✿jewell✿

"You cannot think I'm going out with you wearing that," your roommate sighs, eyeing you up and down when you walk into your shared kitchen.

"This is cute!"

"Yeah, it's cute. But we're going to a house show." She crosses her arms. "Not a tea party."

You look down at your outfit. Blue jean skirt, black ballet flats, a white babydoll top. Your hair sits low on your chest in wide curls. Your makeup is subtle and natural. A safe outfit, but one of your favorites. 

"I can't change," you protest. "If I wore something like you it wouldn't be a reflection of who I truly am."

"Well I guess we can't have that," she giggles.

She's wearing a long grey tank top with cargo microshorts, tattered tights, and tall combat boots. You can almost make out her actual eye shape beneath the layers of black eyeliner and false lashes.

"Take a shot with me?" she asks, already pouring the thick clear liquid into two shot glasses. You try not to make a face when the burning liquid hits your throat. Your hand shoots out for the bottle of Sprite beside you.

"I swear it gets worse every time," you choke.

"It would probably help if we could afford top shelf stuff," she says, chasing it with a long swig of Dr. Pepper.

The half empty ten dollar handle of vodka stares at you both ominously from the counter. The liquid settles warm in your stomach and makes everything feel a little lighter, a little funnier, a little more manageable.

"Are you nervous?" you ask, poking her arm.

"I'm not nervous at all," she says matter of factly. "He'll like you. And I have a feeling you'll approve of him. Plus once you see how hot he is you'll understand me a lot better."

Tonight is the night you finally meet your roommate's boyfriend. You'd heard stories and caught the occasional male voice drifting from the kitchen at 2am, but you hadn't been formally introduced yet. All you knew was that he was in a band at your university and that he was, by your roommate's account, practically obsessed with her. You didn't even know what instrument he played or what he actually looked like, beyond the back of his head she'd posted as a soft launch on her twenty slide Instagram story.

"I'm sure he's great," you tell her, patting her shoulder.

"Who knows," she says, giving you one of her sly smiles. "Maybe you'll take a liking to one of his friends." Knowing her she's already told all of them you were coming and sent a photo of the two of you to the group chat.

"The Uber will be here in four minutes," you say, ignoring her prior comment and spritzing yourself with perfume before grabbing your purse. You take one more shot for good measure.

The vodka finds both of you somewhere between the apartment and the elevator, and by the time you pile into the backseat of the Uber everything is the funniest thing that has ever happened in the history of the world.

When the car pulls up to the curb of the run down college house, the first thing you notice is the sheer number of people crowding the street and front yard.

Your roommate navigates you both to the side gate where a fold up table is set up with two guys sitting behind it, one tall and one short.

"Do you have tickets?" they both ask before looking up. When they do, recognition flashes across both their faces immediately.

"Ahh, the esteemed guest of honor," the tall one says, smiling.

"Hey K!" your roommate beams.

"You should have seen Maki," the short one laughs. "EJ had to practically leash him he was so excited you were coming."

"Sounds like him." She laughs, slinging her arm around your shoulder. "Taki, K, this is Y/N. My roommate I told you about."

"Oh yeah!" Taki says, looking at you with genuine interest. "Cool shoes."

"Thanks," you say. "Cool piercing."

Taki, the shorter of the two, is sporting a bridge piercing that makes him look astronomically cooler considering it's the only one he has.

"He nearly cried when he got it," K says, snickering into his hand.

"Dude." Taki gives him a look.

K doesn't appear remotely apologetic. He just looks in your direction and shrugs. You can instantly clock that he’s the kind of person who wears quiet confidence. Like he wouldn’t mind if everyone in a room was watching him. 

You decide immediately that you like them. 

"Go on in," he says, nodding toward the gate. "Maki's going to combust if nobody tells him you're here soon."

The crowd is massive, buzzing students packed together, all dressed in grunge clothing and bathing in the smoke of what smells like a million cigarettes. Your roommate shoves you both through the crowd, leaving you to apologize to every person she elbows past. They don't seem to care. You cringe at the ground beneath your feet, partially muddy and dusty, and realize the ballet flats may not have been your best decision of the evening.

The stage is set up on the literal roof of the house, students filed all the way back to the rear door. Your roommate knocks three distinct times and the door practically flies open.

A guy with the biggest smile you've ever seen is standing in the doorway. He yanks you both inside before you can protest.

Your roommate is already wrapped in his arms before you've fully processed the last five minutes. She gives him a quick kiss before pulling you back to her side.

"Maki, this is Y/N. My roommate and also my best friend and also my soulmate."

"Nice to finally meet you," you say, giggling at her description. "I've heard a lot about you."

"Same here," he says, laughing. "Sometimes I forget she's dating me and not you."

"I wish," she sighs.

That earns a laugh from the rest of Maki's friends, who drift over to greet you both.

"Y/N, this is EJ," your roommate says, gesturing to the tall brown haired boy beside Maki. He's wearing a black and red crop top with a fishnet long sleeve underneath, hair spiked up, eyes lightly lined with black eyeliner. No tattoos, no piercings, but something about him radiates an uncomplicated kindness.

"Nice to meet you, Y/N," he says, his soft voice matching his soft features perfectly.

"Nice to meet you too." 

"That's Jo and Fuma over there working on the amp," Maki says, wrapping his arm around your roommate, who promptly shrugs him off to make a beeline for the cooler.

Jo looks in your direction giving you a quick nod. He’s wearing a black tank top with black bleach washed jeans. His whole left arm disappeared under a full sleeve of tattoos, black ink swirling from his wrist all the way up to his chest. He has the quiet, unhurried energy of someone who notices everything and comments on very little. 

Fuma is shirtless in blue jeans and black Converse, his toned back flexing as he lifts the amp into his arms. He has a short brown shag that falls slightly over his eyes.

"I would wave but my hands are full," he hollers, and disappears up the stairs.

"I'm Harua!" comes a voice from the kitchen behind you. You turn to find a shorter guy perched on the counter, burgundy hair, eyes bright with excitement. He's wearing a backwards hat and white tank top beneath a stack of silver chains and pearl necklaces. "love the outfit. Very bold in this crowd."

"Thanks!" you say, sipping the beer that your roommate shoved in your hand. "What are you doing up there?"

"Someone has to make sure the sound works," he says, gesturing to the laptop beside him. "We've got like three hundred people out there." You laugh at that. He pats the counter next to him and you hop up, watching him type away.

"Look, you can see the amp Fuma just plugged in," he says, pointing to a notification on his screen.

Before you can respond a voice booms from the stairway.

"YUMA. Did you really take my cigarettes again?"

A snicker comes from somewhere behind you. You turn to find a guy with jet black hair parted in the middle leaning against the wall, his features striking, snakebite piercings glinting in the low light. He winks at you before hollering back up the stairs.

"Shit, Nicho! I had no idea those were yours!"

The look on his face is nothing short of devilish. He extends a hand to you.

"Yuma. You're Y/N, right?"

"That's me."

"Your roommate said you were cute," he says, "but she didn't mention you were this pretty."

Before you can say anything you're interrupted by the same voice from the stairwell. This time right behind you. 

"Really? You had no idea they were mine?" the voice, closer and clearly unimpressed. "Yuma. They were in my room. In my desk drawer."

You turn around to make eye contact with the voice.

And you have to stop your jaw from dropping.

The man standing in front of the counter you and Harua are perched on is tall enough that he's practically at eye level with you even from up here. His hair is cut into a mullet, bleached blonde with dark ends. You count three eyebrow slits cut into his left brow. He's wearing an off white tattered cut off tank top, baggy grey jeans and boots similar to the ones your roommate wore out tonight. A stack of rings and jewelry crowd his fingers and wrists, and his ear is lined with piercings. You also can’t help but notice the pair of handcuffs hanging off his belt loop. 

His brown eyes are rimmed with black liner and right now those eyes are fixed on Yuma with a stare so flat and deadly you feel personally nervous on Yuma's behalf.

Then his gaze shifts to you, perched up on the counter.

"You are?"

"Nicholas, this is Y/N," Maki says.

"My roommate I told you about," your roommate adds, arms already crossed. From the look on her face he is not her favorite out of Maki's friends.

"Oh right," he says, eyes traveling briefly over your outfit. "The ensemble threw me off."

"Would you just shut up?" K says, and tosses him a pack of cigarettes from his own pocket. You don’t remember when he came back inside but you're thankful for the save. "Take these. I should quit soon anyway."

Nicholas catches them without breaking eye contact with you. Then opens the pack and rests a cigarette between his lips. 

"Got a lighter?" he asks. You can tell he's at least partially joking.

Unfortunately you do in fact have a lighter. Primarily used for candles and the occasional joint, but he doesn't need to know that. You shift on the counter and dig through your purse. Your hand emerges with a Hello Kitty Zippo lighter.

"Here," you say, completely casually.

He looks down at it sitting in your outstretched hand for a long moment.

“Cute,” he scoffs, "You're not going to light it for me?"

Oh my god what a bitch.

"No smoking inside anyway," EJ says mildly from somewhere behind him.

"Please don't steal that," you say as Nicholas plucks it from your fingers.

"Like I'd ever be caught dead using this," he quips, and disappears outside.

"That's Nicholas," your roommate says, turning to you with an expression of long suffering patience. "A real bundle of sunshine, isn't he?"

"I could feel the kindness radiating off him," you say.

The whole group laughs at that.

You continue to mingle with the group, becoming quick friends with Harua who finds you effortlessly charming. Yuma laughs a little too hard at every single one of your jokes and then proceeds to look at you with such intense yearning that you can't help but laugh directly at him. Maki and your roommate disappear around a corner and you very graciously pretend not to notice.

When you finish your first beer you look down to find a fresh one already cracked open in your hand, courtesy of Fuma, who has found a shirt somewhere between now and the last time you saw him.

Your hypothesis about EJ proves correct almost immediately. He's incredibly kind and attentive, already offering you his jacket within the first ten minutes and presenting what he calls the grand tour of the house with genuine enthusiasm. 

“We host Yuma, Maki and Nicho’s shows here a lot. The backyard is massive and the roof is the perfect place for a stage. Plus we just like helping each other out.” Ej rambles on as he walks you through the house.

The small house somehow contains nine bedrooms and when you reach the upstairs bedrooms you can't help but linger a little longer in the doorway of Nicholas’. It's cleaner than the rest. Your eyes drift to the terrarium sitting perfectly maintained on the desk, and you squint trying to make out what lives inside before EJ takes your hand and guides you back downstairs.

Jo is resting against the wall beside the stairwell and gives you a single easy nod when he sees you.

"Heard Nicho gave you a tough time," he says, the corner of his mouth pulling up.

"Nothing I can't handle," you shrug.

"I swear he's actually pretty nice," Jo says 

"He just takes a while to warm up to new people." Ej says pinching the bridge of his nose. 

"Talking about me?"

Nicholas materializes beside Jo. Your Hello Kitty lighter is nowhere to be seen.

"Taki says we're on soon," he tells the other two, a satisfied smirk settling across his face. "Sold out."

Your roommate appears out of thin air with Maki at her side, slightly flushed and suspiciously happy.

"Come on!" she says, grabbing your hand and pulling you toward the stairs. She stops in front of a small window at the top of the landing and pushes it open, climbs through, then turns and waves you after her.

You follow.

The night air hits you immediately. You're on the roof.

"Best seat in the house," she says, dropping onto a blanket already laid out on the flat surface. She's right. The section of roof where the stage is set up sits perfectly perpendicular to where you're both settled, an unobstructed view of everything. You look out over the crowd below, hundreds of students buzzing with anticipation, and then tilt your head back to look up at the sky. Cigarette smoke curls slowly upward and dissolves into the moonlight.

The amps flick on and a sharp ring fills the air. The crowd below erupts in anticipation.

One by one the band files out through a slightly larger window, instruments in hand. You recognize the guy stepping up to the center microphone immediately.

"Wait, that's the guy from my communication law class," you say.

"That's Heeseung," your roommate confirms. "Lead vocals. Just wait until you hear him sing."

Nicholas and Yuma settle on one side of the stage together, Yuma's black electric guitar catching the light as he straps in. Nicholas swings the strap of his blood red electric guitar over his shoulder and starts tuning without once acknowledging the crowd.

The low thrum of a bass guitar begins cutting through the noise of everyone warming up.

"Yeonjun on bass," your roommate continues. "He has a really good singing voice too." You nod along as she works her way through the lineup.

Maki settles in behind the drum kit and begins tapping his sticks lightly against the snare in a lazy warm up rhythm. A wave of screams from the front row nearly swallows everything else.

Before you can process the rest of the information Yuma launches into a guitar riff and the whole band slams into the first song like a door flying open. Heeseung steps up to the mic and takes the lead, the rest of the band filtering in around him with their instruments.

"This is their song War Cry," your roommate yells into your ear. "Jo and Yuma wrote it."

"It's really good," you holler back. "Where is everyone else?"

"Behind the scenes." She gestures toward the window they all came through. "Harua controls the sound. Jo, Taki and Fuma handle the crowd. Maki said they're all equally talented but Jo prefers to write, Fuma likes working the crowd, and Taki has really bad stage fright." She pauses. "EJ just likes to watch and K prefers dancing."

You look down into the crowd and find Fuma immediately, pressing back against a group of rowdy guys in greek letters who are edging too close to a group of girls near the front. You watch one of them get a little too handsy and get met with a clean right hook to the jaw for his trouble. Fuma shakes out his hand while the guy's friends drag him backward out of the crowd. The girls turn and thank him and Fuma goes visibly red from all the way up on the roof.

You smile to yourself.

What a crew.

The show runs for another hour and a half. Every song is more electric than the one before it.

You can't help it. Your eyes keep finding Nicholas on stage and you have to actively force them elsewhere to take in the rest of the band. He's more magnetic than you care to admit, all dedicated guitar playing and strong presence, up there like there's nobody watching or like he simply doesn't care that there are three hundred pairs of eyes on him. Either way the effect is the same.

When they finish the set the boys thank the crowd, unplug their instruments and disappear back through the window one by one. You stay on the roof with your roommate for a few minutes, dissecting the show. Below you Fuma is corralling the crowd toward the gate with practiced ease. As if he can feel both of your eyes on him he turns and waves up at you before locking the gate behind the last group.

"So?" Maki's voice startles you both. He's appeared on the roof behind you. "What did you think?"

"It was amazing!" your roommate practically launches herself at him. "You guys are so good. I've heard you practice but seeing the actual show is completely different."

"You guys really have something special," you add.

"You hear that Jojo?" Maki hollers through the window. "Y/N thinks we're special."

"I heard exactly what she said," Jo's voice drifts back from inside, "and it definitely wasn't that."

Maki leads you both back into the house. When you reach the kitchen all the boys are gathered around the island debriefing, red cups in hand.

"Hee, your voice totally cracked halfway through Go In Blind," Yuma says, barely containing himself.

"You didn't even start playing until halfway through Deer Hunter," Heeseung fires back.

"He's not wrong," Harua says mildly into his cup. He looks up immediately when you walk in. "Y/N! What did you think?"

"You guys killed it," you say. "I didn't think you had it in you."

“Pshhh very funny,” Yuma snorts.

"Can I get you anything?" EJ asks. "Another beer?"

"I'm okay," you say. "If I have another you'll all be carrying me back to my apartment."

