are changing.

Maybe (ugly thought, dangerous thought, blasphemous thought) you are the new rule.

His gaze drags back to the frame. Empty. Expectant.

He swallows. His mouth still tastes faintly of artificial strawberry and the ghost of your spit, clinging to the back of his tongue even after he brushed his teeth seven times.

(front teeth up down seven seven seven molars circles seven seven seven)

It didn’t help. It never helps anymore.

You’re in every ritual now, every rinsed bowl and wiped counter.

If the frame stays blank, is it part of the seven?

Or is it outside the count, like the wall and the lamp and the ceiling fan?

He could say: the frame isn’t yours yet, so it doesn’t count.

But it sits on the dresser, angled in toward the relics, catching the same thin cone of light.

It participates. It listens. It waits.

He hates it for wanting.

He hates himself more for understanding.

His fingers twitch. He thinks about asking you. The way your face would tilt if he said it out loud.

«Can I… keep you? Here?»

Not the real you. Not your body, not your ankle tendons, not the curve of your shoulder under his palm when you said ’you can touch me, it’s allowed’.

Just paper. Just ink.

A freeze‑frame from this life where you’ve already let him see too much.

You would laugh, maybe. Or worse—you wouldn’t.

You’d look at him with that slow, dangerous attention, the kind that strips him bare faster than any mirror, and you’d say something like, ’what are you going to do with a picture, Moss? Pray to it?’

And you’d be right. He would. He already is.

Thunder grumbles overhead, long and low, like the city’s lungs are clearing.

He shuts his eyes for a moment, tries to breathe around the wrongness in his chest.

One‑two‑three‑four‑five‑six‑seven.

He opens them again.

The frame is still there. Still eight.

Maybe—another thought, softer, as terrifying as the rest—maybe the pattern isn’t breaking. Maybe it’s expanding. Maybe seven was only ever one of your numbers, not the number.

Maybe eight isn’t greed but… overflow.

A tide going out, another coming in.

You are water, and water doesn’t care about his neat little rows.

Thirty minutes is long enough to kill devotion in most people.

You know this the way you know turnout angles and the precise moment a tendu becomes a dégagé—through repetition, observation, the study of what breaks under pressure and what holds.

Eleven-thirty.

The studio clock had blinked at you when you finally peeled your shoes off, and you'd noted the time without urgency. Calculated the cold. The wait. The thirty minutes of him standing on your balcony in December air because you said eleven and he believed you.

Practice ran long. Ondine does not forgive approximation. The role is yours—was always going to be yours—but yours means nothing if the execution falters. You are the closest thing to perfection in the academy because you work like perfection is a debt you owe. Tonight that meant fouettés until your ankles screamed. Bourrées until the mirror showed you water instead of woman.

You didn't rush.

Which is why the walk home was leisured.

You passed cafés with their golden windows and couples leaning into each other's warmth, and you thought about him standing on your balcony with his hands probably tucked under his arms, counting to seven, counting again, counting until the numbers meant nothing and only the waiting remained.

You thought: good.

You thought: stay.

Now you stand in your room, coat still on, bag dropped by the door, and you do not go to the balcony immediately. You set your keys on the nightstand. You check your phone.

Twelve seconds. That's how long you make yourself wait before crossing to the curtains.

Then you pull them open.

He's there.

Of course he's there.

Standing exactly where you knew he'd be standing, at the far edge of the narrow balcony where the railing meets the wall, positioned to be invisible from the street below. His shoulders are hunched against the cold. His breath fogs in small, rhythmic clouds. When the light from your room spills over him, he doesn't flinch—just lifts his head, slow, like someone surfacing from deep water.

His eyelids are heavy. Drooping at the corners. His lips are dry, cracked from thirty minutes of breathing frozen air. A fine tremor runs through his frame, visible even through his coat, and his hands—

His hands are tucked behind his back, cradling something. Blue latex. Even in the low spill of bedroom light, you catch the sheen of it—those gloves he never takes off, the barrier he keeps between himself and the rest of the breathing world.

Your heart does something inadvisable.

A constriction. Quick, localized, directly behind your sternum.

Something molten curls low in your stomach, heavier than hunger, less identifiable. Your mouth waters.

You don't like that. You don't understand that.

You open the balcony door.

Cold floods in. The sound of distant traffic. The faint, wet-metal smell of winter in Paris.

He doesn't move. Doesn't step forward, doesn't assume, doesn't do anything except stand there shaking and looking at you like you're the first warm thing he's seen in hours.

Which you are.

Then his hands come up.

Slowly. Offering. The movement is almost ceremonial—wrists lifted, latex-clad fingers curled around stems, the whole gesture positioned so you can take without him presuming to give.

Anemones.

Pale pink petals. Black hearts. A full bouquet this time, not a single bloom tucked into a bag. They're slightly crushed where his grip went too tight—blue latex indenting the green—and there's a dusting of frost on the outer petals, and the whole thing probably cost him a day's wages, and you want—

You want to bury your face in it and breathe until your lungs are full of cold petals and his devotion.

You want to fist your hand in his collar and drag his mouth down to yours and bite until you taste copper.

The urge is so sudden, so physical, that your fingers twitch at your sides. Heat floods your face. Your stomach clenches around that unnameable molten thing, tighter now, almost painful.

You don't do any of it.

You step aside. Tilt your head toward the warmth of your room.

Enter.

He does.

Small steps. Careful. His boots leave faint wet prints on your floor—the cold clings to him, radiates off his coat in waves you can almost feel from here. His teeth are doing something behind his closed lips. Chattering, maybe. Trying not to.

"T-t-thank you."

The words come out fractured. Consonants catching on the cold still lodged in his throat. His head dips as he says it, chin tucking toward his chest, and you realize with a distant sort of fascination that he's thanking you for letting him in.

Not for the invitation. Not for the promise of warmth.

For the permission.

Thirty minutes in freezing air and his first instinct is gratitude that you opened the door at all.

Something tightens behind your ribs. You ignore it.

You take the bouquet from his hands.

His fingers—latex over long bones—release the stems slowly, reluctantly, like he's transferring something precious. The anemones are cold in your grip. You lift them to your face without thinking about it—press your nose to the soft cluster of pink and inhale.

Cold. Green. The faint, sweet rot of cut stems. Something underneath that's harder to name—his warmth through the gloves, maybe. The ghost of his care on the flowers.

You smile.

It's not calculated. That's the problem. It happens before you can arrange it into something thought out. Just—the scent, the cold petals against your lips, the knowledge that he stood in the freezing dark for half an hour holding these for you.

