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Empty Vessels (M)

Author’s Note: the next installment in the Tam Infra Quam Supra series. ive spent seven months working on this, and the backstory, details, and world got a little out of control. i promise, though, all of this is important. considering its length, if you have trouble reading this - i recommend you load on a desktop app | Historical note: the names, information, and references used regarding the actual Salem Witch trials have been been lifted for a work of fiction. I make no claim stating that anything described below is true, historically, accurate, or authentic. The Abott family are entirely original characters. Pairing: Junmyeon x Reader (oc; female) Genre: witch!au; soulmate!au; horror; suspense; thriller; romance Summary: Water is everywhere. Junmyeon knows this better than he knows most things. Water is everywhere and it is the source of life - it exists within and inside humanity. But water, he knows, erodes. It weathers a person, and it has dried him out and turned him into something cold. So what does he do, then, when he meets you, his moon? Rating: NC-17 Warnings: graphic depictions of blood; graphic references to violence; mentions of death and dismemberment; graphic depictions of demonic possession; explicit language; dark themes; explicit sex; fingering; unprotected sex; impregnation kink; creampie; dirty talk Word count: 30K

APRIL 1692 2:17AM

He wakes to the sound of thunder, a distant and violent rumble echoing through the house, with a force that makes the walls vibrate.

In the haze between wakefulness and sleep, he shudders with a petulant grimace, joining the manor in a tremble of discontent. Eyelids weighed down by exhaustion and limbs drenched in the comfort of lambskin and wool, he hums to himself, waiting patiently for the soothing fall of rain.

Always, the rain, the water, delivers him a sense of peace that burrows down into his bones, kissing the marrow with a gentle tongue. He cherishes each drop as though they were his own children, relishes their kindness and pays it back in kind - for they are born from the earth and destined to be controlled by his hand alone, a homecoming to their father’s delicate touch.

They caress and preen against his skin, his home, his heart - they caress him, and he welcomes the torrent of their deluge. There is a comfort to be found in the flood, the gift of a surrender that is both terrifying and magnificent, and he welcomes it with expectant, needy fingers. Often, even without wind or breeze, the rain will press against his window, attempting to burrow in and be close, and he waits, readying to soothe and be soothed by the rhythm of their fall.

Tonight, however, the rain does not come. Tonight, the sky is too quiet and his nerves twitch in displeasure at the lack.

The thunder breaks again, and, at the sound of its intensity, Junmyeon furrows his brow, a deep pout setting itself against his lips. April. Too soon for the rainless storms that come from the heat and humidity of the summer sun; too late for oncoming terror of a hurricane, the usual warning bringing nothing behind it at all. There should be a chasm in the sky, something awful thrusting itself against the grass and the glass. There should be a flash of light and the wonder of panic too big to be contained in the armor of one's chest.

There should be something and this thunder, it seems, brings nothing at all.

Except that it does.

Behind the thunder is a yell that lingers, a voice urgent and penetrative, demanding his attention and calling his name with an urgency soaked in bitterness. It is not thunder that woke him, but knocking. Understanding washes over him, eyes growing wide and blood rushing in his ears, waking him fully. Slinging his legs over the bed, he pulls on his breeches beneath his muslin shirt and stalks to the door, tying them as he moves.

His motions are quick, mindless, attention focused on the door and the figures that rest behind it. In the dim light of the moon, their shadows cast along his walls, grotesque and inhuman, macabre in the foreboding they bring.

Names run through his mind, an endless list of friends and acquaintances that circle around and back again. By the time he reaches his door, he assumes it is a coven member - perhaps, a member of another coven, and he dreads their knowing, patronizing stares and hollowed gazes. The witching hour approaches, and, lately, Minseok has had dreams; visions of bloodshed and wounds born of war, of fear - he thought he had time, that they had time, and now he feels the tick of the clock has become a pendulum swinging against their favor.

Behind the door, the town magistrate stands and regards him with tired, accusatory eyes. The veneer of his polite smile is tarnished, fading and pulling at his lips to reveal a sneer of distorted anger, turning him into something poisonous. He holds the torch over his head at such a height, the lines of cheeks create deep crevices along his bones, the contour of his face appearing violent. The magistrate burns beneath the harsh light, much the way acid burns at the back of Junmyeon's throat, his weight shifting from foot to foot in anxiousness.

This, he knows, is not the first time a member of polite society or a member of authority has arrived at his home, seething and unannounced, demanding answers. Briefly, Junmyeon reminds himself this has happened before - it has happened before and it will happen again, but something about tonight tells him there is risk. This will not be the first time they have been discovered - if, of course, that is what this is about - but it may cost them their lives.

Idly, he thinks on the others - if he should wake them, if he should find Luhan, if he should say anything at all - before remembering words have not been shared, and therefore it is best he remain patient. Still, he keeps his tongue locked behind the prison of his teeth, expecting to be accused without any viable proof at all.

'Junmyeon,' is the all the Magistrate manages before releasing a long sigh, eyebrows stitched together in concern. The tension in his voice is thick, palpable, casting a heaviness into the air that makes Junmyeon’s neck begin to ache.

Junmyeon nods in the effort of remaining polite, calling on the water in his cells to keep him as serene as possible. 'Magistrate Adams,' he smiles, voice slow and heavy with sleep. 'What business brings you here at this hour?'

'It's Sasha.'

Another voice breaks behind the magistrate, an exhausted, worried voice belonging to a man who steps forward with anxious and heavy steps. His weathered hands grip his straw hat as though it were a cross. The bags beneath his eyes hang low on his skin, bruising from lack of sleep. Immediately, Junmyeon recognizes him as Sasha Abott’s father, Jacob, a kind farmer with calloused skin and a complexion greying beneath his fright.

Junmyeon regards him calmly, feeling his stomach distend and bend to touch his feet. ‘What about her?’

Sasha is smart, perhaps his brightest student, young and inquisitive and with a penmanship careful beyond her years. She is his favourite student, his favourite and his most observant. Her eyes follow him, tracing his motions as if committing him to memory and gaze lingering on him even when it should not. At sixteen, she is on the precipice of learning her power as a woman, and now his mind reels as implication worms its way through.

‘She has been possessed.’

‘Possessed?’ Junmyeon repeats the word, but remains unsure if anyone truly heard him.

Momentarily, he feels as though he has been reduced, whittled down to little more than ash, blood leaving his face in favor of the company of his toes.

‘By the Devil,’ the magistrate adds sharply, as though it were necessary.

In the silence, Junmyeon listens to the way his breath becomes shallow, eyes flicking between their intense, penetrative stares. He knows it’s possible, that it’s happened before. It has happened before, but not for centuries. Still, he is haunted by the memory of their black eyes and the yellow of their tongues, the grotesque way man succumbs to darkness and renders their bodies inhuman. To be filled with such a cursed thing is an act of dark magic, dark and powerful magic that is as ancient as the moon, and with its power comes the sulfuric scent of death.

‘I am unsure why you think I may be able to help,’ he says eventually, speech slowed by his inability to process the implication. ‘She would need the priest, good sirs.’

He offers the suggestion in a low tone, a warning. There will be little he can do for the girl, little anyone can do - even the priest. To hold the devil within your chest is to kiss fire, to let your organs burn and burn until the soul that remained has been eviscerated, leaving only the scarred shell of a heart that once loved behind.

‘She has named you,‘ Sasha’s father announces, sounding desperate and lost.

For Junmyeon, time seems to stop, blood halting within his veins as his breath falters. He pales, he’s sure of it, looking as good as guilty in the moonlight.

‘It would appear yours is the only name she can say,’ the magistrate offers, watching him narrowed eyes for subtle tells. ‘She begs for you.’

Magistrate Adams holds onto the word beg like he’s gradually unveiling a secret, peeling at the letters with his teeth to bare their unholy core. For a moment, Junmyeon thinks on this word and how it is both a plea, a cry for help, and also a curse. She has named him, requested him, hissed his name at a group of men as grown as he, letting the syllables saunter over we skin to paint pictures in their imaginations.

Sasha has done more than name him - she has damned him.

Shifting his weight from foot to foot, Junmyeon bends his knees as through bracing himself, body preparing to run and preparing to ache. Locking all his emotions away behind his teeth, he grips the door knob tightly and hums.

‘What do you presume I could possibly do?’ he asks, disbelieving as his eyes move from face to face, taking in the shadows the light casts and letting their chill caress his spine.

‘I urge you, sir,’ Magistrate Adams warns, darkening his tone and slowing his speech. ‘Your willingness to assist will eventually play in your favor.’

It’s a chilling thing to say, the words heavy and weighted with threat. Regardless of how this night goes, blood will be spilled, lives will be lost, and Junmyeon’s name will be the first on the list of the accused.

‘Please,’ her father whispers, a broken splinter of a man bulked with strength. The sound of it startles Junmyeon, so heartbreakingly contradictory to Magistrate Adams’ severity. ‘Help her.’

Junmyeon takes his hand and holds it between his own, overwhelmed by the fear, the anguish, the anxious uncertainty that flows from John Abbot’s skin. For a moment, he tries to soothe the pain, easing what he can in the hopes of bringing either one or both some relief, but quickly stops, tightening his fingers around John’s hand to shake it.

Even as he shakes his hand, as he lets the wasted sorrow of a man burn in his chest, as he lets himself be consumed by risk in the name of a child, he knows.

As he offers promises of hope and healing, promises to witness and understand; as he promises let himself burn in the name of a child he wished he could call his own, he knows.

He knows there will be no way out of this, no way that does not involve the ash of his soul or the fracturing of the coven.

Junmyeon is damned. There will be no hope for him until the sun turns black.

Tucked just towards the back of a field crafted into bounty, the Abbot’s home stands small yet warm, the lights of the windows glowing through the night as a beacon. Even from a distance, Junmyeon can sense the pious modesty that defines their home and their land, a rarity to see for such a skilled farmer. But then, he knows the Abbot family is small, and will always remain so. They have only one daughter, and will only ever have one daughter - all other children perishing within Mary Abbot’s womb or within the first few months of life. As Junmyeon approaches the cottage, it is this knowledge that seems to spur a sense of urgency within his blood, an understanding that Sasha is cherished, adored, doted upon if only because she will be the last of her kind.

She is a blessing upon her family, and now, in the grim bleakness of the night, it seems she has been twisted and reduced to little more than a curse.

Before they reach the door, Bridget Bishop steps out to welcome them, seeming out of place in her signature red cloak and tunic. Wringing her hands together, the moonlight casts silver into the tendrils of her hair, the shadows on her face amplifying the intensity in the furrow of her brow. It is the first time Junmyeon has seen her this way, her normally bright disposition overcast with worry and discontent. Acting as Sasha’s nanny, the two had a close bond, often inseparable when walking together in town. Even more, Sasha would choose to sit with her rather than her family at mass, both seated in pews towards the back, whispering.

‘It’s gotten worse since you left,’ she announces, voice sharp as a blade as regards Jacob alone. ‘I fear she may not survive this night.’

From the corner of his eye, Junmyeon watches the way Magistrate Adams regards her with scorn, distrust painted over his features. For a moment, Junmyeon sees her as his only ally, understanding that it is no longer he who has been damned, but Bridget Bishop as well.

‘Is this what women do when they don’t have husbands?’ The Magistrate’s voice cuts through the night, a dagger intended for Bridget’s malleable heart, and to carve directly into the rumours of her adultery with Jacob. ‘Fret over a child that is not their own?’

She breathes his words in deep, letting the poison put lightning on her tongue, eyes falling on Magistrate Adams with a severity that gives Junmyeon a chill. Rooting her feet to the earth, she lifts herself a few inches taller, straightening her spine as though born of iron and steel. Neither scorned nor startled, Bridget simply becomes a viper, vicious in her regard for men who dare tear down a woman.

‘The likes of you have no place here, Adams,’ she says, hands falling to her sides with her fingers outstretched, knuckles tense. ‘With such hate in your heart, I imagine the Devil would take glee in your soul.’

‘Witch!’ Magistrate Adams calls, lurching forward before Jacob’s arm comes to pull him back, gaining rightful authority on his property. ‘This is a threat to vex me! I will not forget it.’

‘Enough.’ Jacob’s voice roars in the night, all warmth having left him somewhere in the walk back to his home. He, too, has become battle born and thread with steel, eyes the cold timber of metal as he regards Bridget with dejection. ‘We’ll be seeing her.’

Even as he steps onto the porch, Junmyeon can smell the sulfur that churns within the house. For several moments, he pauses in the doorway, eyes downcast in search of salt or basil. Finding none, his heart takes to bleeding. The devil has found a plaything here, and they have done nothing to neither keep him inside nor banish him away.

Within the house, the light from the candles flickers in irregular patterns, too uncontrolled and distorted for such a still night. The yellow of the flames casts their shadows tall, curls their edges around the hard angles of the house and makes them too appear as demons. In this light, everyone has claws and no one is safe.

Jacob leads them up the stairs to Sasha's room, and as they approach Junmyeon feels his soul begin to fissure. As with any powerful dark magic, the barriers surrounding the boundary of her room reject him, his light, and his healing. Gravity means to push him away, and it takes effort not to moan with the effort of continuing his ascent. Jacob and Magistrate Adams approach her door as though they have never felt so free, and Junmyeon envies them. He envies the simplicity of their life, and the way it will continue in a chronological order even if their experience of it will be forever altered after this night.

For Junmyeon, his feet struggle to deny their steady approach to doom, to death, to the gallows, or, perhaps, to an empty black of nothing at all. Furrowing his brow, he chews the inside of his cheek with the force of his push until the skin begins to bleed, the salty metallic timber of his essence urging him to turn back. Still, he closes his eyes and presses his hands against her doorway, breathing deeply even though the air makes his lungs and throat ache.

'This is she,' Jacob whispers, neither looking at Junmyeon nor his daughter, truly.

Opening his eyes, Junmyeon glances at Jacob before looking into the room, realizing that everything inside this small space reeks of necrosis. His eyes do not fall on his daughter, nor do they fall anywhere else. Now, his gaze is vacant, confronted with a truth so bleak his mind refuses to truly see at all.

Even in hell, the truth is the only thing he can see.

In her bed, Sasha moans, eyes wide and looking at the ceiling - rather, through the ceiling - as her chest warps tragedy into sound. To him, for a single moment, it appears she is summoning the stars with the force of her will alone.

But then, there is no cosmic nor divine magic to the strength of her stare, the whites of her eyes tarnished with a jaundice that seems to eat away at her skin. It flakes away from her, peeling as though burning and boiling the water in her pores, her blood. And where this should make her pink or pale, cells inflamed with the sudden heat of the fire, it only has made her gangrenous. Her breath, struggling against the spores of her lungs, rattles as though battling within a cage, seeming to echo in the quietness of the house.

Distantly, Junmyeon hears the sound of weeping. He does not know if it is Mary, or Jacob, or himself, or, perhaps, even God. In the end, he supposes it is everyone, hearts breaking in unison.

It seems unfair that he should weep for her, unfair that he should have a right to care for her as much as he does. But, if asked, he would never deny that she was his favourite. His favourite, his smallest, and the one who reminded him he wanted to be a father, a tether to a reality he would likely never touch.

And so, he lets himself mourn and grieve, before shielding his soul with an armor that comes from centuries of learning to kiss death and survive its taste; centuries of seeing the Devil and telling him to run.

With his guard high, Junmyeon feels for the water in her body, and realizes his assumption was correct - she has been subsumed and slowly turned to parchment. Lending her some of his own, he eases the moisture into her throat, permissing her voice returns to her with a vigor stolen by the death she carries within.

Coming to his knees beside her bed, he remains there for a moment as though in prayer, watching her head to turn to face him. He waits for fear to take him, the horror of it slowly walking up his spine and making the hairs on his arms stand on end. While it does not consume him, it holds him, much the same way she holds her gaze on him, unblinking.

‘How long?’ He does not bother to face Jacob as he speaks, arrested by the sight of her.

Jacob coughs, lungs pressured by the weight of his distress. ‘Five days.’

He presses his lips together in a thin line as he chews delicately on his tongue, biting back the condemnations he would spit if the circumstances of his inclusion had been different.

'Sasha,' he begins, keeping his voice gentle and even. 'What is it you've touched?'

Slowly, her mouth opens as though her jaw craves to become unhinged. Sound should come, the sound of a voice or that of a girl, but instead the only sound he hears is the shuffling of uncomfortable feet behind him. In silence, she remains this way, mouth open and black within, until, eventually, she screams.

The shrillness of her tone makes him close his eyes as though stung, but he does not turn away nor does he move back. Junmyeon waits. Junmyeon remains. And he counts the number of voices he hears within the sound.

Three voices from within speak through her, using her small body as a vessel towards a violent end. This is not the first time he has been confronted with possession, but it is the first time there has been more than one beast contained within a person. To summon a devil is black magic that costs a soul. But to successfully manage more than one would surely cost a life, the sacrifice required demanding something sacred, and Junmyeon is certain this magic is archaic and mostly likely older than him.

'The black witch did this.' Buried beneath the screams, the words begin to echo within the sound without the control of Sasha's tongue to give them shape. The syllables slur together, messy and almost indeterminable, but they saunter over Junmyeon’s neck, making his skin itch.

Jacob coughs in alarm and despair before excusing himself from the room, watching his daughter speak without speaking, in a voice that is no longer hers. The Magistrate huffs at Jacob’s apparent squeamishness, but Junmyeon pays no mind to either, letting the words linger in his mind. They do not belong to her, not really. He reminds himself as he studies her blank stare, expressionless and wholly disconnected.

Junmyeon nods, appeasing the things that live inside her with a pious understanding. 'Who is the black witch?' he questions, tone soft.

He abandons emotion, keeping his thoughts and fears and sentiments locked in the silence of his chest. It has taken centuries for him to learn the skill, and even now, when he needs it the most, he fears he may buckle. With water as with life, emotions were his strongest gift, the tool he uses to heal all the anguish he encounters. Stripping himself of them now leaves him feeling uncomfortable and vulnerable, but he cannot let his feelings be swayed.

