𓍯Soulful𓂃

You stared at your phone with a sigh that turned faintly visible in the chilly air. 

It was colder at the station than you thought it would be when you left your apartment. There wasn’t enough insulation anywhere to stop the biting chill from finding its way through the walls and floors of the underground station. A draft swept underneath the sliding glass doors at the front entrance and teased your ankles repeatedly as you paced. Commuters bustled around you in small groups beneath the mounted television near the waiting bench; the murmurs of their conversations punctuated by small clouds of breath as the newscaster droned over images of snow-whitened roads.

“…the blizzard is expected to intensify by late afternoon. All travelers are advised to reconsider non‑essential trips…”

You exhaled slowly and watched the condensation fog your phone screen momentarily before it dissipated. Regret pooled heavily in your stomach. You should have known better than to pick this particular weekend to go home — the rare long break that had lined up perfectly with your schedule and, with spectacular inconvenience, also happened to coincide with the worst winter storm of the year. Too late to reconsider now. The ticket was bought and the bag was packed and you were already here, which was more than halfway committed by any reasonable measure. 

When the train whistle sounded and the engine glided into the station on a billow of frost, you shrugged off what remained of your better judgment and fell in with the sluggish crowd moving toward it. Passengers bundled up in heavy coats brushed shoulders with you and you were swallowed by a ripple of low-toned conversation.

The luggage wheels chose that exact moment to give out.

They jammed in the narrow gap between the platform’s edge and the train’s step. It lurched to an abrupt halt that jolted your arm forward. You tugged once but it wouldn’t budge. Tugged again, harder, putting your body into it — the handle creaked but the wheels held fast. 

Restlessness rippled through the people behind you in line. Heat flushed your neck as you crouched down trying to yank the damn suitcase free, not wanting to hold up the line for much longer.

Not today. You started to panic. Please, not today.

“Need some help there?”

The voice came from just behind you.

You didn’t turn all the way to face him — just bobbed your head in thanks. “Yeah, please. Thank you.”

His hand slid past yours and the cuff of his coat sleeve brushed yours as he knelt down next to the suitcase. One hand gripped the handle while the other nudged underneath just enough to shift the wheels out of the corner. Lifted it slightly and twisted, and it popped free. 

He straightened without comment and took the handle, stepping onto the train and glancing back only briefly to make sure you were following. You nodded hastily and climbed up the narrow stairs. Face still burning, you walked along the aisle behind him and led him towards your seat.

“It's just this row,” you said, pointing. 

At your seat, he hoisted the suitcase up in one clean motion — higher than his head, without any visible hitch — and you watched his arms complete the arc of it that gave you a funny feeling in your belly. Before you quite realized it, your eyes had followed the line of his arms all the way to his hands. You finally got a good look at his face when he turned to you.

Strong lines along his jaw and eyes that warmed when they met yours. A few strands of dark hair had fallen loose from the rest of his neatly combed-back style, resting across his forehead. It was somewhat unfair for a stranger on a train to look like that. 

“Thank you,” you said, your hand going up automatically to check the suitcase was properly secured. “You really saved me from the embarrassment back there.” 

He glanced at it once more and gave it a small push to seat it further in, then stepped back to give you room to pass. 

“Don’t mention it. Happens to the best of us.” He rested his hand briefly on the back of your seat to steady himself as someone edged down the aisle behind him. “Those gaps catch wheels more often than people think.” 

You laughed despite yourself as you sank into the window seat and pulled your jacket closer around your shoulders. “Guess I'm just the unlucky one who got chosen tonight.”

His lips moved into something that wasn't quite a smile yet but was heading there. He rapped his knuckles against the suitcase gently, like to make sure it wouldn’t fall off on you. Then he gestured towards the row in front of you, indicating his seat.

“Mine's a couple up.”

“Thank you again,” you said as he turned to go.

He glanced back over his shoulder at the sound of your voice, and this time the smile completed itself. “Happy holidays,” he replied before continuing down the aisle.

“Happy holidays,” you whispered quietly to yourself. 

You weren't entirely sure how happy it was shaping up to be. 

The inside of the train was dim and catatonic. Departure had already been pushed back thirty minutes in the hopes that any remaining passengers would hurry and get on board before conditions made the journey inadvisable. Even so, large pockets of empty seats remained scattered throughout, and the untouched headrests gave the entire compartment a strangely hollow appearance. 

The seat directly across from yours was unclaimed. So were most of the others within eyeline. 

A small stroke of fortune, perhaps. You could hardly blame them. Considering the warnings that were on every news channel, it seemed likely that most people with flexible plans had chosen to remain safely indoors instead of venturing across the country through a rising blizzard. The ones who had shown up tonight were the ones who couldn't afford the postponement, who had reasons that outweighed the inconvenience of a winter storm bearing down on the railway line. 

You fell squarely into that category. It had been too long since you had last made the trip home and when the long weekend appeared on your calendar, the trip had felt too convenient to postpone. Canceling would have been the sensible thing. You had considered it, and then the thought of putting it off again had guilt building up. So you had packed a bag and come anyway, blizzard warnings and all, which was either devotion or stubbornness and at this point you weren't certain there was a meaningful difference between the two. 

Under ordinary conditions the journey was supposed to take just over two hours. Judging by the sound of the wind working itself against the windows before the train had even cleared the city, the estimate felt increasingly optimistic.

For the first half hour of the journey, you did little more than watch the passage of the evening through the window. The sky held the last of the day's color — pale rose bleeding into silver at the edges as the sun dropped behind a low line of hills, and the first snow began to fall into the fading light. Started as a scattering of delicate flakes drifting lazily through the air which was barely noticeable against the dimming horizon. It was a rather pretty sight. 

Within minutes the flakes multiplied and thickened, merging into a pale curtain that swept across the open countryside in waves. The train’s headlights cut out a small area of movement through the white until there was very little left to look at except the storm itself. Watching it for too long produced a faint, swimming sensation behind your eyes.

A chime sounded through the carriage, followed by the soft crackle of the train’s announcement system. The conductor’s voice came through the speakers, informing that due to deteriorating weather conditions along the route, the train would be reducing speed and making several unscheduled stops to ensure the safety of everyone on board.

Your earlier suspicion had aged into confirmation. This wasn't going to be the usual two-hour ride to Daegu. If the weather kept building at its current rate, the journey could easily stretch to twice the original estimate, possibly more.

There was only so long anyone could watch an unbroken wall of snow before the mind began casting around for something else to do with itself. Some coffee would be a lot more appealing than staring at bleakness, you thought, and it nudged you out of your seat. You made your way down to the snack car. It was marginally brighter than the passenger compartments. A slim counter ran along one side with an attendant moving briskly between shelves and heating units.

The display offered little in the way of temptation.

Plastic-wrapped pastries lay under heat lamps that had long since deprived them of whatever freshness they might have once found. A shelf of microwaveable items occupied the adjacent space. Nothing about it looked particularly appealing, and you could almost feel the sodden heaviness that would come an hour later if you dared to take more than a mouthful. Hardly ideal considering the uncertain length of the journey ahead.

Despite that, the shelves were emptying at a surprising pace. Passengers seemed less concerned with quality than availability, gathering whatever remained before the options disappeared altogether. The sight prompted you to make your decision quickly.

You purchased a couple of the lemon cream buns stacked near the register along with a cup of coffee. The buns looked harmless and would likely sit far better in your stomach than the alternatives. You deemed it a sensible choice. 

With your small collection of supplies in hand, you glanced around for somewhere to sit. A small table near the wall was the only vacant one remaining. You slid into the seat and set the buns down in front of you, curling both palms around the cup. The train rocked more noticeably here than in the passenger car — a slow, side-to-side sway that rattled through the fixtures and occasionally produced a low creak from the metal frame of the carriage when a particularly aggressive gust found the side of the train. 

You set your coffee down and reached for your phone. Your mother had sent four messages since the departure delay, each one a variation on the same concern, and you owed her a call before the evening went any further. The dial tone attempted to connect, held for a few seconds, and then dissolved into silence without going through. 

You pulled the phone from your ear and looked at the screen — the network icon in the corner was flickering back to life then fading again. You angled the phone toward the window on the off chance that the extra distance might persuade the signal to cooperate.

Unfortunately, the same result followed. You clicked your tongue, irritation simmering just beneath the surface.

“Can I sit here?”

Your heart gave a startled jump before your brain had fully registered the voice, and you looked up to find the handsome stranger from the platform standing at the edge of your table. He balanced himself by bracing one hand against the tabletop as the movement of the carriage rocked him slightly where he stood. In his other hand he carried a small packet of food.

“Sure—please, go ahead,” you said quickly, sitting up straighter and nudging your paper bag a little farther to the side to clear the space. 

He dipped his head in gratitude and lowered himself onto the seat beside you. The train chose that exact moment to lurch forward with a particularly pronounced sway that made him huff a quiet laugh. He settled, set his food down, and met your eyes with a look that carried the trace of whatever that almost-laugh had been. 

“I hope you don't mind. Every other table seems to have been claimed.” He glanced briefly around the car before returning to you. “I figured since we'd already spoken, it’d be less awkward than asking a complete stranger.”

“I don't mind at all,” you said, shaking your head with emphasis. “Besides, I doubt anyone on this train is turning down company tonight.”

His lips curved in a gentle smile. “Then I’ll do my best to make sure the company isn’t disappointing. I’d hate to abuse such generous hospitality on our second meeting of the evening.” His gaze held something like assurance, almost as if he were hoping you’d enjoy his presence as much as he would enjoy yours.

“Well,” you murmured, settling back and holding your coffee close, “in that case you’re very much welcome to the table.”

He unwrapped his meal and you noticed he hadn't thought to get a drink. You looked at your own coffee, still warm between your palms, and then back at him. 

“You know,” you added, motioning towards your own cup, “I’ll grab you something to drink—might make the night ahead a little warmer.”

He looked up immediately and raised a hand in protest. “You don't have to do that—really, you've already given me the seat.”

“It’s really not a problem,” you insisted, rising halfway before he could object again. “You helped me earlier, remember? Consider it repayment.” You paused, letting him gather his thoughts before continuing. “Coffee or tea? Whichever you prefer.”

He hesitated for a moment before conceding with a small nod. “In that case,” he said, glancing briefly toward the counter, “coffee would be great.”

You returned shortly after with a cup of coffee. He sat up straighter once you approached. 

“Here you go,” you said, holding it toward him.

He took it with both hands and bowed his head in thanks. After taking a small sip he set the cup down and extended his hand.

“I should have done this properly earlier,” he said. “Choi Beomgyu.”

You repeated his name in your head over again after he said it, savouring the sound. Lingering on the taste of each syllable with a strange attention you couldn’t quite place. As you gave your own introduction, you took his hand and shook it, and noted that it was warm — still carrying the heat from the cup. Just like his name. 

You felt your phone buzz suddenly.

“One second—sorry, my mum's been waiting to hear from me,” you said, quickly placing the phone to your ear while flashing him a look of apology.

Turning slightly in your seat, you focused on the call while explaining the situation to your mother. The connection crackled occasionally beneath your words, forcing you to repeat yourself once or twice as you reassured your mother that you were still on the train and that the delay had only stretched the journey, not halted it entirely. 

Every so often, when you glanced up mid-sentence, you caught him looking at you over the rim of his cup. The simple exchange sent a curious flutter through your chest; it was pleasant in a way that made you unexpectedly aware of the moment.

“Are you visiting family in Daegu?” he asked once you’re done talking.

You nodded, pulling your scarf down from around your neck and draping it across your lap. The snack car had warmed you up enough that keeping it wrapped felt excessive. “I haven't been home in a while.” You rested your hands atop one another on your lap, tapping your fingers together absentmindedly in a restless habit you had never quite managed to outgrow. “You?”

“Daegu as well.” The corners of his mouth lifted. You had the same destination as him, which meant he could spend time in your company longer. “My brother is getting married. The ceremony is the day after tomorrow, actually. I didn't have much choice about traveling tonight, storm or not.”

“Wait, really? That's wonderful!” You leaned forward with a delighted sound, your hands lifting slightly in excitement before you caught yourself and laughed. “Congratulations to him—to your whole family, I mean.”

Beomgyu laughed as well, the sound bright enough to draw a brief glance from someone seated a few tables away. “He's been sending me photos for weeks,” he said, already reaching into his coat pocket for his phone. “Here, let me show you a few—”

He scrolled through the gallery while angling the phone between you on the table so both of you could see. You instinctively found yourself leaning in for a better view.

