#lilysfics

"The craftsmanship is extraordinary," you're saying, turning the vase to catch different angles of light. "How long have you been working with glazes like this?"

"Oh, five years or so," the merchant beams, clearly pleased by the genuine interest. "My wife actually developed this particular blue. She had such an eye for color..."

Phainon should walk away. Should let you finish your conversation and wait like a reasonable person. Instead, he finds himself moving forward with measured steps, his public smile sliding into place with practiced ease.

"There you are," he says, voice warm and perfectly controlled. His hand finds your wrist. Gentle but firm, fingers wrapping around the delicate bones with deliberate pressure. "I was wondering where you'd disappeared to."

You look up at him with surprise and pleasure, and for a moment the tight thing in his chest eases. But then you turn back to the merchant, including Phainon in the conversation with easy grace.

"Phainon, you have to see this work. The way the light plays through the glaze. It's like having liquid sky captured in clay."

The merchant straightens, clearly recognizing Phainon now. "Ah, Lord Phainon! An honor. Your friend here has quite the eye for artistry."

Friend. The word sits wrong in Phainon's mouth, too casual for what you are to each other. His fingers tighten on your wrist. Not enough to hurt, but enough that you glance at him with curious eyes.

"Indeed," Phainon says, and his smile feels like porcelain. Beautiful, brittle, liable to crack. "We should be going, though. There are matters that require attention."

It's dismissive in a way that's unlike him, but the merchant doesn't seem to notice. You do, though. He can feel your questioning gaze even as you politely thank the craftsman for his time.

Phainon guides you away from the stall with his hand still wrapped around your wrist, his grip a constant, possessive pressure. He nods to other merchants, exchanges pleasantries with passing citizens, every inch the gracious public figure. But that hand never loosens, never lets you drift more than an arm's length away.

The walk to his chambers passes in relative silence, broken only by the necessary social interactions his position demands. Each time someone greets you both, each time you smile and respond with genuine warmth, that thing in his chest coils tighter.

By the time he closes the door behind you, his composure is hanging by threads.

"Phainon." Your voice is soft, concerned. "Are you upset?"

He doesn't answer. Can't answer. His throat feels thick with words he doesn't know how to say, emotions he doesn't know how to name. Instead, he moves to the window, staring out at Okhema's afternoon bustle with unseeing eyes.

"The pottery really was beautiful," you continue, settling into one of his chairs. "That technique with the copper oxide. I've never seen anything quite like it. The way he talked about his wife's influence on his work was so touching."

Each word lands like a small blow. Beautiful. Touching. The same words you might use to describe art, poetry, moments shared between lovers. The casual way you say them, like they don't matter, like that smile you gave a stranger doesn't matter—it's driving him to distraction.

"You looked like you were about to strangle that poor merchant."

The teasing note in your voice is the final crack in his facade. Something snaps.

Phainon spins from the window, and you're startled by the raw intensity in his expression. His blue eyes are wild, desperate, like a man drowning who's just spotted shore.

"Do you have any idea what it does to me, watching you smile at someone else?"

The words tear out of him, rough and unsteady. He takes a step toward you, then another, and there's something almost predatory in the way he moves. Not threatening, but desperate, like he's fighting every instinct that tells him to grab you and never let go.

"Phainon—"

"The way you looked at him." His voice cracks on the words. "The way you touched that vase he made, like it was precious. The way you listened to his stories about his dead wife like they mattered to you."

You stand slowly, hands raised in a calming gesture, but he's past the point where reason can reach him. Weeks of careful control, of being the perfect public figure, of swallowing his own needs for the greater good—it's all hemorrhaging out of him now.

"They do matter to me," you say gently. "All of it matters. His art, his stories, his grief—"

"But not the way I matter." He's close enough to touch you now, close enough that you can see the fine tremor in his hands, the way his chest rises and falls too quickly. "Please tell me not the way I matter."

His hand comes up to cup your jaw, thumb brushing across your cheekbone with a slowness that borders on worship. But there's desperation there too, in the way his fingers press slightly too firmly, in the way his breath catches when you don't pull away.

"Of course not—"

"I can't—" He cuts himself off with a frustrated sound, something between a groan and a sob. His forehead drops to rest against yours, and you can feel the fine tremor running through his whole body. "I watch you be kind to everyone, and I know that's who you are, I know that's one of the things I love most about you, but then I see you smile at someone else and I—"

He breaks off again, jaw working soundlessly. When he speaks again, his voice is barely above a whisper.

"What if someday you realize you don't need me? That anyone could make you laugh, anyone could interest you, anyone could—" His breath hitches. "What if I'm not special? What if I'm just convenient?"

The vulnerability in his confession breaks something open in your chest. This is Phainon stripped of all his careful composure, all his public grace. This is the man beneath the hero, frightened and desperate and so in love it's eating him alive.

"Look at me," you whisper, hands coming up to frame his face.

He does, and his eyes are glassy with unshed tears, pupils blown wide with emotion and want and terror.

"You are not convenient," you say firmly. "You are not replaceable. You are not just anyone."

"But—"

"No." Your thumbs brush across his cheekbones, wiping away tears he doesn't seem to realize have started falling. "You want to know the difference between how I smile at that merchant and how I smile at you?"

He nods, not trusting his voice.

"When I smile at him, I'm being polite. Kind. Human." You lean closer, until your lips are barely an inch from his. "When I smile at you, I'm showing you my soul."

The sound he makes is broken, desperate. His hands slide into your hair, tangling in the strands like he's anchoring himself to you.

"I need—" He swallows hard, forehead pressed to yours. "I need you to be mine. Not anyone else's, not the world's, just mine. Is that selfish? Am I horrible for wanting that?"

"No," you breathe against his lips. "You're human. And you are mine."

And then you're kissing him, or maybe he's kissing you. It's impossible to tell who moves first. His mouth crashes against yours with desperate hunger, like he's been starving and you're sustenance. The first touch of his lips is almost violent in its intensity, all raw need and barely contained emotion.

He kisses like he's trying to consume you, to pull you into himself until there's no distinction between where he ends and you begin. His hands are everywhere. Tangled in your hair, gripping your waist, pressing against the small of your back to pull you impossibly closer. When you part your lips for him, the sound he makes is broken, desperate, like you've just given him permission to breathe again.

His tongue sweeps into your mouth with single-minded purpose, tasting, claiming, memorizing. You can feel the tremor in his hands where they frame your face, the way his whole body is wound tight with emotion barely held in check. When you nip at his lower lip, he groans into your mouth, the vibration traveling through both your bodies like lightning.

"Mine," he whispers against your lips, pulling back just enough to speak before diving back in. The kiss turns hungrier, messier, all tongues and teeth and ragged breathing. His hands slide down to grip your thighs, fingers digging into the soft flesh like he's afraid you'll disappear if he doesn't hold tight enough.

You thread your fingers through his hair, tugging gently, and he gasps against your mouth. The sound is raw, vulnerable, and it makes something hot unfurl in your chest. When you pull him closer, he follows willingly, desperately, like he's lost and you're his only way home.

"Please," Phainon breathes between kisses, though what he's asking for isn't clear. "Please, I need...I can't..."

You silence him with another kiss, deeper this time, swallowing his broken words. His response is immediate and overwhelming. Hands roaming frantically over your body, mouth moving against yours with increasing desperation. When he breaks away to trail open-mouthed kisses down your throat, his breathing is harsh and unsteady against your skin.

"I love you," Phainon gasps against your pulse point, and there's something utterly desperate in the way he says it. "I love you so much it's killing me."

His mouth finds yours again, and this time the kiss is slower but no less intense. He explores every inch of your mouth like he's trying to memorize the taste of you, like he's afraid he'll never get the chance again. When you wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him closer, he makes a sound that's half moan, half sob.

The kiss seems to go on forever. Deep and claiming and desperate. His hands shake where they cup your face, thumbs brushing away tears you didn't realize had started falling. When you finally break apart, you're both gasping for air, foreheads pressed together, sharing the same breath.

"Mine," he whispers again, and there's something almost prayer-like in the way he says it. "Please. Just mine."

"Yours," you confirm, and he shudders like the word has physically impacted him.

His hands slide down to your thighs, lifting you easily onto his desk. Papers scatter to the floor—important documents, correspondence, things that would normally make him fuss—but he doesn't even notice. All his attention is focused on you, on the way you look at him like he's the only person in the world.

"I love you," he says again, voice thick with emotion. His hands frame your face again, thumbs tracing your cheekbones with trembling reverence. "I love you so much it terrifies me. I don't know how to be reasonable about it."

"Then don't be reasonable." Your legs wrap around his waist, pulling him closer until there's no space between you. "Be honest instead."

So he is. He tells you about the sleepless nights when he lies awake cataloging all the ways he could lose you. About the way his chest gets tight when you laugh at someone else's joke. About how he wants to be noble and selfless like he usually is but finds himself fantasizing about spiriting you away somewhere only he could find you.

"That's terrible," he says after laying out all his messy, possessive thoughts. "I'm terrible."

"You're in love," you correct, pressing soft kisses along his jaw. "And love makes us a little crazy sometimes."

He pulls back to look at you, really look, taking in your mussed hair and kiss-swollen lips and the way you're looking at him like he hung the stars.

"How are you real?" he whispers. "How are you mine?"

"Because I choose to be," you say simply, staring in those impossibly blue eyes. "Every day, I choose you. Not anyone else. You."

The tears start falling in earnest then, and he doesn't try to hide them. You kiss them away, salt-sweet against your lips, while he holds you like you might disappear if he loosens his grip even slightly.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs into your hair. "For being jealous, for being possessive, for—"

"For loving me?" You pull back to meet his eyes. "Don't apologize for that. Ever."

Phainon kisses you again, slower this time but no less intense. His hands map every inch of you they can reach, like he's memorizing the geography of your body. When he finally pulls away, you're both breathing hard.

"Stay with me tonight," he says, and there's still that underlying desperation in his voice. "Don't go back to your chambers. Stay here, with me."

"I'll stay," you promise, and watch as relief floods his expression.

Later, when you're curled together in his bed, his arms wrapped securely around you, he presses his face into your hair and whispers, "Thank you."

"For what?"

"For choosing me," Phainon says softly. "For letting me be selfish about you. For not running when I showed you all the messy parts."

You turn in his arms to face him, studying his features in the lamplight. Even now, hours later, there's still something vulnerable in his expression, like he's waiting for you to change your mind.

"The messy parts are my favorite," you tell him honestly. "Anyone can love the hero. I love the man."

He kisses you then, soft and sweet and full of gratitude, and you think that maybe this—this honesty, this raw intensity, this overwhelming need to belong to each other—is what love actually looks like when you strip away all the pretty poetry.

It's messier than the stories and whispers make it seem. But it's also more beautiful. Just like Phainon. ____ A/N: This is part of a little two-piece exploration on possessiveness. Mydei’s side is territorial, protective, and rooted in the fear of losing you due to danger. You can read it here.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. Likes, comments and reblogs mean the world. They fuel my writing. :)

“Red alert. All hands, battle stations.”

The alarm blared just as La’an entered the Transporter Room to receive Enterprise’s guests. Immediately, her communicator chirped with a connection from Captain Pike. “Lieutenant Noonien-Singh, are our guests on board?”

La’an locked eyes with Chief Kyle, who immediately threw the switch to energize. “They’re coming aboard now, Captain.” Two figures materialized in in the transporter, and just as the materialization process was complete, the entire ship lurched sideways as it was hit, hard and violent. La’an grabbed hold of the nearest handle to keep steady, but their guests had no such luck and immediately fell over. “Jam- Lieutenants Kirk and Kirk, welcome back!” she shouted over the alarm, as figures in yellow and blue tried to disentangle themselves from each other.

“Reporting for duty, sir!” Sam shouted back, righting himself and pulling his younger brother to his feet. They already looked distinctly dishevelled, with Sam rubbing the shoulder that had caught his fall. James looked little worse for wear, running his hands through his hair.

La’an nodded at Sam, and try as she might, she couldn’t stop her eyes from being pulled to the younger Kirk, who was, inexplicably, smiling. “Is there something funny, Lieutenant?” La’an said, unable to help herself. This was going to be a problem; they were in the middle of a crisis (apparently) and her feelings were overwhelming her.

James shook his head, still smiling. “Just…never a dull moment with you, Lt. Noonien-Singh!” La’an rolled her eyes, feeling her face heat up, noting from the corner of her eye the bewildered look Sam was throwing them. The ship lurched again, and they all grabbed the Transporter Console to stay upright. “What’s going on?!”

La’an shook her head. “I don’t know, it came out of nowhere! Lt. Kirk, to your battle station!” she yelled at Sam, who immediately nodded and left. “We can’t send you back to the Farragut as long as our shields are raised, Lieutenant!”

James nodded, taking a step towards her, but before he could say anything, another boom echoed through the ship and the entire room seemed to lurch. He stumbled forward, nearly overbalancing, and then grabbing hold of her to steady himself. “What can I do to help?” He looked at her with an open expression, and La’an had trouble focussing for a second, because his hands were still on her shoulders.

La’an shook her head a little to clear it, feeling her survivor exterior snap into place. Emotions were of no use to her right now. “I don’t know what’s going on yet. Just…follow me!” Then she tore out of the room, not giving him time to respond. The ship was already quite a mess, with several crewmembers down – dead or unconscious, she did not know, but she saw Nurse Chapel already working swiftly to help. Kirk slowed down to help, but La’an said tersely, “We can’t help them, Lieutenant, medical personnel is already doing triage! We need to get to the Bridge!” She saw a pained expression flit over his face, and she remembered the conversation they had the last time he’d been on the Enterprise. The type who can’t walk past a stranger in need. “James, I promise they’ll get the help they need!” Hearing his name seemed to snap him out of it, and he nodded, continuing to match her pace. “Bridge!” she yelled at the computer as soon as they’d lurched into the Turbolift. James was breathing heavily, looking focussed as the Turbolift raced towards the Bridge.

The doors opened to chaos. Several conduits seemed to have sprung and had flooded half the Bridge with gasses, Una was in the pilot’s seat as Erica had moved to operate firing control, and Captain Pike was helping Uhura to her feet, who was bleeding profusely from a head wound. But what caught her attention more than anything else in the room, was the view screen. Hurtling through space, firing an endless stream of plasma torpedoes at them, was a Gorn hunter ship. For a moment, everything around her went very, very quiet, her breathing stopped, and her brother appeared beside her. He looked at her with a smile on his face, but blood was pouring down the side of his face. “La’an?” he said, his smile widening. “La’an!” Then she noticed the voice was not coming from him at all, but from James, who had grabbed hold of her shoulders and was shaking her. Her eyes focussed on him; his brows furrowed as he held her tight. “Are you alright?” All noise slammed back at once, and she sucked in a deep breath. James was looking at her with a look of distinct worry on his face, but she gave him a curt nod and then took a step away from him.

“Gorn ship is firing another volley! La’an, take firing control!” Erica shouted, who was a decent shot but a better pilot. La’an took her spot at phaser control and immediately started mapping out complex firing patterns.

“Lt. Kirk, welcome aboard!” Pike said, having helped Uhura to stop the bleeding. “Sorry we couldn’t give you a warmer welcome, we weren’t expecting our other guests here to show up! Would you mind helping out around here while we deal with these bastards that are shooting at my ship?”

James, who smiled despite himself, nodded, and immediately went to work on one of the damaged conduits. The battle was brutal, and they were, once again, outclassed. “Captain, we need to find cover!” La’an said, her jaw tense as she shot another volley of plasma torpedoes out of space. Immediately after, she threw a couple of photon torpedoes at the hunter ship, which it dodged deftly.

“Working on that, Lt. Noonien-Singh,” Spock said, infuriatingly calm as always. “Sir, I have a Class J planet on our sensors that seems to emit some kind of dampening field. If we hide in the upper atmosphere…”

“The Gorn shouldn’t be able to detect us,” Pike finished, nodding. “Erica, set a course.”

“Aye, sir.”

As they were coming about, La’an spotted a plasma torpedo heading straight for them, and try as she might, she couldn’t shoot it out of space. “Shit…brace for impact!” she yelled, and then held on tight to her station.

For a second it felt like the whole ship exploded around them. Even more alarms started blaring, sparks flew, and so did people. La’an barely managed to hang on to her console, as the ship shook and lurched with the force of the impact. When the worst of it died down, the ship was still there, sort of. “Damage report!” Pike shouted.

“Shields at 43%, Captain!” Spock said loudly, retaking his place and wiping blood out of his eye. “Phasers are not operational.”

La’an cursed, tapping wildly at her screen to find a way to reset them. “I need those phasers online if we want to get out of this alive, Captain!”

“I can fix it,” Kirk said, suddenly by her side and looking intently at her. He was barely visible through the gases still billowing through the bridge, but he looked alert and seemed generally unhurt, so she knew he wasn’t just saying that. “La’an, I can fix that, but we need to go now.”

La’an didn’t hesitate. Standing up so quickly that Kirk took a startled step back, she paced over to Captain Pike’s side, who was now hauling a dazed ensign off the floor. “Sir, permission to bring Lt. Kirk with me to the phaser banks. We can fix them.” Behind her, Erica had taken La’an’s spot again and Una, who looked distinctly ruffled, had retaken her position at the helm.

“Granted. Do it quickly!” Pike said, barely glancing at her and Kirk as he checked the ensign for signs of concussion.

“Aye, sir,” La’an and Kirk both shouted, as they ran towards the Turbolift. La’an ordered it down to the phaser banks.

Kirk shot her a worried look. “You alright?”

La’an frowned, annoyed. She had no time to focus on feelings when the situation was this extreme, because if she did, she would completely useless. “Of course. I’m fine.”

Sighing, Kirk turned and looked at her until she got the message and turned to look at him as well. “You didn’t seem fine back there. You seemed panicked.” He was standing in his best First Officer stance, his hands on his hips and a stern expression on his face.

Goddamn it, why was this man so good at reading her? The strange connection that had been buzzing between them ever since she’d first called him flared up again, like it had in the corridor all those months ago, like it does every time they swap stories about their perspective jobs. La’an sighed. “Look, everybody I loved died on a Gorn breeding planet when I was young. Seeing that Gorn ship brought back…unpleasant memories.”

Kirk’s face blanched, and his face was full of sympathy, something she distinctly did not need right now. He lowered his hands and had the good sense to look sheepish. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t – ”

“Of course, you didn’t,” La’an said flatly, but before he could do anything else ridiculous like try to put a hand on her shoulder, the Turbolift doors, mercifully, opened and La’an could escape this conversation. “Alright, lieutenant, let’s fix the phaser banks so we can all die another day.”

They set to work, first clearing out the rubble from the phaser tubes, the latter of which were thankfully still intact. Then La’an watched as Kirk crawled behind a bulkhead to find the reset switch. “La’an, can you check the status back there?” he asked, his voice muffled from behind the wall. La’an ran a system’s check, but still got a few reds.

“Not working yet!”

“Damn it, I see the problem, I’ve got a severed powerline. I need to reroute. Hang on.”

Several anxious moments later, some more lights started flashing green. “Got it! There are a few things not working, but…” She was cut off by another shock going through the ship, this one quite different. James appeared from behind the bulkhead, hair dishevelled and a few burn marks on his uniform, looking alarmed. “That wasn’t a plasma torpedo,” La’an said softly.

Kirk shook his head. “That was docking.”

La’an’s blood ran cold. “They’re trying to get in. We need to stop – ” At that exact moment, a different alarm blared. “Intruder alert. Intruder on deck 4.” La’an closed her eyes, fear running through her veins. “They’re inside…” She immediately grabbed her communicator. “Captain, they’re inside, I’m heading to deck 4 to head them off.”

“Acknowledged, sending Spock and any and all security personnel to you. Pike out.”

Kirk made his way over to her side, looking determined. “I’ll go, too.”

La’an shook her head, glad to have a great excuse for sending him as far away from deck 4 as possible. “You’re of much more help on the Bridge, we need a good shot up there and no offence to Erica, but you’re better. I’ve seen your file.”

James smirked at the compliment, causing La’an to roll her eyes. The man never passed up on opportunity to flirt. But then his face turned serious again. “La’an, please…”

“James, I’m Head of Security on Starfleet’s flagship, I think I can handle myself. I’ve done it before,” she said, curtly, proud of how steady her voice sounded when, in actuality, she was freaking out inside. Knowing that Spock was on his way with his logical mind and more-than-average strength was a relief.

James raised his hands in surrender. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

La’an opened her mouth to say something, couldn’t find any fitting words – how could she ever explain the depth of her feelings for him without breaking the temporal general directive? – and closed it again. Instead, she nodded, before heading out, towards deck 4. When she was almost at the Turbolift, she suddenly felt a hand close around her wrist. For a split second, her instincts nearly vaulted him over her shoulders, but Kirk was fast. He spun her around to face him, and she got a glimpse of his determined face before he kissed her.

Oh.

It was embarrassing how easy it was for La’an to completely forget the crisis they were in right now. James was kissing her, after months and months of wondering, longing, and trying to separate that James from this James in her head. He was kissing her, and it felt just as right as it had done with the other Kirk. His arms slipped around her waist, pulling her closer, and she sunk into it for a moment, giving as good as he did, but the alarms were insistent and loud. They broke apart, panting slightly. “What was – ” she began, as his forehead rested against hers briefly.

“For luck,” James said quietly, his eyes closed as if he was steeling himself for what was coming. Then he took a step back. “Be careful, La’an.” Please, his eyes seemed to say.

Mouth slightly agape in shock, La’an nodded, watching him turn away from her and jog in the other direction. It took a second or two for her mind to reboot, but then she said, “You, too!” to his retreating back. He turned around before turning the corner and smiled, as if to say of course, you know me. Which was worrisome, because she did know him, and he generally didn’t give a rat’s ass about his own safety.

Although she was about to run headfirst into a (pack of?) Gorn, so she didn’t really have grounds to talk. The Turbolift arrived and in the several seconds it took for the lift to go up to deck 4, La’an had time to panic, put herself back together and steel herself for what was to come. As the Turbolift opened, La’an immediately went to her knees and ripped open a panel behind which phasers were stored. Taking two, she stashed one in her uniform and held the other out in front of her, setting it to maximum. Then she opened her communicator. “La’an to all security personal and Mr. Spock, what is your status?”

“I have just arrived at deck 4, Lieutenant Noonien-Singh, and making my way to you now. No sight of the Gorn.”

“Do we know if it’s one Gorn or more?”

“Sensors detected a slight life sign as we were boarded but have not picked up any life signs since then. It is impossible to know how many there are.”

“Pray it’s only one.”

“Indeed.”

It was dead silent on the deck, as Captain Pike had obviously had enough of the alarms and had shut it all off. A sense of wrongness overcame her, as if she was being watched. La’an kept moving, knowing that she had to meet her people. Safety in numbers, even with the Gorn. It didn’t take long before she heard movement up ahead. She raised her phaser, moving slowly towards the sounds. If it was a Gorn she would shoot until the phaser was empty, that much she was sure about. Her heart was beating in her throat. “Lieutenant?” said a voice suddenly, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Spock!” she whisper-yelled, embarrassed at how easy it was to rattle her. “I thought you were a Gorn, I’d nearly emptied my phaser on you.”

Spock emerged from the shadows, a single eyebrow raised. “Then I am grateful for your level of self-control. I was on my way to the science lab. I have been thinking about the last Gorn we encountered, and how we defeated them.”

La’an nodded, immediately catching on. “Cold. Liquid nitrogen.”

Spock nodded. “Indeed. If I am not mistaken there are several cannisters of liquid nitrogen to choose from.”

La’an shook her head as they advanced, wondering where her security team was. “One of these days we’re going to have a talk about hazardous materials.”

Spock raised another perfect eyebrow. “As you wish, lieutenant. Though I feel the need to point out that warp plasma is infinitely more destructive, as it…”

La’an held up her hand. “Spare me the workings of my ship. It’s helpful that you’ve got it now.” They crept into the science lab, which was thankfully abandoned for now. They worked fast, assembling a sort of liquid nitrogen bomb to throw at the Gorn when they encountered them. As she worked, she replayed the kiss with James over in her mind. It was distracting and more than once she nearly spilled some liquid nitrogen on herself. If Spock noticed, he didn’t care to comment, which she appreciated. When they were almost done, La’an flipped open her communicator. “La’an to any and all security personnel on deck 4, where are you?”

“This is Ensign Scott, we’re trapped near the Turbolift, lieutenant, there’s one Gorn outside trying to break down the door. We’ve lost D’Jal.” La’an looked up sharply, locking eyes with Spock, who looked faintly troubled by raising a single eyebrow.

“Hang tight, Ensign, Spock and I are on our way. Try to stay as far away from the door as possible!”

“Aye, lieutenant.”

 “It’s finished, lieutenant. It should at least incapacitate the Gorn enough for us to…destroy it.”

La’an remembered smashing the last one, too. She usually didn’t really enjoy violence, but that had felt good. The same fire was suddenly burning in Spock’s eyes, and she remembered how he’d lowered his inhibitions to make himself stronger against the Gorn. It seemed he was doing the same thing now. “Let’s go.”

With Spock holding the bomb, La’an took up her second phaser and used it to cover as much of their surroundings as possible, as they moved in the opposite direction to the other Turbolift. At first it was absolutely silent, and then the lights when out. “Shit,” La’an muttered, quickly turning on her flashlights. “The Gorn found a light switch.”

“I think it’s highly unlikely that…”

Was Spock being particularly Vulcan-y today, or was he always this obtuse? La’an stopped to shoot him one of her famous death stares. “Yes, obviously I meant it destroyed some conduits, Spock, it was a figure of speech.”

“Right,” Spock said, looking politely contrite. “My apologies.”

La’an turned her back on him and crept forward, slower, and more deliberate than before. Gorn could now be on literally every corner, and one false move would mean bad, possibly fatal, news. The quiet was all-encompassing, exacerbated by the darkness, and the feeling of being watched crept over La’an again.

It was an old feeling, familiar from her time on the Gorn breeding planet, and a feeling that she always tried very hard to stay away from. It usually preluded a panic attack of varying degrees of severity. She did not have time in her life for panic attacks. “Lieutenant Noonien-Singh, you have not taken a breath in at least a minute, are you alright?”

La’an took a sharp breath, the pounding in her ears suddenly proof of her lack of oxygen. “Yes. Yes, I’m – ” She shook her head, wondering how she just forgot to breathe. “No, actually, I’m not alright.”

She felt more than saw Spock nod behind her. “The Gorn are a violent species, and you’ve had more run-ins with them than most. Perhaps some comfort can be gleaned from the fact that you have survived them three separate times now.”

La’an scoffed, shaking her head to clear it. “It’s called luck. And it is going to run out.”

“Perhaps. I, myself, have never believed in luck. I must – ” But La’an cut him off with a quick hand motion and a hiss. Nearby, she could hear clicking and pounding. The Gorn, trying to get to her security team. Not today, monster. She motioned for Spock to get on the other side of the corridor with the bomb, so the Gorn would have nowhere to go, and in that formation, they approached the noise, which got more violent and louder with every step they took.