"About that." Your roommate appears at your elbow and steers you gently away from the group. "I'm probably going to stay here tonight. I can call you an Uber. Or," she adds, with the specific smile that means she's been planning this for longer than she's letting on, "you could pick one of the guys in there who can’t stop looking at you. Or just sleep on the couch."

You genuinely contemplate it.

"I'll stay a little longer," you decide. "We'll see how I feel in an hour."

She looks entirely too pleased with herself.

You take the opportunity to navigate yourself to the upstairs bathroom. After giving yourself the usual drunken mirror pep talk you feel ready to go back downstairs and narrow in on your entertainment for the night. You're out of practice but the alcohol is helping, they all seem nice enough, and into you enough that the decision should come naturally. 

Your moment of confidence is completely shattered when you open the bathroom door and are met with those black lined brown eyes. He’s changed into a black distressed hoodie. 

"Oh, fancy seeing you here!" you say. The alcohol is definitely catching up with you. You would never have said that an hour ago. He raises one intrigued eyebrow.

"Yeah, this is actually my house," Nicholas replies. "Wouldn't you know it."

That pulls a real smile out of you before you can stop it.

He's annoying. He's smiling back. He's pretty when he smiles.

"How long were you standing out here?"

"Long enough to hear you whisper 'you got this' to yourself in the mirror."

"You were listening? Freak."

"Sorry," he says, and he's laughing but somehow it actually sounds like he means it. Like he genuinely didn't want to embarrass you.

A beat of silence settles between you in the narrow hallway.

"I was just about to go smoke," he says.

"cool," you say. "And I was just about to go downstairs."

He looks at you for a moment. You look back at him. He narrows his eyes, giving you a look that could almost translate to confusion.

"Y/N. That was me asking if you wanted to come smoke with me."

"Oh."

You contemplate it for a second. The thought of a cigarette would have disgusted you two hours ago but now, with your buzz sitting warm in your chest, the idea of a head rush and the taste of menthol sounds absolutely delightful. You also cannot internally believe this guy has taken a liking to you. You can't help but be intrigued right back.

"Fine. I'll come."

"Don't sound too excited," he snickers, and heads toward the smaller window to the roof.

He climbs out first, then turns and extends a hand to pull you through after him. The yard below is much quieter without all those bodies filling it. You look up into the early spring sky and find the stars considerably clearer than they were an hour ago. 

You settle next to each other on the blanket. An appropriate distance apart. You haven’t even looked at him, your neck craned to see as far into the night sky as possible. 

"I can't stop looking at the stars," you whisper. Almost too quietly. 

"What did you just say?" 

You sigh. The moment is ruined.

"Nothing."

"Sorry," he says. Then he pulls the cigarette pack from his pocket. "K loves these ones. Menthol slims."

You watch him pull one out and bring it to his lips.

"Are you going to have one?" he asks, tilting the pack slightly in your direction.

"Give me that," you say, plucking it from his hand. You slip one out and carefully close the box. "You better still have my lighter."

He smirks and digs into his pocket. His hand emerges with your Hello Kitty Zippo.

"I was hoping you forgot about this," he says, looking down at the small pink lighter with something close to resignation.

"I didn't peg you as a Hello Kitty fan," you say, giggling.

"I'm an incredibly mysterious guy," he says, "until you bring Hello Kitty into the picture."

Something about the way he says it completely undoes you. You dissolve into laughter, tears pricking the corners of your eyes, and he watches you with an expression caught somewhere between genuine admiration and total disbelief.

"Wow. That really got you."

"Sorry, it was funny," you say, taking a slow breath to collect yourself. "Okay. I'm ready."

He chuckles and brings the lighter to your cigarette. His eye contact is lethal. If there wasn't already enough tension sitting between the two of you on this blanket, this finishes the job entirely. He watches carefully as you take your first inhale, and only once the smoke leaves your lips does he move to light his own.

You hate to admit how much you love the buzz it gives you. It's been a while since your last cigarette and you'd forgotten about the head rush, that slow warm dizziness that rolls up from your chest and softens every edge. You truly understand in this moment how people get addicted. The combination of the cool spring air and the nickel and the lingering warmth of the alcohol in your system is doing something genuinely wonderful to your brain.

This is great, you think.

You're really liking this.

You think you want another one.

The stars look impossibly bright. The yard below is hushed and still. Somewhere inside the house you can faintly hear the boys' voices carrying through the walls and it all feels very far away from up here on this roof with the smoke curling up into the dark.

"Y/N?"

You snap back.

"Oh, what?" you say, blinking. "I was completely zoned out."

The corner of his mouth pulls up. He's watching you with that quiet, observant look you're starting to recognize as just being how his face works.

“I just asked if you smoked often.” he clarifies. 

"Not usually," you say. "I was just thinking I need to do this more often."

"If you ask me for another one I'm saying no."

"What."

"You're liking this way too much," he says, and he's actually giggling, which is not what you expected from him at all. "I cannot in good conscience offer you a second one."

"Understandable," you sigh.

A beat of silence settles between you. Nothing awkward. Just comfortable stillness, the easy kind that usually takes much longer to find with a person. You both take the last couple of drags and he puts his out against the roof, you follow suit. He looks out over the empty yard below, quiet and unhurried, like he's replaying the crowd that filled it an hour ago.

"What's in the terrarium?" you blurt out.

Your turn to ruin the moment.

You'd been wondering about it all night if you're being honest. It had been sitting in the back of your mind since EJ pulled you away from the doorway.

"How do you know about that?"

"EJ gave me the grand tour earlier."

"Yeah," he says. "He loves to show off other people's business."

"Well?"

He considers it for a moment.

"Let's just say Yuma isn't the only snake living here."

"Really?" You try very hard to contain how genuinely delighted you are by this information. "Ball python? Or is it a cornsnake?"

"Kingsnake."

"Ohh, so that's why the enclosure takes up your whole desk."

He turns to look at you. "When did you become the snake expert?"

You take a breath.

"Nicholas, I'm an incredibly pretty and mysterious person," you say, "until you bring animals into the picture."

It takes exactly one second to land.

The laugh that comes out of him is completely unfiltered, the first real one of the night, nothing calculated or cool about it. It transforms his whole face.

You decide then and there that making him laugh like that again is going to become a personal goal.

"His name is Pidan," he says, after the laughter settles.

"What does that mean?"

"Century egg. In Mandarin." He looks back out at the yard. "My mom named him because I couldn't think of anything when I got him when I turned twelve."

"Pee-dawn?" you sound out carefully.

"Yup," he says. Then he turns to look at you. "Want to meet him?"

"I thought you'd never ask."

He stands and takes your hand without making a thing of it, and you follow him back through the window into the warmth of the house. The sound of laughter drifting up from downstairs makes you smile. He leads you back around the corner to the hallway and when he pushes open his bedroom door you watch him go straight to the terrarium, scanning for Pidan with the focused patience of someone who has done this ten thousand times.

When he spots him near the back his whole face softens in a way you haven't seen from him yet tonight.

He reaches in carefully and scoops him up, and Pidan settles into his hands like he belongs there, completely unbothered. The snake has jet black scales adorning his slinky body, not an inch of him isn’t completely glossy black. Nicholas sits down on the edge of his bed and turns the snake over gently, studying him with quiet affection, momentarily forgetting entirely that you're standing in his doorway watching all of this happen.

You don't mind.

"You can sit," he says finally, glancing up.

You cross the room and sit beside him. Closer than the appropriate distance you kept on the roof.

Neither of you mention it.

You watch Pidan wind slowly around his fingers and say nothing for a moment. Sometimes silence is the right answer. 

"He likes you," Nicholas says, which doesn't make sense because Pidan hasn't looked at you once. 

"How can you tell?"

"He's showing off." You squint and watch Pidan move, catching the way his jet black scales shift and transform into an iridescent purple where the light hits them just right.

“He’s a Mexican black kingsnake right?” 

He looks at you with that expression again, the one of genuine shock and barely contained amusement, like he truly cannot figure out the person sitting next to him and finds that completely unreasonable.

"Yes,” he confirms. “I’m so confused right now.” 

“I had a reptile phase in middle school.” 

“Right,” he huffs out a breath “like every girl does.” 

"Can I hold him?"

Nicholas looks at you for a moment, assessing whether you actually mean it. Then he holds Pidan out without a word.

You pretend your heart doesn't do something embarrassing at the idea that he trusts you enough for that. You're also, if you're being completely honest, just extremely excited to hold Pidan.

Pidan winds himself slowly up your forearm, his tongue zipping in and out with quiet curiosity, tasting the air, learning you. As if he too needs to decide whether you're worth trusting before he commits. He eventually settles, navigating the length of your forearm with unhurried confidence before looping back and coming to rest in your palm.

You watch him in quiet admiration.

Nicholas watches you.

Neither of you say anything for a moment and the room holds it comfortably.

You stretch your hand out and offer Pidan back to his owner. Nicholas takes him gently and carries him back to the terrarium, something close to a smile on his face the whole time, the unselfconscious kind that comes from doing something you love without thinking about it.

After closing the terrarium he leans back against his desk, arms braced behind him.

"Listen, about earlier," he starts.

"You don't have to apologize," you interrupt. "Jo was right. You are a nice guy."

He exhales slowly, like he's slightly relieved and slightly annoyed at himself in equal measure. "I get weird around new people," he says. "And I get oddly edgy around people I find interesting."

Your heart jumps.

In your current state you do your absolute best to let that land without showing a single thing on your face. You're not entirely sure you succeed.

"So you wanted me to think you were a badass?" you say.

"It's the stupidest thing ever. I know."

"I can't say it worked," you admit, "but I did spend a solid twenty minutes wondering what I'd done to offend you. I thought maybe it really was the outfit."

"You definitely stick out like a sore thumb in this crowd," he laughs, and the way he says it makes it sound nothing like an insult.

You both go quiet at the same time.

Astronomically aware of how this looks. The two of you alone in his room, the door cracked, while you were supposed to be in the bathroom. You forgot about your roommate. You forgot about the other boys downstairs. You forgot that twenty minutes ago you could barely walk in a straight line. The only thing you seem to remember right now is the subtle warmth of him sitting beside you while he watched you fall a little bit in love with his snake.

He looks around the room awkwardly, arriving at the exact same realization, and opens his mouth to say something when the door flies open.

"Nicho have you seen—" Yuma freezes in the doorway. Takes in the scene. His eyes go wide. "Oh my god." He dramatically covers his face with both hands. "Nevermind. Totally nevermind." He walks directly into the doorframe trying to leave, recovers, and finally manages to pull the door fully shut behind him.

The stunned silence that follows lasts approximately three seconds before it dissolves into laughter.

"He's really nonchalant," you giggle.

"The smoothest out of all of us," Nicholas agrees, rubbing his temples.

Then, as if he's finally made a decision, he crosses the room and drops down onto the bed directly beside you. Closer than either of the other times you've found yourselves sitting next to each other tonight. He turns toward you, leaning back on one hand, the mattress shifting subtly under his weight.

"Y/N," he murmurs.

"Yes?" You hate how small your voice just came out. Your heart is hammering.

"Can I kiss you?"

A beat.

Then your lips are on his

The kiss is soft and undemanding. Like it was simply second nature for you both.

You couldn't deny that you'd been thinking about what it would feel like ever since you turned around and made eye contact with that deadly stare for the first time tonight.

He's surprisingly gentle. As your lips move together he doesn't fight for dominance, just lets you lead, his hand finding the space behind your ear and tipping your jaw softly to deepen the contact. Your hand snakes around the back of his neck and your fingers thread into his hair, using the grip to pull him closer.

His hand navigates to your thigh and he pulls you onto his lap in one smooth movement. You can't help but notice the way his hips rise instinctively once you're settled on top of him. He catches himself. Goes back to being incredibly respectful.

To your dismay.

Your tongue finds his without you consciously deciding to, and you notice the careful way his explores your mouth, like delicate territory he doesn't want to rush. Like he has all the time in the world and intends to use it.

You're becoming impatient.

It's not that you don't appreciate the restraint. You do. But you find yourself wondering where the guy who insulted your outfit to your face within thirty seconds of meeting you went. The one with the stack of rings and the blood red guitar.

You want to find him.

You start moving with more enthusiasm, rolling your hips down and deepening the kiss, doing your best to get a real reaction out of him. He continues to be respectful.

You pull back, you don’t say anything, just kind of look at him. 

“What's wrong?” he asks “Are you okay did I make you uncomf-”

"You know something?" you interrupt. "For someone who wears handcuffs on his jeans you're being awfully respectful right now." 

His previously soft gaze darkens, the corner of his mouth curving up. He leans forward, lips brushing your ear.

“I don’t have to be,” he murmurs.

And then, like you flipped a switch, everything changes.

His fingers dig into your hips hard enough to keep you still. His mouth is back on yours in an instant, nipping at your lower lip with enough intention to make you gasp. His hand finds your jaw, fingers curling around it firmly, holding you exactly where he wants you, making it impossible to move away from him.

Before you can say another word he flips you.

Your back meets the mattress and he's over you before you've fully registered the movement, kissing you with something that has nothing to do with careful or gentle. His free hand finds the loose fabric at your waist and travels up slowly, skimming your stomach and the curve of your ribcage until his fingers slip beneath the padding of your bra and cup your bare chest. The cold of his silver rings pressed against your bare skin making you shiver. 

The sound he makes against your lips at the contact is low and completely unguarded.

He pulls back just enough to trace kisses down your jaw and along your collarbone, unhurried and deliberate, while his fingers find the peak of your chest. You squirm instinctively beneath him. His hold tightens in response, keeping you exactly in place while he takes his time with you, his mouth and hands working together with a patience that is somehow more maddening than urgency would have been.

There he is, you think. 

You can't help the sounds that come out of you as he continues to work you up. There is nothing respectful about what he's doing now.

He holds you down against the mattress as his mouth finds the skin below your collarbone, sucking hard enough that you already know it's going to be dark by morning. Then his teeth drag slowly against the same spot, drawing out the sting, and you decide you'll worry about that tomorrow.

His fingers grasp the fabric of your top and pull it over your head, leaving you in just your bra, which is already halfway off from his previous exploration. His lips find the soft spot between your shoulder and your neck as one hand lifts your back and the other snakes around to find the clasp of your bra. 

It's gone in seconds.

He sits back and looks at you beneath him.

The pause lasts only a moment.

"Fuck," he groans, low and completely involuntary.

Then he's back on you, hips grinding between your thighs with an urgency that has abandoned all pretense of restraint. His lips find yours again and the difference is immediate and undeniable. He's hungrier now, kissing you like he's been holding something back all night and has finally stopped bothering.

Which, you're starting to think, might actually be true.

His fingers travel across your bare chest with a desperation that has nothing composed about it, digging into your skin like he's trying to stay grounded. This is the intensity you wanted from him. This is what you knew was underneath all that careful restraint.

His mouth travels back down to your collarbone and traces a slow path of kisses to the peak of your chest. His lips close around the most sensitive point and his fingers attend to the other, and you never anticipated that this alone could make your mind go this blank. You revert to something purely instinctual. You stop thinking entirely and just feel.

Desperate shaky breaths leave you before you can stop them and you feel him smile against your skin when you try to stay quiet and fail, your composure dissolving completely the moment his tongue flicks against you.

He unlatches himself and looks up at you, like he's trying to give you a moment to catch up.

Then with one hand he grabs the hem of his shirt and pulls it off.