The photos moved past in an affectionate chronicle — a smiling couple holding up their hands to show the rings, a table full of family at what looked like a celebratory dinner. The particular beautiful pandemonium of wedding preparations filling someone's living room with fabric samples and flower arrangements and people who all seemed to be talking at once. In nearly every image, Beomgyu's brother and the woman beside him were either laughing at the camera or turned toward each other with the telltale glow of two people eagerly awaiting the day ahead.

You caught yourself smiling purely for them, not for any reason beyond simple happiness.

“They look so happy,” you said, pausing on one photo in particular — the bride-to-be with a streak of flour across her cheek, laughing beside his brother in the middle of what appeared to be a thoroughly failed baking project. 

Beomgyu leaned in slightly to see which one you had stopped on, and his shoulder brushed yours as he did. Neither of you moved apart. “That was their attempt at baking their own engagement cake,” he said, the laugh already back in his voice. “My brother maintained for weeks that it was the best thing he'd ever eaten. Nobody else who tried it agreed with him.”

“He was protecting her feelings,” you said immediately.

“Almost certainly.” He scrolled to the next photo, which showed the same couple holding up a lopsided, fondant-covered disaster with matching expressions of pride. “Although he did finish the whole thing, so either he meant it or he has genuinely terrible taste.”

You laughed, and Beomgyu looked at you when you did. He should have torn himself away after a second. Instead, he stayed there watching you through the sound of it, gaze softening which he failed to hide in time. 

God, he could get used to hearing that. 

The next few were different from the others — older photographs, more personal. A family of four around a dinner table crowded with dishes. A blurry snapshot taken outdoors where two boys stood shoulder to shoulder beneath a vibrant blue sky, squinting into the sun. Another picture showed the same boys years later, taller now, though their expressions suggested they had been persuaded into the photo rather than volunteering for it. 

Beomgyu walked you through his memory lane and told you little stories behind every photo. You listened and watched his face more than the screen. 

You focused on a photo of his father caught in a candid moment with a glass raised toward the camera. You stared at it and then back at Beomgyu, and it required very little imagination to picture how those features might settle with age — how his face may look five, ten years from now etched with laugh lines and softer features. Older, but still the same.

It gave you this tight feeling in your chest that felt oddly misplaced. You had known this man for barely an hour, but the simple act of looking at the people who raised him and listening to him talk about his life — it had begun to create the faintest sense of connection that you hadn't been looking for and weren't sure what to do with. 

“I really hope I make it there on time,” Beomgyu said, more to himself than to you, his eyes moving toward the window. “I promised I'd be there early—there were a few things I said I'd help with before the ceremony. That promise is starting to feel a little ambitious.”

You followed his gaze toward the window where the glass had begun to cloud faintly. Snow tore past it in dense white streaks, illuminated only when the train passed the occasional line of track lights. 

“Optimistic,” you offered. “And I think it’s perfectly fine to be optimistic in times like these. If anything, it gives others peace of mind.”

At this point optimism was the only resource anyone aboard the train seemed to possess. Every passenger you had seen since boarding the train bore the same tell tale demeanor. Hoping and praying that the weather would let up and that they would make it to their destination. 

Beomgyu liked that you had taken his pessimism and returned it to him reframed, and it made him curious whether the calm in your voice was something you actually felt or something you had decided to project for the benefit of the people around you. He suspected it was genuinely both and made him wonder if that calm would hold if he pushed the thought a little further.

“Maybe,” he conceded, glancing once more at the window. “If it doesn’t work out, I suppose I'll just end up stranded somewhere along the line with everyone else who gambled on the weather tonight.” He gave a small shrug, though the thought clearly amused him. “Could be worse outcomes.”

“Significantly worse,” you agreed, lifting your coffee cup. “We're inside, at least. Stranded on a train is categorically not the worst version of stranded. But, like, I still wouldn't want to spend the night here in that situation.”

He let that settle for a beat, glancing around the carriage with a brief, contemplative sweep before his eyes returned to yours. The smile that followed came out slowly, like he had given himself a moment to decide whether to say the next thing and had concluded in favor of it. 

“I suppose that's only true depending on who you're stranded with.”

It was a miraculous testament to your abilities that you kept yourself from blushing at his words. What you did end up doing was burn your lips on your coffee in an attempt to conceal your smile.

You flinched with a small hiss, pulling your bottom lip inward between your teeth and dragging your tongue across it in a futile attempt to address the sting. Beomgyu straightened so abruptly his knee knocked the underside of the table.

“Hey—careful,” he said, offering a folded tissue. “Are you alright?”

There was visible concern in his voice, but still the question ended with a faint breath of laughter he clearly attempted to suppress. You took the tissue and pressed it to your lip, narrowing your eyes in playful reproach. His smile turned apologetic that softened his entire face. The sight had an unfortunate effect on you. Your attempt at indignation dissolved before it could fully form, and the reprimand you had intended never reached your lips.

“It's fine,” you said, lowering the tissue and testing your lip with a light press of your finger. The sting had already softened to a mild throb, manageable enough that your attention had moved on to the more pressing issue of what had come out of your mouth in the seconds after it. “Besides, that was probably the most action my lips were going to get tonight anyway.”

You got a sickening sense of ick arriving after you finished speaking, crawling up from your stomach to the back of your throat in a slow, nauseating wave. It wasn’t that you wanted to make it sound pitiful. You had not meant it as flirtation either, goddammit — that was the honest truth. And the honest truth was somehow worse, because it meant you had simply said something pathetic with complete sincerity and no strategic intent whatsoever. You sounded splendidly sad and misleading.

Slowly, you lowered your hand away from your mouth. You steeled yourself for embarrassment at the very least or polite sympathy at worst — but you found neither on Beomgyu's face. There was no trace of pity in his expression, no awkward hesitation that might suggest he had begun reassessing the stranger in front of him after he was confronted with a confession he had not asked for. 

“Tell me about it,” he said with a barely concealed knowing smile.

“Seriously?” You raised your brows, scoffing softly. “I wouldn't have guessed that about you.”

You meant that sincerely.

He was attractive — there was no point pretending otherwise. He had also been kind and considerate; a gentleman. Whether it meant anything beyond good manners was a separate question entirely. 

Still against your better judgement a small, selfish thought surfaced. 

That’s convenient.

You crossed your legs beneath the table and shifted in your seat, applying what willpower you had left to the project of not following that thought any further down the path it was heading. It was a limited supply of willpower. Beomgyu was not helping. 

If his deft handling of your earlier remark had not already charmed you, the way he reacted now had already gotten to you. He looked away, if only for a second, gaze dropping to the table as a shy smile graced his lips. It was not avoidance so much as a brief retreat, as though he needed the space of a heartbeat before returning to you. When he did return to you, there was a faint flush dusting his cheeks that he appeared entirely unaware of.

Oh.

You were getting smitten by this man far too quickly. You needed to slow down. You were very aware that you needed to slow down. 

“It's kind of you to say that.” He exhaled a short laugh, turning his coffee cup in a slow half-rotation against the table. “No, I mean—it really hasn't been that long. But no.”

You nodded, more to fill the space than anything else. Fortunately, your conscience was still alive and you used the moment to remind yourself of a few things. Charm could be fabricated just as easily as it could be genuine. People could present themselves well and say the right things in ways that made you forget to question what was underneath. None of what Beomgyu had shown you tonight proved anything on its own. 

The reminder was sound. It lasted approximately four seconds.

“I was actually supposed to bring someone to the wedding,” he added, like an afterthought. “Didn’t quite work out that way.”

You perked up at the new information. “Why’s that?” 

He tongued the corner of his lips, hemming and hawing how much he wanted to share. “Explaining the full absence of a plus one,” he said, with a self-deprecating tilt of his head, “might genuinely take longer than the rest of this journey.” He paused. “I could go into it, if you don't mind sitting through the sad highlights.”

“We’ve got time,” you said, gesturing at the window. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere anytime soon.”

The apples of his cheeks puffed up as if he had been waiting for permission to continue. 

But you never got to hear what happened, because somewhere behind you, the sound of a child’s crying echoed through the carriage. Instinctively, your head turned.

A young woman stood a few steps away, shifting a restless toddler against her shoulder while scanning around for an available seat. The train’s swaying had an evident effect on her posture and she adjusted her hold with visible strain.

“We should give her the table.” You glanced once at Beomgyu before nodding toward the woman. 

He followed your line of sight and got the cue immediately. He was on his feet in the blink of an eye, and when the woman approached he gestured toward the seats with a smile. “Please—it's all yours.”

Instant gratitude spread across her features. She thanked you both as she settled in with the toddler, and you wiped the faint ring your cup had left on the table while Beomgyu moved the spare chair aside to give her more room. It was not a long exchange, but it carried an undercurrent of understanding that needed no elaboration. Then, just as quickly, you left the snack car together.

Within the dim confines of the vestibule, you slowed your pace and stole a glance back at him.

“Um—” You tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear, looking ahead rather than at him as you spoke. “If you don't hate the idea of company, there's an empty seat across from mine. You could sit there, if you want—I don't think anyone's coming around to check tickets tonight.” A small pause followed, then you quickly added with an almost self-conscious, “Only if you're comfortable with it, though.”

The amber light caught your face as you turned back toward him, illuminating your features in such a dreamy way that caught him entirely off guard. It pooled along the curve of your cheek and the line of your mouth, and when you looked up at him — he momentarily lost the capacity to breathe correctly.

He had been mesmerized by your eyes from the moment at the platform. He’d known then that you'd be difficult to forget. Now, at this proximity, with your attention fixed on him, they seemed to undo whatever composure he had managed to gather over the last few minutes.

He would be an idiot to say no. A spectacular, irredeemable idiot. 

“I don't mind at all,” he said, falling into step beside you. Only God knew how he didn’t trip over his own words. “That's genuinely a better offer than where I've been sitting. The man next to my seat has decided that I was a reasonable substitute for a headrest.”

Your startled laughter was music to his ears. The stupid grin on his lips refused to tame down — because he was the one who made you laugh. Call it stupid, which it honestly was, maybe even a little embarrassing, but he was already helplessly besotted with you. 

You led him back through the carriage to your row and slid into the window seat, and he settled into the one across from you. The closeness here was different than before, but welcomed by you both. 

He leaned back against the seat and ran a hand through his hair, and you watched him do it with your chin resting on your hand.

"Where was I?" he asked.

"Your mystery plus one," you said. "You were about to explain."

"Right." He exhaled, dropping his hand back to his lap. "Right."

A blind date arranged by a close friend, one he trusted enough not to question the introduction. He recounted every detail that led him to start that year-long relationship with a rueful self-aware smile, because he already knew how ironic it sounded.

He had believed in her completely. That was the part he kept returning to — by strengthening that belief, the memories forged during their time together felt as though they were permanently branded onto his soul. A year passed before the foundation of it showed its first fractures, and by then they had accumulated enough that he couldn't point to a single moment where things had gone wrong. 

It hadn't been betrayal in the way people typically meant when they used the word. Messages that went unanswered until well into the night, accounted for with an explanation that was just plausible enough to accept. A promise that became a lie so gradually that the transition was invisible until it was already complete. Moments where he'd raised a concern and watched it get brushed aside so lightly that he'd found himself questioning whether he had read the situation correctly. None of it had seemed large enough to name at the time, yet each instance had gathered somewhere in him and piled up little by little. 

He told you how she’d invented minor crises just to see if he would react, and how he had mistaken that scrutiny for care. It sounded foolish now that he could hear himself saying it, he acknowledged. She had tested the bounds of his patience and taken advantage of the trust he gave her freely. He then explained how he had called her out on it more than once and she had come back with some half-assed excuse, some bullshit story that had a cute twist at the end and had him questioning his own intuition.

Melancholy had draped itself over his face, painting his lips when he reached the parts that still cost him something to say. She existed as this fantasy, presented herself as a version of a person that matched him so well he had attributed it to compatibility rather than a lie. It wasn't until she slipped, until he caught the tail end of a phone call he hadn't been meant to hear, that the full shape of it became visible to him all at once. 

She hadn’t loved him; she had loved being loved by him.

It had taken him far longer than he was comfortable admitting to understanding the difference between those two things, and longer still to work out what it meant for everything he thought he had known about the year they had shared. Because when she left his life she took her reasons with her and left him only answers to cobble together from the fractures of her decisions.