And then she saw it. A recently hatched, but already quite large Gorn was scratching and pounding at a door, which was slowly losing integrity against the onslaught of a hungry Gorn. Her breath stilled again, her heart pounding in her ears, and for a moment she froze. A soft gasp escaped her throat before she could stop herself, and the Gorn snapped its gaze towards them. “Now!” she screamed at Spock, as she locked eyes with the hungry, dead eyes she’d seen most often in her nightmares. The Gorn leapt towards them just as Spock threw the liquid nitrogen bomb at it.

The bomb exploded in mid-air, straight in the Gorn’s face, and it screeched in pain as the immediate cold washed in waves over its body and through the corridor. La’an leapt back, because though the cold should’ve frozen it solid immediately, the Gorn was still moving, and fast.

“Lieutenant, be careful – ” Spock’s shout pierced the air at the same time La’an felt something long and sharp slash across her chest. “Lieutenant!” The pain was immediate and overwhelming, and La’an fell to the floor. Someone was screaming, she registered dimly, and it took her a moment to realize it was her. The Gorn, she realized. It was still behind her. The pain was blinding her, her vision narrowing, time slowing down, but she had to get away, had to make sure the Gorn wouldn’t infect her. Letting out another scream when she moved, the pain excruciating, she turned around, only to find the Gorn right in front of her, frozen solid, its claw outstretched, parts of her uniform hanging from the talons.

“Die – you monster,” she managed to spit out, before everything went black.

--

The first thing La’an was aware of was that she was lying on a soft bed. The second thing she was aware of was…oh, she wasn’t dead. That was nice. Being alive was nice. She was warm and comfortable.

“Mr. Kirk, I assure you she is going to be all right. You do not need to stand vigil here.”

“I’m fine, Dr. M’Benga.”

That didn’t make sense. How was James here, on the Enterprise, when he was stationed on the Farragut? No, that wasn’t right. He’d come over to the Enterprise to drop his brother off after his shore-leave. And something had happened… Her brain was foggy, the sedative dr. M’Benga had given her obviously doing its work, but she was forgetting something, something important.

The Gorn.

Gasping wildly, La’an opened her eyes and sat up straight, her eyes wide. “Where is it?!” she shouted, barely aware of the pain that pierced through her sedative and shot through her body.

“La’an, it’s okay!” James was there, right next to her, his palms facing towards her to show his calm. “It’s okay, you’re safe. You’re all right.” He took a step closer, putting his hands on her shoulders, which were heaving.

“James?” she asked, her voice high pitched. Her brain was addled with drugs and panic, so she was slow on the uptake.

He nodded, smiling gently. “It’s me, La’an, it’s all right. Trust me.” His voice was soft, calm, and if the Gorn was still at large, why would he be so calm?

“It’s dead?” she said, her voice shaking as the panic slowly subsided. James nodded, raising a hand to her face, and stroking her hair back. “We killed it?”

James nodded again, leaning forward to put his forehead against hers. “Yeah, you did. It nearly took you with it.” La’an closed her eyes, the last of her panic subsiding in his calming presence. She remembered now. The liquid nitrogen bomb, the gashes, the pain. “It’s all right, La’an. You have to lay back down now, you’re still healing.” La’an looked down. She was dressed in her standard issue tank top and shorts, and she could see the gashes the Gorn had made across her chest. Dr M’Benga had done a good job on them, she thought, as she remembered in a flash how deep the cuts had been. “Please, La’an, or Dr M’Benga will have my head, I told him I wouldn’t let you overexert yourself.”

“La’an, you’re awake!” Christine entered Sickbay and immediately rushed over. “You let her get up?” she said, glaring at James, who let go of La’an reluctantly and stepped back.

“Let her? Have you met the lieutenant before, Nurse Chapel?” He locked eyes with La’an and winked at her, and La’an, inexplicably, laughed.

Christine rolled her eyes with a smile, and gently guided La’an back down. Then she set to work on examining her wounds, while James hovered nearby, leaning against the next biobed with one arm and his other hand firmly planted on his hip. La’an almost had to laugh, the man had a way with ridiculous stances in every timeline. “You’ll be all right, lieutenant. The cuts were very deep, and it was a bit touch and go for a while, but we managed to stem the bleeding and repair most of the damage. The rest must heal on its own. We can use a dermal regenerator for the scars when…”

“No,” La’an said curtly, causing both Christine and James to look at her in surprise. “No dermal regenerators. I need to remember this.”

Christine looked like she wanted to argue, but then thought better off it. “Alright. Well, there’s nothing more you can do but rest. I’ll give you another small sedative and leave you in the capable hands of your guard here.” She shot an amused look in James’s direction before administering another hypospray to La’an and heading off to M’Benga’s office. La’an was in too much pain to really object to the sedation, so instead she turned to look at James, who pushed off from the biobed to stand next to hers. He looked down at her with the softest expression she’d ever seen on his smug face. “My guard?” she asked, bemused.

He laughed sheepishly, scratching behind his ear with a blush on his face. She’d never seen him this shy before. “I – I may have been here nearly non-stop for two days?”

La’an’s eyes widened. He’d done what? “Why? Wait, two days?” There were too many questions swirling in her brain at once, and she suddenly felt very dizzy. “Ow,” she muttered, grabbing her head.

He was kneeling beside her in a flash, his hands stroking her arm gently, his eyebrows furrowed in frustration. “What can I do?”

La’an laughed despite the pain, and she turned her head to look at him. She lifted a single hand to rest on his cheek, a gesture of affection she would not usually deal out so easily, but her inhibitions were lowered, and this man had been at her bedside for two whole days. “You’re already doing it, James. Thank you.” She closed her eyes and let the feel of his soft hands running up and down her arm lull her into a superficial slumber. She was warm, and she felt safe, and it was probably the sedatives starting to work, but it felt nice. It wasn’t often that felt safe.

When she next woke up, James was asleep on a chair beside her, his head resting on her biobed, one hand resting in hers, and it was dark in Sickbay. She smiled. She wasn’t sure how long she’d slept, but somehow, she was very sure that he hadn’t moved much except to get a chair. “James,” she said, rolling on her side to face him properly, and squeezing his hand. “James, wake up.”

He woke slowly, and blinked into the semi-darkness as he looked up. “La’an,” his voice was rough with sleep. “How are you feeling?” He lifted a hand to her face, letting his thumb trace the side of her face gently.

La’an closed her eyes to enjoy the sensation. “’m fine.” They gazed at each other for a while, and as they did so, at least twenty different questions popped into her head. “James, why did you…kiss me?”

James averted his gaze with a smile, before looking back up and letting his thumb trace lower, across her bottom lip. “I admit, it was slightly dramatic in the heat of the moment, but…I’ve been wanting to for quite some time, ever since you called me James even though we had barely spoken more than 5 minutes. And then we got that drink, and I got to know you, and I just…I really like you, La’an Noonien-Singh. So when it was a crisis situation and you were about to run headfirst into danger, I thought…now or never.”

“Mmm. Quite presumptuous of you, Lt. Kirk,” she said, her voice teasing and a smile on her face. She moved a bit closer to him, and he slid his hand in her neck, their noses now almost touching.

James shot her a charming half-smile, his eyes flicking down to her lips a few times. “I don’t seem to remember you complaining much, Lt. Noonien-Singh.”

La’an raised one shoulder, suppressing a wince as her scars pulled painfully. “Well, I was caught by surprise.”

“Hmm, that’s not very chivalrous of me,” James whispered, his lips ghosting over hers.

La’an shook her head. “No, not very,” she murmured, and then she closed the distance. It was wonderful, to be able to kiss him freely, after having wanted to for months, having to sort out which of her feelings were real and which of her feelings were left over from the deleted timeline, and finally being unable to figure out how to even go about forming a connection with him. She let her hand wander into his hair, finding it soft and a little smushed together from sleeping against the biobed. His hand snuck into her hair as well, which was hanging loose, free of her usual braids, and she wondered if her hair was just as messy as his. Then she found herself not caring at all, because his mouth was soft against hers, and he was moving closer, moving to put his hand on the bed behind her, causing her to roll onto her back. He was standing now, one hand on the back of her head, protecting her from hitting anything, the other bracketing her, and she felt once again protected and safe.

They were lost in the kiss, were ignoring her injuries, and ignoring the trauma she’d just been through, but it couldn’t last long. A throat cleared behind from somewhere behind James, and they broke apart, gasping. Dr M’Benga stood there, looking equal parts disapproving and amused. “I’m afraid none of this comes under the heading of ‘resting’, Lt. Noonien-Singh.”

La’an felt her cheeks burning, as she lifted her hand to touch her lips, which were tingling. “I’m sorry, Dr M’Benga, we were…”

James was standing next to her biobed, looking both guilty and exceedingly pleased with himself. “This is my fault, Dr M’Benga, my apologies.”

M’Benga looked at him, his gaze stern. “You are free to remain here, Lt. Kirk, but I’ll thank you to let my patient rest.”

James nodded solemnly. “Yes, doctor.”

“Good night, lieutenants.”

“Good night,” they both said sheepishly, as M’Benga left Sickbay. James let out a slightly embarrassed chuckle. “I’m sorry,” he said, sitting back down on the chair, close enough to hold her hand but too far to continue their very pleasurable exploits. Now that the rush of adrenaline was fading again, La’an could feel her wounds throbbing with pain. “You okay?”

La’an shook her head as she pressed her hand to her chest, expecting to come away with blood, but finding nothing. It hurt like it was bleeding. “I was…a little overenthusiastic.” She opened her eyes to him staring down at her with a soft smile. “What?”

“Nothing,” James said, shaking his head as if to clear it. He leaned forward and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, so gentle that it ached. “Get some sleep, La’an.”

La’an grabbed his hand before he could pull it back and held it against her cheek for a moment. “Promise me you will, too?”

“I can sleep here.”

She squeezed his hand to shut him up, then looked up at him with her best Chief of Security-glare. “James, you’ve been here for over two days now. You need a bed. I’ll still be here in the morning, because I don’t think these wounds will heal as fast as I want them to.” Then she kissed his palm, noting with some satisfaction that his breath caught. “Thank you for not leaving me these past few days. But I will never forgive myself if worrying about me causes you to collapse from exhaustion.”

“La’an Noonien-Singh, who knew you had a flair for the dramatic?” he said with a light tease, then got to his feet and leaned over her. “Alright, I’ll go get some sleep. Good night, La’an.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead, sending butterflies soaring through La’an stomach. It was very embarrassing, having feelings.

“Good night, James.” James smiled and then exited the Sickbay, leaving La’an alone with her embarrassing number of feelings.

The sedative worked wonders, however, because with no further distractions in the form of handsome men, her brain got foggy again. Her brain spooled past the last couple of days, in which James played a large part, and the Gorn was conveniently clouded in vague memories. She could still feel James’ lips pressed against hers, his fingers tracing her neck, her arm, his mouth…

Looking at it however, not even Daniel knew what he wanted. Did he really want to be in a relationship with a man like Phil, someone who traveled and killed monsters? Did Daniel want to put his entire life at risk for a simple man, someone who couldn't even properly take care of him, someone who didn't make proper money, nor have a proper job. He couldn't properly protect him, but honestly he could protect Daniel more than anyone, knew things others don't, things other men couldn't protect Daniel from, especially if whatever killed his dad or anything at all what gonna come after him.  

Was Phil someone Daniel even wanted to be interested in? He was the kinda man his father would say run away from. someone so full of sin God couldn't even turn his head to look at him, his name having a permanent place on the list of Hell.  And wait just one second, why was Daniel even considering this, Phil wasn't interested in him, and he wasn't interested in Phil. That was final enough for Dan. He didn't need a relationship, his father had just died, not that Phil could even give him a proper relationship.

He had thought about his father as little as possible, trying to mask his feelings of sadness underneath everything, making himself busy with Phil and the new journey ahead of him so he wouldn't have to worry about how it would be when he had to stop and actually think.

Why had his life had to change so much, why had his father had to die, and why did this happen to him specifically. How cruel was it that a god who claimed to love him so much would make him suffer through this.

Daniel felt his mood drop, he felt his lip tremble, and he felt water stinging his eyes. His father had been a good man, he truly was, or at least that's what Daniel had believed. Things like this just happened to Daniel, there had been a time when he had believed it was because he way gay. Where he had believed everything has happened to him because God was punishing him, and sometimes his father had even agreed with him.

Quickly wiping his cheek he put his bags on the bed. He heard footsteps behind him and he turned around to find Phil staring at him, curiosity in his eyes.

“You okay?” he asked, clearly hesitant, he wasn't one for emotions something he didn't need to tell Dan for him to understand.

All Dan could do was nod, he wasn't going to to cry to Phil, he wasn't going to do this. He was eighteen, he could handle this, after all, clearly his father hadn't been all that amazing so why was he so upset? He could see the doubt in Phil’s eyes, so all that he could do was turn his back to the man, as his shoulders hunched. He could feel his breathing become heavier, his eyes were watering again, tears racing down his cheeks.

Maybe it was the fact he was crying, maybe Phil Lester actually did have a heart, because soon enough he felt arms wrap around him, turning him around and hugging him. Dan could only sob harder as Phil squeezed him. Dan let himself bury his face into Phil’s jacket. Daniel just didn't know how to stop crying, why had this happened to him, why did Phil even have to come to the town, his father should be alive, his mother should be alive, he should be straight and in college right now, becoming the lawyer his father wanted him to be. Instead here he was in the arms of a man he could no longer deny the fact he was attracted to.

Eventually the crying had to stop, and Dan was content with just being held, breathing in the scent of Phil and letting himself sniffle and let everything out and go. Maybe he wasn't healed, maybe this was the first of many breakdowns, but this was a start, and he knew he could do this.

Soon enough he felt the arms start to pull from his body, and as pathetic as it sounds, he let a small whine slip out. He wondered why Phil had to let go so soon, which in turn made him wonder why he even ared, why did he convince himself he wasn't attracted to Phil, only to turn around and prove the facts to his own face?

Phil let out a chuckle, and Dan was only upset when he couldn't feel the vibrations against him like he could have a moment ago. Phil was face to face with Daniel now, and even though Dan hated this fact, he couldn't help notice how amazing those eyes were, close to his own. He hated this stupid cheesy feeling he got near this man, how was it fair someone could jump into your life so suddenly and make him feel something, even knowing he'd never have a chance, even if Phil was gay, clearly he wasn't interested, showing the way he was able to stop making out with him so easily, push him away and then joke about it. Clearly Daniel just wasn't Phil’s type, if Phil even had a type.

He watched the way Phil’s head fell into a tilt, and Dan wanted to die with how cute he looked. How could a single human being make him feel like this? He felt his head tilt, and the sigh that fell from Phil’s lips made him want everything so much more, so much that he almost forgot what he knew would happen if he kissed Phil right here in this present time. He would enjoy himself before Phil ultimately left him crying like the last time. Phil Lester just wasn't one to be held down and Dan knew he couldn't put himself in that position again.

“So what's the worst thing you've ever hunted?”he asked, looking down at Phil's lips for only a millisecond before he was back to staring into those blue eyes, blue eyes that were crinkled at the edges form the smile he was giving Daniel. Dan might be ashamed to admit he felt his stomach swoop from that one smile.

“Hmmm let me think.” Phil said, glancing down before saying “Probably this nest of vampires in Portali, killed over fifteen of the teenage girls in the town, and then kept their bodies. Only way i knew it was vampires is because of the fact that one girl survived. Freaked out she told the police but of course they said she was just scared and couldn't think straight. There were at least seven of those freaks just preying on the girls. It was awful.” He finished.

Daniel shivered at the thought. So many lives lost, yet this man in front of him saved so many people, even though he didn't understand Phil, he was extremely grateful he did what he did, saving people from things cops couldn't ever dream of. He was grateful that he had even saved him from what he had never believed had existed.

“Wait, do all of the families know what you do? He asked, curiously tilting his head. Phil chuckled, he seemed to find it hilarious Daniel was interested in this kind of thing, but i mean what did he expect when this was his life for now? The only thing he could do was deal with this, it was his only choice, he wanted to know about the supernatural elements and how you deal with them. Was there a god? Apparently since castiel existed, if so, did Lucifer also exist? The questions just kept popping up.

“Most families don't know anything unless they see the creatures themselves, which i try to prevent. I don't trust people not to go about trying to do what us hunters do without proper training.” Phil said, he looked away for a second, before finding “Not knowing has really messed a lot of people up, I've watched couples together twenty years divorce because of it, but it's better separated then dead i guess. It just makes you feel bad, but that's what life is. Other hunters think its funny, call them a bunch of pussy’s, but I've watched mothers hold their own kids as they die, hell i know a woman named Jody whose son came back from the dead, poor woman couldn't handle anything cause she loved him so much, but that thing ate her husband, so in the end she lost the most two important dudes in her life. Sam and Dean took care of that one, i was helping others. You haven't seen hurt until you've watched these things. Ain't nobody at fault for crying over what I’ve seen.”

Dan was in awe, staring at Phil for a moment, before he asked “Is she okay?”

Phil stayed silent for a minute, before he nodded. “She's good now, helps us out every once in awhile. She's a real great woman, i just wish we all could have helped more than we did. She should have never seen that. This job destroys people, but more people are gonna hurt if we ignore it and go about our merry ways.” he said.

“Couldn't they just, I don't know leave? Quit?” Daniel asked, kind of shocked at the angry look Phil gave him.

“You think they, or should i say we haven't tried? Things out there have fucking brains, and they will hunt you if you stop hunting them. Many friends of mine have been killed because they wanted a family, settled down, had a kid or two, and the one day wakes up dead, wife’s freaking out, kids crying and she's calling me because she doesn't understand.You can't leave this job, it's dangerous to be in it, worse if you get out. At Least hunting you have the equipment, stay in practice to know when somethings up.” He said. Dan could tell his breathing had gotten a bit heavier, so before it could escalate into a fight over Dan’s lack of knowledge in the supernatural department he placed his hand on Phil’s lightly. “I'm sorry about your friends.” he said sincerely.

Maybe it wasn't a lot, but Phil nodded, his expression softening. On the desk, Phil’s phone rang, causing them both to jump. Phil groaned and got up, answering it and saying “Yes, ma’am” a few times, before he placed the phone down and grabbed his jacket.

“Just got a call from the police department. They have a new body so i’m gonna go ahead and go ahead and get up there, try and exam and stuff. Will you be okay?” He asked.

When young Eryon went missing during the patrol right before Curtain-Fall Hour, the guards hesitated. Too dangerous, they said. Wait for backup, they insisted. But you saw the fear in his mentor’s eyes, heard the desperation in her voice when she begged someone—anyone—to help find her student before the night brought worse things than Titankin.

The guards followed protocol. You followed instinct.

Now, pressed against cold stone with nowhere to run, you’re beginning to understand why the evacuation orders for this area had been so absolute. You found Eryon huddled behind a collapsed wall—terror-stricken, but alive. Getting him to safety was the easy part. You pointed him toward the nearby checkpoint, watched him vanish into the shadows clutching your whispered directions in trembling hands.

The Titankin appeared moments later, as if Eryon’s departure was a signal. Now you face them alone, exactly as you feared you might. They emerge from the shadows like nightmares given form—corrupted flesh and twisted metal moving with predatory intent. One, then two, then five of them, their grotesque shapes filling the narrow space between collapsed buildings. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The alley that seemed like salvation when you found Eryon now feels like a trap.

The lead Titankin snarls, raising a weapon. You fumble for the blade at your side, knowing even as you draw it that you're hopelessly outmatched. Five against one. The math is simple, brutal, final.

The enemy lunges. It never reaches you.

A flash of gold sears across your vision as Mydei slams into the alley like a storm made flesh.

Mydei appears between you and the threat like he's materialized from shadow itself, and there's no weapon in his hands. There doesn't need to be.

His hand catches the corrupted weapon mid-swing, fingers locking around it with such force that the twisted metal screams before it snaps in half. The Titankin snarls, but it’s cut short when Mydei’s fist connects with its chest. You hear a loud shatter.

Mydei should stop there. He doesn’t. His markings blaze, alive with furious light, and he drives his fists down again and again until there’s nothing left to strike.

The red markings across his arms pulse with each heartbeat, each pattern seeming to writhe and burn brighter as his fury builds. This isn’t the methodical efficiency you’ve seen before. This personal. This is what happens when someone threatens what belongs to him.

When another Titankin gets too close to where you’re pressed against the wall, something in Mydei’s expression shifts beyond fury into something primal and territorial. The sound that emerges from his throat isn’t quite human. A growl that seems to resonate in your bones. He doesn’t just kill that one. He obliterates it, reducing it to chunks of corrupted flesh with his hands while his eyes burn like molten gold.

Raw power radiates from him in waves you can almost see, distorting the air like heat shimmer. The remaining Titankin hesitate, some primal instinct recognizing a predator far more dangerous than themselves. Mydei moves through them like a force of nature given human form—hand shooting out to crush enemies, fists caving in armor, spines snapping with casual twists of his wrists.

“Mydei!” Your voice breaks on his name.

That pulls him back, barely. His head jerks toward you, golden eyes molten with something that isn’t just battle-rage. It’s fear.

Another Titankin lunges for your flank. Mydei moves before you can react, hand snapping out to seize its throat. He lifts it clean off the ground, the corrupted thing kicking and flailing in his grip. The growl that rumbles from his chest is low, primal, almost inhuman. When he tears its head from its shoulders, the sound it makes is wet and final.

The fight has lasted seconds. The silence after feels endless.

Mydei stands amid the carnage, chest rising and falling in steady rhythm. But his hands are shaking, fists clenched so tight you wonder if he even feels the ichor dripping from his knuckles. His golden eyes scan the surrounding area once, twice, cataloging every shadow and possible hiding place before landing on you—and what you see there makes your stomach twist.

It isn’t triumph. It isn’t even anger.

It’s terror, raw and unguarded, barely leashed beneath his usual composure.

Mydei crosses to you in three strides, his hand rising, but then hesitating, as if afraid of his own strength. The markings on his arms are still pulsing, slower now but deeper, like a heartbeat made visible. His gauntlets are still stained, and when he reaches toward your face, there’s something predatory in the careful way he moves. Like he’s afraid his own strength might hurt you if he’s not infinitely gentle. When he lowers his hand again, a wave of pain surges through you.

“You could’ve died.” His voice is rough, fraying at the edges. “If I’d been seconds later—” He cuts himself off, jaw locking, as though the words themselves are too dangerous to finish.

“I’m—”

“Don’t,” he snaps, sharper than he means to, golden eyes blazing. “Don’t move away from me again. Ever.”

There’s no room for argument. Not when you can feel the way his whole body hums with the force of holding back something that wants to tear the world apart.

“Are you hurt?” The question emerges through gritted teeth, each word precise because losing control of his speech might mean losing control of everything else.

When you shake your head, relief and residual rage war across his features in a way that makes your breath catch. This is Mydei stripped of all pretense. Not the controlled warrior, but something raw and possessive and utterly, devastatingly focused on you. And terrified. So terrified his hands are shaking.

“Do you have any idea—” His voice cracks, and he has to start again. “Do you understand what I found when I got here? What I thought I was going to find?”

Finally, with deliberate care, he pulls off his gauntlets, the armored pieces falling away with soft clinks. Each piece strikes the ground like a vow, like he’s shedding every barrier between his hands and you. Armor he never lowers for anyone else, dropped without hesitation now.

When his bare palms cup your face, the skin-to-skin contact is electric, intimate in a way that makes everything around you fade into background noise.

“What were you thinking?” The words tear out of him, raw and unsteady. “A missing pupil doesn’t justify you coming here alone. The guards had protocols—”

“The guards were too slow,” you cut him off, finding your voice despite the tremor in it. “Eryon was out here, frightened and alone, and they wanted to wait for backup while he—”

“While he what? Dies?” His voice cracks entirely. “And what if you’d died instead? What if I’d arrived to find both of you torn apart by those things?”

The bluntness of it hits like a physical blow. You can see it in his eyes now. The images his mind conjured when he first arrived, the scenarios he’d prepared himself for. Finding pieces of you scattered among the rubble. Finding nothing at all.

“I was five minutes behind you,” he continues, and there’s something hollow in his voice now. “Five minutes. If those guards hadn’t told me where you’d gone, if I’d had to search…” His hands clench and unclench at his sides. “I might have been too late.”

“But you weren’t—”

“But I could have been.” The words explode out of him with renewed fury. “I could have arrived to find you dead, and it would have been because you decided one life was worth risking the thing that matters most to me.”

His hand finds the back of your neck, fingers spanning the delicate bones there with careful pressure, but you can feel the tremor in his touch. It’s not just possessive. It’s desperate. Like he’s checking to make sure you’re still real, still whole, still breathing.

“Do you understand what that would have done to me?” His voice drops to something barely above a whisper, but the intensity hasn’t lessened. “Finding your body in this alley? Knowing I failed to protect the one thing that matters most?”

“Mydei—”

“I can’t—” He stops, jaw working soundlessly for a moment. “I can’t protect you if you’re not where I can reach you.” It sounds like a confession torn out of him.

His thumb traces along your jaw with a gentleness so at odds with the violence you just witnessed that your breath catches.

The admission hangs between you. This is Mydei stripped of his usual stoicism, showing you the fear that lives beneath all that controlled strength. The knowledge that for all his skill, all his power, he can’t be everywhere at once. Can’t shield you from every threat if you insist on walking into danger.

You whisper his name, but he only shakes his head, pulling you closer until your foreheads touch. When he looks at you again, his expression has softened slightly—the wild terror banking into something more controlled, though no less intense.

His thumb brushes along the edge of your hairline, and you realize he’s taking inventory. Checking for injuries, for signs of shock, for anything that might indicate you’re not as unharmed as you claim. The touch is gentle but thorough, clinical in its precision.

“Your breathing,” he says after a moment. “It’s too fast.”

He’s right. Your heart is still racing from the encounter, adrenaline making your hands shake and your breath come in quick, shallow pants. Without warning, the reality of what just happened hits you all at once. How close you came to dying, how easily they could have torn you apart if Mydei hadn’t arrived when he did.

“Hmph.” His voice is softer now, that commanding edge replaced by something that sounds like tenderness. “Look at me.”

You do, meeting those familiar golden eyes that seem to see straight through you. There’s still anger there, but it’s banked now, controlled. What dominates his expression instead is something fierce and protective and utterly unwavering.

“Breathe,” Mydei instructs, his hand still cupping the back of your neck. “Slowly. Match my rhythm.”

He demonstrates, drawing air in deep and measured, and you find yourself unconsciously mimicking the pattern. His presence is solid, grounding—an anchor point in a world that suddenly feels too sharp and too bright.

“That’s it.” The approval in his voice makes warmth spread through your chest. “Keep going.”

Minutes pass in relative silence, broken only by the sound of your gradually steadying breathing. Mydei doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, just keeps that steady contact that reminds you he’s there, that he’s real, that you’re safe.