His mouth returns to your skin, tracing kisses and soft bites down your stomach, moving closer and closer to where you actually want him. When he reaches your pelvis his mouth lifts from your skin and he pauses there, looking up at you from under those black lined eyes.

"Want to taste more of you," he breathes. Waiting.

It's not like you were going to say no.

"Please, Nicho," you breathe.

The nickname must do something to him because he practically rips your skirt off, scrambling to pull it down your legs with a sudden urgency that has completely abandoned the patience he showed earlier. His pupils are blown wide. His face has turned instinctively hungry in a way that makes your breath catch.

He hooks his fingers under your underwear and pulls them off in one motion, leaving you fully exposed to the cool air of his bedroom.

He grabs your hips and yanks you to the edge of the bed, lowering himself to his knees until he's eye level with your slick core. He gives you one more of those hungry looks, like he's taking a moment to appreciate exactly where he is, and then he positions himself between your legs and sweeps his tongue lazily through your folds.

Your hand flies to the back of his head immediately, fingers tangling in his hair.

He teases you, tongue brushing your most sensitive spot and then retreating just as quickly, and your grip tightens in retaliation. He's being deliberately noisy about it, the vibrations sending that knot in your stomach tightening faster and faster. You involuntarily pull him closer and he doesn't resist in the slightest, happily burying himself deeper.

Your release is barreling toward you when he plunges two fingers inside you without warning.

You decide not to think too hard about when exactly he took his rings off.

His mouth moves to the peak of your core and your vision flashes white. His fingers work in and out of you steadily, curling upward to find that spot, and your orgasm peaks all at once, shockwaves rolling through your entire body. Your hand clenches involuntarily in his hair but he doesn't flinch, staying right where he is, coaxing you through every last wave of it until your vision clears and you remember where and who you are.

And who you're with.

"I'm not done with you," he says before you've even opened your eyes.

You hear the soft thud of his pants hitting the floor. Your eyes flutter open. He's standing at the edge of the bed in just his underwear, unhooking the handcuffs from his belt loop with practiced ease, and the sight of it does something immediate to your already oversensitized system.

He's back hovering over you in seconds. Mindful of your post-orgasm haze he gently takes your wrist and latches one cuff into place, then does the same with the other, guiding your arms above your head where you lay against his mattress.

"Nicho, what—" you start.

"Shhh." His voice drops to something low and steady. "It's okay. I've got you." He meets your eyes. "If it's too much, tell me and I'll stop."

You look up at him, wrists pinned above you, his face inches from yours, those black lined eyes patient and waiting.

You don't want him to stop.

You don't want him to stop at all.

"Okay," you breathe.

Something in his expression shifts. Satisfied and certain all at once.

He kisses you again, letting you taste yourself on his mouth. He's gentle this time, tender even, a deliberate counterpoint to the fact that your wrists are pinned above your head and you can barely move. You feel him shift and watch his free hand reach down to pull his boxers off. The last barrier between you gone.

Both of you naked and tangled in his sheets while he kisses you like he has all the time in the world.

Still holding your wrists above your head with one hand his other moves to your thigh, spreading your legs open. You feel him nudge your entrance. You haven't even had the chance to see him properly, only the fleeting impression of his length pressing against you when you were grinding down on him earlier.

He nuzzles into the curve of your neck, lazily kissing the delicate skin there, whispering your name low against it, and then you feel him line himself up and push inside.

The burning stretch of it catches you completely off guard. You knew he was relatively big but he's massive, filling you in a way that steals the breath straight from your lungs. Just when you think he's done he eases in another centimeter.

"You okay?" he murmurs against your neck, still kissing you softly between the words.

"Mhm," is all you can manage.

You have never felt so full that speaking felt genuinely difficult. You're not entirely sure if that's his size or just his effect on you. Maybe both.

His rhythm starts slow. More intimate than you expected from him, easing you into the sensation of him, giving you time to adjust. His lips stay on your neck the whole time.

"You're doing so good," he whispers. "You'll be okay if I speed up, yeah?"

"please."

That's all the answer he needs.

He pulls back and slams into you and for a moment you forget your own name entirely.

You lose track of time completely. Lost in the heat of him, in the rhythm he sets, in the sounds filling the room. When he finally pulls out of you it takes a second to register what's happening before he's flipping you onto your stomach and coaxing your back into an arch with steady hands.

He pulls your cuffed wrists behind you, keeping his grip on them as he enters you again from behind. Using the handcuffs as leverage to drive deeper with every thrust, each one more devastating than the last.

He makes no effort to stay quiet, low grunts escaping with each movement. You have no idea what you sound like. You can barely hear yourself over everything else.

Your release builds rapidly and by the increasing urgency of his thrusts you can tell he's right there with you. When he repeatedly finds that spot inside you your climax hits hard and fast. He follows shortly after, hips stuttering, one final deep thrust before he spills inside you, both of you suspended for a long suspended moment before the wave finally breaks and you come down together.

He practically collapses on top of you for a moment, catching his breath, letting himself come back down to earth with you beneath him. Then he pulls out carefully and reaches for the tissue box on his dresser, cleaning you up slowly and gently while you do your best to keep your eyes open.

"How was that for you?" he asks quietly, swiping the tissue carefully over your thighs.

"It was good," you admit. "Really good."

The corner of his mouth pulls up.

He finishes with you before cleaning himself up, then disappears briefly and returns with two fresh pairs of boxers and two oversized t-shirts. He considers them for a second and hands you the softer of the two.

You pull it over your head.

It smells like him.

"Thanks," you say.

You end up sitting cross legged on his bed facing each other, him with his back against the headboard, both of you just looking at each other in the quiet of the room. Then he reaches his hand out.

"Come here," he says.

You crawl over to him and he wraps his arms around you without making a thing of it, like it's the most natural conclusion to the evening.

"So, uh," he starts. Then stops. "I don't. I don't really do that very often." He exhales. "Like I've actually never done that with someone I met the same night."

You stay quiet and let him find his words.

"What I'm trying to say is," he takes a breath, "I'd like to actually take you out sometime. I don't want you to think tonight was nothing to me." A beat. "It wasn't."

You look up at him.

"Nicho," you say, smiling. "I'd like that."

He lets out a slow breath like he'd been holding it.

The room settles back into comfortable quiet, his arms around you, his t-shirt smelling like him, the faint sounds of his friends still carrying up from downstairs somewhere far away.

"They're probably giving us hell down there," you sigh.

"It doesn't help that our only witness was Yuma," Nicholas says. "He probably told everyone he walked in on us making out just for the sake of a good story."

"You guys are really good friends, huh?"

"Yeah," he admits, and there's something genuinely fond in the way he says it. "We are."

As if on cue there's a quiet but certain knock at the door.

"Nicho?" Jo's voice, easy and unbothered as always. "Your girlfriend's roommate is looking for her."

You bite back a smile.

"She's here," Nicholas confirms, completely casual. "She's staying."

"Okay," Jo replies, just as casually, and his footsteps disappear back down the hallway without another word.

You don't remember closing your eyes.

The steady rise and fall of Nicholas' chest lulls you under slowly, the distant sound of voices and laughter floating up from downstairs wrapping around the edges of the room like a blanket. His hand travels up and down your arm in a slow, unhurried rhythm, and you feel yourself sinking further and further into the warmth of him.

You think you hear him whisper goodnight.

end

-----------------------------⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹---------------------------

The sound of the keychains on your dance bag clinking together echoes through the hallway of the student rec center. You feel unusually light as you glide down the hall toward the practice room.

Since moving from out of state you haven't been able to find time to practice the way you used to. Being a state champion ballerina has had to be put on hold so you can finish your degree, because dancing for a living just isn't practical anymore. Not in this economy. Not in this life.

You were ecstatic when you saw a break in your schedule late on a Thursday evening, a rare window to simply get back in the studio and move. You needed this for your own sanity. To you, ballet had never felt like discipline or like something you had to force your body to do. It always just felt right. You were craving that feeling more than ever now.

As you round the corner toward the dimly lit practice room you can already hear it. The unmistakable thump of bass bleeding through the door.

Great, you think.

You loved dancing in front of audiences and other dancers who understood the language of ballet, but dancing in front of someone who specialized in hip hop or contemporary was something else entirely. The styles felt so different, the priorities so opposite, and somewhere in the back of your mind you'd always wondered if they saw ballet as rigid. Outdated. You knew the thought was probably unfair. It still stuck.

You straighten your shoulders and regain your composure before yanking open the heavy door.

The practice room is small and cozy. Your school isn't particularly one for the arts, so the fact that it exists at all feels like a blessing. Located on the second floor of the student recreation center, the room has three massive arched windows lining the wall opposite the door. Rain tracks down the glass in slow, uneven lines, catching the dim light. The vinyl floors are in great condition. The mirrors are wiped down by staff twice a day.

The best part of the whole room is the barre. Bolted to the wall underneath the massive windows.  It's the only place on this entire campus where you feel at home.

Your eyes find it automatically, the way they always do.

And then you see who else is already here

A figure, tall and slender, occupies the middle of the room. The retro beats of his hip hop music seep faintly into your earbuds. You don't have much time to take in anything else before you make yourself look away. A navy blue hat sits low on his face and the hood of his loose grey sweatshirt is pulled over his head. His baggy sweats hang off impossibly long legs and the squeak of his sneakers against the vinyl floor matches the rhythm of whatever he's dancing to.

You make sure to control your face. Don't stare. He might think you're judging him.

You stride past him and set your bag in one of the storage cubbies. His steps falter slightly as he registers he's no longer alone. Then he finds his rhythm again, settling back into the routine, and you watch him out of the corner of your eye.

You've never seen a hip hop dancer who managed to make the style look sharp and graceful at the same time. He glides through the moves with an ease that's difficult to fake, and you can't help but notice his control, the precision underneath the looseness of it. It's rare for someone to move their hips that smoothly and still look completely effortless. For him it seems like second nature.

You take out your AirPods to hear the song fully and pull your pocket mirror out of your bag, you busy yourself reapplying chapstick, watching him in the small reflection. Before he can notice that your lips have been coated approximately one hundred times, you snap the mirror shut and toss it back in your bag. You pretend to unlace your sneakers instead.

The speaker cuts out.

Suddenly you're both just two people in a small room, and the only sound between you is the quiet rhythm of his breathing coming down.

He walks over to the mirror and reaches for his water bottle. Takes a few slow sips, chest still rising and falling from the exertion. Then he snatches his phone up from the floor, punches in his password, and you catch the unmistakable green of the Spotify loading screen.

As if he just then remembered he wasn't alone, his face snaps up.

Your eyes meet in the mirror.

You hope he didn't notice how long you were staring.

You don't think you managed to hide it in time.

He's gorgeous. Even in a casual outfit, hood still half up, sweat still fresh on his skin, he is one of the most striking people you've ever seen in your life. His dark brown eyes hold yours in the reflection, calm and unreadable. Your gaze drops, just for a second, to where his hoodie has partially unzipped, his chest still catching its breath beneath it. His dark hair clings slightly to his forehead.

You feel heat rise to your cheeks.

Because he's still looking right back at you.

"I'm curious," he starts, and his voice cuts through the silence so suddenly it makes you flinch. "Do you think the steps leading up to the final chorus are redundant? I feel like I'm cycling through the same eight counts the whole song and I'm sick of watching myself do it. I think I've gone blind to my own mistakes."

You blink.

"Are you talking to me?"

"No, I'm talking to all the other people in this room with us," he says, and the dry sarcasm in his tone catches you completely off guard. Definitely not how a normal person talks to a stranger.

"Right, sorry." You shake your head and look down. You stand after finally prying off your left sneaker and risk another glance at him through the mirror. "I don't know anything about hip hop, honestly. But for what it's worth, it looked good to me."

He scoffs, short and dismissive.

"Here I was thinking another dancer walked in," he mutters, eyes already dropping back to his phone to scroll for another song. Then he glances up again. "Hey." His gaze travels over you slowly. "I think you might be lost. The yoga studio is in the basement."

Black compression jacket. Loose yoga pants. Baby pink headband. You don't blame him for the assumption.

But hearing it roll off his lips like an afterthought still stings more than it should.

You look at him for a long moment. Perfect face. Terrible manners.

There's nothing you love more than proving men wrong.

"I'm not lost," you say, and turn around to dig your ballet slippers out of your bag.

You could take it even further and shock him by pulling out your pointe shoes, but the amount of work that goes into breaking them in isn't worth it on a smug loser like him.

You unzip your jacket and shrug it off, revealing your long-sleeve boatneck leotard underneath. You step out of your loose yoga pants, baby pink tights and black leg warmers underneath those too. You slip your ballet slippers onto your feet quickly and tie the elastic ribbon in a neat bow. Then, before turning back in his direction, you put in your AirPods.

A silent message. Leave me alone.

You notice him stiffen slightly where he stands as you stride toward the barre and begin to stretch.

You quickly forget about the sting of being belittled and fall back into your old rhythm of warming up. Right leg, then left. Working each joint carefully until you're convinced you won't hurt yourself. Then your arms, your shoulders. You roll your neck and stretch your fingers one by one.

The stress of college life fades instantly. Your body reverts to autopilot and you finally feel like yourself again, like something that had been held too tight is slowly releasing.

When you turn to stretch your inner thigh against the barre you steal another glance at him. He's doing his very best to pretend he isn't staring, but you can tell he has been. You can see it in the tight line his mouth has pressed into, like he already regrets opening it.

Once every joint feels like elastic you reach for your phone and drift to an open spot in front of the mirror, about ten feet from where he's standing. You let your eyes meet his for just a moment, casual, unbothered, not giving him anything to read. Then you queue up your favorite song, set your phone gently on the floor, and wait for the first note.

When it comes, your limbs move without being told.

You float into it. Legs and arms weaving together, painting the air with whatever the song asks of you. School fades. Your job fades. The insufferable stranger ten feet away fades. You melt into the music and throw yourself around the room until you forget there's a floor beneath you at all.

When the song slows and the final note fades, you blink away the daze that always settles over you when you dance. Refocusing takes a second. Coming back to the room takes another.

This time, pretending the figure standing ten feet away doesn't exist is impossible.

He hasn't moved an inch since the last time you acknowledged him. Something caught between pure shock and something softer, something closer to yearning, is written plainly across his face.

Good.

Your chest rises and falls as you make your way to your dance bag and dig for your water bottle. You're already anticipating the relief of cold water against the burning thirst in your throat. Your victory is cut short when the bottle feels oddly light the moment you pull it free.

Of course.

You let out a slow sigh and are starting to push yourself off the floor when an ice cold sealed blue powerade bottle appears in your peripheral vision. You turn. It's the grey hoodie sleeve, arm extended, holding it out to you without a word.

"I guess yoga was wrong, huh?" he says, and there's something almost playful in the way he looks at you now.

You snatch the bottle out of his hand and drink half of it in one go. You wipe a stray drop from your chin with the back of your hand, and when you glance up you catch him watching that exact moment. You're not entirely sure how to feel about it.

"I told you I wasn't lost," you say matter-of-factly. "And don't discredit yoga. I know girls who do yoga that could fold themselves completely flat if they wanted to."

"Right. Right." He nods, like he's actually conceding the point. "So, uh, what's your name?"

Who is this guy, and what happened to the outspoken stranger who discredited you fifteen minutes ago?

"Y/N," you say plainly.

"Y/N," he repeats out loud, nodding slowly, like he's turning the syllables over for the first time. He doesn't say anything after that. Just kind of stands there and looks at you.