Demons such as this feed off the power of the heart, and his heart was always the most powerful of all, a veritable feast born for the taking.

‘You know her,’ one of the voices seethes, emerging from the black with a laugh that sounded like fire. ‘You break bread with her, covet her. Why do you hide from the sin you crave?’

‘Tituba.’

The Magistrate’s voice cuts through the room, a low rumble of implication that bursts forth as a tidal wave. Unable to take his gaze from Sasha for fear of becoming vulnerable, Junmyeon narrows his eyes and thinks through the name. Behind him, the men shift from foot to foot, satisfied and pleased as though they have found the answer, ready to seek her and bring her to justice. But still, Junmyeon gives pause, knowing that, with the devil, it would never be that simple.

‘She is an easy target,’ Junmyeon counters, keeping his eyes trained on the yellow of Sasha’s irises. ‘Any accusations made must be made in fact rather than assumption.’

Magistrate Adams scoffs, disdain leaking into the air to mix with the sense of dread. ‘It does not need to be more complicated, good sir,’ he sneers. ‘She speaks in tongues unfit for the darkness of her skin and watches too deeply the men that give her quarter.’

Against his thighs, Junmyeon’s hands curl into fists that gather the cloth of his breeches. ‘She is foreign,’ he says gently, even though he wishes to battle the magistrate with the fullness of his tone. ‘That does not make her a witch.’

His thoughts are interrupted by a great roar that erupts from within Sasha’s chest, a violent sound that gives him the sensation the earth is quaking merely by the force. Her brow does not furrow with the effort, expressionless and serene, she screams and screams until the men around her have been silenced in wait.

When she falls quiet once more, he releases a breath he did not know he had been holding, neck and back tense with the effort of keeping still.

‘Sasha - ‘

At once, a voice cuts him off. ‘You know my name better than most, Water King. Honor me...honor yourself, and use it.’

Blood rushes from Junmyeon’s cheeks, racing away beneath his skin as though the air that kisses it is poison. It rushes down to his fingers, his toes, and into his ears as his eyes widen and his mouth runs dry. The sound of his true name instill a terror within his bones, one that coils around his spine and demands that it break, his heart shuddering in its rhythm to sustain the adrenaline that now courses through his veins.

Behind him, he feels the gazes of the men burn into his shoulders, the weight of his damnation further spiraling out of his depth. It does that matter that he could still easily dissuade their belief of his guilt, does not matter that they have no proof of his magic. His name has been burned into the pyre, and there will be no saving himself after this night.

‘I know your name as Sasha,’ he says, neither fully lying nor fully honest.

Yes, the girl who lays before him is Sasha. But he knows, even against his better judgement, that he has not been speaking to her for some time.

This time, when she laughs, he knows it is the demon who distorts her jaw and giggles with a glee that makes his stomach twist; he knows what he is capable of, what he has done, what he will give, and what he will take away. In irregular clicks, the laugh itself sounds more like grinding metal than a natural sound born from a throat, but Sasha does not appear to move. Instead, she remains still, laughing and barely breathing, waiting to be saved.

Abruptly, the sound comes to a halt, her body twitching in small seizes that make her bed rattles against the wall. Frantically, his eyes scan her body as it writhes beneath her sheets, hands trembling and unsure of where to touch. And then, she stills completely, as though she has been unmoved and undisturbed for the entire evening. It is only when blood begins to seep from her mouth, dripping over her chin and down onto the pillow that he knows she is losing the war waging inside her, and his time for saving is almost out.

'Please,' she whispers voice small and weak, twisted around the presence inside her. She gasps, a wet sound that sprays blood onto Junmyeon’s chemise. 'Help me.'

The sun peaks over the hills at dawn, making the sky burn with a red and yellow that make the seas rage. Junymeon does not take notice, legs burning as he runs from Jacob’s home to the manor, ragged breath searing the nodes of his lungs as he focuses on moving away from hell. In his speed, he is followed by the eyes of the townspeople, muttering curses about the way he does not stop to give greeting, the way he narrowly avoids the bodies that mean to break his stride, or simply because he interrupts the fragile sense of peace the town has created. Briefly, he wishes for Chanyeol, for the legs of a beast to carry him or beat him home, the news he carries weighing him down until his motions feel insufficient.

When he pushes through the manor door, he finds Luhan heading towards the kitchens, hair still mussed from sleep. On the hardwood floor, the stained glass window above the stairs casts coloured patterns on the ground, the coven tree reaching to touch both of their feet.

Closing his eyes, he struggles to catch his breath as Luhan’s gaze wanders over body, taking him in. It hurts to breathe, hurts in a way that Junmyeon is not used to, body trying to repress and suppress all the horror he has witnessed. Falling to his knees, he waits for gravity to send him over, to leave him and abandon him, a hopeless case left behind and forgotten. No longer feeling tired, he simply feels nothing at all, and he thinks this is the most terrifying truth of all.

‘Jun, what is it?’ comes Luhan’s soft imploring voice.

Opening his eyes, he sees the way Luhan watches him, concerned and gentle and every bit the leader he needs - present and ready to listen. But even then, he sees him as a ghost, a burning ember of a man who would not have a place in the world that blazes around them, for there would be no room for this sort of kindness.

Not anymore, and perhaps not ever again.

‘Paimon,’ he chokes out, voice not sounding like his own. ‘Someone is raising King Paimon.’

NOW

The water at Smith Pool is unusually quiet, the current guiding the waves calm in a way that is uncharacteristic for the late autumn season. Under the scrutiny of the afternoon sun, the waters glimmer, inviting and offering a hope that feels almost like hope, as though it is unaware of this falsehood. It laps at the embankment with gentle touches as it rolls back and forth, soothing and altogether too peaceful for the chaos that surrounds the world. Absent is the mist and fog that lingers over the horizon, hovering delicately just out of reach as though kissing the surface, guarding and protecting the secrets that dwell below.

He waits for it. He waits, and it does not come.

Hands fisted in his pockets, Junmyeon roots his feet into the wood of the dock with narrowed eyes, vision clouded by echoes of a time he once thought had been buried. Memories stir, faces and names he would never truly forget but had pushed away through the guise of self preservation; each brutal and all more visceral than the last. A breeze kisses his cheeks though he does not feel it, numbed and weary and worn by the totality of this sudden onslaught.

He remembers the day the lake was made, remembers when the water meant something - a salvation, a hope, a beacon of life for a community.

He remembers the bodies - the bodies that hung from the trees and the bodies that were thrown in the water, accused and convicted, regardless if they were innocent. Their grey shadows linger behind his eyes, hanging from the trees and looming from the black of his memory; humanity reduced to little more than symbols, threats. Always, he stomachs them, swallows them down into the burning acid of his regret and ignores the flavor. Lately, he’s been haunted, the shadows no longer vague, unfocused shapes, but men with faces - his coven, himself, the world.

He remembers a lot of things, nails digging into his palms as his mind swims and swims, the water before him running red. For a moment, he imagines there is nothing. Nothing but himself and the memories, trapped but breathing; naked but safe; and lifelessly valiant in the way he bleeds for the people he loves. For a moment, he imagines he is alone, witnessing the terror of the past and the future, and letting them blur together if only because he believes his iron heart is strong enough to withstand it.

But then, even the security of this is brief and shattered, a fragile, vain hope from the mind of a martyr.

Behind him, Chanyeol cries in a way he believes is ugly and undignified. The sound sours the air, spoiling the delicate pretense of comfort the lake offers. It smothers him, the grief and the intensity of it, building a pressure in the center of his lungs that stings. He rolls his neck from side to side, eyes fluttering closed with a huff as he tries to alleviate the tension that has gathered in his shoulders. Poised and patient, he’s sure his the steel in his posture is not a comfort for Chanyeol or, perhaps, anyone who would witness the way he appears rooted to the earth.

Junmyeon accepts this. Lately, he’s begun to think of comfort as little more than a myth.

For a long while, he remains silent, letting Chanyeol’s choked gasps of breath be the only thing the air touches, neither satisfied nor grieving, simply watching.

‘They’re just birds, Chanyeol.’ Even he is surprised by how empty, how cruel, his voice has become.

With a sniffle, Chanyeol wipes his nose on his sleeve as he inhales a shaking breath, finally daring to break the silence.

‘It wasn’t their time to die.’

Junmyeon does not turn around, unwilling to look at the dead raven Chanyeol cradles in his arms.

At three in the morning, the screams started. First as a low rumble of malcontent, they began to build into an anguished howl that made the house tremble. There was a terror to this noise, a chill to the realization that the voice making the sound did not belong to Yixing. He’d grown accustomed to the tenor of Yixing’s screams, to the cadence that sometimes bends into music as he sees and sees. It was the loudest Chanyeol had been in centuries, and he had almost forgotten the richness that had been locked inside his throat, hiding away from all the horror.

His long limbs thrashed in the bed, twitching violently as though he were being pulled, wounded and scarred. They’d gathered in the room to bear witness, seemingly forgetting the centuries of practice they had with someone else, bewildered by the sudden change. It was only when the rhythmic sounds of thudding on the roof cut through his cries that they moved to action, Chanyeol leaping from the bed as Baekhyun rushed behind on swift feet to cast light.

They followed, uncertain and afraid though fully prepared to fight. From the sky, the birds fell as though they were gliding, and in Baekhyun’s glow, Junmyeon felt a brief moment of peace at the aerial display he thought he was witnessing. For a moment, there was beauty to this new aspect of Chanyeol’s power.

The crash onto the roof hurt, the snapping of their frail necks causing Chanyeol to tear at his own skin, falling to his knees and dying with them. Even without Minseok, he knew, the dread making his toes tingle as he pressed them into the blades of grass.

'Can you not grieve for us?’ he asks, digging his nails into his palms hard enough to sting. The water surges as he speaks, moved by his words rather than the current. ‘For the fact that we might end up like them?'

Chanyeol releases a small whine, a barely there noise of hurt and scorn. 'They were helpless, Jun,’ he begins, softly. ‘This was done to them.'

He smothers a bitter laugh, cocking an eyebrow at the empty expanse before him as he purses his lips. 'That sounds precisely the same to me.'

Footsteps startle them both, the sound of heels on the dock making Chanyeol cough in embarrassment as Junmyeon finally turns, brow furrowed.

Hand in hand, Minseok walks along the dock with his partner, eyes dark and shadows on his face long. Beside him, she weeps silently, cheeks wet with tears that still threaten to spill regardless of her stoic expression. They grip one another as a cross, clutching at each other’s fingers in the effort of reminding themselves they are tactile, whole, and unified, hearts emptied of pleasure by what they had seen. Junmyeon watches the way Minseok runs a thumb over her knuckles, a quiet moment of comfort that provides more empathy than he has seen from him in centuries.

How odd, he thinks, to see one touched by love; touched and utterly terrified.

Standing to Chanyeol’s side, they complete the accidental circle created by the unintentional flow of magic.

‘What did you find?’ Junmyeon asks, casting glances between them both before finally lingering on Minseok, still unclear about the breadth of her power and choosing to trust what he knows.

For a while, they do not speak. Minseok looks longingly out over the water, hollowed, as the herbalist regards the dirt on her shoes with an empty stare. In the silence, Junmyeon minutely nods, the bare threads of his patience allowing them space to find their words. Images spring to his mind, all imagined and none wholly formed, all as bleak and battered as the crow in Chanyeol’s arms. He wonders what Minseok has seen, unable to avoid with a clarity bordering on entrapment; he wonders what she has heard, whispers on the wind of a life he thought he’d left behind.

‘The trees are screaming,’ she announces, eyes still downcast though her voice is sharp; blunt as the edge of a sword and equally as unforgiving. ‘They’re in pain.’

It settles over him, slow and uncompromising, the notion that trees could make sound - that they would choose to. The oldest wisdom lingers in their branches, and for one brief moment, he sees her as someone as old as their roots.

‘Are there ravens?’ Chanyeol asks, running his finger down its beak.

‘There are birds,’ she confirms, voice softening for this redirection of conversation partner. ‘I don’t know if it was only our homes that were affected or if they were drawn to us, in a swarm. I’m not skilled enough to recognize their songs, so I can’t tell if it was just ravens, either. I can only hear the plants.’

For the first time in days, Chanyeol smiles, thankful. ‘That’s good,’ he nods. ‘If there are birds in the forest, there’s a chance it wasn’t the whole species. I can check later.’

Tension builds in Junmyeon’s knuckles, teeth gritting as he stomachs the conversation. Nature is always eaten first in any apocalypse event. It disappears slowly, or even sometimes, swiftly, eradicated as if in warning of an oncoming storm. The seals breaking would always start with nature, and he is glad that they still have some semblance of time, even if the decay within is silent. He is glad, but he is not appeased.

‘Was there more than just...screaming,’ he presses, gaze still trained on the crooked angle of the birds neck.

‘I saw the hangings,’ Minseok says, and Junmyeon regards him with parted lips, blood leaving his cheeks. Together, for a moment, they remember, silent as their eyes trace the outline of nonexistent bodies. ‘I don’t know if...,’ he continues only to fade away, distracted and detached. ‘It felt like layers. Memories of how it used to look filling in details of the future.’

Shifting his weight in his knees, Junmyeon braces as though preparing to leave the earth, evaporating and dissolving amidst the sickness and unease. ‘Are you saying it’s happening again?’ he asks, voice low yet still demanding, bursting through the tightness in his chest with force.

Minseok keeps his expression calm, unreadable, save for the bags beneath his eyes. ‘I’m saying it looks the same,' he advises with a small nod. ‘It feels the same.’

Water sprays up from the dock, a cold mist that startles the herbalist and even Chanyeol. They cower away in shock and surprise, yelping slightly at the sudden chill against their legs, but Minseok and Junmyeon remain still. Together, they remember, a knowing look spreading a thousand words in the distance between them, and none capable of fully expressing the depth of how it feels to truly fear.

Nature is always the first to be razed because, with Paimon, the control of things once thought wholly beyond the command of true evil is always the proof of power. The trees will scream; the birds will die; the water will run black and beyond his control; and it will happen again. Just as it did before.

Shaking his leg to dry his pants, Chanyeol coughs to break the silence, glancing between his brothers in an effort to escape the hold of memory. ‘But if the seals are breaking then why are they different to the ones we used?’

‘There were over six hundred possible permutations,' Minseok shrugs, defeated. ‘I don’t think it matters which ones snap, only that they do and that we feel it.’

The herbalist nods, inching closer to Minseok's side in comfort. ‘The seals are breaking,’ she affirms, breathing her through mouth quietly to mask the shaking of her breath. ‘I don’t think there’s room for argument with that. It just feels like the downswing of the pendulum is out of control. Things are happening faster, more violent. Even in the woods it felt like we were being followed.’

Even as he watches the way they stand near one another, leaning into each other for warmth and comfort and healing, Junmyeon tastes the bitterness on his tongue. In another life, maybe he would have celebrated this union, would have hugged his brother and kissed her cheek in expression of welcome. Instead, all he finds is blame.

Blame that this consummation of love and sex has forced them back into the chokehold of evil. They learned from this, he thought. They had learned and bled and lost through the effort of saving humanity, and he did not think they could survive it again.

And for what, he thought. For love and all the soft effusive things that would never save a life.

Coughing, he stomachs these thoughts, knowing that they do not help their situation - don't even offer further insight. Now, more than ever, they don't need feelings. They just need answers.

'We lost the member of our coven who figured out how to stop this,' he says, dropping his gaze to the wet wood beneath his feet. 'And I don't think the answer will be the same.' He regards the herbalist with what he hopes is a kind, reassuring smile, the kind of expression that would make a person feel welcome and inclined to help. 'Does anyone in your coven have any ideas? Have they felt anything?'

She nods, though it does not come with the enthusiasm of solutions. 'One of my sisters has been turning towards sacred geometry for answers,' she explains. 'She believes that the cage was structured and built, and sacred geometry is builders magic. Maybe the answers lie in the construct seals rather than the consequences.'

Eyes wide, he blanches. Sacred geometry is an old magic, a magic that comes from learning the root and form of power rather than simply how to harness it. Each energetic spell has a form, structure, and texture, and the ability to confidently wield each is what creates a vessel to embody spirit. The heart that carries sacred geometry is usually raw, unyielding, able to process an immense amount of energy as though it were a generator. The last time he knew someone who could handle such raw magic was Luhan.

‘I want to meet her,’ he says, the eagerness in his voice turning their expressions curious. ‘Geometry gave us -‘ Junmyeon pauses, unsure if he wishes to continue.

Sucking in a breath, he holds it in his lungs until it hurts. ‘Context,’ he finishes. ‘Even if we didn’t know it at the time. It’s something both powers from above and below must yield to.’

‘The holiness of it was what turned against us,’ Chanyeol offers, gaze distant as he relives the church falling before his eyes. ‘We underestimated it once.’

‘She’s good at it,’ she says, offering a reassuring smile to Chanyeol. Warmed, he returns the smile, energy becoming at ease once more. Turning her gaze to Junmyeon, she grins. ‘She’s good, but she’s sometimes filled with so much hope she doesn’t see how darkness would twist the magic. You might be good at offering her perspective.’

‘I’m not hopeless,’ he counters, defensive though he does not feel offended by her jab. ‘You weren’t with us last time, so you don’t know how this looks.’

‘We felt it, though.’ In this, she is serious, unyielding, eyes dark and clouded over. ‘Don’t ever underestimate the reach of hell. Every witch was touched, marked.’

Closing his eyes, he sighs and pulls his hands from his pockets, catching the moisture on the breeze. The sky above churns, clouds gathering to mar the sun and the light. They seem fractious, tormented by the taciturn greyness that consumes them, and he allows this sadness to bring comfort. Droplets pool at the tips of his fingers, soaking into his skin before dripping slowly onto the dock, ensuring he feels protected and no longer alone.