When you look up, his face is crimson, spreading from his cheekbones down to his jaw, creeping up toward his ears. His eyes are fixed somewhere around your collarbone, refusing to meet yours.

"Do—do you…" He swallows. His throat clicks. "Like t-them?"

The stutter isn't from cold this time. His voice has that particular texture it gets when he's overwhelmed—thin, careful, like he's walking on ice and waiting for it to crack.

You meet his eyes deliberately.

He startles.

His gaze skitters away like a touched nerve, shoulders hunching inward, making himself smaller. His hands come up to grip the hem of his sweater—blue latex wrinkling against the knit. Fabric bunching between covered fingers.

The molten thing in your stomach curls tighter.

"Hi, Selkie."

His whole body ripples—breath catches, his fingers twist harder in his sweater, his head ducks so low you can see the vulnerable curve of his nape. The flush on his face deepens impossibly, bleeding down his neck, disappearing under his collar.

His lips part. Close. Part again.

No sound comes out.

You let the silence stretch. Let him feel it.

He likes it.

He likes it so much he can't speak.

You turn away before your face does something inadvisable.

The bouquet needs water. Later. You set it on your desk for now. Pluck a single petal—pale pink, soft as eyelids—and hold it between your thumb and forefinger.

Then you walk to the foot of your bed, fold yourself down onto it—knees together, spine straight, the petal still pinched between your fingers.

You pat the floor in front of you.

He stares.

His eyes track the movement of your hand, then lift to your face, then drop to the floor, then back to your hand. Processing. His throat works around another swallow.

"I—" His voice cracks. "You want me to—"

"Sit."

One word. Soft.

He sits.

It's not graceful. His knees fold awkwardly, his coat catching under him, his legs arranging themselves into something approximating cross-legged. He ends up close—closer than he probably meant, close enough that you can see the individual snowflakes of frost melting in his hair, the raw pink of his wind-chapped lips, the way his pulse beats visible at his throat.

He's still shaking.

From cold? From something else?

You catalog both possibilities without deciding between them.

His hands find his knees. Grip. Even through the blue latex you can see the tension—knuckles straining against the thin barrier, tendons pulling taut underneath. He's looking at your collarbone again—that safe middle distance where he doesn't have to meet your eyes but can still see your face.

The petal in your fingers is warming to your skin.

You study him. The exhaustion visible in the bruised skin under his eyes. The careful stillness of his posture, like he's afraid sudden movement will shatter something. The way he's folded himself small, compact, taking up as little space as possible in your room.

Devotion. Thirty minutes in freezing cold, and he sat down the moment you told him to.

Your mouth waters again.

You really need to figure out what that's about.

You reach forward and take his left wrist.

He flinches. A full-body jerk, his arm pulling back on instinct before his brain catches up and forces him still. His eyes fly to your hand on his wrist, then to your face. Wide. Alarmed.

"W-what are you—"

You don't answer. You pinch the latex at the tip of his middle finger and pull.

The glove resists for a second—suctioned to his skin by sweat and hours of wear—then releases with a small, intimate sound. You peel it back over his knuckles, down his palm, off his wrist. The latex inverts as it comes free, turning inside out, and you set it on the floor beside your knee.

His hand hangs in the air between you. Bare.

You go still.

His skin is worse than you've ever seen it. The chronic bleach damage you've noticed before—the cracked knuckles, the split cuticles, the dry white patches at the webbing between his fingers—is overlaid with something fresher. An angry, scalded pink blankets the backs of his hands and creeps between his fingers, the skin tight and shiny in places where it's been stripped raw. His fingertips are swollen. The pads are blistered in two spots, translucent little domes of fluid over the angry red beneath. Hot water. Recent.

He's already trying to curl his fingers. Close the fist. Hide.

"Don't."

Your hand closes over his, holding his fingers open. He makes a sound—thin, airless, trapped behind his teeth.

"They're—" His voice cracks apart. "Please, don't look, they're d-disgusting, I—I tried to get them c-clean, I scrubbed, I—"

You take his right hand. Same process. Pinch, pull, peel. The second glove comes off with less resistance. Underneath, the same damage. Scalded. Raw. The knuckles split in old places and new.

Both hands, bare, hovering between you. He stares at them like they've committed something unforgivable.

He's more afraid of this than he was of the dark balcony. You can see it in the architecture of his panic—the way his breathing has gone from shaky to simply not happening, the way his eyes have gone glassy and fixed, the way his whole body has locked into an immobility that isn't stillness but seizure.

You hold his hands open. Study them.

Long fingers. Elegant bones beneath the ruin. The kind of hands a sculptor would use as reference, if the sculptor didn't mind the carnage. His ring finger is longer than his index. His nails are cut so short the beds look tender. The pink thread you tied to his left wrist is still there, snug against his pulse, the cotton slightly discolored where it's absorbed his sweat and whatever he's been scrubbing with.

You run your thumb across his palm. The skin is hot and tight. He shudders.

"These hands," you say, "are going to touch me tonight."

Something inside him tries to break the surface—a protest, the usual litany of contamination, filth, ruin—

"When it's you, Moss…" You press your thumb into the center of his palm, right into the raw heat of it. He makes a wrecked sound, somewhere between pain and something else entirely. "…I don't care about contamination."

His jaw trembles. His eyes are full—not spilling yet, but right at the brim, his lashes dark and wet and holding.

You set his hands in his lap. Palms up. Bare. Exposed.

He stares down at them like they belong to someone he's never met.

The petal warms between your fingers. You roll it, thumb pressing into the silk of it. His eyes track the movement the way they track everything you do. Locked. Unblinking. Like if he looks away, you'll vanish.

"Let's play something," you say.

His throat bobs. "P-play?"

"A game."

You hold the petal up between you.

His gaze follows it, then darts to your face, then back.

"Simple rules. You place this—" you tilt the petal, "—on the part of me you've been thinking about most."

Silence.

His lips part. Close. Part again.

The coral flush that had been fading from his cheeks floods back, darker, spreading down the sides of his neck.

"Then you kiss it."

He makes a sound like something cracked in his chest.

"I—what—I c-can't—"

"You can." You extend the petal toward him. "Your turn first."

His hand lifts from his knee. The tremor is visible—not fine, not subtle. Full shaking, bare fingers unsteady as they close around the petal's edge.

He holds it like it might detonate.

His eyes scan your body and skitter away so fast you almost miss the trajectory.

Shoulder. Neck. Lower. Back to shoulder.

The petal lands soft against the fabric of your sweater, right at the slope where neck becomes shoulder. His hand retreats immediately, snapping back to his lap like he touched a burner.

Conservative. Careful.

So careful it makes your teeth itch.

