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love on the brain — ᨳଓ .

𑣲⋆ it takes a man to live, it takes a woman to make him compromise, so be in my eyes, and be in my heart

⋮ ⌗ Despite what you may assume, Martin is not a try-hard. He doesn’t volunteer at the shelter because girls think it’s attractive, and he doesn’t carry groceries for old people hoping someone will notice. He just happens to be walking by. Funny then, that for all the people he’s charmed in this town, there was only one girl capable of reducing him to a complete idiot. And oh he wanted her all over. What poor planning on his part.

Boy next door! Martin, who you’re still fairly convinced is a bit of a creep.

When you say this to his face, though more accurately across the small stretch of air between both your windows, he clutches at his chest like you’ve wounded him in some tragic way.

“Y/n,” a deeply scandalized Martin says. “You’re so mean. You know how self-conscious I am about these things.”

You don’t look up from your work. Instead, you just wave him off.

“Then do both of us a favor and leave me alone. I’m trying to work.”

“Yeah, well you’re always working.”

“Trying to pass.”

“You’ve been passing. People who work as hard as you usually end up graduating valedictorian.”

“And the people that distract them usually end up unemployed.”

There’s a long pause after that, then a quieter mutter from his side of the window.

“...Creep… I’ll have you know my mother raised me right.”

“I’m sure she did.”

Alright, maybe you were exaggerating. But what else were you supposed to call someone who persisted that relentlessly in whatever he wanted from you? The fact that your windows faced one another didn’t do you any favors either, though perhaps for him it did.

By now, you’d known Martin for quite a while, ever since your family moved into the neighborhood. And for reasons other than his height, Martin had never once considered making himself less of a Martin for anyone else’s comfort. Even if he’d been 5’3, he still would’ve been hard to miss or avoid. He’s annoying like that.

Oh, but he’s just so adorable, isn’t he?

You have a fully developed frontal lobe, you believe, and with all the years of accumulated experience you currently possess, you are, in theory, equipped for this slow horror of adulthood. But the devil, in all his infinite wisdom, has grown lazy. Once upon a time he offered money and power and a break from the common lowly miseries. These days though, the devil has reinvented himself as a hormonal teenage girl who’s only contribution to your inner mind is gossiping about some idiot boy.

“I’m sure she did.” You set your pencil down and decide to indulge him, resting your chin in your hand with a look you know is too knowing for your own good. “Everyone just seems to like you, don’t they?”

Martin scoffs and looks down. “Yeah. Except you.”

“Aww, who says I didn’t?”

That gets him to look up, and there’s a brief and unmistakable flicker. Martin thinks there are many things a person can do with reason if the girl of their dreams looked at them like that, which is to say, not a lot.

“I guess I’ll do both of us a favor. Did you know studying with music playing gives you more brainpower?”

You pick your pencil again and go back to your work. “Did you know that isn’t actually true?”

Martin, ever the optimist, smiles at you anyway. “You’ll see.”

He disappears from view for a moment, then comes back with his acoustic guitar, the old battered thing you’ve heard him talk about more than once, down to the scratches he remembers all the stories to. Even the ones you never thought to ask about.

After a fair amount of fumbling he’d sooner die than admit to, Martin finally manages to settle himself on the windowsill, his feet swinging freely over the drop. You look up from your textbook long enough to send him a panicked look; you’re going to fall. At least, that’s what he chooses to believe you’re saying. He looks back without missing a beat. Already have.

The rest of Sunday slips through your lead-stained fingers and his calloused ones. Your notebook has gained several completed pages, Martin has worked his way through half a dozen songs by then, and the one thing that made the least amount of progress that day was your determination not to think about him and the fact that he was basically seranading you the whole afternoon.

It’s the devil, I tell you.

Boy next door! Martin, who happens to be very handy. Being an only son had taught him a surprising number of things.

Consider the most common disasters that keep a household in business. Washing machine acting up? You call a guy. Tire gone flat, and there’s another guy. Sink leaking, pipe bursting, fridge making an ominous noise, there’s a guy for almost everything. There exists the little luxuries of a modern life, of course, and just as certainly there will be costs for them.

Martin was your ‘guy’.

“You better not erase anything on there. I got work to do in a few hours.” You linger beside your desk with your arms folded right as Martin glances at you and furrows his brows.

“You drag me into your room to fix your computer and threaten me.” He sets his backpack down by the chair and unzips it. “How wonderful.”

“Is this gonna take long?”

“Most people would start with a hello, or a, hey thanks for stopping by to fix my junky computer, I really appreciate it.”

“I said hello downstairs.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Martin kneels beside the computer tower and turns it gently away from the fall, running his fingers over the screws out of habit before twirling it with a screwdriver. He clears his throat as the first screw comes loose.

“Could be a power supply issue. Could be the drive.” The second screw clinks softly onto your desk. “Or your motherboard.” He slides the side panel free with a careful tug before glancing up at you over his shoulder. “We won’t know if you’re just going to rush me.”

The side panel comes off with a metallic groan. Martin sets it carefully under the desk, angles the tower toward himself, and clicks his tongue. Inside, the case is dustier than it ought to be, enough to suggest that the fan filters have been ignored for a while. A thick little gray buildup clings to the corners near the intake, and one of the cables has slipped a little too close to the fan for comfort.

“Did you ever clean this thing?”

“Am I supposed to?”

“Yes.”

You blink. “... Really?”

Martin lets out a little breathless laugh. “Computers are a little like teeth, y’know. If you only pay attention to them when something hurts, you’ve probably waited a little too long.”

“You’d know a lot about that, huh?”