The way it happened was swift, a downfall that forced even the most secretive of witch into hiding. Flavoured food and spices were seen as witchcraft, too much knowledge of the earth turning food into potions of their own; foreign songs becoming little more than voodoo; anything difficult to be understood, anything new, suddenly questioned with an intensity bordering on accusatory. It has never left society, a golden age of creation and growth spurred on only centuries later beneath the guise of money and capitalism.

It was swift, the pulling of creation and manifestation from humanity, until all that remained was the dull acceptance of eventual death.

Shaking the water from his fingers, he bites the inside of his cheek before speaking. ‘Would she be open to meeting me?’ he asks, watching the herbalist and the way her eyes study his face for hidden meaning. ‘Would she want to work with us?’

She smiles, seemingly gladdened by his offer. ‘I’ll tell her to come to the shop.’

‘Tomorrow,’ he says, offering a small smile before turning back to the water.

He hears Minseok usher them away, giving him time to be alone with the lake.

As they leave, the clouds pull back and bring forth the sun once more. Distantly, he hears the herbalist questioning Minseok about the truth of his power, and she is offered kind, shallow words - words that express the good, the kind, the valiant. Decidedly, he leaves out the darkness - the way water lingers in the blood, controlled by his hand; the way tears will leak and saliva will dry should he so choose.

Minseok leaves out the way he could be synonymous with Paimon, and is not simply by route of choice.

The numbers on the page are meaningless.

Running a hand through his hair, Junmyeon looks at the rows and rows of the shop account book, seeing little more than just colours, shapes of things that once held importance. Ink marks have formed symbols, letters and numbers, details in black that say the shop is fine. They are productive. There is no need to worry. But still, he does not see them. Not really.

Behind his eyes, his mind swims with thoughts - vague impressions and blurred shadows of days once lived or likely to be lived again. Slowly, his mind walks away from him, leaving behind the normal guard he has on memory and emotion - on the things he keeps pushed at arms length to feel effective and efficient, and to, at least, keep calm. Remnants of sorrow that usually would amount to sickness swirl in his stomach, the emotions of comparison rising like bile and making his eyes begin to create tears, exhausted.

This is not the first time this has happened, and he has grown accustomed to the fact that this will not be the last. He’s used to this feeling, the feeling of slipping down and deep inside his mind, detached though not altogether immune to the anxiety that comes with remembrance.

This is not the first time this has happened, but it is the first time he has thought, with any effort of consideration and focus, of the man he used to be. A once kinder version of himself. A softer version, with hands gentle and comforting like feathers. Seeing the details of his past is not something he devotes himself to, choosing instead to walk around and through the memory as though it is a photo, a thing he sees but does not truly witness. Seeing the details now makes his bones burn, fingers swelling with an angst uncharacteristic for someone his age or someone ageless, and he feels it in the liquid amber of his blood like wave.

Even before Sasha reminded him it was natural to play favourites, natural to commit time and attention to someone young in the effort of imparting wisdom, he knew he wanted to be a father. He craved the feeling, the earnestness of devotion that comes with unconditional love and the almost unbearable holiness that comes from creating life. Back then, he wanted it all, wanted to love and love and love, so that even if there was no longer a need for magic at least he could say he had a purpose, a reason.

Her possession came over him like a season, one ripe with loss and anguish and grief, and still it haunts him. Yixing screams in the night, and still he remembers Sasha’s empty eyes and the way she eventually asked to die. Minseok sees, and still he remembers the hanging bodies of Bridget Bishop, of Tituba, of women and strangers and anyone who threatened to question the order of things.

The birds rained down much the way the memories of their first brush with true evil reigned over him, an onslaught of brutality, loss, and grief. Omens come, and love blooms, and all he can sense is the entrapment - the way there is no longer space for this kind of feeling.

The opening of the door to the stockroom breaks his thoughts, Minseok peeking his head in to catch his attention. Junmyeon shifts abruptly in surprise, laughing lowly at himself as he struggles to appear busy.

‘You okay?’ Minseok asks, eyes narrowing as he considers the mess Junmyeon has made with careless hands.

Closing his eyes, he composes himself for a moment, heartbeat erratic and pumping the fullness of his blood into his cheeks. Pressing a finger to his lips, he silenced the noises in his chest, gathering the effort of his usual stoicism.

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he nods, leaning back in his chair, settling and getting comfortable. It’s a lie, one he knows Minseok will sense, regardless if he speaks or not, but he says the words with confidence, unsure who he is trying to convince.

‘You look...,’ Minseok’s voice trails off, eyes running over Junmyeon’s flushed expression as he tries to find polite words. ‘Damp.’

Junmyeon shrugs, muscles in his neck and shoulders tense. ‘It’s just hot in here.’

Casting his eyes up towards the air vent in the ceiling, Minseok hums idly has he looks for signs of heat or airflow. Junmyeon watches him intently, knowing that the heat is not on, not yet - that it’s too soon in the season for such a thing. But still, he is glad. Glad that Minseok humours his statements without drawing attention to the truth, a kindness he does not deserve after the vitriol he had spewed over the last week.

Nodding at nothing and no one, Minseok returns his gaze to Junmyeon’s face and sets his lips in a thin line. ‘Okay, well, she’s here. She’s ready to talk when you are.’

The mere mention of you is powerful, giving rise to a lump in his throat strong enough to falter his breathing and make his brow furrow, affected. He swallows thickly, pursing his lips in bewilderment as his gaze loses focus. He does not know you, has not even seen you, but the violence you tests his strength.

‘I’ll be out in a second,’ he says, voice thick and barely audible.

Narrowing his eyes, Minseok grunts in acknowledgement before leaving, shutting the door with a soft click. Alone, a groan escapes his lungs, body reclining back into the chair as he starts to feel consumed. He knows, even without truly seeing, that this, all of the things that comprise him this day, is because of you. All day, he has guessed that the oncoming storm in the center of his heart is the nature and nurture of you, he wanted so desperately to be wrong.

This, he imagines, is how Minseok felt when he sensed his herbalist - compelled and overwhelmed, and, most horrifically, pleased. Of you, about you, for you, always, he his gladdened and unwilling to avoid all that has chased him across centuries of anguish and despair. All that matters, all that likely ever could have mattered, is that he feels you.

You are stirring things, churning away at his heart and his breath, and while they promise a freedom he craves to kiss, he considers this sort of possession a poison.

He feels you, and he is unsure if he will ever stop.

Making his way through the shop, his legs move of their own accord, driven towards you as though your heart is a compass and it takes him several seconds to realize he is no longer in the back room. He is lured by you, tethered and reduced to little more than a puppet in the wake of you, mouth running dry as the air turns thick with every step he takes.

Even without knowing, you will find them, Yixing had said. In the darkness, where there is no light, you will still see them. And this, this prophecy, he supposes, is all his body would ever truly need to be lead home.

Coming to pause behind the register, he watches as you lean against a bookshelf and keeps his distance, hiding himself away before he lets himself run raw. He takes in the soft angles of your profile, studies the way you nod enthusiastically in conversation with Baekhyun and the herbalist, and wonders if you feel him too.

Does your spine tingle with his presence, tightening the joints in your hands to twitch your fingers in time with his? Does your chest burn, or yearn, or ache, down into the caverns you once assumed empty, overwhelmed with the sudden onslaught of knowing? And in your bones, is the sudden awareness of all your connective tissues - your nerves, your muscles, your sinew - stinging with the overwhelming knowledge of being alive?

‘Jun!’

He jumps, shaken by the loud herald of his name. Gripping the counter, he had been swaying, a slight rhythm rocking him from side to side as though he has been lost at sea. Bakehyun waves at him, having noticed - likely, having seen everything, smiling with an impish grin that feels almost cruel.

‘Come over here and meet Y/N.’

He says your name as though it does not hurt, as though it were simply a name, and Junmyeon steels himself a moment to process how this could be so. Your name quakes inside his soul, pushes him towards a surrender to the unnatural and unresisted promise of misery. The misery of destruction, brutality of war, and the unbearable brutality of love. Love, he knows, is an annihilation that ambushes the unsuspecting beneath the guise of devotion, protection, and unity. Love is just as violent as war, just as permanent as death, and, by this law, for him, you are a hurricane.

The movements in his legs, the unintentional sway from side to side as if lost at sea have captured Baekhyun’s attention, and he calls his name with a delight that almost feels cruel.

You turn to look at him, glancing over your shoulder before you turn, eyes wide and resolute. Something he can't place swims in your irises, something delicate, and fragile, and untarnished, as if the exhaustion of living has never once touched you. As though, for all your years, you have greeted existence with hope. The herbalist was right, he thinks. There is a reckless endangerment to your positivity, the kind we would never need but craves just the same.

Crossing his arms as you approach, his fingers knead roughly into the fabric of his sweater, jaw tensing as you draw near. There’s a bounce to your steps, in the way you walk and carry yourself, a bounce that makes him roll his eyes as he begins to swoon.

The bounce in your footsteps frustrates him, and though he cannot truly place why this so, he imagines it comes down to envy.

He envies the you he was in his youth, before he learned how to lose things that matter - things that promise to stay, to never die, but vanish just the same. He was you, once, but you somehow learned to keep a smile that tells the world you are okay.

‘I hear you’re looking into sacred geometry,' you announce, standing before him with pride.

The counter separates your chests, your hearts, your souls. To Junmyeon, this distance is a canyon, a long void through which he yearns to reach but does not. His fingers twitch, nails digging into his palms with the effort of keeping still.

Resting on your elbows, you lace your fingers together and scrutinize him, not bothering to be discrete. 'It feels urgent that we talk,’ you continue, having your fill of him with glazed eyes. A small furrow knits your brow together, and Junmyeon’s fingers twitch, eager to wipe the wrinkles away. ‘Like there's nothing that matters quite as much.'

Warmth radiates off you, or perhaps it is the air, rolling against him in waves that rock against his perception of you as a person. It makes sense, he knows, that you would get right to the point, because you are made to wear at him, made to break his defenses and match him completely. He knows this, logically, but he did not expect to feel so awed by you, adrift in his mind and floored by the mere idea of you as his neck begins to flush.

‘I have little experience with it,' he admits, coughing as the breeze puts your perfume in his mouth. ‘One of our own was familiar but…' He fades, eyes glossing over much the same as yours, the weak edge of his tone dissipating completely as he remembers. Remembers the bodies and the limbs, the open mouthed scream Luhan released and the silence of it that made his ears ring. In front of you, he remembers everything he had pushed away, battled against for centuries just to keep himself upright.

Closing his lips, the memories die, fading away as the taste of you fades on his tongue.

And this is when he remembers you are deadly. You are lethal. And there is more still within him you could stir.

Clearing his throat, he corrects his posture, standing tall and wearing the mask of a leader with dignity, if not pride.

‘It might be best if we sit and talk somewhere else,' he suggests, hoping to expose his vulnerability to you and only you, rather than those who could suffer the consequences.

You select a table at the back of the cafe, tucked away from teenagers studying for midterms or couples on dates, preening before one another and hoping to be wanted. The oak table sits beneath a speaker, smooth jazz muffling your conversation from those who pass by on their way to the toilet. Shoulders hunched forward, you hold tightly to your mug of cocoa, letting the heat of the ceramics trickle into your fingertips.

Across from you, Junmyeon sits heavily in his seat, with neither drink nor pastry. He has become transfixed by the way your nails trace the edges of the ceramic designs, rolling over the supple curves of the mug, there and back again, just the way his life ebbs to you and back again. In these few short minutes of being alone, together, he has learned that you keep a smile tucked in the corners of your lips, that you laugh easily and you laugh loudly - at nearly everything - and that you sigh, wistfully, longingly, at every child that passes.

In this cafe, you are pink. You are pink and gold, a sunset whispering through a current and everything he suddenly finds himself defenseless against. It is not, he thinks, that he wants to protect you - he knows you do not need him to. It is that he wants to share with you.

His heart. His memories. His life. His family.

Junmyeon wants to share, a horrific thought he clutches at with both hands to remind himself it is not safe. You are not safe, regardless of how his lifetime listens so intently to yours.

And as he casts his gaze to the old map of Salem, framed on the wall behind the top of your head, so too do your eyes wander over his features; learning and memorizing and, often, dissecting. He feels you, feels your gaze with the same intensity as though this were skin to skin contact, your considered analysis of his mouth, his lips, his hair making him breathless. Beneath the table, his leg shakes, anxious from the effort of not reaching for you, of holding you tight as he wanders, head first, into devotion; holding back and holding his tongue with a fierceness that makes him clench his teeth together.

Eventually, you peer back down to your cocoa, satisfied with your findings, or, at least, yourself.

‘Where would you like me to begin?’ you question, words strong and authoritative, though directed at your cocoa.

Releasing a breath he did not know had been contained in his lungs, he bites his lip. There is little he remembers from his lessons with Luhan, and it pains him to admit he would be a novice on this subject.

‘Perhaps just there,' he shrugs, hoping to sound aloof rather than ignorant. ‘At the very beginning.’

Nodding, you intake a sharp breath as you straighten your back, eyes wild with thoughts.

‘This sort of magic,' you begin, confident and empowered, 'relies on the concept that the universe was created according to a geometric blueprint - that a god was the geometer of all things. And it continues, perpetually. A god is constantly at work, building and making. If you can consider that a god is a geometer, then this too means that all those in hell are constructing just the same.’

Tilting his head, Junmyeon traces the lines in the table, the intricate latching of wood and nail, with the pad of his finger. His recall on sacred geometry is limited, but with Luhan he remembers charts - not charts, cloths with shapes, designs with trigger points for magical access. Stand here, Luhan would say. Put the fire here. They were building magic, not the universe.

'I thought sacred geometry was for patterns, crystal formations,’ he questions tentatively. ‘Magic structures rather than...math.'

'It is,' you affirm, 'but that's just one element. Geometry appears in all things. Like I said, if a god is a geometer, this means everything in nature - plants, animals, people - are constructed with sacred proportions.'

Proportions. Like the way your clavicle leads elegantly to your shoulder. Like, the way your bottom lip pouts childishly and begging to be kissed. Like, the way the slope of your nose and the arch of your brow haunts him, puts a retinal burn behind his eyes and makes him feel parched. Like, the way his hand looks as though it would fit yours and hold it, steadfast and for eternity.

Proportions, he thinks.

'So Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man?' he says, instead, with a smirk.

A flush creeps into your cheeks, making you pink and pink and pink, as you regard him with parted lips

'In a sense, yes,' you continue, words rushed as you calm yourself down. 'People are divinely symmetrical, and therefore our actions are symmetrical. And if we are born from symmetry, then we build for the gods in symmetry. Most churches are built with sacred geometry in mind, mimicking the geometry in nature.'

‘Ah,’ Junmyeon intones. 'The Fibonacci spiral.’

‘Yes,’ you giggle, corners of your eyes crinkling in satisfaction. The sound makes the tips of Junmyeon's fingers go numb. ‘That pattern is usually described as God’s divine equation. But even still, Galileo’s lectures on the structure of hell as it lies within the Earth can be considered natural geometry.'

With a huff, you lean back in your chair and shrug. ‘It’s hard to summarize without showing you or working at it over time,’ you grimace. 'These rules and attributes are assigned to specific religious constructs, though it does not necessarily need to be made from god. That's probably the most important thing you could take away from this.’

Mirroring your posture, Junmyeon reclines back and feels his brain dig deep. ‘You’re implying, then, that we can make the geometry as well?’

Nodding, you hum. ‘With that in mind, you must not perceive the magic as the power, but the blueprint itself. All blueprints exist to make things and, by extension, contain them.’

‘Contain them?’ Junmyeon stares at you, aware that his imploring eyes are demanding, pulling at you for more, but he cannot seem to stop himself. ‘Should we then see the Earth as a vessel?’

Through the clench of your jaw, you take in a long breath, knowing he finally understands, grasps the sheer magnitude of this magic. 'If the Earth was made to carry, and hell is contained, it is indeed a vessel.'

Silence befalls you both as you regard one another, feeling the weight of change grow and spawn between you. Junmyeon swallows thickly, eyes gazing over your features, the decor, the table, your skin, yet seeing only truth. It swells inside him, the frustration turned sadness that makes his breath come shallow and uneasy. All the things he should have known, all the things he missed, laid before him so simply - and he’d have noticed if he only ever allowed himself to look back.

‘We solved nothing,’ he murmurs, to neither you nor himself, really. Just a release of vitriol that burns within his lungs, angry at their ignorance.

They never won the war. All they had done, effectively, was delay it.

Your hands slide down and away from your cocoa, pressing against the table to cool your palms. Eventually, you speak again, equally as demanding for information as he. ‘Your coven was here during the Great War?’

He smiles, though it is bitter, knowing you are being polite. You know this answer, you’ve always known this answer, but still you are soft and allowing him the opportunity to deflect. This, he thinks, is a kindness he does not deserve.

‘We were,’ he manages, keeping his tone stable and even.

‘Then,’ you try, nibbling at the inside of your cheek. ‘Maybe you can tell me the nature of the containment? A structure inside a structure - that kind of geometry defies our comprehension of dimensions.'

The question hits him in the center of his chest, and he turns to look away, staring out the window as though peering into the past. Mouth dry, he licks his lips and feels the heat without the moisture, nails dragging along the table as his hands form into loose fists. When he looks back at you, you are not apologetic, merely expectant, unwilling to let him retreat.

Inching your arm forward slightly, your fingers drum on the table as you bite your lip, considering, before moving back and gripping your cocoa with conviction. ‘We all know the truth, Junmyeon,’ you press, gently. ‘We were elsewhere, but we know the stories..how it ended.’

‘New York.’ He says, voice empty, acknowledging that, indeed, you were not here and so you did not suffer.

Unsettled, you purse your lips as you cast him a cold stare. ‘We had our demons,’ is your curt reply. ‘Some centuries later, but we had them.’