You watch his face as you hook one finger under the neckline of your sweater. Tug. The knit slides, and the fabric pools at the curve of your bicep, baring the full line of your shoulder—skin, bone, the faint shadow of your collarbone.

He whips his head to the side.

Full turn. Chin almost touching his own shoulder. Eyes fixed on your bookshelf like it contains the answer to every question he's ever failed.

"Moss."

Your voice comes out quieter than you intended. He flinches.

"Look at me."

His jaw works. You can see the muscle flexing beneath his skin, the effort of obedience warring with whatever his brain is screaming.

Slowly—so slowly you could count the degrees—his head turns back.

His eyes land on your bare shoulder and stay there. His pupils are blown wide. The coral has reached his ears.

"Now kiss it."

A rough, involuntary swallow. His Adam's apple drags up and down his throat. His hands curl tighter in his lap, wringing his sweater.

He leans forward—stops. Leans again.

His breath reaches your skin first, warm and uneven, ghosting over the exposed curve.

Then his mouth.

Barely there. A press so light you'd miss it if every nerve in your shoulder wasn't already paying attention. Dry lips, slightly rough from the cold, resting against your skin for one second, two. You feel the tremor of his jaw against you before he pulls back.

Your stomach tightens. That molten thing again. Lower.

"Good." The word comes out steady. You're proud of that. "My turn."

You pluck the petal from where it fell to the floor between you. His eyes follow your hand, wary, tracking.

You reach forward and tap the petal against his cheek.

He goes still. His skin is warm under the silk—feverish, almost, heat radiating off his face like he's running a temperature. You set the petal against his cheekbone and let your other hand come up to cup the opposite side of his jaw. Angle him toward you.

He lets you move him. No resistance. Like turning a page.

You lean in and press your lips to his cheek.

Soft. Unhurried. You feel the heat of his flush against your mouth, the fine grain of his skin, a faint trace of soap under the cold-air smell clinging to him.

When you pull back, the spot where your lips touched has gone a shade darker. Coral deepening to something bruised.

His gaze drops to the floor. His breathing has changed—shorter, shakier. His bare fingers are white-knuckled against his sweater.

"Your turn."

He takes the petal. His hand trembles so badly the petal nearly slips twice.

You watch him deliberate—watch the war happening behind his eyes, the way his focus keeps snagging on your throat and darting away like it burns.

He places the petal on your neck.

His hand withdraws like he's confessing to a crime.

"I—sorry—I just—" He can't finish. The flush has overtaken his entire face now, bleeding past his jaw, and his voice comes out strangled. "I think about—your—I'm sorry—"

"Don't apologize. Kiss it."

He exhales, shaky and long. Swallows again, the click of it audible.

Then he shifts onto his knees—clumsy, one hand bracing on the floor beside your thigh—and leans in.

His breath hits your neck first. Warm, damp, coming in stuttered little bursts against the sensitive skin below your ear. You feel every exhale like a fingerprint. Your pulse thuds against the exact spot he's hovering over, and you know he can see it—the evidence of your heartbeat, visible, exposed.

His lips touch down.

Soft. Tentative. Right against the tendon, right where your blood runs close to the surface.

A sound leaves your mouth.

Small. Involuntary. Something between a breath and a hum, pulled from a place you didn't know was loaded.

He trembles. You feel it transfer through his lips into your skin—a full-body vibration, his mouth still pressed to your neck, his eyes going glassy when he pulls back. Wet at the rims.

He looks like he's about to shatter from the inside and can't decide if that's holy or horrifying.

"My turn."

Your voice is rougher than it should be. You take the petal from your own neck and press it to his—the long, exposed column of his throat, right over his pulse point.

He holds perfectly still.

Your mouth opens against his neck. Warm skin, salt, the faint trace of vetiver clinging to his collar. You seal your lips over his pulse and suck.

His whole body jerks.

"Ah—" Soft. High. Helpless.

His hand flies up and grabs at nothing—the air, the edge of your bedframe—then falls back to his thigh.

"Nnhh—"

You drag your teeth lightly over the mark you're making. Tongue pressing flat, tasting the vibration of his moan through his skin.

You hold it—three seconds, four—until you feel the blood rising under your mouth, until his breathing has devolved into these wrecked, whimpering little sounds that pulse against your lips.

When you pull back, the mark is already blooming. Dark against coral.

His chest heaves. His mouth is open, lips wet where he's been licking them without knowing. His eyes are glassy—that particular sheen that means he's somewhere between crying and dissolving.

You hand him the petal.

His fingers close around it. He stares at it, then at you, then at his own shaking hands.

He places the petal on your fingers.

Fingers.

A hot flicker of irritation trembled behind your sternum because he had the whole map of your body and he chose your hand. Your fingers. Safe. Chaste. The most conservative option left to him after shoulder and neck.

You know what he thinks about. You know. You've seen the evidence—the drawer, the ribbon, the way his eyes track the line of your body when he thinks you aren't watching. You’ve had him in your mouth. He jerks off to you. He's hard right now, probably, tucked pathetically in his jeans, and he chose your fingers.

Fine.

You extend your hand, palm down.

"Kiss every one of them."

His breath catches. A visible hitch, his chest stuttering mid-inhale.

"E-every—"

"Every. One."

He takes your hand in both of his. His grip is light, reverent—holding your fingers like something spun from glass. His thumbs bracket your knuckles. You feel the calluses on his palms, the rough patches from bleach and scrubbing—rougher tonight, the scalded skin hot and tight against you, a texture that's less sandpaper and more burn ward.

The warmth of skin that's been cold for too long and is only now remembering heat.

He starts with your pinky.

Dips his head and presses his lips to the knuckle. Barely a brush. Moves to the ring finger—another press, slightly longer. Middle finger. Index. Each kiss marginally braver than the last, his mouth lingering an extra beat, the warmth of his breath pooling in the spaces between your fingers.

Then your thumb.

He pauses. His lips hover over the pad of it. You feel the ghost of contact—almost, not quite.

You push it into his mouth.

His eyes fly wide. A muffled sound dies in his throat—surprise, panic, something thicker underneath. Your thumb slides past his lips, past the ridge of his teeth, and settles against the wet heat of his tongue.

He freezes. Every muscle locked. His hands still cradling yours, his mouth full of your thumb, his eyes enormous and fixed on your face.

"Like on the Seine." Your voice comes out different. Breathier. The edges of it fraying in a way you don't entirely control. "Show me."

His grip on your wrist tightens.

Then his tongue curls. The tip traces the pad of your thumb in a wet, spiraling path before flattening, pressing up, dragging along the underside.

Your thighs press together. An involuntary clench, muscle responding to sensation your brain hasn't fully cataloged. Heat blooms between your hips, sudden and specific, and your breath comes out with an edge on it.