This is so weird.

"Usually this is the part where you tell me your name."

"Oh. Right." A smirk crosses his face. "It's K."

"Like K-A-Y, or just the letter?"

"Just the letter," he clarifies. "My real name is Yudai Koga. But when I started university I wanted to go by something different. So. K."

"Ah." You screw the cap back onto the bottle. "Well, K. Thank you for the Powerade."

"Yeah, you're welcome."

This time you actually look at him. Not through the mirror. Not from ten feet away. Not while he's in constant movement. Just directly, unhurried, in the full light of the room.

Yeah. You really have to give it to him. He could absolutely model.

He's smiling down at you with a cocky grin, but there's something sheepish living just underneath it, something in the way his eyes catch the light. He's still embarrassed and trying very hard not to show it.

"I've never seen anyone dance like that," he finally admits. "It's like you aren't even human."

You snort, which genuinely seems to catch him off guard.

You look at him for a second. "You're not so bad yourself," you say, and mean it. "That thing you were doing before the chorus. I couldn't take my eyes off it."

Something shifts in his expression. The cockiness softens just slightly, like he wasn't expecting that.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." You set the water bottle down between you. "Your control is insane. I was watching your footwork in the mirror and I kept waiting for you to lose the timing and you just… didn't."

He's quiet for a moment, looking at you like he's deciding something.

"I'm sorry," he says finally, and it comes out flat and genuine at the same time, like he's not used to saying it but means it anyway. He lowers himself to the floor a few feet away from you, leaning back on his hands and crossing his legs. "The yoga thing was out of pocket."

"It was," you agree easily.

A beat of silence settles between you, but it's different from the one before. Less charged. More comfortable than it has any right to be given that you've known each other for approximately twenty minutes.

"How long have you been dancing?" he asks.

"Since I was three." You lean back on your hands, mirroring him without meaning to. "You?"

"Since I was nineteen." He tilts his head. "So you've got some years on me."

"You're lying," you say, laughing. You know that his level of talent would take far more than a few years of practice. "Be serious. When did you actually start?"

"I am being serious." He gives you a bewildered look.

You study his face for a moment, searching for the punchline.

There isn't one.

"Nineteen," you repeat.

"Nineteen," he confirms.

You let out a short breath that's almost a laugh, shaking your head slowly. Three years old versus nineteen. You spent your entire childhood being shaped by ballet, every weekend and holiday and summer poured into a studio. And he just decided one day, apparently as a fully formed adult, and ended up here.

"That's actually insane," you say, and you mean it as the compliment it is.

He shrugs, but you can tell he's pleased. "I just loved it. Couldn't stop once I started."

You understand that more than he knows.

"I know that feeling," you say.

"I could tell." His gaze drifts to the spot in front of the mirror where you were dancing. "It was like you morphed into something completely different the moment you started. I couldn't hear your music but the way you moved made it so easy to track the rhythm anyway."

"I do morph into something different," you admit. "The music starts and it's like…"

"The whole world disappears," he finishes.

You go still for a moment, looking at him.

"Exactly," you say quietly.

A comfortable beat of silence passes between you.

"I was thinking," he says, "why don't we call a truce."

"I'm listening."

He shifts where he's sitting, and for the first time since you walked in, his confidence seems to quietly leave the room. "I've been working on something, but I haven't been able to show anyone yet." He pauses. "I choreographed a contemporary routine. But I'm not sure it's right, and I can't figure out what's missing." His eyes find yours. "Would you be willing to watch?"

"Knock yourself out," you say, extending a hand toward the empty room.

You adjust yourself on the floor while he carefully stands and moves to turn his speaker on. You pretend not to notice his hands trembling slightly as he pulls up the music on his phone.

He takes a sharp breath. His eyes find his own reflection in the mirror, and for a moment he just looks at himself. Steadying.

Then the song starts.

Your ears perk up the second you recognize it. A deeply emotional, atmospheric song, one you only ever let yourself play at midnight when you needed somewhere to disappear to. A private song. The kind you didn't expect to share with anyone.

And here this man was dancing to it.

You laser focus on every move his body makes. Every sharp beat is met with a perfectly timed jolt of his body. Every slow, cycling melody is answered with a graceful extension of a hand or a leg. He's completely mastered his turns, spinning with an ease that looks almost careless. Almost.

The routine is beautiful.

You catch yourself quietly humming along without meaning to, the melody surfacing in the back of your throat on its own. As you watch him glide and jump and sweep his legs across the floor, you find yourself arriving at a quiet conclusion.

He is a prodigy. Or a god sent down specifically to humble you with the presence of his dancing.

Either way, you're not sure you deserve to be in the same room.

You watch intently. It's good. Really good. But something's missing, like his movements are incomplete, a quiet question waiting for an answer.

When the last note fades he drops his head, chest heaving, and the room goes quiet again.

You don't say anything for a moment. Then the answer hits you.

"Can you run it again?" you ask.

He looks up. "Yeah." He wipes his forearm across his forehead. "Was it that bad?"

"No," you say simply. "I just want to watch it again."

He studies your face for a second like he's trying to read something in it, then nods and reaches for his phone.

The song starts again.

This time you don't just watch. You map it. Your eyes track the places where his body hesitates, not from lack of skill but from lack of an answer. The choreography keeps asking a question and then moving on before anything can respond to it. By the time the bridge hits you're already on your feet, and by the time the chorus swells you're already moving.

You don't ask. You just join him.

It doesn't feel like freestyling. It feels like being a poet finally spilling out the words you could never say onto a page. Your arms reach for him and his arms catch you in return.

The electricity between your bodies is undeniable. But neither of you feel it yet. Not really. Because the music has started and the whole world has disappeared, just like you both said it would. There is only movement and breath and the space between you closing and opening like a conversation finally being had out loud.

You dance like smoke curling off the end of a cigarette into a starry night sky. His movements pick up exactly where they faltered when he was alone. His hands find their place on your waist and it's like a puzzle clicking into its last piece.

You fall in and out of his arms. Spin in time with him, your bodies finding a language neither of you had to teach the other. And when the music finally comes to a slow, you're left breathless in his arms, staring up at him, right into those lethal brown eyes.

Neither of you speak.

You just breathe. Catching your breath together, not breaking eye contact. He moves first, but only to curl the corner of his lips up, slow and certain.

You feel like you never want to be anywhere else again.

Which is insane, you realize, when you remember you met the man currently holding you for the first time less than an hour ago.

"I think I found my missing piece," he says quietly. "And I don't think I'm the only one who already knows this dance needs you in it."

When he finally lets go of you, you both sink to the floor and talk through the dance. You discuss the logistics of the routine, what's working, what could be refined, how to truly polish it into something complete. You decide to keep the fact that the song means something to you entirely to yourself. That feels like too much to offer a stranger.

You don't know why this idea excites you as much as it does. You don't have a lot of free time. Your schedule is already pulling at the seams.

But this feels important. This feels real.

You're lacing your sneakers back up when his phone screen appears in front of your face. He's already opened a new contact with your name at the top.

"We'll probably need to stay in touch if we're doing this," he says.

You take the phone from his hands and punch your number in without overthinking it.

"Just so you know," you say, handing it back, "I'm really busy. I might not have much time for this."

He takes the phone. Looks at the number. Then looks at you.

"You'll make time for me," he says simply, and turns and walks out the door.

You sit there for a moment in the empty practice room, the rain still tracking down the arched windows, the speaker silent, the barre waiting.

And that was your first interaction with Yudai Koga. 

A week later a sense of déjà vu washes over you as you walk down the hallway toward the practice room. The same sound of keychains dangling from your bag. The same even pace of your footsteps. But this time, when the familiar thump of a hip hop track reaches you from down the hall, instead of anxiety you feel something warm settle in your chest.

You decide not to examine what that means.

When you pull open the heavy door K stops dancing immediately, smiling at you through the mirror. Like he genuinely wasn't sure you'd show up.

"Well, well, well," he says. "There's my little ballerina."

You cringe.

"Don't call me that," you say, and fling your bag onto the floor. You sink down and start unlacing your sneakers, beginning your warm up ritual like this is any other day of practice. You'd come dressed for the studio today, pink leotard under your cream bolero, white tights disappearing into pink leg warmers, ballet slippers already sitting at the top of your bag waiting for you.

You make your way to the barre to begin stretching when a familiar figure appears beside you.

"What are you doing?" you ask.

"Stretching," he replies. "Obviously."

"If you're going to do it, at least do it right," you say, and reach over to guide his ankle up onto the barre. He winces visibly as you test his flexibility, and you pretend not to notice the way he writhes slightly under your guidance.

He's wearing a white tank top today and low black sweats, and this close you really get to take in his frame for the first time. His legs are three quarters of his entire body, his arms are perfectly toned like Michelangelo himself sculpted them, and his back-

Stop.

This isn't like that, you tell yourself. Except the feeling sitting low in your stomach isn't listening, warm and inconvenient and getting harder to shake off every time he gets within arm's reach of you.

You laugh watching him attempt to stretch anywhere close to as far as you.

"How are you doing that?" he says, nearly toppling off the barre trying to reach his hamstrings.

"Since I was three, remember," you reply.

The warm up winds down naturally and silence fills the space between you. You both drift toward the center of the room and then just sort of stop, the open floor suddenly feeling very large.

"I don't really remember how it even happened last time," you admit. "Or where to start."

"Me neither," he says plainly, reaching for his phone to pull up the music.

You'd listened to the song obsessively for the past week. Mapping out in your head where your body would go for each lyric. But somewhere between the choreography your mind kept drifting back to him. The way he moved, delicate and powerful at the same time. The way his hands felt when they found your hips like they already knew where they belonged.

There you go again.

That dark corner of your mind that wanted him, quietly and completely, in a way you hadn't invited and weren't ready to look at directly. You'd been pushing the door closed on it all week.

It kept drifting back open.

"Why don't we just go with the music?" he suggests, knocking you out of your daze. "If we find something that works we can go back and refine it."

"Sounds good," you say, and shake yourself back into the room.

When the music starts you both fall into a steady rhythm, stopping whenever something clicks and working it until it's right. The night stretches long around you without either of you seeming to notice, the practice room holding the two of you in its own small world while the rain continues its quiet work against the arched windows.

You find it deeply satisfying the way his contemporary style compliments your ballet. You're able to absorb more about the genre than you expected, and you genuinely enjoy watching him break down his interpretation of the lyrics, the way his body becomes a translation for something words can't quite reach.

The dynamic between you settles into something slightly teasing and quietly competitive. He enjoys critiquing your difference in timing. You enjoy critiquing his flow and his frankly embarrassing flexibility. Neither of you lets the other get away with anything.

The more comfortable you become around him the more you start to notice small things.

Like the mirror.

K loves watching himself in the mirror. Not out of vanity exactly, more like he thinks better when he can see himself. And more than that, you notice, he loves watching you in it. Rather than turning to face you directly when he has something to say, he almost always finds your eyes in the reflection first, like the glass is a safer distance somehow.

When you dance he uses the mirror to its full potential, taking in every angle of the way your body moves through the song. You notice. You say nothing.

When the second meeting wraps up there's that same strange feeling sitting low in your gut. You don't want to leave. You'd enjoyed this far more than you expected, and now that the two of you are getting more comfortable you can feel something growing quietly in your chest that's becoming harder and harder to dismiss.

But you do. You're good at that.

You pack your bag and swing it over your shoulder, turning to give K a small smile before pushing open the heavy door.

"Goodnight," you say.

"Goodnight, little ballerina," he replies.

You roll your eyes. You also can't quite control your face fast enough to hide the smile that follows, wider than you mean it to be, spilling out before you can stop it.

You let the door fall shut behind you.

You spend the following week pretending your mind isn't completely and utterly occupied by brown eyes and long legs. Everywhere you go on campus you keep an eye out for him.

After a brief social media stalk you find out he's a sociology major. One year above you. You start pausing outside the sociology building whenever you pass it, just in case some alignment of the universe puts him walking out at the exact moment you're walking by. It never does.

You think you catch a glimpse of him in one of the campus cafes one afternoon. Dark hair catching the light, a flash of brown eyes, and then he's gone, swallowed back into the crowd before you can be sure.

Thursday creeps up again and you pretend to be less excited than you are as you walk down the hallway toward the practice room.

This time you aren't met with pounding bass. You pull open the door and the lights are off.

You beat him today.

You flip the lights on and begin your ritual. Halfway through your stretches the door flings open and there he is, the fluorescent light of the hallway framing his figure like he's being presented to you. Like a piece of art that wasn't asking to be looked at but can't help it anyway.

"Sorry I'm late," he says, slightly out of breath like he sprinted up the stairs. "I got caught in a meeting with my ethics GE." You can tell he wasn't thoroughly prepared for the rain. His dark hair clings to his forehead and his face is speckled with small water droplets.

"It's alright," you say. "It's not like you can do these stretches anyway."

"Careful, I might start thinking you're happy to see me." he says, throwing his bag on the floor and joining you at the barre.

You continue stretching and laugh at his attempts, guiding him through easier beginner level stretches so he can actually warm up properly.

"Woah," he says, testing the muscles in his shoulder with quiet amazement. "I feel like I could do the splits if I wanted to."

"Please don't attempt that. I have no interest in a trip to the ER."

You fall back into the same rhythm you left off the week before almost immediately. Teasing each other shamelessly, laughing in each other's faces when you get too close, both of you far too unserious to acknowledge out loud that the chemistry between you is completely undeniable.

Once you finish blocking out the first chorus you both collapse onto the floor for a water break. You crawl toward your bag and when you glance up you catch his eyes in the mirror. Looking directly at where your thigh high leg warmers meet the thin strip of bare skin before the shorts of your leotard pick up.

Okay. So maybe you did wear a slightly more scandalous outfit on purpose today. But if anyone asked you would blame it entirely on not wanting to do laundry.

You end up sitting across from each other on the floor while he grills you on your competitive career.

"How many medals do you have?"

"Too many to count."

"Okay but if you had to guess."

"Maybe just under a hundred?"

"Really?!" He looks genuinely astounded, staring at you like you're the most interesting thing he's ever encountered. Like he should consider himself lucky to be sitting on this floor across from you.

"I told you, I was the state champion," you say, laughing. "I have trophies too. And scholarships."

"I can't believe I never saw you in the news."

"Ballet doesn't get a lot of coverage as a sport. Or as an art form honestly." You pause. "Did you dance in high school or did you start after you graduated?"

"I ran marathons in high school," he says. "That's why I'm able to keep up with you. I have good stamina."

You pretend to ignore what that does to you. But your cheeks are already warming and you drop your gaze to the floor, just for a second.

He doesn't say anything about your cheeks. Just files it away behind those observant eyes and moves on.

"Hey, so I wanted to run something by you," he starts.

"What's up?" you ask, completely unprepared for what comes next.

"So I found out there's a dance showcase in a couple of weeks, run by the dance club." You feel your stomach flip slightly. "My friend Jo sent me the flyer. I was wondering if you'd be down to perform this." He motions between the two of you.

You've never seen him like this before. Awkward and genuinely nervous, watching you with a careful kind of hope like he already knows what he wants the answer to be and is trying not to show it. His eyes give him away though. That quiet pleading glimmer, like he's holding onto the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you'll say yes.

"Oh!" The question catches you off guard.

You give it a moment. In the scheme of things this isn't a good idea. You have school on top of work and committing to extra rehearsals just for a showcase sounds like a death wish on your schedule. But then you think about how dancing with K actually feels. The one evening a week where everything else goes quiet. The one place you've felt like yourself since leaving home.