When your heart rate finally returns to something approaching normal, he speaks again.

“Better?”

You nod, suddenly aware of how close he is, how the heat of his palm against your neck seems to be radiating through your entire body.

“Good.” But Mydei doesn’t pull away. If anything, his grip seems to tighten slightly, like he’s reluctant to break the contact now that it’s been established. “You’re safe now.”

The words carry weight beyond their simple meaning. It’s not just a statement of current fact, but a promise. A vow that as long as he draws breath, as long as he can fight, nothing will harm you on his watch.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, though you’re not entirely sure what you’re apologizing for. For wandering off alone, for making him worry, for the fear you saw flash across his features when he thought he might be too late.

“Don’t apologize.” His thumb traces along your pulse point, and you wonder if he can feel how your heart skips at the contact. His voice turns rough again, like gravel. “Just… don’t do it again. I can’t—” He stops, swallows hard. “I can’t survive losing you.”

The admission is rawer than anything you’ve heard from him before. Not just “I can’t lose you”, but “I can’t survive it.” Like your death wouldn’t just break his heart, but destroy him entirely. That he couldn’t stand living his immortality without you in it.

“When I saw this place was empty, when I realized you’d gone into the corrupted zone…” His forehead drops to rest against yours again, and you can feel the tremor running through his entire body. “For a moment, I thought I was too late. I thought I’d lost the only thing that makes any of this worth fighting for.”

“You won’t,” you promise, covering his hand with yours where it rests against your neck. “I’ll be more careful.”

He studies your face for a long moment, those golden eyes searching for something—sincerity, perhaps, or reassurance that you understand the weight of what you’re promising.

“See that you are,” he says finally, but there’s less steel in it now. “I’ve lost enough people I care about.”

The past tense hangs heavy between you, a reminder of the grief he carries, the scars both visible and hidden that mark him as someone who’s learned the hard way that the people who matter can be taken away in an instant.

His hand finally falls away from your neck, and you immediately miss the warmth, the grounding weight of his touch. But he doesn’t step back entirely. Instead, he positions himself slightly in front of you, eyes scanning the area one more time for threats.

“We’re leaving,” he announces, voice back to its usual authoritative tone. “Now. And you stay close to me until we’re back within the city gates.”

It’s not a request, and you don’t treat it like one. When he starts walking, you fall into step beside him, close enough that your shoulder occasionally brushes his arm. Each point of contact feels like reassurance. Proof that you’re both here, both alive, both safe.

As you emerge back into the populated areas of Okhema, Mydei’s posture doesn’t relax. If anything, he seems more alert, his eyes cataloging every face, every shadow, every potential threat.

“Mydei,” you say softly as you walk. “Thank you.”

He glances down at you, expression unreadable. “For what?”

“For coming after me. For…” You gesture vaguely at the alley behind you, at the carnage he left there, at the way he’d materialized exactly when you needed him most. “For everything.”

Something in his expression softens, just slightly. “You don’t need to thank me for protecting what’s mine.”

The casual possessiveness in the statement would bother other people. Not you, though. Instead, it sends a warm thrill through your chest, a reminder that to this man—this warrior who trusts so few and lets even fewer people close—you matter. You’re worth protecting, worth fighting for, worth the controlled fury you saw him unleash on anything that dared threaten you.

“Is that what I am?” you ask, only half-teasing. “Yours?”

He stops walking abruptly, turning to face you with an intensity that makes your breath catch.

“Yes,” Mydei says simply, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You are.”

And when he kisses you there in the middle of Okhema’s street, it’s not gentle. It’s claiming. His mouth crashes against yours with the same devastating intensity he brought to the fight, all barely leashed power and desperate need. The taste of violence still clings to him, metallic and dark, but underneath it is something purely him—heat and possession and the promise of protection written in the fierce press of his lips.

His bare hand tangles in your hair, not quite rough but utterly controlling, angling your head exactly where he wants it. The other traces along your jaw with precision, callused fingertips tracing the shape of you. The kiss deepens, his tongue sweeping into your mouth like he’s marking territory, claiming what’s his with a thoroughness that leaves no room for doubt.

When you gasp against his mouth, the sound he makes in response—low and possessive and guttural—sends liquid heat racing through your veins. But it’s not enough. Not nearly enough to quiet the storm raging in his chest, the desperate need to confirm you’re alive, you’re his, you’re safe.

His hands slide to your waist with sudden urgency, and then you’re moving. He backs you toward the nearest alcove between buildings, away from the curious stares of passersby, his mouth never leaving yours. When your back hits the stone wall, he follows immediately, pressing you against it with his full body weight. The coolness of the stone is nothing compared to the furnace heat of him against your front.

There’s something wild in his eyes now, something barely contained. His hands are everywhere—gripping your waist, sliding up your sides, tangling in your hair with just enough force to tilt your head back and expose your throat to his mouth. He kisses you like he’s starving, like he’s trying to devour you whole and keep you safe inside him where nothing can ever threaten you again.

“Mine,” he growls against your neck, the word rough and possessive. His teeth scrape along your pulse point, and when you gasp his name, he captures the sound with his mouth, swallowing it like it’s something precious.

His hands find the hem of your shirt, fingers urgent and desperate with need. There’s the soft sound of fabric tearing as his grip tightens, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care. All his focus is on mapping every inch of skin he can reach, confirming with his hands what his eyes couldn’t believe—that you’re whole, unharmed, alive.

“I thought I lost you,” he mutters against your collarbone, voice cracking. His hands slide up your sides, thumbs brushing along your ribs as if checking for breaks, for wounds, for any sign that those creatures touched you. “Thought I was too late.”

You try to speak, to reassure him, but he silences you with another kiss. Deeper, more desperate. His tongue sweeps into your mouth with possessive intent while his hands continue their frantic exploration. When he pulls back to breathe, his forehead rests heavily against yours, golden eyes wild and unfocused.

“Need to feel you,” he breathes, and there’s something almost broken in his voice. “Need to know you’re real.”

His hands slide down to grip your thighs, lifting you against the wall in one fluid motion. One arm braces you securely while the other traces along your newly exposed skin with hungry reverence. The wall supports your weight, but it’s his strength that holds you, positions you exactly where he needs you to be.

“Closer,” he breathes against your throat, adjusting his grip to press you higher against the stone. The friction of his bare forearm against your skin makes you shiver, and you wrap your legs around his waist instinctively, drawing him impossibly nearer. You can feel the evidence of his desire, hard and insistent against you, and the knowledge that you’ve affected him this completely sends heat pooling low in your belly.

Your hands begin their own exploration, mapping the familiar territory of his shoulders, his chest, anywhere you can reach. Mydei watches you with a mix of want and adoration, golden eyes heavy as you touch him.

When your lips touch his collarbone, pressing soft kisses along the line of muscle and bone, he presses his face into the curve of your shoulder with a sound that’s half groan, half prayer.

Mydei grips you tighter, as if he’s trying to steady both you and himself. When your mouth finds his neck, the soft pull of your lips draws a low, unguarded sound from him—a moan that spills warm against your throat.

“Claiming me as well?” Mydei’s voice carries a hint of his usual smirk, but it’s strained with desire. He pulls back to look at you once more, taking in your disheveled appearance, your flushed cheeks, the way your torn clothing barely clings to your frame.

Your hands roam across the breadth of his chest, but then he catches one, guiding it lower with his own. His other hand is firm on your waist, keeping you pressed against him. His breath is hot against your ear when he growls, “They say even this body has only one fatal weakness.” His grip tightens, his golden eyes burning into yours. “But they’re wrong.”

He presses your palm flat against the rapid thrum of his heart.

“My greatest weakness isn’t on my body. It’s right here. It’s you.”

His voice breaks on the last word, half-growl, half-confession, and then his mouth is on yours again, desperate and claiming. His lips move away from your mouth again, savoring every spot on your body they can reach.

“How warm you are,” Mydei murmurs against your skin, his voice thick with wonder and need. “So alive.” He plants kisses on your bare stomach. “So beautiful.”

His teeth graze your shoulder, followed immediately by the soothing press of his lips. Each touch sends sparks racing through your nervous system, making it harder to focus on anything but the overwhelming sensation of him—his heat, his strength, his desperate devotion.

Mydei’s hands find the fastenings of your pants with practiced efficiency, pushing the fabric aside so he can touch the bare skin of your legs. His grip is firm, possessive, as he adjusts his hold to support you better.

But even this isn’t enough. The confined space, the awkward angle—his frustrated growl tells you he needs more access, more contact, more of everything. In one smooth motion, he lifts you away from the wall, carrying you the few steps to where a patch of soft grass grows in the shadowed alcove. He lowers you down with careful control, following you down until he’s braced above you, golden eyes drinking in the sight of you spread beneath him.

“Someone could see,” you whisper, suddenly aware of your exposed position.

His response is immediate and fierce. “Let them see,” Mydei growls, his mouth already descending to claim your throat again. “Let them see that you belong to me. Only me.”

With the limitations of the wall removed, his touches become bolder, more thorough. He settles his weight against you. Not crushing, but solid and inescapable, a living reminder of his strength and protection. You can feel every line of his body, every tense muscle, the way he trembles with the effort of restraining himself.

But now, with space to move freely, that restraint begins to crack. His hands roam with newfound urgency, caressing all spots he couldn’t reach before. When his mouth trails down your throat, he doesn’t stop at your collarbone—he continues lower, teeth grazing along your shoulder, your chest, your stomach, marking a path that speaks of possession and desperate need.

His breathing grows ragged against your skin, each exhale hot and unsteady. The careful control he’d maintained against the wall dissolves into something rawer, more primal. His grip tightens on your hips, fingers digging into flesh as he positions you exactly where he needs you. There’s nothing gentle about the way he claims this space, this moment. It’s all consuming heat and barely leashed power.

“You have no idea,” he breathes against your skin, voice thick with something between desperation and worship, “what seeing you in danger does to me.” His hands slide along your sides, touch becoming more insistent, more demanding. “What knowing I could have lost you—”

His mouth finds yours again, the kiss deeper and more consuming than before. There’s hunger in it now, the kind that comes from staring death in the face and finding life on the other side. When he pulls back, his golden eyes are wild, sun-shaped pupils blown wide with emotion and need.

You can feel the tremor in his muscles, the way his whole body vibrates with barely leashed energy. His mouth finds your throat again, trailing hot kisses down to your shoulder where he bites. Harder this time, enough that you gasp his name. The sound seems to ground him slightly, reminding him of where he is.

“Mine,” he says again, but the word comes out rougher now, more broken than possessive. His hands slide up to frame your face, and you can see the exact moment when the wild desperation begins to shift into something deeper. “My responsibility. My treasure. My—”

The words seem to catch in his throat as the adrenaline slowly begins to fade, replaced by something deeper, more vulnerable. His grip softens, becomes reverent rather than desperate.

“You need to understand,” Mydei mutters, voice rough with barely leashed emotion, “what it does to me, knowing I could have lost you.”

His forehead rests against yours again, but this time there’s less wild desperation and more profound relief. His hands still shake slightly as they trace your face, your neck, your shoulders—but now it’s with awe rather than panic.

“The thought of never touching you again,” he continues, voice cracking slightly. “Never seeing you smile, never hearing you laugh, never talking to you, never having you look at me like I’m worth something more than—”

You silence him with a softer kiss this time, one hand sliding up to tangle in his hair. The sound he makes is broken, grateful.

When you part, his eyes have cleared somewhat, the wild edge replaced by something deeper and more lasting. His thumb traces your lower lip, like he can’t quite believe you’re here, you’re his, you’re alive.

Gently, he helps you sit up, gathering you into his arms so your head rests against his chest. You can hear his heartbeat. Still fast, still unsteady, but gradually slowing as he holds you close.

“Mine,” Mydei repeats one final time, but now the word carries less desperation and more certainty. Not just possession, but devotion. Protection. Love so fierce it borders on worship.

When he kisses you again, it’s with the tender gratitude of someone who came too close to losing everything that matters. His mouth moves against yours, claiming and protecting and cherishing all at once.

By the time you finally part, your breaths have steadied, and his golden eyes burn with a satisfaction that makes your heart skip. He tilts your chin with careful fingers, pressing one more lingering kiss to your lips. And when Mydei smiles against your mouth, you sip the whispered “mine” like a raindrop in the desert from his lips.

——

A/N: Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. Likes, reblogs, and comments mean a lot and help fuel my writing. This is part of a little two-piece exploration on possessiveness. Mydei’s side is raw and protective, but if you’d like to see a different take—Phainon’s mix of desperation and longing—you can find it here.

“Thank you,” you say softly.

He nods once, sharp and efficient, but you catch the way his shoulders relax slightly. As if your approval matters more than he’d care to admit.

Anaxa often shows affection through modification. Your favorite pen suddenly writes smoother because he’s adjusted the ink flow. Your laboratory stool is precisely the right height when you arrive each morning because he’s been calibrating it to your measurements. The lighting in the spaces you share together grows softer, warmer, more flattering.

You realize he’s been quietly optimizing your entire environment, making your life more comfortable in a dozen small ways you barely noticed until you started looking for them.

“You’ve been changing things,” you observe one evening as he adjusts a valve that controls the air circulation.

“Minor improvements,” he says without looking up. “Nothing significant.”

But his fingers linger on the mechanism longer than necessary, and you notice how he glances toward you to gauge your reaction. For all his clinical detachment, he’s invested in your comfort in a way that feels deeply intimate.

“I like it,” you tell him. “I like how you notice things.”

His hand stills on the valve. When he finally turns toward you, there’s something unguarded in his expression. Pleased and almost surprised by his own pleasure.

The first time you find romance novels hidden beneath his research texts, you pretend not to notice. But the second time, when a particularly worn copy of The Art of Courtship falls from his stack of papers, you can’t hide your smile.

Anaxa freezes, his usual composure cracking for just a moment. His eye widens before narrowing again, as if he’s calculating the exact probability of this mortification.

“Research,” he says curtly, snatching the book back. “I am investigating certain behavioral patterns.”

“What kind of patterns?” you ask, genuinely curious rather than mocking.

He’s silent for a long moment, clearly weighing whether to dignify this with a response. Finally, he says, “Conventional expressions of attachment. The methodologies appear unnecessarily complex.”

You step closer, noting how his grip tightens on the book’s spine. “Finding anything useful?”

“The theoretical framework is sound,” Anaxa admits reluctantly. “Though the practical applications seem inefficient.”

You can‘t suppress your laugh at his indignation. “You could have just said that you wanted to learn how to give me compliments properly.“

He raises his eyebrow at that. “But where‘s the fun in that, oh sole focus of my remaining eye?“ Although his words sound mocking on the surface, his expression and tone suggest otherwise.

“To me, you’re funny even when you’re not trying to be,” you say lightly, a broad smile tugging at your lips. You can’t help it. Ever since you both acknowledged there was more between you, his presence has filled you with an indescribable happiness. Even more so than before.

Anaxa takes his time to answer. “You should be careful about the information you offer so freely,” he muses. His hand hovers for a fraction of a second, as if he’s running silent calculations on the variables of touch, before brushing a strand of hair from your forehead. The motion is precise, deliberate. Yet there’s nothing clinical in the way his fingers linger, like he’s satisfied with the outcome of a new kind of research only he could design. “There are those who would consider such information valuable data for their own experiments.“

The smirk that follows is different from the ones he gives when he mocks people. It simply exists to unravel you. And it does. Anaxa does. He pretends not to notice when you blush but is unable to hide the quiet sigh of contentment that escapes his lips.

II: Tension

Two weeks later, Anaxa brings you tea prepared exactly to your preferences and sets it down with unusual ceremony. He has made you tea often before, but this time it feels different. He indicates for you to start drinking. Then, with the air of someone conducting a particularly delicate experiment, he clears his throat and declares, “Your countenance illuminates the shadows of my comprehension like dawn breaking upon the most complex theorem.”

It’s archaic and overwrought and completely earnest. You have to bite your lip to keep from smiling. Instead of just telling you that you make him happy, he has given you a declaration that sounds more like an ode than a normal compliment.

“Did you prepare that?” you ask gently.

His cheeks color slightly. “I may have consulted several historical texts regarding appropriate sentiments.” He pauses, then adds with characteristic precision, “The sentiment itself is empirically accurate.”

Sometimes Anaxa’s dedication to work means missed opportunities. You mention wanting to watch the meteor shower together. A rare event that only occurs every few years. He nods absently while reviewing calculations, murmuring something about “fascinating orbital mechanics.”

When the night arrives, you wait outside, watching the sky as stars begin to streak across the darkness in brilliant arcs of light. His laboratory remains lit, papers no doubt still scattered across every surface, his attention consumed by some theoretical breakthrough regarding his soul research.

You don’t interrupt. You understand that his research drives him, that discoveries can’t wait for shooting stars. But something still sinks in your chest as you watch the celestial display alone, counting meteors that burn bright and brief against the velvet sky.

The next evening, he appears at your door with a complex piece of equipment you don’t recognize.

“I have constructed a device for enhanced astronomical observation,” Anaxa says formally, his usual precision slightly stiff. “The meteor shower’s residual particle trail should remain visible for several more nights, given optimal viewing conditions.”

You look at him—noting his slightly rigid posture, the way he’s clearly rehearsed this—and realize he’s trying to make amends in the most Anaxagoras way possible.

The meteor shower has largely ended, leaving only occasional streaks of light. But he sets up his device anyway, adjusting lenses and calibrating measurements. Through his enhanced viewer, you can see faint traces of cosmic dust still glittering in the atmosphere, the ghost trails of yesterday’s spectacle.

“I should have prioritized differently last night,” Anaxa says as you both peer through the eyepiece at the subtle celestial remnants.

“Your work is important,” you reply.

“So are you.” The words come out quietly, almost accidentally. When you look at him, his eye holds something vulnerable. “That is the evidence supports prioritizing your satisfaction alongside research objectives.”

Even his apologies sound like experimental conclusions. You take his hand in yours.

“Next time, just ask me to wait with you while you work,” you suggest. “I still enjoy the quiet company, you know. That will not change.”

Something shifts in his expression. Relief, perhaps, that solutions can be so straightforward.

One afternoon, you suggest a walk when you notice the tension coiled tight in his shoulders, the way he’s been hunched over his research for nearly six hours without so much as stretching. His eye has that strained, reddened quality that comes from squinting at fine print for too long, and there’s a rigidity to his posture that speaks of someone pushing past the limits of comfort.

The late afternoon light filters through the old trees as you lead him along the winding paths, casting everything in a dense green shadow, streaked with shafts of gold where the light pierced the canop. The air carries the scent of blooming flowers and the earthy richness of well-tended soil, a stark contrast to the sterile atmosphere of his laboratory.

“I don’t require recreational activities,” Anaxa says, but there’s no real conviction in the words. He follows you anyway, his longer stride easily matching your pace, though you notice he keeps glancing back toward the buildings as if mentally cataloguing all the work he’s leaving behind.

You point out things as you walk. The way afternoon light transforms ordinary leaves into something almost luminous, a particularly striking flower growing wild between the manicured garden beds, its petals a deep purple that seems to absorb the golden light. You pause beside it, genuinely enchanted by the unexpected splash of color.

He responds with brief observations about botanical classifications and optimal growing conditions, his tone clinical and detached, as if he can’t help but dissect the beauty into component parts. “Probably a variant of a flower from my hometown. The soil composition here would support the alkaline preference…”

“You don’t have to analyze everything,” you say gently, reaching out to touch one of the velvet petals. “Sometimes you can just enjoy it.”

The words are barely out of your mouth before you see him stiffen. He stops walking entirely, turning to face you with that sharp, calculating expression that usually appears when someone has challenged one of his fundamental assumptions.

“I am perfectly functional as I am,” he says, and there’s an edge to his voice now, defensive and more distant than you are used to these days. “I don’t require adjustment. Not when it doesn‘t serve my goals, at least.“

The words hit you. Heat rises in your cheeks, a mixture of embarrassment and hurt that you try to swallow down. You’d been hoping to share something simple with him, to give him a moment of peace away from his relentless research. The idea that he might actually enjoy something without needing to understand or improve it had felt like a small gift you could offer.

But his defensive, almost harsh reaction makes you feel naive, presumptuous. Like you’ve overstepped some invisible boundary you didn’t even know existed.

“Of course,” you reply quietly, your voice smaller than you’d intended. “I didn’t mean to suggest that you needed-”

Before you can finish the apology, Anaxa’s hand finds yours. The touch isn’t calculated this time, not the careful, measured contact from his romantic research. It’s instinctive, almost startled, as if his body moved before his mind could intervene. His fingers thread through yours with surprising urgency, and when you look up at him, his expression has shifted entirely.

The guarded expression is still there, faintly, but underneath it you can see something that looks like panic. As if he’s just realized how his words sounded, how they might have hurt you.

“I am…” he starts, then stops. Swallows hard. When he speaks again, his voice is lower than usual, more careful. “I am unaccustomed to such considerations. No one has ever…” He trails off, seeming to struggle with concepts that don’t fit neatly into his usual frameworks.

You can feel the slight tremor in his hand where it holds yours, see the way his jaw works as if he’s trying to find the right words for something he’s never had to articulate before.

“But your intention is noted,” he continues finally. “And appreciated. More than you might realize.”

The admission seems to cost him something, and you squeeze his hand gently in acknowledgment. The rest of the walk passes in comfortable silence, his hand warm and solid in yours. You notice he stops trying to categorize everything, instead letting his gaze wander over the gardens with something that might actually be appreciation.

When you reach a stone bench overlooking the grounds, he doesn’t immediately sit. Instead, he stands quietly, watching the way the setting sun catches in your hair, the peaceful expression on your face as you take in the view. There’s something almost wondering in the way he looks at you, as if he’s seeing something unexpected.

“Perhaps,” he says carefully, breaking the comfortable quiet, “periodic breaks from laboratory work could be beneficial to my cognitive function and to our togetherness.”

You can’t help but smile at the way he frames it. Still clinical, still couched in terms of productivity, but you can hear the real meaning underneath.

“Is that your way of saying you’d like to do this again?”

“It’s my way of saying the data suggests regular intervals of this. It might optimize overall performance.” His voice softens just slightly, the corners of his mouth curving. “For both of us.” And throughout the entire exchange, he hasn’t let go of your hand.

III: Hunger

The first time Anaxa’s control truly slips, it’s during a late-night research session. You’re both exhausted, working by lamplight, and you’ve been debating theoretical applications for hours. Your mind is sharp against his, matching his pace, challenging his conclusions.

“That’s not correct,” you say, leaning across the desk to point at his calculations.

“Explain your reasoning,” he says, but his voice has dropped lower than usual.

As you outline your counterargument, you notice he’s not looking at your notes. His eye tracks the curve of your mouth, the way your lips form each word, lingering there with the same focus he usually gives to equations. The intensity of his attention makes heat rise in your cheeks.

“You’re not paying attention,” you say softly.

“I am paying attention,” Anaxa replies, but his gaze drops to your lips again as you speak. “I’m simply processing multiple inputs simultaneously.”

When you lean closer to see what he’s written, he doesn’t move away. The space between you crackles with tension, close enough that you can smell the faint scent of ink and parchment that always clings to him, mixed with the metallic tang of his experiments. Instead, his hand comes up to cup your jaw, thumb tracing the line of your cheekbone with scientific precision.

“This is highly irregular,” Anaxa murmurs, but he’s already leaning closer, his breath warm against your skin.

“Your research methods?” you whisper back, feeling the way his thumb pauses in its careful exploration.

“My capacity for rational thought collapses when you’re this close.” His voice drops to barely above a whisper, rough with want.

The kiss that follows is nothing like his careful, studied attempts at romance. It’s hungry and desperate and completely unguarded, as if months of restraint have finally snapped. His other hand fists in your shirt, pulling you closer across the desk with surprising strength, scattering papers and equipment in a chaos he would normally abhor. Yet in this moment he doesn’t even notice.

The sound of his breath catching against your mouth sends heat racing through your veins, and you can feel the way his usually precise movements become clumsy with want. His lips are soft, warm and insistent as they move against yours.

You can taste the sharp mint of the tea he’d been drinking, mixed with something that’s purely him. When you respond, parting your lips, letting your tongue meet his, the sound he makes is somewhere between a sigh and a groan, completely unguarded and utterly human. The careful control he maintains in every other aspect of his life dissolves entirely.

His mouth moves against yours with increasing urgency, all his careful restraint unraveling in moments. There’s still something methodical in the way he kisses you, like he’s cataloguing every response, memorizing the exact pressure that makes you gasp, the precise angle that makes you melt against him. But underneath that analytical mind is pure hunger, raw need that he’s clearly been suppressing for far too long.

The hand cupping your jaw slides to the back of your neck, fingers tangling in your hair with a possessiveness that surprises you both. You can feel the slight tremor in his touch, the way his breathing has become uneven. When he tilts your head to deepen the kiss, you hear a soft sound. Papers sliding to the floor, perhaps, or maybe just the whisper of fabric as you lean into him.

When he pulls you further across the desk, your knee knocks against an inkwell, sending it clattering to the floor with a crash that echoes in the quiet laboratory. Neither of you care. If anything, the sound seems to spur him on, his hands sliding into your hair, fingers tangling in the strands as he deepens the kiss even further. You can feel his careful composure completely abandoning him, replaced by something raw and immediate.

His free hand finds your waist, fingers pressing against the fabric of your shirt as if trying to anchor you to him, to this moment. The touch burns even through the layers of clothing, and you can feel the controlled strength in his grip. Careful not to hurt, but firm enough to leave no doubt about his intent.

“I am not used to not being in control,” he murmurs against your mouth, the words vibrating against your lips. But he doesn’t stop, doesn’t pull away. If anything, he holds you tighter, as if the admission has freed something in him.

“Is it a bad thing?” you whisper back, breathless, tasting the words on his lips.

“Not at all. Just something I need to study a lot more. On a regular basis, to be precise.” His forehead rests against yours, both of you breathing hard. His pupil is dilated, and you can see every fleck of silver in his eye, the way his eyepatch casts a shadow across part of his face.

His breathing becomes more frantic and he pulls away to catch some breath. His chest rises and falls sharply, robe shifting with the force of each inhale, and for once he doesn’t bother to hide how undone he looks.

His breath feels warm against your skin, yet you feel even warmer inside. He kisses the corners of your mouth and then your temples, as if honoring not just your body but the place where every thought begins. “You’re brilliant,” he murmurs, kissing your temple once more before pressing his lips to your forehead with a soft inhale. The words settle over you like a vow, quiet and tender, carrying far more weight than their simplicity suggests.

When he looks at you again, he groans and starts nibbling at your lips, while murmuring, “I may never gain all the answers from the gods I seek.” He moans, lips brushing yours, words fractured between breaths. “But you-” Another kiss. “gave me answers to questions I never dared to ask in the first place.”

Then, before you can respond, Anaxa kisses you again. Deeper this time, more confident. This kiss carries intention, purpose, as if he’s reached some internal conclusion about what he wants. His mouth moves against yours with renewed hunger, and you can taste his growing certainty, feel it in the way his hands begin to explore with deliberate precision.