Slowly, he turns to look at you. “Y/n, are you implying I have terrible teeth?”

“I’ve seen you come home from the dentist completely drugged up on anesthesia more than once. Through my window, by the way. There must’ve been something wrong with your teeth.”

“So you’re just implying you’re a stalker, is that it?”

You grab the nearest pillow and toss it at him, and without looking, he catches it against his chest. Martin grins, all terribly healthy teeth and all. They look perfectly fine. Better than yours, actually. His smile is just another matter you aren’t really adamant about bringing up.

“I’ll get this working again in a couple of hours.” Martin brushes the dust from his hands onto his jeans before standing. “You can take a nap in the meantime.”

You eye him suspiciously. “And leave myself unconscious in a room alone with you?”

There’s a brief pause before he retaliates. “You think I’m the problem here?”

“Well I don’t know Martin. Who knows what you might try.”

He laughs under his breath and shakes his head. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, little missy. You’ve got some deeply unaddressed trust issues that need to get checked, seriously.”

“Mmh,” You crawl beneath your blanket, already turning toward the wall. “M’kidding, Edwards. Wake me up when you’re done.”

“Nighty night.”

Boy next door! Martin, who happens to be so handy in fact, that he becomes a recurring character in your house, courtesy of your father, who likes to joke that having one bratty daughter and no sons is an unfortunate imbalance to his life. Not that your father doesn’t love you. He does. It’s just that when it comes to repairs, you’re not exactly useful in the way he would prefer.

Martin, meanwhile, almost always shows up at the worst possible moment.

You had just gotten out of a very long, very steamy bath, feeling clean and ultimately pleased with yourself until you caught your reflection in the mirror and saw that you had managed to shave yourself into the general texture of a potato. Oh well.

With one towel wrapped around your body and another around your hair, you step out of the bathroom and are about to head for your room when—

“Wha—Martin?!”

He looks up from the box he’s been rummaging through at the foot of the staircase, one hand still gripping a drill, the other half-buried in a handful of nails. The second he sees you, the both of you go still, and the guise of the situation lands on you at the exact same time.

“Holy shit—”

“Get the fuck out! Oh my god—”

Martin jerks backward so quickly he nearly drops the drill, then immediately covers his eyes with one hand as if that might somehow undo the fact that he’s now seen you. You would feel bad for him if you weren’t the one standing there in nothing but a towel and ready to evaporate from all this mortification.

“Jesus, where’d you come from?!”

You’re already backing up, trying your best to pull the towel closer to yourself.

“The shower?! What are you doing in my house?”

“Your dad called me over to help him put up a shelf!”

Martin fumbles the words out fast, grabbing the box of nails again before waving a hand in your general direction.

“Oh god, okay I didn’t see anything, I’m heading down—”

“Hurry!”

You whirl around and practically sprint toward your room, towel clinging for dear life, cheeks burning, and your heart pounding like a witness. Martin, meanwhile, runs back downstairs, and when your dad asks why he’s suddenly gone so red, he blames it on the heat, which would have been believable if the weather outside had not been one of the most disappointingly temperate August afternoons in recent history.

A while later, when you head downstairs after growing some balls, you’re greeted by a blissfully clueless father and a flushed Martin.

You send them the flattest look you can manage. “Hey uh, I’m heading out to a friend’s. Be back later.”

“Plans with a friend,” your dad repeats, then nods toward the counter where Martin is still standing with a screwdriver set to the wall, clearly trying to seem invisible. “And while we’re on the subject of friends, aren’t you going to greet the one currently standing in our kitchen?”

You close your eyes for one brief, tragic second.

“...Hi, Martin.”

He chokes up a reply in return. “‘Sup.”

You veer your gaze towards your dad again. “Excellent. Can I go now?”

“Need a ride?”

‘No thanks.”

“Alright, be back by 6, okay?”

Most of the time, Martin’s heart is usually good for standard things; pumping up blood, keeping him alive, the usual. But this particular organ also has come to know that whenever you look at him, Martin seems to forget his rhythm altogether. So when you give him one last glance before you leave, the thing stumbles over itself in his chest, and he fears he might just give himself away sooner than later.

Boy next door! Martin, who leaves you things on your windowsill like a diligent little bird with his very own nesting spot.

His gifts were rarely grand enough to be called gifts, which was part of the problem. A CD with listen to this scribbled on a sticky note attached to it. Some snacks. A keychain. Little trinkets he had found all over the place and decided, for reasons best known to himself, that it should probably be yours.

Then there was the time he heard you making that miserable sound from your room, figured out you were on your period, and reappeared by your window like a chivalrous knight with a few too many pads, pain relievers, and hot packs, confessing he didn’t know which size you used and that he wasn’t prepared to get it all wrong. It was mortifying at the moment. Later though, after the embarrassment had settled down, it became one of those strangely conclusive truths about Martin: he was, for all his nonsense, a genuinely nice guy, and he really did mean well. Sometimes that made him a nuisance. Sometimes, it also made him a miracle, like an answered wish from a candle.

So evidently, you spent an embarrassing amount of time wondering why Martin was still single.

Because he was handsome, amongst other things. That much even the local aunties could agree on, and they were, for better or for worse, an intuition unto themselves. Objectively speaking, Martin had everything people claimed to want. One of your friends who went to his school told you he was practically impossible not to know. Martin just had that effect on people, and it made sense. He remembered names and birthdays, fixed things if only to stop you from crying, and laughed with his whole body. He was funny in the unintentional way, and so persistently kind.

He really should’ve been somebody’s boyfriend already. There had to be something slightly off in the universal laws to have left him unclaimed for this long.