You don't think any harder than that before answering.

"I'd love to," you say, smiling.

K looks like the wind got knocked out of him.

"Really?" he asks, and there's nothing performative about it.

"Don't make me regret saying yes."

"I definitely won't." The grin spreading across his face is absolutely insufferable.

You cannot stand him.

After running through more of the song you both pack up your things, joking with each other like it's the easiest thing in the world. Like you've been doing this for years.

The next week comes. Then the week after that you're meeting on Monday, then Tuesday, then Thursday. You've been quietly getting your shifts at the pub covered and front-loading all your homework as early in the week as you can. Just so you have more time in that practice room.

Just so you have more time with K.

Being with him has become the highlight of your week and you've mostly stopped pretending otherwise, at least to yourself.

When you see your friends every other Friday you bring him up in passing. Carefully, casually, not insinuating anything. Just mentioning that you love getting to dance again. That you found someone to practice with.

You leave the rest to them.

"Is he cute?"

"What does he look like?"

"He sounds mysterious."

A symphony of giggles fills your apartment when you explain with a completely straight face that your interactions are purely friendly.

You almost believe it yourself.

Finally the week of the showcase arrives. You meet K on Thursday, the day before.

"Hey, little ballerina," he says.

The familiar nickname makes you roll your eyes on instinct. You pretend you haven't grown quietly fond of the syllables, the way they come out easy and automatic every single time he sees you.

"Did you forget my name?" you say flatly, giving him your best unimpressed look. "Be honest."

"Nope," he says, throwing his bag on the floor and digging through it. "I just love seeing you annoyed." He produces a blue Powerade and tosses it in your direction. "Got this for you."

How romantic.

"Wow," you say, pressing it dramatically to your chest. "Just like the day we met. I'll cherish it forever."

"If you're going to be weird about it just give it back," he says, pulling a red bottle out for himself. "They only had one blue one left and everyone knows that's the best flavor."

"So you gave it to me?"

He doesn't answer that. Just twists the cap off his red bottle and takes a long sip, very deliberately not looking at you.

You smile at the Powerade in your hands and say nothing.

The practice goes smoothly. The choreography is completely polished and after running through it four times you could both probably perform the whole song in your sleep. You take a well deserved break, settling into your usual spots on the floor. The blue Powerade is surprisingly refreshing after all that work.

"Wow, what's it going to be like when all this is over?" you joke.

You ignore the pit that opens quietly in your stomach. You never wanted this to end. You never thought you could have this much fun away from home, or feel like you belonged somewhere new. But here you are in this warm little practice room with this boy who somehow completely changed the shape of your days without asking permission.

"Let's not focus on that," he says. You sense the same feeling radiating from him. Neither of you are ready to look at it directly.

"You're right," you sigh. "Have you decided what you're wearing tomorrow?"

"Yes, but it's a surprise," he says, smirking. "You?"

"You'll see," you say, standing and offering him a hand up.

You run through the choreography two more times for good measure. When the song ends for the last time that night you feel that aching feeling settle back into your chest. It never truly leaves when you're around him. You both take longer than necessary packing your things, moving slowly, neither of you in any real hurry.

"I'll see you tomorrow, little ballerina," he says softly, shouldering his bag and heading for the door.

"Hey, K?" The words leave your mouth before you can stop them.

He turns. And the way he looks at you in that moment, patient and still, like he's been waiting for you to say something real for weeks, makes your heart climb into your throat.

But you don't. You freeze. The words dissolve somewhere between your chest and your mouth.

"What is it?" he asks softly.

"Oh, uh, sorry. I was just going to thank you for the Powerade," you say, and even as it comes out you can hear how hollow it sounds.

A beat passes.

"Anytime," he says quietly, and disappears into the hallway.

You stand there in the empty practice room for a moment, the rain long gone from the windows, the barre waiting in the silence.

You really have to stop doing that.

You hardly sleep in anticipation for the showcase. When morning comes you pull your outfit from the closet and smile. You always loved this one, rarely getting to wear it because of the strict guidelines of competitive ballet.

You press it against your chest in your full length mirror. A simple black dress, chiffon skirt draping softly around the bodice, sequined lace appliqués climbing up both sides, the neckline gathering into a delicate mock neck. You can't wait to see his reaction.

You get ready, slip into your dress, do your hair and makeup, and head to the showcase rehearsals.

︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶

Yudai had been there for twenty minutes already when the room shifted.

He didn't see you walk in so much as he felt it, some change in the atmosphere that pulled his attention across the crowded backstage before his eyes had even found you. And then they did.

He forgets how to breathe.

You're standing on the other side of the room in a black dress, arms and legs on full display, your hair neatly pinned up, your makeup doing something to your features that makes it genuinely difficult to look directly at you. Like staring into something too bright.

He's seen you in leotards and leg warmers and ballet slippers every week for over a month. He's watched you move like the floor doesn't quite apply to you the way it applies to everyone else.

None of that prepared him for this.

His friend Jo appears at his shoulder.

"Is that her?" Jo asks, following his eyeline with obvious interest.

Yudai doesn't answer immediately.

"Yeah," he says finally. "That's her."

Jo looks between the two of you, taking in the yearning his friend is hardly bothering to mask anymore. He can't help but smile.

"What?" Yudai asks.

"Nothing," Jo shrugs. "I'm just sensing that you're in trouble." He claps him once on the shoulder and walks away.

Yudai watches him go.

He doesn't argue.

Before he can admire you from afar any longer you spot him across the room and begin weaving through the crowd of other dancers toward him, smiling slightly as you go. Like you're just as happy to see him as he is to see you.

Almost.

"Hi," you say when you finally reach him, huffing out a small laugh at the sheer number of bodies you had to navigate to get here.

He can't quite find words. But he tries anyway.

"Hey, little ballerina," he says, his voice coming out softer than usual. His eyes drop briefly to your dress, gaze lingering just a moment at the spot where the chiffon rides up your thigh. "Look who dressed up."

"Not too bad yourself," you say.

He glances down at his outfit. Black pants and a white flowing button down one shade away from being sheer. Simple, clean. He's glad he went with it. You deserve to be the main event tonight.

"Are you ready for this?" he asks, because it's the only thing he can think to say that isn't everything else currently running through his head.

You look up at him, completely unbothered, completely certain.

"I've been ready since I was three."

You both head to the main stage for the rehearsal. 

︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶

You and K sit backstage sharing your usual blue Powerade, both of you doing a poor job of pretending you aren't nervous. His phone lights up on the floor beside him and he smiles at the screen.

"My friends just got here. Come on, let's peek through the curtain."

You agree immediately, curiosity getting the best of you. You've wondered about his friend group for weeks.

You both make your way to the wings and position yourselves at the edge of the curtain, looking out at the auditorium slowly filling with students.

Before K spots his friends you spot yours. All four of them settled into the second row, smiling too wide and laughing with each other about something that is almost certainly about you and K. Then their attention shifts, drawn to the other students filing into their row. Eight seats next to them, eight other guys settling in, greetings exchanged.

You watch your friend on the end of the row go completely still, leaning sideways to mouth something into your other friend's ear. You catch the words "history" and "office hours" from across the auditorium. She smiles at one of the guys and he gives her a quick nod back.

Then, as if fate itself decided to test you, the guy on the aisle seat makes direct eye contact with you and waves enthusiastically.

K waves back.

"That's them," he says, grinning. "Looks like they made some friends."

He turns to look at you and you burst out laughing.

"Looks like they did," you manage, and one of your friends finally spots you through the curtain, waving, the other three following immediately after.

K shakes his head slowly. "Of course they found each other."

Out in the auditorium the entire group of twelve are now fully mingling, animated and buzzing. Presumably about the both of you.

When the showcase finally starts everything stops being funny and starts to feel too real. You and K are fourth, and after the first two acts finish and the third starts you both get called to the wings. You feel like you're about to throw up. You never felt like this at ballet recitals or even in competition. But this is different. You're nervous because you don't want him to look bad. You don't want to let him down.

"How are you feeling?" you ask shakily, finally looking up at him. He's practically vibrating.

"I can't wait to get out there."

Well. That wasn't what you expected. You aren't surprised that he loves to perform but you also wish he felt at least a little anxious. Just so you could feel slightly less alone in it.

The third act ends. The dancers walk offstage. The wings go quiet.

He gives you one last look, something unwritten living in his expression, something he's been carrying around for weeks that neither of you have found the words for yet. Then he reaches out and takes both of your hands, and the shock of it roots you completely to the spot.

"Stop thinking," he says quietly. "You've been doing this since you were three, remember?"

You look up at him.

"Don't let go until we're out there," you say.

He doesn't

The lights illuminate the two of you and suddenly the stage feels enormous. You're frozen, trying not to think about the hundreds of faces watching from the dark. You fix your eyes on the floor in your starting position and before you can spiral any further the music starts.

Before you even recognize the shift in yourself you're back in that small practice room. Just the two of you. Nothing to worry about.

You move through the first verse with ease, floating around and with each other like two swans who learned the same water. Every time you move he meets you there. Every time the distance grows his hands find you again. Every time the music slows before the chorus you get to look at him, really look at him, and nothing else exists. Not school. Not work. Not the hundreds of people watching from the dark.

Just you and him.

Your bodies collide when the bridge hits and you're back in his arms, and you savor every second of it. The more you practiced with him the more aware of him you became, how he feels beside you, how he looks at you when he thinks the music has your full attention. This is the boiling point. When his arms find you for the last time and you tip toward the ground and your eyes meet, it's undeniable.

Your heart aches. You want him so badly it fully consumes you.

An eruption of applause shatters the moment. The second row is practically on their feet, all twelve voices combining into something that sounds less like applause and more like a small riot.

"That's my best friend!" someone hollers, and you can't help but giggle even from the stage, even still tucked in his arms.

You look up at him.

He's smiling in a way you've never seen before. Full and unguarded and entirely real. Something happened in the last three minutes and you can feel it sitting between you, warm and undeniable and impossible to put back.

You both bow. You wave to your very enthusiastic second row fan section. And then you walk off the stage together.

As soon as you're out of the audience's line of sight you barely have time to breathe before you're back in his arms. He picks you up and hugs you tightly, lifting you clean off the ground.

"We did it," he says, setting you back down. You barely have time to process what just happened in the last four minutes before the stage managers are shooing you both away toward the green room.

When you arrive you sink into chairs across from each other and immediately start dissecting the performance, the way only two people who have been practicing it together for over a month possibly could. Every moment that worked, every transition that felt better than it did in rehearsal, every small thing only the two of you would notice.

The showcase ends and you make your way out to the lobby to find your friends, who have of course already become completely inseparable from each other. Your girlfriends shriek when they see you, pulling you into a group hug and shoving flowers into your arms. Beside you K's friends are clapping him on the back and raising their eyebrows pointedly when their eyes move between the two of you. The shorter one who waved from the aisle seat produces a bottle of champagne you recognize immediately from Trader Joe's. Three dollars

Your four friends just stare at the dynamic with matching expressions.

The whole group is mid argument about where to go to celebrate when K interrupts.

"You guys go ahead," he says. "I need to grab my speaker from the rec center." He looks at you. "Y/N, want to come with me?"

You gulp.

Who are you to deny him anything right now.

"Sure," you say, and say your goodbyes to the group. As you and K slip out through the exit you hear one of the more enthusiastic boys suggesting the college bar down the street to your friends. They agree immediately and far too eagerly.

It makes you happier than it should.

When you and K round the corner toward the practice room a steady silence has settled over you both. Neither of you acknowledge the shift. He pulls the door open and holds it for you, and you step inside and flip on the lights.

You feel warm immediately. The same place where it all started. The same barre. The same arched windows with rain tracking quietly down the glass. The same four walls that have held every version of this thing between you for the past month.

You don't ever want to lose this.

K strides to the corner where he left his speaker and takes a slow breath, looking around the room the same way you are.

"Good to be back," he says.

He turns and looks at you, and something in your expression gives you away. The twinge of sadness you weren't quite fast enough to hide.

"Wanna run it back one more time?" he asks. "You know. For old times sake."

"Only if you dip me lower this time," you reply, smiling despite yourself.

"Try to keep up, little ballerina."

He starts the music.

And there you both are again. Two stars tracing constellations across the same floor you met on. This time neither of you pretend to be serious about it, smiling widely at each other the whole way through, laughing when he nearly misses your hand at one point and catches it anyway. You move through the routine like two people who have been dancing together for years, like the choreography was always yours, like this room was always meant to hold the two of you.

When the song begins its slow close you feel it rising in your chest before you can stop it. This isn't the last time, right? You'll see him again. This means just as much to him. It has to.

When he dips you for the final beat and the music fades to nothing he looks down at you.

And sees the tears streaming quietly down your face.

You look at each other in the silence. You sniffle once, soft and helpless, and then his hand finds your face. His thumb brushes a tear from your cheek with a gentleness that undoes you completely.

Before you can find a single word his face dips down to meet yours.

And your lips collide.

You let out a muffled noise against him. Your whole world has just shattered, you don’t have to question anything anymore, the way his lips move against yours are proof in themselves to how he feels. You can’t let him do all the work, so you kiss him back. 

He slowly lifts you to your feet, not breaking the kiss, and his hands settle on the side of your face, like he's making sure you're real. Your lips work together in the same way your limbs do when you dance. In perfect rhythm, each of you picking up where the other left off. Finally you break the kiss, just to look at him. 

“You don’t know how long I've wanted to do that.” he says in a breathy voice, looking down at you, those brown eyes slightly glazed over. 

“I think I do know,” you say softly, and stand on your toes to meet his mouth again. 

He deepens the kiss, his tongue grazing your lips slowly, like a question. You answer by parting your mouth and letting him in. Your tongues, still blue with the remnants of the Powerade, dance in tune with each other.  

His tongue navigates yours like uncharted territory, unhurried and deliberate, like he never fully believed he'd get here and now that he has he has absolutely no intention of rushing it. Like he's committing every second of it to memory.

Your hands find the top buttons of his shirt. You undo them one by one, unhurried, and when his chest is fully exposed your palms slide up and down the lines of his stomach, feeling the definition beneath your fingertips. The same frame you've been pretending not to stare at for weeks. You finally let yourself look. He shrugs off his shirt completely and your arms loop up around his neck and pull him closer.

He breaks the kiss.

His hands find your waist and without a word he turns you both slowly until you're facing the mirror. You catch your own reflection and feel heat rise immediately to your cheeks. His chin drops to your shoulder, eyes finding yours in the glass, steady and dark and completely certain.

"I want to watch," he says quietly against your ear.

Your breath catches.

Oh.

It makes sense, you realize distantly. He always loved the mirror during practice. You just never thought it went any deeper than that. A knot forms low in your belly, warm and insistent. You love what this is doing to you. What he's doing to you.

"I'll put on a show then," you say, keeping your voice low and even. It doesn't rattle him even slightly.

He just looks at you in the mirror for a long moment. Then his lips find the skin of your shoulder, and his mouth moves slowly against it.

"You won't need to."

Then he gets to work on your neck, eyes still fixed on the mirror.

Watching him move his mouth against your skin in the reflection is almost too much. Soft breaths leave you before you can stop them, quiet sounds you don't bother trying to suppress. His own small groans vibrate warm against your skin in response. His hands begin to move, one settling at your hip like that's simply where it belongs, the other cupping your breast through the fabric of your dress.