You found it difficult to hold yourself at a distance from what he had shared. He was objectively someone you barely knew — someone whose life intersected yours for the briefest of moments. You were supposed to suspend your trust in these circumstances, that a narrative spun in a place and time like this could become whatever version the narrator needed it to be. You had reminded yourself of this already tonight, more than once, and it had helped less each time. 

Because there was something about him as he talked that tethered his words to the haunted yearning he struggled to hide.

Raw honesty had a particular quality that was very difficult to sustain without it being exactly what it appeared to be, and what you were watching was not someone shaping a narrative for your benefit. It left you wondering, with a growing sense of disbelief, how someone who spoke with such care and openness could have been met with so little of it in return.

“Did your friend know?” you asked. “The one who set up the blind date—did he know what she was like?”

Beomgyu pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head slowly. The rueful smile returned, directed more at the memory than at you. “Taehyun had no idea,” he said. “If he had, he wouldn't have pushed me into it. He felt terrible when everything came out—kept apologizing for weeks, wouldn't let it go no matter how many times I told him it wasn't his fault.”

“Taehyun?” You blurted out, eyes going wide like saucers. Your sudden rise in volume in turn startled him. “Kang Taehyun?”

“Yeah,” he answered, hesitating for a brief second before adding, “Do you… know him? I mean—it's not a rare name, there are probably—”

“No, hold on,” you muttered, already scrolling through your gallery with growing urgency until you found what you were looking for. You turned your screen toward him, leaning across the space between your seats. “This Taehyun. Is this him?”

Simultaneously leaning forward, creased eyebrows crinkling up and mouth falling agape in recognition, he pointed a finger at your screen.

“That’s Taehyunnie,” he chortled. “Yes—yes! That's my friend. That's him.”

“You’re kidding.” You pulled back with a laugh of your own that came out slightly unhinged, pressing your palm briefly to your forehead. “He's my friend too.”

He fumbled for his own phone, unlocking it with hurried movements and swiping into his gallery. He held his screen beside yours, flipping through a series of photos — some from school days and others more recent, Taehyun in various configurations with a younger-looking Beomgyu across several years. 

“Look—this is us. This one was last year,” he said, tapping a photo of the two of them against the backdrop of the Han River at night. 

“What are the actual odds,” you said, shaking your head slowly. “How does that even happen.”

“The world is ridiculously small.” He huffed out a breath. “Which university?”

“Same as him. Same department too,” you said, sitting up straighter now, the earlier heaviness of the conversation completely overturned. “We were year mates.” 

“I've known him since school. We ended up at different universities but we never lost touch.” He let out another incredulous laugh. "I can't believe I've never seen you around.”

“He never mixes his people.” With deft fingers, you quickly texted Taehyun asking about Beomgyu. You hoped the network was cooperating. “I don't think I've ever seen him introduce anyone from different parts of his life to each other.”

“That explains a lot. He’s always been like that,” Beomgyu said, nodding. "I've met maybe two people from his university years, and both times it was accidental." 

This unbashful feeling of giddiness was so, so stupid, but you didn’t feel the need to hold yourself back anymore. How narrow could the world be? How could it be, that you had wandered unknowingly alongside him for so long? Something that had felt like a wall between you — the stranger-ness of him — had just been pulled away. Your heart leapt with joy.

Conversation lulled into momentary silence but it was thrumming with the last of your laughter and the surprise that had not yet worn off. Staring into each other’s eyes you both felt this growing sense of belonging that you were not feeling around each other when you met.

“I feel so happy,” he confessed with a warm smile. The flat of his palm caressed his chest where his heart laid. "I don't know why exactly. I just—I really do." 

"Me too," you said simply. And you meant it all the way down. 

He had this tendency to say more with his eyes than his mouth could describe, something you observed he’s been doing all evening. You loved deciphering him this way.

"I kept thinking we'd get off the train and that would be it," he said, his gaze dropping briefly to your hands before returning to your face. "That you'd be a good memory I wouldn't have any way of returning to. I kept thinking I should prepare myself for that. It’s… comforting knowing that we can actually keep in touch.”

You tilted your head sideways, narrowing your eyes playfully. "So without Taehyun, we wouldn't have managed that?" you asked with a light, probing edge.

The surge of satisfaction that grasped you was palpable when you saw him undone by you. Colour rose along his cheeks — heat that crept upwards even as his charming smile held, because Beomgyu was choosing to ride the wave you clearly already had. 

“I can be friendly,” he murmured with a croon as he leaned forward, elbows coming to rest on his knees and closing the distance between you by a fraction that registered in every nerve you had. His gaze that stayed on yours asked for nothing and yet held your attention completely. 

You hummed, nodding for him to finish what he started. “Go on.”

"I would have found a reason to stay right here regardless." His fingers brushed once against the fabric near your knee as the train swayed. An involuntary shiver ran up you just from that miniscule of a contact. "But I'd rather earn it," he said. "Starting with being your friend."

You were looking at each other so intently that anything beyond the two of you went unnoticed. The rest of the compartment might as well have fallen away. You had eyes for each other and nothing else.

"I'd like that," you said, and let your voice drop a little so that he had to lean slightly closer to catch it. "I'd like to be your friend too." 

"Good." The curve of his mouth was slow and warm. "I was hoping you'd say that."

Your heart raced with nerves and exhilaration. Just then your phone vibrated against your palm, abrupt enough to pull you back. 

Tyun wait why are you asking about beomgyu are you actually on the same train as him rn. please say yes Tyun ok if you are- he's one of the best people i know. genuinely. you're in good hands. also this is the funniest thing that's happened to me all week and i'm at my friend's wedding rehearsal dinner so that's saying something

You stared at the screen for a moment, the corner of your mouth pulling up despite yourself. Of all the moments for Taehyun to come through with a functional response, it had to be now. While you had gone silent, Beomgyu began to feel a tad bit of concern over his choice of words. Had he pushed you too far?

"Everything okay?" he asked.

You looked up from the screen and met his eyes, and this time you didn't look away first.

"Yeah," you said. "More than okay."

The pellucid certainty with which you had said it did more than reassure him. He had meant what he said about earning it, about taking things at the pace they were supposed to take, and that intention hadn't moved. But intentions and the pull he felt sitting across from you occupied two entirely separate parts of him, and the latter was becoming considerably less manageable by the minute.

"I should probably stop making this all about me," he said, gathering himself back into some semblance of composure. "That feels a bit unfair at this point."

“Unfair?” you echoed, a hint of disbelief slipping through. 

The word sat oddly with you. You had not felt shortchanged for a single moment. If anything, you had been the one taking more than you gave, learning him piece by piece while keeping most of yourself tucked carefully away, and the imbalance had been entirely your doing. The fact that he had read the conversation as one-sided in your favor was almost endearing enough to be a problem. 

"I've done most of the talking," he went on, reading nothing of where your thoughts had just gone. "You've been sitting here listening this whole time. That can't be a particularly good deal." 

You almost smiled at that. He really did think this had been one-sided. He had no idea what his presence had been doing to you the entire time. 

"I don't know." You shrugged, a soft breath escaping you. "I actually like hearing you talk." 

His brows rose, caught off guard. There was nothing particularly remarkable about his voice, or so he had always thought. The urge to just cross over this friendly boundary still maintained slyly by the two of you was becoming more and more overwhelming for him.

You pressed your lips together for a second, and then shook your head. The words you had chosen felt insufficient for what you had actually meant. 

“No—that’s not quite right,” you corrected, more honestly this time. "I love your voice. I could listen to it for a long time. Is that a strange thing to say?" 

There were too many things Beomgyu could say, and none of them felt safe enough to let out without altering the course of where this was going. 

"No." He breathed, and it came out faster than anything he had said before. He stopped right after it, lips parting as if to add more. “I just—”

You watched him try again. It only made your curiosity deepen.

“I’d like to hear about you too,” he confided a little softly. “If you’re willing.”

You bit down on your lip to keep your expression from giving too much away. He knew exactly what he was doing and he was not being clever about any of this. Your heart argued with your senses but pragmatism had long lost its hold on you. He was just too irresistible. It was as if he inspired a recklessness in you, a desire to go all-in. Lose yourself in him completely.  

You reached into your paper bag and held out one of the lemon buns toward him.

"I don't mind," you said. “Being asked, I mean.” 

There is a version of this that could be explained very simply.

Two people passing the hours with conversation, letting the journey carry them forward while they trade stories to make it feel shorter. Friends, if someone were curious enough to ask. 

He listened with care, asking questions without overstepping that kept you speaking. You set the pace for how much you revealed, and he respected that boundary perfectly. Just like a good friend would do, he remembered the details you shared (which truthfully surprised you) as if it mattered beyond the moment itself. It would be easy to accept that at face value, to believe that this was all it was. 

Friends, as you both agreed to be.

Perhaps that was why it felt the way it did. 

Because ntihng had crossed any line, and nothing had been said that could not be taken back if needed. Every word could still belong to a version of this night that ended without consequence, where you part at your destination with a smile and carry nothing forward except a pleasant recollection. At some later point, you might meet again through the same shared acquaintance. You would greet each other with the comfort you had reserved for being familiar strangers turned to friends. 

But then there were smaller moments that defied such easy explanations. 

The glances that did not move unless you gave him a reason to. There were gestures such as reaching over in the middle of something you were laughing about and wiping the trace of lemon cream from the corner of your mouth with his thumb, followed by the absent motion of bringing that same thumb to his mouth without breaking eye contact. 

That is where the simplicity begins to fray. If this were only friendship, it wouldn't feel like this.

"This is a little strange, isn't it?" you said.

“In what way?”

“We’ve been talking for—what, over an hour?” You smiled a little; there was a daze that washed over your face from settling into the moment. "And I don't feel like I'm talking to someone I just met." 

That downward smile was going to be the death of you. “I stopped thinking of it that way a while ago.”

Just as you'd expected, he voiced the very thing you'd been longing to hear without any hint of insincerity. You had felt it coming in the way you feel the temperature drop before rain — how easily he kept meeting you where you stood. 

"Honestly, I kind of assumed we'd eventually hit an awkward patch," he admitted. “Or that we’d run out of things to say.”

He had expected for the specific variety of silence that descends when two strangers have exhausted their common ground and are waiting for a graceful way to stop pretending otherwise. Strange, how quickly that concern had disappeared without him noticing when exactly it had stopped mattering.

“I’m almost disappointed about that.” You laughed, shaking your head. "I had a whole exit strategy prepared." 

“Really?” he asked, a hint of disbelief slipping through. “You don’t strike me as someone who needs an escape plan.”

“That’s because you haven’t seen me in a truly terrible conversation.” You quirked one side of your lips. “Trust me, I can be pretty persuasive when I want to be.” 

“Were you close to using it?”

His voice carried a lightness that didn't entirely mask the fact that the answer actually mattered to him. The idea of you having considered leaving even hypothetically — it bothered him. 

“No.” The single syllable rolled off your tongue slowly. “I didn’t need to.”

There was that damn downturned smile again. You were convinced that until this point he did that on purpose. But now you don't even know anymore.

“I’m glad I made it past that, then.” 

It had slipped from notice that the blizzard outside had picked up and how far the train had traveled cutting through sheets of snow. The space you carved out with him held its own pocket of time that the world beyond the glass had stopped feeling entirely real. 

“I’m going to step away for a minute,” you said, rising to gather yourself. You needed to use the restroom. “I’ll be right back.”

He gave you a small nod, letting his eyes linger on you for a moment — just a second. 

“Okay,” he said softly. “I’ll be right here.” 

Once you left the carriage, Beomgyu’s nerves finally lit up and ran through him all at once. He sank back into his seat, composure slipping now that there was no reason to hold onto it. It didn’t make sense how present you still felt.

Had he said too much? Not enough? He tried to retrace the conversation, searching for when he may have gone too far, but every answer blurred into the next. He hoped he hadn't bored you. God no — he hoped you weren’t just humoring him out of politeness, offering him your attention so he would not feel out of place.

Politeness could mimic interest so convincingly that it frightened him. He had spent a year learning that lesson and several months afterward trying to unknow it. He had to close his eyes just to escape those thoughts. But you were there against his eyelids still, as if his mind had been waiting for the moment it could drift back to you without resistance. 

Beomgyu dragged both hands over his face and bent forward until his elbows met his knees. He let out a low groan that was muffled into his hands. He couldn't believe how far gone he already was, and so quickly. 