Going back to the matter of Martin leaving things on your windowsill though, today’s gift had been more difficult to interpret than usual. So after a few minutes of knocking at his window from across with a stick, he finally appeared from inside and opened it, still in his school uniform, tie loosened at the collar, hair disheveled in a manner that suggested he had either spent the whole day frustratingly studying for once or he’d been dragged through a hedge. Either way, he looked really good all the same.

“Hey,” he said, squinting at you a little. “How was school?”

You lifted the mid-sized teddy bear, the roses, and the heart-shaped box of chocolates in one go. “Is this from you?”

Martin’s expression shifted from confusion to something faintly indignant. “Uh, yeah. Do you not know what day it is today?”

“It’s… Valentines Day.”

“Right.” He leaned an elbow against the window frame and grinned. “And do you remember what you said during the last Valentine's Day?”

“No?”

Martin gave you a look of great impatience and said, in a mocking high-pitched voice, “‘Oh man, I just wish some guy would give me flowers and chocolates and an ugly teddy bear so I could post it and pretend I wasn’t staring at everyone else’s Instagram stories feeling left out. Oh man.”

You stared at him, mouth agape. “Did I really say that?”

“You sure did. So, I decided to take the initiative.”

“Clearly,” you mutter. Then, because you’re still trying to process the fact that he even did this, you lift the whole arrangement a little higher. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

Martin shrugged. “Record a boomerang of it or something, I don’t know. You’re welcome.”

You narrow your eyes. “Who am I gonna tag though?”

He paused just long enough for the answer to feel like a small trap. “No one. People get more intrigued when you’re in a mysterious relationship.”

“Even if there’s actually no mysterious relationship to be intrigued about.”

Martin gave you one of those long, knowing looks he was always doing now, then smiled that teasing little smile before turning back to wash up.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Y/n.”

You make a point of shutting your window and drawing the blinds. Then, once everything has been constricted down to the size of a single bedside, only then do you sink onto the edge of the bed, Martin’s gifts bundled awkwardly against your chest, a ludicrous embassy of red. It ought to be funny, except your chest has gone strange on you as you try, with very little success, to think in a straight line. As you try to reason out through all the confusion, your heart is worse than it is useless. It jolts and stumbles in your ribcage like something newly awakened.

Later that night, after posting the boomerang Martin had so graciously insisted upon, a public act of protest against whatever bizarre emotional crisis he’d managed to make out of you, your phone dings with another notification you decide to check.

1 new comment!

M.j.edwards: wow!!!! wonder who the lucky guy is :P

You throw your phone somewhere across the mattress, bury your face into the pillow until breathing becomes mildly constricted, and just before sleep finally catches up to you, one perfectly coherent thought manages to squeeze itself free:

Fuck this guy.

Boy next door! Martin, who always manages to turn every grocery run into a little domestic performance in which the two of you were a happily married couple with a mortgage and three children. For the discounts, of course. Right?

The discounts were real though. So was the fact that, whenever your parents were too busy to run errands on the weekends, somebody had to go, and that somebody had gradually become you, the respectable and considerate daughter you were by a long stretch and a generous interpretation of the word.

You didn’t have a car though. You also didn’t have the upper body strength required to haul a sack of rice home by yourself. Which left you, regrettably, in need of a big strong and willing man. If only there were someone…

“I think we need more than just one carton of eggs.” Martin said, stopping in front of the eggs isle and peering at the rows of cartons.

You leaned against the shopping cart and looked at the one already sitting inside. “Mom didn’t specify how many, so let’s just assume she only needed one.”

Martin lifted a brow. “Be honest, Y/n. Not even a family of 3 can survive on just one carton of eggs.”

“I don’t know what kind of diet your family put you on for you to grow like that, but I’m pretty sure we can.”

He made a faint sound of offense. “It’s just the Edwards genes.” Martin glanced back down at the egg display, then reached for another. “I’m getting another carton just in case, is that alright?”

“Do whatever.”

By the time you both reach the counter, the line has thinned to the far left in a halfhearted little tail that won’t be your problem anymore. You nudge the cart forward when it’s your turn, the wheels giving a soft complaint against the tiles, and the old woman at the register looks up with a soft smile.

“Will that be all, dear?” she asks.

“Yes, please.”

Her gaze flicks from the cart to Martin and then back to you again, brightening in that knowing immediate way, as if they can smell romance the way dogs smell the rain.

“Oh, aren’t you two just adorable,” she says, and before you can decide whether to laugh or panic, she’s already continuing, warm and delighted. “How is everything? Got any kids?”

You make a sound of protest. “Oh no we’re not—”

“No kids, aunty.” Martin says at the exact same time, slipping so easily into the lie as he rests one hand against the cart and the other on your shoulder, giving the lady a smile so open you were doomed. “But everything’s doing alright, right honey?”

Your head turns toward him so sharply it would count as a whiplash. “Uh huh.”

“How long have the two of you been married?”

“It’s hard to say,” he says with a hint of mischief. “Time becomes a concept when you’re just so in love, huh?”

You stare at him. Don’t.

He stares back, too pleased with himself. Do something about it.

The old lady makes a small, approving noise. “Well, with a pretty girl like that, you ought to know what you’ve got, boy.”

Heat rushes up your neck so fast you’re certain Martin can see it. Beside you, his mouth twitches, and for one second you think he’s going to look just as embarrassed as you are. But he doesn’t, and instead leans a little closer to the counter.

“He’ll be carrying most of these, right?” She asks, nodding toward the bag of groceries.

You turn to Martin before he can answer. “Don’t worry, aunty. His mom raised him well.”