"This is cute," he murmurs against your ear.

His hands snake around to your back, fingers finding your zipper, and he drags it down slowly. Deliberately. When he reaches the base of your spine he peels the fabric away from you, leaving your skin bare to the cool air of the practice room. His palm slides up the length of your back and a shiver runs all the way through you. In the mirror you watch him press small unhurried kisses into the curve where your neck meets your shoulder, his eyes never leaving the glass.

The pure shock and adrenaline of it all moves through your body like a current. Goosebumps rise across every inch of exposed skin. He notices immediately.

"y/n," he says softly, his voice dropping into something low and steady. "It's okay." His arms tighten slightly around you. "You can relax. I've got you."

You sink into him, barely trusting your own legs anymore.

He presses his lips to the taut skin of your throat, bites softly, then soothes the sting immediately with a scatter of gentle kisses that make your eyes flutter.

His hands leave your back and find your thigh. His fingers graze the skin there lightly, the thin layer of chiffon gathering and rising the further up his hands travel. 

When his fingers finally reach the thin line of your underwear he hooks one finger through the fabric and pauses.

You can feel the restraint radiating off him. The deliberate, careful way he's holding himself back and taking his time with you.

"This okay?" he asks.

"God, yes," you breathe.

In the mirror you watch him smile, slow and satisfied, as he draws your black lace thong down. You take a small step away from him to shrug the rest of the ensemble off entirely. You figured it was time.

Now your full body is revealed to him in the mirror. A stark contrast to his own mostly clothed frame still standing behind you.

He yanks you back against his chest without hesitation.

The feeling of your bare skin meeting his bare chest hits you somewhere deep, like something you've been quietly craving your whole life without knowing what to call it. He still towers over you, looking at you fully in the mirror, both hands resting on your shoulders like he's grounding himself. Like he needs a second too.

"Look at you," he says quietly. "I knew you were perfect."

He catches your chin in his hand and turns your face until your lips meet his. He's hungrier this time. More urgent, kissing you with a restrained desperation that tells you exactly what he's holding himself back from. Barely breaking away he drops his forehead to yours.

"I want you to watch too," he murmurs, taking your bottom lip between his teeth and dragging it slowly. "I want you to see me make you cum."

His long fingers find their place between your legs. He pauses there, deliberate and unhurried, just long enough to make you buck your hips up toward him before he finally gives you what you want. His fingers sweep slow and devastating through your already slick folds, and the sensation crests so sharply your whole body sways back into him.

In the heat of it your eyes fall shut.

A hand closes around your chin.

Your eyes flutter open.

"I told you to watch, didn't I?"

In the mirror his grin is wide and completely satisfied, dark eyes fixed on the reflection like he's been waiting for exactly this. Like this is everything he wanted to see.

You force yourself to keep your eyes open.

It's the hardest thing you've ever done.

He works you diligently, coaxing sounds out of you while his fingers find a steady rhythm against your most sensitive spot. The hand wrapped around your chin tightens slightly every time your head tries to turn away, and every time your eyes threaten to close he stops touching you entirely. He's winding you up in a way you have never experienced before, patient and merciless in equal measure.

The knot in your belly pulls tighter when he finally slides one long finger inside you. A choked sound leaves your throat. In the mirror you can see exactly what it's doing to him too, his eyes glazed over and dark, his bottom lip caught between his teeth, holding himself back by a thread. He needs to savor this. He doesn't want to rush.

You're too important to rush.

He slides in a second finger, moving them in and out with devastating ease. When the pressure builds past bearing he curls them and a sharp jolt rockets through your entire body.

"K, I'm close," you whimper.

His fingers retreat entirely.

You slump back against him, breathless and desperate, nothing left to anchor you except that unrelenting hand still wrapped around your chin, still holding your gaze forward.

He looks at you in the mirror for a long moment.

"Look at you," he says, and the satisfaction in his voice is almost unbearable. "Doing so well for me without even having to, what did you call it?" A beat. "Put on a show?”

"K." You give him a desperate look in the mirror. "Please. Please don't stop."

"Who am I to deny you anything right now?" he murmurs, and his teeth catch the soft flesh of your earlobe as his fingers find their way back inside you.

His pace is steady but his breathing is climbing. He pulls you even closer and you feel it, pressed firmly against your lower back, the undeniable hardness of him. He grinds against you slowly, chasing any friction he can get, and you can sense how desperate he is by the way small sounds have started leaving him too, quiet and unguarded, matching yours.

He tears his eyes from the mirror only to bury his face in the curve between your shoulder and neck, taking a sharp inhale like he needs to steady himself.

Your orgasm builds again and he knows it before you say a word. He can feel it in the way your legs begin to tremble and your breathing goes shallow and uneven.

"Look at me, baby," he murmurs gently when your head starts to tip back.

You try. You genuinely try.

But the moment you face forward his thumb finds your clit and your orgasm detonates through you. White stars swallow your vision. Your head falls back against his chest despite everything and you hear both of your voices tangled together somewhere above you, his hips grinding steadily against your back as his fingers guide you through every last wave of it.

When you finally come back to earth you're gasping, leaning the full weight of yourself against him.

This time when you look up he isn't looking at the mirror.

He's looking at you. Just you. His hand lifts and tucks a loose strand of hair gently behind your ear.

"You okay?" he asks, his voice soft and sincere. The tenderness of it combined with his hand warm against your cheek sends an entirely different kind of heat through you. You feel the tips of your ears burn.

"I'm perfect," you say. "What about you?"

You turn to face him fully now, your back to the mirror. Your eyes travel down his front and land on the visible strain against his pants. You reach out and grab him through the fabric without overthinking it.

His hips buck immediately into your touch. He hisses at the sudden contact, the sound escaping before he can stop it.

You rise onto your toes, something you happen to be incredibly good at, and bring your lips to his ear.

"We should probably do something about this, huh?"

Both his hands reach behind you instantly, squeezing the soft flesh of your backside between his fingers. His lips find yours again, his breathing coming in short unsteady bursts against your mouth as he tries to keep himself quiet. Your hand continues working him through the fabric until he lets out a couple of sounds that are entirely unguarded and you decide you've taunted him long enough.

You make quick work of his pants, unzipping them and letting them drop. Then after spitting in your hand you start working him again.

"Fuck," he groans into your mouth. You can't help but smile against him.

His hands find your waist and he steps out of his pants, he doesn’t stop walking you backward, deliberately, unhurried, like he already knows exactly where he's taking you. His lips stay on yours the whole time, steering you with quiet certainty across the practice room floor. When your lower back finally meets something solid he breaks the kiss just long enough to glance at it.

The barre.

Of course.

He looks back at you, eyes dark and completely certain.

“Grab it.” he says against your mouth, “both hands.” 

You give him one of your tentative looks and he's already smirking back at you.

Then he turns you around.

You reach for the barre in front of you, hands finding the familiar wood without having to look. The same barre your hands have known since the first night you walked into this room. Interesting, you think, that this is where it all started. And where it finally reaches its climax.

His hands find you immediately, tracing every line of you slowly, deliberately, cataloguing every reaction he draws out. You turn your head to the right and find him in the mirror without even meaning to. Old habit.

His palm settles flat against the center of your back and presses you into an arch.

He leans down and peppers slow kisses up and down your spine, his hands roaming your chest as he does. You can feel him sometimes brushing against your entrance, the contact fleeting and maddening, but you're too entranced watching him work in the mirror to do anything except grip the barre tighter.

Finally he lines himself up.

The reality of this actually happening, here, in this room, crashes over you and your breathing picks up. You deliberately push back against him, trying to speed things along.

He lets out one of those insufferable smirks and pulls away.

You could scream.

He catches your eye in the mirror, completely unbothered.

"You like watching too, huh?" he asks, slightly breathless. A pause. "Then let's both watch."

His hand wraps around your throat, gentle but deliberate, angling your head until you're facing the mirror directly. The slight pressure of his fingers against your pulse point sends heat flooding through you instantly. Your reflection stares back at you, his hand at your throat, his eyes dark and fixed on the glass.

When he pushes into you your mouth falls open. Every inch of him is devastating and satisfying in equal measure, a slow consuming stretch that makes your fingers tighten around the barre. Like this is what you were always meant to find each other for. Like every practice session, every stolen glance in the mirror, every almost moment was leading precisely here.

When he finally begins to move you see stars.

He doesn't build to a fast pace. Instead he pulls back as far as possible, almost completely out of you, and then drives himself back in until he's buried to the hilt. Slow. Purposeful. Devastating.

You watch the place where your bodies connect in the mirror, letting your choked sounds do all the talking for you.

His own sounds are exactly what you'd expect from him. Breathy and low, almost like he's laughing, like this is the most satisfying form of entertainment he's ever discovered. Like he's incredibly pleased with himself for getting you exactly where he always wanted you.

"You're doing so good for me," he says. "Do you like watching me fuck you like this?"

The words should probably embarrass you. Normally they would. But something about the complete certainty in his voice, the quiet confidence of it, makes it the hottest thing you've ever heard in your life.

He plunges into you again and stays there, not pulling back. He bends forward and you watch his mouth find the shell of your ear in the mirror.

"I asked you a question."

"Y-yes," you manage. "Fuck, K. Yes."

He finally settles into a steadier rhythm. His hand leaves your throat and you feel the absence of it immediately.

"I'm trusting you not to look away anymore," he murmurs.

His arm reaches around your front, his palm settling flat against the skin just below your navel. And then he presses.

You feel him driving in and out of you through his own hand. The contact forces him to glide over your most sensitive spot with every single thrust and your orgasm climbs faster than it ever has before, sudden and consuming and completely out of your control.

"K, I'm close," you manage to squeak out.

He picks up immediately, moving harder and faster, his hand pressing firmer against your lower belly. This feeling is all consuming. All you feel is him. Even the barre you're practically about to snap in half between your hands fades away entirely.

You writhe, your head dropping down between your hands, and before your forehead can meet the wood his fist bunches in your hair and snaps your head back.

"Sorry baby," he says, and he doesn't sound sorry at all. "But I told you to watch."

You use the last of your strength to face the mirror.

Your orgasm crashes through you with one final thrust and your vision goes completely white. The room dissolves into flashes and through it you can just barely make out his face behind you, brows pressed together, jaw tight, continuing to drive into you through every wave of it. His hand, still twisted in your hair, begins to tremble. The only truly human thing you've witnessed from this version of K you've been discovering tonight.

You're still riding the last of your high when his hips begin to falter. His hand releases your hair and drops to your hips instead, gripping hard, using the leverage to intensify his thrusts. His eyes never leave your conjoined bodies in the mirror. His bottom lip is caught between his teeth.

Then, with one final guttural groan, he drives into you all the way to the hilt and stills.

You feel him release inside you and take the opportunity to flex, tightening yourself around him. His voice cracks. His hips stutter through the last of it, riding it out until there's nothing left.

The sight of you both in the mirror, breathless and undone, makes heat rise to your cheeks all over again.

He gently pulls out and drops to his knees behind you, taking a moment to simply look, watching himself seep down your thigh. Then he presses one slow, soft kiss to the back of your thigh, stands, and disappears to his bag to retrieve a clean towel.

You can't help but laugh at your own reflection, watching yourself stranded in place, unable to move without making a mess of everything. He hurries back over, towel in hand, and begins cleaning you up carefully. Starting at your thighs and working up. Taking his time with it.

"Was I too much?" he asks while he works. You glance in the mirror and notice he's deliberately not making eye contact. He's looking down, focused on his hands. That awkward K from the first night in this room is back, standing right in front of you.

"K," you say. "I can't even pretend. I've been wanting you for so long and I never expected it would be that good."

That earns you one of those insufferable smirks.

"Yeah?"

"Yes," you confirm.

You both quietly make your way to your things and swap your performance outfits for the spare changes of clothes you've both taken to keeping in your practice bags. Once you're dressed you sit down and fidget with your fingers before speaking.

"K?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't think I can go back to normal after this. After you." You meet his eyes. "I don't want to."

"Me neither, Y/N." He sits down beside you, closer than he ever has before. "So let's not."

He kisses you gently this time, unhurried and soft, like he's setting something new in stone. You melt into it completely. When he pulls back he's grinning wide and unguarded, the most open you've ever seen his face.

"Should we go see what chaos our friends have caused at the bar?"

"Yeah," you say. "Absolutely."

You both grab your bags and head for the door. Before stepping out you turn and give the practice room one last look.

Same barre. Same arched windows. Same mirror. Same four walls.

You smile. Just for yourself.

Then you let the door fall shut behind you.

Your phone buzzes against the café table, rattling slightly against the wood. You ignore it at first, nodding along as your friend continues her passionate rant about the absurd price of campus coffee. But curiosity wins. You flip the phone over.

And then your stomach drops.

History 302 — Final Paper Graded.

Not just any paper. The paper. The one worth fifty percent of your entire grade. The one you pulled three all-nighters for. The one you practically lived in the campus library to finish.

"Sorry, hold on. I need to check this. Like, right now," you say, already unlocking your phone.

Your friend pauses mid-rant and pulls out her own phone, casually opening Instagram.

You inhale. Open Canvas. Click the submission.

Your heart pounds as the page loads.

FINAL PAPER (50% of term grade): 25/100

For a second, you genuinely forget how to breathe.

No. That's wrong. It has to be wrong.

You spent hours on this. You tracked down physical books. You triple-checked your citations. You didn't cheat. You definitely did not deserve a twenty-five.

Your friend notices your face immediately.

"Everything okay?" she asks slowly.

"Oh my god," you whisper.

"Okay, relax. It cannot be that bad." She laughs, until you shove your phone into her hands. Her expression shifts instantly. "Oh."

"I'm going to fail. I'm actually going to fail this class. My parents are going to kill me. I've never done this bad on anything." Your breathing speeds up, the three cups of coffee you downed earlier deciding now is the perfect time to kick in. Your hands start to shake.

"Hey. Hey. Breathe. Did your GE leave comments?"

She scrolls to the feedback section. Frowns. Turns the phone back to you.

Fuma Murata 1:32pm: Please come to office hours. 3:00pm–4:30pm.

"That's it?" you say. "What the hell does that mean?"

There's nothing else. No rubric marks. No comments. Just that.

You barely remember him. First day of class, quick introduction, said he was a PhD student. After that, he was mostly just the back of a head in lecture. Or the raised hand reminding the professor class was running over.

You've never spoken to him.

"Okay, not to stress you out more," your friend says carefully, checking the time, "but it's 1:45."

Your stomach drops again.

"You should probably start getting ready to go."

She grabs your hand and squeezes it. "You're smart. You'll figure it out."

"I've never even talked to him before. This is so humiliating."

"Well…" She tilts her head, a slow grin spreading across her face. "You could try the old-school method."

You narrow your eyes. "What old-school method?"

"Flirt."

You stare at her. "Absolutely not."

"I did it with my Spanish GE. Highest grade in the class." She shrugs like she's discussing the weather. "It's about confidence. He's a grad student, he's probably not that much older than us. And you clean up very well."

Her eyes travel pointedly over your oversized hoodie and sweatpants.

You glance down at yourself.

"Fuck it," you mutter. "I need this grade."

"That's the spirit." She beams. "Text me the second you're done."

You head home at record speed.

Fifty minutes later, your hair is curled, your makeup sharp, and your best push-up bra is doing its job. You give yourself one final look in the mirror.

