#stubborn reader

╭┈─────── ೄྀ࿐ ˊˎ-╰┈➤ ❝ [25/12/25] ❞

phew... you're in for a ride.

Neteyam is overjoyed at your pregnancy! However...

This joy is quickly overshadowed by him going into responsible mode. He immediately goes from elated to a hovering nanny (*cough* malewife).

He’s researched EVERYTHING that could be potentially bad for the baby.

Unfortunately for him... you are a Metkayina warrior. Taking it easy isn’t in your vocabulary.

"Ma Y/N, the healer said rest. Maybe just… sit by the rock pools today?"

To you, this translated to "go free-diving for the sharpest spear-shells in the reef? Got it."

Neteyam’s face: 😟

Tuk is your partner in crime. She’s the lookout for when Neteyam is coming so you can pretend you’ve been resting.

The shit you put him through is so fucking funny.

For instance, he catches you teaching the younger kids to do a sweep-kick.

Neteyam's nervous system immediately kicks off like a motor, but before he can run to your aid (you're fine), Jake gives Neteyam a heavy pat on the back, beyond amused. "She’s got good form, son! Don't let her hit you."

Or, there was the time Neteyam told you he’s going out with the hunters, and that you must stay back and weave baskets.

Halfway through the hunt, he sees a familiar figure dive-bombing a target...

It’s you.

OH MY GOD, IT'S YOU.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?"

You, on the other hand, chewed on a piece of fruit looking completely unbothered. "Boredom is dangerous for the baby, Neteyam. I’m stimulating the child."

This time, Neteyam's face goes from 😠 to 😩. He can’t stay mad because you look so cool doing it lololol

Lo’ak lives for the chaos of it all. He'll actively encourage you just to watch Neteyam in distress.

Often, you'll have dinner with the rest of the Sully family. Neytiri secretly loves your spirit.

Once, she whispered to you, "I did the same thing with him. Don't tell him, he’ll faint."

Eventually, Neteyam tries to ground you.

Key word, TRIES.

You simply look him in the eye and say, "I am carrying a future olo’eyktan. They need to know how to hunt before they're born."

After sometime, he finally admits defeat.

He spends the rest of the pregnancy just following you around with pillows and extra water, looking like a stressed out bodyguard.

He really has his work cut out for him...

Now imagine this:

One day, Neteyam was sprinting across the woven walkways of the village, looking frantically into the heights of tangled vines.

"Y/N? Ma Y/N! Please tell me you are at the healer’s lodge and not-"

He stops dead in his tracks and looks up.

YOU ARE 30FT ABOVE THE MAIN WALKWAY.

Neteyam's voice cracks as he pleads with you.

"The wood is wet, Y/N!"

You, on the other hand, merely grinned down at him. "I’m fine, 'teyam! The baby likes the sea breeze up here!"

"The baby doesn't have eyes yet! And the wind is too strong! Please! My heart cannot take this!"

Lo'ak chimed in, shouting from the lower docks while cleaning a spear. "Do a flip into the water! The splash would be huge!"

Ooohhohoho, that made a vein pop out of Neteyam's forehead.

"It is insane— you are insane…!" You whisper-yell to your younger brother, though the word 'insane' feels far too generous for the logic he is employing. Viserys’ nose scrunches up in anger, his fingers just itching to wrap around your neck as he insists that this is the only way to secure an army to take back the Targaryen honour.

You are both huddled in the shadow of a heavy tapestry, your voices barely rising above a hiss, yet the intensity of the argument makes the air between you feel electric.

Viserys is vibrating with a desperate, frantic energy, his eyes wide as he paints a picture of a golden throne and a city reclaimed, all bought with the currency of your sister’s hand. You argue that a Dothraki alliance is a gamble built on sand, that Daenerys is a girl, not a political chip to be tossed into a nomadic gamble. But Viserys doesn't hear the word risk; he only hears the word crown, and his voice reaches a fever pitch of indignation.

"The great horse-lord has arrived," a small, breathless voice interrupted. You pivoted, the tension in your shoulders vanishing the moment your eyes landed on Daenerys.

She stood in the doorway, looking smaller than her years in the oversized silks, her violet eyes wide with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity. She looked like a fragile piece of Valyrian glass, and the sudden shift in your chest was visceral; the anger you had felt toward Viserys evaporated, replaced by a protective warmth that always seemed to bloom whenever she entered the room.

You stepped away from the shadows of the tapestry, offering her a soft, reassuring smile that reached your eyes, consciously softening your posture so she wouldn't feel the lingering electricity of the fight.

"You're trembling, Dany," you murmured, reaching out to tuck a stray strand of silver-gold hair behind her ear. The gesture was instinctive, a quiet anchor in a world that had spent years trying to drift them all apart. Looking at her was like looking at a reflection of everything the Targaryen name was supposed to be, not the frantic, jagged greed that drove Viserys, but a sort of innate, quiet dignity.

She was the only thing in this gods-forsaken city that felt untainted, and the thought of her being traded like a piece of livestock to a man who spoke a tongue of screams and wind made your stomach coil.

"He is waiting," Daenerys whispered, her voice barely a ripple in the silence of the room.

You didn't let her take the first step. Instead, you slid your hand down from her cheek to grasp hers, your fingers locking firmly around hers. The contrast was weird, your hand, calloused and steady, against her small, porcelain palm.

You liked to think you weren't escorting her; you were anchoring her. As you led her toward the threshold, you felt the fragile tremor in her frame, a rhythmic shaking that spoke of a terror she was trying desperately to suppress for the sake of the family name.

"Keep your eyes on me, Dany. Just for a moment longer," you murmured, your pace slow. "When we walk out there, you aren't walking into a void. You're walking with me. I will be the shadow at your shoulder, and if the air becomes too heavy to breathe, you only have to squeeze my hand, yeah?"

The sunlight of Pentos was blinding as you stepped into the courtyard, the heat hitting you like a physical weight. The Dothraki were a sea of leather, bronze, and muscle, their horses shifting restlessly, hooves drumming a nervous rhythm into the packed earth. At the centre of the swarm sat Khal Drogo, perched upon his stallion with a languid, predatory grace.

He was draped in furs and silks that clashed with the arid air, his long braid swinging against his thigh as he surveyed the three of you. You didn't feel the intimidation Viserys felt— the kind of fear that masqueraded as reverence. Instead, you felt a prickle of irritation. To you, Drogo looked less like a conqueror and more like a peacock in leather, his chest puffed out with a confidence that felt unearned in the face of your own blood.

You tightened your grip on Daenerys’s hand, your gaze narrowing as you took him in. He was certainly a specimen of a man— broad-shouldered and bronze-skinned— but the bells in his hair jingled with every slight movement, a noisy ornament that seemed absurdly ostentatious.

The bells in Drogo’s hair gave a final, sharp chime as he shifted his weight, his onyx eyes scanning the three of you. You didn't see a warlord; you saw a man who spent far too much time grooming his facial hair and smelling of horse sweat and expensive oils. The idea that this man, this loud, braided peacock, was the pinnacle of power, and the price for which your sister was being bartered, felt like a personal insult to the blood of Old Valyria.

Drogo’s gaze slid from Viserys to the wide-eyed Daenerys, and finally, it settled on you. He didn't look away. He lingered on the set of your jaw, the steady way you held your ground, and the protective grip you maintained on Dany’s hand.

There was a shift in his expression, a flicker of genuine curiosity that smoothed the hard lines of his face. He didn't see a displaced prince or a frightened refugee; he saw a predator masquerading as a bodyguard, a man whose stillness was more dangerous than Viserys’s frantic energy.

A slow, knowing smile tugged at the corner of the Khal's mouth. He spoke a few words in his tongue to his bloodriders, his voice a low rumble that sounded like stones grinding together in a riverbed. The bloodriders shifted, their eyes narrowing as they looked at you, but Drogo raised a hand to silence them. He dismounted his stallion in one fluid motion, his boots hitting the dirt with a heavy thud.

You didn't move an inch, your boots rooted in the Pentos dust as if you were a statue carved from stone. As Drogo approached, the air around him seemed to ripple with the heat of the afternoon, but your focus remained narrow and sharp.

You didn't offer a bow; you didn't offer a smile. Instead, you let your gaze harden, your brows knitting together into a deep, visceral scowl that spoke of a territorial instinct older than the cities surrounding you. It was the look of a wolf guarding a cub, a silent declaration that while Viserys might be selling the girl, you were the one who decided if she was delivered.

Drogo stopped a mere pace away, the scent of leather and crushed grass clinging to him. He was a tiny bit taller than you, but you refused to tilt your head back in a way that conceded the height. You simply stared, your eyes tracking the rhythmic jingle of the bells in his braid.

To the bloodriders circling behind him, this was a breathtaking breach of etiquette— to scowl at a Khal was to invite a blade to the throat. Yet, Drogo didn't reach for any type of blade. He tilted his head, his onyx eyes dancing with an amusement that suggested he had found something far more interesting than a bride.

"He is very rude," Viserys hissed, stepping forward with a frantic, placating smile. "Khal Drogo, please excuse my brother. He has always been… overly protective of our sister. A trait of the blood, you understand? A passion for the family legacy."

Iksan se rude mēre? (I am the rude one?) You think, but you didn't look at Viserys. To acknowledge his stuttering apologies would be to acknowledge the desperation that fueled them, and you had no appetite for his cowardice. Instead, you maintained your gaze, your eyes locking onto Drogo.

When you shifted your gaze to your little sister, you didn't see the "Silver Princess" Viserys imagined or the political pawn the Magisters of Pentos envisioned. You saw a child who was vibrating with a terror so profound it seemed to hollow her out from the inside. Her violet eyes were wide, shimmering with unshed tears, and they searched yours for a way out. In that gaze, there was a silent, desperate plea: don't let them take me.

Fuck.

You looked at Daenerys— really looked at her— and saw the way her small fingers were clutching your hand, not as a gesture of affection, but as a lifeline. She wasn't a princess in this moment; she was a frightened girl being led to a slaughterhouse draped in silk. Viserys saw a crown, and Drogo saw a prize, all you saw was your baby sister.

The thought of her waking up in a yurt, surrounded by a language she didn't understand and a man who viewed women as possessions, made a roar of protective fury rise in your throat. You knew, with a sudden and absolute certainty, that you could not let her go. Not to this man, not to this life, not even if it meant burning every bridge in Pentos to the ground.

You didn't let go of her hand. Instead, you stepped slightly in front of her, shifting your center of gravity to shield her body with your own. Was it a risky move? Yes. Was it a reckless one? Almost certainly. But as you felt Dany’s small hand tighten around yours, the risk felt insignificant compared to the visceral need to stand between her and the trade.

"The girl is not for sale," you said. You felt Dany’s breath hitch against your shoulder, her small frame trembling, but you didn't budge. You tightened your grip on her hand, shifting your stance to lock your boots into the dust, creating a living wall of Valyrian stubbornness. "Find another bride, find another alliance, or find another way to get your army. But you will not take her."

Viserys made a sound like a strangled hen, his face draining of colour. "Brother! You cannot—"

"Be silent, Viserys!" you snapped. You shifted your weight, feeling the heat of the Pentoshi sun baking the earth beneath your boots."You may play the merchant, but I am the wall. If you want a horse-lord’s favour, find a different coin to spend."

Turning your gaze back to Drogo, you offered a smile that didn't reach your eyes, a sharp, cold thing. "My sister is not a trade. Now, unless you intend to drag her away in chains, I suggest you take your horses and your bells and find another path. Fuck off, Khal."