Martin reaches for the bagged rice and another two bags of groceries, holding them up as if to say I’ve got it, giving you a lazy smirk and a small wink. “See?”

The old lady bids you two farewell with an equally hearty smile. “You two have a nice day.”

And when you wheel the cart back toward the entrance, cheeks still hot and Martin encumbered with far too many bags, this whole thing seemed to hover just slightly beyond an ordinary life, luminous and a little detached. Martin tells you he secured the discount, fully content, and you watch him stack the bags into the back of his truck while the road holds steady at a distance and the afternoon burns on in its indifference.

You sigh before you can stop yourself and ask the sky, the birds, and the heat with all this childish longing in your chest for one small sign that what you feel for him isn’t a joke being played over your head, not a dare, not some cruel little ruse of timing.

“Any other place we need to head to? The bank? Pharmacy? Dry cleaners?”

You shake your head and let the window slide down. “Not on mom’s list so I think that’s it for today.”

“Then why don’t we get some kebab before heading back? I’ll treat.”

“I have no objections if it’s on you.”

When Martin turns that bright, tooth-baring grin on you and answers with some teasing little thing that ought to have been harmless, you look away toward the open window, toward the road and the heat-hazed distance beyond it, wishing for something small and true. God, where is that damn sign?

Boy next door! Martin, who your friends have promoted to “boyfriend” without your consent, no matter how many times you remind them that no, he isn’t.

In fairness, they’re working with some pretty damning evidence.

Because if you walked past your school’s parking lot and saw a guy from an entirely different campus casually posted up against his car calling out for one girl (in this case, that girl would be you), wouldn’t you assume boyfriend too?

“Oh look who it is.” Hyein sings beside you, nudging your shoulder hard enough to nearly send your notes flying. “Again.”

Sure enough, Martin’s leaning against his slightly dirty sedan, one hand shoved into his pocket while the other waves you down the second he spots you weaving through the flood of students spilling out of the school.

You sigh. “My dad’s probably still stuck at work.”

Three pairs of eyes swivel toward you. “Oh, don’t give us that excuse again, Y/n.” Iroha groans.

Yujin folds her arms and points dramatically between you and Martin, who. “You’re hiding something, and I think I know exactly what’s going on.”

“Haha.” You wince before she can finish, flashing the brightest smile you can manage while already walking backward toward the parking lot. “I don’t want to know what comes after that.”

“It starts with ‘boy’ and ends with—”

“I’ll see you tomorrow!”

You pivot on your heel and flee before the accusations can get the better of you, and the laughter that follows trails behind you all the way across the parking lot.

Martin reaches over to open the passenger door before you can. “Your dad asked me to pick you up.”

You climbed in while he rounded the hood toward the driver’s seat. The inside of the car smelled faintly of solder and the peppermint gum you told him to stop chewing on, lest he wanted to go on another trip to the dentist. He started the engine.

“I figured. Did you come here straight from school?” You ask as you buckle your seatbelt.

“Yeah. I got held back by band practice though.” He frowned slightly as he eased the car out of the parking space. “I didn’t keep you waiting, did I?”

“No, I just finished.”

Traffic crawled as you pulled away from the school district, every other intersection painted red by another spotlight and another line of impatient cars. Martin didn’t seem to mind. He drummed absentmindedly against the steering wheel whenever the car came to a stop, fingers tapping out a rhythm you vaguely recognized from whatever song he liked to play on a speaker in his room where the sound would reach your own.

“...and then our drummer, Juhoon, kept insisting we were rushing the chorus,” he said, making a face. “But we weren’t rushing. He just kept slowing down.”

“So who was right?”

“I was. Obviously.”

“Sounded pretty biased to me.”

“If you say so.”

By the time he turned onto your street, the sun had already slipped low enough to stain the rows of houses gold, the light catching in the windshield until you had to squint. Martin pulled up neatly against the curb and shifted the car into park.

You twisted around to grab your backpack from the backseat, only—

“I got it.”

You looked over.

“You don’t have to, Martin.”

“I know.”

“I’ve been carrying it all day. So I can carry it ten more feet.”

“I know.”

Martin let out one long sigh through his nose, the corners of his mouth curling into the laziest grin. “I got it.”

By the time you’d shut the passenger door, he’d already slung your backpack over one shoulder, so there was no way to protest now. And the thing looked silly on him because of how small it seemed compared to Martin.

He climbed the two front steps ahead of you, waiting while you dug around in your pocket for your keys.

“Be careful on the way back. Check your rears and all that.”

“What would you know about driving, Y/n?”

“Enough to avoid getting killed. Thanks for the ride home Martin.”

“And thanks for letting me drive you.”

“...Letting you?”

“Mmh.”

“You make it sound like I did you a favor.”

“Well, you did.”

He’d probably spent thirty minutes driving across town after school, waited outside in the parking lot, carried your backpack all the way to your front door, and somehow you had done him the favor.

“See you tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He gave a small nod, hands already tucked into the pockets of his school slacks.

“Okay. ‘Night, little missy.”

And there it was again. That abiding look. You take it to mean three things: goodnight, I’ll text you when I get back, or I’m glad I got to see you today. Which one, you’re never sure of.

By the time Martin gets home, which is basically just next to your house, the sky has long since traded its gold for a hazy blue-gray.

He toes off his shoes in the entryway, mutters a quick hello to his parents somewhere deeper in the house, and shrugs out of his school uniform before changing into some more comfortable clothes. And homework can wait. Well, homework will wait.

He crosses his room and reaches for the cord hanging beside his window. The blinds rattle softly as they climb, and there you are. It’s a sight he awaits to see every single night ever since he’s had the chance to look at it.

