You turn off the timer and go back into the kitchen, taking the teabag out of your mug. You’ve been branching out to new teas since the first evening you’d tried it in the safehouse, sampling them little by little. You now own a small village’s worth of tea boxes, after watching in horror as your best friend swiped her arm along the shelf of teas at the store and into your cart, insisting it was her treat. You’ve found you don’t care for straight green tea or matcha (green bean water, more like), but you like jasmine just fine, peppermint too. English Breakfast is okay, just not as malty, and chai is good if you add more cream than usual.

Tonight, though, you’re allowing yourself to Admit and Mope Over having feelings for a made man. Which, naturally, means your tea is his favorite, Irish Breakfast. You set the teabag in your spoon and wrap the string around it, wringing extra tea into the mug. You’ve gotten rather good at it with practice.

You turn to throw out the teabag when you hear a muted thump from somewhere in your apartment.

You stare, unmoving, at the teabag dangling in your hand over the garbage bin. It swings gently back and forth, and you try a deep breath. One, two, three four. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

By the end of the deep breath, no more noises have come. You drop the teabag in the bin and turn back to your mug, only partly aware of reaching for the sugar. Pal, chill out. Someone came home across the hall and dropped their groceries. The box of Christmas decorations finally teetered off the shelf in the closet. Kids down below jumped too high on their bed and whacked into the ceiling.

Your phone vibrates sharply against the counter, and you drop your spoon with a clatter. You crane your head aside to glance at the screen.

LEEDO: u can say no but do u mind if I stop by?

You snatch your phone clumsily and fumble to the app with live feeds of your security camera. A raven-haired man in office slacks and dress shirt is leaning heavily against your front door. As you watch, his knees buckle under him, and you hear another thump as he crumples against your doorframe.

“Shit,” you hiss. You drop your phone on the counter and hurry to the front door.

Geonhak catches himself heavily on the doorjamb as you ease the door open, a final defense against collapsing entirely.

“Hi,” he murmurs, sounding for all the world like he’s fine and not a man who can’t stay upright.

You drop to your knees, trying to figure out where it’s safe to touch him. His entire left side, from head to toe, looks to be spattered in blood.

“Jesus Christ,” you mutter, guiding his right arm over your shoulders. You brace your hand against his back, heaving upward.

You manage to stay balanced, most of his weight on you, and stumble back inside. You’re careful to keep your hand at the center of his back, away from the side that’s drenched in red.

He sags back against the door as you shut it again, relieving you of crutch duty. Flipping on the front hall light, you try to get a better look at him. His side is littered with bloody hand- and fingerprints—probably from staunching the blood flow, you take a guess. There’s so much blood, it looks like so much. The blood on his face has trickled down from a matted spot in his hair.

“What can I do?” You ask, surprised at how calm you sound. “What do you need?”

A corner of his mouth quirks slightly. “Just towels.”

His voice is cottony, so un-Geonhak-like. A sliver of ice sinks into the pit of your stomach.

“Just….” You take a tentative step back from him to see if he’ll stay upright. He leans more heavily against your front door, and your hands hover there in front of him. “Just….don’t move.”

You fly into the kitchen, feet barely touching the ground, and yank open the drawer of tea towels. You grab the entire stack and flip on the sink, running a few under cool water. Your eyes catch on your mug on the counter, and after a second you grab it and bring it all with you.

Geonhak’s face is tilted towards the ceiling when you return, eyes closed. A thin line of blood is slowly trickling down the side of his neck. In the light of the entryway, positioned as he is, he looks like a hero straight out of a classical painting. Lordy. No man has any business looking this good bleeding out.

You set the mug gently on the hall table next to him and close the distance with the towels.

His head drops back down, eyes opening at your approach, and you offer him a wet towel. He murmurs his thanks, taking it and mopping his neck and face roughly while you unfold a dry one.

You rake your gaze over him carefully, heart pounding. His hair has grown out a bit since you saw him last. You note in the part of your mind that isn’t panicking that it suits him, although everything suits Geonhak. Gingerly, you scrape your fingertips along his hairline, combing his hair off his face and checking for more injuries. His jaw works and his throat bobs once, and you replace his thoroughly bloodied hand towel with another damp one.

“‘Woong’s in Chinatown tonight, won’t be able to get here for a half hour,” Geonhak says as he works, and you realize he’s apologizing. “He’ll take me to the safehouse and out of your h—”

“Like hell he will,” you say, swapping him for another fresh towel. “Finish mopping up and we’ll take my car.”

“Hwanwoong will come get me,” Geonhak mumbles, eyes closing as he prods at the spot on his head.