The bloodriders surged forward, their hands flying to the hilt of their arakhs, a collective snarl ripping from their throats. They looked at you as if you were a ghost or a madman, their eyes wide with the shock of seeing a man speak to the Sun and Stars of the plains as if he were a common stable boy. Viserys had actually stopped breathing, his mouth hanging open, certain that the next sound he would hear would be the wet thud of your head hitting the dirt.

Drogo didn't move. He stood perfectly still, his onyx eyes scanning your face, searching for the flicker of fear that always accompanied such defiance. He found none. Instead, he saw a man who was entirely willing to bleed to keep his sister's hand in his own.

He stepped closer, invading your personal space until the scent of musk and leather overwhelmed the salt air of the coast. You didn't flinch, though your heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs.

Drogo’s gaze dropped from your eyes to your mouth, then swept down the length of your frame, lingering on the strength in your shoulders and the unwavering set of your jaw. A low, guttural sound vibrated in his chest, not a growl, but a chuckle of genuine appreciation.

"The little dragon has a sting," Drogo murmured in the Common Tongue, his voice a rough velvet that seemed to vibrate in the air between you. He ignored Viserys entirely, treating the exiled king as if he were nothing more than a buzzing fly. His eyes returned to yours, flashing with a sudden, predatory hunger that had nothing to do with political alliances or the promise of a throne.

He stepped closer, his chest nearly brushing yours, the heat radiating off him in waves. Slowly, with a lack of urgency, Drogo reached out and ran a calloused thumb along the line of your jaw. It wasn't a gesture of aggression, but one of appraisal, as if he were measuring the quality of a stallion's spirit. "The girl is a flower," he said, his gaze dropping to the small, trembling hand you still held firmly in your own. "But the brother… the brother is a blade."

A slow, dangerous smile spread across the Khal's face, his onyx eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that felt like a physical weight. "You tell me to fuck off," he said, the words rolling out in a low, rhythmic rumble. "I will. I will take my horses, my bells, and my bloodriders, and I will leave this courtyard to the dust."

He paused, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw once more, a touch that was possessive and challenging all at once. "But the price has changed. I do not want the flower. I want the blade."

Viserys looked as though he had been struck by lightning, his mouth opening and closing without a single sound escaping.

You felt Dany’s grip on your hand loosen slightly, her violet eyes darting between you and the Khal. The terror was still there, but it was now tempered by a flicker of bewildered hope. You shifted your stance, stepping back just an inch to create a sliver of space between you and the bronze-skinned warrior. Your voice was low, stripped of the aggression from moments before, replacing it with a cold, transactional precision.

"If I go with you," you began, your gaze locking onto Drogo’s onyx eyes with an intensity that demanded a binding oath, "You leave her alone. No claims, no contracts, no 'favours' called upon her in the future. She remains free of your shadow and the shadows of your bloodriders. Do you agree?"

Drogo’s expression didn't waver, though his gaze dipped once more to the silver-gold hair of your sister, then snapped back to yours. A slow nod followed, the bells in his braid chiming a soft, final chord. "The flower remains in the garden," he replied, his voice a rough rumble of certainty. "The blade comes to the plains."

"Alright then," you replied, the words sounding like the snap of a closing trap. You only looked at Drogo, matching the heat of his onyx gaze with the cold fire of your own. You had just traded your freedom for her safety, and as the reality of the bargain settled in, you felt a strange, electric thrill shoot down your spine.

The release of Daenerys’s hand was the hardest part. You did it slowly, as if breaking a spell, ensuring she was standing on her own two feet before you stepped away. You reached up, cupping her small face in your palms for one last fleeting second, and pressed a firm, lingering kiss to her forehead. With a playful, sudden movement, you reached out and ruffled her silver-gold hair, messing up the precise braids Viserys had insisted upon. It was a childish gesture, a reminder that she was still just a girl, and for a moment, the ghost of a smile touched her lips.

"Stay in the garden, little dragon," you whispered, your voice thick with a tenderness you refused to show the men watching you. "Grow strong. Be the light in this family, because the rest of us are far too fond of the dark."

You turned back to Drogo, the warmth vanishing from your face like a cloud covering the sun. The Khal was watching you, his posture relaxed yet poised, like a leopard observing a creature that had just walked willingly into its territory. He didn't offer a hand to lead you; he simply turned on his heel, expecting you to follow in the wake of his horse.

As you stepped toward him, you caught the look of absolute horror on Viserys’s face. You ignored him, stepping closer to the Khal until you were nearly shoulder-to-shoulder.

"One thing, Khal Drogo," you murmured. "Do not expect my personality and my self to die like a dog for you."

— A few weeks later.

The stars over the Great Grass Sea were a cold, shimmering audience, watching from a ceiling of velvet indigo as the festivities of the wedding feast wound down. The air was thick with the scent of roasting horseflesh and the lingering echo of screams— some of joy, some of agony— as the ritual combats had claimed their customary quota of lives. You had spent the day as a curiosity, a silver-haired anomaly amidst a sea of bronze, refusing to be cowed by the bloodriders who viewed your presence as a riddle they couldn't solve.

Then came the gift.

Drogo had led you away from the flickering campfires, his hand a heavy, warm weight between your shoulder blades, guiding you toward a tethering post where a creature of fire and muscle waited. It was a stallion, lean and leggy and young, with a coat the colour of charcoal.

"He is a bastard," Drogo murmured, his voice vibrating with a low, appreciative hum. He didn't mean the horse's lineage, but rather its temperament. The stallion tossed its head, eyes rolling with a wild, untamed energy that mirrored the restlessness currently clawing at your own gut. "He has a heart of fire and a head of stone. He has killed five men who tried to ride him already. He will try to throw you."

You looked at the charcoal beast, then back at the Khal. Drogo was leaning in, his onyx eyes searching yours, a challenging smirk playing on his lips. He seemed to be enjoying the moment, treating the presentation of the animal not as a gesture of generosity, but as a test of your mettle. He shifted his weight, his own mount, a lean, red stallion that looked more like a creature of myth than flesh, snorting in agreement beside him.

"Do you know how to ride?" Drogo asked. You let out a short, sharp laugh. "Do I know how to ride?" you repeated, your voice dripping with sarcasm.

"I was born in the saddle of a palfrey before I could walk, Drogo. I’ve ridden through the mud of the Free Cities," you countered, your voice a sharp, confident edge. "A charcoal 'bastard' with a grudge is hardly a challenge."

You didn't wait for him to offer a hand or a lesson. You stepped into the stallion's space, your movements fluid and devoid of the hesitation the horse expected. The beast let out a piercing shriek, rearing back and snapping its teeth toward your shoulder, but you didn't flinch. You stepped inward, closing the gap and planting a firm, grounding hand against its muscular neck.

With a sudden, explosive surge of motion, you vaulted onto its back. Your body snapped upward in a single, blurred motion of strength and timing. The stallion bucked once, a violent, jarring heave that would have sent a lesser rider sprawling into the dirt, but you absorbed the shock in your hips, gripping the creature's flanks with a strength that bordered on desperation.

For a second, you were suspended in the air, the world tilting on its axis, and then you slammed back down into the saddle with a heavy, satisfying thud.

You sat there, breathless, your hair wind-whipped and your eyes blazing. The horse was trembling beneath you, his sides heaving, but he wasn't trying to throw you anymore. He was waiting. You leaned forward, pressing your chest against his warm neck, feeling the thrum of his heart beating in sync with your own.

You looked over at Drogo, who was still standing by his red stallion, his expression one of genuine, startled curiosity. He had expected a struggle; he had expected the 'blade' to be chipped by the horse's fury. He hadn't expected you to mould yourself to the beast's chaos in a matter of seconds.

"Race ya," you challenged, your voice a playful rasp.

Drogo paused, his brow furrowing. You were a prize, a guest-slave, a curiosity, you were not someone who challenged a Khal to a contest of speed on the open plains. He looked at you, then at the charcoal stallion, then back to your smug, silver-gold reflection of defiance. He seemed genuinely perplexed that you would dare to suggest a competition where he could possibly lose.

With a sharp command and a sudden snap of the reins, you drove the stallion forward. The horse practically launched himself like a stone from a sling. The wind whipped past your ears, a roaring torrent that drowned out everything but the rhythmic, thunderous drumming of hooves against the earth. You leaned low over the horse's neck, becoming a single, streamlined extension of muscle and will, cutting through the twilight air with a predatory grace that mirrored the Khal's own.

Behind you, a roar of laughter erupted, a deep, booming sound that shook the air. Drogo had found the joke. He vaulted onto his red stallion with a fluid motion, his bells jingling in a frantic, melodic crescendo as he spurred his mount into a gallop.

The race was a blur of charcoal and crimson against the deepening violet of the horizon. Every time you glanced to your side, Drogo was there, his onyx eyes flashing with an adrenaline-fueled hunger.

The world became nothing but the smell of hot dust and the rhythmic, violent drumming of a thousand heartbeats between the horse’s hooves and your own. You pushed the charcoal stallion until his lungs sounded like bellows, the wind tearing at your clothes and whipping your silver hair into a frantic halo.

Beside you, Drogo was a silhouette of crimson and bronze, his laughter lost to the roar of the gale, yet his gaze remained locked onto yours, a silent, competitive fire that burned hotter than the midday sun. You didn't know where the finish line was, and neither did he; there was only the horizon, the bruising speed, and the intoxicating sense of being entirely, dangerously alive.

When the distance between you and the camp had stretched into a mile of shimmering void, you gave a sharp, commanding whistle. You didn't slow down gradually; you leaned back, digging your heels in for one final, explosive burst of speed that put you a fractional length ahead of the red stallion.

Then, with a sudden, jarring pull of the reins, you brought the charcoal beast to a sliding, spraying halt. The horse screamed, his hooves carving deep trenches into the earth, and you vaulted off his back before he had even fully stopped. You hit the dirt in a controlled roll and sprang upward, your chest heaving, your lungs burning with the sweet, sharp taste of dust.

Drogo pulled up a second later, his red stallion foaming at the bit. The Khal sat motionless for a moment, his chest rising and falling in a heavy, rhythmic cadence. He didn't look at the finish line, there had never been one, he looked at you.

A slow, predatory grin spread across Drogo’s face. "You ride like a demon," Drogo murmured. "A reckless, stubborn demon."

You didn't answer him immediately. Instead, you let your legs give way, sinking into the tall grass of the plains until you were sitting flat against the earth. The adrenaline that had powered your ride was receding, leaving behind a heavy exhaustion that felt like lead in your veins. With a slow exhale, you tipped backward, your spine meeting the soil with a soft thud. You lay there, staring up at the canopy of the Great Grass Sea's night sky, your long, silver-gold hair spilling across your face like a frayed silk curtain, blurring the constellations into shimmering, distorted smudges of light.

For a long moment, the only sound was the rhythmic, wet huffing of the horses and the distant, muffled cheers of the camp. You felt the earth beneath you, still holding the ghost of the day's heat, and for the first time in years, the crushing weight of the Targaryen legacy felt distant.

A shadow fell over you, blotting out the stars. Drogo had dismounted and approached, his presence a warm, imposing pressure. He didn't speak; he simply stood there for a moment, looking down at the silver-haired creature sprawled in his wake. Then, with a low grunt, he sank to the grass beside you. He didn't lie down, but he leaned back on his elbows, his bronze skin glowing in the fading twilight, the bells in his braid giving a final, soft chime as he settled.

"The others," Drogo began, his voice a low rumble that seemed to vibrate through the ground and into your ribs, "They would say you are mad to challenge a Khal. They would say the blade has a flaw in its tempering." He turned his head, those onyx eyes searching yours through the veil of your hair. "But madness is often the only way to survive the world. Your brother… he is a man of shadows and whispers. You are a man of fire."