This was a completely unprecedented situation for him. Barely even knew you for a few hours and he’d already undone all the resolution he’d worked months on rebuilding after his last relationship fell apart. He had told himself, after everything with her, that whatever came next would be approached with care. He would take his time and not give himself away so completely to someone he hadn't yet earned the right to trust with that. 

You, a stranger on a train — even though that word had begun to lose its meaning — reached into his heart and stirred life where he had grown accustomed to stillness. How on earth did you manage that so easily?

Every time you had looked at him his breath had caught before he could do anything about it. Every time he looked at you, he wanted to leave you just as breathless. He wanted to take his air back from your lips. 

Still hunched forward in that position, he dropped one hand and reached into his pocket for his phone. The signal had been unreliable all evening, yet he placed the call anyway and lifted the device to his ear, waiting through the faint interference. 

Lucky for him, it did go through.

"Taehyun."

Taehyun's voice came through slightly distorted, carrying the ambient noise of wherever the rehearsal dinner had deposited him. "Hey—what's up? I heard you met my fri—"

“How come you never mentioned her?” Beomgyu asked gravelly, his palm still pressed against his face. 

There was a definite pause from the other side. Then a sound that was unmistakably Taehyun trying not to laugh.  

“What? You're not making any sense." Taehyun hummed, then clicked his tongue. "Actually, you are making sense. You're making a very specific kind of sense. So I'm guessing that means you two are getting along." 

Beomgyu pressed his fingertips to his temple and said nothing for a moment. The answer was obvious to him and yet impossible to articulate without sounding ridiculous. How could he possibly condense the way you'd become his every waking thought into something as simple as getting along?

He could only place the blame on Taehyun.

If he had been introduced to you at any point before this — he liked to believe things might have unfolded differently for him. Perhaps then he would have avoided the long detour of heartbreak that had left him so guarded in the first place.

With a sigh, he slouched back again in his seat. “Yeah, you could say that.” 

Taehyun made a sound of vague acknowledgment, oblivious to what Beomgyu was implying. "Well, yeah. She's good people. I figured you'd work that out on your own." 

Taehyun didn’t have to describe how wonderful you were for Beomgyu to understand that you were someone worth taking a risk on. Beomgyu was enchanted, irrevocably shackled to you. Right now he couldn’t conceptualize beyond you, was already wondering how much longer until you returned, was already longing to have more time before he had even figured out what to do with the time he had already been given.

That was right, what he wanted was more time with you that was unburdened by the end of this journey. He longed for conversations with you that were not bound by the ticking of stations, moments that didn't feel so transient. He wanted to see you again in a setting that did not threaten to take you away at any second. 

His grip on the phone tightened slightly. “I’ll call you later.” 

“Yeah, sur—”

He ended the call and set the phone face-down on his thigh.

You would be back any minute. He needed to put himself back together before you came through that door. He straightened up. Ran a hand through his hair. Exhaled slowly through his nose.

He was absolutely, completely fine.

The narrow corridor felt even more confined as you walked out, permeated by a warmth that clung a little too closely to your skin. It was difficult to tell whether it came from the heating circulating through the carriage or from within you. Honestly, after a moment, you stopped trying to work that out. The distinction began to feel irrelevant to hold your attention for long.

You stood at the small sink and looked at your own reflection in the mirror above it, and the face that looked back at you was not particularly useful at concealing things. You liked whatever was happening between you and him. You couldn't recall the last time you'd felt that rush in your chest. You were not the type to be swept up without noticing but you had no interest in pulling yourself back either. He made you want to remain exactly where you were and see what came next. 

Still, the complicating factor was how this choice was fundamentally undermining all your personal aspirations. You were a believer in time. You always made sure to thoroughly get to know the person before letting anything more substantial take root. That was a rule you lived by. You never had before, nor had you ever found a reason to doubt it. 

Within the span of a single evening, Choi Beomgyu was dismantling that whole belief system.

You reached for the door, pausing only for a second before pulling it open. Once this journey ends and you both decide to keep things friendly, you couldn't foresee the path your friendship might take. 

You had your eyes downcast but you looked up when you stepped back into the carriage. Heart leapt so hard that it hurt when you saw him. He was exactly where you had left him, and he was already looking toward you. The small lift of his hand in greeting carried more impact than it should have given how little time had passed.

There was no way of deciding the outcome here, standing in the train — but you could decide what to do with the present.

With a returned smile, you steadied a hand on the overhead bin when you felt the carriage sway. Had the wind outside gotten worse so suddenly? The motion underfoot no longer matched the memory of it from a few minutes ago. 

An unanticipated lurch snapped through your footing and destabilized you. Your grip slipped and you caught yourself against the nearest seat with a jolt that travelled up your arm. Beomgyu across from you was already half out of his seat, both hands reaching towards you with intentions to catch you before you hit the ground. Pure panic written so openly across his face that it stopped you for a second. You had not seen that expression on him before. You shook your head before pushing yourself upright again. Waving him down, you sent a quick signal that all was well.

You managed only two more steps.

In a sudden motion, the train slowed and threw everyone forward. The deceleration ripped the ground beneath you and you were falling backwards before your mind processed what even was happening. The impact with the floor was cushioned underneath your head only because you felt hands wrapped around you turning the fall into something controlled yet no less forceful as both of you went down together.

Metal screamed along the rails, a prolonged and violent scrape that resonated through the carriage and pounded into your skull. It went on and on while the brakes worked through their full range before the train finally seized to a jarring halt. The force of it traveled upward through the floor, through your spine, through every bone in your body at once. Overhead compartments sprung open under the strain, and luggages came down in heavy bursts striking seats, the aisle, anything in its path. 

“Fuck—watch out—!!”

You couldn’t even tell whose voice belonged to who. 

Even if the fall had injured you, your panic-driven mind latched onto two things — the bags coming down and the fact that he was above you. Your hands moved before thought had any place in it. With your palms cupping the back of his head and fingers pushed through his hair, you pulled him down against you, shielding his head as best as you could. There was no room left to consider anything beyond that. Where anything might land, what might strike you instead — none of it mattered.  

The lights went out. Somewhere in the darkness people fell or shouted in confusion. The cacophony of overlapping cries completely obliterated any sense of direction. The deafening ringing in your ears made you lightheaded. Your breathing came in uneven pulls, your hands still locked where they had been placed, holding him there, refusing to let go. A heavy thud landed somewhere close. Another followed.

Then a bag came down and struck Beomgyu’s back with such force that you felt it through him, hurtling down into your arms as he let out a rough, bitten-off breath against you. You blinked against the darkness, forcing your vision to adjust and your mind to catch up. A strained groan from above you left Beomgyu and your heart jumped to your throat. 

"Beomgyu—" His name came out fast and ragged, barely put together. 

His body had taken the hit for both of you, completely encapsulating you. He shifted slightly, warm breath ghosting unevenly against your cheek. 

“I’m here,” he managed. The words were rough, so close that you felt them more than heard them. “I'm here.”

There was a flicker and then the lights came out one by one until the carriage revealed itself again in fragments. Complete disarray. Fallen bags and open compartments. People pulling themselves upright and voices rising in questions that had no answers yet. 

Beomgyu pushed himself up slowly, one hand bracing beside your shoulder, the other still securely cradling the back of your head. His hair had fallen forward across his forehead and his face was in partial shadow, but it didn't obscure the strain in his expression or the tight line of his mouth as he exhaled through it.

“I’m okay,” he repeated, sounding duller from the aftermath of the impact. “I’m okay—are you—”

Instead of his hair, your hands cupped his face, a firm hold that stopped him from speaking further. “Don’t say that if you’re not sure,” you cut in, too fast to soften it. “Where does it hurt? Your shoulder? Your head—”

“Hey, hey, look at me,” he insisted softly, his hand coming up to close around your wrist for a second. That was all it took to bring you back to earth a bit. “You’re the one I’m worried about.”

He helped you sit up, but your hands were trembling. You pressed them against his shoulders, then along his arms, checking what you already feared without needing words for it. “But you—fuck,” you said under your breath, “that bag came straight down on you, I felt it, you have to—you’re bleeding? Wait—no—are you—”  

"See? Nothing's bleeding. I'm okay." He spoke again, this time lower so his words fell directly into your ear while his hands intercepted both of yours before you could spiral further. He turned his head one way and then the other, letting you see until you were convinced. 

“Why didn’t you move?” you were baffled.

“It didn’t matter.” He said it simply, as if the answer had been obvious from the start. His hand came up to your cheek, thumb brushed lightly along your skin as his eyes moved over your face with the same fervour you had just turned on him. "Now let me—your head, did it hit anything when you went down?" 

“I don’t think so,” you said, though you weren’t entirely sure. Everything had happened too fast for you to keep track of where your body had gone, what had hit what. There were aches assembling themselves in various places that you were not currently interested in acknowledging. “I think I’m alright. I—”

You trailed off as your eyes began to wander despite what you were saying. A wave of dread washed over you as you grasped the terrifying reality of the situation — how truly alarming this was, and the chilling possibility of it being far more dire. Fuck, the train mustve been stranded. 

“Do you think something happened to the tracks?” you mumbled. 

“Has to be.” He glanced toward the aisle, quick, taking in what he could before looking back at you. “Something ahead must have given way.”

It wasn’t a real answer that explained anything, but you found yourself holding onto it anyway. Anything was better than letting your thoughts run too far ahead of you. 

Beomgyu looked down at you. He took you in, carefully looking over you for any sign of injury and he didn’t like what he saw. The sight of how shaken you were stirred a fierce need in him to keep anything from touching you again.

“I’ve got you,” he said, and this time it stayed between the two of you.

Pushing himself up carefully on unsteady legs he pulled you with him, grabbing your hand before you could steady yourself on anything else. He didn’t let go once you were upright, keeping you close against his side.

The overhead speaker crackled to life with a burst of static that cut through the noise. “Ladies and gentlemen, please remain where you are. A conductor will come through each carriage shortly to check for injuries and assess the situation.”

Nobody particularly listened. People were already reaching for what had fallen and trying to check on each other. Beomgyu didn’t wait either. He guided you back to your seat through the narrow space, keeping you within reach the entire time. Once you were seated you watched him position himself between you and the pandemonium unfolding behind him.

You had somewhat calmed down by then. Your pounding heart settled into a more manageable pace, though every now and then you flinched when something remotely loud happened around you. From where you sat, you looked up at Beomgyu’s standing figure. You were certain he was pretending far too well. You literally felt the bag hit him. You curled your fingers around his sleeve and gave a weak tug to garner his attention.

“Beomgyu?” you called out softly. “Why don’t you sit down?”

He glanced at your hand on his arm, then at your face. A soft smile appeared. He reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, his palm settling gently at the back of your head. 

“I promise I'm okay.” 

You frowned at his response. You did not accept his words easily no matter how much you wanted to believe them. Tiny beads of sweat remained at his brow, partially hidden by hair that no longer sat in place from the earlier commotion. He was holding his right side in a controlled way without appearing to hold it. 

“Come here.” You tried again, moving yourself over to the next seat and patting the space you had just vacated. 

Beomgyu let out a breath that might have been a laugh under different circumstances, but he didn’t argue this time. Just when he was about to sit, the carriage door at the far end swung open and a conductor came through. He looked rattled as the rest.

“What’s going on?” Beomgyu didn’t wait to ask once he reached your row.

The conductor glanced between the two of you before answering. “We had to stop the train,” he explained, glancing briefly down the aisle where other passengers had begun to gather. “There's a section of track ahead where the ground has dipped significantly under the snowfall. We couldn’t risk pushing through.”

Hearing this, a worried — “What?” — left you, causing the conductor to subtly panic. 

“There's no immediate danger,” he added, pivoting to you quickly. “The train is stable where it is. We're positioned near a town, and we've already been in contact with the main control unit. Arrangements are being made.”

“Arrangements?” Beomgyu pressed. He wasn’t satisfied with vague answers at a time like this. “What does that mean exactly?”

“Emergency vehicles should be here by morning.” He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then continued, “It will take a few hours.”

“How long are we talking about?” Someone from the small crowd asked. 

“I can’t give you an exact time,” he admitted with a faltered look. “The weather’s working against us. It could take the entire night. I wouldn’t want to promise otherwise.” 

A murmur moved through the people within earshot. You pressed toward the window. 