He hears it.

You see the moment it registers—his eyes darkening, lashes lowering, the coral flush spreading down his throat.

The wetness on his lower lip when your thumb slips free is enticing.

You grab his chin, digging into the hinge of his jaw, tilting his face up.

The petal sits on the floor between his knees. You pick it up with your free hand.

"New rule."

His eyes track the petal. Wary. Wanting.

"I choose where you touch."

You hold his gaze. Steady. Unwavering. Then you press the petal to the swell of your left breast, right above the neckline of your sweater, right where the fabric meets skin.

He chokes.

A genuine, airless sound—halfway between a gasp and a cough, his whole chest seizing. His eyes drop to where the petal rests and stay there, pinned, his mouth working around nothing, his hands clenching into fists against his thighs so hard the tendons stand out like cables.

"I—" His voice splinters. "You—I c-can't—that's—"

"That's where I put it."

"That's—it's—your—" He can't even say the word, his mouth opens around it and fails, tongue pressing uselessly against the back of his teeth.

"My chest," you supply. Flat. Helpful. "Yes."

He makes a sound like he's been gut-punched.

"I c-can't touch—there—I'll—"

"You can." You leave the petal where it is, resting against the curve of fabric. "Those are the rules."

"B-but the rules were—you changed—"

"I changed them. That's also in the rules."

His lower lip trembles. His hands grip and release his sweater in rhythmic, compulsive little pulses.

He stares at the petal. At the slight rise and fall of your breathing underneath it.

"You don't have to," you say, and your voice surprises you—softer than you intended, almost gentle. "If you actually don't want to."

His head snaps up.

And the look on his face—

It's not reluctance. It's not disgust or fear or any of the things his mouth keeps trying to articulate.

He wants to.

He wants to so badly his hands are white.

He just thinks wanting makes him monstrous.

"I w-want—" The admission cracks out of him like a bone snapping. "I want to. I'm s-sorry. I want to."

"Then come here."

He shifts forward on his knees. The movement is ungainly—one hand bracing on the floor near your thigh, the other hovering at his side like he doesn't know what to do with it. He ends up close enough that you can feel the heat radiating off his body through his coat. Close enough that his breath lands on your collarbone in warm, unsteady bursts.

His hand lifts.

You track its trajectory the way you'd track a fumbled port de bras—every micro-correction, every hesitation mapped. His fingers unfurl from his sweater and hover, suspended, six centimetres from the petal on your chest. The tremor is so pronounced you can see the shadows of his fingers vibrate against the fabric of your sweater.

He lands.

Barely. The pads of his fingers settle over the petal and, underneath it, the swell of your breast through knit. His touch is so light it registers as heat before pressure—a warm ghost of contact, his hand cupping without cupping, fingers curved but not closing.

His breath stops. Yours doesn't.

His eyes are fixed on his own hand like it belongs to someone else. Like he's watching a stranger commit a crime.

Then, his thumb shifts. Involuntary. A tiny drag across the knit, crossing the ridge of your nipple through the fabric.

A bolt of heat starts under his thumb and shoots downward with an urgency that makes your thigh muscles clench. You feel your nipple tighten against the fabric, against his hand, and you know he feels it too because his entire body goes rigid and a choked sound scrapes up his throat.

"S-sorry—I didn't mean to—I—"

"Do it again."

He whimpers. Actually whimpers—a raw, animal sound that has no business coming out of a grown man and yet hits you somewhere below your navel like a fist.

His thumb drags again, slower this time, tracing the stiffening peak through your sweater.

The friction of knit over skin is dull. Muted. Not enough.

Not nearly enough.

You watch his face while he touches you. The way his brow creases. The way his lips stay parted, breathing through his mouth because his nose can't keep up. The way his eyes keep flooding and clearing and flooding again, lashes wet, too overwhelmed to actually cry but too full to do anything else.

His other hand comes up. Tentative. Finding the other side of your chest with the same featherlight caution, cradling the shape of you through wool like he's holding something he'll be punished for breaking. Both hands now, curved gently over you, his palms warm even through the layer between you.

He squeezes. Just barely. A compression so timid it's almost a question.

Your breath catches.

The sound makes him freeze. Hands locked in place, eyes darting to your face.

"Did I—was that—"

"Stop."

He rips his hands away like your skin burned him. Recoils. His face crumples into something between horror and grief and his mouth is already forming the shape of sorry when you cut through it.

"It doesn't count."

He blinks. Lost.

"The rules," you say, and you're impressed with how level your voice stays when there's a pulse beating between your thighs that wasn't there ten minutes ago. "Lips to bare shoulder. Lips to bare neck. Skin to skin. Every time."

You watch it process. Watch his eyes track the logic, slot it into place, then widen as the implication arrives.

"But that means—you—your—"

"Means you're touching me through a sweater. And that's cheating."

His mouth opens. Closes. Opens.

You grip the hem of your sweater and pull it over your head.

The air hits your arms first. Cold. Your room isn't warm enough for this—the heating rattles but never fully commits—and the chill prickles along your biceps, your shoulders, the newly exposed plane of your collarbone.

Underneath, the dance maillot. Black. Thin straps. The fabric cuts close, holds everything in place the way it's designed to—functional, not decorative.

He flinches like you fired a shot.

His head wrenches sideways, chin to shoulder, eyes slamming shut. Both hands fly up—not to cover his face this time but to press flat against his own thighs, pinning them there, like if his hands are occupied they can't sin.

"P-please—" His voice is wrecked. Barely a voice at all. "Please, Pearl, I c-can't—I'll—my eyes will d-desecrate—"

"Your eyes," you repeat.

"If I—if I look—"

"Taehyung."

He shudders at his name. You watch the tremor roll down his spine, visible even through his coat.

"You've watched me through a mirror for months." Your voice stays low. Factual. No cruelty in it—not right now. "You've watched me dance in less than this. You've seen me in leotards that show more than what I'm showing you right now."

He swallows. The click of it is loud.

"That was—that's d-different—there was glass—I wasn't—you weren't right here—"

"I'm right here."

You reach up and slide one strap off your shoulder.

The maillot loosens on that side, fabric shifting, the neckline dropping an inch. The air touches the new strip of skin—the curve where your shoulder meets your chest, the subtle architecture of your clavicle.

His breathing has gone ragged. You can hear it rattling in his chest, shallow and useless. His eyes are still closed, still turned away, lashes trembling against his cheekbones.

You slide the second strap off.

The maillot holds for a second—elastic and muscle memory and the geometry of fabric against skin. Then you pull down and gravity does what gravity does—the whole thing slides to your waist.