"Fire can burn," you replied, your voice a low rasp, "or it can be harnessed. Depends on who holds the torch."

You shifted on the grass, your shoulder brushing against the rough leather of his leggings. You had expected this transition to be a collision, a brutal claim of ownership. You were a prize won by a bargain, a captive in all but name, and you had spent the journey across the plains preparing yourself for the moment Drogo would simply take what he believed was his.

You had braced your spirit for the storm, imagining a night of forced submission where your only weapon would be the silent, cold endurance of your ancestors.

Drogo turned his head fully toward you, his gaze dropping from the stars to your heart hammering in the hollow of your throat. He didn't reach for you with the suddenness of a predator. Instead, he leaned in closer, the scent of horse-sweat and warm musk enveloping you like a shroud.

"The sun has set," Drogo murmured, his voice a velvet rumble that vibrated in the small space between your lips. "The race is over. The moon claims the plains now." He paused, his onyx eyes searching yours with an intensity that felt almost invasive, yet lacked any hint of cruelty. "Do you wish for this, [Y/N]? Do you want to be with me?"

You blinked. For a moment, your mind raced back to the stories of the Dothraki— the tales of raiding parties, the screams of captured women, the brutal, unilateral way the warlords of the plains claimed what they desired. You had spent the last few weeks constructing a mental fortress, bracing yourself for a night where your consent would be treated as an irrelevant formality.

You had expected a conquest, a forced surrender of your body to match the bargain of your freedom. The shock of his hesitation was more jarring than the bucking of the charcoal stallion. He was a man who could command a thousand blades with a single word, yet he was waiting. He wasn't hovering with the predatory intent of a man about to strike; he was simply there, his gaze steady and patient, offering you a choice that you hadn't known existed in this world of leather and blood.

A strange, tight knot of tension, one you hadn't even realised you were carrying in your shoulders, finally snapped. You looked at him, really looked at him, seeing the way the moonlight softened the harsh angles of his face. There was a raw honesty in his onyx eyes, a curiosity that mirrored your own.

He didn't want a broken thing; he wanted the blade, and a blade, you realised, had to choose to unsheathe itself. You shifted, rolling onto your side so you were propped up on one elbow, facing him. The distance between you was now a sliver of moonlight and warm air.

You could feel the heat radiating off him, a living furnace in the cooling night. Slowly, tentatively, you reached out. Your fingers brushed the gold rings binding his moustache, then slid lower, tracing the line of his collarbone where the bronze skin was slick with the remnants of the day's exertion.

The silk was a burden, a shimmering cage of weaving that felt suffocatingly heavy against your skin. You didn't look away from Drogo as you reached for the fastenings of your tunic, your movements slow. With a soft, sliding hiss, the fabric began to slip, sliding over your shoulders like a falling curtain. You let the garment pool around your hips, exposing the pale, lean muscle of your chest and the sharp line of your ribs.

You didn't stop there. With a quiet, focused intensity, you worked the remaining ties, shedding the layers of opulent finery until the wedding silks lay in a discarded heap of silver and cream upon the dirt. You stepped out of the fabric entirely, standing before the Khal in the raw, unfiltered moonlight. You were practically a map of Valyrian legacies— pale skin that seemed to glow against the indigo night, muscles honed by survival and a stubborn refusal to break.

You stood before him, stripped of every pretense and piece of silk, feeling the cool night air prickle against your skin. There was no instinct to cover yourself, no flicker of modesty to make you shrink beneath his appraisal. You were a creature of the dragon's line, and in your mind, there was nothing to be ashamed of in the architecture of your own body.

You stood tall, your posture open and challenging, offering him a view of a form that was lean and disciplined. Your skin was as smooth as polished marble, devoid of the coarse hair that plagued the men of the Free Cities, save for the white, masculine line of a happy trail that dipped from your navel toward your hips, and the thick curls of your pubic hair.

You didn't move, remaining as still as a statue carved from moonlight. You had laid your cards on the table, stripped of the finery. Now, the air felt electric, charged with a tension that made the fine hairs on your arms stand on end. You watched him, your violet eyes tracking the way his chest rose and fell in a heavy, rhythmic thrum.

The Khal remained seated for a secomd longer than necessary, his gaze travelling over you with a slow but steady hunger. He looked at you not as a possession, but as a peer— a challenge to be met. You felt a sudden, sharp spike of impatience.

You had bared yourself to the wind and the stars; it seemed only fair that the Great Khal should do the same. You didn't ask, and you certainly didn't plead. Instead, you arched a silver brow, a ghost of a smirk playing on your lips.

"What is the matter, Drogo?" you challenged, your voice a low, daring rasp that cut through the stillness of the plains. "Does the Great Khal find himself suddenly paralysed by a bit of moonlight?"

You shifted your weight, leaning forward just enough to let the moonlight catch the curve of your hip. The smirk on your lips deepened into something truly predatory. "I had heard the Dothraki were made of iron and storm, but looking at you now, I suspect you might just be a very loud man with a very fancy braid and a very small…"

The laugh that ripped from Drogo’s throat was less of a chuckle and more of a roar, a sound of genuine delight that seemed to vibrate the very earth beneath your bare heels. He didn't answer with words; he answered with action. In one fluid, explosive motion, his hand shot out, gripping your waist with a strength that felt like a brand of hot iron. He yanked you forward, the momentum sending you tumbling across his broad chest and landing squarely in his lap.

You let out a sharp, surprised huff as you hit the hard muscle of his thighs, your legs splaying across his lap to maintain your balance. You didn't struggle; instead, you leaned back, propping yourself up on his shoulders, your violet eyes dancing with a mischievous light.

"Small?" Drogo murmured, the word a low vibration against your skin. "You wish to test the measurements of the Khal?"

He dismantled himself with a efficiency that felt like a siege. The leather fastenings of his breeches gave way with a series of sharp, rhythmic snaps, and as the heavy fabric fell away, you felt the air leave your lungs. The moonlight, which had been your only companion in your nakedness, now seemed to pale in comparison to the sheer, imposing physicality of the man beneath you.

He was built like the earth itself, vast, hard, and unyielding. His cock was a heavy, twitching weight of bronze skin, thick and formidable, coupled with a raw, predatory heat that radiated against your thighs. It was a weapon of a different sort than a blade, though it looked just as capable of carving a path through anything in its way.

A slow, triumphant smile curled your lips as you looked down at him. "Well," you whispered, your voice a playful, breathless rasp. "Perhaps the rumours were underselling you."

Drogo’s hand, large and calloused, slid from your waist to the small of your back, pulling you flush against him. The contact was electric, a collision of pale marble and sun-baked bronze.

You didn’t leave the final move to him. You were not a creature that waited to be claimed, and the heat radiating between your thighs had reached a fever pitch that demanded resolution. Reaching down, your fingers curled around the heavy, pulsing length of him.

His skin was hot, the texture of polished stone and velvet, and you felt the sudden, sharp intake of his breath as you tightened your grip. You began to stroke him, a slow, rhythmic motion that drew a low, guttural groan from deep within his chest. You watched his face, the way his onyx eyes hooded with a mixture of surprise and raw desire, the way his jaw tightened as you played with the weapon he had offered.

Satisfied with the tremor that ran through his massive frame, you shifted your weight, lifting yourself just enough to align the searing heat of his head with your hole. You didn't rush the descent. Instead, you hovered there for a second, the tip of him teasing the entrance of your heat, creating a friction that made your toes curl into the grass. Then, with a press of your hips, you began to sink.

The first inch was a shock of fullness that threatened to overwhelm you, a stretching sensation that felt like being split open by a warm, living blade. You gasped, your head falling back as you felt the sheer mass of him begin to fill the void.

The sensation was an intrusion of the most exquisite kind, a sudden, heavy expansion that seemed to rewrite the geography of your body. You let out a long, shuddering breath, your eyes fluttering shut as the pressure mounted, pushing against the very limits of your endurance. Instinctively, you leaned back on both of your hands, your arms locking to support your weight, creating a bridge of trembling muscle between your shoulders and the earth. You were a taut string of a bow, vibrating with the effort of absorbing him, your chest heaving as you fought to maintain the rhythm of your own breathing.

Drogo’s hands, wide and calloused, didn't just hold you; they claimed you. He felt the slight tremor in your arms, the way your breath hitched in a ragged, uneven cadence. With a low, predatory hum of approval, he shifted his weight. In one fluid motion, he gripped your waist and pivoted, rolling you off his lap and flat onto your back. The transition was seamless, the grass cushioning your spine as the world tilted and settled. Before you could even gasp at the change in position, he moved with the precision of a warrior, lifting your legs high and hooking them firmly over his broad shoulders.

The shift in angle was devastating. Now, with your hips tilted upward and your legs pinned, there was no room for hesitation or retreat. You were completely open, your vulnerability laid bare under the indigo sky, while Drogo loomed over you like a mountain of bronze and muscle. He looked down at you, his onyx eyes burning with a mixture of possessiveness and admiration. He didn't just want to take you; he wanted to see the exact moment the 'blade' finally surrendered to the fire.

"Now," he murmured, the word less a request and more a command.

He didn’t glide into you with the tentative caution of a man fearing he might break a fragile thing. Instead, Drogo drove forward with the sudden, violent precision of a cavalry charge, a single, powerful surge that slammed into you with the force of a landslide.

The air vanished from your lungs in a sharp, strangled gasp as you were pinned deep into the loam, the sheer mass of him filling every available space, stretching you to a limit that felt almost agonising and utterly transcendent.

Then, he began to move. He didn't establish a rhythm; he ignited one. Drogo thrust with a blistering, frantic speed, his hips snapping forward in a blur of bronze muscle and raw power. Each strike was a percussion of flesh against flesh, a rhythmic thundering that echoed the gallop of the charcoal stallion.

It was an assault of sensation, a relentless barrage that left you breathless, your head tossing from side to side against the grass as you struggled to keep pace with the sudden, exhilarating violence of his pace.

You felt the world dissolve into a series of fragmented images: the silver blur of your own hair whipping across your cheeks, the oppressive heat of his chest crushing yours, and the endless, velvet indigo of the sky spinning above you.

The speed was dizzying, a blurring velocity that turned the pleasure into something sharper, more desperate, like the feeling of falling from a great height and realising you loved the wind in your face. Your fingers clawed at the earth, digging into the soil and grass as you fought to anchor yourself against the storm of his body.

Drogo’s breathing had become a series of guttural, rhythmic snarls, his teeth grazing the sensitive curve of your shoulder. He wasn't the patient observer anymore; he was the storm itself. He gripped your thighs with a strength that would leave bruises, his fingers sinking into your pale skin as he drove himself deeper, faster, chasing a peak that felt like a cliff edge. The friction was a searing current of electricity, a white-hot spark that ignited in the pit of your stomach and radiated outward to your fingertips.

The sensation was too much, a tidal wave of heat that threatened to drown your senses, and the sudden urge for a different kind of collision flared in your chest. You weren't content to be the shore that the storm simply broke upon. With a sharp, feline hiss of breath, you reached up and wound your fingers deep into the thick, black mass of his hair, gripping the coarse strands with a firmness that brooked no argument. You jerked his head downward, a sudden, commanding snap that forced the great warlord to buckle and lean into your space.

He let out a startled, low grunt, his eyes widening for a fraction of a second before he met the collision. You didn't wait for him to find his balance; you surged upward, meeting him halfway in a kiss that tasted of salt, adrenaline, and the wild, untamed heat of the plains.