Okay.

You can do this.

By 2:55, you're climbing the stairs of the ancient history building, which smells permanently of dust and old books. Five flights later, mildly out of breath and reconsidering your life choices, you finally reach his office.

You steady yourself. Fix your posture. Knock.

"Come in," a soft voice calls.

You murmur a quick prayer and push the door open.

The office is humble, almost painfully so. One narrow bookshelf lines the back wall, packed tightly with ancient history texts that look like they haven't been opened in decades. A small plant sits on his desk, leaves glossy and carefully maintained. On the windowsill rests a neat row of rocks that don't look interesting at all. A small globe sits on a side table in the corner, slightly tilted like it's been spun one too many times.

And then there's him.

Fuma is shockingly more handsome than you remember. Chestnut brown hair falls just slightly over warm brown eyes. Soft features, but a sturdy frame beneath his button-down. Gold-rimmed glasses rest low on his nose as he finishes writing something in a leather notebook, brow slightly furrowed in concentration.

He doesn't look up when you walk in. He doesn't look up when you sit down.

Only when you've settled into the chair across from him does his pen still.

His eyes lift.

He gives you a quick scan.

They don't linger on your cleavage like you hoped they would. They don't widen. Don't soften. Don't betray anything.

He looks at you like a book he's read a thousand times before.

For a split second, something close to pity flickers across his face. Then it's gone, replaced with composed neutrality.

The realization hits hard: you haven't even said anything yet and he already knows what you're trying to do.

"I apologize," he says evenly, voice soft but controlled. "I haven't memorized all of my students' names. Remind me of yours."

"Y/N," you say, suddenly aware of how small your voice sounds. "You, um… left a comment on my essay submission."

Recognition flashes in his eyes. "Ah. Yes. I asked you to come because I felt a discussion would be beneficial for both of us. I have quite a bit of feedback, and I'm curious about your thought process."

You let out a long, dramatic sigh and brush your hair back from your neck. "And here I was thinking I was special. It's not every day a teacher asks you to meet in person."

There it is again. That look.

"I'm a graduate employee," he corrects calmly. "Not a teacher." He reaches into his leather briefcase. "And I just want to discuss your writing process for this paper."

He pulls out a printed copy of your twenty-page paper.

It's bleeding red.

The margins are packed with notes. Sentences underlined. Entire paragraphs bracketed. More red question marks than actual words in some sections. It looks less like grading and more like a massacre.

"Do you usually spend this much time on one paper?" you ask, leaning closer to the desk, letting your voice soften. "It looks like you put a lot of extra thought into mine."

You look at him through your lashes.

His gaze meets yours, steady and unimpressed.

"No," he says. "Most students understood the assignment. This many revisions simply takes longer."

That stings more than it should.

"Well," you press, forcing a small smile, "what exactly did you want to discuss?"

"Why did you choose this topic?" he asks, eyes fixed on you.

You hadn't planned for this.

"The Enlightenment era just seemed really interesting," you say, dragging your words slightly, letting your voice dip lower. "I've always been curious about the nineteenth century." He's a history PhD student, after all. He probably thinks history is sexy. Maybe that'll do something.

"I know that's a lie."

The words are calm. Certain.

They knock the air straight out of you.

The act drops before you can stop it. You exhale sharply and sink back into the chair. "I'm a philosophy major. I know the Enlightenment era like the back of my hand. That's why I chose it. I didn't want to have to learn something completely new."

You cross your arms over your exposed chest, suddenly hyperaware of everything. The push-up bra is digging into your ribs. Your nose itches but you can't scratch it without ruining your foundation. The room feels ten degrees colder than it did five minutes ago and you're sitting here in a low-cut tank top like an idiot.

This is going horribly.

You can't wait to get out of this office. You can't wait to deal with the inevitable fallout of failing an upper-division class.

Fuma leans back in his chair. This time, he really looks at you. Your mask has slipped completely, and instead of disappointment, there's something almost like intrigue in his eyes. He studies you for a long moment, watching the silent war playing out across your face.

"You're intelligent," he says quietly, and your attention snaps back to him. "That's precisely why this paper disappointed me."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" you shoot back before you can stop yourself. You don't care that he technically has authority over you. You're annoyed. Embarrassed. Exposed. How did he manage to dissect you this easily? You thought the essay was good. Now, staring at the red-marked pages, you feel small. Amateur. Like you wasted both his time and your own.

"What I'm saying," he continues evenly, unfazed by your tone, "is that based on your writing style, it's clear you're capable of deeper analysis." He folds his hands on the desk. "So why did you write like you were afraid to take a stance?"

Oh.

"Excuse me?" you ask, eyes widening.

"You spent twenty pages circling your thesis without ever committing to it," he says. His voice isn't raised, but it's firm. Certain. "Every time you were close to saying something meaningful about the time period, you retreated. You hid behind summaries. Citations. Safe language." His gaze sharpens slightly. "I'm starting to think you didn't want me to notice that you were writing about philosophy, not history."

Your throat goes dry.

You can't find a single word.

"I asked you to come in because I had a hypothesis," he continues. "I wanted to see if I was right." A pause. "I was."

Your stomach sinks.

"This essay is lazy," he says calmly. "And it's ingenuine."

The words sting. You're already composing a mental rant about his arrogance, about the audacity of some grad student thinking he can psychoanalyze you in five minutes.

"But," he adds.

The word stops you cold.

"It's a few decisions away from being profound."

You stiffen, unsure whether to brace for another blow.

"If you had completed your thoughts," he says, leaning slightly forward now, "if you had confidently taken a stance on the impact of philosophy in the nineteenth century instead of pretending you were detached from it…" His eyes hold yours. "I would have given you the highest grade in the class."

You blink.

"I don't normally offer revisions," he continues. "But I know you're capable of writing something far more compelling than what you turned in."

Your heart leaps before you can stop it. Relief floods through you so fast it makes you dizzy.

"Really?" you ask, and you hate how small your voice sounds.

"Yes," Murata says.

Then, surprisingly, he stands.

He moves to the bookcase with quiet confidence, and you can't help but watch him. His eyes skim over the spines, focused, deliberate, until something catches his attention. A flicker of satisfaction crosses his face when he finds what he's looking for. He slides the book free and looks down at the cover, and then, softly, he smiles. Like it's an old friend he hasn't seen in years.

Without looking up, he says, "I think this might help you."

He opens the book as he walks back toward you. "It's a copy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I read it during my undergrad."

He rounds the desk this time instead of returning to his chair and stops at your side. He rests the open book on the table in front of you.

"Oh, uh, I've already read this," you say quickly, not wanting to seem ungrateful.

"Not this version," he replies.

He leans one hip against the edge of the desk beside you and slides the book closer.

Now that it's inches from your hands, you notice the margins.

They're full.

Notes. Dates. Cross-references. Arrows connecting passages across pages. The book looks almost identical to your essay, crowded, annotated, obsessive. Every page is marked. Every idea is contextualized. Alongside Kant's arguments, he's written timelines of what was happening politically and socially at the time. Revolutions. Publications. Scientific discoveries.

What Fuma did to this book is the exact opposite of what you did to your paper.

He turned philosophy into history.

You turned history into philosophy.

Slowly, you pick it up and flip through the pages. The ink varies slightly in shade, different pens, different years. You're not just looking at annotations. You're looking at his evolution. His undergrad brain wrestling with Kant in the margins.

It feels… strangely intimate.

You wonder if he's ever shown this to anyone before.

You're smiling before you realize it.

You flip to a page thick with commentary and shake your head softly. "You kind of did the same thing as me," you say, glancing up at him briefly before looking back down at the book. "Except you turned philosophy into history."

That earns you a real smile.

"You're right," he says, a quiet chuckle escaping him.

Then he leans over you to point at something in the left margin.

His arm comes to rest on the desk near your shoulder. Close, but not touching. You can feel the warmth of him, though. His sleeve brushes the air near your bare skin.

"Except I didn't hold back," he adds.

His finger taps a line he'd written years ago.

Why did 19th century philosophers think they were god??????

You laugh, really laugh, and the sound fills the small office.

When you look up at him again, the space between you feels different.

Smaller.

Not inappropriate.

Just noticeable.

He hasn't moved away.

He's still leaning over you, close enough that you can see the faint crease between his brows, the gold rim of his glasses catching the light.

He's looking at you.

And just when you start to wonder if you imagined it, if you're projecting the pounding of your own heart onto him,

His eyes flick to your lips.

Just for a second.

But long enough.

Okay. So you're not crazy.

He's thinking the exact same thing.

Something in your expression must have betrayed you, because he clears his throat and looks back at you, still keeping that same charged distance. He doesn't step away. Doesn't fix the proximity.

"That performance earlier wasn't necessary," he says, voice lower now.

Your stomach drops.

Of course he noticed. Of course he did. You're starting to feel personally attacked by how easily he reads you.

"What do you mean?" you ask, barely above a whisper.

He inhales slowly through his nose, like he's choosing his words carefully.

"You don't need to rely on that," he says. His gaze doesn't waver. "You're far more compelling when you're honest."

The words land somewhere deep in your chest.

You look down at the open book between you and let out a soft, self-conscious laugh. "Guys usually don't find philosophy or history sexy."

There's a beat of silence.

When you glance back up, his expression has changed.

Less analytical.

More intent.

"That's because most people don't understand it," he says quietly. His eyes flick briefly to the book in your hands, then back to you. "There's nothing more attractive than someone who knows exactly what they're talking about."

Your pulse spikes.

The air in the room feels heavier now. Warmer.

He's still close enough that if either of you leaned forward even an inch…

"And for the record," he adds, voice just shy of teasing but still controlled, "history is very sexy."

That almost makes you smile.

Almost.

Because the way he's looking at you now has very little to do with history.

* * *

Fuma had only ever seen you from across the lecture hall.

Slouched in your seat. Expression distant. Looking bored, almost unimpressed by anything the professor had to say. You rarely raised your hand. Rarely spoke. If he didn't know better, he would've assumed you weren't paying attention at all.

Then he saw your name while inputting grades.

The smaller assignments you submitted were nothing like the student he observed in class. They were thorough. Engaged. Sharp in a way that made him pause mid-scroll. Your interpretations weren't conventional, you connected historical movements to philosophical frameworks in ways that felt instinctive rather than rehearsed.

For a moment, he considered the possibility of academic dishonesty.

But your writing style was too distinct. Too consistent. Too… you.

Then he saw you after lecture one afternoon, lingering near the podium. Asking the professor questions, real questions. Curious ones. The kind that wandered beyond the syllabus.

Those questions should be for me.

The thought surprised him with its sharpness.

After the professor announced that students were required to CC their graduate employees on emails, Fuma had straightened in his seat. He'd told himself it was procedural. Professional.

But your emails never came.

You never reached out. Never asked him a single question. You submitted assignments quietly, each one stronger than the last, and maintained absolute distance from him.

It unsettled him more than he cared to admit.

When the final paper deadline approached, he found himself checking the submission portal more often than necessary. Waiting for your name to appear.

And when it did, he opened it immediately.

The first page confused him.

By the third, he felt something colder.

This wasn't how you usually wrote.

The structure was there. The citations were flawless. The language was polished. But something was missing. You were retreating from your own ideas. Every time you approached something bold, something dangerous, you pulled back. Rephrased. Softened. Hid behind neutrality.

It irritated him.

More than it should have.

He used his remaining GE printing credits without hesitation and printed all twenty pages. He told himself it was because the paper demanded thorough feedback.

He stayed in his office long after the building emptied.

Circling the places you almost said something brilliant. Underlining the moments you nearly formed a thesis that could've restructured the entire argument. Marking the exact points where your voice emerged, and then disappeared.

He became absorbed in it.

Obsessive, even.

Reading your paper felt like looking at you through a sheer curtain. The outline was unmistakable. The intelligence obvious. But you refused to step fully into view.

It frustrated him.

It intrigued him.

It made him want to push.

So he did something selfish.

Something he had never done in his professional career.

He asked you to meet in person.

He told himself it was about academic integrity. About giving a capable student the opportunity to improve.

But when he saw you enter his office through his peripheral vision, when he caught the shift in your posture, the subtle calculation in your movements, his heart skipped.

You didn't know it.

But he had been waiting for an excuse to get you alone.

And now here you were, sitting inches from him. Cheeks faintly flushed. The tips of your ears burning red. He could see the pulse in your throat. If he focused hard enough, he was convinced he could hear your heartbeat.

He had to commend your bravery.

Walking into his office dressed like that. Performing with such confidence. If he were a little less observant, a little more naïve, he might have fallen straight into your trap.

But he knew how intelligent you were.

He knew you thought you could manipulate him. He knew the plan the moment you brushed your hair back and lowered your voice. Flirt with the GE. Play dumb just enough. Pretend you hadn't put your pride on the line for a passing grade. Walk away once the semester ended and never think about him again.

The thought irritated him more than it should have.

Which is why he enjoyed dismantling the act.

He noticed every flicker of frustration in your jaw when he shut you down. Every micro-expression when you realized charm wasn't going to work. He pretended not to see the way you leaned forward to emphasize your cleavage. Pretended the soft trace of your perfume in the air didn't make his head feel lighter than it should.

He let you perform.

Because he needed to see what was underneath it.

He had to crack you before he could make any move of his own.

And when you finally slumped back in your chair and told him the truth, when the mask dissolved and your real voice came out, he had to hide the satisfaction that curled low in his chest.

That was the person who occupied his thoughts.

Not the calculated flirtation.

Not the practiced smile.

The girl sitting beside him now, flipping through his annotated Kant with genuine amusement. The one who caught parallels. The one who laughed at his dramatic question marks. The one who wasn't afraid to challenge him when she forgot to be strategic.

That was the person he couldn't stop thinking about.

He wasn't a monster.

He knew there was every possibility that you'd walk out of this office uninterested. That you'd take the revision, submit something brilliant, earn your grade, and never look at him again. He knew that professionally, that was the most likely outcome.

And he was prepared to accept it.

He would remain composed. Offer the revision. Keep the boundary intact. Let you go.

But then he leaned closer to point at the margin of the book.

And your breath hitched.

You tried to disguise it. You tried to pretend nothing had changed.

But he saw it.

And now, the way you were looking at him, not embarrassed, not calculating, not guarded, but aware.

Hungry.

It gave you away.

You wanted this just as much as he did. And now you were slightly leaning forward.

"This is inappropriate." He sighs almost at a whisper, inches away from your face. He doesn't retreat. You don't either.

"Yeah, it is." You say looking up at him. Then glancing at his lips.

"We really shouldn't," he says, his voice at a full whisper now. His face slightly tilted down toward you.

"Yeah, I know." You reply. "But I don't really want to stop."

That's enough to break him. His hand finds your jaw and lifts you to meet his lips.

He kisses you like you're an artifact, delicate and sophisticated. His mouth grazes yours slowly at first, testing, giving you space to pull away.

You don't.

You lean into him instead, your hand settling against his chest, feeling the steady rise and fall beneath your palm. Grounding yourself. Confirming this is real.

His hand slides from your jaw to the back of your neck, fingers warm and firm, tilting you just slightly to deepen the angle. The kiss shifts. It's still controlled, still careful, but there's hunger in it now. Not aggressive. Not careless. Just restrained desire finally given permission.

Like he's been waiting.

You don't know that he has.

He tastes faintly of blood orange and honey, something warm and clean and entirely him. When his tongue brushes softly against your lower lip, the contact is tentative, an unspoken question.