“And I said like hell,” you reply, your free hand going to the buttons on his shirt. “This needs to…move…so you can get to the spot on—oh, don’t look at me like that, you’re bleeding.”

“Interesting way to ask me to take my shirt off,” he murmurs with a shrug, smile as dangerous to your pulse as ever as his free hand starts unbuttoning.

Once he’s undone the first four, you shove another damp towel inside and grip at the injured place on his side firmly, making him hiss. Serve him right, flirting while bleeding out on my doorstep.

“Hold this there, tightly. Be right back,” you say, taking another bloody towel from him and scooping up the others.

You pause for a second, then gesture at the mug of tea. “For you.”

Within moments, you’ve thrown the bloodied towels in the drum of the washer to deal with later and grabbed several other things on the way back.

Geonhak’s finishing a long sip of Irish Breakfast when you return. Wordlessly, you hand him a few ibuprofen. A smile plays at his lips as he accepts them and downs them with tea.

“Off,” you say as he sets the mug down, waving vaguely at his blood-sodden shirt. “I’ve got something clean.”

“It’ll just get dirty, too,” he says, already undoing the final few buttons and shrugging it away.

Any other time you would admire him shirtless, but your focus now lasers in on the injury. After all the blood he was wearing, it’s surprisingly smaller than you feared. “I don’t care if it gets dirty, too. I have my first aid kit—”

“Just—” he winces when he presses against his side wound too hard, then sighs softly, “just…if you’ll drive me to a safehouse, I’ll get Keonhee to patch me up.”

Ah yes. Keonhee. A trained medical professional. Someone of actual use to him. “Let me get my shoes.”

You watch from the corner of your eye as he takes the oversized hoodie you offer him and finagles it on gingerly. You’ve grown so accustomed to Geonhak in office attire that anything else looks unfamiliar on him. You’re right, though; anything suits him. Your heart doesn’t seem to notice the oddness, twisting at the knowledge that the hoodie is yours.

Your staring doesn’t escape Geonhak’s notice.

“Don’t usually wear this kind of thing,” he says as you exit the apartment together. He leans into you for security as you lock your door.

“And why not?” You ask, heading for the stairs at a stilted pace.

Your face bumps into his neck as he stumbles, and he swears and apologizes under his breath. Despite the clear excitement he’s had tonight, you notice he still smells like the pine and eucalyptus soap you’d seen in the safehouse shower. You immediately try to ignore this.

He shakes his head as you both begin slowly down the stairwell. “Not taken seriously in street clothes. Look too young.”

You can feel him wincing with each descending step, and you slow your pace, keep the hand at his back soothing.

“Well, who wouldn’t take you seriously right now?” You ask as you reach the exit. You pause to heave your free shoulder against the door when it sticks. “Now? When you’re bleeding a concerning amount?”

“I’ve had worse,” Geonhak says mildly, misstepping and staggering against you as you exit into the night. You catch him, free hand landing against the front of his torso, and you mumble an apology as he winces and straightens again.

“Surprised you survived with these reflexes,” you mutter, hobbling with him through the parking lot in the warm summer night air.

You lay a towel along the back of the passenger seat before Geonhak sits; blood sounds horrible to get out of a car. He wordlessly plugs an address into your GPS once you start the car, and then you’re on the road.

The car is quiet as you follow the first few directions, save for the occasional GPS voice. Geonhak extracts his phone from his back pocket, wincing all the while. He taps away at the screen, likely notifying the safehouse and Keonhee, as you follow the directions onto a street that sounds vaguely familiar.

“Should I, um. Worry about being followed?” You ask, glancing at the passing headlights in your rear view mirror.

“Mm-mm,” Geonhak says, shaking his head slightly and pocketing the phone again. “Our guys got him.”

You refuse to consider what “got him” means in this context.

“I’m sure it’s pointless to ask, but what happened?”

Geonhak sighs, leaning back in his seat with a wince. The silence carries for a few minutes, and you begin to assume he won’t answer when he finally speaks.

“He didn’t like what happened at your shop this week.”

You stiffen as you stop for a red light. A blue-eyed smirk you’ve come to hate flickers to mind. The man who was the reason you’d met Geonhak in the first place; the man who was the reason you’d had to hide for a week in a safehouse meant for organized crime members. “Him?”

Geonhak leans his head back against the headrest, eyes shutting as he adjusts the towel against his head. He gives no indication to confirm or deny.

That isn’t allowed to be the end of it. “But nothing really even happened. He just…came in, to intimidate me again. And then he got spooked by your uncle and left.”

A corner of Geonhak’s mouth curls. “Technically, he was humiliated by a crime boss over muffins. To a lot of these guys, that’s something.”