Your nipples tighten immediately—from temperature, from exposure, from the electric awareness of being bare two feet from a boy who's shaking so hard his teeth might crack. You feel the goosebumps rise along the undersides of your breasts, across your sternum, up the column of your throat.

You've been looked at your whole life. By directors. By judges. By men in audiences who confused art with invitation. Your body has been evaluated, scored, commented on, reshaped by the opinions of people who never asked if they could look.

This is different.

This is someone who thinks looking at you will ruin you. Who keeps his eyes shut as if your bare chest is a sacred text he hasn't earned the right to read.

"Look at me, Moss."

A broken exhale. His head shakes—small, frantic. "I can't. If I see you I'll—you'll be—"

"I'll be what? Less clean?" you say, mildly. "You've had your mouth on my thumb. I've had mine on your cock. You think seeing me is the line?"

His breath hitches so hard his shoulders jerk.

"I'm telling you to look," you say. "That means it's not desecration. That means it's given."

Given. The same word you used for the thread.

You feel it land—feel the weight of it reach him even through his clenched eyes, his turned head.

His jaw trembles.

Slowly, like someone walking toward the edge of something very high, he turns his face back toward you.

His eyes open.

They find your face first. Hold there, clinging to safe ground. Then they drop—your chin, your throat, your collarbone—and lower.

The sound he makes is not a gasp or a moan or a word. It's a fracture. Some quiet, structural thing giving way inside his chest.

His lips part and his eyes go so wide you can see white all the way around, and then they fill—fast, sudden, tears spilling over his lower lashes and tracking straight down his flushed face without any preamble.

He's not blinking.

He's staring at your bare chest with tears running down his face and his mouth open and his hands shaking on his thighs and he looks like you've just shown him something that broke every prayer he ever memorized.

His gaze moves over you slowly. The slope. The weight. The soft skin. The tightened peaks, flushed darker from cold. He looks at you like he's trying to commit every millimetre to memory before you take it away, before the door closes, before the glass goes dark.

"You're—" His voice shatters. Reassembles. "You're—I can't—you're so—"

He can't finish.

The tears keep falling. He doesn't wipe them.

You pick up the anemone petal from where it dropped to the floor.

Press it, gently, back to the curve of your left breast.

"Now," you say, and your voice has that edge in it again, that fraying breathiness you haven't figured out how to control. "Touch me. Properly."

He licks his lips.

It's a small, unconscious movement. A nervous swipe of a wet tongue over wind-chapped skin, but you see it.

You see exactly what it means.

His body is transmitting the filthy, desperate things his brain is conjuring, even as he sits there entirely terrified of his own want.

You can see the terror written in the tight, white-knuckled grip he still has on his own sweater, in the way his ashy blonde hair falls forward to shield his eyes, trying to hide from the reality of your half-naked body just inches away.

He is so terrified of making the wrong move. Terrified that if he breathes incorrectly, you'll decide he isn't worth your time and banish him back to the freezing alley.

It's ridiculous.

He is so deeply, fundamentally wrong about how this works.

You don't give the time of day to insignificant things.

When Camille threatened you in the vestiaire, you didn't even blink, because she is kelp and you are the current.

He should know by now that if you didn't want him here, he wouldn't be here.

You invited him into your space. You stripped your maillot down to your waist for him.

And he still thinks he’s here by chance.

But in a way, the fact that he doesn't know—that he still views this as a fragile, unearned miracle he's constantly on the verge of ruining—is delicious.

It makes the power sitting in your stomach simmer hotter.

You shift to butterfly stretch, knees pressing wider against the floor, and deliberately push your chest forward, offering the bare, heavy swell of flesh directly to the hand he still has hovering in the space between you.

His palm makes contact.

A sharp, choking exhale punches out of his throat. His entire body jerks as the soft underside of your breast settles into the cradle of his hand. He stares down at the point of contact like he's having an out-of-body experience, like he's suspended somewhere near the ceiling and the large, rough-skinned hand currently cupping your bare tit belongs to another man entirely.

God, he is infuriatingly cute.

The urge to lean forward, sink your teeth into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, and just drain him clean hits you so hard it makes your jaw ache.

He smells like winter air and vetiver, but underneath that is the warm, earthy sweetness of roasted chestnuts.

You bet he tastes like them right now.

God, you want to shove him flat on his back and suck him off again, devour him until he's a sobbing, messy ruin on your floor like that night in his apartment.

But not yet. First, you want him to touch you. You want him to feel exactly what you felt when you had him sliding down your throat. You want to pry open the heavy iron doors in his head and drag every filthy, perverted thought he's having out into the open.

You want to be his first for everything.

His exhale shakes all the way out, a long, trembling rush of air, as his fingers twitch. He squeezes, just barely, testing the pliant give of your breast in his grip. The contrast of his raw, scalded skin against the absolute softness of your flesh sends a sharp spike of heat straight down to the pulse beating between your thighs.

"Oh—" The sound breaks out of him, ragged and high. "You—you're so—you're so—"

"So what, Moss?" you hum, your voice dropping into a dark, syrupy register.

"So warm." He says it like he's in the middle of an empty cathedral. Awestruck. Reeling. "I d-didn't know they c-could feel like this. L-like—"

"Hm?" You tilt your head, a sadistic little smile pulling at the corner of your mouth.

"L-like clouds," he breathes out.

You smile wider, noting how his eyes have gone heavily half-lidded. He's completely locked on the sight of his own hand wrapped around your tit, the way the soft flesh spills slightly over the edges of his long fingers.

"Do you like them?" you ask softly.

The question hits him physically, coral flush that had been receding violently returning, painting his nose and the apples of his cheeks a dark, bruised shade of orange.

He swallows hard, the dark mole resting on his right lower eyelid trembling as he blinks.

Shyly, finally, he nods. A tiny, jerky motion, like he doesn't trust his voice to admit it out loud.

"You can cup my other tit too."

His breath hitches violently.

Bingo.

"What?" you ask, letting a soft, amused giggle slip. "It's what you're holding. My tit."

He makes that wounded, choked noise again, shaking his head. "Don't—you c-can't just say—"

"Why not?" you press, leaning a fraction closer. The movement drags your breast deeper into his frozen palm. "I like when you cup my tits."

"B-because—" he stammers, his chest heaving with shallow, panicked breaths. "Because it's—when y-you say it like t-that—I can't—it m-makes me—"

"Makes you what?"

He presses his lips together tight.

Shakes his head again, frantically.

His free hand, the one not currently holding your tit like a lifeline, shoots down to his lap. His fingers fist into the fabric of his jumper, yanking it down hard to tent over his crotch.