You answer by parting your lips.

The world narrows to warmth and breath and the subtle scrape of his glasses shifting as he leans closer. Your fingers curl slightly into his shirt, and he exhales against you, quiet, controlled, but unmistakably affected.

His thumb presses lightly at the nape of your neck, steadying you as the kiss deepens, unhurried but intent. It's not messy. It's not frantic. It's deliberate. Exploratory. Like he's learning you the same way he studied your words, patiently, thoroughly.

When he finally pulls back, it's only an inch.

His forehead rests lightly against yours. His breathing isn't as even as it was a minute ago.

"This changes things," he murmurs.

"Yeah," you whisper.

Neither of you steps away.

"I need to be sure you aren't doing this for a grade," he says, looking at you sincerely.

"This has nothing to do with my grade," you breathe.

"Good."

When he kisses you again, there's no restraint.

Only certainty.

His hand tightens slightly at the back of your neck, grounding your spinning thoughts. This time, his mouth moves with intention. His tongue traces the seam of your lips slowly, like he's committing the shape of you to memory.

Your free hand slides into his hair, gripping softly, pulling him closer even though there's barely any space left between you. He makes a low sound at the back of his throat at the pressure, and the kiss deepens, still controlled, but undeniably hungry.

He shifts, guiding you up from the chair without breaking contact. The movement is seamless. One steady hand at your waist, the other still at your neck, and suddenly you're seated on the edge of his desk.

The new angle makes you gasp into his mouth.

He takes advantage of it immediately.

His glasses slip slightly down his nose as he leans in further, and when he finally breaks the kiss, it's only to remove them. You're left breathless, trying to remember how oxygen works, while he carefully folds them and places them on the desk with meticulous precision.

Cute.

Before you can tease him about it, his hand returns to your jaw and tilts your face to the side. His mouth follows, slower now, trailing from the corner of your lips down the curve of your jaw.

Each kiss is deliberate.

Measured.

He lingers at your neck, warm breath fanning over sensitive skin before his lips press there. The sensation pulls a soft sound from you before you can stop it. He pauses at the noise, then continues, mouth moving lower, a faint smile brushing against your skin when you react again.

When his teeth graze lightly along your collarbone, it's enough to make your fingers tighten in his hair.

He knows exactly what he's doing.

As his mouth continues its slow descent along your neck, his free hand moves, deliberate, cupping your breast over the thin fabric.

The sound that leaves you this time is louder.

He stills instantly.

One finger rises to your lips.

"Shhh. The professor is next door."

The realization sends a fresh pulse of heat through you. You vaguely remember the professor's name on a plaque outside the office next door. You exhale shakily and nod, biting down on your lower lip to steady yourself.

"Try to be quiet," he murmurs against your skin, voice low and controlled. A beat. "But not too quiet."

The contradiction makes your stomach flip.

He straightens just enough to reclaim your mouth, kissing you slower now, more deliberate, as his fingers push your tank top strap from your shoulder. Your bra follows, slipping aside under his careful insistence.

His palm finds bare skin beneath the fabric, and the sound he makes this time is unmistakable, low, restrained, hungry.

You roll your hips into him instinctively, seeking friction. He answers with a subtle shift of his own, teeth catching lightly on your bottom lip before soothing the sting with his tongue.

Then you feel it.

The firm heat of him pressing against you through the thin barrier of clothing. The contact is sudden and overwhelming, so immediate it almost feels unreal.

But there's nothing imagined about the way he moves against you.

Nothing imagined about the way your body responds.

His thumb brushes over your nipple and the sensation sparks through you, sharp and electric. The reaction is immediate, undeniable. You want him. Not cautiously. Not intellectually. Fully.

The room feels smaller now, thick with heat and uneven breathing. When he reaches behind you and unhooks your bra, the soft release of fabric feels impossibly loud. He eases it away, revealing you to him.

And then he pauses.

Really looks at you.

Need is written plainly across his face, not rushed, not frantic, but deep, consuming. Like he's been holding himself back for far too long.

"God… you're beautiful."

The sincerity in his voice makes warmth rise to your cheeks. For a split second you feel exposed in more ways than one, not just physically, but emotionally. He's unraveling you in all the right ways, and you're letting him.

His mouth returns to your neck, then lower. When he closes his lips around your nipple, the sensation steals the breath from your lungs. He alternates between gentle pressure and careful attention, deliberate in every movement.

"Fuma," you whisper, fingers tightening in his hair.

You feel the curve of his smile against your skin.

"Keep saying my name like that," he murmurs, voice rougher now, less controlled, "and I won't be able to control myself."

"Then don't," you breathe, saying his name again, softer this time, but more intentional.

Something shifts in him at that.

His hand slides down, steady and purposeful, finding the button of your jeans. He undoes it without looking, eyes still on you, still watching your expression as the zipper lowers with a slow, decisive sound.

You help him shrug your jeans off, and in the brief space he creates between you, your eyes drop, and stay there longer than you intend. The fabric of his slacks does nothing to hide how affected he is, and the realization sends heat flooding through you all over again.

His hands find you again within seconds.

Your mind goes completely blank when he cups his palm over your center, the fabric embarrassingly damp against his touch. He kisses you harder, hungrier, as his fingers ease the fabric aside. The sound you make is immediate and helpless, swallowed by his mouth before it can escape. He answers it with a low groan of his own, something restrained finally giving way, as his fingers find exactly where you need them.

He works you with his hands like he already knows you, unhurried, precise, impossibly attentive. Every time you shift or catch your breath, he adjusts. Learns. Files it away. Like this is research he intends to be thorough about.

You're already trembling slightly when he finally eases two fingers inside you.

The gasp that leaves you is involuntary and immediate. He swallows it, and then, for the first time, he forgets his own advice. The sound he makes against your lips isn't restrained or calculated. It's a real moan, low and unguarded, escaping before he can stop it. The composed GE who sat behind that desk thirty minutes ago feels very far away.

You want to take him apart the same way he's taking you apart.

Your hand drifts down his chest slowly, deliberately, and when your palm presses against the front of his slacks, the sharp intake of breath he makes sends satisfaction curling hot through your chest.

Then his fingers curl upward.

The sensation detonates through you. Your vision whites at the edges, your grip tightening against him instinctively. He feels the reaction, in your hand, in the way your whole body answers him, and does it again, slower this time. Intentional. Watching your face like he's reading a text he's been waiting years to get his hands on.

You press back against his palm through the fabric, matching his rhythm. His breath catches.

Good. Now you're even.

When he finally draws your underwear down and off, the cool air of the office hits you all at once. You're completely bare on the edge of his desk now, and the vulnerability of it, the contrast between you and him, still fully dressed, composed, watching, makes your breath unsteady.

You don't plan what comes out next. It just does.

"Fuma." A whisper. Barely sound at all. "Please."

You don't finish the sentence. You don't need to.

Something in his expression shifts, the last thread of academic composure quietly dissolving. His hands find your hips, fingers pressing into the curve of your waist as he guides you closer to the edge of the desk. He holds your gaze the entire time, unhurried, certain, like he has every intention of taking you apart and absolutely no intention of rushing it.

Then he lowers himself to his knees.

The sight alone does something to you.

When his mouth finally meets you, the first touch is soft, a single slow, testing stroke of his tongue, almost gentle. Like he's getting acquainted.

And then he's not gentle at all.

He finds his rhythm quickly, mouth moving over you with the same focused, unhurried thoroughness he applies to everything else. No wasted movement. No hesitation. Just deliberate, devastating attention. When his tongue circles your clit in slow, feather-light strokes, the sensation crests so sharply it forces a broken sound from your throat.

He doesn't stop. He learns what makes your thighs tremble and then returns there, again and again, methodical and merciless.

The knot tightening in your belly is almost unbearable.

His hand slides up, palming your breast, while his fingers find their way back inside you, a slow curl upward that makes your vision blur at the edges. He works both at once with infuriating precision, and you realize distantly that he is approaching this the exact same way he approached your essay. Thoroughly. Patiently. Finding every place you tried to hide something and pressing until it surfaces.

You're close. You're so close you can feel it pulling at every nerve ending, coiling tighter with every stroke of his tongue.

Then his teeth graze you, barely, just the lightest edge of pressure against your clit, and his fingers curl sharply inside you at the same moment.

The orgasm doesn't build to a peak. It detonates.

Your mouth falls open and his hand is already there, palm pressed gently over your lips, absorbing the sound before it can reach the wall between his office and the next. Your legs shake. Your fingers grip the edge of the desk hard enough to whiten your knuckles. White swallows your vision entirely for a long, suspended moment.

He doesn't pull away. He guides you through it, soft, unhurried strokes, easing you down gradually, until you're left boneless and breathless against the desk, undone in every sense of the word.

His hand drops from your mouth.

He looks up at you from where he's still kneeling, completely composed. Not a hair out of place.

Insufferable.

He slowly stands and captures your lips in his again. The taste of yourself on his mouth should feel lewd, but it doesn't. It feels strangely intimate, like he wants you to know exactly how good you taste to him.

Both of you know what comes next.

You break the kiss.

"Fuma, please," you whisper.

"What is it, baby?" he asks, pressing his lips to the corner of your mouth.

"I need," you can't finish the sentence. Not out of embarrassment. Out of pure, consuming desire.

"Use your words," he murmurs against your ear, and the hair on the back of your neck rises.

"I need you," you say. "Right now."

"Good."

He reaches up and unbuttons his collared shirt, and you can't help but stare. You knew he had a sturdy frame, you'd noticed that much from across the office, but nothing prepared you for this. He shrugs the shirt off his shoulders and the full picture stops your breath entirely. Broad, solid shoulders tapering into a narrow waist. A toned chest. A stomach that is unambiguously, distractingly defined, the kind of six pack that doesn't happen by accident. When he shifts his weight and reaches for you, you catch the flex of his back and the sight makes your mouth go dry.

The man who spent his evenings annotating Kant apparently also found time for the gym.

You're gaping and you don't even try to stop yourself.

He notices.

"See something you like?" he asks quietly, the faintest suggestion of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

You practically lurch for him, clinging to his toned shoulder while your free hand works his belt and then the zipper of his slacks. He steps out of them, and when your hand finds him through his boxers, the full, undeniable length of him, your breath catches all over again.

He lets out another unguarded moan.

You break the kiss with a cheeky smile.

"Shhhh," you whisper against his ear. "The professor is next door."

His hands dig into your hips, hard, deep, the kind of grip that might leave something behind, and something dark and satisfied flickers across his face.

Then he removes his boxers and lets himself spring free.

You swallow. The sight of him, flushed at the tip, glistening, and so clearly wanting you, makes heat pool low and urgent in your belly. You already knew. But knowing and seeing are two very different things.

He gives you only a moment to look.

Then his hands find your waist, steady and deliberate, and he turns you slowly, guiding you down over the desk.

He lines himself up, and for a moment he doesn't move. Just breathes. His hands are steady on your hips but his chest rises and falls faster than it did an hour ago when he was calmly dismantling your essay with a red pen.

Then he bends down, lips brushing the shell of your ear.

"No more hiding." A pause, just long enough for the words to settle into you. You think about his office, the annotated margins, the way he circled every place you almost said something real. Then, softer, more private, like it belongs only to this moment, "not from me."

He pushes inside you.

The sound you make is immediate and helpless. Every inch is more devastating than the last, a slow, consuming stretch that steals rational thought entirely. His breathing is climbing too, controlled, deliberate, but visibly costing him something. He's doing his best to stay quiet, to keep this contained to the four walls around you both.

You are doing considerably worse.

His hand finds your mouth before you can embarrass yourself, palm pressed warm and firm against your lips. It helps. But when he seats himself fully inside you and your whole body shudders, the sound that escapes around his palm makes him pause.

He glances at his desk.

His tie is still folded neatly where he left it that morning, of course it is, because he is exactly that person, and without a word he reaches for it. He folds it once with quiet efficiency and brings it gently to your lips, and something about the gesture, so practical, so entirely him, makes heat curl through you all over again.

"Better," he murmurs.

Then he starts to move.

Deliberate. Measured. Every thrust considered, like he approaches everything else, with patience and complete, devastating attention. He finds a rhythm and reads your body the way he reads a text, noting every reaction, cataloguing what makes your breath hitch and your knees threaten to give. When he finds the pace that makes your eyes flutter he stays there, consistent and relentless, committing to it because he knows it's working.

Behind you, his gaze is fixed on you with something close to infatuation.

He looks at you like you're the most interesting thing he's ever studied.

After a while his rhythm begins to falter, the measured consistency he maintained finally starting to fracture at the edges. His breathing is uneven now, ragged in a way he can't quite control, and the sound of it sends satisfaction blooming warm through your chest. He's close. You can feel it in the way his hips stutter slightly, the way his grip on you tightens like he's trying to hold himself together.

His now free hand slides around your hip, fingers finding your clit and rubbing slow, lazy circles that drag a muffled sound from behind the tie. He's pulling you toward the edge with him, unhurried even now, even when his own composure is visibly unraveling.

Then he bends over you, chest warm against your back, and presses slow kisses along your shoulder. Gentle. Almost tender given the circumstances.

Then he bites.

Not hard enough to hurt, but firm enough, deliberate enough, that you already know it will still be there tomorrow. He lifts his head and looks at the mark with quiet, unmistakable pride.

He doesn't know it sent you straight over the edge.

Your second release rolls through you hard and sudden, your whole body clenching around him. He tries to help you ride it out, fingers still moving, but the feeling of you undoing beneath him breaks the last of his control. With a few final, desperate thrusts he's finishing with a low groan against your shoulder, his hips stuttering through it while you're still coming down.

For a long moment neither of you moves.

The office is very quiet. The only sounds occupying it are the sounds of both your heavy breathing.

He gently pulls out of you. Reaches for the tissues on his desk with the same quiet efficiency he applies to everything else, takes care of you first, then himself. The gesture is small but it lands somewhere soft in your chest.

The silence isn't awkward. Just charged. Heavy with something neither of you has the words for yet.

You straighten up slowly and find your clothes, pulling yourself back together piece by piece. He does the same. His shirt. His slacks. His tie, which he folds and sets back on the desk without comment, though you notice the corners of his mouth twitch slightly.

When you're both dressed he picks up his glasses from where he set them earlier and slides them back on. Pushes them up the bridge of his nose with one finger, the same way he probably does every morning.

Somehow that small, ordinary gesture makes everything feel very real.

You look at each other.

Both of you know that the past hour has changed something, not just between you, but in the quiet architecture of your individual lives. Neither of you says it out loud. You don't need to.

"Your revision is due in two weeks," he says finally, voice composed. Almost.

"I know," you say.

You pick up your bag. Move toward the door. Your hand finds the handle and you pause, glancing back at him over your shoulder.

He's already watching you.

"Fuma."

"Yes?"

You smile. Small and private, just for him.

"History is very sexy."

You leave before you can see his expression fully change, but you hear it. The quiet exhale. The almost-laugh he doesn't quite manage to suppress.

Two weeks later you submit the revised version of your paper.

Fuma grades it within three hours. You see the notification and open Canvas with your heart in your throat.

99/100 (page number missing on page 17)

You laugh out loud.

Of course he noticed. Of course he did.

Your curiosity spikes and you scroll to the comments.

Fuma Murata 1:27am: Come to office hours. 3:00pm–4:30pm.

Fuma Murata 1:32am: Dinner after?