Over muffins. The space in your chest for breathing begins to shrink. It was your fault. That man, the one who’d tried to convince you to let his boss run dirty money through your store, who kept showing up at your new storefront to intimidate you, had hurt Geonhak. He’d been so mortified by Geonhak’s uncle, who was there to defend you, that he’d taken it out on the man’s nephew for good measure. Not on you, who actually owned the store; him. Geonhak was hurt because of you.

“Breathe,” Geonhak says, voice firm.

You gasp in a breath and blow it out shakily, easing on the gas as the light turns green.

“Slower than that. There’s enough air,” Geonhak soothes.

You shake your head, each breath coming heavier and quicker. I did this to him.

He starts counting, and you take a deep breath and hold it like he taught you, blowing it out unsteadily. It does little to settle your jittery pulse, your whirling thoughts.

“Promise it’ll be over soon,” he says, glancing at the GPS. “In six minutes. Just drop me off at the front door and—”

“I—you’re kidding, I’m not just, just—leaving you somewhere,” you protest, grip tightening on the wheel. “You’re covered in…Geonhak, I did this to y—”

“Don’t. Don’t you dare.”

His voice is so suddenly sharp that your mouth snaps shut without another thought. His mouth is set in an even line, blue flame behind his eyes as he stares out at the road.

“You are good, and you are innocent, and you did not do this to me,” he says, voice dangerously even. “I won’t have you taking blame for that shithead. I won’t.”

You swallow, trying another slow breath in, out. You nod.

“Sorry,” you whisper.

He blinks, still watching the road, but the hardness in his eyes dissipates.

“Me too,” he admits. “Shouldn’t have dragged you into this.”

“No, it…I mean, I don’t mi…it’s—” You stammer, trying to figure out how to say you missed him without saying it outright.

Eventually you snap your mouth shut, face burning. You see him glance at you out of the corner of your eye, then lean further back into his seat.

“You, um.” A smile is playing on his lips. “The tea, earlier....I didn’t think you drank tea.”

Your face feels even hotter. You swallow. “…I do now.”

He doesn’t say anything the rest of the drive, but that smile stays in the corners of his mouth.

The address, an old brick bungalow, is different from the last safehouse—probably closer to where you live, you assume. The porch light is on, and you see movement in a window as you park along the curb.

“Stop, just—would you hang on a minute?” You huff as Geonhak opens his door, unbuckling.

You hurry out of your seat and around the front of your car as Geonhak tries to ease out by himself. He grunts in pain and stumbles over into you, and you sway as you attempt to keep balance for two people.

“I got it,” he says, trying to straighten, face twisting in pain.

“You really don’t,” you say firmly, locking your car and helping him up the walkway. “Cut the heroics.”

It’s Keonhee who opens the door as you reach the five little stairs up to the porch. You’re surprised to see him in pajamas and glasses.

“Up you get, come on,” he says, coming to Geonhak’s injured side and gingerly lifting his other arm over his shoulders. Keonhee glances over Geonhak’s shoulder and smiles at you, somewhat of a grimace. “I’d say it’s nice to see you again, but…”

Your smile is also half grimace, remembering the first time you met him, when he treated your black eye. “Agreed.”

Keonhee’s taller than you, so when he straightens, Geonhak’s arm stretches up higher, and he hisses.

“Son of a bitch, Keonhee, ow,” Geonhak grits through his teeth.

“Yeah, yeah, get inside, you big baby,” Keonhee mutters. “I know for a fact you’ve had worse knife wounds before.”

Ice drops into your stomach; a knife. That man had gotten close enough to hurt Geonhak with a knife.

With Keonhee in the lead, the three of you shuffle sideways up the porch stairs and through the front door. To the left of the entryway is a little kitchen. To the right you see a small sitting room, with a couch covered in a few sheets. The coffee table has a spread of little tools that remind you of emergency room procedurals on TV.

“In there, if you don’t mind,” Keonhee says. “I made coffee before I remembered you drink tea, Geonhak, so there’s coffee if you want it.”

“Water for them,” Geonhak manages, panting as you help ease him to lie down across the couch.

You stick your tongue out at him but don’t argue. Your mind and body are starting to catch up with the shock of an injured Geonhak, and you don’t want to make yourself even more jittery.

Keonhee disappears briefly into the kitchen, emerging with a glass and a mug. You take the water gratefully, hiding yourself in the glass as you swallow back half of it.

When you lower it again, Keonhee is seated beside the couch and inspecting Geonhak’s head wound. He swabs at it with alcohol wipes and clucks his tongue.