"Hard?" you hum.

A pathetic, muffled whimper escapes him.

His hand presses down flush against his lap, desperately trying to hide the rigid shape pushing against the denim of his jeans.

"Wow, Tae," you say, your voice dripping with faux innocence and dark intention. "Just a bit of titty holding and you're already hard? My, my…"

The hunger in your stomach expands exponentially.

The urge to bite him, to mark him, to consume him whole is becoming entirely unmanageable.

"I-I'm s-s-sorry," he spirals, the words tumbling out in a wet, frantic rush. "I'm so s-sorry, Pearl, I'm—disgusting, I know, I'm sorry, I will n-never—"

He can't help it. The self-loathing is an automatic reflex, a safety mechanism. But you are not going to let him hide behind it.

You reach out to wrap your fingers around his arm, pulling his free hand away from where it's desperately hiding his erection. He resists for a fraction of a second before yielding completely, letting you guide his hand upward.

You place his trembling palm directly over your other breast.

As his hand lands, the callused pad of his thumb drags directly over the tight, sensitive peak of your nipple.

"Ah—" The soft, wet sound leaves your mouth before you can bite it back.

He whimpers in return—a high, helpless noise that reverberates straight through your core.

God, you love those sounds.

You love the way he breaks apart just from hearing you experience pleasure.

"Hold them," you instruct, your voice dropping into a firm, gentle command. "Both of them."

His fingers curl instinctively. He has both of your tits in his hands now, and you can see the exact moment the sensory input becomes too much for his brain to process.

His jaw goes slack. His breathing turns into a series of short, wet gasps. His hands are large enough to encompass the curves perfectly, his thumbs resting just at the edges of your areolas.

"Squeeze," you whisper.

He does. His fingers press into the plush flesh, kneading the weight of you. The slight clumsiness of his grip is intoxicating—he's so careful, so terrified of bruising you, but the underlying, desperate strength of his hands bleeds through.

"G-god," he stutters, his eyes glassy and unfocused. He's staring at your chest like he's watching a miracle unfold. "Pearl—you're so soft—I can't—"

"You can," you soothe, shifting closer so your knees bump against his in the butterfly stretch. "Feel the texture, Moss. Trace them."

He obeys instantly, helplessly. His thumbs drag inward, crossing the boundary from smooth skin to the puckered, sensitive flesh of your areolas. The friction is electric. Your breath stutters, your thighs tensing as the rough pads of his thumbs brush over your stiff nipples.

He feels your reaction. His eyes widen, blowing dark and blown-out, the ashy blonde fringe doing nothing to hide the feral, starving look overtaking his features.

"D-does that—feel good?" he asks, his voice barely a rasp.

"Yes," you breathe. "Pinch them. Gently."

His hands are trembling so violently now that the movement is jerky, but he catches the hardened peaks of your nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.

"Oh, fuck," you hiss, your back arching slightly, pressing your tits firmer into his palms.

"P-pearl—"

He's hyperventilating. His chest heaves, his mouth hanging open.

He looks feverish, completely derailed by the wet, needy sounds you're making. His thumbs rub over your nipples again, a little harder this time, testing the boundary.

"Good boy," you purr, biting your lower lip as you watch his eyebrows flutter. "You like holding my tits, don't you?"

"Y-yes," he sobs out, actual tears spilling over his lashes now, tracking down over his flushed cheeks. "So much—I love them—I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—"

Your free hand drifts down, slow, skating over the bunched cotton of his jumper, the cheap fabric stretched over his chest. You feel his heart hammering through it—too fast—but you don't stop there.

Lower.

"W-wait, I—"

His belt. The thick line of denim under his coat.

You slide your fingers over his lap, press once, casual.

The shape waiting there is not casual at all.

"Ah—"

His head tips down, fringe swinging forward to hide his whole face now, jaw dropping. His hand on your breast spasms, grip tightening too hard for a beat before he remembers himself and flinches, starting to pull away.

"Stop," you warn.

He freezes instantly.

You trap his hand against you again, palm firm over his knuckles, forcing him to keep holding your tit the way you want while your other hand gives his clothed cock a slow, measuring stroke.

Through denim, he's thick and straining, the fabric dragging in rough lines over whatever pathetic boxer briefs he's probably wearing.

"Y-you're… you're t-touching—ah—" His head jerks when you give another slow stroke along his length. "You're t-touching me there, I c-can't, I, I'm g-gonna—"

"I know," you say. "That's the point."

You let your thumb trace the ridge of him through the denim, right along where the head must be pressed against his waistband.

The way he jolts tells you exactly where he is. His hips grind up, then down, then lock, thighs trembling where his knees butterfly out in front of you.

He's so far gone he doesn't realize he's moaning.

Little, broken things spill from his mouth—"nnh," "ah," "hh—god"—half-sounds that never quite cohere into words. His teeth worry at his lower lip in a vain attempt to dam the noise, but every time your hand passes the most sensitive spot he can't help it; his lips part on another gasping whimper.

You watch him.

Watch the way his hair hides his eyes but can't hide the shine of tears slipping out from underneath, tracking down his flushed cheeks.

He looks edible.

You lean in.

He doesn't see you move at first, too busy drowning. Your hand keeps its steady pace on his cock—up, down, just enough pressure to slide the fabric against him in maddening friction.

Then your mouth is at his ear.

"Moss," you whisper, right against the shell, making his whole body jerk. "I want to eat you."

Before he can even ask what you mean, your tongue flicks out and traces the curve of his ear in one slow, deliberate lick.

"Ngh!—"

This time the sound is full, helpless, punched straight from his lungs. His head tips to the side, baring more of his neck, as if presenting.

He tastes exactly the way he smells—roasted and smoky-sweet, like chestnuts you have to crack open hot from the paper cone. The skin of his ear is warmer than the rest of him, delicate, thin enough that you can feel the rush of blood underneath when you drag your tongue up to the softer cartilage at the top.

You can't help yourself. You catch the upper edge between your teeth and nibble.

He loses any last semblance of composure.

"Mmph—"

He bites down on his own lip, hard, trying to strangle the noise, and his free hand—poor, useless thing—flies up and grabs your wrist where it's working his cock, fingers clamping around bone.

"P-please, I, I'm g-gonna, I c-can't—" His words tumble over each other, breath shredding them.

He's right at that trembling edge where his body is so full of sensation his brain can't log anything but overload.

You suck gently at the sensitive rim of his ear one more time, then pull back just enough to murmur, "You're so cute when you're about to make a mess, Moss."

His grip on your wrist tightens, bordering on painful. His hips jerk under your hand in a stuttering little rut, completely involuntary.