Junmyeon smirks, the unique singularity of your war slightly humours. ‘The headless horseman.’

Cocking an eyebrow, your response is immediate. ‘It’s inappropriate to tease about any war, regardless of its scope.’

For a long while, you hold his stare and remain still, eyes powerful enough to knock the wind out of him. They hold him, almost as intensely as they hold him accountable for his words, and he is glad for the severity. Glad, in the end, for the proof that you are just as tormented, and just as haunted as he.

It’s enough, he supposes, to share, to let himself be intimate. Exposure, of any kind, is a wound on its own. But with you, with someone who hurts just as deeply and carries it within their bones, exposure is a commiseration and a comfort.

‘Back then,’ he begins slowly, reaching back to scratch his neck in thought, ‘it was not us alone who created the seal.’ Stopping himself from continuing, from sharing too much, he pauses and rephrases his thoughts. ‘We were of great assistance, but we had help.’

Humming, you sip your cocoa as you process his words, lashes fluttering as you drink in pleasure. Licking your lips, you furrow your brow. ‘It sounds as though this help was unexpected? I thought your coven was alone, in Salem?’

Junmyeon nods, barely imperceptible. ‘The Reverend's wife…’

At once, he sees her face, the delicate frailty of her features. Ill, always ill, and carrying with her a shawl as if to shield her from a chill, even in summer. Often, the children said she was spun from silk, the supple length of her black hair and the finery of her skirts extensions of her skin and spirit. Always speaking about God as though she knew him, personally; pointing the slender elegance of her index finger at widowed or spinster women, and accusing them of being sinners, of being harpies sent to pray on the God fearing goodness of gentlemen.

‘She helped you connect with God?’ you try, puzzling together what he infers.

He shakes his head, barely there and barely focused. ‘It must have overwhelmed her,’ he mutters, haunted. ‘And...she only helped...because we saw. It was not offered to us.’

She said she had visions, that she had seen the devil and the scourge he would lay upon the Earth. Even as she burned, laughing and laughing, he still couldn’t believe she’d said the words with desire. The flames ate at her skin and still she laughed, said she wanted it, that she should feel him, that the dead, and their ashes, tasted sweet. Remorse never tainted her features, taking pleasure in her body count and making sure that all the world witnessed the glory.

Blinking, he brings himself back to the present. ‘She burned for what she knew,’ he says, finally. ‘We turned her to ash, but it still will never be enough.’

Pressing your back into your chair, you consider him for a moment, watching intently to see if he will swim in his memories once more. ‘A lot of women burned. Women are always burning.’

‘You say you know the truth, but did you know it started with her?’ he spits, not bothering to hold back the aggression in his tone. ‘That she had poisoned the girls, possessed children, ate their souls in the efforts of raising a King?’

Eyes wide, you lips open and close as though offering muted consolations and apologies, saying with breath what your mouth cannot before shivering and holding your cocoa once more.

‘Have you ever seen someone burn in holy fire? Seen the way it peels back flesh and sucks at muscle?’ he hisses, spurred on by a great resurgence of things long kept trapped inside. ‘Have you ever seen a child ask to die? Seen your coven leader pulled apart and ripped like cotton?’

And even as you regard him, pale faced and thin lipped, he still can’t stop himself from tossing the question out, offended by its flavor.

‘Have you ever seen a dead body?’ he finishes, coldly.

Separated from the words, he realizes he has leaned, rather vigorously, towards you and bent himself into a posture of hunting. For all your sweetness, you have not cowered away from him, but at such close proximity he can see the tears that have sprung to the corners of your eyes. The sadness in your expression, the under markings of horror that stain your cheeks, makes his fists clench, ashamed of himself for bringing the water of you to the surface.

He could pull at it, pull it away and keep you dry. Or, instead, he could push it further, push it down your cheeks and into his waiting palm so he could kiss your tears and swallow them whole.

Instead, he slumps in his seat, childishly, and stares emptily at his lap.

Sniffling softly, you discretely wipe your eyes. ‘Why?’

Unable to truly look at you, Junmyeon speaks to his lap. ‘Not all great evil has a great purpose. Sometimes, true horror, true fear, is senseless - existing just because it can.’

The vice at his lungs releases as he says the words, shoulders no longer feeling compressed into an impossible smallness. Testing this new freedom, he breathes deeply, letting the air stabilize his equilibrium.

‘No,’ he continues, correcting his posture and looking around you. ‘I don’t think we can ever really know and it took one of our own sacrificing his life to rest within the pattern to show us how to build the, as you call it, blueprint.’

Within him, the memory floods, the visceral and bloodstained image of body parts - limbs and digits and torso - aligned in intricate shapes. It was biblical, the sight of not just one, but many, still warm and festering from death as they bled, ceaselessly, into the grass. And in the center, a sacrifice The only magic strong enough to seal a promise.

Stomach churning, he grimaces, awkwardly meeting your gaze in apology.

You’ve blanched, considerably, somehow truly understanding him without knowing him at all. ‘Are you saying?’

Minutely, he nods. ‘He became the blueprint.’

Unnerved, you hug yourself, looking away as you bite your lip. It’s transcendent watching you fight through sadness and pain and fear, a cosmic sort of shattering he feels is too vulnerable for him to witness, and yet you show him, bravely, courageously. He does not think you’ve ever shied away from atrocious thoughts, rather simply kissed them until they felt beautiful.

Inhaling a shaky breath, you face him but you do not smile. He misses it. ‘I think,’ you say, quietly yet with more power than he could have imagined, ‘the last thing you need to know…I’m sorry.’

Furrowing his brow, his shoulders arch forward, body attempting to reach for you and hold you. ‘For what?’

Fixing him an intense gaze, you focus on him completely, showing, teaching, and reminding him what you are going to say will hurt. ‘Sacred geometry is mimetic...a mirror. As above, so below.’

You pause, watching as his mind reels and he races to the end.

He gets it. He understands. He wishes that he didn’t.

‘And if bodies are what sealed it -‘ you continue, only to be cut off.

Junmyeon finishes for you. ‘Then bodies are what will open it.’

The setting sun ignites the trees, dappling the red and gold of the leaves with such force for a moment he believes the kitchen is on fire. Shadows cast on the walls and floor stand tall, shifting until nearly unrecognizable - something profoundly other; an audience for his malcontent.

Slouching in his seat, he studies his whiskey, the liquid bronze that swirls within the glass as he turns it. Vaguely, he imagines he is turning time - turning back the clock to an era when he laughed easier, smiled wider, and touched with just as much voracity. Mostly, he is falling, backwards and head first into a state of confliction.

Elizabeth Eldridge was beautiful, something he would often voice with confidence and charm, a sense of satisfaction, as though he were pleased by the sight of her. It was not, he thinks, that he desired her, or wanted her in any sense of physical context. Merely that, he imagined her essence of ethereal beauty was the sort he wanted to marry, someone not unlike vapors - whole and tangible, yet effervescent, and cradled by his hands alone.

Elizabeth Eldridge, in the end, burned without dignity and with all of her pride. Holy fire kissed her, sucked the oil from her skin and used it as fuel. Unfazed, she smiled as though she expected it, as though she were gladdened by the heat, and laughed. She laughed - it is this he remembers most, the shrillness of it and the way Yixing had to look away, tormented by the sight of the flames themselves. She laughed as her skin fell evaporated, exposing the underbelly of her muscles and bones, marrow melting with little pomp and circumstance. In the night sky, her voice continued to echo, a shrill resolution and promises of a return, a throne, a king.

People, he knew, say an awful lot of things in their moment of death - some amounting to statements a profound lamentation of grief or honest declarations of validation, but most usually an annunciation of promise that summarises a life well lived or well intended. Luhan ensured her fate with the splitting of his limbs, and so Junmyeon did not think to question her words, ensured, even in death, by his leader.

Now, with little to comfort him, he wonders if he has earned quite as much from his coven. Had Luhan been wrong? Had he? Had their fate been sealed long before their birth and long after their death? Would he, with the same boldness and conviction, make the same choices?

Would he die, knowing as he does now, that even this selflessness may be in vain?

Would he let himself be shattered for you, if it meant your safety was only momentarily assured?

With a soft click, Yixing pushes through the door and comes to pause, regarding Junmyeon with a concerned expression as he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He should be used to it, Junmyeon thinks, the feeling of inquisitive eyes resting and feasting on his skin, but still he looks down at his lap, burdened by the attention. At once, the air becomes thick, slithering down Junmyeon’s spine with the same slowness as Yixing’s eyes over his face, studying and questioning, and, most likely, knowing.

Yixing does not allow him a reprieve, maintaining his penetrative scrutiny as he takes off his shoes. ‘You’re home early,' he states, testing the atmosphere.

Junmyeon remains pensive, brow furrowed as he studies the denim weaving of his jeans. The universe has offered him a kindness, he supposes, that it is Yixing who has found him and not the others. Already, he can hear the words that will be hurled towards him once he tells the truth.

Liar. Hypocrite. Embarrassment. Asshole. Cunt.

He deserves them, he thinks, perhaps they suit him best. And he notes, with little emotion, that he has given himself over to you far quicker than Minseok gave over to his herbalist, wondering if he ever truly deserved the title of a leader.

‘I met her today.’

He tosses the words out with conviction, meaning them to the edge of the world and trying to be repulsed by them. There should be no instance in which he craves death or danger, no instance in which he seeks the palm of your hand and the fall of a mountain - but he does. He wants, with all of himself, every fiber of the release you promise and finds, as Minseok had said, that death feels justified.

Death, in this moment, is justified, for it is the only consequence equal to the sentiment he carries for you.

Unmoved and keeping his expression placid, Yixing blinks. ‘Met who.’

Junmyeon rolls his eyes, knowing this is both a formality and a test, and everything but a question. The words matter, need to be said out loud and broken apart; inspected, learned alongside the full breadth and scope of their consequence. But still, he hates it, feels childish that he must say it at all. There have never been any secrets in this house, not truly, and the bitterness of this truth rises on his tongue.

He swallows thickly before he speaks, petulant. ‘Don’t act like you don’t know, Xing.’

Sliding out a chair directly opposite him, Yixing settles softly and places his journal on the table, resting his hand on the leather cover. Idly, his fingers stroke over the worn texture, body positioned in a resolute show of peacekeeping and calm. Junmyeon watches the movements of his fingers, hypnotized though not altogether soothed. War lingers behind his eyes, and the contact Yixing maintains with his journal tells him he can feel it.

Yixing knows, senses the magnitude of his afternoon, and clutches to small comforts as though they are a cross.

For a long while, Junmyeon is glad to simply sit with him, neither speaking nor allowing hostility to enter the room - amazed that they are capable of such a thing without Chanyeol. For a long while, they simply sit, gathering strength to both say the words and let them breach the kitchen once more.

Eventually, Junmyeon pinches the bridge of his nose, knowing the end of this day - of this life - is inevitable.

‘My soulmate,’ he says, meeting Yixing’s eyes and letting his gaze pierce the edge of his lungs.

Yixing leans back in his chair, regarding him with some distance, words settling against his skin. Nodding minutely, he hums, neither accepting nor battling the admission. Simply, letting it co-exist between them, acknowledging that there is a becoming amongst them, and there is more of it to be said.

Yixing’s silence is much like quicksand, edging Jummyeon forward and urging him to continue.

Once more, he looks at his lap, unwilling to let Yixing’s potential judgement tarnish the memory. ‘She came to the bookstore and I...we…’ his voice trails, splintering under the immense pressure of explanation. ‘We went to the cafe across from the shop,’ he says, finally, returning his gaze to Yixing’s. ‘I spent over an hour with her, talking. She’s trying to help us.’

Removing his hand from the journal, Yixing nods once more, humming in consideration.

‘Even,’ he begins, tone curious though his eyes remain hard, ‘after you were...so adamant against Minseok meeting with his?’

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Junmyeon retorts, ‘like I’m the worst sort of hypocrite.’ Jaw tense, he grits his teeth before continuing. ‘She’s from their coven, and Min said she could help. I didn’t know it would be her. That she would be the one.’

‘And can she help?’ Yixing keeps his attention on the woodmarks in the table, the frayed and overstuffed pages of his journal, anywhere but Junmyeon’s face.

Face morphing into a scowl, Junmyeon cocks a brow and moves through the sense of judgement Yixing has cast, focusing instead on all the words Yixing made it a point to ignore. He chose to focus, not on the fact that she is his soulmate, but instead on the fact that she can help. Perhaps, he assumes, because it is this information that is most pertinent. And, even more, it is this information that must be handled, managed beyond, and alongside, the grave understanding of their impending demise. He was always like that, walking around and through a conversation to get to the heart.

Junmyeon shrugs, knowing that you can, and you probably will, but even still your help may not be enough. ‘She knows sacred geometry,' he announces, careful with the way he says it, watching Yixing’s expression for a sign of change.

It has the same effect on Yixing as it did on him: a sharp intake of breath, a soft blanche to the cheeks, and a hand returning to his journal. The temperature of the room seems to rise, putting a flush at Junmyeon's ears and neck, before it dissipates, and Yixing gathers his thoughts, placing his hand back in his lap once more as though nothing about Junmyeon’s words hurt.

Junmyeon almost smiles, witnessing your power as it walks over all of them, claiming their house and their skin as the fabric of your own. Slowly, delicately, you are touching all of them, pulling at their hearts with adept and agile fingers, exposing what lies beneath.

Yixing himself becomes distant for a moment, not altogether present as he walks backwards into memory with much the same force as Junmyeon. Irises clouded, he thinks and thinks, his silence heavy and full hearted with grief.

‘It seems ironic she would be a seal,' he reasons, a small frown forming at his lips. 'But then...so did Lu.’

It's difficult to ignore his choice of words - "did" rather than "was," delicately handling the visceral image that haunts Junmyeon from the moment he met you. Neither a memory nor a premonition, just an inevitable course of destruction: you in the blueprint, just the same as Luhan.

Shaking his head, Junmyeon takes in an unstable breath. ‘It feels like a cursed magic.’

Yixing shakes his head. ‘You’re a self fulfilling prophecy, Jun,’ he says sharply, refusing to let him wallow. ‘Preparing to lose her the way you blame yourself for losing him.’

Tightening his grip on his glass, Junmyeon takes a drink of whiskey, letting the burn cool the back of his throat. ‘Bonding leads to death, Xing.'

Feeling somewhat volatile, he brings the glass back to the table with a loud smack. ‘You know that, I know that. We had to lose someone in order to seal it away, and now we have to lose someone again to keep the order.’

‘You always knew these rules,' Yixing says evenly, combative in a way that frustrates Junmyeon. 'We all know these rules. We knew we would have to lose each other, at some point, to keep this world alive.’

And all at once, all over again, Junmyeon finds himself the week after Luhan died, when the world was quiet but still full of ash and smoke. Hollowed, is how he described the feeling, as though it were his limbs ripped away and placed into the pentagon. Yixing clutched his shoulder, eyes neither sad nor grieving, simply empty, dark in a way that made Junmyeon find him inhuman. With his nails digging into Junmyeon's chemise, he said these same words, unable to provide comfort for he too was beyond the point of consolation. Simply, stating the truth of the pain so they at least could understand the logic and the weight, if not the aftermath.

Rolling his tongue over his teeth, Junmyeon brings himself back to the present, cradling the difference between the here and now with the past in his palms.

‘It was easier when I felt the absence of it.' He feels small as he says it, childish and impossibly young, uncertain how to handle the intensity of such a truth. 'When there was nothing to feel, and everything to just know, it was so easy.’

Yixing chuckles. 'Pretending took work, once upon a time. You've just grown used to it.'

The center of his chest constricts, feeling the words into the nodes of his lungs, and he coughs. Looking away from Yixing, he takes another sip of his whiskey, downing the glass. ‘When was the last time...' he fades, licking his lips as he prepares his question, 'that we felt?’

Arching his brow, Yixing takes the bottle from the center of the table and pours him another glass. ‘I think the question, Jun,' he says, holding his gaze fiercely rather than watch the volume of the glass, 'is when was the last time you let yourself feel.’ Bringing the bottle to his lips, he takes a quick drink before setting it down, posture straight and austere. ‘You’ve been running.’

‘I’ve been leading,' Junmyeon snaps, ‘protecting. Holding us together.’

‘But you haven’t held yourself.' The whiskey in his throat has set Yixing's words ablaze, tongue unafraid of cutting him down. ‘Not together, not in one piece, just not at all. It’s like you’re in a constant place of triage. You can’t blame yourself for a choice he made, for a thing we all did. We knew, and we know - that will never change. What matters is how you experience it.’

Junmyeon laughs, cold and frustrated in bewilderment. ‘So what are you saying? That I’ve watched death and walked away unscathed? That I shut down and felt nothing at all?’

‘Not at all,' he says, voice like a thunderclap. ‘I’m saying you’ve watched death, and never walked away again. You’ve put yourself in a grave and called it a life.’

Junmyeon shivers, lips parting to speak or defend himself, only to fall silent, too aware of the honesty in Yixing's words to fight them. Shaking his head, he takes another drink, eyes unfocused and glassy with thoughts of how he got here.

‘What are we talking about anymore?’ he mutters, swallowing his drink and letting it sear his insides. ‘I feel like I’m drifting at sea. Like she’s taking me apart...unmaking who I am.’

Yixing cocks his head to the side, considering his words. ‘Or, she’s reminding you of who you were.’

It's like a falsehood, he thinks, remembering the person he was when magic felt like a blessing, a gift. The difference between his compassion and his sense of security is, he believes, down to a reduction. A reduction of life, of hope, of reasons to accept that all things end while losing the belief that they will end happily. Once, he thought he was getting better, that he'd had enough distance and enough peace to convince himself life both gives and takes in spades.

But that was decades ago, and just before the man in front of him started screaming in his sleep, tormented by prophecies.

‘There’s a lunar eclipse tonight,' Yixing says, gathering his journal as he comes to stand. 'You should go see it.’