Your blinds are open too. They usually are, and Martin tells himself that’s why he’s always looking. Because they’re open, and because his are too. Because it’d be stranger to deliberately avoid the window than it would be to glance outside every now and then. Except ‘every now and then’ has, over the past few years, evolved into ‘every few seconds’.

But anyway, here are the things he’s managed to pick up on. He knows you study too much, and you do so with your legs folded beneath you until they inevitably go numb. He knows you chew the inside of your cheek whenever you get confused, knows you have the unfortunate habit of biting your nails while reading, only noticing after you’ve already ruined another perfectly good manicure. And whenever a topic finally pushes you one step too far, you grab your hair on both sides and tug.

Martin has watched this exact sequence enough times to predict it, and when he sees you do just that, he smiles not because of your frustration, but because he was right. It sends a wave of triumph straight through his chest.

If anyone asked, he’d have a difficult time explaining why simply existing in the same line of sight as you makes working on his own assignments feel a little less tedious. Fortunately, no one asks most of the time. And Martin certainly isn’t about to bring it up because that would seem—

Hah, he’d definitely sound like a creep, but in his head it was easier to pretend this was no stranger than any other nightly ritual.

Just like his window, which lifts each night beneath that thin, trembling thought that maybe…

Ah.

There you are.

Boy next door! Martin, who cares. Too much.

By the time you called him, it was well into the night. The party had long since crossed the invisible line between fun and too much without anybody seeming to notice but you. The music had been turned up several notches beyond what your ears could take, the lights had been dimmed until every face dissolved into moving shadows, and downstairs there was nothing but a blur of shouting, perfume, sticky floors, and bodies on bodies like they were a bunch of sardines.

You had escaped to the hallway upstairs some time ago. It was quieter here, if quieter simply meant you could at least finally hear yourself think over the bass rattling through the walls. One shoulder rested against the wall beside a bedroom with its door left half open, your phone clenched so tightly in your hand that it hurt. Every few seconds someone stumbled past laughing at something you couldn’t hear, disappearing down the staircase without sparing you a glance.

You’d never felt more out of place in your life.

Thankfully, Martin answered on the second ring.

“Hello?” His voice nearly made you want to cry with relief.

“Martin, hi.”

There was a pause just long enough for him to notice the strain in your voice, the music bleeding through, and the fact that you weren't calling him at nine-thirty on a Saturday night just to chat. And then he knew right away.

“Tell me where you are.”

“I…” You squeezed your eyes shut, pressing the heel of your palm against your aching forehead. “I don’t know where I am. It’s too crowded.”

“Okay.”

You waited for the inevitable why didn’t you check? or how’d you lose your friends? But it never came.

Instead he asked, “Can you ask somebody? Just the address. D’you think you can do that?”

You looked over the banister, at the people below still weaving around one another with their drinks balanced precariously in their hands. The thought of stopping one of them and trying to explain that you were lost in a house you’d willingly walked into three hours ago felt suddenly impossible.

“I don’t think so.”

A quiet exhale crackled through the speaker, then some thinking.

“Alright,” Martin said. “Why don’t you send me your location from your Maps app? Just pin it and send it to me.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll come get you.”

It all sounded so simple to him that, for a second, it barely seemed to attest with you at all. It would be that easy from Martin, would barely even qualify as a decision in his hands. No wary should I? Do you want me to? His answers were as definitive as he came.

You fumbled through your phone, missing the button twice before finally finding the app.

“There,” you mumbled after a moment. “I sent it.”

“Got it. Now give me a description of the house.”

You wandered toward the front windows, careful not to stray too far from the hallway, and peered through the glass. Beyond the reflections and the garden lights sat an enormous wrought-iron gate painted matte black.

“It’s…” You squinted harder. “Really big. Black gate.”

“Mmh.”

“And really tall.”

His keyboard clicked faintly through the phone. “Keep your phone on. I’ll call you when I’m there.”

“Okay.”

“And don’t wander off.”

You glanced back toward the stairs where another wave of strangers spilled into the hallway.

“I won’t.”

Martin came downstairs in sweats and a thin T’shirt that didn’t do enough to hide how much he was ready to fall asleep. His hair was still a little damp from the shower, and his dad peered up from the couch the moment he heard him cross the landing, looking mildly suspicious.

“Where are you off to so late?” His dad asked.

Martin reached for the keys on the little table by the door then glanced back over his shoulder. “Gotta pick Y/n up,” he had decided once and for all. “I’ll be fine. Don’t wait up.”

His dad’s expression shifted at once from curiosity to half-smothered amusement. “Be careful,”

The whole drive over, Martin tried very hard not to panic, which unfortunately only made him more aware of the fact that he was panicking. He spent the entire ride with one hand on the wheel and the other tapping restlessly against his thigh, telling himself to calm down. By the time he turned onto the street pinned on his GPS, he was already looking for the house with the black gate and the tall front wall, and sure enoug there it was, sitting at the end of the block. Even better, it was unmistakably hosting a party. Lights glowed through the windows, silhouettes moved behind the curtains, and the bass thumped so hard from inside the house Martin could feel it through the soles of his shoes the second he stepped out the car.

He would’ve preferred literally any other outfit for the occasion. But because he had been at home and expected to stay there until thirty minutes ago, this ugly Nike hoodie would have to do. No iced up swagged out Martin tonight. It happens.

He took out his phone and called you. Once, and no answer. He tried again. Still nothing.

Martin looked up at the house again, jaw tightening, and shoved the phone back into his pocket. Fine. He would simply go in, locate you, and then leave. Simple. He already had a plan, more or less, to ignore everyone who even glanced at him. And so he stepped through the open front gate, nodded awkwardly at nobody in particular, and went inside.