It wasn't a gentle union; it was a clash of wills, a desperate, hungry exchange of breath and tongue that mirrored the violence of the rhythm below. Your teeth grazed his lower lip, a sharp spark of aggression that seemed to ignite something primal in him, causing his hips to snap forward with renewed, bruising force.

The angle of the impact shifted, a sudden, precise adjustment of leverage that drove him deeper than he had ever reached, bypassing the surface friction to strike a singular, hidden nerve.

The sensation was a bolt of white light, an electric shock that bypassed your mind and detonated directly in your core. He hit your prostate with the precision of a master swordsman finding the gap in a breastplate, and the air you had been holding in your lungs escaped in a raw, unrestrained sound. You moaned loudly into Drogo’s mouth, the noise muffled by his lips but vibrating through your entire frame, a admission of complete and utter defeat.

The world narrowed down to a single, white-hot point of convergence. As you felt the sudden, rhythmic contraction of your own body, Drogo gave one final, devastating thrust, burying himself to the hilt. In that instant, the tension that had been building like a summer storm over the plains finally broke.

You built your walls the way castles were built—slowly, deliberately, with mortar made of clipped sentences and stone quarried from every disappointment you'd ever catalogued in the quiet museum of your chest.

It was not cruelty. You wanted that understood, even if no one was listening closely enough to understand it.

It was preservation.

And Lilia Vanrouge—who had lived long enough to watch forests become kingdoms and kingdoms become footnotes—recognized the architecture immediately.

He'd built similar walls himself, once.

Centuries ago. In a life that tasted like iron and smelled like dying wisteria.

The first time he truly saw you—not the passing glance across the dining hall of Ramshackle Dorm, not the half-acknowledgment when Crowley shoved yet another impossible task toward your already-overflowing plate—but truly saw you, it was raining.

It was always raining in your most unguarded moments, you'd later realize. As though the sky itself conspired to soften what you refused to soften on your own.

You were standing beneath the rotting eaves outside the kitchen door, arms crossed, watching the downpour with an expression that most would read as irritation but that Lilia read as something far more translucent.

Longing.

You wanted to stand in the rain. You just didn't want anyone to see you want it.

"Falling water suits you," he said from the window above, his voice carrying the particular lilting warmth that made half of NRC's student body simultaneously flustered and unnerved. "It makes your scowl look almost poetic."

You didn't startle. You were too well-trained for that. But your shoulders migrated north by a fraction of an inch, and your jaw set with the precision of a closed vault door.

"I'm not scowling. I'm observing."

"Ah." He rested his chin on his folded arms, the window frame casting cruciform shadows across his face. "My mistake. You observe the way a general surveys a battlefield. With great personal offense."

"I don't have personal offense with the rain."

"No. You have personal offense with the fact that you want to stand in it and you've decided that wanting things is a vulnerability you can't afford." He said it simply. Gently. The way one might comment on the color of the sky. As though he hadn't just reached through your ribs and plucked something.

The rain hammered between you.

Your throat did something complicated.

"I don't know what you're talking about," you said, and turned on your heel, and walked inside with the rigid posture of someone who had not just been seen in a way that made them feel like stained glass—beautiful specifically because of the cracks, and devastating specifically because someone was standing close enough to notice the light coming through.

Lilia watched you go.

He smiled.

But it was the kind of smile that had grief folded inside it, like a letter pressed into a book for so long that the words had pressed ghost-versions of themselves onto the facing page.

He recognized you.

Not who you were—what you were.

Someone who had decided, at some point, that love was a door that only opened out, and that if you let anyone in, they would take more than they left behind.

He could have told you that the opposite was also true.

But Lilia Vanrouge had learned, in seven hundred years of living, that some truths had to be earned.

And you were not the type to let anyone earn anything without making them bleed for it first.

ii. the siege

He began the way one begins any siege: not with force, but with persistence so mild it barely registered as an attack at all.

A cup of tea appearing beside your elbow when you studied in the library. Not placed for you—never with the theatrical generosity that would let you reject it on principle. Just… there. As though it had grown there naturally, like a mushroom in damp soil. Chamomile. The specific blend you reached for on the shelf but never bought for yourself because it felt like an indulgence you hadn't earned.

You didn't drink it.

You wanted to drink it. The steam curled upward in gentle, beckoning spirals, and your fingers twitched with the particular ache of someone denying themselves a small mercy.

But drinking it would mean acknowledging it. And acknowledging it would mean acknowledging him. And acknowledging him would mean—

"You know," you said aloud, to no one, staring at the cup with the fury of a general facing an undefeatable enemy, "this is ridiculous."

The tea sat there, steam curling like a question mark.

You drank it.

It was perfect. Of course it was. Because Lilia Vanrouge did nothing by half-measure, and if he was going to wage a quiet war on your defenses, he would do it with the precision of someone who had actually waged war, and who understood that the most effective siege was the one that made the besieged want to open the gates.

He found you in the courtyard three days later, attempting to repair a broken bench with a hammer and a expression that suggested the bench had personally insulted your lineage.

"Trouble?"

"No."

"The bench seems to disagree."

"I don't recall asking the bench." You drove a nail with more force than necessary. The wood groaned in protest. "Or you."

Lilia tilted his head, that ever-present amusement playing at the corners of his mouth like sunlight through leaves—dappled, shifting, capable of casting warmth or shadow depending on the angle. "You didn't ask. And yet here I am. Funny how that works."

"I have a term for people who show up uninvited."

"I'm certain you do." He crouched beside you, and the proximity made your hammer-hand stutter mid-swing, which you covered by pretending you'd meant to pause. "But I've found that most of the things worth having in this life arrive without an invitation. Sunsets. Rain. The realization that you matter to someone."

Your nail bent at an ugly angle.

"You can't just say things like that," you muttered, yanking the ruined nail out with a sound like a small, frustrated murder.

"Like what?"

"Like—" You gestured vaguely with the hammer. A dangerous gesture. "—that. Those. Words. Arranged in that order."

He laughed. Not the performative, mischievous laugh he wore like a costume in the hallways of NRC. Something lower. Softer. A laugh that had weight to it, as though it had been carried a long distance through a long life before arriving here, in this courtyard, for you.

"I've been arranging words for seven centuries," he said. "I've gotten rather good at it."

"I've noticed," you said, and then realized you'd admitted to noticing, and the blush that followed was the kind that started at your collarbones and marched north with military efficiency.

You stood. Abruptly. The bench wobbled dangerously.

"I have to go."

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"Anywhere that isn't here."

You left.

Lilia stayed crouched by the half-repaired bench, and if anyone had been watching closely—and no one was, because Lilia made sure of that—they would have seen him press his palm flat against the wood grain and close his eyes for a moment that lasted exactly one breath longer than comfort allowed.

He was not laughing anymore.

Because he remembered—intimately, viscerally, in the way that old wounds remember the exact temperature of the blade that made them—what it felt like to build a wall so high you forgot there was a world on the other side.

And he was beginning to suspect that your wall was not built to keep him out.

It was built to keep you in.

Safe. Alone. Unhurt.

The cruelest kind of prison was the one you constructed with your own hands and then called protection.

iii. the crack

It happened on a Tuesday.

Unremarkable by calendar standards. Catastrophic by the standards of your carefully maintained architecture.

You'd had a day. Not a bad day—you were too proud and too practiced to allow bad days to accumulate into anything recognizable. But a day of small erosions. A comment from a professor that landed too close to an old insecurity. A letter from home that said everything by saying nothing at all. The particular loneliness of being in a room full of people who spoke a language you understood but could not, for the life of you, speak back.

You found yourself on the roof of Ramshackle at midnight, sitting on the edge with your legs dangling, because there was something about verticality that made horizontal problems feel smaller. The night sky over Twisted Wonderland was not your sky. It would never be your sky. The constellations were wrong, the moon hung at the wrong angle, and every time you looked up you were reminded that you were somewhere else, and that somewhere else was not home, and home was—

Home was complicated.

You pressed the heels of your hands against your eyes until you saw colors.

You did not cry. You did not cry. Crying was a luxury reserved for people who hadn't already spent their entire emotional budget on maintaining the structural integrity of their own walls.

"There you are."

You didn't jump. But your heart did something aerobically inadvisable.

Lilia landed on the rooftop with the gravity-defying grace that reminded you, viscerally, that he was not human. That the playful grandmother energy he projected was a choice, a costume worn over something ancient and sharp and not entirely safe.

He didn't sit next to you. He sat a careful three feet away—close enough to be present, far enough to not be a threat—and leaned back on his palms, tilting his face toward the wrong constellations.

"Grim was looking for you. Something about a tuna sandwich and betrayal."

"Tell him I'm dead."

"Shall I arrange a funeral? I know a wonderful florist in the Scalding Sands who does excellent arrangements for the tragically dramatic."

Despite everything—despite the letter, despite the comment, despite the wrong sky and the accumulated weight of being a person who refused to need anyone—your mouth twitched. Just barely. A seismic event disguised as a facial expression.

"You're not funny."

"I'm hilarious. You're simply too committed to misery to laugh."

"I'm not miserable. I'm—"

"Situated on a rooftop at midnight, alone, pressing your hands into your eyes hard enough to leave bruises." His voice was still light, but there was something underneath it now. Something that felt like the bottom of a lake—cold, still, and deeper than it appeared. "If that's not misery, it's at least its close personal friend."

The silence that followed was the loudest thing you'd ever heard.

"I don't need your pity," you said, and your voice came out smaller than you wanted it to. Which made you angry. Which made your voice sharper. "I don't need anyone's pity. I'm fine. I've always been fine. I'll continue to be fine. That's the whole— that's the point."

"The point of what?"

"Of—" You made a frustrated sound, somewhere between a laugh and a wound. "Of handling it. Of not being the kind of person who falls apart because some professor said something careless and a letter from home feels like a bomb with the fuse already lit and I miss—"

You stopped.

The wall shuddered.

Lilia did not move. Did not push. Did not fill the silence with his usual effervescence. He simply sat there, a steady presence in the dark, and let the silence be what it needed to be—which was not empty, but held.

"You miss what?" he asked, quietly. Gently. Like handling something made of glass. Or like handling something made of thorns—carefully, because the thorns were all that was holding it together.

You stared at the wrong stars.

"I don't know," you whispered, and the admission cost you something you couldn't afford to spend. "I don't know what I miss. I just know there's a hole, and I've been pretending it isn't there, and most days I'm fine, but tonight—"

Your voice cracked.

A single, traitorous tear escaped down your cheek with the audacity of a prisoner making a break for it while the guards were distracted.

You swiped at it with a violence that was really desperation.

"Don't—" you started.

"I won't," he said.

And he didn't.

He didn't reach for you. Didn't offer comfort in the way that people offered comfort—loudly, performatively, in ways that required you to receive it publicly and thus acknowledge your own vulnerability. He just sat there, three feet away, wrong constellations reflected in his red eyes, and let you fall apart in the dark without making it a spectacle.

It was, without question, the kindest thing anyone had ever done for you.

And you hated it.

You hated it because kindness that didn't demand anything in return was the most dangerous kind. It was the kind that slipped through the cracks in your wall like water through stone, and water, you knew, could bring down anything if given enough time.

You sat on that roof and you let the tears fall—quietly, furiously, in the way of someone who was angry at their own eyes for betraying them—and Lilia Vanrouge sat three feet away and watched the sky with the patience of someone who had once kept a vigil beside a dying queen and knew that some moments were not about fixing but about witnessing.

When it was over—when the tears had exhausted themselves and you were left hollow and trembling and furious at your own trembling—you spoke without looking at him.

"If you tell anyone about this, I will find a way to end you, ancient fae or not."