Blinking, Junmyeon regards him, unsure when the notion the conversation was over had filtered into the room. Yet, the mention of the moon seems to smooth his edges, pulling hard enough at his ribs to give his lungs room to breathe. He needs her, he thinks, the only light that has ever given him peace.

‘You always feel best when she’s with you,' Yixing continues, letting his voice drift behind and fall on Junmyeon like rain. 'Just as empty or just as full.’

At night, Smith Pool assumes a foreboding aura, yet somehow maintains its majesty beneath the light of the full moon, the deep purple black of the sky reflected on the water with an otherworldly glow. His fingers idly stroke the blades of grass, damp with the evening’s caress of dew, coated and slick as though waiting in anticipation for his touch. The wetness walks along his fingers, gliding over his skin and tracing patterns that defy gravity, called to him the way he is called to the moon.

Tonight, he does not manipulate them, mold them, does not even consider it. He lets them go, wetting his hands before they slip away, lost but not forgotten. Softly, his heart breaks, releasing the water without truly kissing it or connecting with it an unnatural act for king amongst his children, but the memory of consequence haunts him, puts a terror in his bones that assures him he may never hold anything ever again.

Luhan’s face springs back behind his eyes, stone faced and ashen, eyes holding his gaze with a conviction that bordered on feral as he let the words wash over him.

‘Someone is raising Paimon.’

Even now, centuries later, he regrets saying it - saying it on his knees and gasping for breath, as though the world was already ending. It was. They both knew it was. It started to end the moment ritual die had been cast, but he wonders. Always, he wonders.

Would Luhan have run head first into annihilation if he had spoken calmly, concisely, without shame or guilt? If he hadn’t loved Sasha like his own, would all of this have hurt less? Would things have looked different, if he hadn’t been cut from the same cloth - one nature magician from above pitted against one nature magician from below?

If he weren’t the devil’s mirror, would they all be free?

Logically, he knows the answers - knows that, regardless of how it looked, the ending would always be the same. But still, the wonder reminds him that he hurts, and this is how he remembers he survived.

‘The moon brought you out too, I see?’

The sound of your voice pulls him from his thoughts, startling him with a small jump. Casting a glance over his shoulder, he sees you approach, footsteps light enough on the grass he almost believes you are floating. Your presence empties him, mind suddenly vacant of thought or action, heart stumbling to put himself back together, locking his secrets away.

‘Sorry?’

He doesn’t mean to sound breathless, like he’s overexerted himself to be near you. It’s just that, with your body close enough to touch, standing above him, in the dark and the night, with only the moon to see, he struggles to find his self control.

Biting your lip, you hang your head slightly and nod in apology. ‘I can sit somewhere else.’ You gesture vaguely towards the opposite end of the lake. ‘I just had a feeling…’ Shifting your weight from foot to foot, you sigh as your voice fades away, nervous. He smiles at you, the sound making his blood run hot. ‘It’s just nice to see that the moon touches you the way it touches me,’ you clarify in a rush, suddenly shy that you’ve said anything at all.

Any other night, any other person, and he’d have asked that you leave him, go far away from him so he can be alone and the world can be safe and he can imagine the universe only changes when you look closely enough to notice the difference. Considering the flush at your cheeks, he almost tells you to leave altogether, to go back to New York, because seeing you gone means he doesn’t have to see you get hurt.

But then, considering the flush at your cheeks, he knows to be away from you is just the same as death, and so he smooths the grass beside him with a tense palm, keeping his smile placid in the effort of not giving himself away.

‘You don’t have to,’ he says, trying to keep his tone casual. ‘Sit somewhere else, I mean.’

Beaming, you settle beside him, leaving just enough space between your bodies for the breeze in the air to feel like a chill. He hopes you do not notice him shiver.

‘How could you tell?’ he asks. ‘It’s pretty specific to assume the moon is why I’m here.’

The curl in your lips when you smile tells him you have a secret, that you’re proud of it, a dimple forming in your right cheek. His fingers twitch, stopping himself from reaching out to touch it.

‘I know I laugh too loud,’ you explain, smile unwavering, ‘and giggle a lot - at pretty much everything - and can sometimes come across as, I don’t know, childish -’

Junmyeon cuts you off. ‘I don’t think you’re childish.’ He holds your stare, watching your smile fall as you consider his serious expression. ‘I’ve never thought that. Not once.’

‘Thank you,’ you mumble, swallowing thickly as you hold his stare. When you speak again, it is only after you take in a shaking breath, looking away from him to peer out over the water. ‘I’m bad with words,’ you announce, either as apology or clarification - he is unsure. ‘I’m just saying, I know how it seems. That someone like me wouldn’t know or be aware...but I do.’ Looking back at him once more, your eyes are resolved, unwavering. ‘I see more than most people give me credit for. And I know. I know.’

‘That we’re soulmates?’ he tries, wanting to hear you say it.

Something about this makes you laugh, head cocked back and mouth open to the sky. The sound of your voice echoes, carries into the air and rains over him. The hairs on his arms stand on end, mouth running dry as he watches you surrender, heart first, into bliss.

Regarding him once more, your eyes seem to dance in the moonlight. ‘It’s very hard to ignore the elephant sized tension here, don’t you think?’ Resting your head on your hand, you smirk. ‘It’s a little distracting.’

It’s his turn to laugh, eyes falling to his lap, sheepish. Around you he feels young, so impossibly young and small and unprepared. ‘I don’t know how Min did this.’

‘He didn’t.’

You fill the words with humour, but he still catches the undercurrent - the rolling wave of want that makes them fall, thick and heavy, against his skin. When he looks at you again, you appear placid and serene, but he feels the tension that vibrates from your core - the same vibration at the core of his soul. It’s hurting you not to touch him, the same way his skin feels tight, wrapped around and around his bones, until the water in him has been wrung dry.

‘We can’t…’ He shakes his head, uncertain what he even intended to say.

‘I know,’ you concede, catching his meaning and leaning back on both hands to regard the water once more. ‘Seals are funny things aren’t they? There’s always a special kind of thrill in breaking them, some kind of rush - even if you have permission to open them, even if you already know what’s inside; you just want to touch them.’

Mirroring your position, Junmyeon considers your words and chooses to avoid them, unwilling to let talk of seals spoil the light of the moon. ‘How did you learn sacred geometry?’ he asks, instead.

‘The way you’d learn any other kind of magic: practice and study,’ you shrug, as though it took no skill or effort at all. Junmyeon briefly wonders if this is your magic - a knowing, similar to Minseok’s. But rather than a knowing of events, you manage to know the very nuances of magic itself. The thought makes his stomach drop, not in fear but in awe.

‘I assume,’ you continue, looking up at the moon and basking in the light, ‘you mean to ask why did I choose to learn it?’

Junmyeon nods. ‘I suppose so, yeah.’

‘It’s reciprocal.’ Brow furrowed and focused, you still don’t turn to face him, though he’s sure you can feel his eyes as they wander over your cheeks, your lips, the very curvature of your profile. ‘As above so below,’ you ponder, repeating your words from earlier in the day. ‘It’s a method of seeing the other side of magic - the origin, the darkness, and the beauty. If I can understand the madness, then I can understand how to heal it. If I can understand the symmetry, then aren’t I little bit more connected to the source?’

Someone like you should be impossible, he thinks, someone who holds the heart of magic and does not burn from the force of it. His heart beats like thunder in his chest, tearing through his sternum to get to you, awed and humbled by your ability to command the source of things, to understand and fathom the totality of it - accepting it without wanting to harness it.

‘That’s an interesting way of looking at it,’ he says, licking his lips as blood rushes in his ears. ‘Luhan, our brother…’

‘He’s the one you lost?’

Finally, you look at him once more. Shoulders lowering in relief, he is almost ashamed of the command you have over his body so soon. Grief lingers behind your eyes, sad for him and sad for the memory, and he wars with himself against pulling you close. The muscles in his arms twitch, and he presses himself into the ground with the effort of keeping still, stopping himself from closing the distance.

‘Yes,’ he says, though his usual contempt for the memory does not rear its head. He imagines this is because your presence is a balm, a comfort, and he wishes at once that you do not depart from him, not for the night and never again.

Eyes softened, he watches your hand as it moves along the grass, heading towards his fingers before retreating back to its original position.

‘I’m sorry,’ you say softly, the conviction behind it powerful enough to steal the breath from his lungs.

Centuries have passed, full of people he thought perhaps he could call friends, people who were there, in town and watching him grieve; others still who heard the tale, having lost someone in their life too - for different reasons, but lost just the sam - and all had offered condolences, reached for a hug or his hand or his shoulder as though the touch of a stranger would be comfort enough to ease the pain. For centuries, people have come and gone, and lived and died, and all have seen the grief within his soul and apologized for it being there at all, and not once had he believed they were sincere.

Never, until you.

‘He learned it to understand time,’ he continues, blinking through the dryness in his throat in order to keep his composure. ‘He wanted to understand how patterns repeat or don’t repeat; life and all the smallness of it.’

Junmyeon casts his gaze back out to the water, aware that he’s rambling and fearing he is speaking, now, just to speak. Your gaze remains on his, steadfast and unwavering, toying with his pulse as though it were your plaything. He wonders if you are having fun, invading his synapses so easily.

‘He mastered it,’ he continues, short of breath, ‘probably because he knew we never can truly separate ourselves from the cosmic nature of things.’

‘Ananta.’

The reverence in your voice as you speak nearly makes him whimper, wishing to be cradled against you the way your mouth cradles the word. Steeling his strength, he lets his eyes move over your body, fixing you with a confused expression he hopes does not morph into one of longing.

But you continue to smile, sighing contentedly as though pleased by the mere sight of him.

‘It’s a Hindi expression to describe the endless nature of the cosmos,’ you explain, licking your lips as your gaze wanders briefly down to his neck. ‘They were among the first to really study cosmology.’ With a small sigh, you move your gaze back up to his face, seemingly satisfied. Junmyeon’s fingers dig into the grass, spine going tense under your scrutiny. ‘The whole of the universe is within ourselves, and that is why we are sacred.’

Silence befalls you both, a comfortable silence that carries no expectation for conversation. Raising your eyes to the moon, you continue to smile, content and calm and glowing beneath the light of the moon. He begins to feel erratic, eyes tracing over your features in the struggle to process your existence, and the way you seem to accept the universe as though you were its sole creator.

‘When I’m with you,' he exhales, eventually, 'I feel like I know nothing.’ Slowly, you bring your gaze back to his, and still your smile does not fade. His breath catches, brow furrowing in the effort not to swoon. ‘Like, I'm starting over - I have everything to learn, all over again.’

A flush creeps up Junmyeon's neck, lips opening and closing as his eyes go wide. This sort of admission, this vulnerability, is unfamiliar, almost painful, and he suddenly does not know how to respond himself. Now, your hands are not just touching his memory, you are taking hold of his self-identity, coaxing words from his chest and knowledge from his mind, leaving him empty and wanting and completely at your mercy. With you, he feels fragile and uncertain, and he cannot remember the last time he let himself become shy.

Humming, you don't appear to notice that he's let himself become small. Or, perhaps, you do, and your smile of pleasure does not change, for you find enjoyment in all things, especially the stuttering rhythm of his heart.

‘That’s probably because there is always something to learn,' you shrug. 'You’ve been feeling as if you have to know everything, assuming that you do or, at least, assuming that you have to.’

At this, you fall back onto the grass, laying down with your hands tucked beneath your head as a makeshift pillow. Closing your eyes, you press into the earth, unbothered by the dampness that soaks into your shirt and jeans, luxuriating in the softness.

‘How do you do that?’ he mumbles, incredulous.

Turning to peer up at him, wide eyed and curious, you pout. ‘Do what?’

Again, his hands clench in the grass, clutching at fistfuls as he struggles not to bed down and kiss you; tongue running through your mouth and along your lip, hungry. ‘Approach everything like it’s something for play,' he manages with a cough, voice thick.

This only makes your pout deepen, and he swallows a moan. The sweetness of you is a poison, he reminds himself. He will want to taste and hold and devour you, and it is imperative he does not.

‘Is that a bad thing?’

‘No,' he shakes his head, 'I just don’t understand.’

Looking at the faded blue of his jeans and the browned stains on his white sneakers, he focuses his attention on these details as he speaks, rather than the pink curve of your lips.

‘How do you come away from everything as though it won’t hurt you? Or doesn’t?’ Frustration bleeds back into his voice, and he is glad his focus remains on these insignificant things, because now he feels like himself. ‘How can you laugh, even tonight? The moon is full but the water doesn’t glow, not really, not from below. The light doesn’t touch the bottom anymore, and you walked up to me ready to laugh. I know you’re smart enough to see these things, and you feel these things, but why do you...how do you...people have died.’ When he looks at you again, he is angry, and he is glad for the wrath of it. ‘Death stains things, it stains people, and you can’t ever walk away from that or pretend like it’s okay it happened.’

Rolling onto your side, you gaze up at him, face unmarred by hurt or upset. Junmyeon chews the inside of his cheek, breathless and ready to curse himself for his vitriol, but you don't seem to mind. Instead, you merely seem interested, appreciative that he shared these things at all.

‘Do you think that’s what I do?’ you muse, choosing your words carefully, almost tender with your selection. ‘Pretend?’

‘Don’t you?’ Junmyeon implores, feeling needy and small and praying you agree with him, because he can't fathom a life any other way.

Suddenly, your gaze hardens. ‘Absolutely not.’

His stomach drops, lips falling into a frown, crestfallen. ‘Then I don’t get it.’

‘Who showed you how to keep horror in your chest?' you almost laugh, he can hear it in the tightness of your words. ‘You weren’t born with it.’ Brow furrowed, you take your time picking him apart, considering the totality of him before continuing. ‘I don’t pretend. That’s so disingenuous.’ Shaking your head, you pluck at the grass near his thigh. ‘When anything happens, I just grieve. I grieve deeply and I’m not afraid of showing the pain. I let it out - I don’t rush myself out of it. When you do that, it never really lets go, it just holds onto you tighter. It makes a home out of you, and it stays there, waiting to rise up and eat away at you.’

Pursing your lips, you pause. In the quiet, Junmyeon finds himself missing the sound of your voice.

‘You heal by letting it win you over,' you finish with an almost imperceptible nod, 'just for a little while, until it’s small enough to slip out of your hands.’

He wants to laugh, howl at the idea that such a thing could even be possible. ‘You’ve never had to lead.’

‘Leadership doesn’t exclude you from the spectrum of human emotion,' you counter. ‘We have power, we are special, but we still feel and we still bleed.’

‘What if it never lets you go?’ Mirroring your position, he settles on his right side. He feels almost like a child, sordid and unsure and so, so contented by the nearness of you. It is for this reason, he assumes, that he is able to share at all, and the thought makes the tips of his fingers go numb. ‘What if it never gets small?’

‘Then you accept that it’s part of you, but you don’t let it own you.’ Taking in a deep inhale, you reach for his hand in the grass, twining your fingers together tightly, seriously. ‘You are not comprised of horror alone,' you announce, authoritative and almost severe. 'You are not a collection of misery and death. You are a man, and you are magical. You just need to take command of yourself, not those around you.’

Junmyeon is trembling, tremors running down and through his veins at the sudden feel of your skin against his. The warmth of your hand floods him like a fever, lips parting to take in more oxygen, world rocking beneath him as though he were out at sea. You seem to notice it too, eyes suddenly going wide, and the smooth expanse of your chest along the neckline of your shirt turning pink, and then red.

Behind his eyes, he sees himself, inching closer over the earth to hover above you, lips pressing against yours and knees parting your legs to settle between them. He sees himself clutch your hips, your hands brace his arms, his mouth at your neck, and -

He pulls his hand away, rolling back over to sit up, hugging his knees to his chest. His semi-hard erection strains against his jeans, protesting this new, uncomfortable position.

‘I didn’t expect you to be so blunt,' he says, weakly.

‘Well,' you breathe, voice unsteady and tone dry. Junmyeon smiles. 'The thing about me is I feel all my emotions. The whole range.’ He hears you sit up as well, brushing grass off what he assumes is the back of your shirt. He does not chance a glance. ‘Not just the ones I hold in higher judgement.’

Smirking, he glances at his hands, folded over his legs. ‘You’re getting spicy now.’

‘Spicy?’ you laugh in mock offense. ‘I just call it tough love.’

And then, he can't help it. At once, he's looking at you again, savoring you and the word you've put into the air, as if it meant nothing. As if it were light, and weightless, and easy. ‘Love?’

Settling your arms at your side, he watches as your spine straightens and your neck elongates, suddenly empowered. ‘Do you want it to be?’

His chest constricts, systematically removing the air required to speak. Yes, he nearly screams. He wants it, oh, how he wants it to be, knows that it should be. The joints of his fingers ache from where you touched him, furious to be separated and burning with the loss; his thighs ache, tense from trying to cool the blood of his desire and to ensure his arousal remains unnoticed. He wants you, all of you, and it is the first time in centuries he's wanted a person beyond a body within which he could briefly forget.

Undaunted by his silence, you look back up at the moon. ‘The moon is out. Maybe she knows something.’

The light plays with your hair as though it makes a home of you, casting silver and glitter into the strands in a pattern he finds hypnotizing. Always, the moon enhances aspects of a person - he has always known this, understood the full spoke and terror of the light she provides. She is a beacon, a hope, and a home for the lost creatures and souls that call to her, but she is rarely forgiving.

On you, she is exquisite.

The light settles against your skin, casting shadows and carving the edges of your jaw, your nose, your brow as though she were painting you, sculpting you. It radiates out from beneath your skin, glowing from within as the magic seeps from your pores. Staring at you, he feels he could be blinded, visioned burned by the holiness of you, and as the tears well in his eyes - abrupt and unwelcome and terrifying - the light becomes a halo, and then becomes wings, turning you into the goddess of the moon.