The tracks outside had vanished entirely beneath the snow, swallowed into a continuous white expanse that stretched beyond the rails and erased the boundary between the ground and everything else. Further out, across the distance, a scatter of low buildings broke the line of white — dim lights burning in their windows, the shapes of signs and structures suggested inns, maybe homes, maybe a combination of both. 

The town sat there within reach and still felt removed.

Beomgyu in the meantime finished talking to the conductor. Seeing you looking out the window unmoving, he took the seat beside you without a word. He could tell there was something weighing on your mind, evident in those pretty depths of your eyes. 

“Do you have enough warm clothes on you for the night?” he asked, his hand coming to rest against your arm. “They're reducing power to conserve energy. The heating won't hold through the night.” 

Ignoring his question, you instead asked something else. “Is this really safe?”

You didn’t look away from the window even after asking it. Matter of fact, he had been circling the same thought himself. The train was stable, technically, but it certainly wasn’t going to be a wise decision to stay the night in a train that was already losing warmth by the minute. His focus flicked to the window, to the blinking lights of the town against the white sheet. Each of them was an opportunity beckoning him to act.

There was something he could do but that wasn’t a decision he was willing to make alone. 

“Would you feel safer spending the night in one of those inns?” the gentleness of his voice coaxed you to meet his eyes. 

“But…” you trailed off, glancing out again before turning back to him. Your voice lowered slightly. “How do we know there's even a room available? Everyone’s stuck here. We won't be the first ones to think of it.” 

He nodded with a hum, considering it properly. There was a possibility that what you said might be true. There were no guarantees waiting out there. If he took you out there and came back with nothing, it would turn into a pointless trip through the cold. Worse, it would mean dragging you through it for no reason at all and you might end up sick. He wouldn’t be able to forgive himself for that.

“I can go and check first,” he said after a moment. “Just to know what we’re dealing with.”

You blinked at him. You weren’t dumb to understand what he meant, not at all — but it was still absurd hearing him say it so plainly. 

“What do you mean, you?” you asked, eyes narrowing. 

“I'll ask around, see what the situation is,” he explained. “You can stay here until I—”

He started to get up, and your hand tightened instantly around his sleeve. 

“Beomgyu, you’re not going alone.” 

He was taken aback by the severity of the way you spoke — leaving no room for him to protest. Your voice never raised but it still pinned him to place. 

“I’ll be fine,” he tried, the tail end of it with a chuckle. His hand coming up as if to ease your grip. “It’s just a quick check. I can’t have you out there in this—you’ll be drenched before we even reach the town.” 

“And you won’t?” you returned, your brows pulling together. 

He exhaled through his nose, the argument falling apart before it could fully form. “It’s better than both of us going out there for nothing.”

You shook your head. You could see what he was trying to do, see the way he was placing you first again, but it only made you stand your ground firmer. 

"You're already hurt. I felt that bag come down on you. I watched you hold your side for the last twenty minutes thinking I wouldn't notice," you said, more adamantly this time. “And you want to walk out into a blizzard alone? That's your plan?” As if that made any sense. 

He opened his mouth.

"No," you said, before he could use it. You stood, keeping your grip on his sleeve, and moved to face him properly. "Whatever happens from here—we figure it out together. That's not a negotiable point. You don't get to make that call by yourself and leave me sitting here wondering."

You felt a little ashamed of the tremor in your voice; with the way your words had spilled out with such naked fervor — but you had meant every last one of them, and you knew it even as the heat climbed into your cheeks. Beomgyu was no longer a stranger to you. You couldn't have explained it to anyone with any satisfying logic or couldn't have justified the fierceness of it. But the care was there. You cared the way you'd care for someone who had been woven into your life for years, not someone you'd only met hours ago on a train that smelled of old upholstery.

You were not going to stand by and watch him walk out alone into a blizzard with a hurt shoulder because he had decided your comfort was worth more than his own. 

“I’m coming with you,” you pleaded softly, your gaze dropping as you lost the nerve to hold his eyes any longer. Your grip loosened, sliding down his sleeve until your fingers found his wrist and curled around it. His pulse was there, warm beneath your fingertips. “So don’t go alone… please.” 

Beomgyu had gone completely still. His eyes were wide, you'd seen that much in your periphery before you'd looked away. His mouth had opened just slightly, the beginning of a word that never arrived.

He wasn't sure what he would have said anyway. He wasn't sure he was capable of forming language at all right now, because something in his chest had just detonated so quietly and so completely that he almost expected to look down and find himself changed. 

Cared for — this was… this was something he never imagined he would feel anytime soon. He hadn’t expected this from you. From anyone, maybe, but especially not you. Why would he? He had only known you today. One single day, and yet you had felt more real to him than most things he could name in his life.

He wanted to pull you into him. He spent a very willful second not acting on it, gaze cutting sideways to avoid the sight of your downturned face — because if he kept looking at you, he wasn't sure what he'd do and he was even less sure he'd regret it.

He said your name under his breath. The single syllable found you anyway.

You looked up.

He wished you hadn't, and he was also very glad you had. Beomgyu felt the sensation of his heart being pulled clean out of his chest. If this is what dying feels like, he thought, I wouldn't mind it happening again. He wouldn't mind it happening every day for the rest of however long he had.

He slipped his hand free from your loose hold and turned his palm, lacing his fingers through yours. A bloom of heat spread from that one point of connection until it reached somewhere behind your sternum and sat there.

“You’re right, I'm sorry.” He smiled softly, squeezing your hand. "Let's go together." 

You let out a shaky sigh of relief. Your smile came back at him unsteady at the corners but genuine all the way through. 

Beomgyu backtracked to find the conductor while you waited near the door of the compartment, your joined hands finally separating only because they had to. He found the man near the vestibule. 

"We'd like to stay the night in town, if that's permitted," Beomgyu said in a stable tone he'd had to rebuild from scratch in the last five minutes. "Is there any flexibility on that?" 

The conductor considered him for a moment, then nodded. "You won't be the first to ask, and it's no trouble on our end—but for the safety of all passengers, anyone arranging their stay nearby will need to leave their contact information and boarding details with me before they go. It’s for record-keeping and to ensure everyone is accounted for when we resume.”

"Of course." Beomgyu turned to glance back at you, and you were already moving forward, having caught enough of the exchange to understand.

You gave your name, your boarding details, the number they could reach you at. Beomgyu followed after you and gave his own. Once the conductor had everything noted down, he gave you both a brief nod of acknowledgment and moved on. Beomgyu adjusted his bag onto his left shoulder — the uninjured one. You made a mental note to find a moment to properly check on it later. 

To your surprise, he reached for your luggage. Foolish man, did he think you were going to let him take on the burden? You stopped him, fixing him with a look that you hoped communicated the full extent of what you thought of that idea. 

Beomgyu withdrew his hand. He was very clearly suppressing a smile about it. You chose not to acknowledge this. 

One of the crew members patrolling outside the vestibule came around to assist with the snow covered steps. You passed your bag down first, then stood at the top of the steps as Beomgyu reached the bottom and turned back toward you with both arms open. You took hold of him and stepped down, the snow compressing softly beneath your weight. The two of you were standing so close that you could see a snowflake catch in his lashes before the wind took it. 

He found your hand and pulled you forward into the dark.

The town was supposedly a ten-minute walk. But the wind had teeth. It came at you sideways, driving the snow in sharp little gusts into every gap between your scarf and your collar. Not to mention, it kept finding your eyes regardless of which direction you angled your face. You dropped your head and followed the forward pull of his hand, trusting his sense of direction entirely when your own vision had reduced to a narrow strip of ground directly ahead of your feet. 

He turned to look at you with his hair whipping across his forehead. "You okay back there?" he asked loudly over the wind. 

"I'm okay," you called back. "Keep walking."

He turned forward again, and his grip on your hand tightened.

The local inn was the first lit building you reached, its windows glowing a deep amber against all that darkness. The woman on the other side who had clearly been watching the path and had seen you coming opened the door before you reached it. You were ushered into the warmth of the entrance, and the sudden change in temperature hit you so completely that you went still for a moment just to absorb it. Towels were pressed into your hands almost immediately, and someone disappeared to retrieve a space heater, guiding you both toward the lounge.

You were the one who approached the front desk once you'd gotten your bearings back, pulling your scarf down from your face and explaining the situation to the receptionist. She listened with her eyes on her screen, typing as you spoke, and her expression did a small and very telling thing when she reached whatever entry she had been looking for.

"I'm very sorry," she said, and she did sound it. "With the weather and the number of people who've come in tonight, we only have one room left."

"I'll take it." Beomgyu, who had been standing by your side, said to the receptionist as he produced his card from his wallet. "For her."

You turned to look at him slowly.

He was staring at the receptionist.

"Only for me?" you asked.

That made him look at you. "You'll have somewhere to sleep and you won't have to worry abo—"

"Where will you stay?"

Beomgyu did not find the courage to tell you that he was planning to go back to the train. In that pause you turned back to the receptionist before he could reconstruct whatever answer he'd been assembling. 

"We'll both take it," you told her. "Both names on the booking, please."

She processed this without a visible reaction and set the key on the counter. You picked it up before Beomgyu could. 

"Didn't I say," you began, "that from here on out, we'd stick together?"

He was losing his mind. This was a verifiable fact, and he was now conducting a very private reckoning with himself somewhere three steps behind you as you ascended to whatever floor the room was on. Never in his wildest dreams did he think he'd share a room with you. One bed, presumably, since there was one room and he was not going to suggest you sleep on a chair. He would gladly take the floor himself if it came to that. 

But you — you looked completely unaffected. He could not tell whether you genuinely weren't affected or whether you were simply so much better at concealing it than he was. Either possibility was going to keep him awake tonight, and the irony of that was not lost on him at all. 

Beomgyu had known, in the abstract, that you were going to be the end of him. He just hadn't expected it to happen this fast.

However, that ‘unaffected’ demeanor of yours slipped soon enough.

At the door, he watched you work the key into the lock. It caught on something inside the mechanism, and you had to pull it back halfway and try again. You were holding yourself together. It was a valiant performance. He was almost convinced.

Almost being the operative word, because your hands were still shaking.

"Sorry, I—these keys are—" The sentence dissolved. You were not sure what you had intended to finish it with. 

It wasn't only the cold making your hands uncooperative. You were acutely aware of the warmth radiating off him from where he stood behind you. So far you were putting a brave front that you were extremely okay with sharing a room with him. But in the privacy of your own skull the facade you had been constructing since the front desk began developing very audible fractures. 

You finally got the lock. The door swung inward. 

You stared at the predicament in front of you, and you could almost hear the splinters of your self-control breaking echoing in your ears. 

It was not a bad room. There was a single window set into the far wall with the curtains already drawn against the snow, a desk against one wall, a wardrobe; the usual geometry of a hotel suite and perfectly adequate in every respect except for the one that mattered.

The queen-sized bed sitting squarely in the middle of the room.

You were distantly conscious, without turning around, of Beomgyu coming to stand just inside the doorway. The jitters that had been lurking at the base of your stomach all evening were now making their presence extremely known.

Goosebumps moved along your arms when he spoke. 

“I’ll go ask for an extra mattress.”

He sounded a little weary. You turned to see him over your shoulder and found him already looking at you. One hand resting on the door frame — hovering at the threshold in a way that told you he had not yet decided whether he was fully in this room or still in the process of giving you an out. 

He meant it. He would go back down those stairs right now, charm the exhausted receptionist into producing a mattress from wherever spare mattresses went on a night like this, and drag it back up here himself on a hurt shoulder without a single word of complaint. All so that the arrangement you had walked into with such apparent calm would feel less like what it was.

You held his gaze for a beat and felt the fractures in your composure spread another inch.

You turned back to the bed and told him to go ahead. Maybe the time alone would help you sort through your thoughts before he came back. What you didn’t know was that by letting him leave for a while, you had given him the same chance to collect himself. 

Beomgyu peeled himself from the door frame and left, pulling the door shut behind him with a soft click. You sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the curtains for a while.

As soon as he was out, Beomgyu pressed his back against the wall beside the door and dragged both hands up over his face, muffling a whine. He stood there for a moment in that position and then, he tipped his head back and let it knock against the wall once. The impact sent a dull throb radiating from his shoulder blade, where the bruise from the bag had been quietly intensifying for the last hour. He winced a little as he slowly rolled his shoulder back.