One hand slides from your waist upward, fingers tracing the curve of your ribs through the thin fabric of your shirt with the same methodical attention he brings to his most delicate experiments. When his touch finds bare skin where your shirt has ridden up, his breath catches audibly against your mouth. A sharp intake that speaks to how affected he is by the simple contact of skin against skin.

His fingers map the line of your spine with care, each touch measured and intentional, as if he’s committing every response to his memory. The contrast between his usual clinical detachment and this tender exploration makes every caress feel more significant. You can feel the slight tremor in his hands, the way he pauses when you react to his touch, filing away your responses like crucial data.

His free hand cups your face again, thumb brushing along your jaw as he pulls you closer, angling your head so he can deepen the kiss further. The dual sensations—his mouth claiming yours while his other hand continues its careful exploration—make it difficult to think of anything beyond the heat building between you and the way he touches you like you’re something precious he’s afraid to break.

When you finally break apart, both breathing hard, he looks almost stunned by his own loss of control. His hair is mussed where your fingers had tangled it, falling across his forehead in a way that makes him look younger, less guarded. His usually perfect appearance is completely disheveled. Robe rumpled, collar askew, lips slightly swollen from kissing.

“That was enlightening,” he says, voice rougher than usual, as if he’s still trying to process what just happened.

“Your best discoveries usually are,” you reply, reaching up to smooth down his hair where your fingers had tangled it, marveling at how soft it feels, how it slips through your touch like spun sea foam in the lamplight.

IV: Surrender

Dating Anaxa means learning to read affection in precision rather than poetry even though he gets better at giving you compliments day by day. It’s the way he remembers exactly when you like which beverage and how you prefer your food, how he continues to modify equipment to fit your needs, how he saves you the comfortable chair without ever mentioning it.

It’s also learning to treasure the moments when that precision breaks down. When he kisses you like it’s the only thing he wants to do, when he admits he’s been researching romance further because he wants to do right by you, when his careful composure cracks just enough to show the depth of feeling underneath.

“I may not excel at traditional demonstrations of affection,” he tells you one evening, his arms around you as you both review research by firelight. His voice is matter-of-fact, but you can feel the slight tension in his embrace.

“No,” you agree, settling more comfortably against his chest. “You excel at better ones.”

His arms tighten around you, and you feel him press a kiss to the top of your head. Soft, unplanned, perfect.

One day, you find him four hours past when he said he’d stop working, bent over a complex apparatus that pulses with an eerie, blue-white light. The energy it contains makes the air itself feel thick and electric, raising the fine hairs on your arms even from across the room. His movements are sharp and focused, but you can see the fatigue in the way his shoulders curve inward, the slight tremor in his usually steady hands.

This isn’t careful research. This is the same reckless obsession that led him to remove his own eye, to experiment on his very soul in pursuit of answers that might not exist.

“Anaxagoras,” you call softly, not wanting to startle him when he’s working with something that clearly shouldn’t be disturbed.

He doesn’t look up, his attention completely absorbed by the delicate calibrations he’s making to the device. “I’m nearly finished. The resonance patterns are responding better than anticipated.”

But you can see the cost of his focus written in every line of his body. The pale cast to his already fair skin, the way his eye has taken on a bloodshot quality from strain. There’s something almost fevered about his concentration, a desperate edge that speaks to someone pushing far beyond safe limits.

You’ve seen this before. The way he disappears into his research when he’s on the verge of what he considers a breakthrough, losing track of time, of basic needs, of everything except the relentless drive to understand. It’s the same intensity that led to his greatest discoveries and his greatest losses.

“You told me you don’t want to lose me,” you say, and you can hear your voice catching slightly despite your efforts to stay calm. “But what about me? I don’t want to lose you either.”

That makes him pause. His hands still on the apparatus, and for the first time in hours, he looks at you directly. There’s surprise in his expression. Genuine, startled surprise, as if the idea that someone might worry about his wellbeing is not just unexpected but completely foreign to him.

“The risk is minimal,” he says, but even as the words leave his mouth, you can hear that they lack his usual analytical conviction. “I’ve calculated the probability of adverse effects based on previous iterations-”

“You’ve calculated wrong before.” The words come out sharper than you intended, edged with fear and frustration, but you don’t take them back. You can’t. “When you tried to bring back your sister. You told me that-”

His eye flashes with something dangerous, a warning that you’re treading on ground he’s marked as forbidden territory. But you push forward anyway, because this matters too much to back down.

“I know you’re trying to find answers for her. And I accept that. But not if it costs me you.“ You take a deep breath and look to the side. “Because my soul already carries its answer. And it doesn’t require dangerous experiments.“

The silence that follows feels heavy with unspoken grief, old guilt, and the weight of choices that can never be unmade. You watch as something shifts in his expression. The defensive anger cracking just enough to reveal the raw vulnerability underneath.

Finally, slowly, reluctantly, he begins powering down the apparatus. The eerie light fades gradually, taking with it the electric tension in the air. His movements are stiff, almost painful, like he’s fighting every instinct he has.

“I don’t…” Anaxa starts, then stops. His hands rest on the now-silent equipment, and you can see the way they shake slightly. From exhaustion, from adrenaline, from something deeper.

Your chest aches at the quiet honesty of it. He doesn’t say more, but he doesn’t have to. You can hear the rest in what he leaves unsaid, in the way his voice falters, in the tremor of his hands.

So you step closer, brushing your fingers over his sleeve until he finally looks at you. “You don’t need to explain,” you murmur. “I understand.”

Anaxa strokes over your cheek once, then retreats his hand. “I’m not accustomed to… to someone being concerned about my wellbeing,“ he adds.

The admission is quiet, almost lost in the sudden stillness of the laboratory. There’s something achingly lonely about the way he says it, as if the very concept of someone caring whether he lives or dies is genuinely foreign to him.

“Well, get used to it,” you say gently. “Because I am concerned. Constantly.”

When you touch him slowly, you can see and feel the exhaustion written in every detail. The tight lines around his eye, the way he holds his shoulders as if they’re carrying weight far beyond the physical. There are ink stains on his fingers, burn marks on his sleeves from whatever volatile substances he’s been working with.

Without really thinking about it, you place your hands on his shoulders, feeling the knots of tension beneath the fabric of his robe. They’re rock-hard, the kind that speak to hours of hunched concentration and stress held too long in the body.

Anaxa freezes immediately, every muscle in his frame going rigid. “What are you-”

“Relax,” you murmur, beginning to work at the tight muscles with gentle but firm pressure. “You’re going to give yourself a permanent headache if you keep this up.”

“I don’t require-” But his protest dies mid-sentence as your thumbs find a particularly tight spot near the base of his neck and work at it carefully. His eye closes involuntarily, and despite himself, a soft sound escapes him. Somewhere between surprise and relief, as if his body is betraying him by responding to care he insists he doesn’t need.

“This is highly irregular,” Anaxa mutters, but the words lack any real resistance. His breathing, which had been shallow and quick from stress, begins to slow and deepen.

“So is working yourself into an early grave,” you reply, continuing the gentle massage. You can feel him gradually relaxing under your touch, the rigid tension slowly leaving his frame one muscle at a time. “When’s the last time you actually rested? Really rested, not just collapsed from exhaustion.”

“Rest is inefficient.” But even as he says it, you can hear how automatic the response is, like something he’s told himself so many times it’s become reflex rather than belief.

“Rest is necessary.” Your hands move to work at the base of his neck, where the worst of the tension seems to be concentrated. “Even your precious equipment requires regular maintenance and downtime.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, and you think he might argue the point. His mind is always working, always pushing, always demanding more from himself than would be reasonable to ask of anyone else. Instead, when he finally speaks, his voice is softer than you’ve ever heard it.

“I don’t know how to let someone take care of me.”

The admission is so vulnerable, so completely at odds with his usual controlled precision, that it makes your chest tighten. You can hear the bewilderment in his voice, as if he’s encountered a problem that has no logical solution, no clear methodology for resolution.

“Then practice with me,” you say softly, pressing a brief kiss to the part of his neck you’ve been massaging. Anaxa exhales. A long, surprised sound that now resembles a sigh.

“I will work on it,” he says, his breath unusually quick. “With you. If you allow it. Although I lack experience in the matter.”

“You don’t have to know how,” you continue, your touch gentling further as you work at a stubborn knot. “You just have to let it happen.”

Another long pause, filled only with the quiet sounds of the now-still laboratory and his gradually evening breath. Then, almost inaudibly, he says, “This is acceptable.”

Anaxa turns and studies you, taking you in as if observing a new specimen, then lets his mouth lift upward slightly. “You’ve been invaluable since day one. Over time I’ve found I prefer—no, I want—your company more than anything my theories ever promised.“

The smile he offers is small but real. It lands warm and steady, and your chest feels impossibly full.

Coming from Anaxa, who measures every word and admits nothing without analysis, it might as well be a declaration of devotion.

V: Devotion

The first time you visit Anaxa‘s private quarters, you’re not sure what to expect. Everything is precisely organized. Books arranged by subject and frequency of use, equipment cleaned and properly stored, not a single item out of place. It’s exactly what you’d imagine Anaxa’s space would look like.

Except for the dromas plushie sitting on his bedside table.

It’s clearly old, well-loved, with slightly faded fabric. Completely at odds with the clinical perfection of everything else in the room. You stare at it, trying to reconcile this soft, childlike object with the man who treats everything as a precisely calculated equation.

“That is…” he starts from behind you, voice unusually tight. “My sister gifted it to me.“

You turn to look at him. His usual composure is strained, shoulders tense as if he’s bracing for mockery or questions he doesn’t want to answer. The vulnerability in his expression, raw and unguarded, makes your chest tight with emotion.

Instead of asking questions or making observations, you simply cross the room and wrap your arms around him. You feel him stiffen in surprise, then slowly, carefully, his arms come up to hold you back. His embrace is tentative at first, as if he’s not sure he’s allowed this comfort.

“You don’t have to explain.” you murmur against his shoulder. “I understand.” You think about the lab where you have said those exact words to him, but it feels different now.

His grip tightens then, and you feel some of the tension leave his frame. When he speaks, his voice is softer than you’ve ever heard it. “Others find it undignified, ridiculous even. A weakness.”

“Others are wrong.” You pull back just enough to meet his gaze, noting how his eye is bright with carefully controlled emotion. “It’s love. That’s never undignified.”

For a moment, he simply stares at you, as if trying to process this information. Then, almost wonderingly, he says, “You continue to confound my expectations.”

“In a good way?”

“In the best way,” Anaxa admits quietly.

Later, when exhaustion finally claims you both, you find yourself settling against his side in his precisely made bed. The mattress is firmer than you’d expected, the sheets crisp and perfectly tucked. Everything arranged with his characteristic attention to detail.

Anaxa lies stiffly at first, as if unsure of the proper protocol for sharing sleeping space. His arm hovers uncertainly before finally settling around your shoulders, the touch careful and deliberate. You can feel the tension in his frame, the way he’s clearly overthinking even this simple intimacy.

“You can relax,” you murmur against his shoulder, breathing in the clean scent of his soap mixed with something that’s uniquely him. Metal and parchment and that sharp, precise essence you’ve come to associate with his presence.

“Merely adjusting parameters,” he replies quietly, but you feel some of the rigidity leave his posture. His arm settles more naturally around you, fingers tracing absent patterns against your shoulder through the fabric of your shirt.

The room is dark except for the faint glow of moonlight through the window, casting everything in silver and shadow. You can hear his breathing gradually evening out, feel the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath your cheek. His free hand rests on his chest, fingers twitching faintly, as if even in rest, his mind can’t help but keep working.

“Thank you,” he says suddenly, voice barely above a whisper. “For accepting the situation with my sister’s belongings. For not finding it peculiar. For not considering me-“ He inhales sharply and clears his throat. He doesn’t even need to finish the sentence for you to understand him.

You shift slightly to look at him, noting how the moonlight catches the sharp line of his profile, the way his eye reflects the faint light. “There’s nothing peculiar about this, Anaxagoras.” About love, your mind adds. About us.

His breath catches almost imperceptibly at the use of his full name. His arm tightens around you, and when he speaks again, his voice carries a vulnerability you’ve never heard before but want to hear many more times.

“I have no experience with this form of attachment. The theoretical models are inadequate for practical application.”

You press a soft kiss to his collarbone, feeling the way his pulse jumps beneath your lips. “Some things can’t be calculated. Sometimes you just have to trust the process.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, considering this. Then, with characteristic precision, he mutters, “I find I am willing to trust your guidance in this particular experiment.”

Sleep takes you gradually, lulled by the steady rise and fall of his chest, the gentle weight of his arm around you. You feel him press a soft kiss to the top of your head. Tentative and sweet and genuine.

Just before consciousness fades completely, you hear him whisper, almost to himself, “My soul remains fractured. And yet, I feel more complete than ever.”

His arm remains around you throughout the night, protective and warm, never loosening even in sleep. And if you notice him glance toward the bedside table once before dreams claim him—toward the small reminder of someone he loved and lost—you don’t mention it.

In the morning, he wakes before you but doesn’t move, content to let you sleep against him. When you finally stir, the first thing you see is his face in the soft morning light, unguarded and peaceful in a way you’ve never seen before.

“Good morning,” he says quietly, his voice warmer and more open than his usual precise diction.

Anaxa shifts both of you and kisses you, more gently than you’d thought him capable of. You hum into the kiss, content in a way that feels eternal.

“Good morning,” you reply, nestling closer to his chest.

He kisses you again, lingering this time, and when he pulls back his eye searches yours with quiet certainty. “Stay,” he murmurs. The word is simple, but you feel everything he leaves unsaid in it.

You tuck yourself closer, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. Morning light spills across the room, but for once neither of you moves toward the day’s work. He only tightens his hold around you, as if the experiment worth repeating is this: learning how to keep tenderness.

⋆ ✦ ⋆

A/N: Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. Likes, reblogs and comments are always appreciated. They fuel my writing. :)

More works for Anaxagoras are planned. He’s not done with me yet.

I. The Beginning

[The pages are crisp, unused. Anaxa’s handwriting is immaculate. For now.]

Entry #01: Hypothesis Formation

[Undated, though the ink is fresh]

Hypothesis: Prolonged proximity to certain individuals induces measurable cognitive interference.

Subject: Y/N. Scholar-in-training at the Grove, specializing in philosophical texts regarding the Titans. Competent, if occasionally reckless in interpretations.

Observations thus far:

Lapse in concentration during joint archival sessions (3 documented instances)

Misplacement of research tools (quill, reference texts, alchemical measures)

Increased frequency of tangential thoughts during solo work periods

Possible explanations:

Standard fatigue due to intensive research schedule

Environmental factors (poor lighting, inadequate ventilation in archives)

Soul resonance interference from sustained interpersonal exposure

The third option warrants investigation. If emotional frequency can influence harmonics—as my alchemical experiments have begun to suggest—then repeated exposure to a specific individual may create residual field distortions.

My work on soul-structure through alchemical deconstruction has shown that consciousness persists beyond physical form as information patterns. If souls and the preserved memories are like data, then emotion becomes the catalyst that shapes how that data resonates between individuals.

Methodology: Continue scheduled collaborative sessions. Monitor for pattern escalation. Document deviations in cognitive baseline.

Correlation is not causation. But the scientific mind, once disrupted, struggles to return to symmetry.

Conclusion: Further observation required.

Addendum: Found my quill in Y/N’s hand this morning. Y/N has been using it to annotate our current work, apparently for the past hour. When I pointed this out, Y/N laughed and returned it without apology.

The laugh. I should note the acoustic properties. Frequency, duration, tonal quality. For research purposes.

I will monitor for further deviations.

⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

You meet Anaxa in the archives on a morning that feels like every other. Pale light filtering through the high windows, the smell of old parchment and the sharp tang of alchemical reagents, the quiet hum of knowledge waiting to be decoded.

He’s already there when you arrive, because of course he is. He’s always early, always prepared, always three steps ahead of whatever conversation you’re about to have.

“You’re late,” Anaxa says without looking up from his work.

You glance at the timepiece on the wall. “By two minutes.”

“Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds.” Now he looks up, his eye—that distinctive pale blue, almost luminescent in certain light—meeting yours with something that might be amusement. The eyepatch draws your attention as it always does, a stark reminder of his dedication. Or his recklessness. You’re still not sure which. “Precision matters in research.”

“Does it matter in greeting someone?”

“Particularly then.” But there’s the ghost of a smile at the corner of his mouth as he gestures to the chair across from him. “Sit. We have work.”

You’ve been collaborating for three months now. It started as a necessity—your specialization in Titan philosophy complementing his work in Nousporism, soul theory, and alchemical investigation. Two scholars, two pieces of a larger puzzle, brought together by the Grove’s mandate to understand what came before.

It should have stayed professional. Purely academic.

Instead, you’ve started arriving early just to watch the way he works. The precise movements of his long fingers as he arranges his alchemical tools—vials of luminescent compounds, carefully labeled soul essence samples, the brass instruments he uses to measure certain frequencies. The way he tilts his head when reading something that challenges him. The little “hm” of satisfaction when a theory clicks into place.

You haven’t documented any of this. You don’t need to.

“I reviewed your thesis on Titan emotional suppression,” Anaxa says, sliding a stack of papers across the table. The pages are covered in his handwriting. Parts are angular, controlled, beautiful in its precision, other parts are messy, as if his writing couldn’t keep up with his thoughts. “Your argumentation is sound, though you’ve made several logical leaps that require additional support.”

“Several?” You pick up the first page. There are annotations everywhere, but they’re not harsh. They’re engaged. Like he cared enough to follow every thread of your thinking.

“Seven,” Anaxa clarifies. “I’ve marked them. You’ll find my suggested revisions on pages three, eight, and fifteen.”

You flip to page three. His note reads: “Adequate reasoning, but you’ve conflated causation with correlation. The Titans didn’t fall because they suppressed emotion. They fell because they never learned to (re)integrate it. See addendum.”

The addendum is half a page long. He’s essentially written you a mini-essay in the margins.

“You know,” you say, looking up, “most people just write ‘needs work’ and move on.”

“I’m not most people.” He leans back slightly, arms crossed. The motion makes him look almost casual, though you know better. Anaxa is never truly relaxed. There’s always that hum of mental energy, that sense of constant analysis. “And your work deserves more than dismissive notation.”

Something warm settles in your chest. You try to ignore it.

“Thank you, Anaxagoras.”

There’s a pause. Brief, but noticeable.

Most people at the Grove call him Anaxa. A casual shortening that he tolerates with barely concealed irritation. But you’ve always used his full name, drawn to the weight of it, the way the syllables feel important and deliberate.

You didn’t realize he’d noticed until now, when something shifts in his expression. Not quite a softening, but close.

“You’re welcome,” Anaxa says, and his voice is different. Quieter. “Now. Let’s discuss your interpretation of the soul-thread harmonics in chapter four. You’ve made an interesting claim about emotional resonance that I want to explore.”

You settle in, pulling your notes closer. The morning light shifts as you work, pouring across the table in golden bands. Occasionally you catch the faint chemical scent from his most recent alchemical experiment. Something acrid and metallic that makes you wonder what he’s been testing this time.

And you don’t notice the way his gaze drifts from his papers to your face when you’re reading.

You don’t notice the way he pauses before speaking, as if testing the weight of words before releasing them.

You don’t notice that his handwriting gets slightly less controlled in the margins of your work, as if his usual precision falters when he’s writing to you instead of for the archive.

But Anaxa notices.

He notices everything.

⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

Entry #02: Variable Documentation

Observation Count: 7 sessions completed since initial hypothesis formation.

Deviations recorded:

Session 3: Discussed Y/N’s theory on soul-memory adhesion for 47 minutes past scheduled end time. Did not notice until archive keeper began closing procedures.

Session 5: Caught myself explaining Nousporic principles using examples from Y/N‘s previous arguments rather than classical sources. Concerning. Y/N remembers things I say. I remember things Y/N says. The feedback loop is becoming self-reinforcing.

Session 7 (today): Y/N called me Anaxagoras. Again. Most at the Grove use the shortened form—Anaxa—which I can tolerate but dislike. It feels dismissive, casual in a way that diminishes the significance of nomenclature. Y/N makes the full name sound… proper. Respected. As if the name itself matters.

Physical observations:

Y/N gestures when excited about an idea. Small movements, but distracting.

Y/N’s laugh when I make dry remarks—not mockery, but genuine amusement. Unexpected. (Acoustic analysis pending.)

The way Y/N reads: lips moving slightly, brow furrowed in concentration. I have spent 4.5 minutes observing this today alone.

Alchemical correlation: My recent experiments on soul-essence resonance patterns support the theory that consciousness creates harmonic fields. When two compatible frequencies interact repeatedly, they don’t simply coexist. They amplify each other. The resulting pattern is more stable than either frequency alone.

This may explain why my concentration improves in some ways during our sessions, even as it deteriorates in others. Not interference. Resonance.

Hypothesis revision: Initial assumption that proximity causes interference may be incorrect. Alternative theory: proximity creates resonance. A harmonic pattern rather than dissonance.

If the record shows emotional impressions as data, then repeated exposure to compatible frequencies would create reinforcement rather than disruption.

Conclusion: The field effect is not diminishing. It is intensifying.

Problem: I am unsure whether I wish to counteract this or allow it to continue.

Secondary problem: I find myself hoping Y/N will be early tomorrow. This is unscientific.

Note to self: Begin documenting resonance patterns more carefully. If emotional frequency can influence soul-thread harmonics, this could have significant implications for—

Who am I fooling.

I want to see Y/N again.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

II. Shared Study

The next session, you arrive five minutes early.

Anaxa is already there—of course—but this time he looks up immediately when you enter. His eye tracks your movement across the room, and you swear there’s something different in his expression. Not quite relief, but close.

“Early,” he observes.

“Thought I’d beat you here for once.”

“An impossibility.” But he’s almost smiling. “I’ve prepared tea. Fifth blend from the right—it helps with concentration.”

You glance at the table. There are two cups already poured, steam still rising. The setup is too deliberate to be casual.

“You made tea,” you say slowly.

“I often make tea.”

“You made two cups.”

“An elementary deduction.” He gestures to the seat across from him. “Are you going to sit, or continue cataloging my beverage choices?”

You sit, wrapping your hands around the warm porcelain. It’s exactly the temperature you prefer. Not too hot, steeped long enough to be strong but not bitter.

Anaxa remembered.

The work begins as it always does: papers spread between you, references cross-checked, theories tested against evidence. But today there’s something else threading through it. A current of awareness that wasn’t there before, or maybe was always there and you’re only now naming it.

Your hand reaches for a reference text at the same moment his does.

Fingers brush.

The contact lasts less than a second—barely qualifies as touch—but you both freeze.

Anaxa recovers first, pulling his hand back with careful control. “Apologies. You were…please, take it.”

You pick up the text, hyperaware of the warmth still lingering on your skin. “Thanks.”

Silence. The kind that feels too loud.

Then Anaxa clears his throat and says, with perfect academic dryness, “If you insist on annotating in the margins, at least have the courtesy to use proper notation.”

The absurdity of it—the deflection, the return to familiar ground—makes you laugh. Real laughter, the kind that surprises you both.

His eye widens slightly. You watch him try to process the sound, try to categorize it, and you see the exact moment he gives up and just… listens.

When you finally manage to speak, you’re still smiling. “My notation is perfectly adequate.”

“Adequate.” He repeats the word like he’s testing it. “Yes. That’s certainly one assessment.”

“What’s yours?”

“Promising.” The word comes softer than expected. “Though dangerously reckless in places.”

“Reckless?”

“You make logical leaps that would give most scholars vertigo.” Anaxa is leaning forward slightly now, drawn into the conversation despite himself. “You assume connections before proving them. You trust intuition over methodology.”

“And that bothers you.”

“Profoundly.” But he’s almost smiling again. “It also produces remarkable insights that more conservative approaches would miss entirely.”

The compliment lands gently, unexpectedly. You’re not sure what to do with it.

“So what you’re saying is… I’m effectively reckless?”

“Brilliantly reckless,” Anaxa corrects, and something in his tone makes your breath catch. “There’s a difference.”

The afternoon light has shifted while you’ve been talking, pouring through the high windows in golden bands that catch the dust motes floating between you. The archive feels smaller suddenly, or maybe you’re just more aware of the space. The two feet of table separating you, the way his sleeve brushes papers when he gestures, the controlled rhythm of his breathing.

In the corner, you notice one of his alchemical setups. A complex arrangement of glass vessels and copper tubing, some kind of distillation apparatus. The faint shimmer of soul essence glows in one of the containers, pale blue-green like captured starlight.

“What are you working on?” you ask, gesturing toward the equipment.

Anaxa follows your gaze. “Testing a hypothesis about consciousness transfer. Whether soul-essence can be extracted, studied, and reintegrated without degradation of the original pattern.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“Most worthwhile research is.” Anaxa’s tone is matter-of-fact. “The pursuit of truth requires sacrifice. Understanding requires risk.”

You think about the eyepatch, about the rumors that circulate through the Grove. That he removed his own eye to get answers. That his alchemical experiments have left scars. Visible and otherwise.

“Anaxagoras?” you ask quietly.

Anaxa looks up from his notes. Focuses on you with that complete, undivided attention that makes you feel like the only thing in the world worth observing.

“Yes?”

You’re not sure what you were going to say. The question dissolves under his gaze.

“Nothing,” you manage. “Just… thank you. For the notes. For all of this.”

Something flickers across his face. Surprise, maybe, or something deeper. “You don’t need to thank me for doing what I’d do regardless.”

“What you’d do regardless?”

“Engage with work that challenges me.” Anaxa pauses, then adds, quieter, “And with the person behind it.”

The words hang between you like a confession he didn’t mean to make.

Then the archive keeper calls out that they’re closing in ten minutes, and the spell breaks.

You both move to gather your things. A familiar ritual, papers sorted and stacked, quills capped, cups collected. But your hands are shaking slightly, and you’re pretty sure his are too.

At the door, Anaxa pauses. Turns back.

“Same time tomorrow?” he asks, and there’s something careful in the question. As if your answer matters more than it should.

“Of course,” you say.

He nods. Once. Then: “Good.”

You leave first, but you swear you can feel his gaze following you until you turn the corner.

⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

Entry #03: Hypothesis Failing

I touched Y/N’s hand today.

Correction: our hands brushed during a simultaneous reach for the same text. The contact was incidental, lasting approximately 0.8 seconds.

The resonance effect lasted considerably longer.

Physical response documented:

Elevated heart rate (estimated 15% increase)

Acute sensory awareness (temperature, texture, proximity)

Cognitive disruption (lost track of conversation for 4-6 seconds)

Y/N’s response:

Similar physiological markers observed (increased respiration, dilated pupils)

Maintained composure better than I did

Laughed when I retreated into academic formality

Y/N’s laugh. I need to stop noting the laugh. It serves no research purpose.