There were people everywhere, all of them moving in small, confident knots in a sympathetic sort of social chaos Martin had been denied. He muttered apologies to a handful of people for stepping on their feet, and called your number again as he moved deeper inside. Still nothing.

At that point, he was nervous, because something was definitely up. Maybe you were just overwhelmed. Maybe you’d gotten separated from your friends. Maybe you were in some quiet corner trying not to cry, which was a thought already so upsetting Martin tried not to think about it further. He turned the corner into what looked like the living room, only to nearly walk straight into a group of girls who were all turned toward him at once, smiling with a kind of deviant interest.

“Oh my god,” one of them said, eyes flicking over his face and then down. “Are you with anyone?”

One of the girls leaned in a little, grinning. “We’re heading out to the back deck. You should come with.”

Martin looked down at her hand that had actually caught at his sleeve, then back at her face.

“No,” he said with enough firmness that she let go right away. “I’m looking for someone.”

She blinked, then laughed a little. “Okay, mystery man.”

They kept watching him as he moved past, and one of them called after him, “Come back if you get bored!”

Martin didn’t turn around. “I won’t!”

No sign of you still. He called your number again, then immediately groaned when it went to voicemail for the third time.

“Come on,” he muttered under his breath.

Martin eventually found you at the far end of the kitchen, which was the worst possible place to be caught in a conversation you no longer wanted to be having, because there was no good way to leave it without looking rude and no good way to stay in it without feeling your skin crawl a little more every second.

The guy in front of you was too close, one hand braced against the counter beside your shoulder. He was smiling at something he had just said, though you’d already stopped listening about three sentences ago, and you kept offering the sort of tight little expressions that were for you meant to try and end the conversation, and instead seemed to encourage him to continue.

“So,” he was saying, leaning in a little more, “you come here a lot or what?”

You smiled with your mouth and absolutely nothing else. “Not really.”

“That’s crazy. I feel like I would’ve remembered seeing you around.”

You blinked at him.

No, you thought. You would have remembered deciding to leave.

“Yeah,” you stick to saying for the 100th time tonight. THere really was no dignified way to say I don’t know you and I don’t want to be doing this without somehow hurting this guy’s delicate manhood.

“Small world.”

“Mm.” His gaze dragged over your face, then to the rest of you, sizing you up. “You got a boyfriend?”

You had prepared for that question. Unfortunately, you were stupid enough anyway to reply with a “No.”

There was a pause, and then the smile on his face sharpened into something more pleased. “Good.”

You opened your mouth to say something when another voice cut between the two of you.

“She’s with me, buddy.”

The guy in front of you looked over first, annoyed by the interruption. You turned your head too, and there was Martin.

You’d never seen him angry before. He was usually the sort to play things down, the forgive-and-forget type. You thought of him as the kind of person who seemed constitutionally incapable of staying mad for very long, which was always why you never took him seriously. If you had ever wanted to know what it looked like when a six-foot-something guy who clearly hadn’t slept enough loomed over somebody in complete eerie silence, you now had the pleasure of finding out.

The guy glanced from Martin to you and back again. “I don’t think she wants that.”

Oh, I would want nothing more. You let out a long, exasperated sigh. Men. Such gifted readers of character, truly.

Martin didn’t move. He didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t puff himself up or do anything particularly cinematic, which was somehow the most unsettling version of him possible. He just looked at the guy.

And looked some more.

The silence that followed wasn’t all that barren. It was full, and hard, and woefully directed.

The guy then shifted his weight uncomfortably. “What? I was just talking to her dude.”

Martin’s gaze dropped to the hand still braced against the counter beside you. The guy seemed to see this because he pulled his hand back a little too quickly as if the gesture had suddenly become embarrassing.

“I think you need to wrap this up, man. I gotta get her out of here.”

Then the guy looked at you again, one more attempt at reclaiming the situation, and the expression on his face had gone a shade past offended into something stupidly affronted. “Whatever dude, party’s shit anyway.”

The moment he steps out of the kitchen, Martin nudges your shoulder and checks your forehead for a fever. “Coming?”

“Yes please.” The relief in your own voice was a little embarrassing, though you really were glad he was here.

“Cool.” His expression eased at once, and then he was guiding you toward the door with a steady hand at either shoulder, his taller frame hovering at your back like a stable presence.

By the time you got in the car, your head hurt so much. Martin seemed to notice the strain your eyes made visible. “Hey. Something wrong?”

“Head hurts like a bitch.”

“I’ll get us back in a hitch. Hold on a bit longer, okay?”

“I can do that.”

Martin eased the car up a little faster on the drive back, refusing out of pure principle to let you make a mess on his leather seats. Every so often he glanced over at you from the corner of his eye, checking for breathing and the general amount of color left in your face. The house lights slipped past in a soft smear of orange and white, and your head had long since stopped feeling attached to your body in any practical sense.

By the time he pulled up quietly up the curb outside your house, the street had gone dark. Martin killed the engine, got out, and came around to your side before you had time to fumble with the door yourself. He opened it and crouched a little, one hand braced on the frame.

“You good?”

“I gotta…” You swallowed hard. “Puke—oh god—”

“Alright, alright.” Martin reached in, gathered your hair back with one hand, and guided you as carefully as he could toward the bush near the fence where you folded over yourself and emptied your stomach into the dark with all the remaining poise you had left, which was to say none at all.

Martin stood close enough to keep you steady with one hand resting lightly between your shoulder blades while the other kept your hair clear. It would’ve been humiliating if he hadn't been so absurdly matter-of-fact about it. When you were finally done, he glanced toward the house. The windows were dark. No lights on downstairs.