It was always you, his one and only serenity.

‘The moon pulls at water, creating the tides.’ He’s unsure why he says it, why he speaks at all. In the end, he supposes it’s because he sees you as something ephemeral, and speaking, even if it hurts him, opens him, will keep you by his side. ‘Everyone knows that,’ he smirks. ‘It’s basic laws of gravity. But people forget that they are made of water, and the moon pulls at them, too.’

Keeping still, you smile up at the moon and through the light, appreciative and proud. ‘The moon has always been responsible for deep emotional revelations.’

‘Insomnia, depression, psychosis, anxiety,’ he lists, joining you in adoring the moon. ‘She pulls at people, makes them confront what they don’t want to see.’

In his peripheral, he sees you shake your head, heartily disagreeing. ‘She heals it though,’ you say, voice serene. ‘She’s creative, intuitive, spiritual. You don’t hurt for nothing.’

It strikes him, then, that he likely was not wrong, not entirely. His heart sees you as a goddess, showered and anointed by the light, nurtured into full bloom in the dark and in the flow. He sees you as a goddess, but then, in the old days, when magic was known and revered and respected, the moon goddesses were often called oracles. And, perhaps, you are descended from the temple of the moon, a modern day priestess, sent to break and rebuild all his darkest pieces, sewing him back together with silver.

‘Is that your magic?’ he tries, realizing he never really did ask how you define your skills. ‘The moon?’

Suddenly shy, you bow your head and let your halo become a crown. ‘In a sense, yes.’ Turning to smile at him, he no longer sees your beauty as something soft but as something biblical. ‘I understand her, how she affects people - her cycles, her power, her secrets. I’m sensitive to her, aware of how the planets, all nine of them, bend and yield to her.’

Looking back up at the sky, it appears for a moment that your soul stretches beyond the earth, and beyond time. ‘The stars, too, I get power from them as well. The sun is a star, people often forget that. I see how the sun and the moon play together, and, I guess, how they play with people. That’s probably why people assume I’m weak.’ Biting your lip, you pause. ‘Because I’m perceptive rather than aggressive.’

For centuries, he's cursed the foolishness of mortals, hiding in plain sight and letting them win him over because he watched them die. Magic had burned the world - unholy and corrupted with sin - and he had let it. He let men and mortals define a great many things about him, and not once did he mind. But for you to be seen as weak or something unassuming, meager, he finds himself offended. You are one with the universe, and therefore all creatures should bow to you.

You, he believes, are the blueprint and creator of the universe.

‘The stars are going out again,' you announce abruptly, interrupting his thoughts.

Junmyeon blinks, surprised by this sudden change of subject. ‘Again?’

‘It was hard to tell in New York, but we saw it,' you sigh, closing your eyes and sucking in a deep breath, overcome. ‘Back during the great war, the sky went black.’

When he thinks back to the war, he remembers a great many things - terrible things that have coated his skin with wax, embalming him for eternity. He remembers the smell and the screams, the wet ink of notices on church doors declaring another woman damned; the trials and the yelling and the way no one could look each other in the eye. He remembers the way trust vanished, a frail thing that likely never existed to begin with, offered with a sense of reciprocity but never truly delivered. He remembers looking everywhere, at everyone, but not at the sky.

‘What was that like for you?’

‘For my coven?’ you ask, fixing him with a hard stare. It doesn't seem to suit you, but now he sees that you, too, are tormented. ‘Or for me?’

‘You,' he affirms, glad to be so direct.

‘It hurt.' You answer comes without hesitation, gaze unwavering and focused. ‘When the war reached its peak, the sky was completely black. It was a new moon for days, and I ached with the lack of it. It was unnatural - it felt like the universe was dying, decaying before my eyes and I was helpless.’ Momentarily, you pause, eyes searching the darkness that lingers behind him, eyes unseeing, simply remembering. ‘My sisters did their best. They’re empathetic and sensitive, completely aware, but they couldn’t feel it the way I did. Every death, I felt it in my soul, pieces crumbling away.’

He lets you wander in the memory, watches the way you swim inside it without ever falling completely into its clutches. Your eyes move over everything - over his face, his body, the water, the dock that lingers far behind him - but you don't stop. He wonders if this is how he looks, when he becomes consumed, and knows, with a small bush, that it is not. Where you remember actively, fighting through and around the length of your life, he remains still, letting it hold him until he surrenders just as he did the day he learned to hurt.

‘I suppose,' you continue, returning to the present, smiling as though you have a secret you're too excited to keep, 'in the end, what I was really feeling was you.’

His mouth runs dry, blood seeming to halt in the chambers of his heart, as your sentence ends. It rattles him, quakes him, unmakes his DNA as a floodgate inside him opens. He knows what you were feeling, knows that, even without knowing, he had felt it too - felt you too. Separate and together, you had survived the unnatural and unresisted surrender to the promise of brutality.

Thousands of miles away, in a small settlement in New York, you had felt the world end and felt his soul break. And he, confronted with the totality of hell, felt the loneliness that comes with knowing - knowing without seeing or feeling. Knowing that, he was falling apart, and someone was meant to be there to hold him, and was not.

He thought it was Lu. All this time, he had been grieving for Lu. And, only after you study him with care and attention and worry, does he realize he was grieving for you, too.

Pushing himself up and away from the earth, he rises to a stand as he struggles to keep his breath under control. Again, he feels himself become devoured, given over and overwhelmed by the understanding and the magnitude of your connection. If he does not leave, he will no longer be able to trust his actions and, after so many years alone, he stubbornly considers himself his greatest companion, unwilling to truly let himself go.

If he stays, he will have you, press himself against you until there are no edges along your bodies. He will live inside you, the way you live inside him, and nothing, not even the threat of death, will tear you apart.

'Are you okay?' you ask, startled by his sudden shift in energy.

'I have to go,' he says, words falling from his lips in a rush. 'I have to talk to my brothers. I...realized something.'

With this, he turns and leaves you and the moon feeling too full and too consumed to keep still. It hurts to leave, he feels it in the way his legs and feet ache with every step he takes, pulling himself from a soul deep comfort he has spent the length of his existence craving, but he does not look back, not even once.

Outside the door, Junmyeon can see the kitchen light is on.

Lingering on the porch, he shifts his weight from foot to foot, considering if he wants to go in. All the way home, his mind had been racing, spiraling towards thoughts of you, your body, the moon, your connection, and the all encompassing sense of dread that comes with it. He’s full, almost too full to be a normal and healthy person, breaths coming in ragged inhales that speak of exhaustion, and he’s not in the mood to talk.

He’s been praying for silence, to be alone with his thoughts and the empty nothingness of a glass of whiskey - his third of the night, but when confronted with a life alone or the ending of every life, he feels the numbers don’t matter. Silence, it seemed, would not be his companion this night, and he braces himself as he pushes through the door, readying for yet another discussion.

Minseok and Bakehyun busy themselves in the kitchen, cleaning and cooking respectively, deep in conversation. Upon his entrance, they hush, eyes falling on him and and expressions going calm, passive. Junmyeon’s eyes lower to the small carpet by the door, looking for Yixing’s shoes and finding they are not there. Gazing up once more, he notices the whiskey has been put away, placed back on the shelf and out of his reach. He’d have to cross Minseok if he wants to get it, and he bites his lip.

A brief twitch brings Baekhyun’s brow to a small knot, before dissipating, eyes warm with concern. ‘Are you ok?’ he asks gently.

It’s unlike him to be so soothing, usually boisterous and loud, and only effusive with Yixing. With both pairs of eyes on him, he roots his feet to the floor, fighting the urge to cross his arms defensively. Not that he could. Even down to his bones, he feels heavy and drained.

‘What are you guys talking about?’ he deflects, trying not to focus on the ache in his chest and the pain behind his eyes. ‘Am I interrupting something?’

‘The seals,’ Minseok clarifies, placing the tea towel onto the counter. Folding his arms, he considers Junmyeon with a speculative kindness. ‘How the birds dying were one, and that its the first time we’ve seen anything like them. They weren’t like this before, at least the birds certainly weren’t.’

Junmyeon simply nods, moving his focus to a seat at the table. He slumps heavily in the chair, closing his eyes as he leans back. His lower lip trembles, going numb. The water ran black, he remembers, undrinkable until boiled and sending the town into chaos. That was the first - and instead of living in the memory, he falls back to you. To your eyes as they wander over Smith Pool, unable to see that the moonlight no longer lets the water glow.

Neither black nor cursed, merely different. And that is frightening enough.

‘Baek thinks between Xing and myself, we could see if other seals, elsewhere, have been broken.’

It’s taking work for Minseok to keep himself peaceful and tender, a rough gravel behind his words giving an edge to his tone that feels conflicted. They’re both testing him, fully aware and not altogether sure they’re ready to address what they sense down to their very spirit, but Minseok has never been one to run from confrontation. And, tonight, Junmyeon wishes he would.

‘I’ve always wondered if it was just our coven with the curse,’ Baekhyun says, resuming the spread of his jam over toast. ‘Or if it was every coven.’

Keeping his eyes closed, Junmyeon frowns. ‘That sounds dangerously optimistic. Like you’re playing with fire.’

The words don’t sound like they come from him, his voice warped and garbled. The rhythm of his heart escalates, catapulted forward by Baekhyun’s simple statement, and he presses his nails into the palm of his hand. Optimism like this is dangerous - absolutely lethal. It’s an excuse and a reason to be with you, take you, feel you all over him and pretend that it’s not damning the rest of the world. If someone else is cursed, it means you might not be a seal, and that kind of hope is what leads men to shallow graves.

‘It’s worth a shot,’ Minseok counters. ‘I’m going to talk to Xing, see what else is in his notebook.’

Junmyeon tenses, spine going rigid as his breath falters. Behind his closed eyes, his vision runs hot, throat beginning to swell around the lump that has formed.

‘There’s a lot he doesn’t share,’ he persists, tone indicating he has seen Junmyeon’s reaction, but has chosen to continue anyway, ‘but I know something in there has to have an answer.’

‘Luhan’s head was in the center of that blueprint.’ Opening his eyes, he casts a cold stare at both of them, mind battling with too many thoughts and feelings to want to entertain this conversation. ‘We were sealed in the curse the minute she put him inside it. It’s pointless to go looking.’

Even after he finishes speaking, he regrets it. It’s the coldest, most insensitive he’s been in a long while, explicitly reminding them of all the things they had decided they’d never bring up again. But he does, and he hates himself for it, already knowing it was wrong.

Running his hands through his hair, he sighs, chewing at his tongue with enough force he hopes that it bleeds. He doesn’t want to talk about this, not now, not tonight. He doesn’t want to talk, but he knows he has to, and part of him, a sudden, overwhelming part, wants to share and share until there is nothing left inside him anymore, wondering how it would feel to be so free.

Minseok and Baekhyun remain quiet, and he feels their stares on him like a sickness. His skin goes damp, clammy, fingers carding through the strangs of his hair as they ball into fists, and he coughs. Regret consumes him, regret as old and ancient as his heart.

‘What’s up with you?’ Minseok asks, attempting, and failing to keep his tone soft. ‘You never talk this way.’

‘I met her.’ Junmyeon announces it, wet and unceremonious, between the palms of his hands. ‘I thought Xing would have told you.’

He waits patiently for the energy in the room to shift. He readies for it, bracing for the sound of Minseok’s cold hard laugh, a brutal I told you so, and Baekhyun’s sharp inhale sucked between his teeth. The chill will wander over him, making him shiver; conversations about pride, and how being a leader means he’s excluded from rules; the group called together at some unbearable hour of the night, and every cold hard stare reminding him he’s a hypocrite, and that he deserves this. He deserves this kind of hurt and separation, unworthy of a love as powerful as this.

He waits for them to say, without any hesitation, that if anyone deserves to stay away from love, it is him.

‘He wasn’t here when I got home,’ Minseok states, plainly. ‘She’s from their coven, isn’t she.’

Junmyeon tenses, brow furrowed in bewilderment. Lowering his hands, the blur of his vision focuses on Minseok, who leans against the counter with an expectant smirk.

‘You knew?’ he manages, voice suddenly impossibly small.

Minseok shrugs. ‘I had a feeling…’ He fades, bowing his head as he laughs to himself. ‘Yeah, I knew.’

His throat runs dry, mind racing. Pressing the flat of his hands to the table, he waits for the cool of the wood to seep into his skin. ‘Was this a set up?’

Raising his hands in mock surrender, Minseok shakes his head. ‘I only sensed it the day at the shop. I didn’t set that up on purpose. I promise.’

And he wants, with all of himself, to be upset and furious - because he is. There is a rage in him unlike anything he has grappled with before, a frustration so hot his skin feels tight and his teeth feel sore. His tongue has started to crack with words and thoughts, rubbing against the roof of his mouth as he watches Minseok smile and smile and smile, as if this were a game.

But he cannot. Because Minseok smiles, and Minseok knows, better than anyone, that there is nothing about this that is worth a laugh. He envisions you, standing beside Minseok with your warm smile, and the laugh lines on your face, and wants to hold onto the anger, but it fades, because all you are, and all he can be when presented with you, is pure, unfettered delight. Minseok has brought him home, and he did so without interfering, without judging, and without stopping him altogether.

Lips parted and body shaking, Junmyeon deflates, brow furrowed in remorse. ‘I’m sorry.’

Holding Minseok’s stare, he refuses to look away, imploring him to look and keep looking. Startled, he lowers his hands, looking at Baekhyun before returning Junmyeon’s focused stare, chewing the inside of his cheeks. He knows they both feel it, the weight of his apology and how it attempts, in just two weak, overdue words, to make up for all way Junmyeon fought him - fought everyone - battled through their emotions and told them it was unsafe to feel.

He’s sorry. And he knows they feel it.

‘Oh, shit,’ Baekhyun mumbles, posture straightening as his mind runs to conclusions.

Junmyeon moves his gaze to him, and regards his wide, doe eyes and the way his food remains, cold and forgotten at his side. Baekhyun seems more uncomfortable than Minseok, and this, he thinks, is just another unexpected turn the night could take.

‘Nothing,’ Baekhyun says, shaking his head in an effort to clear his thoughts. ‘It’s just...it’s been a really long time since you’ve apologized.’ He pauses, lips pursed momentarily before continuing. ‘For anything.’

He’s sure he must have, he thinks. He must have said the words at some point and some when, when things were less heavy and less dangerous than they are now. Reeling, he attempts to remember anything other than hurt and vitriol and trauma, and comes up empty. For so long, he’s pushed everyone, even himself, away, and now, he realizes, the only person who was unmaking him and his identity was himself.

‘Look,’ Minseok says, clearing his throat and getting Junmyeon’s attention, ‘I don’t blame you.’ The sincerity with which he speaks is uncharacteristic for someone just as austere as he, and Junmyeon feels himself arch a brow. ‘You did what you thought was right. And so did I.’

It’s the last thing he wants to hear, that connecting or letting you in or letting himself go is even remotely the right or moral thing to do. Eyes locked on Minseok, he silently wills him to take it back, imploring him to say it’s wrong, that they shouldn’t - that he shouldn’t.

But he doesn’t. He just nods, resolute in his convictions.

‘Jun, it is right,’ he affirms. ‘I don’t know how I was doing things before I met her, and, honestly, I don’t want to remember. Living like that -’ He cuts himself off, eyes scanning the room as his thoughts run wild before settling back on him, alive. ‘It’s not living. That was not living. She’s made me stronger, better. Do you really think I’d have forgiven you so easily if it weren’t for her influence? You were protective, sure, but you were an asshole about it.’

The argument between the two of them still lingers, smeared over the walls and chairs of the kitchen. They’d both been furious, Minseok and himself battling over an intangible possibility - a maybe that lead to a certainty, unclear yet already final.

‘Having a match means you are bonded to a duality, a light and a dark,’ he had said, as though it were simple and logical and effective enough to keep all of them away. But then, now, he has found you, and the ignorance of such a thing, the foolishness of it - as if the symmetry of being bound together were so easily ignored - makes him blush like a child.

And he thinks of you, the way the light washes over your skin, the way the moon holds you close, and the way you pull him towards you - accidental and unassuming - as though you alone are his moon. He thinks, now, that he is the darkness and you are the light he crawls towards, and knows that, for Minseok, it was likely this same feeling.

‘I feel like I’m losing control,’ he announces, pressing his fingers into his temples. ‘Like suddenly I’m helpless and immature, like my sense of identity is falling apart. I can’t let it go.’ Closing his eyes, he takes in a deep breath, shocked and alarmed that he’s saying this much at all. ‘It’s killing me,’ he continues, ‘the fact that a seal has been broken, and even worse, that I almost don’t care. It’s like nothing matters, and I know you said that - you were trying to tell me. But I can’t let it go. The risk, Min. I -’

‘Im telling you, its right.’ Minseok cuts off his rush of words, tone sharp and authoritative. ‘She’s there to make you better, she balances you. You weren’t wrong,’ he concedes, ‘that it’s a duality. But you have to realize that dualities are made for balance. I just so happens the result is just fucked up.’

They hold on another’s stares for a long while, Baekhyun looking awkwardly between them both, often glancing to the other room as if he wishes to leave. But he stays, and they stay, unified as the world seems to shift and change around them.

‘And no,’ Minseok announces, gaze resolute as he breaks the silence, ‘I won’t stop you from being with her.’

The tension in the room snaps, Junmyeon and Baekhyun regarding Minseok with alarmed, ashen faces. Even as he remains completely still, watching the way Minseok puts his hands in his pockets, casual and nonchalant, with steel in his spine that says he knows, Junmyeon feels the tectonic plates of the earth shift. It changes everything, the way they function as a coven and the way they approach their doom, has been reconstructed and made completely new.

It terrifies him, makes the tips of his fingers go numb and his breath halt. Hair falls into Baekhyun’s eyes, shifted from the force of his movements, but he does not bother to fix it. He, too, has been stilled, awed into silence, witnessing the cosmic shift with wide, wet eyes.