"Your secret is safe with me." A pause. Then, softer: "It's always been safe with me."

You stood. Brushed off your uniform. Straightened your spine with the determination of someone rebuilding a demolished wall brick by brick, starting now.

"Goodnight, Lilia."

"Goodnight."

You made it to the rooftop door before his voice caught you again—not because it was loud, but because it was the kind of quiet that travels through bone rather than air.

"For what it's worth," he said, still not looking at you, still gazing at those wrong, beautiful, impossible stars, "the hole doesn't go away. I know. I've been carrying mine for seven hundred years."

Your hand froze on the door handle.

"But it does," he said, "eventually, become a place where light can enter. If you let it."

You didn't turn around.

You couldn't.

Because if you turned around, he would see your face, and your face was doing something it hadn't done in years—it was believing someone.

You went inside.

You did not sleep.

You lay in your bed at Ramshackle.

==================================================(Version 2)

What Blooms In Defiance

The Art of Not Wanting

i. the inconvenient truth of dark hair

You told yourself it was the light.

The way the late afternoon sun caught the edge of his hair as he leaned against the doorway of the classroom, that was all it was. A trick of architecture and atmosphere. Nothing more. The fact that your pulse did something shameful and erratic behind your ribs was purely physiological—a fight-or-flight response to being startled, because he had appeared out of nowhere again, and any reasonable person's heart would seize under such circumstances.

"You're staring," Lilia said, without looking at you.

"I'm glaring," you corrected, because the alternative was unbearable. "There's a difference."

"Is there?" He turned then, and the smile he wore was the kind that had probably undone kingdoms. Not the bright, performative one he wore for the first-years—the one that said look at me, I'm harmless, I'm eccentric, I'm just a funny old man in a young body. No. This one was quieter. Smaller. A secret kept between the two of you, even though you hadn't agreed to keep any secrets with him.

Especially because you hadn't agreed to keep any secrets with him.

"There's a monumental difference," you said, and your voice came out steadier than you deserved. "Glaring implies hostility. Staring implies—" You stopped yourself before you could say fascination or longing or any other traitorous word that had been lodging itself in your throat like a fishbone lately. "—implies a lack of manners."

"And you have an abundance of those, I'm sure." He said it like he believed it. Like he'd watched you hold doors for people who didn't thank you. Like he'd noticed the way you straightened the collar of a first-year's uniform when you thought no one was looking. Like he'd been paying attention, which was worse than anything else he could have done, because attention from Lilia Vanrouge was not a casual thing.

It was a precision instrument.

It was a weapon you weren't armored against.

"Go bother someone else," you said, gathering your things with more force than necessary. A pencil rolled off the desk. You did not pick it up. You would not give him the satisfaction of watching you bend.

He picked it up instead.

He turned it over in his fingers—just a boring yellow pencil, nothing special—and you would have thought nothing of it, except that he looked at it the way he looked at everything. Like it mattered. Like the small, unremarkable things people discarded were the very things he found worth holding.

"You dropped this," he said.

"I know. Keep it."

"I intend to."

He slipped it into his pocket, and something in your chest cracked like a window hit by a winter stone—not shattered, but fractured, with a delicate web of damage you could hide but not repair.

You walked out of the classroom without looking back.

You always walked out without looking back.

You were becoming very good at it.

ii. a history of fortified walls (and the general who besieged them)

The thing about Lilia Vanrouge that no one seemed to understand— the thing that made him so insufferably, unreasonably dangerous—was that he was patient.

Not passive. Never passive. There was a difference there too, though most people were too dazzled by the performance to see it. Lilia was patient the way a river was patient with a stone. Not kind. Not cruel. Simply inevitable. He would wear you down not with force but with time, and time was the one thing he had more of than anyone.

You knew this.

You had studied him—carefully, from a distance, the way one studies a predator in the field, with binoculars and a healthy respect for the distance between you. You knew his habits. You knew he took his tea at four, that he haunted the kitchen at midnight to commit atrocities against cuisine, that he watched the first-years with an expression that flickered between amusement and something ancient and unnameable. You knew he had been a general. You knew he had fought in a war that had shaped the very land beneath your feet.

You knew, in the abstract way that one knows historical facts, that he had lost people.

What you did not know—what you refused to examine too closely—was why that knowledge made your throat tighten when you heard him laugh in the next room, bright and sharp as a bell, as if joy were something he had to choose every single day.

"Your observations are becoming less subtle," he told you one evening, appearing beside you on the bench outside the dormitory. The moon was a thin, suspicious sliver. The air smelled like impending rain. You had thought you were alone.

"I don't observe you." The lie was so automatic it barely required your participation. "I have better things to do than track your movements."

"Do you?" He tilted his head, and the moonlight did something terrible to his cheekbones. "I've noticed you don't spend your evenings with anyone else."

"Maybe I like being alone."

"No," he said, with a gentleness that felt like a blade slipping between ribs. "You don't. You've just learned to prefer it over the alternative."

The alternative.

Being seen. Being known. Being left.

You stood up so fast the bench scraped against the stone. "You don't know anything about me."

"I know you stayed up all night last week to finish a potion assignment that wasn't due for a month, because you needed a distraction." He didn't stand. He stayed exactly where he was, looking up at you with those eyes that had seen centuries and still somehow found you worth looking at. "I know you argue with your textbooks when you think no one is listening—not because you disagree with the material, but because you're testing it. Proving it wrong would be easier than trusting it."

"Stop."

"I know you keep a journal and you write in a language you invented yourself so that no one could ever read it, even if they found it." His voice dropped, not softer but closer, like a hand reaching through the dark. "I know that the first word you wrote in that journal, on the very first page, was why."

The rain began then, soft and indifferent, as if the sky had decided to weep on a completely unrelated matter.

You were not crying.

You would never cry in front of Lilia Vanrouge.

"You're a monster," you said, and you meant it in every possible sense of the word—ancient and terrible and impossible to escape.

He smiled, and it was the saddest smile you had ever seen on a human or fae face, and that was the moment you understood the true cruelty of Lilia Vanrouge: he did not pursue you despite knowing these things. He pursued you because of them.

"I've been called worse," he said, "by people I loved far more than you."

It should have been an insult.

It felt like a door opening.

iii. the culinary warfare that was not really about food

You found him in the kitchen at 1:47 AM.

This was not unusual. What was unusual was that you had come to the kitchen intentionally, which meant you had either lost your mind or surrendered to something you didn't have a name for yet. You were hoping it was madness. Madness was treatable. Madness could be blamed on stress or sleep deprivation or the peculiar atmospheric pressures of a school built on a nexus of magical energy.

The other thing—the thing with no name—was not treatable.

The other thing was Lilia stirring a pot of something that smelled like a crime scene and hummed a melody you didn't recognize but that made your chest ache anyway, because it sounded like a lullaby for someone who no longer needed to be lulled.

"Is that supposed to be soup?" you asked from the doorway.

"It is soup."

"It's hostile is what it is."

He laughed, and you hated—genuinely, sincerely hated—the way the sound moved through you like warm water, loosening things that had been clenched tight for years.

"Would you like to try it?"

"I would rather swallow broken glass."

"That can be arranged." He lifted the spoon toward you with an expression of pure, delighted mischief, and you took a step back, and he took a step forward, and suddenly the kitchen felt very small and the distance between you felt very negotiable.

"I'm not eating that," you said.

"I didn't ask you to eat it. I asked if you'd like to try it. There's a difference."

"You and your differences."

"You think about them a lot, don't you? Differences. Boundaries. The space between things." He set the spoon down. He set the mischief down too, and what was underneath it was so raw and so present that you forgot to breathe. "I've been alive for a very long time, and I've learned that most of the walls people build aren't to keep others out. They're maps. They show you exactly where it hurts."

"You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Saying things that make me want to hit you."

"I know." He said it like a confession. Like something shameful. Like the fact that you wanted to hit him was proof of something he treasured and grieved in equal measure. "That's why I keep doing it. You're very beautiful when you're furious."

Your face burned.

Not blushed. Burned. As if someone had pressed a hot iron to your cheekbones, and the heat spread down your neck and across your collarbones and you wanted to die, actually. You wanted to sink into the kitchen floor and become one with the tile grout.

"I'm leaving."

"The soup—"

"Is a war crime and should be tried at an international tribunal. Goodnight, Lilia."

You turned on your heel. You made it three steps.

"You came to the kitchen at nearly two in the morning," he said to your back, quiet as a heartbeat. "Not because you were hungry. Because you knew I'd be here."

You stopped walking.

You did not turn around.

The silence stretched between you like a thread pulled taut, and you could feel it vibrating, and you knew—you knew—that if you turned around, something irrevocable would happen. Some last防线 would crumble. Some door you'd locked and thrown away the key to would ease open, and you would be standing on the threshold of something you'd spent your whole life running from.

You walked out of the kitchen.

But for the first time, the walking felt like running.

iv. an interlude in which you consider the weight of centuries

You could not sleep.

This was not new. Insomnia and you were old, intimate enemies—familiar as a married couple, hostile as a divorced one. What was new was the reason.

Usually, your sleeplessness was a formless thing. A free-floating anxiety with no anchor, a hum of unease that you couldn't name and couldn't cure. But tonight it had a face. And hair the color of endless night. And a voice that kept saying why in the language you'd invented, as if he'd cracked the code without even trying.

You pressed your face into your pillow and screamed, muffled and undignified.

Why him?

Of all the people in this school—the brilliant ones, the beautiful ones, the ones who didn't carry the weight of centuries in their spines like a second skeleton—why did it have to be the ancient war general who cooked like a supervillain and smiled like he knew every secret you'd ever had?

You thought about the things you knew of his past. Pieced together from overheard conversations and library books and the occasional, devastating slip of Malleus's tongue when the young dragon spoke of his guardian with a tenderness that suggested Lilia had been the only constant in a life full of loss.

He had outlived everyone he'd ever fought beside.

He had held dying friends in his arms and watched the light leave their eyes and then—then—he had gotten up the next morning and made breakfast for a child who had lost his parents, because that is what Lilia Vanrouge did. He carried his grief like a river carries the dead leaves of autumn—quietly, continuously, without ever stopping to demand recognition for the weight.

And you—what were you? A student with a sharp tongue and a tendency to build walls? A  person—who had been hurt, yes, but not in the way he had been hurt. Not in the way that leaves scars measured in centuries. Your wounds were ordinary. Common. The kind that everyone had and no one talked about, and you had built your personality around the conviction that if you never let anyone close enough, you would never have to explain the architecture of your damage.

Lilia had looked at your walls and seen maps.

You rolled onto your back and stared at the ceiling and felt something shift inside you, tectonic and slow, like a continent drifting toward an inevitable collision.

You were not afraid of Lilia.

You were afraid of what he would find when the walls came down.

You were afraid that he would look at the ordinary, common, unremarkable wreckage of your heart and find it not worth the effort of navigating.

You were afraid that he would stay anyway, and that would be worse, because then you would owe him something you didn't know how to give.

Why.

The first word in your journal. The question you'd been asking since before you could remember. Not why me or why this but just—why. Why anything. Why the effort of it. Why the architecture of getting up every morning and performing the rituals of being alive when the being alive part felt so fundamentally unconvincing.

You squeezed your eyes shut.

Sleep did not come.

But something else did—a quiet, terrifying awareness that you were no longer running from Lilia Vanrouge.

You were running toward him, and pretending, even to yourself, that it was the other way around.

v. in which the siege engine reveals itself to be a seed

It happened on a Tuesday.

Unremarkable. Forgettable. The kind of day that history books skip over, the kind that exists only as filler between the moments that matter. Which, you supposed, was exactly the point. Lilia had always understood that the most important things happen in the spaces between.