He looked down at you. “You’re a champ.”

“Shut up, Martin.”

“Here.” He adjusted his stance and reached for you again, one arm going firmly around the back of your waist while your other arm was guided up over his shoulders. “I got you.”

The walk to the front door became a slow and awkward collaboration between his steadiness and your lack thereof. Martin supported your weight without making a fuss, his hand secure at your side, his voice low whenever you wobbled or muttered some complaint about being treated like a sack of laundry.

He got you up the stairs one careful step at a time. At the top landing, he paused just long enough to let you breathe, then guided you down the hall toward your room as quietly as he could. By the time he reached your door, you were mostly being held up by his one arm.

Martin nudged the door open with his free hand. “Alright, we made it.”

“My head hurts.” You complain as Martin settles you down on your mattress in a sitting position.

“Do you have any pain relievers lying around?”

“Used them all up when I had my period.”

Martin snorts, but it's mostly out of sympathy. “I’ll be right back.”

You watch him move toward your window, opening it as he’s climbed in and out numerous times before. He crosses to his own window across the way, fishes around for the stick he keeps by the frame, and opens that one too before hauling himself through.

“You better not fall and die.”

“You first.”

Then he disappears out of sight, and for a minute all you can do is stare at the window and try not to think about how your parents are probably asleep hard enough that they wouldn’t hear a train in the hallway, let alone Martin dropping back into your room like a cat burglar.

“Some Ibuprofen.” He handed you a pill, then his water bottle. “And water. I can’t risk going downstairs right now so this’ll have to do.”

“Thanks.”

He gives you a brief look, almost fond, almost disbelieving, then waits while you swallow the pill and hand the bottle back. You scoot over on the bed until there’s just enough room for him to climb in beside you, and he does so without indecision, settling with his back against the wall thinking this was where he’d always belonged at the end of the night.

Then Martin looks at you, takes in the exhaustion, the headache, the general state of your presence, and says, “You look horrific.”

You squint at him. “You say the nicest things.”

“I try.”

That gets a laugh out of you, albeit a tired one, and Martin’s mouth twitches in quiet achievement. He shifts a little against the wall then reaches for the blanket and pulls it up over your lap. Outside, the street was dim with only the occasional sweep of someone’s headlights slipping past the curtains. Inside, the window stood open just enough to let the air move through, and it was cool on the back of your neck, cool on your wrists, cool where it touched the damp edge of your hair. Martin sat beside you with his shoulder against the wall and his knees drawn up, looking tired but content.

“Did you know who that guy even was?” he asked at last, and there was nothing casual in it despite what it sounded like.

“No, he was pretty cocky too. Kept telling me about his new car and how I should join his Soho house.”

He let out a short breath through his nose. “Sounds exhausting.”

“Yeah.”

He turned his head then, slow enough that you could feel he wanted to pry. “What is it?”

You stared at the ceiling for a second, because the answer was not an easy one and you’d grown tired of pretending otherwise. “I don’t know. I really was just having fun a while ago, then it all turned to shit because the alcohol kind of got to me and the guys were pretty lame.”

“Were you there to look for a guy?”

“Not exactly.” Which wasn’t as far from the truth. “My friends just all have boyfriends now, and I guess they were trying to find someone for me. Don’t know where they went off to after a while, but I just suddenly felt awful.”

Martin’s expression changed, brows now furrowed. “S’that why you said you didn’t have a boyfriend to that guy earlier? Because you were looking for one?”

You turned your head toward him offensively. “Don’t make it sound stupid, dude.”

“I’m not trying to. But seriously? Him? Sleazy rich kid with the spunky attitude?”

“Isn’t that what they say love’s all about? Finding the beauty in something horrendous, or whatever the fuck?” You dragged a hand down your face. “Like… ah, Beauty and the Beast, for example. He was cruel before he was kind, and Belle stayed anyway. I guess she was rewarded in the end because he turned into this beautiful blonde hot prince. That’s the bargain, isn’t it? Love is supposed to redeem people.”

And you guessed you didn’t sound all that stupid, though the worry that you’d be perceived that way was still there. Maybe Martin would think you were only some overinterested, underloved, chronically single woman reading too much into every little thing. Worse, maybe whatever this feeling had become would dry up under that kind of scrutiny and leave you with nothing but embarrassment. Because unlike the dramatic little trials people always seem to assign to love in the stories, Martin was anything but difficult. Not a necessary pilgrimage over rough holy ground. No, Martin was easy, and oh so serene. That, more than anything, disturbed you.

Martin turned his body toward you, one shoulder going easy against the wall. He looked at you for so long before speaking that you’d already predicted by then what would come out would’ve been something very hypercritical.

Instead, he asks a question. “Y/n, do you want me to tell you something a little seditious?”

“What?”

“You’ve got love all wrong.”

Not what you expected. Then again, it was better than being criticized anyway.

“How can I get love wrong?”

“Because it’s a very pessimistic approach.” Martin let out a small huff of a laugh and shook his head.

“I’m not trying to mansplain anything to you, but you think it all has to hurt before it can even mean anything. Does the hurt somehow make it more invaluable? I don’t think you have to dig and dig and excavate through everything ugly first like some godawful price of admission to have something beautiful.”

His eyes wandered for a second before settling back on yours. “And sure, it’ll make for some good storytelling. Maybe it’ll give your relationship some edge. When it’s fiction, people like to eat that stuff up. But that’s not always how it should be.”