(It does, however, make everything feel less insurmountable.)

Alchemical parallel: In my recent soul-essence experiments, I’ve observed that when two compatible consciousness patterns are brought into proximity, they don’t remain discrete. They begin to synchronize. Creating harmonic interference patterns that are more stable than either pattern in isolation.

The phenomenon is called resonance coupling. It’s what I’ve been trying to achieve in my alchemical work for months.

Apparently, it occurs naturally between certain individuals.

Revision to working theory: Emotional resonance does not simply influence soul-patterns. It creates new ones. Sustained proximity isn’t building interference. It’s building architecture. A space that exists only when we’re both present.

The Titans fell because they couldn’t (re)integrate emotion into their structure. They saw feeling as corruption rather than foundation.

I’m beginning to understand what they missed.

Current status: Hypothesis failing comprehensively.

Accurate status: I wanted to touch Y/N’s hand again the moment I pulled away.

Note: Tomorrow. Same time. Y/N said “of course” like it was inevitable.

Perhaps it is.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

III. Notes Accumulating

Over the next three weeks, something shifts.

The work continues—theories tested, arguments refined, breakthroughs achieved—but it’s no longer just about the work. Or maybe it always was about more than the work, and you’re both finally admitting it.

Anaxa starts leaving notes for you.

The first one appears on your usual desk in the archive, pinned under your inkwell:

I’ve relocated the new ingredients to the second shelf, right side. You misplaced them. — A.

The handwriting is immaculate, but there’s something about the dash before his initial that feels almost… affectionate.

The next day, another note:

Avoid the east corridor between the hours of 2 and 4. Alchemical experiments ongoing. Potentially hazardous. Don’t test me on this. — A.

You smile at “don’t test me on this”—as if he knows you well enough to predict you’d be tempted.

(He does. You were.)

By the end of the week, the notes have become a language of their own:

Your interpretation of Titan suppression theory in yesterday’s discussion was insightful. I’ve left a reference text that supports your argument on page 47. Read it. — A.

You left your notes again. They’re on my desk. Try to remember where you put things. It’s becoming a pattern. — A.

Don’t forget to eat. I will notice this. (No signature this time, but the handwriting is unmistakable. There’s also a small, precise ink blot after the period, as if he hesitated before pulling the pen away.)

You start writing back in the margins of your shared documents:

Anaxa’s annotation: This conclusion is adequate, though you could strengthen it with additional supporting evidence.

Your response: ‘Adequate’ again. Is that your favorite word, or do you just enjoy being withholding?

Anaxa’s reply (in even smaller script): I enjoy precision. There’s a difference.

You: Duly noted, Professor.

Anaxa: I’m not YOUR professor. Don’t be obtuse.

You: Then stop acting like one with me. :)

Anaxa doesn’t respond to that one directly, but the next time you see him, there’s color on his cheeks and something that might be fondness in his eye.

One afternoon, you’re both working in his private study. A space he rarely lets anyone enter. It’s smaller than the main archives, more personal. Books stacked in careful towers, alchemical equipment gleaming on the workbench, distillation flasks filled with luminescent compounds that cast strange shadows on the walls. Windows overlook the Grove and the distant trees beyond.

There’s only one chair.

You’ve been sharing it for an hour now, pressed shoulder to shoulder, and neither of you has acknowledged how unnecessary this proximity is. There are other chairs. Other rooms. But here you are, thigh touching thigh, the heat of him seeping through layers of fabric.

“This passage,” Anaxa says, pointing to a line in the text between you. His voice is carefully neutral, but you can feel the slight tension in his frame. “The Titans’ understanding of soul-structure was fundamentally flawed. They treated emotion as external contamination rather than intrinsic data.”

“So you’ve said.” You lean closer to read the passage, and your hair brushes his shoulder. You feel him go very still. “But what if that’s what they needed to believe? What if acknowledging emotion as foundational would have meant acknowledging their own vulnerability?”

He turns his head slightly. Just enough that you can see his profile, the sharp line of his jaw, the way his throat works as he swallows.

“That’s…” He pauses. “That’s a compelling interpretation.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I’m frequently surprised by you.” The admission is quiet. “It’s becoming a pattern.”

You risk looking at him fully. He’s already watching you, and the intensity of his gaze—that focused, analytical attention now weighted with something else entirely—makes your breath catch.

“Anaxagoras—”

“You’re the only one who calls me that,” he says suddenly. “Anaxagoras. Most at the Grove or in Okhema use the shortened form. I’ve always disliked it. Too casual, too dismissive.”

“I don’t mean to presume—”

“No.” Something softens in his expression. “You make it sound proper. Respected. As if the name itself matters.”

“It does matter.”

“Why?”

You’re close enough to see the flecks of lighter blue in his eye, the way his pupil has dilated slightly. Close enough to notice the faint chemical scent that clings to him. Copper and something sharper, the residue of his alchemical work. Close enough to count his breaths.

“Because it’s yours,” you say simply.

The silence that follows is different from all the others. Heavier. Fuller. Like the moment before thunder, when the air itself holds its breath.

Then Anaxa stands abruptly, putting distance between you with the kind of control that suggests it costs him.

“I should—” He gestures vaguely toward his workbench. “There’s a calculation I need to verify. The soul-essence distillation requires precise timing, and if I miss the optimal extraction point—”

“Right.” You stand too, smoothing your robes to give your hands something to do. “I should probably—”

“Same time tomorrow?”

The question comes faster than usual, almost urgent.

“Of course,” you say, and his shoulders drop slightly. Relief.

“Good.” Anaxa turns toward his equipment, but not before you catch the way his hands are trembling. “That’s good.”

You leave before the tension can crack completely, but you feel his gaze on you until the door closes.

⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

Entry #05: Cognitive Dissonance Study

I have identified the problem.

The issue is not that you disrupt my concentration.

The issue is that you have become my concentration.

Every theorem bends toward you. Every question leads back. When you laugh, I document the acoustic frequency. When you argue, I catalog the logical structure. When you leave, I count the seconds until return.

This is not research.

This is longing dressed in notation.

Today’s session: We shared a chair. Unnecessary. There were other options available. But when you sat beside me—close enough that I could feel your warmth, smell the faint scent of ink and something sweet I cannot name—I found I could not suggest you move.

The work suffered. My focus was divided between the text and the way your shoulder pressed against mine, the rhythm of your breathing, the small “hm” you make when reading something that intrigues you.

At one point, you leaned closer to read a passage, and your hair brushed my shoulder. I forgot how to breathe for approximately 3.7 seconds.

Your observation about the Titans: “What if acknowledging emotion as foundational would have meant acknowledging their own vulnerability?”

You understand. Not just the theory. The truth beneath it. The Titans didn’t fall because they were logical. They fell because they had faults. Maybe they were afraid.

I am afraid.

Alchemical reflection: I’ve spent years studying souls through systematic deconstruction. I removed my own eye to get answers. I’ve extracted, distilled, and analyzed consciousness itself in pursuit of understanding.

I thought sacrifice was the price of knowledge. That understanding required distance. That to see truth, you had to remove yourself from it.

But when you look at me with those eyes—curious, warm, seeing—I want to be seen. Not as the scholar, not as the professor, not as the blasphemer who questions the comfortable doctrines.

Just as Anaxagoras. The person beneath the title.

You said my name matters because it’s mine.

What do I do with that?

Conclusion: I am a fool in a scholar’s robes, pretending observation is not the same as devotion.

Accurate conclusion: I am devoted.

Addendum: Tomorrow. Please let there be tomorrow. Always a new dawn.

⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

Entry #06: Notes on Notation

You’re writing back to me.

In the margins of our shared work—those spaces I use for correction and commentary—you’ve begun leaving responses. Teasing ones. Challenging ones. Messages that have nothing to do with research and everything to do with… this. Shall I call it…us?

”‘Adequate’ again. Is that your favorite word, or do you just enjoy being withholding?”

I had to put the paper down when I read that. Had to breathe. Had to recalibrate my entire understanding of what these annotations mean.

You’re not just tolerating my notes. You’re responding to them. Engaging with me, the person, not just the work.

And then you called me Professor. (I am not YOUR professor. The distinction matters. We are colleagues, collaborators. Whatever hierarchy exists in the Grove’s structure or in Amphoreus doesn’t apply here. In this space we’ve built together.)

I replied. Of course I replied. I couldn’t not.

“I’m not YOUR professor. Don’t be obtuse.”

Your response was something that resembled a smiling face. A tiny, hand-drawn curve in the margin.

I have stared at that mark for longer than I care to admit.

Current realization: Our marginalia has become correspondence. These aren’t just notes anymore. They’re letters. Tiny, contained conversations that exist in the space between formal thought.

You’re creating a private language with me.

And I’m answering.

Secondary realization: I have begun timing my delivery of annotated papers to coincide with your arrival at the archives. This is transparently manipulative. I don’t care.

This morning I left you a note: “Don’t forget to eat. I will notice this.”

No signature. If you know it’s from me (you will), then the care embedded in the words will be obvious. If you don’t… well. Then I’m a coward.

Alchemical parallel: In my work on soul-essence resonance, I’ve learned that consciousness patterns don’t exist in isolation. They’re constantly seeking harmonic frequencies—other patterns that complement rather than clash.

When two compatible patterns find each other, the resonance amplifies. They become more than the sum of their parts.

That’s what’s happening here.

Not interference. Not disruption.

Amplification.

Conclusion: The experiment has evolved beyond my control.

Accurate conclusion: There never was an experiment. Only me, trying desperately to pretend I wasn’t already lost.

⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

A week later, you find a new note on your desk. This one is different. Longer, written on proper stationery rather than scrap paper:

Your recent thesis on memory-adhesion in coreflame- and soul-related matters is exceptional. I’ve annotated the sections that require refinement, but the core argument is sound. More than sound—it’s innovative.

You have a tendency to underestimate your own insights. Stop doing that.

I’ve left a supplementary text on the third shelf (you know where). Read it. Then we’ll discuss your theory properly—meaning I will likely argue with you for an hour while secretly agreeing with most of it.

— A.

At the bottom, in smaller script:

P.S. The tea blend you preferred last week is on my desk if you’d like more. I may have acquired extra. For research purposes.

You read the note three times, tracing the careful loops of his handwriting with your fingertip. The formal praise. The gentle command to value yourself more. The postscript that’s trying so hard to sound casual and failing completely.

For research purposes.

Right.

You write back on the same paper, leaving it on his desk before he arrives the next morning:

Anaxagoras,

Thank you for the notes. And the tea. And for pretending that acquiring my preferred blend was anything other than thoughtful.

I’ll read the text. I’ll probably argue with you anyway. That’s half the fun.

See you tomorrow.

— Y/N

P.S. Your handwriting gets less controlled when you’re writing to me instead of for the archive. I’ve noticed. It’s endearing.

⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

When you arrive the next day, Anaxa’s already there (of course), but this time he looks up immediately when you enter.

There’s color high on his cheeks. His eye is brighter than usual.

“You—” Anaxa stops. Clears his throat. “You read my note.”

“I did.”

“And you responded.”

“I did.”

Anaxa stares at you for a long moment, and you can practically see him trying to formulate words, trying to maintain the careful distance he’s built between you.

Then he says, very quietly, “My handwriting is perfectly controlled.”

“It isn’t, though.”

“You’re making unfounded assertions.”

“Am I?” You pull out the stack of annotated papers he’s given you over the past month and spread them on the table. “Look. The early notes—immaculate. Perfect spacing, consistent pressure. But these recent ones?” You point to the margins filled with his responses to your responses. “The letters slant more. The spacing varies. There’s even a small ink blot here where you hesitated.”

Anaxa looks at the evidence you’ve presented. His jaw works silently.

Then, to your complete surprise, he laughs.

It’s quiet, barely more than an exhale, but it’s real. Genuine. The sound of someone who’s been caught and doesn’t entirely mind.

“You’re collecting data on me,” Anaxa says, and there’s something wondering in his voice.

“You’ve been collecting data on me for months.”

“That’s different. That’s—” He stops. Realizes there’s no defense. “Fair enough.”

“So?” You sit across from him, mirroring his usual posture. “What’s your hypothesis, scholar? Why does your handwriting change?”

Anaxa meets your gaze. Holds it.

“You know why.”

The admission hangs between you. Not quite a confession, but close. So close.

“Anaxagoras—”

“Same time tomorrow?” Anaxa asks, and there’s something almost desperate in the question.

You nod. “Same time.”

“Good.” He turns back to his papers, but his hands are shaking slightly. “That’s… not unwelcome.” You try to hide the smile creeping up your lips and fail miserably.

You work in silence for the next hour, but it’s a different kind of silence now. Charged. Full.

The notes continue.

So does the careful dance of not-quite-touching.

But something has shifted.

You’re both still pretending this is about research, about scholarship, about the work.

Neither of you believes it anymore.

⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

Entry #08: Integration Failure

I am compromised.

Thoroughly.

Possibly irreversibly.

You noticed. Of course you noticed. You’re brilliant, observant, maddeningly perceptive. You noticed that my handwriting changes when I write to you.

Not for you. To you.

And instead of letting me deflect, instead of allowing me to retreat into academic formality, you presented evidence. Laid out my own deteriorating control like a thesis and asked me to defend it.

I couldn’t.

So I laughed.

I laughed, and it felt like surrender, and I didn’t want to take it back.

Current status: The boundaries I’ve maintained—scholar/colleague, professor/student-in-training, observer/observed—are dissolving. Every session, every note, every moment of shared silence erodes them further.

You left me a message. Called my tea acquisition “thoughtful” and my handwriting “endearing.”

Endearing.

I have been called many things: brilliant, difficult, unnerving, blunt, precise, sarcastic, cold, blasphemer. Never endearing.

I don’t know what to do with that word except hold it carefully and read it again when I think you won’t notice.

(You’ll notice. You notice everything about me now.)

The Titans’ failure, reconsidered: They couldn’t (re)integrate emotion into their structure because they saw it as weakness. As compromise. As the thing that would undo their perfection.

But what if perfection was never the point?

What if the point was connection?

I spent years analyzing their downfall, documenting their hubris, using alchemy to deconstruct their very essence. I removed my own eye believing that sacrifice would grant me clearer vision—that understanding required stripping away the physical to perceive the spiritual.

And perhaps it did. My perception improved. My alchemical work advanced.

But I missed the simplest truth: the Titans were alone. Each of them, alone inside their own power, their own misdeeds, their own goals, their own certainty.

I have come to realize…I don’t want to be alone anymore.

Conclusion: Tomorrow. Same time.

You’ll be there.

I’ll be there.

And maybe—maybe—I’ll find the courage to stop pretending this is anything other than what it is.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

IV. The Bath and the Boundary

You’re not supposed to be here.

The private bathing chamber attached to Anaxa’s study is off-limits to students. Even advanced scholars-in-training like yourself. But he’d asked you to bring him the revised calculations for the soul harmonics experiment, said they were urgent, told you to come directly to his study even if he wasn’t at his desk.

“Just leave them on the table if I’m occupied,” he’d said.

You didn’t think “occupied” meant this.

The door to the bathing chamber is slightly ajar, steam curling through the gap like reaching fingers. You can hear water, the quiet lap of it against tile, and underneath that—his voice.

He’s talking to himself. Or rather, thinking aloud the way he does when he’s trying to work through a problem.

“—adhesion patterns remain consistent even at distance, which suggests the exploration doesn’t require continuous proximity to maintain resonance. But then the question becomes: what is proximity in this context? Physical space? Emotional—no, that’s imprecise. Experiential overlap. Shared memory as location rather than a—”

You should leave. Put the papers down and go.

Instead, you find yourself stepping closer.

“Anaxagoras?” you call out, keeping your voice carefully neutral.

The water sounds stop.

There’s a pause. Long enough that you wonder if he’s going to pretend he didn’t hear you.

Then, he mutters, “Did I not specify that urgent meant ‘leave them on the desk’?”

His voice is tight, controlled, but there’s something underneath it. Not anger. Something closer to panic.

“You did,” you admit. “But I thought you’d want to know that I found an error in the third calculation set. It changes the entire conclusion.”

Another pause.

“How significantly?”

“Significantly enough that you’ll want to see it immediately.”

You hear him exhale. A sound that might be frustration or amusement or both.

“Of course you did.” The water shifts. “Stay where you are. Don’t leave. Just…Give me a moment.”

“I can come back—”

“No.” The word comes too quickly. “No, I… the calculations are time-sensitive. If there’s an error, I need to address it now. Just—turn around. Face the door.”

You do, heat rising in your cheeks despite yourself.

There’s the sound of water sloshing, fabric rustling. You keep your eyes fixed on the doorframe, on the way the steam makes the wood grain blur.

“You may enter,” Anaxa says finally. “But maintain your current trajectory. No sudden movements.”

You step into the bathing chamber slowly, still facing away.

The room is smaller than you expected, all pale stone and copper fixtures. A large sunken bath dominates the center, still steaming. The air is thick with heat and the faint scent of something herbal. Rosemary, maybe, or sage.

“The papers,” Anaxa says from behind you, and his voice is steadier now. “Which calculation set?”

“Third,” you say, holding them up without turning. “The section on residual soul echo. You assumed a linear decay pattern, but I think it’s actually logarithmic. See—”

“I can’t see anything while you’re facing the wrong direction.”

“You told me not to turn around.”

“I’m decent now. Mostly.” There’s a pause. “Turn around.”

You do.

Anaxa is sitting on the edge of the bath, wrapped in a simple robe that’s not quite closed properly. His pale green hair—normally so carefully arranged—is damp and disheveled, silver-white strands clinging to his forehead. He looks so human. Vulnerable. More real than you’ve ever seen him.

And he’s staring at you with an expression you can’t quite read. Something between mortification and fascination.

“The calculations,” he says again, but his voice is rougher now.

You cross the space between you, papers held out. “Here. Third set, second page. You’ll see—”

Your foot catches on the edge of a floor tile.

You stumble forward.

Anaxa moves without thinking. Rises, reaches, catches you by the arms before you can fall into the bath.

For a moment you’re suspended there, his hands firm on your upper arms, your own hands braced against his chest. The robe has shifted with the movement, and you can feel the heat of his skin through the thin fabric, the rapid flutter of his heartbeat under your palm.

This close, you can see the water droplets still caught in his eyelashes. The faint flush on his cheeks that might be from the bath or might be from something else entirely.

His eye is very, very beautiful.

“Careful,” Anaxa murmurs, and the word sounds like it costs him something.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“I know.” But he hasn’t let go. Neither have you.

The papers have fallen, scattering across the wet stone.

“The calculations—” you start.

“Can wait.” His grip tightens almost imperceptibly. “You’re… you’re very close.”

“You caught me.”

“Yes.” He swallows. You watch his throat work. “I seem to keep doing that.”

“Catching me?”

“Reaching for you.” His eye drops to where your hand is still pressed against his chest. “Even when I know I shouldn’t.”

The steam has made the air thick, hard to breathe. Or maybe it’s not the steam at all.

“Why shouldn’t you?” you ask quietly.

“Because I’m your professor.”

“You’re not MY professor. You’re A professor. There’s a difference.”

“Semantics.”

“Precision,” you counter, throwing his own word back at him. “I thought you valued that.”

Anaxa’s laugh is breathless, almost helpless. “You’re going to ruin me.”

“Is that what this is? Ruin?”

“I don’t know what else to call it.” But he’s leaning closer, and his hands have moved from your arms to your wrists, thumb pressed against your pulse point. “You’ve taken up residence in my thoughts. Every theorem bends toward you. I can’t work without wondering what you’d think of it. I can’t make tea without calculating the exact temperature you prefer. I can’t—”

He stops himself, jaw clenching.

“Can’t what?” you whisper.

“Can’t stop,” he admits. “Thinking about you. Wanting—”

The word hangs unfinished between you.

You’re close enough now to feel his breath against your face. Close enough to count the water droplets sliding down his neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his robe.

“Anaxagoras,” you say, and his eye flutters closed at the sound of his name.

“Don’t.” But he doesn’t pull away. “If you say my name like that, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?”

“Forget every reason I’ve constructed for why this is inadvisable.”

“Maybe,” you say softly, “that’s the point.”

His eye opens. The look he gives you is raw, unguarded, and so full of want it makes your chest ache.

“The Titans fell because they gave themselves wholly to their faults,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “I promised myself never to do the same. To maintain control. To never let emotion override reason. Yet here I am, tempted to offer my entire mind to the sound of your voice.”

“I’m not asking for your entire mind.”

“Then what are you asking for?”

You slide your hand up from his chest to cup his jaw, feeling the scratch of stubble, the heat of his skin.

“Just this,” you murmur. “Just you. However much you’re willing to give.”

He makes a sound low in his throat—something between a laugh and a groan.

“I’m willing to give too much,” he confesses. “That’s the problem. With you, I want to give everything.”

“Then give me this moment.”

“Just this moment?”

“We can start there.”

He leans his forehead against yours, and for a long breath you just exist there—two people, suspended in steam and want and the terrifying possibility of something real.

“You realize,” he says finally, “I’ll have to document this. The resonance effect of—”

“Later.” You smile against his skin. “Document it later.”

“But the data—”

“Anaxagoras.”

“Yes?”

“Stop thinking.”

“I don’t know how,” Anaxa admits.

“Then let me help.”

You tilt your head up, close enough that your lips almost brush his, giving him time to pull away, to retreat into safety.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he closes the distance.

The kiss is nothing like you expected. Not practiced, not smooth. It’s hesitant and hungry all at once, the kiss of someone who’s spent too long denying himself and has finally, finally stopped.

His hands come up to frame your face with a scholar’s precision, tilting your head to deepen the kiss, and when your lips part under his the sound he makes is devastated.

You thread your fingers into his damp hair, feeling him shiver at the touch.

When you finally break apart, you’re both breathing hard.

Anaxa stares at you, his eye wide and dark and full of something that looks like wonder.

“Oh,” he says faintly.

“Oh?”

“I have severely underestimated the intensity of direct emotional resonance.”

Despite everything, you laugh. “Is that what we’re calling this?”

“I don’t have better terminology.” His thumb traces your cheekbone, the touch achingly gentle. “Everything I know is about observation. Distance. Control. This is… not that.”

“Is that bad?”

“No.” He kisses you again, softer this time. “No, it’s terrifying. But not bad. The opposite, to be precise.”

You stay there for longer than you should, trading slow kisses and breathless words, until the water in the bath has gone cold and the steam has cleared and reality starts to seep back in.

When you finally pull away properly, Anaxa looks positively wrecked. Hair disheveled, robe askew, lips slightly swollen.

He looks beautiful.

“The calculations,” Anaxa says weakly, glancing at the scattered papers.

“Still wrong.”

“We should review them.”

“We should.”

Neither of you moves.

Then Anaxa laughs—real laughter, bright and free—and pulls you close again.

“Later,” he murmurs against your hair. “We’ll review them later.”

“Scandalous,” you tease. “Professor Anaxagoras, prioritizing something over research?”

“You have no idea how scandalous this is.” But he’s smiling. “I may never recover my reputation.”

“I’ll risk it if you will.”

He pulls back just enough to look at you properly, and something in his expression shifts—becomes serious, intent.

“I’ve spent my entire life questioning everything,” he says quietly. “The Titans, the Flame-Chase Journey, the blind faith that leads people to destruction. I question doctrine, authority, even my own conclusions. But this?” He touches your face. “I don’t want to question this.”

“Then don’t.”

“It’s not that simple. People already call me blasphemer. If they knew I was… that we—”

“Let them talk,” you say firmly. “You taught me to seek truth over comfort. This feels like truth.”

He closes his eye, breathing out slowly.

“Yes,” he agrees. “It does.”

When you finally leave his study that evening—calculations reviewed, theories revised, the kiss still burning on your lips—you don’t see the way he leans against the closed door, hand pressed to his mouth, eye bright with something that might be joy or terror or both.

You don’t see him sit at his desk and pull out his diary with shaking hands.

But you’ll read about it later.

⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

Entry #14: Boundary Dissolution

Variable integrity: catastrophically compromised.

Today I made a fool of myself. Attempted to discuss soul-related harmonics while submerged in bathwater and distraction.

Correction: today I kissed you.

Let me be precise, since precision is apparently the only thing I have left:

You found an error in my calculations. You came to tell me despite my instructions otherwise. You nearly fell, and I caught you, and for one impossible moment we stood there in steam and silence and I felt every wall I’ve ever built dissolve like salt in water.

Empirical observation: proximity and heat distort rational thought beyond recovery.

Secondary observation: I don’t care.

I told you the Titans fell because they gave themselves wholly to their goals and faults. What I didn’t say: I understand now why they did it. When you feel something this consuming, this certain, resistance seems like cowardice.

You said my name—not Professor, not Anaxagoras with that formal respect you usually employ—just Anaxagoras, soft and sure, like you’d been saving it.

I broke.

The kiss was… I don’t have adequate words. How do you document the moment your entire framework shifts? How do you record the instant when observation becomes participation, when distance becomes intimacy, when hypothesis becomes hope?

Physical data: elevated heart rate, acute sensory overload, complete abandonment of propriety.

Emotional data: terror, elation, relief so profound I could weep.

Your hand in my hair. Your lips against mine. The way you laughed when I tried to maintain academic terminology and told me to “stop thinking.”

I tried. Gods, I tried.

But every thought I have is filled with you.

The truth I’ve been avoiding: I love you.

Not the theoretical concept of you. Not the intellectual stimulation or the compatible resonance patterns. You. The person who brings me tea and challenges my conclusions and looks at me like I’m not broken, just complex.

The person who kissed me in my bathing chamber and made me forget every reason I’d constructed for why this was inadvisable.

I told you I don’t want to question this.

I meant it.

The Grove calls me blasphemer for questioning the Titans, for refusing blind faith in the Flame-Chase Journey. They say I corrupt the students with doubt. Perhaps I do. But you—you’ve corrupted me with certainty.

I am certain of this: whatever we are, whatever this becomes, it’s real.

More real than any theorem I’ve ever proven.

Conclusion: I am lost.

Accurate conclusion: I was always lost. You simply helped me stop wandering.

Note: Tomorrow. Please let there be tomorrow. I crave the new dawn every day, again and again. Infinitely.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

V. Separation and the Diary Left Behind

Three days after the kiss, Anaxa tells you he’s leaving.

“There’s been a report of unusual disturbances near the outer Grove perimeter,” he explains, not meeting your eyes. “Residual soul echo, possibly connected to Titan perishing. I need to investigate.”

You’re in his study—your usual place now, though everything about it feels different since that afternoon. The space where you kissed is still there, a charged absence in the room.

“How long?” you ask.

“A week. Perhaps more.” He’s organizing his field notes with unnecessary precision, hands moving restlessly. “It depends on what I find.”

“I could come with you.”

“No.” The word is sharp, immediate. Then, softer: “No, it’s too dangerous. The Black Tide corruption is spreading in that region. I won’t risk—” He stops himself.

“Won’t risk what?”

He finally looks at you, and his eye is bright with something that might be fear.