Everything was going to be just fine if he found an extra mattress, right? He was a rational person and this was a rational solution and there was absolutely no reason for his brain to go anywhere near the alternative, which was—

He was not going to finish that thought.

He was, unfortunately, already finishing that thought.

It wouldn't be the worst thing, said some deeply unhelpful corner of his mind, sharing a bed. You've had a long day. You've both had a long day. It would be fine—

Beomgyu slapped himself on the cheek. A sting that bloomed across this skin that he thoroughly deserved, and which he hoped would serve as an adequate eviction notice for whatever was currently colonizing his better judgment.

There was a man at the end of the corridor. 

A staff member, identifiable by his vest, holding a stack of folded towels and staring at Beomgyu with a wide neutral expression. He was definitely going to be thinking about it for the rest of his shift and possibly several shifts thereafter. The two of them made prolonged awkward eye contact. Beomgyu slowly lowered his hand. 

"Evening," Beomgyu said.

The man blinked. "Evening, sir."

Whatever remained of his dignity was simply going to have to be enough to work with. He cleared his throat and walked toward the man, adorning a smile pretending as if nothing happened.  

"I suppose you'd know if there are any spare mattresses available for the night?" he asked, with what he felt was perfect charm. "Or even a cot—anything along those lines would do."

The staff member's expression morphed into something genuinely apologetic as he shifted the towels in his arms. "I'm sorry, sir, we've had a full house tonight with the weather—we've no spare beds or pillows left at all, I'm afraid." He paused, as if taking stock of Beomgyu's face and finding something there that warranted the addendum. "We do have extra blankets, though, if that would help. Plenty of those."

Beomgyu looked at him for a moment.

"Blankets," he repeated.

"As many as you'd like, sir."

So the mattress plan was dead and his self-respect had taken significant casualties. He more or less expected this outcome so he accepted this information with a nod that he hoped projected serenity, and thanked the man. 

You had managed to do very little in the time he was gone except sit on the edge of the mattress and stare at the middle distance. So when the door opened you startled badly enough that your hand flew to your sternum.

Beomgyu, to his credit, took one look at you and chose not to say a single word about it. He stepped inside and set the folded stack of blankets he was carrying onto the armchair in the corner.

“They didn't have any mattresses to spare.” He paused. “They were, however, extremely enthusiastic about giving me blankets. Enough blankets to—I don't know—build a fort, maybe.”

Despite everything, the laugh that came out of you was genuine. Beomgyu's mouth curved into it too, and for a moment the two of you were just sitting with the absurdity of the whole evening.

“A fort,” you repeated.

“Structurally sound, I think, if we're creative about it.”

You shook your head, still smiling, and the fizzle of nerves in your stomach went down several degrees.

“Go freshen up first,” he said, nodding toward the bathroom. “The water should be warm by now.”

“I'm alright,” you said, and it was the truth — or at least, you needed it to be true for a little while longer. “I need to sit down for a bit more. You go ahead.”

He looked at you for a moment, considering, and then decided not to argue. He pulled a change of clothes from his bag and disappeared through the bathroom door without another word. 

The room was very quiet without him in it.

You sat in silence for another moment before reaching for your bag and pulling out what you needed for the night. You laid everything out on the bed beside you and tried not to think too hard about anything. But you couldn't stop thinking about what had happened so far. Every time you tried to gather yourself, another memory surfaced before the previous one had even faded properly. 

You were still going through your bag when the bathroom door opened.

Beomgyu emerged with a towel slung around the back of his neck, working the ends of it through his damp hair. The coat and heavy winter layers were gone. He was wearing his jeans still and a white t-shirt that had clearly been retrieved from the depths of his bag, and the effect of the lamplight on that particular combination was — you needed to look at something else. You found something extremely interesting to look at in your open bag and devoted your full attention to it.

"Bathroom's all yours," he said, dropping into the armchair and draping the towel over one knee. He picked up his phone and looked at it, and did not appear to notice anything. You were grateful for this, whether it was genuine or not.

You gathered your things and left without further incident. When you came back out, hair damp and changed into something warmer, Beomgyu had moved from the armchair to the floor. He was arranging the extra blankets with his back against the side of the bed, long legs stretched out in front of him. He'd turned the overhead light off at some point, leaving only the bedside lamp, which gave the room a softer ambience.

The sliver of skin peeking out under the neckline of his shirt stopped you. You’d been meaning to say something about the bruise but you weren't sure how to start the conversation. You were still trying to locate that opening when your phone buzzed on the bed where you'd left it. You picked it up and felt your chest swell up with guilt as you read the name on the screen.

You answered, sitting on the edge of the mattress and pulling your knees up. "Hi, mum."

Beomgyu did not look up, but was already preparing to take himself somewhere else in the small room to give you space to talk. He settled quietly against the far wall instead.

Her voice came through at full volume. You held the phone a fraction from your ear and let her go, because she had earned it. She wanted to know where exactly you were, how you had ended up there, whether the inn was properly heated, whether you had eaten, whether the staff had been helpful, and whether she needed to call someone — this last question delivered with the implication that she already had a list prepared and was ready to begin working through it the moment you gave her any opening whatsoever. You answered each one in turn, assuring her that you were warm and safe and completely, genuinely fine, that the conductor had everyone's details, that the train would resume in the morning, that she did not need to call anyone at all. 

"And you're not alone?" she asked, and her voice had gone from worried to specifically worried, which were two different registers that you had spent a lifetime learning to distinguish.

From the corner of your eye, you saw Beomgyu glance up. 

"No," you said, and then, after a beat — "I'm with a friend." 

You held his gaze for a moment, and the smile that came onto your face was small and a little helpless. Beomgyu’s breath caught but he returned it in kind — a slow, soft thing moving into his eyes before it reached his mouth. 

Your mother was still talking. You made yourself listen. Soon the call ended and you lowered the phone into your lap. 

The silence was beginning to close in on you. You had not moved since the call ended. Beomgyu had resettled himself against the side of the bed. You could hear the softness of his breathing and the occasional tapping of his phone screen.

Your eyes found his shoulder again. You’d been doing that all evening — returning to that spot the way a tongue finds a sore tooth. Since the moment he had put himself between you and the falling bags without a second's pause, and then sat up and asked if you were alright.

The guilt that had arrived with your mother's call had not fully left. It had just rerouted itself, going into a different chamber of your chest, and was now sitting there with everything else you hadn't said tonight.

You opened your mouth. Thought better of it. Looked at the phone in your lap, then back at him.

"Beomgyu."

He looked up.

You had not prepared a beginning for this, which became apparent almost immediately once you started. "I have something in my bag—for bruising, it's a spray, I've been carrying it around forever and I—can I see your shoulder?"

The question came out, and then before he could answer whatever polite deflection he was about to offer, the rest of it came out too, because the dam was broken and there was nothing left to hold it.

"I'm sorry." You closed your eyes for a moment, shaking your head. "I'm sorry, I keep thinking about how uncomfortable I've probably made you with all of this—I shouldn't have forced the room situation, I just didn't want you out there somewhere on a cot in a corridor with a hurt shoulder and I—" The exhale that left you came out uneven. "And I know, I know that's ironic, because now you're on the floor anyway and the whole arrangement is—I can see that it's not what you would have chosen. "

You pressed your lips together. Tried to find the thread back to something coherent. 

"You've been helping me since the moment we met," you said, and your voice had gone softer, stripped of the rambling and left with only the part that was true. "Every single moment since we met, actually, and I haven't—I wanted to do something for you too. I keep thinking about your brother's ceremony." 

Had he called his family after getting into this predicament? He was so excited about it, too. Your heart hurt thinking about it again.

"I just keep thinking about it and I can't stop, and I need you to know that this isn't pity, Beomgyu, I swear to you it isn't, I just—"

You didn't have the word for what it actually was. You left the sentence where it ended. 

Beomgyu had not looked away from you once. He had let you go — all of it, every fragmenting, half-finished piece of it — without interrupting. In his eyes was something that lived in the same neighborhood as the way he had looked at you on the train when you'd told him not to go alone.

He reached over and took your hand.

"I'm grateful to you.” His voice was low and carried nothing except the truth of the statement. "For not giving up on me." 

Your throat tightened. You looked at his hand over yours and then back at his face. The room felt warmer than it had a minute ago, and yuo were aware that you were not going to be able to say anything particularly articulate for at least another few seconds.

When you trusted your voice again, you reached for your bag with your free hand.

"Can I see your shoulder?"

This time, he nodded. He got up from the floor and moved to sit on the edge of the bed. With the spray can in hand you told him, with as much composure as you could locate, that he was going to need to take his shirt off. 

Beomgyu sat motionless for a beat, then reached behind his neck and pulled the shirt over his head in one clean motion. You looked away out of instinct and heard the fabric settle. You gave yourself three seconds, which was not enough but was all you were going to get, and turned back around.

The thing was, you had not been prepared for that.

You had spent the entirety of today beside him and had built a reasonable understanding of him — tall and broad-shouldered. What you had not accounted for was what the coat and the layers had been quietly keeping to themselves this entire time. You found your breath stolen by his lean, subtle musculature, a lithesome elegance to the long lines of his body.  

He was watching your face with an expression you couldn't parse. You gave him nothing back, or at least you tried to, and directed your eyes pointedly to his shoulder.

"Turn around," you said.

He listened, settling with his back to you. You uncapped the spray and focused on what you were doing. The bruise was starting to pronounce itself by the colour of it — a wide, muted violet bloom. You winced softly at the sight of it. 

You pressed the nozzle and the cold spray hissed out against his skin. You heard him pull a short breath in through his teeth. The sound shouldn't have sent a shiver through you, but it did.

"Sorry," you said immediately.

"Don't be.” He exhaled, the tail end of it caught in a groan. "Keep going."

You did, working carefully across the area, your fingers hovered near his skin without touching him. The lamp threw long shadows across his back enunciating all the dips and muscles, and you were close enough that you could have rested your chin on his undamaged shoulder if you had lost your mind entirely.

When you were done you capped the spray, and he turned back around to face you.

He didn't move back. Neither did you, which meant the gap between you was considerably less than sensible. You looked at his collarbone. His jaw. Anywhere that wasn't his eyes, because his eyes were the part of him you trusted least to look at right now without consequence.

Beomgyu had spent all this time at the outer edge of what he could manage. Every time the distance had narrowed he had found a reason to widen it again, only for it to narrow once more since the moment you had taken his wrist in your hands and told him not to go alone which had cracked him right down the middle. He had talked himself back from the edge more times tonight than he could count. But you were standing in front of him now with bare inches between you, and he had just exhausted the last several minutes trying not to lose his goddamn mind. 

“You keep doing that,” he murmured.

The sudden drop in register of his voice pulled you back to him again. He was ruined by you.

You frowned faintly, trying desperately to hold onto normalcy. “Doing what?”

His gaze moved fractionally away, then returned and held. "Make it difficult to remember why I should keep my distance." 

The lamp caught the side of his face and you noticed, not for the first time, how much he gave away in his eyes even when the rest of him stayed composed. 

It was a shame how your poor heart again picked up her pace. Your throat had gone dry.

"That's a rather serious thing to say to someone you just met." The evenness of your own voice was a small miracle. 

The corner of his mouth moved just barely, not committed to a smile but got most of the way there. His gaze stayed on yours without wavering. "It is," he agreed. 

Your knuckles had gone white around the spray can. The push and pull of the entire evening was still moving between you, and you knew exactly where you could meet him right now — knew he was right there waiting. But there was a part of you, stubborn and a little wicked, that wasn't done yet.

"And what made you forget?"

He answered you with his eyes dropping lower on your mouth which made your stomach turn over completely. A ghost of a smile graced your lips when he looked back up at you. 

"That you're not nearly as unaffected as you act." 

"Careful," you muttered. "You're starting to sound like you know me." 

"I don't." There was something in the way he said it — more an observation he found genuinely interesting. "But I think you like it when people almost do." 

Your next breath came out thin, and something in you that had been braced all this time slowly stopped bracing. You looked at him and past the hours of both of you circling — and you let him see it too. All of it. The fact that his name had been sitting differently in your mouth for a while now. You were standing here at the end of the world's longest day and you were not unaffected, you had never been unaffected, and you were so tired of pretending otherwise.

You reached out and cupped his jaw. You felt the imperceptible hitch of his breath — and he went very still beneath your palm.

Whispering, you asked. "Is that what you've been thinking about all evening?" 

"Among other things," he breathed out. 