“Stupid, but not awful,” Keonhee says, fighting a smile as Geonhak swears violently under his breath at a firmer prod. “Probably won’t even need stitches. Just bled a lot.”

“You’ll bleed a lot if you don’t cut that out,” Geonhak grumbles. Keonhee snorts and scoots back, lifting the hoodie to get a better look at his side.

“Need a few stitches here, though,” Keonhee says, pausing when Geonhak jolts from the rubbing alcohol sting. “Ribs hurt at all?”

“Not as much as yours will if y—shit,” Geonhak hisses at another pass of the alcohol wipe.

“Look at you, king of the streets, brought to your knees by antiseptic,” Keonhee says, grinning.

Geonhak glares at him, breathing heavily. “I say king of the streets one time, back in high school, and you won’t let it die.”

“Nope.” Keonhee pops the “p” and reaches for a few things on the coffee table.

You take a deep breath, setting down your glass with shaky hands. “Uhm, if I needed the bathroom, where…?”

Keonhee’s eyes are understanding. “Down that way, on the right. I’ll be quick. He’s seen worse.”

You hear Geonhak’s “fucking hell” from the living room before you close the bathroom door behind you.

You lean heavily on your hands against the sink and rest your forehead against the mirror, allowing yourself a moment in the whirlwind of thoughts. Knife wound. They got him. He’s been hurt worse before.

He came to me. When he got hurt, he came to find me. I got to see him again.

That’s what feels the most shocking, that he’s here, you’re here, back in his world, when you didn’t think you’d ever see him again. You know he’d told you it was for your own good that he keep a distance, and you didn’t think his reasons were bad. It still hurt, though, to make such a connection with him and then watch him disappear from your life like he’d never been there.

Well, now you’ve seen him again—covered in blood, admittedly, but nonetheless. He hadn’t been a figment of your imagination, after all. He’ll be on the mend soon, and then…

You gulp. That’s what’s scariest. How fleeting being here, being back in his circle, feels. You wish for selfish things for a brief moment—for a few more nights of Irish Breakfast, a few more conversations, even one more exchange of banter, for wounds that need time to heal, time you can spend with him. The thought that he’ll slip away again forever after this is…

A soft knock on the door startles you a little too much. “Hm?”

“He’s all patched up now, all fine,” Keonhee says. “Just needs a couple days of low activity and he’ll be back to normal.”

You sniff, leaning back off of your hands. “Good. I…good.”

There’s a pause. “I’d like to take a look at you when you come out. Customary check.”

“Oh, uh, sure, yeah, coming out.”

You reach up to itch a spot on your cheek and blink when your hand comes back wet. You wipe under both eyes, hands coming away damp. When you glance at your reflection, you grimace at how blotchy you look. There’s no way to hide it, so you sigh and brace for the inevitable, opening the door.

Keonhee studies you for a moment, then says, “let’s see if I’ve got tea somewhere after all, hm?”

It feels a bit wrong to dig through his cupboards and pantry like this, but Keonhee encourages it, clapping your shoulder when you find an old box of orange pekoe.

“You’ll be staying tonight, of course,” he says after he cleans out the coffee pot and begins brewing plain hot water. “At least until the shock wears off.”

You purse your lips as you retrieve two mugs. “I don’t want to overstay my welcome…”

Keonhee scoffs, putting a tea bag in each one. “Please. You’re more tolerable than he is, swearing at me over a little scratch.”

“Is it really that minor?” You ask, watching yourself run a thumb over the lip of a mug.

“He’s just fine,” Keonhee says, firm and reassuring. “He’ll be back to intimidating us all at full capacity far too quickly.”

The nobler side of you relaxes at this. Your less noble side wishes for a few more days of bed rest. You try to ignore the less noble side.

“Perhaps I should worry more about you,” Keonhee says, studying you. “You’ve been well?”

You laugh once. “Oh, yes. I’m just fine. I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of a single made man until this week, much less tangled with any of them.”

You wince inwardly at how bitter you sound. Ridiculous.

Keonhee hums, taking the now-filled pot of hot water and pouring it into the mugs. “I see an awful lot of made men, but that doesn’t necessarily add or detract from any tangles. Surprising, how much you can see of them without being involved.”

You don’t know what to say to that. You realize with a pang that you’re almost jealous of him, of his ability to be involved but not involved.

He frowns at one of the mugs as it steeps. “I should go check how he takes it, I can never remember—”

“That’s alright, I’ve got it,” you say, waving that away and preparing both mugs.

Keonhee’s quiet as you labor over the tea. When he speaks, you can hear a slight smile.

“Good. I’ll go make up the air mattress, then, if you’ve got this under control.”