“You,” he says simply. “I won’t risk you.”

Your chest tightens. “Anaxagoras—”

“I need to go.” Anaxa turns back to his packing, movements jerky. “The expedition leaves at dawn. I’ve left instructions for your continued research in the usual place. The Library of Philia has the texts you’ll need for your thesis revision. I’ve also—”

He hesitates, hand hovering over his desk.

“I’ve left my field notes,” he continues quietly. “My personal observations. In case you need reference material while I’m gone.”

There’s something careful in the way he says it. Like he’s offering more than just notes.

“Your diary?” you ask.

His shoulders tense. “My research journal. There’s a difference.”

“Is there?”

“Yes.” But Anaxa won’t look at you. “One is objective documentation. The other is… less controlled.”

You cross to him, putting a hand on his arm. He goes very still.

“Come back safe,” you say.

“I intend to.”

“Promise me.”

He turns then, cupping your face with both hands, and the touch is achingly gentle.

“I promise I’ll try,” he murmurs. “That’s the best I can offer.”

“Then I’ll take it.”

He kisses you. Slow and deep and desperate, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of your mouth, the taste of you, everything he’ll miss while he’s gone.

When he finally pulls away, his forehead rests against yours.

“Don’t reorganize my lab while I’m away,” he says, attempting lightness.

“I make no promises.”

“Of course not.” He almost smiles. “You never do.”

He leaves before dawn, and you don’t see him go.

Two days later, you return to his study.

You’re not snooping. Not really. Anaxa said you could use his space, could reference his materials. The research journal is right there on his desk, leather-bound and worn, filled with his precise handwriting.

Research journal, you think. Not diary.

But when you open it, the first entry makes you freeze.

Entry #01: Hypothesis Formation

Hypothesis: Prolonged proximity to certain individuals induces measurable cognitive interference.

Subject: Y/N…

Your heart stutters.

This isn’t a research journal.

This is about you.

You should close it. Should respect his privacy. Should—

You turn the page.

Entry #02: Variable Documentation

Session 3: Discussed Y/N‘s theory on soul-memory adhesion for 47 minutes past scheduled end time. Did not notice until archive keeper began closing procedures… ⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

Oh.

Oh.

You sink into his chair, fingers trembling as you continue reading.

Each entry is a revelation—his thoughts laid bare, the careful documentation of his own falling. You see yourself through his perspective: brilliant, distracting, essential. You see his fear, his longing, his desperate attempts to rationalize what he’s feeling. ⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯ Entry #04: [Crossed out title] [Anaxa's handwriting is messier than usual, words cramped together] This is irrational. Unscientific. I should stop. I should— Y/N laughed at something I said today. Not polite laughter. Real laughter. The kind that makes someone’s eyes crinkle at the corners. I spent four hours trying to work after that. Accomplished nothing. Just kept hearing that sound. This is a problem. I am the problem. [The rest of the page is blank except for a single line at the bottom] I don’t know what I’m doing. ⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯ Your throat tightens. You keep reading. ⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

Entry #05: Every theorem bends toward you. Every question leads back. This is not research. This is longing dressed in notation. Entry #07: Deterioration

[The handwriting starts controlled, gets progressively worse]

Empirical observation: I am not handling this well.

Y/N touched my hand today while reaching for a text. Accidental. Lasted perhaps half a second. My pulse rate increased by an estimated 20%. I lost my train of thought mid-sentence.

This is becoming untenable.

I can't work. Can't focus. Can't think about anything except—

[Several lines are heavily crossed out]

I wonder what Y/N thinks about. Late at night. Alone.

I wonder if—

[More crossing out]

No. This is inappropriate. Unproductive. I should—

Y/N. Y/N. Y/N.

[The name is written three more times, each one messier than the last]

I'm losing control. ⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯ Oh. OH. Your eyes are glued to his handwriting now. ⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯ Entry #08: I am a fool in a scholar’s robes, pretending observation is not the same as devotion. Entry #11: Failed Hypothesis

[This entry is extremely short]

Hypothesis: Distance will restore objectivity.

Method: Avoided the archives for three days.

Result: Thought about Y/N constantly. Possibly more than when in direct proximity.

Conclusion: Hypothesis failed. I am comprehensively fucked.

Entry #13: [No title]

[The handwriting is shaky]

We were arguing about Titan suppression theory—Y/N was brilliant, as always, saw the flaw in my logic before I did—and I looked at Y/N and thought it. Only thought it....Couldn't say it.

Am I reading this wrong?

[The entry ends abruptly] ⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

You’re crying by the time you reach the entry about the bath, about the kiss. ⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

Entry #14: The truth I’ve been avoiding: I love you. ⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

He loves you.

He’s loved you this whole time, documented it entry by entry, and never said a word.

Your hands shake as you turn to the most recent entry, dated the night before he left. ⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

Entry #15: Departure Protocol

I’m leaving tomorrow. The expedition is necessary. There are disturbances that require investigation, answers that need finding. This is my purpose: questioning, seeking truth, refusing comfortable ignorance.

But tonight, that purpose feels like exile.

I’m leaving this journal behind. Deliberately. If you find it (and I suspect you will—you’re too curious, too brilliant not to look), then you’ll know.

Everything I couldn’t say. Everything I’ve been documenting instead of declaring.

Love, as an empirical phenomenon, resists containment. I’ve tried formula, metaphor, even silence. None suffice.

The truth: I love the way you argue with me. The way you see connections I miss. The way you say my name like it matters. I love your handwriting in my margins and your laughter in my silence and the fact that you make me want to be honest instead of careful.

I love you.

Not as a variable. Not as a subject of study.

As the person who makes me want to stop observing and start living.

My sister died. And I couldn‘t bring her back. I’ve spent years since trying to find truth through reason, through investigation, through keeping everything at arm’s length so I could see clearly.

But you—you taught me that some truths can only be found through proximity. Through risk. Through letting someone close enough to hurt you.

I fear my findings are irrelevant without you present to interpret them.

Conclusion: If I don’t return—

No. Unacceptable hypothesis.

Revised conclusion: When I return, I’ll tell you this properly. Not through notation. Not through observation. Just… honestly.

If you’re reading this, know that you’ve given me something I thought I’d lost when my sister died: hope.

Hope that truth doesn’t have to mean loneliness.

Hope that questioning everything doesn’t mean trusting nothing.

Hope that maybe, just maybe, I deserve this.

I’ll come back.

I promise I’ll try.

— A.

⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

You sit there for a long time, the journal open in your lap, tears sliding down your cheeks.

He left this for you to find.

He wanted you to know.

Outside, the Grove is quiet, the sun setting in the distance. Somewhere out there, beyond the perimeter, Anaxa is chasing answers in dangerous territory.

And here you are, holding every truth he couldn’t speak aloud.

“Come back,” you whisper to the empty room. “Please come back.”

The journal doesn’t answer.

But you hold it close anyway, like maybe your certainty can reach him across the distance.

Like maybe love is its own kind of soul-exploration, carrying messages that reason can’t explain.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

VI. Anaxa‘s Return

Anaxa comes back on the eighth day, two days later than promised.

You’re in his study when you hear the door. You’ve been spending most of your time there, surrounded by his books and his scent and the diary you’ve read so many times you could recite passages from memory.

The door opens.

Anaxa stumbles in.

Your heart stops.

He looks wrong. His robes are dusty, stained with something dark that might be mud or might be worse. His hair is disheveled, falling into his face. There’s a cut above his eyebrow that’s scabbed over badly, and his visible eye is shadowed with exhaustion.

But he’s here. He’s here.

“Anaxagoras—”

“I’m fine.” His voice is hoarse, rougher than you’ve ever heard it. He moves toward his desk with mechanical precision, like he’s running on pure will. “The expedition yielded significant data. The distortions were more severe than anticipated. I’ve documented—”

He sways slightly.

You’re across the room in an instant, catching his arm.

“You’re not fine,” you say firmly. “When did you last eat? Sleep?”

“I don’t recall. The observations required continuous monitoring. If I’d stopped to rest, the patterns might have—” He blinks slowly, like focusing is difficult. “Where was I?”

“Anaxagoras.” You guide him toward the chair—his chair, the one you’ve been sitting in for days, waiting. “Sit. Now.”

To your surprise, he does.

For a moment he just sits there, hands braced on his knees, breathing carefully.

“I kept my promise,” he says quietly. “I came back.”

“You did.”

“Are you angry?”

The question catches you off-guard. “Why would I be angry?”

“I’m late. I said a week. It’s been eight days.” His eye finally focuses on you properly, and there’s something raw in his gaze. “I tried to return sooner, but the corruption—there were complications. I couldn’t leave until I was certain the data was complete, that the risk was justified, that—”

“Anaxagoras.” You kneel in front of him, taking his hands. They’re cold, trembling slightly. “I’m not angry. I was terrified, but not angry.”

“Terrified,” Anaxa repeats, like he’s testing the word.

“You went into Black Tide territory. You were gone longer than you said. What else would I be?”

He stares at your joined hands. “I didn’t think… I didn’t let myself think about what it would mean for you to worry. I was too focused on the work, on finding answers, on—” He stops. Closes his eye. “I’m sorry.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“The field distortions were worse than reported. Residual soul echo from Titan degradation—the patterns suggested active corruption spread rather than passive decay. I had to track the source, map the boundaries, collect samples for analysis. The work was… consuming.”

“You pushed yourself too hard.”

“Someone had to document it. Someone had to question whether the Titans’ essence is truly beneficial or if we’re worshipping our own destruction.” His voice gains strength, the familiar passion bleeding through exhaustion. “The Flame-Chase journey sends Chrysos Heirs to gather coreflames without understanding what they’re gathering. My sister died, and I won’t—I can’t—let that blind faith continue without—”

He sways again, and you realize he’s running on fumes and fury.

“Enough,” you say gently. “You can crusade against blind faith tomorrow. Right now, you need to rest.”

“I need to document the findings while they’re fresh. Memory degrades over time, and if I don’t record—”

“Anaxagoras.” You cup his face, making him look at you. “The findings will keep. You won’t if you collapse.”

He leans into your touch, eye fluttering closed.

“I missed you,” Anaxa confesses, so quietly you almost don’t hear it. “The entire expedition, every observation, every sample collected—I kept thinking about what you’d say about it. How you’d interpret the data. Whether you’d argue with my conclusions.” His hands come up to cover yours. “I kept thinking about you.”

Your throat tightens. “I read your journal.”

His eye opens. For a moment there’s panic—then resignation. Then something that might be relief.

“I know,” he says. “I left it for you.”

“All of it? Even the entries about—”

“Especially those.” His thumb strokes across your knuckles. “I’ve spent my life documenting observations because it was safer than admitting feelings. But you deserve more than notation. You deserve honesty.”

“Anaxagoras—”

“I meant what I wrote.” His gaze is intense despite the exhaustion. “Every word. Every desperate, unscientific, completely irrational confession. I love you. Not as a hypothesis. Not as a—”

You kiss him.

It’s meant to be gentle, just a soft press of lips to stop the words spilling out of him, but he makes a sound—desperate, relieved—and pulls you closer with shaking hands.

When you break apart, his forehead drops to your shoulder.

“I’m filthy,” Anaxa mumbles. “I haven’t bathed in days. This is highly unsanitary.”

Despite everything, you laugh. “I don’t care.”

“You should. The Black Tide corruption carries particulate matter that—”

“Anaxagoras.”

“Yes?”

“Stop thinking.”

“I don’t know how to—”

“Then let me help.” You pull back enough to meet his eye. “Bath. Food. Sleep. In that order. The world can wait.”

“The documentation—”

“Can wait.”

He looks like he wants to argue, but his body betrays him—another tremor, exhaustion winning over will.

“Fine,” he concedes. “But you’re not leaving.”

It’s not a question.

“I’m not leaving,” you confirm.

You help him to the bathing chamber. The same one where you kissed weeks ago, though it feels like years.

This time there’s no pretense, no careful distance. You help him out of his stained robes while he protests weakly about propriety and proper procedure. The cut above his eyebrow needs cleaning. There are bruises on his ribs you don’t ask about yet.

“I can manage,” he says, but he doesn’t push you away when you guide him into the warm water.

“I know you can.” You kneel beside the bath, reaching for the cloth. “But you don’t have to.”

He’s quiet as you clean the wound on his forehead with careful touches. Quiet as you work the dust from his hair. His eye stays closed, but his breathing gradually evens out.

“This is highly irregular,” he murmurs eventually.

“What is?”

“You. Caring for me like this.” He opens his eye, and there’s vulnerability there that makes your chest ache. “I’m not accustomed to it.”

“Get accustomed to it.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“It’s a promise.”

Anaxa‘s lips quirk slightly. “You’re using my own terminology against me.”

“I learned from the best.”

He catches your hand, bringing it to his lips. The kiss he presses to your palm is soft, reverent.

“I thought about this,” he admits. “Out there, in the corrupted zones, surrounded by degradation and death. I thought about your hands. Your voice. The way you look at me like I’m not broken.”

“You’re not broken.”

“I’m damaged. There’s a difference, but the outcome is similar.” His thumb traces patterns on your wrist. “My sister’s death broke something in me. Made me question everything, trust nothing, keep everyone at arm’s length so I could see clearly. But you—”

He stops, swallowing hard.

“You make me want to stop seeing clearly,” he continues. “To stop observing and start participating. To risk being hurt because the alternative is being alone, and I—” His voice cracks. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

You lean forward, pressing your forehead to his.

“You’re not alone,” you whisper. “Not anymore.”

When he pulls you into the water fully clothed, you don’t protest.

When he kisses you with desperate, careful intensity, you kiss him back.

And when he finally breaks down—exhaustion and relief and emotion he’s held too long finally spilling over—you hold him while he shakes apart.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps against your shoulder. “This is—I don’t—”

“Shh. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“I’m supposed to be controlled. Rational. I’m supposed to—”

“You’re allowed to feel,” you tell him firmly. “You’re allowed to be human.”

He laughs, but it sounds like a sob. “I’ve forgotten how.”

“Then I’ll remind you.”

You stay there until the water grows cold, until his breathing steadies, until he’s calm enough to stand.

You help him into clean robes. Make him sit while you prepare tea—the blend he likes, though you add honey for energy he desperately needs.

He drinks it obediently, watching you with an expression that’s soft and wondering.

“You’ve been staying here,” he observes. “In my study.”

“How did you know?”

“Your notes are on my desk. Your preferred tea blend is out. The chair is angled differently—you sit with one leg tucked under you. I don’t.” He sets down his cup. “Also, you’re wearing one of my reading robes.”

You glance down. He’s right—you’d grabbed it two nights ago when the study grew cold, and you hadn’t bothered to take it off.

“I missed you,” you admit. “Being here helped.”

“You read my journal.”

“You told me to.”

“I did.” He stands, crossing to where you’re leaning against his desk. “What did you think?”

“I think you’re brilliant and self-sabotaging in equal measure.”

“Accurate.”

“I think you’ve been in love with me for months and couldn’t figure out how to say it.”

“Also accurate.”

“I think—” Your voice softens. “I think you deserve to be happy. And I want to be the one who makes you happy, if you’ll let me.”

He cups your face with both hands, and his touch is achingly gentle.

“You already do,” Anaxa murmurs. “Every day. Every moment. You walk into a room and I forget what I was worried about. You smile and I remember why I’m fighting to save this world.” He kisses your forehead. “You exist, and I’m not alone.”

“Anaxagoras—”

“I love you.” The words come easier this time, stronger. “I love your mind and your courage and the way you challenge me. I love that you read my rambling journal and didn’t run. I love—”

You pull him down and kiss him, stopping the words with your mouth.

This kiss is different from the others—not desperate, not tentative. It’s certain. It’s choosing.

It’s saying yes to everything you’ve both been too afraid to claim.

When you break apart, you’re both breathing hard.

“Bed,” you say firmly. “You need sleep.”

“Will you stay?”

“Do you want me to?”

His eye is very blue, very bright. “More than I want my next breath.”

“Then I’ll stay.”

His bed is even cleaner than you expected. Neat, austere, exactly what you’d imagine for someone who spends most of his time working.

Anaxa lies down with visible relief, and you settle beside him, fitting yourself against his side.

For a while there’s just breathing, the warmth of him solid against you.

Then his hand finds yours in the darkness, fingers lacing together.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

“For what?”

“For waiting. For reading. For not leaving when you saw how much of a disaster I am.”

You squeeze his hand. “You’re not a disaster. You’re just… human.”

“I’ve spent most of my life trying not to be.”

“I know.”

“My sister was so pure. And at the beginning, shortly after her death, I was so certain the Titans would return her to me. I was… so very wrong.” His voice is raw. “I promised myself I’d never be that blind again. Never trust anything I couldn’t prove. Never let faith override reason.”

“And then I showed up.”

“And then you showed up.” He turns his head to look at you. “And you made me want to have faith in something again. Not in Titans or Flame-Chase journeys or divine purpose. In this. In us.”

“That’s not faith,” you tell him softly. “That’s evidence. You’ve documented months of data proving we work.”

Anaxa laughs quietly. “Using my own methodology against me again.”

“I’m a good student.”

“You’re extraordinary.” He pulls you closer. “And I’m terrified.”

“Of what?”

“Losing you. Failing you. Proving that love is just another form of corruption that destroys what it touches.” Anaxa’s jaw clenches. “The Titans fell because they got consumed. What if I—”

“You’re not a Titan,” you interrupt. “And I’m not asking you to worship me. I’m asking you to trust me. To trust this.”

“I want to.”

“Then do.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, and you think maybe he’s fallen asleep.

Then: “I trust you. I do. It’s myself I doubt.”

You shift to face him fully, close enough to see the exhaustion in his features, the fear he’s trying to hide.

“Listen to me,” you say firmly. “You are the most controlled, rational, careful person I’ve ever met. You question everything. You refuse blind faith. You think before you act.” You touch his face. “But you’re also capable of feeling deeply. Of caring. Of loving. Those things don’t contradict each other. They complete each other.”

“The Titans—”

“Were beings who suppressed emotion until it destroyed them. You’re not suppressing anything. You’re integrating it. There’s a difference.”

He closes his eye, breathing out slowly.

“How are you always right?” he murmurs.

“I’m not always right. I just know you.”

“You do.” Wonder creeps into his voice. “You really do.”

He kisses you then—soft and slow and achingly tender. Not asking for anything, just… grateful. Present.

When you settle back against him, his arm wraps around you securely.

“Sleep,” you whisper. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

His breathing evens out within minutes, exhaustion finally winning.

You stay awake a little longer, listening to his heartbeat, feeling the rise and fall of his chest.

This brilliant, broken, beautiful man who documents everything because he’s afraid of forgetting.

Who questions the divine because his faith died with his sister.

Who loves you so completely he needed hundreds of journal pages to convince himself it was real.

You’ll stay.

For as long as he’ll have you, you’ll stay.

⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

Entry #16: Return Protocol

[Written two days later, in steadier handwriting]

I’ve been back for 48 hours.

The expedition data has been filed. The samples are being analyzed. My formal report to the Grove has been submitted, though I doubt they’ll appreciate my conclusions about Titan corruption being deliberately obscured by Flame-Chase doctrine.

But that’s not what I’m documenting today.

Subject: Integration. Not of data, but of self.

I returned exhausted, damaged, running on nothing but compulsion and the desperate need to make it back to you. And you were there. In my study, wearing my robe, surrounded by my books and my mess and my confessions.

You read everything. Every rambling entry, every desperate observation, every moment I’d tried to rationalize love into research.

And you stayed.

Physical observations:

You cleaned my wounds with careful hands

You made me tea the way I like it (but added honey, which I normally refuse but drank anyway because you made it)

You held me when I broke down, which I did not anticipate and could not prevent

You stayed through the night, solid and warm and real against my side

Emotional observations:

I am loved. Not as a concept. Not as a hypothesis. Actually, tangibly loved by a person who sees all of me—the brilliance and the damage and the fear—and chooses to stay anyway.

I told you I’m terrified of becoming like the Titans, of letting purpose consume me until I collapse inward. Until I lose all emotions left in me. You told me I’m not suppressing emotion—I’m integrating it.

Integration. The word feels correct in a way my theories never have.

The Titans failed because they saw reason and emotion and purpose as opposing forces. One had to dominate. One had to win. They chose purpose, suppressed feeling and reason, and this destroyed them from within.

But what if the answer isn’t dominance? What if it’s balance?

What if love doesn’t corrupt reason doesn’t corrupt purpose—it just gives reason purpose and purpose reasoning?

Revised hypothesis: Emotional resonance and intellectual pursuit are not opposing forces but complementary systems. When integrated properly, they create stability rather than collapse.

Evidence: Your hand in mine. The way I can think more clearly now, not less, because I’m not spending all my energy pretending I don’t feel. The fact that my sister’s death no longer only means loss. It also means the reason I fight for truth. For preventing other faithful people from being consumed.

Conclusion: I’m in love.

Thoroughly.

Irrevocably.

And for the first time in years, that doesn’t feel like weakness.

It feels like coming home.

Note: You’re still here. Asleep in my study chair with a book open in your lap. Your hair is falling into your face. I want to wake you and carry you to bed (proper rest, you deserve it) but I also want to document this moment. The domestic peace of your presence, the way my space has become ours.

I think I’ll do both.

First document. Then wake you. Then hold you while I can.

Because tomorrow the world will require me to be the blasphemer again, the questioner, the one who refuses comfortable faith.

But tonight, I’m just Anaxagoras.

And that’s enough.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

VII. Letting Go

The next few days develop a rhythm.

Anaxa returns to his classes at the Grove—though the whispers follow him everywhere. Blasphemer. Heretic. The professor who questions the Titans. He ignores them with practiced ease, but you see the tension in his shoulders when students avoid his gaze, when colleagues turn away in the halls.

You stay close. Not hovering, just… present.

You attend his lectures when you can, watch him command the room with that sharp intellect, see the way he comes alive when debating philosophy and soul theory. The students who do listen—the ones brave enough to question alongside him—hang on every word.

Afterward, you return to his study together. Sometimes you work in comfortable silence. Sometimes you argue about theories until you’re both hoarse. Sometimes you just exist in the same space, and that’s enough.

But there’s still something held back between you. A tension that hasn’t resolved.

He touches you carefully—hand on your back when you pass, fingers brushing yours when exchanging papers. But he never pushes further, never asks for more than these small contacts.

Like he’s afraid of wanting too much.

It breaks on the seventh night after his return.

You’re both working late—him reviewing his Black Tide corruption data, you drafting your thesis on Titan emotional suppression theory. The lamplight is low and golden, casting long shadows across his study.

You glance up and find him staring at you.

Not at your work. At you.

“What?” you ask softly.

Anaxa blinks, like he’s been caught. “Nothing. I was just… thinking.”

“About?”

“How you look in my space.” His voice is quiet, almost wondering. “How natural it feels. How much I’ve wanted this and how terrifying it is now that I have it.”

You set down your pen. “Terrifying?”

“I’m not good at this.” Anaxa gestures vaguely between you. “Emotional intimacy. Physical closeness. I can document attraction, theorize about connection, but this—” He stops. Swallows. “I don’t know how to do this without controlling it. Without observing instead of feeling.”

“Do you want to feel?” you ask carefully.

His eye darkens. “Desperately.”

The word hangs between you, raw and honest.

You stand, crossing to where he sits. His gaze tracks you, and you see his hands tighten on the arms of his chair.

“What are you afraid of?” you murmur.

“That I’ll want too much. That I won’t know when to stop. That I’ll—” He closes his eye. “The Titans existed with complete devotion and it destroyed them. What if I love you like that? What if I consume you trying to hold on?”

You frame his face with your hands, making him look at you.

“I’m not asking you to worship me,” you say firmly. “I’m asking you to be with me. Present. Real. No observation, no documentation. Just… this.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Then let me show you.”

You lean down and kiss him. Slow, deliberate, giving him time to pull away.

He doesn’t.

Instead, his hands come up to your waist, gripping like you’re the only solid thing in his world.

When you deepen the kiss, he makes a sound low in his throat. Something between surrender and relief.

You pull back just enough to whisper, “Stop thinking.”

“I can’t—”

“Yes, you can.” Your lips brush his jaw. “Just for tonight. Stop analyzing. Stop documenting. Just feel.”

His breathing hitches. “If I stop controlling this—”

“Then you stop controlling it.” You kiss the corner of his mouth. “And we see what happens.”

For a moment he’s frozen, caught between fear and want.

Then something shifts in his expression—a decision made, a wall dropped.

He stands abruptly, pulling you against him with a intensity that steals your breath. His mouth finds yours again, and this kiss is different. Deeper, hungrier, like he’s finally letting himself want without permission.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he gasps between kisses.

“You won’t.”

“I don’t know how to be gentle.”

“I’m not asking for gentle.” You thread your fingers into his hair. “I’m asking for real.”

He groans, and the sound is devastated. “You’re going to undo me.”

“Good.”

He walks you backward until your legs hit the edge of his desk. Papers scatter. Neither of you cares.

His hands frame your face, tilting your head back so he can kiss you properly. Deep, thorough, like he’s trying to memorize the taste of you. When his mouth moves to your throat, you feel him smile against your skin.

“What?” you manage.

“Your pulse.” His lips brush over the flutter of your heartbeat. “It’s racing.”

“So is yours.”

“Empirical observation,” he murmurs, but there’s warmth in his voice now. “I can’t help it.”

“Anaxagoras.”

He pulls back to look at you, and his eye is dark, pupil blown wide. “Say it again.”

“Anaxagoras.”

“Gods.” He kisses you again, harder this time. “The way you say my name—”

“Like it matters?”

“Like I matter.” His hands slide down to your waist, thumbs brushing the skin just above your hip. “Like I’m not just the blasphemer or the professor or the broken thing that questions everything.”

“You’re not broken,” you tell him fiercely. “You’re careful. There’s a difference.”

“Not tonight.” His forehead drops to yours. “Tonight I don’t want to be careful. I want—”

“Tell me.”

“You.” The word is raw. “I want you. All of you. I want to stop observing and start feeling. I want to know what it’s like to be completely present instead of analyzing from a distance. I want—” He stops himself, jaw clenching.

“You want to lose control,” you finish softly.

He nods, and you see the fear in it—the terror of wanting something he can’t rationalize or contain.

“Then lose it,” you whisper. “I’ve got you.”

The permission breaks something in him.

He kisses you like he’s drowning and you’re air—desperate, thorough, overwhelming. His hands map your body with a scholar’s precision but a lover’s intensity, learning the places that make you gasp, the touches that make you arch into him.

When he lifts you onto the desk, you don’t protest. When his hands slide under your robes with trembling certainty, you help him.

“Tell me if I—” Anaxa starts, but you silence him with a kiss.

“Stop thinking,” you remind him. “Just feel.”

So he does.

His hands slide under your robes with increasing confidence, and the way he's looking at you—focused, intense, utterly present—makes your breath catch.