But still, he does not look as frightened as Junmyeon, who, behind his eyes, watches the world end and his heart soar, hands roaming over your body as you sweat gasoline into the grass, fires burning in the distance. Permission is dangerous, he knows, and Minseok knows it, too. And still, it does not stop him.

Nodding, Minseok merely smiles, seemingly unmoved by the shockwaves around him. ‘You have my blessing.’

The words cut Junmyeon deep, a gift he does not deserve and a sign that Minseok is better - better now and better before, a better man that he ever was; a better man than he could let himself be.

Weakened, Junmyeon releases a strained sigh, the sound breaking into the atmosphere as a moan. ‘You know what will happen,’ he argues, spitting dissent like it still matters to him. ‘Why I can’t, and certainly why I don’t deserve it.’

Minseok keeps his expression placid, and gaze stern. ‘I know.’

Emotion wells inside him, scorching against his throat as reality burns around him, shifting instead towards the reckless unknown of you. ‘Then why?’

‘Because you have to choose the light,’ he says, unmoved and unwavering. ‘If you don’t, it’s as good as letting hell win.’ Minseok smiles, running a hand through the purple strands of his hair, proud. ‘She taught me that.’

For a moment, they both get lost. Minseok in memories of love and growth, and Junmyeon in the knowledge that nothing will ever be the same. He’s full, full to the brim of you, and his breath comes shallow, empty, painful in his lungs as he thinks of you and lets himself want and want. And at once, its swept away, by visions of Luhan and the way they died, and how Sasha broke before his eyes and how he has always been feeling, and never once did he stop.

‘Did you really think there’s a way out of this?’ Minseok tries, redirecting the topic as though Junmyeon isn’t falling - as though, around him, everything is fine and normal. Junmyeon knows he must feel it, must see what he sees, but still he soldiers on. ‘That we’d be able to solve it or avoid it?’ He chuckles then, amused by their ignorance. ‘We were never going to resist. It was just a matter of time before we gave in, or before we were forced to come together. That’s the point of this - it’s bigger than us.’

‘So we’ve been helpless?’ Baekhyun says, gentle and sweet and Junmyeon can tell he sees something is wrong, but he, too, continues, leaving Junmyeon to drown on his own. ‘The whole time, it’s just been inevitable?’

‘Most likely.’ Minseok’s voice goes distant, the blood in Junmyeon’s ears turning his answers into little more than white noise, a static that does not bring him comfort. ‘Yixing’s been alluding to it, and even when the Black Witch burned, she promised the cycle would repeat. It was always going to look different, but she told us it would happen.’

‘So it’s all just been dormant,’ Baekhyun reasons, pushing from the counter to settle in the chair across from Junmyeon.

He sees him do this, but he does not actually witness it.

Instead, the tears that had threatened to consume him spill from his eyes. He’s glad for this, briefly, because now it means he can see Baekhyun, but the heat on his cheeks sears him deep, hand raising to the skin and discovering that it is wet. Around him, the world falls silent, Baekhyun’s shape blurring into a smear of nothingness while Minseok’s voice dies, muted by the throbbing in Junmyeon’s head.

The wetness glistens against his fingers, warm and slippery, and he wonders why he’s never bothered to touch this - the water that comes from his own body. He coughs, not realizing he’s started to sob, lips and mouth wet as he struggles to breathe, shattered inhales of pain and remorse and regret and the horrific, candied flavor of ardor.

He cries and he cries, feeling everything all at once with greedy fingers, pulling at his memories and pulling at you, wearing the images as tattoos against his soul. Luhan died, and so did he, and so did every part of himself he thought he loved. And you lived, smiled like he was a whole and complete man, something worth loving, reminding him he never did anything wrong, he just got scared. And the water, all this time, pulled away and came back to him with an aggression he thought was normal - waves that cast up against his legs, reminding him they are one and they are together - but never kissing him the same way again.

And now, for the first time, he cannot remember the last time the rain felt sweet, everything about a storm casting a gloom that made his shadow grow tall.

The skin of his cheeks feels trapped, torn between drying the tears as they stream from the heated temperature of his blood and feeling relief, a lightness to his pores as they release everything they’ve kept inside. There should be a reprieve from this, a release from his body as he shudders and fractures, letting himself feel vulnerable and aching with the shame of being seen.

Minseok and Baekhyun stay with him, neither reaching for his hand nor running away, frightened. Their presence, though not a comfort, is an alliance, an acceptance he had not granted himself for centuries, excluding himself from brotherhood under the guise of leadership. They welcome him back, silent and aware, keeping him company as he breaks, neither judging him for the noise or the shape this sort of breaking takes. He empties himself with them, pulls everything from the vessel of his soul and lays it bare, before them and asking that they hold it with him.

And they do, having done this together, without him; having done this centuries ago, finally gladdened that their brother has come home.

The moon remains full for three days, an omen waiting patiently in the center of the sky and altering the night. A halo of red orange light bleeds from its edges, spilling blood into its center and changing its usual silver hue into one of flames.

Chanyeol feels it the most, having been separate from all the conversations, but awoken and rattled just the same. A wolf inside him fights his spirit, affected by the moon more intensely than he normally would be, barely sleeping and leaving the house at odd hours, needing to be outside and needing to be alone. Minseok offers Junmyeon knowing looks each morning, reassuring glances that say it would have been this way regardless. Still, he sips his tea too slowly and too long, the liquid going cold until it is almost flavorless, worrying himself raw and wishing his resolve meant nothing would change.

With all of his remaining strength, he avoids Smith Pool, tucking himself away from the bloodthirsty and severe shadows he knows the light will cast. He feels this unnatural avoidance in the tension that builds in his neck, moving his head from side to side at the shop to release the pressure, mind wandering and unable to focus on anything other than water. Nightly, instead, he submerges himself in the tub, pressed to the bottom and letting himself be held, nurtured, and cleansed. He experiments with the droplets as he rises, pulling them off his body and making shapes, making stars, feeling as though he is making you, before calling them back to skin and ensuring they do not dry.

It does not escape him, even as he does this, invoking play with his power at liberty rather than tucking it away, no longer cowering from it as though scorned, that Paimon is a part of him. The great release of his tears means he has started to accept the reality that all things above are mirrored below, and takes great pride in the fact that he holds water out of respect; the water bends and opens for him, because he loves it, because he lets it, not because he demands it, and not because he expects it to.

And on the fourth day, when the pain of staying away from the lake starts to hurt, the colour fading from his cheeks and lips, he brings himself out, anxious and starved. With every step, he feels the water call to him, lapping against his spirit and carrying him home, remembering their maker, and luring him towards the dock, lonely and needy in its anticipation. He'd longed for it, unsure how he had been able to stay away between the cycles of the moon, for years denying so many parts of himself in the name of leadership.

Sitting on the dock, he swings his feet over the surface as the moon seems to pull him forward, his hands digging into the wood to keep himself from tipping. Leaning into the light, he hums, the echo of the current easing his mind, the thoughts and worries falling silent, if only for a moment. Worn thin, he'd been thinking through his feelings, engaging and pulling at them, working through the how and the why and the when, but now, he simply sits. All his emotions bubble to the brim, and he luxuriates in them, accepting them for what they are rather than what he’d like them to be - what he’d make them to be.

Junmyeon breathes deep, the mist from the water seeping into his lungs, and rather than make him cough, he simply sighs, glad to have felt, and glad to have lived.

The water beneath his feet sloshes almost violently, erupting up and over the dock in a small wave to spray him, playfully, welcoming him - his true nature - and he laughs, loud and long, eyes squeezed shut in childlike pleasure. Against his skin, the memories in the water make his breath catch, memories of the lake being made, of his voice blessing the water on completion, of his feet - breeches raised high and toes wiggling on the stony bed below - running and chasing and thriving. There were children with him then, always. Children from town and children from school, calling him their guardian as they learned to trust the water.

The memories fade as soon as they came, dripping down and back through the crevices of the dock, the atmosphere changing as he senses your approach.

Straightening his spine, his pulse begins to race, lips parting on a silent exhale as he counts each of your steps. The last time he met you here, he'd been imprisoned, locked in a self made cage where his hands and heart could not reach you - trapped inside himself, he could not feel you, not truly. Now, he is whelmed by the totality of your soul, overcome and overrun, and he struggles to keep himself from turning to watch you.

One look at you, he knows, and there will be no hope for him. Once he feels you, he will feel all of you, and then there will be no pretending anything would ever be the same.

‘Welcome back.’

Your voice is full of joy, thrilled by the mere sight of him, and he closes his eyes, a smile tugging at his lips. Biting the inside of his cheek, he feels the excitement, the noise of you, gather within his spine, and he suppresses a contented sigh.

Finally allowing himself the comfort of your warm eyes and full lips, he takes his time watching you thrive beneath the light of the moon, ignited and given wings as you approach. Digging his nails into the dock, his breath catches, and he takes a moment before he speaks, gathering his words to ensure they do not break.

‘Are we making a habit of this?’

Settling beside him, excitement rolls off your aura in waves as you take off your shoes and socks. Scooting to the very edge, you smirk, teasing. ‘I hope so.’

Letting your feet drop into the water, just the barest ends of your toes touch the surface. Upon contact, your grip the dock a little tighter, a small yelp emerging from your chest. Eyes wide with shock, Junmyeon looks from your face to your feet and back again, bewildered.

'Isn't that cold?' he laughs, amusement tainting his surprise.

'Yes,' you nod, giggling as your toes splash lightly. 'But isn't it terrible we only let ourselves be silly in the summer? The water is always inviting, even if we can't dive in.'

Awed by the mere existence of you, Junmyeon remains quiet, letting the serenity you provide seep down and deep into his pores.

‘You look different,’ you say, breaking the silence. ‘A little more free.’

The heat from your stare peels back his skin, exposing all hs fragile, vulnerable parts as though readying for a feast. But he does not hide. Now, he is proud of the difference, and, most of all, proud that you have noticed. Rolling his shoulders back, he watches the water as it makes swirls on your feet, glad that it touches you when he cannot.

‘I am,’ he affirms, grinning bashfully. ‘I’m glad you feel the difference.’

Chuckling, you avert your eyes to the water at your toes. ‘I can.’ Your brow furrows, distracted momentarily before relaxing once more. ‘You feel like home.’

The air in his lungs catches, startled to a halt and held in place by your admission. In the aftermath, you don’t recoil from it, simply turn to face him with a conviction that makes his limbs start to feel heavy. In you, he could drown, happily surrendered to the depth so your soul and spirit, heart pulled out and left open, craving the affection of your touch.

You small gasp breaks his thoughts, his eyes following yours to the water.

‘This is your power?’ you ask, amazement lacing through your tone.

Before you, a thin veil of mist rises up and up, pulled from and out of the lake, sparkling beneath the light of the moon. Stretching far above and into the sky, the droplets hold their shape, their makeshift curtain refracting the light and elegantly speckling the dock as your skin becomes illuminated. Even without his permission, he couldn't let the water stay away, adoring and worshiping you, mirroring his heart and his affections; glimmering, in the effort of anointing you as wife.

‘Yes,’ he admits, watching the curtain fall back down, silently. ‘I’ve been called the Water King.’

Reaching out a hand to collect droplets as they fall, attention rapt and lips parted with wonder, you sigh. Junmyeon shivers, feeling your touch through the water.

‘I see why this has been hard for you,’ you offer, moving your hand through the spray until it is gone, a small pout pushing your bottom lip forward.

His head falls, eyes downcast through his lashes. Unsure if he is ready for you to expose his nature or if he simply misses the feel of your touch against his heart, he keeps silent, conflicted and feeling small.

‘Nature magicians,’ you tease lightly, sensing his discomfort and softening to keep him safe. ‘You always feel Paimon more deeply than everyone else. My sisters -’

‘The herbalist,' he announces, remembering the way she cried, on this dock, clutching at Minseok to keep herself together.

You smile, glad for his attention to detail.

‘She needs Minseok.' As he says it, he blinks slowly at the taste of the words on his tongue. Sentiments like this used to come easily, rolling from his heart and mouth at will, honest and loving and gentle. Now, he is simply startled at the comfort they bring, taking shape as though he had been waiting to say it for years. 'I’m glad she has him.’

Eyes warm and full of devotion, nails digging gently into your thigh, you continue. ‘Another one of my sisters handles fire. She’s been...well, she never really lets us see how bad it gets.’

The water rolls forward against the legs of the dock, aggressive and foreboding. Too many nature magicians, he thinks, all located in one place. The hair on his arms stands on end, and slowly he realizes Minseok was right. It was always going to be this way, whether they gave in or not.

‘I’m glad she has you,' he says, an odd, distracted rephrase of his previous sentiment, but still he means every word. ‘That you see through to her heart. It takes incredible strength to do that, and not run away.’

‘And who do you have?’ you counter without hesitation, angling your chest towards him, unwilling to let him back down. ‘Do your brothers truly understand how it feels to be a part of nature’s mirror into hell?’

‘They try,' he shrugs, lowering his gaze to the wet wood beneath your hands. ‘I’ve told them what I can.’

‘I see the moon finally touched you.’

A rush of blood cascades in his ears, eyes lifting to greet yours, bashful and suddenly defenseless against your sweetness. Looking right down into him, you see, he knows you see, the way he let his heart break open, shattered into an irreparable state in the effort of learning to remake his soul. You see and you see, and he lets you in, feels your hands touch and caress all the parts within that did not used to exist - or did, have always exists, but were bent into irregular, inhuman shapes to make breathing hurt just a little less.

You see and you see, and so, he sees you too, drinking his fill until his fingers ache with the future nostalgia of your hair and his lips burn with the flavor of your tongue; having all of you, unafraid of being greedy in the name of love and lust.

‘She did,' he manages, eventually, words fading as a sigh.

‘But, I have to say,' you begin, holding his stare and demanding he does not look away. 'There’s really only one heart I’d rather be looking into.’

Tipping his head back slightly, he feels himself smile, ecstatic and impish and warmed to a flush that makes his cheeks sting. Looking back at you, he sees the hunger in your eyes and knows that he mirrors the intensity, watching a flush creep along your neck.

Junmyeon licks his lips, seeing just how far he can tempt your blush. ‘I know the feeling,'

‘I remember you saying that we can't.’ You toss his words back at him, running a hand through your hair and leaning into the breeze, seeking relief.

‘Does that mean you don’t want to?’ he challenges, inching closer.

The closeness of your body, with each small movement, sends an electric current up his spine, heart racing in his chest.

‘It’s like seals,' you murmur. ‘The more you’re told you shouldn’t, the more you want to.’

‘You know that I’d want you,’ he replies, words heavy and thick, ‘even if you weren’t a seal.’

‘I know.’ Wetting your lips, you breathe deep. ‘Me too.’

It would be easy, he thinks, to lean forward and catch your tongue before it slips back into your mouth. Easy, to press his fingers into the back of your neck, tipping your head back to kiss you and kiss you until the breaths you share together make you blood hurt. It would be easy.

‘Before the first war,’ he says, moving his eyes back towards the water, feeling his heartbeat like lead with the loss. ‘I wanted a family. I was ready to get married, ready to have children. I wanted to be a father, not a leader. Many would say they’re the same thing, but not really. With a family, you have a partner. And I never let myself have that, I guess, in the coven. But even still, it’s not the same.’

Considering his words for a moment, he feels you shift, pressing yourself against the dock as if rooting yourself and keeping your composure. He does not chance a glance however, blood alive like fire.

‘I was engaged once,’ you share, breathless and clutching at the dock, tone bewildered by this shift in topic. ‘A long time ago, about seventy years or so. He was a nice man, but something was lacking. He was kind and funny and warm, but I never felt anything for him, because I never saw him as my partner.’

In the water, he sees reflections of your past - reflections of a man who held you tight, but incorrectly, kissing at you with thick lips and careless hands. He wanted you, wanted all of you, and would have loved you as best he could. Which is to say, he would have loved you in a human, simple way that echoed commitment and choice without lust and passion. And you, looking up at the moon and looking at the stars, would have waited for the universe to ignite in your heart, waited to love him enough to make a sky out of your bed, withering beneath the permanence of a contract that did not taste cosmic.

He hates it. Down to his core, Junmyeon hates it. Hates the idea of someone's hands on you, feeling you without feeling the moon, without feeling your heart. Hates that your lips have been kissed at rather than savored, that your mouth and body and hands made moon for a man who could not give you the sun, and wants, with all of himself, to prove that the galaxies you inspire in his bones are not a fever but a fate. To prove, once and for all, that the only man who could love you enough to let you shine, is him.

The cold front sweeps in, merciless and relentless, blowing with a force that tells him the sky has felt him too. The rain falls, sudden and heavy, bathing you both in the intensity of his affections, soaking through and through until you are laughing in it - laughing in him - looking at him with wide eyes.

You don't say anything, know that you don't have to, studying the way he breathes deep, water dripping down his nose and cheeks, unafraid of hiding.

'I'm not sorry,' he says, emboldened. 'Please don't make me think about that again. Someone else's hands on you, I -'

'Yours are the only hands I want,' you announce, cutting him off.

In the deluge, he feels the heat of your skin, hears the erratic rhythm of your pulse, and the way your fingers twitch, halting in their trajectory to touch him. Finding it unfair that he should feel you so fully, with you only dripping for him, he raises his hand and guides the rain away from you, sheltering you from his storm.

‘Did you walk?’ he asks, gravel building in his voice from the sight of you wet and wet and wet with him.

Unable to speak, eyes dark as you hug yourself, pressing the water into your skin, you nod.

Junmyeon nods, watching as your nipples harden beneath your thin shirt. Blinking, he catches his breath. ‘We can talk in my car.’

And he doesn't know why he does it, only knows that he needs it, body moving without permission from his mind. Taking your hand in his, he twines your fingers together, the wetness of the rain drying immediately to press your skin against his. He gasps, and you sigh, both of you halting in your steps to gaze at one another, feeling the current grow between your palms, a thunder clap he'd been waiting centuries for.