He looked genuinely wrecked. Eyes wide, jaw slack by a fraction, all the composure he'd been maintaining for the better part of the evening dissolving in real time right there in your hand. The sight of it — of him, undone and unguarded and entirely yours to read pulled a soft laugh out of you.

"I was wondering when you'd stop pretending."

The column of his throat moved when he swallowed. "Were you pretending too?" His voice had gone very, very low.

You tilted your head at him just slightly, and let him see the answer in your face before you said it.

"What do you think?"

Your hand trailed from his jaw so slowly he felt each centimeter of the loss before you gave it back — fingers finding his hair instead, sliding through and curling, and the sensation of it traveled straight down his spine. You gave a soft tug. He had been braced for so many things tonight — but not this. His lashes fluttered, and a shiver wrung out at the edges of the breath that left him. He couldn’t help himself but lean further into your touch, savoring the feel of your palm. 

He stayed there for a moment, just a moment, with the warmth of your hand against the side of his face and the soft press of your fingertips still curled in his hair, and it felt indecent how much he needed it. How long he had needed it. Everything inside him begged to reach for you.

When he opened his eyes, whatever had been left of his composure was gone. His jaw had set and his eyes had gone several degrees darker than you had seen them all day.

His hand came up and curved around the back of your neck, and he pulled you down. 

It was not a soft kiss, feverish and wanting, his mouth a hungry thing against your own. It felt like a kiss he had thought about, a kiss that he could not help but hurry toward now that there was nothing left standing between him and it.

God, he thought, distantly, finally. 

Just as hungry, you fell into it completely — the kiss so hard and so burning that slowing down felt almost physically impossible. The sheer intensity of it clawed out a tattered little sound from the back of your throat. The spray can found its way onto the mattress somewhere beside you as you had to catch yourself against the bare warmth of his shoulder. The uninjured one, some still-functioning part of your brain noted before that corner went quiet too. 

He gently bit your bottom lip making you groan softly, his grip at the back of your neck tightening for half a second before easing again when he realized he was holding you too hard. The kiss felt so good and so right, you realized, in the blurred and breathless space between one moment and the next.

He was the one who found the way back to guide you to a gentler motion. His lips closed against yours, pressed once and held.

Your breathing had become the same air. Neither of you had managed to pull away properly, your mouths still brushing every time either of you exhaled. Your eyes wouldn't open fully, thoughts drifting somewhere far behind the haze settling over you while strands of your hair spilled forward around both of your faces.

Beomgyu’s gaze could no longer hold onto one place for very long. They moved over you slowly, greedily, taking in every detail that revealed itself now that you were this close to him; the dazed glaze over your eyes and the part in your lips still damp and red from his mouth. His hand slipped from the back of your neck to your face, fingers brushing through the strands that had fallen across your cheek before carefully tucking them behind your ear. 

One more suspended second was all he took before he kissed you again. 

This time, your legs went genuinely weak beneath you, a wave of dizziness rolling through your chest and down to your knees. You pitched forward with a soft sound escaping into his mouth as you had to bring your knee up onto the mattress between his parted thighs for balance.

Even through the haze clouding your thoughts, you heard the way Beomgyu moaned at the contact. 

You were intoxicated by the reaction you had pulled from him so easily. Curious now, bolder, you pressed your knee up experimentally against him once more. You felt the full-body jerk of him beneath you with a hitched breath, his hand shot to your thigh and gripped it which sent heat rushing through your stomach. 

There it is, you thought, and smiled against his mouth. 

Groaning into the kiss, a slow roll of his hips came, involuntary at first and then less so, chasing the pressure with a hunger that made his head spin. He was so fucked. The heady taste of your mouth, the feverish press of your hands against his bare skin, the sweet sounds you kept making — sounds that he was responsible for, that he was drawing out of you — every part of you was driving him toward madness at each passing second.

Too much and nowhere near enough.

He needed — he didn't have a precise word for what he needed, only the overwhelming awareness that he needed more of it, more of you, more proximity than was currently physically possible given that you were already as close as you could get. 

Beomgyu broke the kiss only to stand up, towering above you and you had half a second to register the loss before he came back down to recapture your lips. Tilting his head to find a deeper angle, he cupped your face with a possessiveness that felt completely natural to him now. Thumbs pressing against your jaw before he let them travel — sliding down the column of your throat and tracing the lines of your collarbone, traveling lower until his fingers found your waist and dug in. He pulled you flush against him which prompted your hands to tangle themselves into the hair at his nape because the alternative was falling. 

“Remember earlier,” he said against your mouth, his breath warm across your lips, “when you said being chosen tonight meant you were unlucky?”

You could barely think straight enough to answer. “Mhm?”

“I would’ve spent the rest of my life regretting it if it had been anyone else.” He pressed a soft kiss to the corner of your mouth, voice roughened beyond repair.

Beomgyu could not stop thinking about how fragile chance truly was. 

The possibility of some other version of tonight, some parallel arrangement of events where you had gotten the luggage free on your own or someone else had been the one to offer a hand. Some other reality where he never learned your name at all. It left a bitterness crawling across his tongue he wanted to retroactively prevent.

Every alternate path that did not lead directly here felt not just improbable but wrong, an offense against some order of things he hadn't known he believed in until this moment. Because right now, you were there in front of him with flushed lips and dazed eyes. You were his reality — and he couldn't imagine having been anywhere else. 

“That’s a terrible thing to sound so pleased about,” you told him, a smile threading through it despite yourself. You tipped your head to one side with a feathery exhale, wetting your lower lip. You wouldn't have had it any other way either. You knew he could see it, and neither of you needed to say so out loud for the fact to sit plainly between you. But you still wanted him to hear those words. “I think I would’ve hated it too. For the record.” 

The smile that crossed his face at that was slow and a little smug and deeply, irredeemably pleased with itself.

"You look very satisfied with yourself," you told him.

"I am," he said, without any apparent remorse about it.

You laughed, and he caught the sound of it in his mouth with the same consuming want that had been there from the very beginning. You felt it everywhere, felt it travel all the way down your spine and settle low in your stomach. You could feel the hard press of him through his jeans, more than substantial and it pulled a genuine gasp which got swallowed by him.

He spun you, guiding you backward until the back of your knees met the edge of the bed and you went down and he came with you. Beomgyu held himself above you on one forearm braced beside your head, his hair falling forward in dark disheveled strands.

“Beomgyu—” His name barely survived the kiss. 

It was still more coherent than his reply which didn't make it to language at all but was a low sound against your skin as his mouth found the curve of your throat and began to move downward. The heat of it was dizzying; the solid press of his chest against yours and you had to close your eyes because keeping them open felt like too much. Your back arched off the mattress on its own when he licked and nibbled on your skin with growing hunger, and every breath he dragged from you appeared to drive him further past reason.

You had never been kissed this way before. There was yearning in every part of him now, laid bare beneath your hands without concealment, and the proof of it sent your pulse racing harder when he lifted his head again to look at you.

The pause made you finally regain some semblance of rationality. When he did nothing but stare at you, a small crease formed between your brows. 

“What?” you asked.

“Nothing.” He touched the side of your face, fingers tracing the line of your cheekbone. “You’re beautiful.”

The simplicity of his compliment made heat crawl up your cheek. You laughed softly, and you knew you looked a complete mess. But Beomgyu thought the opposite of whatever you were thinking about yourself. You looked even more beautiful. It made him smile too.  

He pressed a kiss to your forehead, the curve of your cheek, then the tip of your nose. The tenderness of it nearly ruined you more than the heated kisses had. He returned to your mouth briefly before turning his head, brushing his lips against the shell of your ear. 

A startled giggle burst out of you immediately, your shoulders curling inward. “Wait—”

“You’re ticklish there?” he asked, already smiling against your skin.

“That’s not funny.”

“I think it’s a little funny.”

You shoved weakly at his chest while laughing again. He joined you, his forehead dropping to the curve of your neck and for a suspended moment you were just two people lying tangled together on a hotel bed, laughing at nothing in particular, and it was so easy and so warm that you felt your chest expand with it. You couldn't remember the last time laughter had found its way into a moment like this. It made the whole thing feel weightless, unlocked from gravity, driven by nothing except warmth and pleasure and the specific delight of being here with this specific person. 

He was back to trailing kisses down the torrid skin of your collarbones before biting down on the supple flesh, eliciting a breathy moan from you. 

“Beomgyu, please.”

He was breathing rougher now after hearing his name fall from your lips that way. Your head fell back against the mattress and the full line of your throat opened to him, an offering, and he took it without pause. His hand slid down your side before stopping at the hem of your shirt. Fingers curled into the fabric, his eyes lifted to yours first.

“Can I take this off?” he asked softly.

By now here was no patience left in you for a slow answer. You were hot and restless and had been running on the ragged edge of wanting him for long enough. Nodding vigorously, you let him help you. Fabric disappeared in hurried movements and half-broken kisses, your fingers brushing clumsily against his wrists whenever both of you reached for the same place at once. You wanted nothing more than the feeling of his torrid naked skin on yours.

The second the last barrier disappeared between you, you pulled him back down with a renewed hunger. When your tongue swept against his lower lip a shuddering moan tore from him. It vibrated straight into your mouth, sending a fresh pulse of heat coiling low in your core that made your toes curl against the mattress. 

Even though the separation felt visceral when he sat up, the thin strand of saliva still connected your mouths for a fleeting second before breaking apart had your mind reeling. He parted your legs and settled between them. You had to resist the urge to reach for him again just to have something to do with your hands, which were suddenly and inconveniently purposeless at your sides. 

You didn't know if Beomgyu had read your mind or not. Because the next moment he gathered both your wrists in one hand and held them above your head, pinning to the mattress.

"Keep them here for me, love." 

The way he spoke, followed by a sweet kiss to your forehead had you clenching around nothing. You felt your arousal pooling and her skin prickling with heat, heart thundering. A whine forming in your throat that you swallowed back down, your thighs instinctively pressing inward to relieve some of the ache that had been building since the moment his mouth had first found yours. The effort was largely unsuccessful with the way he was holding your knees apart. Nothing but the slow and mounting burn of wanting him and being made to wait. 

You watched him through heavy lashes as he took you in, his chest rising and falling with the same labored cadence as yours. His hand came down to the base of your throat — open-palmed, barely any pressure, just the heat of his skin against yours before he drew it downward in one long, slow pass. Over the swell of your chest that had your nipples perk up, following the line of your sternum, across the plane of your stomach, and everywhere his hand traveled the skin came alive behind it. 

"You're so beautiful. I keep thinking I've gotten used to it and then I look at you again," he said, and his voice had gone so low it was nearly gone entirely. The candor in his eyes was almost too much to hold. 

You bit down on your lower lip, trying to hide the shy smile. "Mhm. You said that already." 

His face softened further at that, and his hand came up to cup your face, thumb tracing your cheekbone. He tilted your face toward his. 

"I know,"  he said simply. His eyes stayed on yours. "I'm glad it was you. Out of everyone on that train tonight, I'm so glad it was you."

"Do you mean it?" you whispered back. 

He took your hand from above your head and brought it down to his chest, pressing your palm flat against the place where his heart was. The gesture was so nakedly honest that it took you a moment to breathe around it. 

"I do," he admitted earnestly. "What do you want me to do to make you believe?" 

There was no doubt that you believed him, but he was close to begging. This man — who had been so consuming just minutes ago — was now looking at you with flushed cheeks and eyes gone wide and earnest. He was stripped of every layer of dominance he'd been wearing so naturally, and he looked so genuinely, openly gone for you that you had to press your lips together to hold back the moan just from that sight. He just kept getting better. Every single time you thought you had a handle on what he was, he turned into something more interesting.

You bit the inside of her cheek, considering. "Think you can be good for me?"

His breath left him in a rush. "Anything you want, baby." The endearment came out like it had been waiting. "I can be so good." 

You tilted your head, fingers trailing idly along his jaw. "Mhmm, yeah? How will you do that?"

Beomgyu flashed you a boyish smile before pressing feathery kisses on your stomach, working his way downward and stopping right over your glistening cunt. He groaned, thumb finding your clit when he registered exactly how much he had done to you. He moved a slow, exploratory circle over that bundle of nerves and he drank up every twitch and gasp your body gave him.

“Let me take care of you,” he whispered against your inner thigh. You let out another soft sound that had his mind reeling, and he felt his cock twitch in his jeans at the thought of how much more of that he could draw out of you if you'd let him. "You can trust me." 