You were in the library. Alone, or so you thought, because you had chosen the most obscure corner on the most remote floor, surrounded by books on magical theory so dense they could double as blunt weapons. You were not studying. You were hiding. There was a difference, though you had long since stopped pretending it was a meaningful one.

He didn't announce himself. He never did. He simply materialized in the chair across from you, as if the universe had always intended for him to be there and was only now correcting an oversight.

You looked up from your book—a book you had not read a single word of in the past forty minutes—and found him watching you with an expression you couldn't categorize. It wasn't the teasing smile. It wasn't the quiet sadness. It was something else. Something careful. Something that looked almost like—

Fear.

Lilia Vanrouge looked afraid.

The recognition hit you like a physical force, because in all your observations, in all your careful study from a distance, you had never once seen him look afraid. You had seen him amused and tender and weary and fierce and grief-stricken in that hidden way of his, but never afraid, and the fact that he looked afraid now, sitting across from you in a forgotten corner of a library on an unremarkable Tuesday, made your hands go cold.

"Lilia." You said his name without meaning to. It fell out of you, unguarded, and the sound of it in your own voice terrified you almost as much as the look on his face.

He heard it too. The difference. The absence of armor.

"I need to tell you something," he said, "and I need you to not run away while I'm telling you."

"I don't run away."

"You do. You're very fast at it. It's impressive, actually. I've seen you do it in the space between one heartbeat and the next." He folded his hands on the table. His fingers were still. Not fidgeting, not drumming, not performing any of the restless little gestures that usually characterized him. The stillness was wrong. The stillness was what made your chest hurt. "I'm going to say something, and you're going to say something cruel, because that's what you do when someone gets too close. And I need you to know—" His voice faltered. Actually faltered, like a candle flame in a draft, and the fragility of it was so staggering that you felt your own breath catch in sympathy. "I need you to know that I will survive it. Whatever you say. I've survived worse. But I need you to also know that it will hurt, and I'm telling you this anyway, because—"

He stopped.

He looked down at his hands.

"I have lived for a very long time," he said, so quietly you had to lean forward to hear. "And in all that time, I have never once met someone who made me want to explain myself. I have never met someone whose anger I wanted to earn honestly, whose walls I wanted to respect rather than dismantle, whose no I wanted to treat as sacred rather than as an obstacle."

Your throat was closing.

"I don't want to take your walls down," he said. "I want you to open the door. Not for me. For you. Because you deserve to be on the other side of them."

The library was silent. The books were silent. The dust motes hung suspended in the lamplight like frozen stars, and the whole world had drawn a breath and was holding it, waiting to see what you would do with the gift you'd just been given—not a declaration of love, not a demand, not a trap, but a doorway, offered without expectation, held open by hands that trembled slightly under the weight of centuries of loss and the terrible, reckless courage of hoping anyway.

You opened your mouth.

"I don't—" Your voice cracked. You swallowed. Tried again. "I don't know how."

The words came out so small. So unlike you. So stripped of every defense mechanism you'd spent years constructing that you barely recognized them as your own.

Lilia's eyes softened into something that was not pity—never pity—but a recognition so profound it bordered on reverence.

"I know," he said. "That's why I'm not asking you to do it alone."

Something broke open in your chest. Not dramatically, not like a dam bursting, but like a bud unfurling in slow motion—petal by petal, inch by inch, a process that could not be rushed or forced or pretended. You felt your eyes sting, and for the first time in longer than you could remember, you did not fight it.

A single tear fell onto the open book in front of you. It hit the page with an audible softness, blurring a line of text until the words became unreadable.

Lilia reached across the table.

He did not take your hand. He simply placed his beside yours, close enough that you could feel the warmth of his skin without the obligation of touching it. An offering. A proximity. A choice.

You looked at his hand—pale, long-fingered, a general's hand that had wielded swords and stirred terrible soup and cradled the faces of the dying and now rested, palm-up, on a library table on a Tuesday, waiting for you.

You turned your hand over.

Your fingers touched his.

The contact was so slight it barely qualified as a touch at all—just the merest brush of skin against skin, a whisper of warmth, a question asked in a language older than words.

Lilia's fingers curled gently around yours.

You did not pull away.

The ceiling did not collapse. The world did not end. Your walls did not crumble in a single, cinematic avalanche. They simply—shifted. The way tectonic plates shift: imperceptibly, over time, with a deep and rumbling certainty that changes everything even though you can't see it happening.

You sat in the library on a Tuesday and held hands with Lilia Vanrouge, and it was not a victory and it was not a surrender.

It was a beginning.

vi. the slow and terrible business of being known

After the Tuesday—which you did not call the Tuesday in your head, because that would imply it was special, and you were not yet ready to admit that—things did not change.

That was a lie.

Things changed constantly, in increments so small they were almost invisible, like the movement of an hour hand. You did not suddenly become soft. You did not suddenly become kind. You were still sharp-edged and difficult and prone to saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and Lilia was still infuriating in that particular way of his where he saw through every one of your defenses as if they were made of glass.

But there were moments.

Small ones. Secret ones. The kind that would mean nothing to an observer and everything to you.

He left a cup of tea outside your door one morning—proper tea, not the nightmare sludge he usually concocted, which meant he had either made it himself with unusual care or coerced someone else into making it, and either way the implication made your face heat. There was no note. There was no signature. Just a cup of tea, still warm, placed with a precision that suggested he had stood there for several minutes deciding on the exact right spot.

You drank it.

You did not thank him.

He knew you drank it because the cup was gone when he came to collect it, and the smile he wore when he retrieved the empty cup from where you'd left it—balanced carefully on the threshold, neither inside nor outside, a liminal placement that said I accept this but don't you dare make a thing of it—that smile was so radiant that Silver, who happened to be passing by, stopped and asked if his father was feeling well.

"I'm feeling wonderful," Lilia said, and meant it.

Another moment: you were in the courtyard, reading, and he sat down beside you without asking, and you didn't move away. This was unprecedented. This was historical. This was the kind of seismic shift that registered on instruments you didn't know existed.

He didn't speak. He simply sat, and read his own book, and the silence between you was not the charged, combative silence of before but something easier. Something that breathed. Something that existed not as a weapon but as a shared space, a room with two chairs and a window and nothing that needed to be filled.

After twenty minutes, you shifted—just slightly, just a few inches—and your shoulder touched his.

You did not move away.

Neither did he.

The contact remained for the rest of the afternoon, a point of warmth that anchored you to something you couldn't name, and when you finally stood up to leave, you said, without looking at him, "Your tea was acceptable."

"I'll strive for good next time," he said, and the laughter in his voice was not at your expense but at the absurdity and the wonder of it—of you, of this, of the fact that after centuries of living, a single word of grudging approval could make him feel like he'd conquered something vast.

vii. a lesson in the grammar of grief

He told you about the war on a Thursday.

Not the whole war—just a piece. A fragment. A single shard of a stained-glass window that had once depicted something magnificent and whole. He told you about a friend—a soldier under his command—who had carried a pocket watch that played a melody when you opened it. A silly, impractical thing to bring to a battlefield. The friend had said it was to remind him that time was passing, that every second was a small music, that even in the worst places, beauty could be wound up and released.

The friend had died on a hillside that no longer had a name.

Lilia had kept the watch.

He still had it.

He didn't show it to you. He simply told you it existed, and the telling was such an act of trust—such a naked, unguarded offering of a wound he had carried for longer than your entire lineage—that you forgot every defense mechanism you'd ever learned.

"That's—" You stopped. Started again. "That's a terrible story. Why would you tell me that?"

"Because you asked."

"I didn't ask anything."

"You asked why." He looked at you, and his eyes were the color of something that didn't have a name—not quite crimson, not quite red, but somewhere in the catastrophic space between. "The first word in your journal. You've been asking it since before I met you. And I wanted you to know that I've been asking it too. For much longer than you."

Why.

The question hung between you like smoke.

"I don't have an answer," he said. "I've looked for one for seven hundred years. I haven't found it. But I've found—" He paused, and you watched him search for the word, watched him rifle through a vocabulary that spanned centuries and multiple languages, and what he settled on was so simple it broke something in you. "—moments. Small ones. That make the question feel less urgent."

You thought about the cup of tea on your threshold. The shoulder against yours in the courtyard. The hand on the library table, palm-up, waiting.

"Like what?" you asked, and your voice was so quiet it barely existed.

"Like this," he said. "Sitting with you. Being someone you don't push away."

The grief in that sentence was immense. Not performed, not displayed for effect, but simply present, the way gravity is present—constant, invisible, inescapable. He had spent centuries being left behind, being the one who survived, being the one who stood at the graves of everyone he'd ever loved, and here he was, telling you that not being pushed away by a difficult, prickly, thoroughly inconvenient person who drank his terrible tea and held his hand in a library was a moment that made the question of why feel less urgent.

You did something you had never done.

You reached for him.

Your hand found his wrist—his wrist, not his hand, because wrists were practical and hands were intimate and you were not ready for intimacy, you were barely ready for proximity—and you held on. Not tightly. Not desperately. Just held on, as if he were something that might drift away if you didn't anchor him.

He looked down at your fingers on his wrist.

His breath caught.

You watched it catch. You watched the rise and fall of his chest stutter like a skipped heartbeat, and the realization that you could affect him—that this ancient, untouchable, devastating creature could be undone by something as small as your hand on his wrist—was so powerful that it terrified you more than any darkness you'd ever faced.

"Don't—" You didn't know how to finish the sentence. Don't leave. Don't die. Don't be a story I have to read about in a history book. Don't become another reason I ask why.

He understood anyway.

He always understood.

"I'm here," he said. "For now. For as long as I can be."

It wasn't a promise. It wasn't forever. It was something better—something honest, something fragile, something that acknowledged the impermanence of all things and chose to exist anyway.

You held his wrist in a courtyard on a Thursday, and somewhere in the space between your bodies, a question began, very slowly, to transform into something that was not quite an answer but was no longer just a question either.

viii. the disaster of almost saying it

Three weeks after the Tuesday—which you now, privately, in the sanctuary of your own mind, called the Tuesday, because you had run out of lies to tell yourself—you nearly told Lilia Vanrouge that you loved him.

The word had been rising in you like water in a flooding basement—inexorable, relentless, seeping through every crack in your foundation. You had felt it building for days. It was in the way you looked for him in crowded rooms. In the way you caught yourself smiling at the thought of his laugh. In the way you had begun to write his name in the margins of your journal, in your invented language, as if even the alphabet you'd created to keep people out had been infiltrated by him.

You were sitting on the roof of the dormitory at midnight. You did not know how he'd gotten there—you had climbed through a window and crossed a perilous stretch of slate tiles to reach the highest point, specifically because it was inaccessible—but there he was, legs dangling over the edge, looking up at the stars as if they were old friends he was catching up with.

"How," you said.

"The same way I do everything." He patted the tiles beside him. "With flair."

"I hate you."

"You don't." He said it without arrogance. Without smugness. He said it the way one states the weather—clearly, simply, without room for argument, because the sky is blue and water is wet and you did not hate Lilia Vanrouge. "Sit down. You're going to fall."

"I'm not going to—"

Your foot slipped on a loose tile.

You didn't fall—you caught yourself, barely, with a graceless lurch that sent a shower of broken tile fragments skittering over the edge—but for one horrible, suspended moment, the ground was very far away and the air was very empty and your stomach dropped through the floor of the universe.

A hand closed around your arm.