He is absolutely about to cream his jeans.

His forehead finally drops all the way to your shoulder, hair curtain falling forward to hide everything, breath hot on your collarbone, almost panting now, close to sobbing.

"N-no, no, I, I c-can't, not in your, in your r-room, I—"

"Shh," you croon, wicked. "I want it."

He makes a shredded little keening sound into your skin.

"P-pearl—wait, p-please, j-just—"

The plea is cut off by a sharp rap on your door.

A knock.

You don't move.

"Yes?"

"It's me." Léa, muffled through the wood, a little apologetic. "Can I come in for a sec?"

You don't move. His hands have gone absolutely still against you, waiting for instructions about what to do with them.

"Not right now," you call back. Flat. Unhurried. "I'm changing."

"Oh—sorry! I just—okay, real quick through the door then, you will not believe what Camille pulled in Villon's office today."

You study his face. The wide, drowning eyes. The fringe falling forward. The way his lower lip trembles at one corner, barely anything, barely visible.

You give it three seconds. Then you reach out and press your palm flat to his chest, slow, and push.

He shuffles back on his knees, confused, hands sliding from you with obvious reluctance.

You lean back on both palms. Open one knee outward. Tilt your chin toward the space you've made between his legs and yours.

"C'mere."

He looks at your thigh. At your face. At your thigh again.

"I—" The word comes out barely held together. "Pearl, what—she's right there—what are you—"

"Moss."

His mouth closes. Opens.

"I d-don't understand what you want me to—"

"Yes you do."

"She went to Villon directly," Léa continues through the wood, unloading gossip she’s probably been holding for hours. "Sat in her office for twenty minutes. Manon saw her come out and said she looked—you know that face she makes? When she thinks she's won something?"

The fringe drops forward. His chin tucks. Both of these happen in the same second, the same automatic retreat, and he stays like that—head bowed, breathing through his nose, hands pressed flat against his own thighs.

"No," he says. Very quietly. "Please. Not—not like that."

You look at the anemone petal on the floor between you. You reach down and pick it up. Hold it out to him on your open palm, pink against your skin.

"If you actually don't want to, you can say petal, Moss. I'll stop."

He stares at it.

The petal. Your hand. The petal again.

His throat bobs.

He is doing the mathematics of this with his whole face—the terror of wanting, the horror of how much he wants, the specific and dreadful knowledge that he could end this right now and will not.

He doesn't take the petal.

He doesn't say the word.

He shifts forward on his knees instead, closing the distance you opened between you, and the look on his face as he does it is the most devastating combination of shame and relief you have ever seen on a human being.

Cute.

"Mm," you say toward the door. "What did she want?"

"Okay, so—you know the London scouts were at the showcase last week?"

You say nothing to him. You let him arrange himself. Let him figure out the geometry with his knees bracketing your thigh, his weight above it, and you watch him understand—really understand, landing in his body—what this looks like. What he looks like. What he's about to do with your roommate three metres and one unlocked door away.

"I'm going to—" He stops. Starts again. "Your leg. I'll dirty your—"

"Hump my leg, Moss." Soft. Almost kind. "I know you want to."

His lower lip trembles. Visibly. The whole bottom half of his mouth doing something complicated and uncontrolled.

He looks at the petal in your hand one more time.

Doesn't say it.

"Good boy," you murmur. And you lean back.

"Apparently the Royal Ballet sent a letter," Léa says. "And the Semperoper—the one in Dresden? They're both interested. In multiple dancers."

The first press of his hips is tentative to the point of barely existing—the slowest possible roll forward, denim dragging against your thigh, and the sound that escapes him is a single, hushed ”mm” that he catches immediately and swallows.

His eyes dart to the door. Back to you. To the door.

You hold his gaze. Steady. Unblinking.

"Villon hasn't announced anything yet," Léa continues, "but Camille was in there lobbying. For herself. Telling Villon she should be on the shortlist for London."

"As if," you say to the door.

Your weight shifts back and your chest pulls away and you watch the exact moment he notices—the exact second his gaze drops to your bare chest, to the breasts his hands had been holding thirty seconds ago, and his eyes go wide and desperate and hungry in a way that's so transparent it's almost funny.

He wants them back. He wants them back so badly it's written in every line of his face and the helpless position of both his hesitating hands hovering at his sides, fingers curling and uncurling, not reaching but wanting to reach, and he hasn't even realized what he looks like yet.

You catch him looking.

Coral surges dark past his ears, flooding down his neck, and his chin snaps down so hard his fringe swings forward and covers everything.

"I—I wasn't—I w-wasn't looking at—"

Léa continues. "…I mean—London saw you dance. If anyone's on that shortlist…"

"Is Dresden sending someone for spring?" you ask.

"Rumour is March." A pause. You can practically hear Léa leaning closer to the door. "Villon's keeping it quiet but Clara heard from Antoine that they want to see the full Ondine run. The whole cast. Which means Camille's going to be unbearable for the next three months. Just—fair warning."

"Noted."

You look back at him. He's stopped moving. Hips locked, hands fisted on his knees, breathing in sharp little pulls through his nose.

The shame of being caught staring at your chest has shut down the rhythm entirely—his whole body rigid with the effort of not looking, not wanting, not existing as the creature he is.

"Keep going, Moss."

His face floods darker. A sound escapes him that is so quietly mortified it registers mostly as texture.

"I—I j-just—the—your—" He can't finish any of it. "Sorry."

"Mm." You bite the inside of your cheek. "Keep going."

The rhythm finds him again slowly—not decided, just arrived at, his hips settling into a forward press and a pull back.

His fingers fall onto your thigh and with each forward motion, they loosen, then tighten again, and the sounds he's making have gone from controlled to not—small, soft "nnh"s on each exhale, breathing shortening, chest starting to heave with the effort of keeping everything quiet.

"Also—" Léa's voice drops half a register. "Did you hear about Stuttgart? Apparently their ballet master emailed Villon asking specifically about our Ondine. Like, specifically about you."

You watch him. The movement of his hips. The way his fringe trembles slightly with each forward press. His knuckles on your thigh going white.

"I hadn't heard that," you say, and your voice comes out flawless. Conversational.

As if you're sitting cross-legged on your bed with a mug of tea and not watching a boy grind himself apart on your thigh while your bare chest catches the cold air.

The thrill of it sits in your stomach like warm liquor.

"Manon overheard Villon on the phone. She couldn't catch everything but she said your name came up three times and the word extraordinary came up once and the phrase principal material came up once and Manon almost choked on her protein bar."

"Manon needs to learn to eavesdrop without choking."

Léa snorts. "I'm just saying—London and Germany? That's not normal. You should talk to Villon before Camille poisons the whole well."