You ran your hand through his hair, a lopsided smile on your lips. You did trust him. There was no fear in you when it came to him. 

"You can do whatever you want with me," you breathed out. You never said things like that — had never felt the ground beneath you feel solid enough to say it and mean it. You meant it now. With him, in this specific moment, it felt not only natural but true. "I'm all yours." 

There was a flash of something primal in those gentle eyes the moment those words left your mouth. The small smirk that followed arrived slowly and it was a different creature entirely from the boyish smile of a few minutes ago. Beomgyu blew a soft breath directly over your center — barely anything, a whisper of air — and your whole body shivered in response, a tremor that started at your core and radiated outward to your fingertips, your thighs drawing in on instinct before his hands spread them back open. 

"Beomgyu—" His name dissolved into a gasp before you could finish it, your back arching clean off the mattress when he pressed his lips to your clit. A kiss so devastatingly soft it turned your brain into mush. "Oh fuck, ah—" 

He smiled against you. You felt it, and it sent another shudder rolling through you causing you to blindly chase that feeling again. 

Beomgyu had always considered himself a patient man. That quality was currently hanging by the thinnest possible thread, because the moment he tasted you it detonated through his senses so completely that the shockwave traveled all the way to his fingertips before plummeting his sanity somewhere down to his dick. 

Encouraged by your whimpers, he flattened his tongue against your clit before delving lower to lap at the velvety lips of your pussy, exploring the wet heat with long, languid strokes. He savored the way you were so warm and slick against his tongue and each time your inner walls clenched, he probed deeper. Your juices dripped down his chin, a filthy reminder of how desperately you needed this. 

He gripped your thighs, your hips, urging you forward — coaxing you to move against his mouth, to take what you needed from him — and when you did, when your hips rolled down into him with that small, desperate press, he felt his mind going completely blank. Fuck — there was your hand gripping his hair. He was huffing and taking short breaths. There was a ringing at the edges of his hearing as he looked up at you through his lashes, eyes wide and glossy because in this moment, he felt like he was made to kneel between you. You were flushed and breathing heavily but looked extremely beautiful like this. 

"You taste fucking divine." His words were muffled between your cunt. 

He was drunk, so high on you as he watched you let out a high pitched gasp when he eased in two fingers. Your folds stretched around the thickness of them, clenching down hard before he had fully seated them, and he groaned against you at the sensation. He began to move them in a slow drag, feeling the way your soft walls responded to each angle, each depth, each curl of his fingers, and you were already so far gone and so slick that the slide of it was obscenely easy and obscenely good. 

Your head went back against the pillow. The bedsheet crumpled in your fist. His name was falling from your mouth in fragments — just sound, broken and breathless and needier than you had ever heard your own voice. Closing your eyes you let yourself get absolutely lost in the ecstatic pleasure he was giving you.

He had made you a promise and he intended to keep it. He picked up every micro reaction you gave at every thrust of his fingers, every tremble of your body when he sucked on your clit before swirling the tip of his tongue over it until he figured out what was going to take him to guide you over the edge. But looking at you, it didn’t seem like he was going to need to do much work anyway. 

He could feel you spasming around his fingers, your moans were coming faster now, falling over each other, your thighs closing around his head. He was suffocating but it felt excruciatingly good that his eyes rolled briefly before he wrenched them back open, because he needed to see you, needed to watch every second of what he was about to do to you, and he was not going to miss it for anything. 

Amidst all that, Beomgyu humped the mattress below him, the taste of you and the sound of your voice and the grip of your fingers in his hair combining into something that was rapidly exceeding his capacity to contain. He curled his fingers and stroked upward into the soft, swollen spot that made your whole body seize, and did it again, and on the third stroke he sucked your clit into his mouth and held it there with the flat of his tongue pressed firm against it — bringing you over a mind shattering orgasm.

It was the scratch of your nails on his scalp and the sound of his name breaking apart in your throat that made him cum. His release poured out of him in waves that left him loose and trembling and utterly, completely spent. He pressed his forehead against your inner thigh and breathed, ears ringing faintly, and the bliss that settled over him in the aftermath was so total and so warm that for a long moment he couldn't have told you where he was or how any of this had happened. 

"Gyu…" you croaked. You were still trembling from the aftershocks, your whole body loose and oversensitive. You reached for him anyway, fingers finding his jaw. "Come closer."

He complied with your request and you took the chance to grab his face and kiss him hard, tasting yourself all over his wet lips. He moaned into your mouth and pressed against you. It was denim against bare skin that had you mewling, your hips jerking upward on reflex. You broke the kiss with trembling hands as they traveled down his stomach to the waistband of his jeans, working the button with fingers that weren't quite cooperating, and he let you — watched you with his chest heaving and his weight braced on one forearm above you — until the zip gave and he took it off. Your hands found the front of his boxers and stopped.

The fabric was unmistakably, warmly wet, and your brain took a full second to catch up.

"Fuck," you breathed, one finger hooking into the waistband, pulling it down slowly. His cock came free and you stared at it — flushed and thick and coated with his creamy release. “Did you cum?”

"Couldn't help it, love." His voice had the faintest note of sheepishness threading through the warmth of it. "You were so fucking good." 

You didn't say anything, because there was nothing to say and also your mouth had stopped functioning properly. You pushed his boxers the rest of the way down and he kicked them off, and then he was kissing you again before he pulled back just far enough to speak against your lips.

"Protection?"

You nodded toward your bag. Beomgyu followed your gaze and reached for it in one fluid motion, rummaging through it. He found what he needed, tore the packet open with his teeth and rolled the thin rubber over his shaft, giving it a few pumps. 

He was — there was no clinical way to put this — beautiful, in a manner that made your oversensitive pussy clench with a want so acute it bordered on painful. 

The anticipation that coiled within your stomach crawled up to your throat and through your chest, gathering all your oxygens from your lungs on its way. Beomgyu shuddered over you, hands roaming, fingers mapping out your skin like he was committing every inch of you to memory. He lined the tip of his cock against your entrance, and drew it torturously, inexcusably slowly along your folds without pushing in.

"Beomgyu, please," you cried out after he kept stroking you. "Please—" 

"Tell me if it gets uncomfortable." He was panting, chest rising and falling against yours, and he reached down to guide your knees upward, folding them gently toward your chest, opening you further. "Tell me if I hurt you, okay?"

Your bodies flushed together, every inch of heated skin sliding against the other as Beomgyu’s tip breached inside with the moan of your name. He kissed you, so deeply, so fiercely, that the gasp you let out at the stretch was entirely devoured by his mouth. The overwhelming pleasure flooded both of you until he couldn’t keep his head up anymore and it lulled forward beside yours. 

Beomgyu’s mouth hung open, puffing against the hot skin of your neck as he seated himself inside you inch by inch until he was buried to the hilt and you were so full of him that your vision had gone soft at every edge. He gritted his teeth, jaw clenching as he had to fight the urge to cum from just feeling your tight walls sporadically clenching around him. Strong arms bracketed your head, caging you in and his hips started to roll in deep, languid undulations — not thrusting so much as grinding. 

Each thrust carried him to the very limit of your depth before drawing back in a long, dragging pull that had every nerve ending inside you lighting up in sequence. The stretch of him was extraordinary; you felt every ridge and contour of him on each withdrawal with a vividness that had you gasping and moaning.

"Feels sooo good, Gyu—!!" you were now blabbering incohesive words, brain a complete mush under the overwhelming and capsizing pleasure of him. 

Beomgyu tried to hold onto the last bit of his sanity when he felt your hand trail up to the hair on his nape, curling and tugging on a fistful. Even with a snowstorm outside, both your bodies were glistening with sweat and heat radiated off of you as you were pressed chest to chest; there was nowhere for either of you to go, every exhale of his landing directly against your face and every inhale of yours pulling in the scent of him, the heat of him, the totality of him.

Tears of pleasure sprung to your eyes. He brought his face up from biting your neck to smash his lips against yours. His tongue glided over you in messy strokes, saliva pooling at the corner of your lips and hot puff of breath exhaling against his mouth.

For the last several minutes, the bruised area was sending a dull throb through him with every movement — but Beomgyu did not give a single fuck about it. How could he even bother with it when you were there underneath him? Face blissfully fucked out with glistening lips and teary eyes, you warmth enveloping him so wholly — his shoulder could wait indefinitely. There was not a version of this moment in which he was going to stop. 

The depraved sound of skin against skin along with your mingling groans and gasps resonated off the walls of the room. He could feel you clenching around him, could tell you were reaching your high again soon with how thoroughly fucked out you looked and sounded.

"Beomgyu—’m close,” is all you managed before crying out, the rest of whatever you were going to say dissolved as your back arched off the mattress, every inch of contact maximized.

You gripped him like a vice, your body quivering when you finished, his name spilling from you so sinfully that his vision went white at the edges.

He became the louder one then — groans and grunts as his thrusts became sloppier, helping you ride out your orgasm before he buried himself to the hilt in one deep thrust and spilled into the condom with a long, broken groan pressed into the curve of your neck.

Both of you were breathing hard, the sound of it filling the silence left by everything else. He didn't pull out, stayed exactly where he was, his weight settling into you gradually as the tension released from his muscles all at once. You felt him softening inside you slowly as the two of you drifted back to earth. 

"So perfect," he slurred against your skin. 

His lips left trails of kisses around your chest, neck, and shoulders, as if making up for every mark he couldn't leave. Tasting the salt of your skin, his tongue traced your areola that dragged a whine out of you even now. He sucked gently, then harder, then dragged his teeth across the swell of flesh before soothing it with his tongue. 

You sighed at the sensation, feeling your body reaching absolute bliss. His voice brought you back from slipping into dreamland. 

“Are you okay?” he asked softly, a hand running through your hair and you melted at the soothing feeling. 

He lowered your legs carefully onto the mattress afterward, though neither of you made any real attempt to move apart. His chest still pressed against yours in places and your knee hooked loosely over his thigh.

“Mhm.” Your eyes slipped shut again for a second, contentment pulling through you slowly. “Is your back alright?”

Beomgyu laughed breathlessly. “We might need another round of that ice spray.”

Your eyes flew open immediately, horrified enough to make him break into genuine laughter this time. He dipped down before you could scold him, pressing a kiss to the tip of your nose.

“I’m joking,” he murmured against your skin. “Mostly.”

“Beomgyu.”

“There she is.” His grin widened lazily. "I was wondering how long before I got that look." 

You sighed despite yourself and cupped his cheek, thumb brushing back and forth absentmindedly over warm skin. His expression changed the second you touched him again; softer instantly, eyes lowering for half a moment before returning to yours.

“You know,” you said slowly, “we’ve thoroughly ruined any chance of being friends." 

“Mmhmm, well.” He turned his head and pressed a kiss into your palm. "Wasn't planning on being your friend for very long anyway."

You raised a brow at him. "Really."

Beomgyu smiled into your hand before finally looking at you properly. There was still heat in his eyes, though now it mixed too openly with affection.

"I meant it when I said I wanted to earn your trust," he spoke earnestly, playing with your hair. "I really did mean that. But somewhere around tonight, after everything—" He exhaled another laugh beneath his breath. “I got selfish. I think staying only friends with you would’ve actually killed me.”

Your stomach flipped hard at the honesty in his voice. You didn’t think you could handle any more of this man —  he was seriously too much for your heart.

"You're so cute," you cooed, poking his cheek.

He stared at you. "I just confessed my suffering to you."

"You did it adorably, though."

Beomgyu stared at you in disbelief that lasted approximately a few seconds before your sweet laughter dismantled it. His mouth twitched. He pressed it flat. It twitched again. You were still smiling when his eyes dropped to your mouth; the fondness remained and the teasing still there, but desire began to creep back in beneath it piece by piece.

“Can't believe you say things like that right after ruining me for half the night,” he murmured, fingers sliding along your thigh again.

Your mouth curved. "Half the night?"

"Yeah." He chuckled, thumb grazing your bottom lip. “I’m trying to sound respectable.”

You opened your mouth and sucked on his thumb, swirling your tongue around it. The heat began its slow return through your body, and watched his jaw tighten when you released his finger with a pop. "I like you better when you're honest." 

He simply looked down at you with a slow smile, tonging the corner of his lips. He then shifted a bit up and you keened with delight when he rolled his hips in one slow, purposeful thrust. 

“I don’t think I’m anywhere near done with you yet.”

THE END.