Martin looked relieved, and his voice softened. Now, he was close enough that neither of you had to raise your voices anymore. “Love can be just beautiful. You can either be a war heroine crawling out of the ground, or you can just be Meg March, who wants her love simple and savoury. There’s nothing overly wrong about that. Either way, love’s all the same when it’s the right kind.”

“But there’s always a catch.” And you’re not arguing with him so much as just repeating what this life has spent years teaching you. It’s really something you need to shake off at some point.

“Maybe,” He shifts on the mattress until the space between you has somehow become smaller, and you don’t remember Martin looking this florid and earnest ever. “But not this time.”

“What do you mean?”

“It means,” He looks down at his hands, rubbing his thumb over his knuckles like that’ll somehow sand some courage on him as well. “That if you let me love you, it won’t be punishment, or some long and bruising thing you have to push through to deserve all the good parts.”

Without really thinking, because then thinking would make him even more nervous, he reaches toward you. His fingers hesitate only an inch from your face, and when you don’t move away, he gently hooks a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

“Because I’ll give you all the good parts. You don’t have to ask me.” The backs of his fingers graze your cheek, and they're warm. “It can just be this.”

Your breath catches so abruptly you wonder if Martin hears it. Maybe he does, because he looks away for the briefest second, suddenly fascinated by absolutely anywhere that isn’t your face, which would be a lie at best. He still has to ask himself how you manage to look so pretty all the damn time.

His hand hasn’t gone very far, though. His thumb brushes your temple, barely there, so light it feels less like being touched.

“Just let me love you. I swear I’ll be good.” Both hands cup at your cheek now, index resting just beneath your ear as he whispers. “I’ll give you… so much. What do you want?”

You don’t have to think about it more, because the thought wouldn’t leave your mind the moment you saw him at the party anyway. Your hand finds his wrists, and his pulse leaps beneath your fingertips.

“I think…” You swallow. “... I’d really like you to stop talking now.”

“... Oh.” Martin blinks, and stiffly looks around, then back at you. “Was that—?”

“I just,” You shake your head, smiling despite the impossible state of your heart. I just want to kiss you.

You don’t say it out loud because you guessed words have carried the two of you as far as they can. So instead, you close whatever remaining distance there was left between you and kiss him into the pillow. Maybe the alcohol was still in your system, because there was no way in hell you’d be able to concoct all this courage by yourself. Tomorrow, you think, you’ll probably wake up sober and horrified, but you’ll remember this. Even if it ends badly. Especially if it ends badly.

Fortunately for you, Martin’s always been more in love with you than you’ve been with him. If he were being particularly insufferable, he’d probably argue that, being a considerably larger human being than you, he possessed a much larger storage capacity for love. Then you’d tell him that was the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard, and he’d tell you to prove him wrong.

He waits another heartbeat, suspicious that he still hasn’t woken up from this very lifelike dream. When he pinches his leg and realizes this is in fact real, he sighs into the kiss, relieved. His hand rises almost timidly, gathering the last wandering strands of your hair behind your ear, and kisses you straight back with all the sentiments he’s managed to keep secret while standing at adjoining windows for so long.

Every hope he crumpled small enough to fit inside his own body, every wish he’d been too afraid to speak of, every kind of aftertime he’s daydreamt that always had you in it, all of it, he presses into that sweet kiss he’d wanted so badly all his life and hopes you’ll taste what years of wanting felt like to him.

Martin smiles as he pulls you back. “You never keep this tucked away,” he murmurs, holding a bunch of your hair into the back just like how he did when you were emptying your guts about an hour ago.

“Is it getting in the way?” You ask as you wipe your lips dry. “We can stop.”

“Oh but you make a man go crazy, Y/n.” He exclaims, leaning closer until your foreheads touch. “You make me go crazy. And I’ve wanted to pluck you out of my head for a while, but you’re like a little scurrying rat. I can’t seem to catch you.”

You make a scandalized expression that immediately dies down as soon as you see Martin’s mouth curl so wide, and he makes another request. “So kiss me a little more, why don’t you?”

“How dare you compare me to a rat.” You lean in once again and kiss him anyway.

You don’t know it yet, but tomorrow morning you’ll wake up with one leg thrown across Martin’s waist and your face buried somewhere between his shoulder and his neck. The size of your bed deems it less advantageous on Martin’s part. His arms and legs, which had always been oddly long, will be hanging off both sides of the mattress at once. His neck will ache, and his back will have been bent out of place as if he slept inside a folded lawn chair. In the end, as he’s climbing back to his own room through the windows yet again, this time for a completely different reason than all the times before, he won’t complain.

The two of you will arrive spectacularly late for school looking under-rested. Fortunately, neither of your parents will have wandered upstairs to wake you. Finding their daughter sleeping peacefully, snoring even, on top of the neighbor’s son would’ve been a conversation with enough lasting psychological consequences that you absolutely did not want.

Boy next door! Martin, who believes that not every Beast is owed a Belle. Stories have been telling that lie for centuries. The lie that enough love could blunt the fangs off so much cruelty, or that it was a forbearing little chisel meant to sculpt monsters into men. It could be true for some people, but he’s been a hopeless romantic ever since he was a boy. And if there’s anything he knows about romance, it’s that surely, surely it would never begin with pain.

Perhaps, more importantly, not every Belle out there should have to wander into a forest hoping the next monster she meets will someday turn into a dreamy prince. Martin’s never liked those odds. Some girls deserve to arrive at a castle and find no curse waiting for them at all. Now, he can’t promise the cosmos will stop penning beasts into other people’s stories, and he can’t rewrite every fairy tale ever told, but he can decide what sort of man he’ll be in yours. And he wants to be a good one. Now that, Martin can make sure of.

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