You make your way back into the sitting room slowly, trying not to spill either mug. Geonhak has every pillow propped up behind his back, an arm slung over his eyes. You frown when you see one of his ankles in a brace.

“You didn’t tell me your ankle was hurt.”

A corner of Geonhak’s mouth twitches. “Only twisted a little. It’s why I couldn’t keep better balance.”

He lowers his arm from his eyes and looks up at you. You lift his mug, nodding at it, and he inches his way further upright, grimacing.

“Let’s see how badly Keonhee did on this cup,” Geonhak says as he takes the mug.

“He didn’t make it. I did,” you say, sitting gingerly by his knees and blowing on your mug. “Two sugars, no cream. Strong. Brought the spoon when you want the bag out.”

You set your mug on the coffee table, now cleared of surgical instruments, and lift your teabag into said spoon, twisting the string round and draining the excess. You feel Geonhak’s silent, studying gaze and try not to let it fluster you as you find a wastebasket at the end of the couch to toss the teabag.

You take a sip of the tea, then blink. “You know, I always thought orange pekoe would be…well, orange flavored. But this is just another black tea.” Hmm. Suppose it can’t hurt to have around for guests, so the nicer teas can be for you.

“Damn it,” Geonhak sighs softly.

You glance over at him as you blow on your tea, raising an eyebrow. He’s cradling his tea placidly against his stomach, eyes shut.

“You make it so difficult.”

You blink. “So difficult to what?”

He opens his eyes and meets your gaze. “To stay away from you.”

Your lungs feel suddenly empty. Oh. Some warm and electric feeling zings up your spine.

You look down into your mug, pulse skipping. “…I see. My hopelessness when it comes to tea, back at it again.”

When he speaks, you can hear his smile. “Might play a part, maybe.”

You take another swig of tea, bracing yourself. “I wish…I wish you wouldn’t stay away, but I, you know, I get it. Promise.”

You shrug a shoulder, grimacing.

He purses his lips, then sets the mug down. “Mind getting the bag for me?”

You set your tea down and grab the spoon, finagling with the tea bag in his cup.

His fingers brush against your knee, backs of his knuckles rubbing gently back and forth. You swallow, throat surprisingly dry for how much tea you’ve drank, tossing his teabag and setting the spoon aside again.

“Don’t like when you’re in danger,” he murmurs.

You nod, picking your mug up again with shakier hands than you’d like.

“Don’t want to be the reason you’re in danger,” he says quietly.

You nod again, tilting your head thoughtfully and taking a sip of tea. “Keonhee’s got a lot of your guys in his life and he’s not in danger.”

“He’s under my uncle’s protection,” Geonhak says, not unkindly.

You shrug a shoulder. “Well…think I might be now, too. He intimidated that man into leaving and then left a hundred dollar tip for his muffins.”

Geonhak laughs once, and his hand opens on your knee, resting warm and firm.

“Touché.”

You take another sip of tea, gathering courage, then drop your hand to your knee and curl your fingers around his hand.

His gaze makes you feel shy, but you don’t look away, drinking in the way it feels to be looked at like this.

He shakes his head at himself, smiling wryly. “Knew exactly what I was doing tonight. Might’ve been easier to go to a few different places, but I went out of my way.”

His fingers squeeze yours.

“I just missed you,” he whispers.

It’s a good thing you hear Keonhee clattering back down the hall. You’re not sure you have the power of speech anymore.

Keonhee forces Geonhak to give up two pillows (“you have all the other pillows in my house, fiend, surrender one to me and to the guest”) and pushes aside the coffee table to make up your bed. It’s a good thing you were already in pajamas, you think as you sit at the edge of the air mattress. No need to sleep in clothes, unlike Geonhak, despite your hoodie.

When the lights go out and Keonhee goes back to bed, you spend a while staring up at the ceiling. You realize, too late, that there was caffeine in both of those teas. Late night caffeine intake versus shock exhaustion, fight.

“There’s, um.”

You glance over at Geonhak on the couch. He’s looking up at the ceiling, too. “There’s this place on the other side of town, a bar? But it’s got cats, like a cat cafe. Hwanwoong tells me you’d really like it.”

You purse your lips, fighting the massive grin threatening to take over your whole face. “I’ve heard of it. It’s got some cat pun name, yeah?”

“Yeah, I can’t think of it, either,” he says, laughing softly.

His hand reaches out and finds yours in the darkness. “Wanna try it with me, maybe? Like, in a week or two, obviously, or Keonhee will put my head on a stake.”

You laugh quietly, squeezing his hand. “I’d like that.”

His thumb brushes over the back of your hand, gentle. “Okay.”

When you finally fall asleep, your hand is still in his.