"I will."

You won't. Not yet.

Timing is a form of leverage, and Camille can exhaust herself lobbying while you rehearse.

Your attention zeroes into him when his breathing goes ragged, teeth sinking into his lower lip to dam the noise.

You reach down and press one finger to his mouth. Quiet.

His eyes snap up to yours. Glazed. Wrecked. Pupils blown so wide the brown is barely visible.

"Thank you, Léa," you say. Even. Warm enough to be convincing.

"Of course." A beat. The sound of her shifting her weight in the hallway. "Hey—are you okay? You sound kind of…"

"I'm fine. Just tired. Long rehearsal."

"Okay. Get some sleep. And lock your door—Camille's been weird about wandering the hall at night."

Footsteps. Retreating. The soft click of Léa's own door, three rooms down.

You lift your finger from his lips.

The sound he releases is wrecked—a shuddering, wet exhale he's been holding since the knock, his whole chest caving with the force of it.

You want to eat him alive.

You want to close your mouth over the back of his neck and taste him. You want to bite the soft part of his ear until he makes that destroyed sound again.

Chestnuts.

God. He smells like chestnuts.

"P-Pearl—"

You don't answer, too focused on the thought.

"Pearl." More urgent. His voice has gone thin and rough-edged, hollow.

Still nothing.

"Please—I'm—" He stops. Swallows. The motion of his hips stutters slightly, then steadies, then stutters again. "Please, I—I don't know—I c-can't—"

He is babbling. He doesn't know he's babbling. His mouth is doing it independently of the rest of him while his hips keep moving against your thigh and his hands shake on your leg and his whole body is one long, continuous, agonized tremor.

"I'm g-going to—" A breath. "I'm—Pearl, I'm going to—on your l-leg, I'm going to—please I don't want to sully—please, just—p-please let me—I'm—ah—"

You lean forward, fingers hooking into his fringe and pull it upwards. His head tips back, the ”ah” punching out of him louder than anything he's let escape all night, the mole on the inner white of his right eye suddenly visible as his eyes fly wide—and there they are.

Both of them.

Enormous. Shining.

Every bit of his devotion and his terror and his want sitting right there behind the glassy shine of tears that haven't fallen yet, lashes trembling, the mole above his left brow and the one at his cheek and the one in the white of his eye all sitting precise and perfect on a face that is so completely, helplessly undone that you have to—

His eyes.

This close, in the low bedroom light angled directly into his upturned face, you can see something you've never seen before.

The dark brown sits at the centre of each iris, dense and deep around the pupil—the colour you've seen a hundred times through glass and across counters and in the blue-white wash of his store's fluorescents.

But now that you’re paying attention you see around it, ringing the outer edge of the iris where brown meets white, there's a circumference of blue.

The colour of very deep water seen from very far above.

You hadn’t noticed before he has central heterochromia.

Brown flooding the centre like earth, blue ringing the perimeter like coast.

The kind of detail that only surfaces in specific light at specific proximity—the kind you'd miss through a mirror, through a window, from across a studio.

You had to get this close. You had to pull his hair back and tip his face up and hold him in the light like something you were examining under glass.

He’s beautiful.

You grab his face in both hands and kiss him.

He makes a sound into the kiss that breaks apart in the middle and you feel the shudder start somewhere deep in him and move outward.

"Nnh—mmph—ah—"

You muffle every single one of his whimpers with your tongue, letting the shaking from the orgasm move through him in long, slow waves.

When it’s over, you pull back by a centimetre.

His eyes are closed. The blue is gone now. Hidden again behind closed lids, behind the wet dark fringe of his lashes.

"Mhm," you say. Quiet. Just for the two of you. "Humped my leg like a good boy."

He goes onto your shoulder, and the sound he makes is mortified and wrecked and something else underneath it that he will never, ever admit to.

You smile at the ceiling.

Chestnuts.

He smells infuriatingly, devastatingly exactly like chestnuts.

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Silence.

His lips part. Close. Part again. 

The coral flush that had been fading from his cheeks floods back, darker, spreading down the sides of his neck.

"Then you kiss it."

He makes a sound like something cracked in his chest.

"I—what—I c-can't—"

"You can." You extend the petal toward him. "Your turn first."

His hand lifts from his knee. The tremor is visible—not fine, not subtle. Full shaking, bare fingers unsteady as they close around the petal's edge. 

He holds it like it might detonate.

His eyes scan your body and skitter away so fast you almost miss the trajectory. 

Shoulder. Neck. Lower. Back to shoulder.

The petal lands soft against the fabric of your sweater, right at the slope where neck becomes shoulder. His hand retreats immediately, snapping back to his lap like he touched a burner.

Conservative. Careful.

So careful it makes your teeth itch.

You watch his face as you hook one finger under the neckline of your sweater. Tug. The knit slides, and the fabric pools at the curve of your bicep, baring the full line of your shoulder—skin, bone, the faint shadow of your collarbone.

He whips his head to the side.

Full turn. Chin almost touching his own shoulder. Eyes fixed on your bookshelf like it contains the answer to every question he's ever failed.

"Moss."

Your voice comes out quieter than you intended. He flinches.

"Look at me."

His jaw works. You can see the muscle flexing beneath his skin, the effort of obedience warring with whatever his brain is screaming. 

Slowly—so slowly you could count the degrees—his head turns back.

His eyes land on your bare shoulder and stay there. His pupils are blown wide. The coral has reached his ears.

"Now kiss it."

➜ Coming: soon!

It’s not what he says so much as how he says it—low, husky, like the line came straight from whatever part of his brain is currently not supervised by common sense.

Like he’s talking to Miki, not you.

Like this is a panel that should be shrink-wrapped and slapped with an 18+ sticker.

Your heartbeat slams against your ribs, stupid and loud.

He realises what he’s just said a second too late. His eyes flick to yours, wide, like he wants to drag the sentence back into his mouth and swallow it whole.

You could laugh it off, call him a pervert, roll your eyes, tell him his brain’s made of hentai now.

You don’t.

You feel your lashes lower, like they’re heavy. Your mouth goes a little soft around the edges.

Fine, then.

If that’s the game.

You turn slightly on the couch, angle your body towards him. The blanket slips down one shoulder. You reach out again, fingers closing gently around his wrist.

The pulse there jumps under your thumb.

You keep your eyes on his, steady. Try on that look you’ve practiced for Miki in the mirror, the one that lives somewhere between bored and hungry.

“This spot?” you ask, voice coming out lower than you meant.

Your tongue meets his skin again, dragging the tip along the inside edge of his thumb, where the knuckle meets the pad.