Lilia had moved—actually moved, with a speed that reminded you, violently, that he was not a person but a fae, not a student but a warrior, not a funny old man in a young body but something ancient and powerful and capable of catching you mid-fall without seeming to exert himself at all.

He pulled you to safety. Not roughly, not gently, but with a precision that suggested he had calculated the exact amount of force required to bring you to solid ground without injuring you or dislocating your shoulder.

You ended up on your knees on the rooftop, gasping, his hand still on your arm, and he was crouched in front of you, and his face was very close, and his expression was—

Terrified.

Not of the height. Not of the fall. Of losing you.

The realization hit you with the force of the ground you'd almost hit: Lilia Vanrouge, who had survived wars and famines and the deaths of everyone he'd ever loved, was afraid of losing you. You—a difficult, contrary, thoroughly unremarkable person who couldn't even accept a cup of tea without making it into a power struggle.

"Lilia—"

"Don't." His voice was rough. Stripped of its usual music. "Don't do that again."

"I didn't mean to—"

"I know. That's what makes it—" He stopped. Closed his eyes. His hand was still on your arm, and you could feel his fingers trembling—actually trembling—and the tremor traveled through your skin and into your bones and settled somewhere in the vicinity of your heart, where it lodged like an arrow. "That's what makes it frightening. The things we don't mean to do. The things we can't control."

He opened his eyes.

They were very close. Too close. Close enough that you could see the faint lines at the corners—signs of smiling, of frowning, of seven hundred years of making expressions that meant things. Close enough that you could see your own reflection in them, small and upside-down and seen.

"I lo—"

You stopped.

The word was right there. Right at the edge of your tongue, ripe and terrible and ready to fall. Three syllables. Eight letters. The shortest sentence in any language and the most dangerous one you'd ever almost spoken.

You didn't say it.

Instead, you did something braver.

You kissed him.

It was not a good kiss. It was clumsy and desperate and tasted like the tea he'd made you that morning—good tea, because he'd been practicing, because he'd been trying to get it right, because of course he had—and your nose bumped his and your teeth clicked against his and it was, by any technical standard, a disaster.

But Lilia made a sound against your mouth. A small, broken, grateful sound, as if you had handed him something he'd stopped believing existed, and his hand moved from your arm to the back of your neck, and he kissed you back with a gentleness that made your eyes sting, because he was holding you like you were the pocket watch—like you were a small music, like you were beauty wound up and released, like you were a reason to believe that time passing was not the same as things ending.

When you pulled apart, you were both breathing hard, and the stars were very bright, and the broken tiles were still skittering over the edge into the dark.

"You—" You couldn't finish. You didn't have words. Your invented language had no word for this. No language did. This was the thing that existed before language, the thing that language had been invented to try and fail to capture.

"I know," Lilia said, and his thumb traced a slow arc across the back of your neck, and you shivered, and he smiled—not the performative smile, not the sad smile, not the teasing smile, but a new one, one you'd never seen before, one that was only for you, one that said I see you and I am not afraid of what I see.

"You still haven't said it," he murmured.

"I don't know how."

"I know." He pressed his forehead to yours. His breath was warm against your lips. "I can wait. I've gotten very good at waiting."

"That's not—" You swallowed. "That's not fair. You can't just—be patient at me. I don't know what to do with patience. I know how to fight. I know how to run. I don't know what to do with someone who just waits."

"Then learn." So simple. So impossibly simple. "I'll teach you. I have time."

"You won't." The words came out before you could stop them, and the grief in them—your grief, your grief, the grief of a person who had just realized that she loved someone who might outlive her by centuries—was so raw that it startled you both. "You have too much time, Lilia. And I don't have enough."

The silence that followed was the loudest thing you'd ever heard.

He pulled back just far enough to look at you, and his expression was the most unguarded you'd ever seen it—every mask removed, every performance abandoned, and what was underneath was not the ancient general or the mischievous fae or the loving guardian but simply Lilia, a person who was afraid and hopeful and heartbroken and brave all at once, in the exact proportions that made up every person who had ever loved something they couldn't keep.

"Then we make the time we have count," he said. "That's all we can do. That's all anyone can do." A pause. His voice dropped to something barely above a whisper. "I've lost people who had centuries ahead of them. Time is not the thing that keeps us safe. Love is the thing that makes the time matter."

You stared at him.

You stared at him, and you thought about all the years he had carried, all the loss he had survived, all the moments he had collected like precious stones in the pocket of a coat that was far too old and far too worn, and you thought about the fact that he had chosen to add you to that collection—not as a grief-to-be, not as a future wound, but as a moment, small and current and alive, a small music in the middle of a battlefield.

"Okay," you said.

"Okay?"

"Okay. I'll learn." You said it like a declaration of war. Like a treaty. Like the most terrifying and the most necessary thing you'd ever said. "But I'm going to be bad at it."

"I know."

"I'm going to be terrible at it. I'm going to push you away and say cruel things and build walls and then get mad at you for not climbing them."

"I know."

"And you're going to have to—" Your voice wavered. "You're going to have to keep waiting. Even when I give you no reason to."

"I will." No hesitation. No conditions. Just I will, as simple and as absolute as gravity.

You kissed him again.

This time it was better. Slower. Less desperate and more deliberate, as if you were learning a new language and the kiss was your first sentence—clumsy but clear, imperfect but true. His hand stayed on the back of your neck. Your hand found the front of his shirt and gripped the fabric like an anchor, and the wind moved across the rooftop and the stars watched and the broken tiles fell and fell and fell into the dark, and none of it mattered because you were kissing Lilia Vanrouge on a rooftop at midnight, and the word you couldn't say was everywhere—in the press of your lips, in the grip of your fingers, in the ragged breathing between kisses—and he heard it even though you didn't speak it, because Lilia Vanrouge had spent seven hundred years learning to listen for the things people couldn't say.

ix. an epilogue, of sorts

Months later—months in which you learned to say thank you for the tea and stay when you wanted to run and I'm scared when the walls started rebuilding themselves—you opened your journal to the first page.

Why.

The word sat there, small and solitary, the way you had written it all that time ago, before Lilia, before the Tuesday, before the rooftop and the broken tiles and the kiss that had been a sentence in a language you were still learning.

You picked up your pen.

Beneath the why, in your invented language—in a code that no one else could read—you wrote a second word. Then a third. Then a fourth. A sentence. A paragraph. A page. Another page.

You wrote about pink hair in late afternoon light. About soup that smelled like a crime and tea that tasted like trying. About a hand on a library table, palm-up, waiting. About the sound he made when you kissed him—small, broken, grateful. About the terror of being known and the greater terror of remaining unknown. About grief, his and yours, and the way it didn't cancel each other out but stacked, creating a shared height from which you could both see further than you could alone.

You wrote about the fact that you still didn't have an answer to why.

But you were beginning to think that the question itself was the answer. That the asking was the point. That the very fact that you could sit in a library or on a rooftop or in a kitchen at 1:47 AM and feel something—pain, longing, fear, joy, all of it, all at once, a cacophony that was indistinguishable from being alive—was the closest thing to a reason you were ever going to get.

You closed the journal.

You went to find him.

He was in the kitchen, as he often was, stirring something that smelled marginally less catastrophic than usual. He looked up when you entered, and the smile he gave you was the one that was only for you—the new one, the real one, the one that was still learning how to exist.

"I made tea," he said.

"I can see that."

"It's good this time. I've been practicing."

"I know you have." You crossed the kitchen. You took the cup from his hand. You set it on the counter. And then—because you were learning, slowly, imperfectly, with all the stumbling grace of a newborn thing—you took his face in your hands and kissed him, soft and sure, the way you'd been practicing too.

When you pulled back, his eyes were bright.

"I love you," you said.

The words came out quiet. Matter-of-fact. As if you were telling him the time or the weather or any other simple, obvious, irrefutable truth. No drama. No grand gesture. Just three syllables, spoken in a kitchen that smelled like slightly-burnt tea, to a fae who had waited seven hundred years to hear something that sounded like that—like a door opening, like a wall coming down, like a small music in the middle of a battlefield.

Lilia Vanrouge looked at you as if you had handed him the world.

"I know," he said, and smiled, and meant it, and the word why—that ancient, relentless, unanswerable word—did not disappear, but it softened, the way a question softens when it stops demanding an answer and starts becoming a prayer.

"Babe?" he calls, voice still rough with sleep as he checks the bathroom, the kitchen. The coffee pot is on, but you're nowhere in sight.

He spots it then, swirling white outside the window.

The world beyond the glass is a blur of snow, fat flakes whipping sideways in a full on snowstorm. And there, halfway down the driveway, is you.

You, in your thick coat, shovel in hand, out in the middle of the snowstorm.

Shoveling.

John freezes at the window for exactly three seconds, processing

"You've got to be kidding me."

He yanks on a hoodie, pulls on his boots without socks, and storms toward the door, muttering under his breath, "She better not have a death wish, because I swear..."

The wind hits him the second he opens the door, icy and vicious, snatching his breath. Snow flies into his face, sticking in his hair and beard. He squints against it and stomps out onto the porch.

"HEY!" he booms over the howl of the wind.

You shovel another heavy line of snow and toss it aside, pretending not to hear him.

He isn't fooled.

"Don't you dare ignore me," he warns, trudging down the steps. Snow is already past his ankles. "What are you doing?"

You finally look up, cheeks flushed from exertion and cold, snowflakes clinging to your lashes. "What's it look like?" you yell back. "I'm shoveling!"

His eyes narrow, that little vein in his forehead starting to show. "You're out here in the middle of a damn snowstorm..."

"It's not a storm," you argue. "It's just… aggressively snowing."

"...shoveling the driveway," he continues as if you didn't speak, "by yourself, at..." he checks his watch "...eight in the morning?"

You shrug, digging the shovel into another drift. "The snow doesn't care what time it is."

John steps off the porch, squinting like the snow personally insulted him. "Where's your hat?"

"In the house."

"Where it does what? Supervise?"

You roll your eyes. "I'm almost done, relax."

He walks closer, boots crunching over the half-cleared driveway. Up close, you can see the way his jaw ticks, the lines between his brows deepening as he takes you in, no hat, no scarf, jacket unzipped, hair dusted in white.

"How long have you been out here?" he asks.

You look away. "Not that long."

"That's not an answer."

You puff out another cloud of breath. "I woke up at six."

"Six?!" His voice goes up a full octave. "You've been out here for two hours?"

"On and off," you protest. "I went inside for coffee."

"Oh, great," he says. "You hydrated with caffeine and came right back out to freeze to death. That's much better."

You grit your teeth, shoveling another path just to prove a point. "I'm not freezing to death. I'm fine. I've done this a hundred times."

"Yeah, before you lived with a six-foot-something human snowplow," he snaps, jabbing a thumb at his chest. "You were supposed to wake me up."

"I didn't want to bother you," you shoot back.

He stares at you like you've spoken another language. "Bother me? By letting me shovel my own damn driveway?"

You grip the handle a little tighter. "I always do it myself. It's not a big deal."

"It is when you're out here half dressed, in a storm, for two hours," he says. His brows pinch together, his voice dropping into that low, irritated concern he gets when you do something he interprets as a direct attack on his blood pressure. "You're gonna get sick."

You snort. "That's not how that works, John."

"I don't care if it's scientifically accurate," he mutters. "You're coming inside."

You shove another pile out of the way. "I told you, I'm almost done..."

"Yeah?" He takes another step closer, looming now, arms crossed over his chest. "Define 'almost.'"

You gesture vaguely down the driveway. "I just have… that part. And then the sidewalk. And maybe the steps."

He follows your hand and sees the untouched half of the driveway, the snow still coming down, already starting to fill in what you've cleared. His eye twitches.