He takes his time walking the short distance to his car, savoring the feel of your fingers rubbing against his knuckles. As he walks, he watches your profile, studies the angular slope of your jaw, the elegant vein of your neck, the tantalizing juncture of your neck and shoulders. How he could have wanted, how he could have needed, anything other than you - how he ever thought he'd survive without you. A laugh rises in his chest, amused by is foolishness, and he swallows it down, unwilling to admit just how quickly he craves surrender with you.

In the car, he lets your hand go, sitting silent with his palms resting on his legs. Staring straight ahead, you both watch the rain as it glides down the windshield, feeling sheltered and submerged. Idly, he wonders how far this reaches, if this storm is just for you or if he has covered the town, announcing that he has found you and he will never let you go.

The windows fog, warmed by the heat of your bodies as the temperature rises in the car. Sweat on his brow mixes with the drops of rain, and only when he thinks he may break, when the tightness in his spine, his thighs, and his chest is enough he fears he may break, does he speak.

‘Its killing me,' he says, almost whining. ‘Not touching you again.’

Bold and unafraid, he feels your eyes graze over his face. Inhaling a deep breath, he wrestles with his composure, breathing through his mouth so he cannot smell you.

‘So touch me,' you say, almost demanding that he disobey, reckless and thriving.

And he looks at you, looks at the way the rain has made your lips and cheeks wet; how your eyes glimmer, hopeful even behind the dark dilation of your pupils, brave under the weight of your desire. He remembers you saying you felt everything, all your emotions, all your pain and wanting and fear, with the totality of you, and only now does he notice you are shaking.

‘If I do, I -’ he chokes, watching your hands pull your shirt away from your skin, attempting to keep yourself cool. ‘I won’t hold back.’

‘So don’t.’

Junmyeon shakes his head, sucking air between his teeth. ‘You don’t get it.’

‘I do.’ It's the loudest you've ever been, confident and strong and so completely regal. ‘Every time I see you, I’m waiting for you to reach out and touch me. I’ve seen into your heart.' Chest heaving for breath, you continue. ‘I've seen how badly you need to be loved, and heard, and witnessed. Your mind is powerful, and it’s been given so much of the attention for hundreds of years, but your heart is just as magnificent. And I see you, I see how deeply you’ve been feeling everything and I’ve wanted to hold you. I lay up at night, thinking about you beside me and knowing that I’m supposed to be there, to make light of the moon less harsh. To hear you. To kiss you.’

His head falls back against the headrest, pressing himself into the seat as he looks at you, wanting you all over him and wanting to be all over you. His fingers drag along his jeans, the last threads of his composure fading away.

‘Minseok gave me permission,' he says, speaking just to test his voice, to see if he can. ‘I know I don’t need it. But still. I’m telling you. There’s no going back.’

‘Do you even want to?’ you almost plead. ‘You’ve let it go. Does the past even look appealing when you think about it anymore?’ Holding his stare, you tilt your head back, exposing your neck and chest to him. ‘Does it look better than me.’

Junmyeon angles himself in his seat to face you, fully, eyes demanding your attention. ‘I need you to tell me you want it,' he commands. ‘You know what will happen.’

If he has you, there will be no stopping him. He will take you, all of him, breaking open a seal with giddy, greedy fingers. He will bond with you, press himself inside you and demand you never be separated again. The world will end, and many will die, but he will love you and love you and love you until even the ashes of his bones is left mixing with your cosmic dust.

‘I know what will happen,' you press, insistent. ‘And I still want it.’ Leaning forward, you run your fingers through the wet strands of his hair, sending shivers down his spine. ‘I want you.’

The tightness in your voice, the raw and all encompassing yearning for him, washes over him, breaking through the last remaining threads of control to which he had managed to cling. Looking at you, letting himself fall into your eyes, he slowly comes to realize that the only consent he needed was not from Minseok, but from you. To be damned alongside you, no longer alone, walking into hell and lust and desire with his hand clasped in yours.

And when you breathe, sucking air into your lungs as your breasts fight against your shirt, he finds that it does not matter - that being damned does not matter, so long as the taste of you remains on his tongue, until the only thing he can ever remember is you.

Over the console, he reaches for you, lips coming together full of hunger and want, starved over centuries for the press of your tongue against his lips. Reclining his seat as far back as it will go, the kiss is messy, all teeth and tongue, wet from rain and wet from your mouths, rolling against one another to devour each other whole.

He nips at your bottom lip, pressing his teeth into the soft flesh and pulls, hearing you whimper as your hands fist at the collar of his shirt. Sliding his fingers up your neck, his hands gather fistfulls of your hair, tugging slightly and chuckling as he hears you gasp.

‘That’s it, princess,’ he murmurs against your lips, dipping his tongue inside the cavern of your mouth. ‘Let me hear you.’

Whimpering, you grip tightly at his shoulders as he pulls you, indelicately, over the console to settle in his lap. Straddling him, you grind your hips down into his, the heavy thickness of his erection pressing into your center through his jeans. Gasping at the contact, he peers up at you, at your swollen lips, your hair falling messily over your shoulders, and swallows thickly. Rolling up into your core, separated by all your clothes, your eyes flutter shut, and he brings one hand to the back of your neck, lowering you to his mouth where he begins to suck.

Your nails dig into his shoulders, as you hiss. ‘Right there, fuck. It’s sensitive.’

Against your skin, he smiles, biting softly without leaving a mark. ‘I’ve felt you,’ he breathes, running his tongue over the spot his teeth just touched. Beneath his hands, you tremble. ‘For so long in the rain, I’ve felt you.’

‘It’s not like me to hold back,' you moan, holding his face between your hands and tilting his head to kiss at his jaw. 'Ever.’

The feel of your lips against his bones ignites a fire in him, need pooling deep into his belly as his hips roll up into yours once more. Hands needy and urgent, he leans back in his seat, gripping the hem of your shirt and pulling it over your head in one fell swoop. Your chest is flushed, breaths coming in hollow pants, and the supple skin of your breasts presses tantalizingly against the cups of your bra. Mouth watering, he wraps his arms around your waist and pulls you flush against his chest, lips moving against the space between your breasts.

'Unfair,' you gasp, pushing at his shoulders before reaching before tugging at his shirt.

Helping you, he releases his hold on your waist, skin still tingling from the feel of you, and lifts his arms over his head. Tossing his shirt into the back seat, your eyes rake over his chest, followed swiftly by the pads of your fingers as they press barely there touches to the curves of his muscles. With each graze of your skin against his, he sighs, hands coming to grip your hips tightly and pressing you against his groin.

‘Greedy?’ you smirk, bending down to kiss sweetly below his ear.

Junmyeon groans, rolling up against you once more. ‘Only for you.’

Holding you so close, the heat of your core resting against his cock, seeping through his jeans, he takes a moment to clear his vision, grounding himself in the moment. The rain against the windows rolls down in streams, the glow from the street lamps outside casting shadows against your cheeks and shoulders, and for a moment, you become the waterfall he has always craved.

The moment is broken by your agile fingers, pulling at the button of his jeans. Laughing at the way you fumble slightly, fingers slick and slipping along the button, he lifts his hips, holding you still against him, as you work his jeans and boxers down. Erection freed, he sighs in relief, only to choke on his breath as your strong hand wraps around him entirely, pumping his length slowly.

Biting his lip, his head falls back as his hands reach behind your back, unclasping your bra.

'Look at you,' he rumbles, throat tight as your grip squeezes around him. 'Fuck, you're perfect.'

Consumed, he presses up into your hand at the same time as he bends to take your breast in his mouth, rolling his tongue over your perked nipple. Your rhythm falters, releasing his cock as pleasure takes over, raking your nails over his biceps as he laps at your breast. Biting down slightly, he lets his teeth make bite marks, marking the soft skin as his own, claiming a part of you for himself.

‘Tell me if you want me to slow down,' he breathes, pulling away from your breast to pay the same attention to the other. ‘I’ll do anything for you. I’ll hold back for you.’

‘I told you want you,' you whine, writhing against him as his teeth graze over your nipple, sending static like tingles down to your core. 'I’ve been wanting you.’

Lifting his mouth, he releases his hold on your hips to scratch at your thighs beneath the thin fabric of your leggings. ‘I need to show the world you’re mine.’

‘I’m yours,' you nod, kissing at his lips messily, sucking his tongue briefly before pulling away to breathe. ‘Only yours.’

Invigorated, the tension in his hands reaches its breaking point, and he feels himself rip through your leggings without even realizing it. Blinking down at the exposure he created, he feels a blush of shame creep into his cheeks before you begin to laugh.

‘I’ll buy you a new pair,' he offers, apologetically.

Shaking your head with a smile, you kiss him deeply, letting your tongue explore the velvet texture. 'Doesn't matter.'

Pushing past the remains of your leggings, he moves your underwear to the side and presses two fingers into your core. Your head lolls forwards against his shoulder, one hand gripping at his arm while the other strokes lazily around his cock. He lets himself press knuckle deep, enough for your walls to clench around his fingers, hoping to keep him trapped inside, and a deep moan rattles against his ribs.

‘Already wet for me, baby?’ he manages, thrusting slowly into your heat before curling his fingers.

He's coated with your wetness, the slickness of you dripping onto his hand and signaling you are likely ready for a third, but he deprives you, wanting to keep you on edge. Pretty when you're needy, he likes the way you curl against him, whining into his touch.

‘What do you expect,' you manage, turning your face to bite at his neck, 'when you’re dealing with a water king?’

Hearing his name and title roll off your tongue, with pride and ardor and passion, he cannot help the possessive growl that overtakes him, a third finger slipping inside you as he lets his thumb rub circles against your clit. His chest grows hot, warmed to the brim of your and your sweet, inconsistent strokes along the veins of his cock, and he knows, for better or worse, he will bring you to orgasm on his hand if he does not slow down.

‘How do you want to come, princess?' he manages, stilling the fingers between your folds and letting them curl upwards.

Petulant, you grip his cock tightly, urging him to continue. Junmyeon shakes his head and clucks his tongue, wrapping his hand around the one that holds his cock, keeping you still.

‘Words, princess,' he says, voice dangerously low. ‘Use your words.’

‘Cock,' you whine, rolling your hips against his hand for some relief. ‘Need to feel you inside me.’

Junmyeon pauses for a moment, considering. He is not one to carry condoms with him, but he knows that Baekhyun usually keeps one in the glove compartment for nights when he feels the most lonely; nights in autumn and winter when the light retreats from his skin and he seeks a body to feel warm. The last time he sought a companion was a week prior, and Junmyeon is certain the condom no longer remains.

'I don't have a condom with me,' he says, pressing his fingers back into you in a slow, lazy rhythm. ‘I'll have to pull out.'

Clenching around his fingers, you nod vigorously into his neck.

‘Princess,’ he commands, halting his fingers once more and lifting his thumb from your clit. ‘Tell me it’s ok. I won’t do anything you’re not comfortable with.’

'It's okay,' you whine, pressing against him to have the contact once more. ‘Want to feel you inside me.’

'Are you on something?' he presses, being careful and making sure you mean every word you say.

'No,' you manage, kissing at his neck and squeezing at his cock to get his attention, hoping to hurry him along.

Stricken, he flushes, removing his hand from yours to tug at your hair. Peering into your wide, lustful eyes, he searches your face with panic. 'You could get pregnant…'

You nod, reaching up to smooth the hair out of his face. 'I know.'

It settles over him, the implication of your words and the way you seem so calm, so blissful, so at peace with the idea. There's no fear in your voice, no terror or uncertainty. You simple look at him, full of love, a full moon, waiting for him to kiss you.

‘What are you saying?' he whispers, heart thundering in his throat as blood rushes in his ears.

He'd forgotten what hope felt like, what it felt like to feel himself and his desires, the whole length of them from beginning to end. He'd forgotten, and now that he remembers, he does not ever want to stop.

Wordlessly, you bend down, capturing his lips and a sound, unhurried kiss. You suck at his lips, humming with a smile, as your let your hands wander over his skin, clenching around the fingers that remain inside you, reminding him you still want him, need him.

Breaking away from the kiss, he keeps his eyes on yours, needing to hear it. 'Princess,' he tries, a tiny, barely there whisper of the man he feels he could be. 'Can I put a baby inside you?'

And, once more, without any sound, you nod.

The motion breaks something inside him, his eyes suddenly going dark and wild, blood alive like liquid gold to press eagerly against your silver. It's unlike him, the vigor with which his fingers thrust inside you, spreading slightly to stretch you in preparation. Deep inside him, there is a deluge, something awoken - not altogether dark but not altogether himself - pressing at your skin, hoping to press through and live inside you.

'I want to get you pregnant,' he says, fingers pressing at your nerves and walls, hard enough to make sure you feel every hill and valley of his knuckles. 'Watch you grow my baby inside your perfect womb. Make you swollen and fill you so completely your body feels empty without me. Please, let me. Please, can I get you pregnant?'

Your hold on his cock is weakened, thighs and body starting to quake as he pushes you close to release. 'Yes,' you cry.

'Say it again,' he demands, pushing you against him to bite at your shoulder.

'Yes.'

Junmyeon lets his thumb tap roughly against your clit, swirling your juices over the nerves. 'Again.'

'Put a baby in me,' you moan, clutching at him as your finger smears pre-cum over his tip. 'I want to have your baby.'

Pulling his fingers from your folds, he smiles as you whimper at the loss. His hand lifts yours from his cock, and he grips the ample flesh of your hips, letting his fingers dip between the waistband of your underwear to press into your ass.

Holding you up, he bites at your lip before speaking. 'Sit yourself on my cock, princess.'

Moving your underwear out of the way, you slowly lower yourself down, holding his tip between your slit for a few moments, impishly keeping still. Guiding a hand between your legs, you hold onto him, keeping him still as your squeeze around his base, letting your nails idly tap against the veins. Junmyeon hisses, fighting the urge to press you down, to bury himself inside you to the hilt, and distracts himself by massaging your ass, hard enough to leave bruises.

'Gonna ride just the tip?' he grunts, eyes locked on the way he has just barely begun to disappear inside you.

'Just wanted to see how long you'd go before you broke,' you laugh, before sliding all the way down, taking him deep until there is no end to where you your bodies begin.

Settling your hands on his shoulders, you roll forward, gently thrusting against him to get used to the feel of him inside you. Junmyeon exhales through his teeth, the feel of your walls around him sending his body into overdrive, cock hard enough the ache in his spine has his breath coming in rasps. Lifting yourself, you fall back down on him, creating a rhythm that his him thrust up into your cunt in desperation.

Moving his hands forward, he holds onto your hip as he takes one of your breasts in his hands, massaging the flesh as you bounce on him, clenching tightly enough to make him gasp. In retaliation, he takes your nipple between his thumb and forefinger, rolling the bud tightly until you hiss. And then, in one fell swoop, brings his mouth and tongue over pink nub, sucking harshly.

Your hands move to his hair, carding through the strands as you grip him, gasping through the sensation.

'You're fucking tight,' he groans, meeting your downward fall with an upward thrust. 'I'm gonna have to spend my life fucking you hard enough to fit.'

The power behind his words has your body shaking, the wetness of your bodies coming together filling the car as a symphony. His orgasm builds behind his eyes, the tension in his legs wrapping around him as a coil. Around his cock, you clench, desperate to hold and keep him inside, and the more you do the more his control slips away, body driven to powerful thrusts, seeking an end.

Bringing a hand between your bodies, he returns his fingers to your clit, tapping hard circles in time with his thrusts.

'Next time,' he groans, 'I'm gonna eat this pussy out for hours. Suck it dry and make it wet again.'

'Jun -' you moan, lapping at his lips as your bouncing becomes erratic.

'You gonna come, princess?' he breathes, smiling against your panted breaths.

All you can manage is a nod, aware that the noise in your chest sounds just like begging. Inside you, he is relentless, seeming to press himself deeper and deeper with each thrust.

'I'm going to come,' he manages, the first clear and well constructed sentence he's said since he's been inside you.

Admission means he's giving you one last chance, one brief opportunity to change your mind, and he thrusts so deeply inside you, he hopes his motive is clear. He wants you pregnant, swollen, carrying his baby, making sure all the world knows you are his and you are his home. He gives you this opportunity, because he can wait, he has been waiting - for you, he has been waiting, and there is a lifetime during which he can build the life with you he craves.

But you hold on tight, grind down onto him with a moan, and look him straight in the eyes.

'Come inside me,' you whisper, speech steady and careful. 'Fill me, please. I want it.'

Unleashed, untamed, and alive, Junmyeon presses against your clit, babbling into your ear as he feels his orgasm burn inside his belly. With each thrust, he sees it, sees you, full of him and laughing, body mooned outward because of him, and he suddenly cannot catch his breath.

'I'm gonna put a baby here. Right here. You're going to get big, round, so fucking pregnant you'll think you might been waiting for it your whole life.'

That’s all it takes, the mere image of you rounded and pregnant as you ride him, to send him over. He spills into you, hot and moaning your name, feeling you tremble around him as you come together, your legs shaking on either side of his. Your voice is thick and heated in his ear, wet cries of pleasure and moans, whispers of permission, of love, and hope dripping from your mouth. The whine of his name from your lips makes him gasp, pressing deep inside you as he feels his come spill out of you and back down onto his thighs, jeans, and your skin.

Trembling against him, you gasp to catch your breath, body sensitive as his cock softens inside you. Stroking your hair, he presses soft kisses to your cheeks and shoulder - anywhere his lips can touch, he kisses, reminding you he loves you, he loves you, he loves you.

With his eyes closed, body encased in bliss, he lets the world remain at peace, for this one brief moment.

And outside, outside the car where he does not choose to look, the moon comes out, but still it rains. It rains, unholy and unnatural, spilling backwards up into the clouds, up and up and up, defying gravity.

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