"I want—" Anaxa stops, seeming to struggle with the words. Then, with characteristic bluntness: "I want to take you apart. Methodically. Until you forget every coherent thought." His thumb traces your lower lip. "I've thought about it. Constantly. In lectures. During experiments. At night when I should be sleeping."

Your heart hammers against your ribs. "Then do it."

"You don't understand." His voice is strained, eye dark and wanting. "Once I start, I won't want to stop. I'll want—everything. Every sound you make. Every response I can draw from you. I'll want to know exactly what it takes to make you—"

You kiss him, cutting off the words, and when you pull back you're both breathing hard.

"Then take it," you tell him firmly. "Take everything. I'm giving you permission."

The sound he makes is devastated. "You're going to ruin me."

"Good. Now stop talking and kiss me."

He does. Thoroughly. He starts nibbling your neck, murmuring, "You taste divine," and you laugh while leaning into his touch.

"I thought you don't like exaggerations?" you say, your voice trembling, breath shaky.

His lips wander lower, his hands never leaving your body. "I don't," Anaxa confirms, pressing closer. "Precision like always." His hands roam your body, effortlessly removing your clothes. You do the same, and he makes a low sound in his throat. His fingers trace your skin with need, his voice getting deeper the more he explores and learns you. "I always thought softness is unnecessary. Your skin tells me it's elemental."

Anaxa’s touch is reverent and hungry all at once. The careful observation of a researcher combined with the desperate need of someone who’s denied himself too long. He learns your body like he learns everything: completely, thoroughly, with an intensity that makes you feel like the only thing in the universe worth studying.

“Beautiful,” Anaxa murmurs against your skin. “You’re—I don’t have words.”

“You don’t need them.”

“But I want to—I need to tell you—” His voice breaks. “You’re everything. Everything I thought I couldn’t have. Everything I told myself I didn’t deserve.”

You pull him closer, feeling the solid warmth of him, the racing of his heart against yours.

“You deserve this,” you tell him firmly. “You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be loved.”

He makes a sound that might be a laugh or a sob. “I’m terrified.”

“I know.”

“What if I’m not enough? What if I fail you? What if—”

You kiss him, stopping the spiral of fear.

“You’re enough,” you whisper against his mouth. “Right now, exactly as you are, you’re enough.”

When he finally lets go completely—when the last wall crumbles and he stops trying to control or observe or analyze—it’s like watching something transform.

Anaxa’s intense in ways you didn’t expect. Not rough, but present. Completely focused on you, on this moment, on the connection between you. Every touch is deliberate. Every kiss feels like a question answered.

He whispers your name like a prayer and his own like he’s reminding himself he exists.

And when you’re both breathless and tangled together, foreheads pressed close in the lamplight, he laughs.

Actually laughs—bright and free and wondering.

“What?” you ask, smiling.

“I’ve spent years documenting everything. Every observation, every conclusion, every piece of data.” He brushes hair from your face with gentle fingers. “But I have no words for this.”

“Is that bad?”

“No.” He kisses you softly. “No, it’s astonishingly… liberating. To experience something I can’t explain. To just be instead of constantly analyzing.”

“How does it feel?”

“Terrifying.” He smiles. “And perfect.”

You stay there for a long time—on his desk, surrounded by scattered papers and the warm glow of lamplight, just holding each other.

Eventually he carries you to his bed (narrow, austere, somehow perfect), and you fall asleep wrapped around each other.

No documentation. No observation.

Just presence.

Just this.

You wake before him.

Dawn light filters through the window, soft and golden, illuminating the planes of his face. In sleep, he looks younger. The sharp edges of his intellect softened, the weight he carries eased.

You trace the line of his jaw carefully, and his eye opens.

For a moment he just looks at you, and something in his expression makes your chest tight.

“Hello,” you whisper.

“Hello.” His voice is rough with sleep. “You’re still here.”

“Where else would I be?”

“I don’t know. I thought perhaps I’d dreamed you.” Anaxa pulls you closer, tucking your head under his chin. “I’ve done that before. Dreamed you were here, then woken alone.”

“Not a dream,” you assure him. “I’m real. This is real.”

“Yes.” He presses a kiss to your hair. “It is.”

You lie there in comfortable silence, listening to his heartbeat, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing.

Then, quietly, he says: “Thank you.”

You pull back to look at him. “For what?”

“For staying. For being patient. For teaching me that losing control doesn’t mean losing myself.” His hand cups your face. “For loving me when I couldn’t figure out how to love myself.”

“Anaxagoras—”

“I mean it.” His thumb brushes your cheek. “My sister died and I couldn‘t save her. I spent years after refusing to believe in anything other than my theories. And then you—” He stops, swallows. “You made me believe in this. In us. In the possibility that maybe faith isn’t about blind devotion to distant gods, but about trusting the person right in front of you.”

Your eyes burn. “I love you.”

“I know.” He smiles, and it makes you tear up. “You’ve been very obvious about it.”

“Says the man who wrote a hundred diary entries instead of just telling me.”

“Fair point.” He kisses you softly. “I love you too. In case that wasn’t clear.”

“It was clear.” You settle back against his chest. “But I don’t mind hearing it.”

“Good. Because I intend to say it often.” His arm tightens around you. “I’ve wasted enough time being afraid. I don’t want to waste any more.”

Outside, the Grove is waking—students heading to morning lectures, professors preparing lessons, the world continuing its slow turn toward whatever comes next.

But in this small room, in this narrow bed, wrapped in each other and the gentle morning light, you’ve found something the Titans never understood:

That truth isn’t found in isolation or distant observation or forcing beliefs onto other beings.

It’s found in connection.

In choosing vulnerability over control.

In loving someone enough to trust them with your whole, messy, complicated heart.

Anaxa has spent years questioning everything.

But this—this he finally believes in.

⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯

Entry #17: Post-Integration Analysis

[The handwriting is different now—still precise, but looser, more natural]

I’m writing this while you sleep beside me, morning light turning your hair to gold.

I should be working. There are samples to analyze, reports to file, lectures to prepare. The Grove scholars want my formal recommendations on the Black Tide corruption patterns, though I suspect they’ll ignore my conclusions about the Flame-Chase doctrine being fundamentally flawed.

But right now, none of that feels urgent.

Observation: I am happy.

Not content. Not satisfied. Happy.

It’s an unfamiliar sensation. I keep testing it, like a new hypothesis, waiting for the variables to shift and disprove it. But it remains.

Last night, I stopped documenting. I stopped observing. I just… experienced. And it was—

I don’t have adequate vocabulary. The scientific terms feel insufficient. The poetic language feels overwrought.

So I’ll just say this: it was real. More real than any theory I’ve proven, any data I’ve collected.

You told me I deserve to be loved. I’m beginning to believe you.

Revised understanding of Titan collapse:

The Titans didn’t fall because they loved too much. They weren‘t capable of that. They fell because they loved the wrong things. They loved perfection, control, power, their own divine purpose. They loved abstractions instead of people. Or were just drawn to themselves, egoistic as they are.

But loving a person—flawed, complicated, real—that’s different.

That’s not consumption. That’s connection.

Current status: Integrated. Not perfectly. I still have the urge to document, to analyze, to create distance through observation. But I’m learning to resist it. To be present instead of protected.

You‘re stirring now.

Your hand is searching for me in sleep.

I should let you rest. You deserve it after putting up with my catastrophic emotional processing.

But I also want to wake you.

To kiss you good morning. To tell you again that I love you, because apparently I’m capable of saying it now without my throat closing up.

Conclusion: The experiment continues. But it’s no longer an experiment.

It’s just life.

A life I finally want to live.

EPILOGUE ⋆ ✦ ⋆

A/N: Thanks for reading. Likes, reblogs and comments are highly appreciated. They fuel my writing. :)

You’ve noticed the patterns. How he never buys just one book. How he returns a week later, discusses a single paragraph from one of them like it contains the secret to life, and then vanishes again. Always dressed a little too well for this small, dusty place. Collared shirts with the sleeves rolled up, faint traces of gold on the cufflinks. He carries himself like someone who’s seen the world from a great height but prefers to stay grounded now.

Today, he’s seated by the window, head tilted, eyes moving over the pages with the quiet reverence of someone who reads to remember.

Phainon turns a page. You pretend to busy yourself with dusting the same shelf twice.

Your eyes flicker back to him. You can’t deny he’s handsome and intriguing with the way he carries himself. It’s his presence that captivates you more than anything. You restock shelves nearby, trying not to stare too long. Eventually, you break the silence.

“Finding what you’re looking for?”

A pause follows. Then you see that half-smile, thoughtful, amused.

“I thought I was,” Phainon says, closing the book carefully. “But the problem with good writing is it never stops asking questions back.”

You blink. “That’s either very profound or you’ve been reading philosophy again.”

Phainon laughs. Soft, melodic, a little self-aware. His laugh does something to the air in the shop. Makes it lighter, warmer. You realize you’ve been holding your breath without meaning to. “I’m afraid you caught me. I try to balance it with poetry, but the poets are just as interrogative.”

You lean on the counter. “Maybe you should try fiction next. Something with dragons or time travel. No questions, just chaos.”

He pretends to consider it. “Tempting. Though I’m afraid I might start identifying too strongly with the dragons.”

“They say dragons are dangerous,” you murmur.

“They are.” Phainon’s voice is quiet. “Their fire will always be both warm enough to save and strong enough to destroy. That’s the nature of it. You can’t have one without the other.”

“And you?”

He looks at you then, his blue eyes burning. “I’m trying very hard to only be warm.”

The answer shouldn’t make you ache the way it does, but it does. There’s something disarming about the way he speaks. Not flirtatious, not performative, but deliberate. Like everything he says has been sifted through three layers of meaning before it reaches you.

Phainon stands, returning the book to its shelf. His fingers linger on the spine, tracing the title. On Memory and Light.

“I like it here,” he says after a moment, voice softer now. “It’s quieter than most places.”

“Not much happens here,” you reply. “That’s the point.”

He looks at you with an intensity that leaves you breathless.

“That’s what makes it extraordinary.”

“Extraordinary?” You raise an eyebrow. “That’s a big word for a place that smells like old paper and regret.”

“The best places usually do,” he says, and there’s something in his smile now. Playful, almost provocative. “Besides, I’ve always found regret far more interesting than contentment. It has better stories.”

“Careful. That sounds dangerously close to philosophy.”

“Too late. I’m afraid you’re trapped now.”

For a heartbeat, the shop feels too small, too bright. You busy yourself with the register, pretending not to feel his gaze linger a moment longer than it should.

Outside, the rain begins to fall harder. Inside, Phainon stays a little longer than usual. Flipping through another book, eyes tracing words he probably already knows by heart.

You don’t know it yet, but this will become a pattern too.

The pattern settles in quietly. At first, it’s just Phainon appearing at predictable times. Then it’s Phainon staying longer.

Then it’s Phainon still here after closing, and you realize the pattern has shifted into something else entirely.

It‘s late again.

The kind of late where the street outside is more reflection than light, all rain-slick glass and ghosted neon. You’re restacking a small pile of returns when you notice he’s still here.

Phainon has taken his usual place by the back shelves, where the poetry bleeds into philosophy. The shop is closed—you turned the sign an hour ago—but he hasn’t moved.

The soft gold of the reading lamp pools across his face, outlining the tired grace of someone who carries both light and the cost of holding it.

You hesitate before breaking the quiet. “You’ll turn into one of the displays if you stay there much longer.”

A small smile, not quite reaching his eyes. “Would that be so terrible? I’d get to rest among the greats.”

“You’d be alphabetized between Phaedrus and Pindar,” you reply. “Not bad company.”

That earns you a real laugh. Low, unguarded, the kind of sound that warms the air. Then silence again. A heavier one.

You take a step closer, pretending to straighten the stack beside him. “Long day?”

Phainon exhales through his nose, looking down at the page but not really seeing it. “Long life, perhaps.”

There it is. That quiet exhaustion he never quite lets through. He catches himself almost immediately, offering an apologetic tilt of his head. “Forgive me. That sounds more dramatic than intended.”

“It’s allowed,” you say softly. “The dramatics. It’s been a slow day. Someone should provide the poetry.”

You catch that faint smile again, but this time it holds something fragile beneath the charm. “I’m afraid I’m all out of poetry. These days, I only seem to find prose. Or perhaps just realism.”

You don’t answer. The shop hums faintly with the sound of rain against the roof. After a moment, Phainon closes the book and looks up, eyes meeting yours with that same unsettling focus. Like he can read thoughts as easily as words.

“You seem tired too,” he says quietly. “People often are, in places like this. We come to hide, but the quiet has a way of revealing things.”

“I could say the same about you.”

Something flickers there. Recognition, maybe, or the ghost of an old ache. Phainon looks away first.

“You’re observant,” he says, tone light again but the weight never quite leaving. “Dangerous trait. You might start seeing through the masks people so carefully craft.”

“I think you already have.”

Phainon doesn’t deny it. Just laughs softly, shaking his head, and stands.

“Then perhaps we’re equally doomed.”

You stop mid-motion, turning to face him properly. “You do that a lot, you know.”

“Do what?”

“Deflect. Every time something gets too close to real, you make a joke. Wrap it in clever words.”

Phainon blinks, actually startled. For a moment, the careful composure slips, and you see something raw underneath.

“I—” He starts, then stops. Tries again. “You’re not wrong.”

“I know.” You soften slightly. “I just thought someone should say it.”

He helps you close up. Folding chairs, stacking the last stray books. His movements are careful. Deliberate. The soft thud of books being stacked, the whisper of chair legs against wood, the rustle of his shirt as he reaches for high shelves. Every sound feels amplified in the quiet.

When he hands you the keys at the end, his fingers brush yours. A fleeting touch, static and startlingly human.

“Until next time,” Phainon says, voice low, gentle.

And then he’s gone.

Into the rain, into the blur of passing headlights, leaving the faintest scent of paper and warmth behind him.

Phainon returns three days later. Same time, same soft greeting. But there’s a question in his eyes that wasn’t there before, and you’re not sure you’re ready to answer it.

So you’ve been more reserved this week. Not enough for most people to notice, but Phainon isn’t most people.

He still comes to the shop every few days, always at the same time, always with the same soft rhythm of greetings and half-smiles. But lately, you’ve stopped teasing him. Your replies are shorter, your smile slower to form. And when you think he isn’t looking, your expression carries a weight he doesn’t know how to name.

He notices everything. That’s his curse.

On the fourth day, Phainon finally says something. “You’ve been quiet.”

“I’m always quiet.”

He tilts his head, that familiar motion of his. Not skeptical, just searching. “Yes, but this is a different kind of quiet.”

You pause mid-shelving, spine pressed to the bookcase. “You analyze everyone like this?”

“Only those who matter.” You turn away quickly, but not before you see his expression soften. When you risk a glance back, he’s still watching you. Not with that careful observation from before, but something warmer. Almost tender.

It isn’t flirtation, and that’s what undoes you. Just honest, like a fact stated plainly.

You turn away, pretending to fix a crooked stack. “Just tired, I guess.”

He doesn’t push. Not directly. Phainon never interrogates emotions. He approaches them like delicate artifacts. Examined carefully, touched only if invited.

“Tiredness,” Phainon says after a pause, “is a language I speak fluently.”

You almost smile. Almost. “Bet you still correct the grammar.”

A soft laugh. “Sometimes.”

The silence after that isn’t awkward. It’s heavy, but shared. You can feel him watching you from across the aisle. Not in judgment, not even in pity. Just presence.

Then, quietly, Phainon asks, “May I ask what’s weighing on you?”

You hesitate, fingers trailing over the spine of a book you aren’t really seeing. He doesn’t fill the pause. He waits. That patience is almost unbearable. The kind of stillness that makes running impossible.

Finally, you sigh. “It’s nothing big. Just life. The kind that keeps happening no matter how tired you get of it.”

He nods, gaze thoughtful. “The most relentless kind.” And then, softer, he mumbles, “I know that one well.”

When you look up, there’s something unguarded in his face. A crack in that eternal composure.

“Do you ever get tired of holding everything together?” you ask before you can stop yourself.

He blinks, startled. Not by the question, but by how much it reveals about you.

“Yes,” Phainon says after a long moment. “But I’ve learned that the world doesn’t stop spinning just because I do. So I try to rest in motion.”

You frown. “That sounds lonely.”

“It is.” He smiles. Not sadly, just honestly. “But less so now.”

It takes you a second to realize what he means. Your chest tightens.

When the day ends, Phainon offers to walk you home. You almost refuse, then see the faint exhaustion behind his eyes and realize it isn’t charity. It’s company.

You walk side by side through the quiet streets, saying nothing. The kind of silence that feels less like absence and more like understanding. Your footsteps echo off wet pavement. Somewhere nearby, a cat yowls.

The streetlights cast everything in amber, and when you glance at him, his profile is all sharp angles and soft light. At one point, his hand brushes yours. Neither of you pulls away. You don’t hold hands—not quite—but your knuckles touch with every other step, and neither of you mentions it.

At the corner, he stops. “You know,” Phainon says, “people often mistake strength for never faltering. But the truth is…” He hesitates, looking up at the faint light between clouds. “Even stars collapse before they shine brightest.”

You want to ask what he means. But then he looks at you, really looks, and somehow you understand.

At your door, you hesitate. “Phainon… this—us talking, spending time—it’s nice. But I need to know—”

“What?” His voice is careful, guarded.

You should stop. You should let the silence stay soft. But you’ve never been good at pretending not to care.

“Are you just being kind? Because you seem like the kind of person who’s kind to everyone, and I don’t want to—” You stop, frustrated with yourself for even asking.

The silence stretches too long. When you finally look up, his expression is unreadable.

“I should go,” he says quietly.

And he does. Leaving you standing there, wondering if you just ruined something that wasn’t even real to begin with. The sound of his footsteps fades faster than the rain. The air smells like ozone and absence.

Two days of silence.

Two days of wondering if you ruined something that was never really yours to ruin.

Two days of rain that won’t stop falling.

The storm arrives without warning. Wind rattling the glass, rain streaking across the windowpanes like spilled ink. You’re halfway through locking up when the door bursts open, wind and thunder crashing in together.

Phainon stands in the doorway, soaked through. His hair clings to his forehead, his cloak heavy with rain.

Behind him, lightning fractures the sky. Silver veins across a dark horizon. Water drips from his hair onto the floorboards. A soft, rhythmic patter that somehow sounds louder than the thunder. You can see him shivering, the way his hands tremble slightly when he tries to wring out his sleeve.

For a long moment, neither of you moves. The sound of the storm fills everything. Then, quietly, as if afraid to break whatever fragile thing hangs between you, you mutter, “Phainon, you’re insane.”

“So I’ve been told,” Phainon says, voice rough with cold and fatigue, water dripping from his sleeve as he shakes it out. “But in my defense, the library closed early, and apparently this is the only place in the district that feels like home.”

The word home catches in his throat. You can see it. The tiny pause, the almost-apology in his eyes.

You move without thinking, ushering him inside. The door closes on the storm, and silence blooms again. Heavy, intimate, threaded with the sound of rain against the roof.

“You’ll catch your death like that,” you murmur, tugging his wet cloak off his shoulders. For the first time since you’ve met him, he looks entirely unguarded.

His white hair is damp and messy, tempting you to touch it. His shirt clings to his frame, cold skin shivering beneath fabric. His usual composed air is replaced by something quieter, simpler. He doesn’t protest when you guide him toward the radiator, doesn’t look away when you press a towel into his hands.

“You should change, or you’ll freeze,” you say, already disappearing into the back room.

You return with an oversized hoodie. One you keep here for long nights spent sorting books, when the shop gets cold and you forget to go home. It’s soft, worn-in, nothing special. But it’s dry and warm, and that’s what matters.

He hesitates, then takes it, fingers brushing yours. The touch lingers just a heartbeat longer than necessary.

When he pulls it on, it fits him perfectly. It’s softer than anything he usually wears, the sleeves slightly too long. He looks younger, somehow. Less like a luminous figure from stories and more like just a person.

Just Phainon.

The collar of the hoodie is loose, and for the first time you see it clearly. The mark on his neck. A sun, rendered in gold ink. Usually hidden by high collars and careful positioning. It’s intricate, beautiful. Heavy.

He notices you looking. His hand moves unconsciously to his neck, fingers brushing the edge of the mark.

“It’s beautiful,” you say quietly, before he can feel the need to hide it.

He blinks, surprised. “Most people say it looks heavy.”

“It is,” you admit. “But that doesn’t make it less beautiful.”

Something in his expression shifts. Relief, wonder, vulnerability. Like you’ve said exactly what he needed to hear.

He inhales, almost absently. “Smells like you.”

The words slip out before he seems to realize he’s said them. You both freeze.

His eyes widen slightly—caught, vulnerable—and for a moment you see panic flicker across his face.

Then, quieter, like he’s decided to commit to the honesty, he says, “It’s comforting.”

Your heart does something complicated in your chest. “Good,” you manage. “That’s good.”

He doesn’t look away. Just stands there in your hoodie, damp hair falling across his forehead, looking at you like you’ve given him something precious instead of just fabric and warmth.

Phainon sits heavily, elbows braced on his knees, watching the water drip from his hair onto the floorboards. “You shouldn’t fuss.” He sighs. “Thank you,” he murmurs.

You hesitate, then sit across from him on the floor, both of you facing the rain-streaked window. The storm outside becomes a cocoon. Thunder distant, rain constant.

The radiator clanks and hisses, working overtime. Outside, wind howls against the windows, but inside feels impossibly small. Just you and him and the space between, shrinking with every breath.

“And you shouldn’t come in looking like a drowned hero,” you reply. “Yet here we are.”

That earns the faintest curve of his mouth.

When you hand him tea, your fingers brush. His are freezing. You can feel the chill radiating off him, see the tremor he tries to hide.

He takes the cup, his thumb grazing yours in wordless thanks.

Silence settles again. You watch the steam rise, the color return to his face bit by bit. There’s something about this—about him here, the storm outside, the small flicker of warmth between you—that feels impossibly fragile. Like speaking too loudly might shatter it.

“Do you ever wonder,” Phainon says eventually, eyes on the window, “why the worst nights always sound beautiful?”

You blink. “Because they remind us we’re still alive, maybe?”

He turns to you, studying you the way he studies everything that matters. With unbearable gentleness.

“Alive,” he repeats. “Yes. I suppose that’s enough reason.”

When thunder shakes the windows, you flinch. He reaches for your hand instantly. Not thinking, just reacting, and his fingers lace through yours like they’ve always belonged there. His palm is warm now, calloused, steady against yours.

He doesn’t let go.

His thumb moves once across your knuckles. Absentminded, almost reverent. Like he’s memorizing the shape of you. When he looks at you again, the smile is gone, replaced by something raw.

You open your mouth—maybe to ask what this is, maybe to tell him you already know—but he looks away first.

“I should go,” he murmurs, though his fingers don’t move.

“It’s still raining.”

“Then I’ll wait,” he says, softly. “Just until it stops.”

It doesn’t stop for hours.

You start talking. About anything. It’s nice. You have never seen Phainon this relaxed.

After a while, he says softly, “You were right. About what you said before.”

“What did I say?”

“That I try to hold everything together.” He glances at you, eyes sparkling even in the dim light. “It’s a habit I don’t know how to unlearn.”

You turn slightly toward him. “You don’t have to unlearn it. You just have to let someone else help sometimes.”

Phainon huffs out a quiet laugh. “Easier said than done.”

You reach out—tentative, offering rather than insisting—and lay your hand over his. His skin is still cold from the rain, but he doesn’t pull away.

“I know,” you say. “But you could start here.”

He looks down at your joined hands, then back up at you. Something flickers. Disbelief, hope, fear, all tangled together.

And then, so softly you almost miss it, he says, “I don’t remember the last time someone said that to me.”

You squeeze his hand gently. “Then I’ll say it again.”

Phainon laughs quietly, the sound rawer than usual. “You’re relentless.”

“I’ve been told that before,” you say.

“By people who clearly underestimated you.” His smile is soft, almost proud.

It turns into one of his rare, unrestrained smiles. The kind that lights his whole face, like sunlight breaking through old glass.

Phainon‘s fingers curl around yours, and neither of you moves. The rain drums against the window. The radiator clicks and hums. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolls low and long.

“I came here tonight,” Phainon says, voice barely above a whisper, “because I couldn’t stand the thought of you thinking I didn’t—” He stops. Swallows. “That this was just kindness.”

Your breath catches. “Phainon—”

“Let me finish.” His thumb traces your knuckles, achingly gentle. “I don’t do this. I don’t let people close. It’s easier that way—safer—but then you…” He looks at you, and his eyes are burning. “You see me. Really see me. And I don’t know what to do with that except want more of it.”

You talk after that. About nothing, everything. He tells you stories, half-philosophy, half-memory, and you listen, letting his voice fill the room. At some point, he pulls the sleeves of your hoodie over his hands, an unconscious gesture that makes him look impossibly soft.

You smile. “Comfortable?”

“More than I’ve been in a long time,” he admits, not meeting your eyes.

Then, he leans back against the wall, eyes half-closed, listening to the rain. When he speaks again, it’s quieter. “You make the silence less lonely.”

You don’t answer. Just stay there beside him, your shoulder brushing his. The radiator hums. The world stays soft.

And for the first time, Phainon doesn’t leave when the storm ends.

At some point, exhaustion wins. Your head finds his shoulder, his hand finds yours. The storm fades to background noise, then to nothing at all.

The last thing you remember is the sound of rain tapering off, his hand still in yours, his voice fading into something half-dreamed. A murmur about light, or hope, or maybe just the quiet comfort of being seen.

And then, only warmth. Morning will come eventually, but for now, there’s only comfort and rain and the quiet miracle of Phainon staying.

You fall asleep somewhere between one heartbeat and the next.

When you wake, morning has already arrived. Gentle and gold and warm.

The storm has cleared sometime before dawn, leaving the air washed-clean and trembling with light. You’re curled on the sofa you’d both ended up in when talking turned to quiet. A half-open book lies forgotten on the floor. The smell of rain and tea lingers in the air.

For a moment, you don’t know where you are. Only that there’s weight against your back, breath soft and even against your shoulder, and fingers still loosely tangled with yours.

Phainon.

He’s still wearing your hoodie. Somehow that detail makes everything feel more real. More intimate than any kiss.

Like he’s wrapped himself in you and decided to stay.

His arm is draped over your waist, holding you close even in sleep. His face is pressed into the curve of your neck, and you can feel the flutter of his lashes when he stirs.

The bookshop is painted gold with morning light, dust motes drifting lazy through the air. Everything smells faintly of rain and old paper and him. Warm, clean, like sunlight caught in fabric.

You don’t want to move. Don’t want to break whatever spell this is.

But then he shifts, a soft sound escaping his throat—half-sigh, half-hum—and his arm tightens around you briefly before he realizes where he is.

He goes still.

“You’re awake,” he mumbles against your shoulder, voice rough with sleep and devastatingly unguarded.

“So are you.”

“Regrettably.” You feel him smile against your skin. His thumb moves absently over your hand, tracing the pulse at your wrist like he’s counting heartbeats. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Stay?” you finish.

A pause follows. Then, quieter, he says, “Hold you like this.”

Your breath catches. “I’m not complaining.”

Phainon exhales. Relief, maybe, or something closer to wonder.

His forehead presses against the back of your neck, and for a long moment, neither of you moves. Just breathes together in the morning light.

You turn in his arms. Carefully, giving him every chance to move away. He doesn’t. Just watches you with those blue eyes, unguarded and a little afraid.

Your head finds the curve of his chest, tucked beneath his chin.

His fingers begin to trace slow circles along your arm. Absentminded, soothing, the kind of touch that says I’m here without needing words.

You shift slightly, and your gaze falls on his neck again. The mark you glimpsed earlier. From this angle, closer now, you can see every detail: the way the gold catches the dim light, the intricate rays spreading from the center, the permanence of it.

Without thinking, you reach up and trace it gently with your fingertip.

Phainon goes completely still.

“Is this okay?” you whisper.

You can feel his heartbeat quicken beneath your other hand. Then, he whispers, “Yes.”

Your finger follows the curve of it. Warm skin, slightly raised ink. “Does it hurt?”

“Not physically.” His voice is soft, careful. “But it’s always there. A reminder of what I’m supposed to be. Someone who sparkles. Who inspires others.”

You press your palm flat against it, covering the mark entirely. His pulse beats steady beneath your hand.

Alive, real, his.

“Right now, you’re just Phainon,” you say quietly.

Phainon’s breath catches. Sharp, surprised, like the words have hit somewhere deep. When you look up, his eyes are shining. This impossible blue reflecting the dim light, wet with something he won’t let fall. Can’t yet fathom.

“Thank you,” he whispers, voice breaking slightly on the words.

You don’t ask what for. You already know.

The rhythm of his breathing steadies you until the last of the nightmare fades completely, replaced by the reality of this: safety, warmth, him. All of him, burdens and beauty both.

“I thought about this often,” Phainon admits, so soft you almost miss it. “Waking up next to someone…You, to be precise. Not having to leave before the new dawn. Not having to pretend I don’t want to stay.”

“Then don’t pretend,” you say.

His breath hitches. Then he’s cupping your face, thumb brushing your cheekbone with unbearable gentleness. “You make it impossible to.”

“Good.”

When Phainon kisses you, it’s different.

The careful restraint from the night before is gone. Burned away by storm and confession and the weight of waking up beside you. This kiss is certain, hungry, like he’s finally allowing himself to want without calculating the cost.

His hand slides into your hair, cradling the back of your head, fingers trembling slightly against your scalp. You feel the exact moment the last of his composure fractures. The soft sound he makes against your mouth. Half-breath, half-surrender.

You kiss him back just as fiercely, hands fisting in the hoodie, pulling him closer. He responds immediately, his other arm wrapping around your waist, holding you like you might disappear if he doesn’t. Like you’re the only solid thing in a world that’s always felt too vast, too heavy.

When you finally break apart, both of you are breathing hard. His forehead drops to yours, eyes closed, and you can feel him shaking. Just barely, the kind of tremor that comes from releasing something held too long.

“Tell me this is real,” Phainon whispers, voice raw in a way you’ve never heard before. His eyes open, and they’re burning and desperate and so vulnerable it makes your chest ache. “Tell me I’m not—”

You kiss him again, softer this time but no less certain. “It’s real,” you murmur against his lips. “I’m real. This is real.”

He exhales, shuddering, relieved, and his grip on you tightens. It isn’t possession. It’s the need to feel real. To anchor himself in the moment, in you, in the rare certainty that he’s allowed to belong here.

To simply be.

“I—” Phainon’s voice catches. He tries again. “I’ve spent so long being careful. So long not letting myself—” He stops, swallows hard. “And then you.”

You cup his face, thumb brushing his cheekbone. “And then me,” you agree softly.

Phainon’s laugh is quiet, almost broken. “You make it impossible to hold back.”

“Good,” you whisper. “Don’t.”

Something in his expression cracks wide open. He kisses you again. Even deeper this time, all the careful control he’s spent a lifetime building finally, gloriously undone. His hand tightens in your hair, his body pressing close, and you can feel his heartbeat against yours. Wild, unsteady, alive.

When you finally surface, Phainon is laughing. Quiet and breathless and so openly happy it makes your heart stutter.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Phainon admits, still holding you close. “How to just want something without justifying it.”

“Then don’t justify it.” You brush your lips against his again, feather-light. “Just stay.”

His eyes close, and when they open again, they’re shining. The gold in the midst of the blue reminding you of wheat fields with the sky in the background.

His exhale sounds like relief, like years of weight lifting.

“Stay for breakfast?” you murmur.

Phainon laughs. Soft, real, utterly content. “I’d like that very much.”

He glances down at himself, still wearing your hoodie, rumpled and soft in the morning light. “Oh…I should probably… return this.”

“Keep it,” you say before you can stop yourself.

He looks up, surprised. “What?”

“Keep it. It looks good on you.” You pause. “And I like the idea of you having something of mine.”

His expression does something complicated. Vulnerable and pleased and almost shy. “I—” He stops. Starts again. “Thank you.”

The light spills across both of you, warm and slow, and for the first time in too long, Phainon doesn’t feel like a ghost of what was lost.

He feels found.

And when you kiss him again, it feels like the world exhales. Like the first soft light after a long night, spilling gold and warmth into every shadow.

⋆ ✦ ⋆

A/N: Post-fic Phainon, finally letting himself want:

Phainon: “Wait we can just… do this? Whenever? Without justification? Without—”

You: “Yes.”

Phainon: “Oh. Oh no.”

You: “What?”

Phainon: “I’m never going to stop.” (Kiss. Kiss. Kiss.)

Approximately 48 hours later:

Morning: Phainon kisses you awake

Breakfast: kisses between bites

Restocking shelves: Phainon pauses to kiss

Customer asks question: “One moment—” kiss “—yes, philosophy is on the left”

Closing shop: kiss kiss kiss

You: “You’re insatiable.”

Phainon: “You told me not to hold back.”

You: “I’m not complaining.”

Phainon, smiles, kisses again: “Good.”

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. Reblogs, comments and likes are appreciated. They fuel my writing. :)

I. Dawn (First Awareness)

The gardens are quiet at dawn. Empty except for birdsong and the whisper of leaves in the early morning breeze. You’ve come here seeking peace, escaping another sleepless night, and expecting solitude.

Instead, you find the General of the Luofu crouched beside a stone bench, palm outstretched, while a cluster of small birds peck at seeds in his hand.

He’s speaking to them. Softly. The kind of gentle murmur you’d never expect from a military commander.

“There you go. Yes, I know. You’re always hungry, aren’t you? Patience. There’s enough for everyone.”

You freeze, suddenly uncertain whether to announce yourself or retreat before he notices.

Too late.

“You’re up early.” His voice carries that same lazy warmth, but he doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t startle. As if he’d known you were there all along. “Or is it late? I can never tell with insomniacs.”

“I—” You step closer despite yourself. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“Then you’ve failed spectacularly.” But he’s smiling when he finally glances at you, golden eyes catching the sunrise. “Come here. These ones don’t bite.”

You approach slowly, watching as another bird lands on his wrist with complete trust.

“You do this often?”

“When the world gets loud.” Jing Yuan offers you a handful of seeds from the small pouch at his side. “Would you like to help? Fair warning—that one there is greedy.” He nods toward a particularly plump bird eyeing you with interest. “He’ll take more than his share if you’re not careful.”

You accept the seeds, and your fingers brush his palm. Warm. Steady.

“Sounds like someone I know,” you murmur, settling beside him.

His laugh is quiet, genuine. “Careful. That almost sounded like you’ve been paying attention to me.”

“It’s hard not to.” You hold out your hand, and within moments, a bird lands with surprising gentleness. “You’re not exactly subtle when you fall asleep during meetings.”

“Strategic rest,” he corrects, watching you with something soft in his expression. “There’s a difference.”

“Is that what we’re calling it?”

“Several hundred years of experience says yes.” He’s quiet for a moment, then adds, “You should see how I handle the truly boring ones. Full meditation. Eyes open and everything.”

You laugh, and the sound makes more birds flutter down, drawn by the warmth.

“They like you,” Jing Yuan observes. “That’s rare. Most people are too… restless. Too loud in their thoughts.”

“And I’m not?”

Jing Yuan tilts his head, considering. “You’re quiet. Not empty. Just… still. Like you’re not trying to fill every silence with noise.” His gaze settles on you properly now, unhurried and assessing in a way that makes your breath catch. “It’s refreshing.”

The moment stretches, comfortable and charged all at once.

A bird pecks his thumb insistently, breaking the spell.

“Impatient creatures,” he murmurs, but he’s smiling. “Much like certain generals I could name.”

“I thought you just said you were patient.”

“Mm. I’m learning some things are worth being impatient for.”

The weight of those words settles between you, but it’s not just the words. It’s the way he says them. That low, unhurried drawl that seems to wrap around syllables like he’s got all the time in the world to shape them. Warm and smooth as sun-heated stone.

You realize you’ve been staring.

Worse—he’s noticed.

“Something on your mind?” Jing Yuan asks, and there’s the faintest hint of amusement threading through his tone now.

“Your voice,” you blurt out before you can stop yourself. Then immediately wish you could take it back.

His eyebrows rise, just slightly. “My voice?”

“It’s—” You fumble for words that don’t sound absurd. “Nice. You have a nice voice.”

“Nice.” He repeats the word like he’s testing it, and even that sounds unfairly good. “How diplomatic of you.”

“I just meant—”

“I know what you meant.” His smile curves into something pleased and entirely too knowing. “But I appreciate the observation nonetheless.”

Your face burns.

A bird pecks his thumb insistently, breaking the moment, and you’ve never been more grateful for avian intervention in your life.

“Impatient creatures,” he murmurs again, but you catch the way his smile lingers as he turns his attention back to the birds.

He definitely noticed. And he’s definitely filing that information away for later.

Before you can recover your composure, he stands with that languid grace that makes people forget he’s one of the most dangerous people in the Xianzhou. If he chooses to. If he needs to be.

“Same time tomorrow?” Jing Yuan phrases it as a question, but there’s something careful in his tone. As if your answer matters more than it should.

“To feed the birds?”

“To feed the birds,” he confirms. Then, quieter, he adds, “And perhaps continue this conversation. I find I’m… curious. About what else you think while the world sleeps.”

You nod, not trusting your voice.

His smile is small, private—the kind that doesn’t appear in public.

“Good. I’ll bring extra seeds.”

⸻

II. Ritual (Building Trust)

You come back the next morning.

And the next.

And the next.

It becomes a ritual neither of you names but both of you protect. Dawn in the gardens. Seeds and birdsong and conversations that start about nothing and drift into everything.

Today, a week into this pattern, you arrive to find him already there. But this time, Mimi is with him—the massive lion lounging in a patch of sunlight, looking far too pleased with itself.

“You brought reinforcements,” you observe.

Jing Yuan glances up from where he’s running his fingers through Mimi’s mane, and something in his expression shifts. Softens.

“She insisted. Apparently, I’ve been keeping secrets.” He pats the space beside him on the bench. “Come. She won’t bite. Probably.”

“Comforting.”

“I try.”

You settle beside him. Closer than you have before, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from both him and Mimi. The lion makes a low, rumbling sound that might be a purr.

“She likes you too,” Jing Yuan murmurs. “Excellent taste, as always.”

“Does she approve of all your friends?”

“I don’t really have friends.” Jing Yuan says it matter-of-factly, no self-pity. Just truth. “I have subordinates, colleagues, responsibilities. People who need the General.” His hand stills in Mimi’s fur. “It’s different. With you.”

You turn to look at him properly. His profile in the dawn light, the way white hair falls across his shoulder, the faint smile that never quite leaves but rarely reaches his eyes.

Except now. Now it does.

“Different how?”

“You don’t need me to be the Divine Foresight.” He finally meets your gaze. “You don’t ask me to predict the future or solve crises or carry the weight of the Xianzhou. You just…” He gestures vaguely at the birds pecking around your feet. “Sit. Feed birds. Exist.”

“Is that enough?”

“It’s everything.” The words are quiet, but they land with weight. “Do you know how rare it is? To just… be?”

You don’t answer immediately. Can’t, really, with the way he’s looking at you.

“Your hair,” you say instead, and his eyebrows rise slightly.

“My hair?”

“It’s so long. Beautiful, but—” You hesitate. “Does it take long to maintain?”

Something flickers across his face. Surprise, maybe. Vulnerability.

“Hours,” he admits. “Every few days. It’s… tradition. Meaning. A reminder of—” He stops, then continues quieter: “Would you like to know? The real reason?”

“If you want to tell me.”

He’s silent for a long moment, fingers still moving through Mimi’s mane in steady, soothing strokes.

“It’s about time,” Jing Yuan says finally. “And memory. In the Xianzhou, we live so long that years blur together. Faces fade. Names become echoes.” His hand moves to his own hair, almost unconsciously. “This—maintaining it, caring for it—it’s deliberate. It forces me to slow down. To remember that some things require patience. Attention. Care.”

Jing Yuan looks at you then, and there’s something raw in his expression.

“The people I’ve loved… they all had their rituals. Small things that mattered. And I remember them through those moments. The way my mentor tied his sash. How my friends laughed.” His voice drops. “I suppose I’m afraid if I stop maintaining my own rituals, I’ll forget how to care about the small things. And then what’s left of me?”

Your throat tightens.

“You’re not going to forget,” you tell him softly. “You feed birds at dawn. You speak to Mimi like she understands every word. You notice when people are too loud in their thoughts.” You shift slightly closer. “Those aren’t the actions of someone who’s forgotten how to care.”

He exhales slowly, and it sounds like relief.

“Would you—” Jing Yuan starts, then stops. Starts again. “If I asked, would you help me? With my hair, I mean. It’s… it’s not something I usually…” He trails off, uncharacteristically uncertain.

“Yes.” You don’t hesitate. “I’d be honored.”

The smile Jing Yuan gives you is worth the sunrise.

“Tomorrow then. I’ll show you how.”

———

You’re helping him with his hair. Carefully working through a tangle while he sits with that eternal patience, occasionally giving soft instructions.

“A bit lower… yes, there. Gentle.”

You’re trying very hard to focus on the task and not on the fact that his voice seems even more unfairly attractive when it’s quiet like this. Intimate. Just for you.

“You’re tense,” Jing Yuan observes. “Am I making you nervous?”

“No.”

“Liar.” There’s laughter in his voice now, rich and warm. “Your hands are trembling.”

“They are not—”

“It’s alright.” He turns his head slightly, catching your eye with that lazy, devastating smile. “I don’t mind. Though I’m curious… is it the hair? The proximity?” His voice drops, just a fraction. Becomes even more of that low, honeyed drawl. “Or perhaps something else?”

Your hands freeze in his hair.

“You’re doing this on purpose.”

“Doing what?” Pure innocence, except for the wicked gleam in his eyes.

“That. The—” You gesture vaguely at him. “The voice thing.”

“Voice thing?” He shifts to face you properly now, clearly enjoying himself far too much. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific. I’m just talking.”

“You know exactly what you’re doing.”

“Do I?” He leans closer, and when he speaks again, his voice is barely above a murmur—low and intimate and absolutely deliberate. “Perhaps you should tell me. In detail. What exactly my voice does to you.”

Your breath catches audibly.

His delighted laugh is soft and warm. “There it is. You know, when you mentioned you liked my voice, I filed that away for future reference. I’m a strategist, after all. It’s important to understand which… tactics… are effective.”

“Jing Yuan—”

“Mm?” Even the hum is unfair.

“You’re terrible.”

“I’m centuries old. I’ve earned the right to be terrible.” But he’s grinning now, unrepentant and boyish. “Besides, you started this. That first morning, remember? ‘Nice voice,’ you said. ‘Nice.’” He shakes his head in mock disappointment. “Such a carefully neutral word. It made me want to test exactly how nice you found it.”

“Consider it tested,” you mutter.

“Oh, I’m just getting started.” He settles back into position, presenting his hair to you again. “Now, where were we? Ah yes—you were doing such excellent work. Please, continue. And do try to keep your hands steady.”

The absolute audacity—

“Though,” he adds, voice dropping back into that dangerous purr, “if you need me to stay quiet to help you concentrate, you need only ask. I can be very quiet when properly motivated.”

Somehow, that’s even worse.

You tug his hair just slightly. Not enough to hurt, just enough to scold.

His laughter rumbles through his chest, genuine and delighted.

“Careful, dear. I might start thinking you enjoy putting me in my place.”

“Someone has to.”

“Mm. I’m certainly not opposed.” He glances back with warmth and mischief in equal measure. “In fact, I’m finding I rather like it when it’s you.”

Your heart does something complicated in your chest.

He reaches back to catch your hand, bringing it forward to press a kiss to your knuckles—and even that small touch is paired with the quiet hum of satisfaction that vibrates through his voice.

“Thank you,” Jing Yuan says, softer now. Sincere. “For indulging my terrible sense of humor. And for—” He pauses, thumb tracing circles on your wrist. “For reacting. It’s… refreshing. To know I can still affect someone. That I’m not just the General with the calculating mind. That I’m still…”

“Human?” you offer quietly.

“Yes.” He smiles, and it’s gentler now. “That.”

You squeeze his hand. “Your voice is more than nice, by the way. In case that wasn’t clear.”

“Oh?” The teasing lilt returns. “Do go on.”

“Absolutely not. Your ego is already insufferable.”

Jing Yuan‘s laugh is the best sound you’ve heard all day. In a long, long time, actually.

“Fair enough. But the offer stands—anytime you’d like to elaborate, I’m all ears. And voice, apparently.”

You roll your eyes, but you’re smiling.

And when you return to working on his hair, his quiet hum of contentment settles warm in your chest, better than any sunrise.

⸻

III. Pillow Fort (Joy Reclaimed)

Two weeks in, you arrive at dawn to find a note instead of Jing Yuan:

Can’t make it this morning. Emergency council meeting. Come by my quarters tonight instead if you’re not tired of my company. I promise better entertainment than birds. - JY

You shouldn’t feel disappointed. You definitely shouldn’t feel the flutter of anticipation at “tonight” and “my quarters.”

But you do.

When you arrive that evening, the door opens before you can knock.

Jing Yuan stands there in casual robes, hair down and loose around his shoulders, and the sight steals your breath.

“You came.” He sounds pleased. Relieved, even.

“You invited me.”

“Mm. I’ve learned not to assume with you. You have a troubling habit of keeping me guessing.” He steps aside. “Come in. Fair warning—I’ve had a terrible day of sitting through meetings where people argued about things that won’t matter in fifty years, and I’m in a mood.”

“What kind of mood?”

His smile is slightly mischievous. “You’ll see.”

You follow him inside, noting the tea already prepared, the casual comfort of the space. It’s more lived-in than you expected. Books scattered on surfaces, a game of starchess half-finished, Mimi dozing in the corner.

Homey. Human.

“So,” you start. “What’s this better entertainment you promised?”

Jing Yuan gestures at the pile of cushions and blankets he’s apparently arranged in the center of the room.

“We’re building a pillow fort.”

You blink. “We’re… what?”

“A pillow fort.” Jing Yuan is already pulling cushions into position, utterly serious. “When I was younger—much younger—we used to build these during long campaigns. Little spaces that were just ours. Safe. Separate from war.” He glances up, and there’s something boyish in his expression. “I haven’t built one in centuries. Thought it might be time.”

“The General of the Luofu wants to build a pillow fort.”

“Jing Yuan,” he corrects gently. “When it’s just us, remember? And yes. Desperately. Are you going to help or just stand there judging my architectural choices?”

You can’t help it—you laugh. Really laugh, the kind that shakes your shoulders and makes your eyes water.

And his face—gods, his face lights up like sunrise.

“There it is,” Jing Yuan murmurs. “I was hoping to hear that.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“I’m hundreds of years old and building a blanket fort. ‘Ridiculous’ doesn’t begin to cover it.” But he’s grinning now, and it transforms him. Makes him look younger. Lighter. “Now come on. That corner needs reinforcement and you’re closer.”

You help. Of course you do.

And somewhere between arguing about structural integrity and nearly collapsing the whole thing twice, somewhere between his warm laughter and the way he keeps catching your eye like he’s memorizing this moment—

You realize you’re gone for him.

Completely.

You end up inside the fort, tea growing cold between you, talking about everything and nothing. He tells you about campaigns centuries past, and his voice in the enclosed space feels even more intimate. Like velvet wrapping around you in the darkness.

“You’re doing it again,” you murmur at one point.

“Doing what?”

“The voice thing.”

His quiet laugh reverberates in the small space. “I’m not doing anything. This is just how I talk.”

“That’s the problem.”

“Is it a problem?” He shifts closer, and you can hear the smile in his voice. “You don’t sound particularly distressed.”

“I’m being emotionally manipulated by your vocal cords.”

“Manipulated.” He sounds absolutely delighted by this. “Such strong language. Here I thought I was simply having a conversation.”

“You know exactly what you’re doing.”

“Perhaps.” His hand finds yours in the dim fort-light, and when he speaks again, there’s warmth beneath the teasing. “But if I’m being honest—and I find I can’t help but be honest with you—I’m not doing it on purpose anymore. This is just… how I am. When I’m happy. When I’m comfortable. When I’m with you.”

Your breath catches, and he continues, voice softening even further.

“So if my voice affects you, well—” His thumb traces circles on your wrist. “Consider it unintentional evidence of how much you affect me.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No,” he agrees quietly. “But it’s true.”

Time becomes meaningless in the warmth of the pillow fort.

“This is nice,” Jing Yuan says eventually, lying back against the cushions with that eternal languor. But his eyes are bright. Alert. Happy. “I’d forgotten what this feels like.”

“What?”

“Playing.” He turns his head to look at you. “Just… existing without purpose. Building something that doesn’t matter. Being silly.”

“It matters,” you say softly. “If it makes you happy, it matters.”

His hand finds yours again.

“You make me happy,” he says, simple and devastating. “These mornings. These moments. You.”

Your breath catches.

“Jing Yuan—”

“I know.” His thumb traces circles on your wrist. “Too fast. Too much. I’ve lived so long I forget people need time—”

“No.” You squeeze his hand. “Not too much. Just unexpected.”

“Bad unexpected?”

“The opposite.” You shift closer, until you’re shoulder to shoulder in the blanket-fort darkness. “I think I’ve been waiting for you to say it.”

His exhale sounds like relief.

“Good. Because I’m terrible at hiding things I care about. Ask anyone—I’ve never been subtle about treasure once I’ve found it.”

You turn to find him already looking at you, and the warmth in his gaze could rival the sun.

“Stay?” he asks quietly. “We can talk until dawn. Or just… be. Whatever you prefer.”

“I’ll stay.”

His smile could illuminate the Xianzhou.

“Then I’ll make more tea. And perhaps we can discuss the structural improvements for next time.”

“Next time?”

“Mm. I’m thinking weekly pillow fort nights. It’s tradition now.”

“You just made that up.”

“And?” He’s already moving to prepare more tea, but he glances back with that lazy, devastating smile. “Centuries of authority means I can make traditions whenever I want. Argue with me.”

You don’t.

You wouldn’t dream of it.

⸻

IV. Confession (Choosing Again)

Three months into morning bird feedings and evening conversations.

Three months.

Three months of dawn meetings and evening conversations. Of slowly learning the shape of him—the quiet general behind the legend, the man who builds pillow forts and speaks to animals and laughs like he’s remembering how.

Three months of his hands gentle in your hair as you help him maintain his own, of soft conversations and softer silences.

Long enough to feel like home. Short enough to still feel like a miracle.

You’re in the gardens again, but this time it’s evening. Sunset instead of sunrise.

Jing Yuan is quiet beside you, more pensive than usual.

“What are you thinking?” you ask.

He’s silent for a long moment, watching birds settle into trees for the night.

Then, he says, “I’ve lived for centuries. Do you know what that means?”

“Tell me.”

“It means I’ve cared about people.” His voice is soft, careful. “And I’ve lost every single one of them. Time, battle, Mara… it doesn’t matter how. The result is always the same. I stay. They leave.”

Your chest tightens.

“I learned to be careful,” he continues. “To keep distance. To be the General instead of just… me. Because the General doesn’t get attached. Doesn’t grieve. Doesn’t stand at graves wondering if it’s worth it.”

Jing Yuan finally looks at you, and his eyes are ancient. Weighted.

“But then you stumbled into my garden. Fed my birds. Built blanket forts with me like it was the most natural thing in the world.” His hand finds yours. “And I realized I’m not being careful at all. I’m falling in love with you. Have been, probably, since that first morning.”

Your breath stops.

“And the terrifying part?” Jing Yuan’s thumb traces your knuckles. “I know how this ends. I’ll have decades with you if I’m lucky, and then…” He closes his eyes. “I’ll stand at another grave. Learn another grief. Add your name to the list of people I’ve loved and lost.”

“Then why—”

“Because I’m choosing it anyway.” He opens his eyes, and they’re blazing with certainty. “I’ve lived for so long, and I know what this is. I know the cost. And I’m choosing you. Choosing this. Choosing every morning we get, however many that is.”

He cups your face with both hands, gentle and sure.

“I love you. Not as a concept. Not as a comfortable companion. But as someone who makes me remember what joy feels like. What hope feels like. What living feels like instead of just existing.”

Your eyes burn.

“You’re allowed to say no,” Jing Yuan murmurs. “I’ll understand. The math doesn’t make sense. Loving someone who’ll watch you fade while they stay—”

“Yes.” The word breaks free. “Yes, I want this. Want you. However long we get.”

His smile is sunlight breaking through centuries of clouds.

“Then stay,” Jing Yuan whispers. “For as many tomorrows as we have. Help me feed birds and build blanket forts and remember how to be silly. Let me love you. Let me have this.”

“Yes,” you say again, and then his lips are on yours.

When you finally pull apart, he rests his forehead against yours.

"Thank you," he breathes. "For choosing this. For choosing me."

"Jing Yuan," you whisper, and he goes still at the way you say his name. "I love you. I'm choosing you, too. Not despite the cost, but because of who you are. Because you feed birds and build pillow forts and remember how to laugh. Because you're patient and kind and you see me." Your hand cups his face. "However long we have—I want every moment."

His eyes shine in the fading light.

"Say it again," Jing Yuan murmurs.

"I love you."

"Again."

You laugh softly, and Jing Yuan catches the sound with another kiss.

"Always," you promise against his lips.

And you mean it.

___ A/N: I hope you enjoyed this quiet love story. Jing Yuan's voice is so distinctive—that patient, warm cadence—and I spent a lot of time trying to capture it. Hope I did him justice.

This started 2 years ago as notes about how Jing Yuan might fall in love, and it grew into... this. A story about choosing joy after loss. About pillow forts and patience and love despite knowing the cost.

More Jing Yuan requests are always welcome. And if this resonated with you, likes, reblogs and comments mean a lot. They fuel my writing and encourage me. :)