"We're gonna lose this battle," he says flatly. "The snow is winning. Get inside."

"John..."

"Nope." He shakes his head, decisive. "We're not arguing. You're cold."

"I'm not cold," you lie immediately, even as your teeth threaten to chatter.

He gives you a slow, disbelieving once-over. "Your nose is literally the color of a stop sign."

You lift your free hand, covering your nose self consciously. "It's fine."

John sighs, the long, put-upon sound of a man who knows he's about to do something dramatic. "I tried the reasonable approach," he mutters. "I really did."

You narrow your eyes. "What does that mean?"

"It means," he says, closing the space between you in three strides, "you brought this on yourself."

"John, don't..."

You don't even get to finish the sentence before he plucks the shovel straight out of your hands like you're a toddler holding a plastic toy, jams it point-first into the snowbank beside you, and then, before your brain can catch up, he bends, grips the back of your thighs, and hauls you over his shoulder.

You yelp, the world tipping upside down with a rush of blood to your head.

"John!" you squeal, muffled by his back. "Put me down!"

"Not a chance, sweetheart," he grunts, adjusting you like you weigh nothing. One arm hooks around the back of your knees, the other bracing your waist. "You had your shot. Now it's my turn."

You smack at his back with your gloved hands. "I am an independent adult!"

"Uh-huh." He starts marching toward the house, boots crunching over the snow. "An independent adult with no hat, no scarf, and a death wish."

The wind hits your exposed legs and you hiss. "It's not a death wish, it's called being productive!"

"It's called frostbite waiting to happen!"

"You're being dramatic," you grumble, though your voice wobbles a little because you are upside down and also very aware that the neighborhood can probably see this.

He snorts. "Says the woman shoveling like she's fighting the final boss of winter."

You squirm, trying to twist and see where you're going, but all you get is a view of the half cleared driveway and your shovel, abandoned and sticking out of the snow like a sad little flag of surrender.

"John, seriously," you protest. "I'm going to fall."

"I've got you," he says, and he says it so easily, so confidently, that something in your chest squeezes. "I'm not dropping you. Relax."

Your fingers curl in the back of his shirt at the solid warmth of him under your gloves. His shoulder digs into your stomach, but he keeps a hand splayed steady against your back, protective even while he's lecturing you.

"You do realize," you mutter, "this is completely unnecessary."

"You being out there alone for two hours is unnecessary," he shoots back. "This is a proportionate response."

"You kidnapped me from my own driveway."

"Correction, I rescued you from your terrible decision making."

"You are unbelievable."

"And you are stubborn." He huffs a breath, the sound vibrating through his back. "We're a fun pair."

He tromps up the steps, shouldering the front door open. Warmth spills out, along with the faint smell of coffee you'd left on the counter. He steps inside and uses his heel to kick the door shut behind him.

The sudden change in temperature makes you shiver. You hadn't realized how cold you really were until now.

"See?" he says, like he can feel it. "Freezing. I knew it."

"I am not freezing," you argue weakly, even as your body goes from numb to pins and needles in seconds.

"You're arguing while upside down," he says. "That's how I know you're lying."

"You started this!"

He chuckles, finally slowing. "Sit tight. We're almost there."

"Where is 'there' exactly?" you demand.

"Couch. Blankets. Possibly a lecture," he says. "We'll see how cooperative you are."

He bends and, with surprising gentleness, lowers you until your feet find the floor. Your knees wobble, the room tilting for a second after hanging upside down. You grab his forearms to steady yourself, fingers clutching at warm muscle, and he catches you around the waist automatically.

You're suddenly very close. His cheeks are pink from the cold, a few snowflakes melting in his hair. His eyes sweep over your face, checking you, like he's cataloguing each little detail, the red tip of your nose, the flushed skin, the way your hands are shaking slightly where they rest on him.

"Hey," he says softly, the irritation blunted now by concern. "You okay?"

You swallow. "Yeah. Just… dizzy."

"That's what happens when you play shovel warrior for two hours," he says, but it comes out quieter, his thumb brushing absentmindedly along your side where his hand rests. "Come on."

He steers you toward the living room, one arm secure around your shoulders. You let him guide you, mostly because your legs are still protesting and partially because his body heat feels really, really good.

"Sit," he orders, nudging you down onto the couch.

You drop onto the cushions with a sigh, the couch swallowing you. John snags the throw blanket from the back and shakes it out, the fabric fluttering over you in a warm cloud before he tucks it around your shoulders like he's wrapping a burrito.

You wiggle your hands free. "I can do that myself, you know."

"Yeah," he says, stepping back to look you over with his hands on his hips. "I know you can. That's half the problem."

You blink. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He lets out another long breath, the last of his irritation settling into something more like exasperated affection. "It means you're so used to doing everything yourself, you don't even think to ask me."

You pull the blanket tighter around you, suddenly a little defensive. "I didn't want to wake you up. You were actually sleeping for once. I can handle snow."

"I know you can handle it," he says. "You can handle just about anything. Doesn't mean you have to."

You look away, picking at the edge of the blanket. "I'm not… used to asking people for help."

"Yeah." His voice softens, like he gets it. Like he's seen it a hundred times already. "I've noticed."

You shrug one shoulder. "I don't want to be a burden."

John's quiet for a beat. When you finally meet his eyes again, there's no annoyance there, just something steady and warm.

"Hey," he says, and you hate how much you like the way he says that, like it's a subtle way of saying hey, look at me. "You're my girlfriend. You're not a burden. You're… my responsibility."

Your brows shoot up. "Oh, I'm your responsibility now?"

The corner of his mouth twitches. "Yeah. In the sense that I am absolutely responsible for making sure you don't do dumb things like reenacting a polar expedition at dawn."

You snort. "It was hardly a polar expedition."

"You were one frostbite away from starring in a cautionary tale," he insists. Then his expression turns more sincere. "Let me help, okay? That's what I'm here for."

You shift under his gaze, suddenly feeling a little raw in a way that has nothing to do with the cold. "I'm trying," you admit quietly. "It's just… new."

He nods, like he understands that more than you said. "We'll take it slow. Step one, when it's aggressively snowing..." he gives you a pointed look "you wake me up. Deal?"

You chew your lip, considering. "And what if I wake you up and you're grumpy?"

"I'm already grumpy," he deadpans. "Might as well put it to good use."

You snort, the sound turning into a reluctant laugh. "Fine. Deal."

He grins, the tension finally easing from his shoulders. "Good. Now, I'm gonna make you some hot chocolate so your insides remember what warmth feels like."

"I can make my own..."

His eyes narrow.

You catch yourself. "I… can sit here and… let you make it."

"There you go," he says, satisfied. "Character development."

You roll your eyes but sink back into the cushions anyway, blanket cocooned around you. As he turns toward the kitchen, you hear him muttering under his breath about you being "a menace" and "too stubborn for your own good," but his tone is fond.

You close your eyes for a second, letting the heat seep into your fingers. The house is quiet except for the low rumble of John in the kitchen, cabinets opening and closing, the clink of mugs. The contrast to the howling wind outside makes the living room feel extra cozy.

A moment later he's back, juggling two steaming mugs. He sets one on the coffee table and hands you the other, careful to angle the handle toward you.

"Careful," he warns. "It's hot."

You take it, your gloved fingers fumbling. He clicks his tongue and gently tugs the gloves off one hand, then the other, stuffing them into his pocket.

"Hands," he says. "You can't warm up with snow gloves on."

"You're very bossy today," you murmur, curling your bare fingers around the mug. The warmth sinks in immediately, making you sigh.

"I'm bossy every day," he points out, dropping down onto the couch next to you. The seat dips, your shoulder brushing his. "You just usually argue harder."

"I'm conserving energy," you say. "I was out there battling nature."

He gives you a side eye. "I know. I watched you for a full minute before I came out. You looked like you were about to declare war on the driveway."

You puff a laugh, taking a careful sip. It's rich and warm and way too sweet, and you know he added extra marshmallows just because he knows you like it that way.

"You know," you say after a moment, staring into your mug, "you could've just… taken the shovel and helped."

"I was going to," he says. "Then you said you weren't done yet in that tone."

"What tone?" you ask, offended.

He mimics you in a high, dramatic voice. "'I'm not finished yet.'"

You gape. "That is not what I sound like."

"That is exactly what you sound like when you're about to push yourself too far," he counters. "And I knew if I just took the shovel, you'd try to wrestle it back."

You open your mouth, then close it. "…Okay, yeah, maybe."

"So," he says, smug, "over the shoulder was the safest option for both of us."

You stare at him. "Safest?"

"Yeah. That way you couldn't slip on the ice, and I got to be the hero," he says, grin widening. "Win-win."

You roll your eyes so hard it almost hurts. "You just wanted an excuse to show off."

"I don't need an excuse to show off," he replies instantly. "But I do appreciate one when it presents itself."

You elbow his side, earning a soft oof. "You're insufferable."

"You love me."

You make a face, but your heart does a little flip anyway. "…Unfortunately."

He chuckles, draping an arm along the back of the couch behind you. After a second, you lean into him, letting your shoulder press against his chest. He immediately takes advantage, tugging you closer until you're tucked against his side, blanket spread over both of you now.

"You know," he says quietly, lips brushing your hair, "you don't have to prove anything to me."

"I wasn't," you argue automatically, even as the words land a little too true.

He hums, not calling you out, just… there. Solid. Warm. Gentle in a way that constantly surprises you, considering how tough he can be with the rest of the world.

"I like that you're independent," he adds. "I love that you can handle yourself. Just… let me handle some things too, yeah?"

You play with the edge of the blanket, thinking. Letting someone else handle things, handle you, still feels weird. Vulnerable. But the way he'd marched out into the snow without even a coat, just because you weren't in bed where he left you, makes something tender unfurl in your chest.

"Okay," you say softly. "I'll… try. No promises."

He smiles against your hair. "I'll take 'try.' And next time you wanna shovel, you wake me up and we'll do it together. Or, wild idea, we wait until it stops snowing."

You sniff. "Where's the fun in that?"

"Fun?" He pulls back to look at you. "You and I have very different definitions of fun."

You tilt your head, lips quirking. "You didn't have fun carrying me inside?"

His eyes spark with mischief. "Oh, I had fun with that part, for sure."

You swat at him, laughing. He catches your wrist easily, bringing your knuckles to his lips, his gaze softening.

"Seriously, though," he says, a little quieter, a little more serious. "Next time… don't make me come out and fish you out of a snowdrift, okay?"

You feel your cheeks warm, and it has nothing to do with the hot chocolate. "Next time," you promise, "I'll wake you up. You can be my very grumpy snowplow."

He grins. "That's all I ask."

You take another sip of hot chocolate, then nestle back into his side, listening to the wind howl uselessly against the windows. Outside, the driveway is being swallowed by snow again, but you find you don't really care.

For once, it's not your job to fix it. Not alone, anyway.

You've got your own overprotective, infuriating, wonderful human snowplow for that.

"Yeah, ready when you are," Keeho replied, glancing down at your bare shoulders. He paused, a slight frown tugging at the edge of his smile. "Are you going to put on a jacket?"

You looked at him for a second, tilting your head. "Are you going to wear a baseball cap?"

Keeho blinked, caught off guard. "No...?" he answered, looking thoroughly confused by the sudden question.

You nodded in satisfaction, as if that settled the matter completely. "Then I’m not wearing a jacket. It’d completely ruin the fit."

Keeho chuckled and pulled out his phone, quickly tapping open his weather app. He held the screen out toward you, pointing at the temperature drop scheduled for later that night. "It's going to dip down pretty low, you know. You might get cold."

You just shook your head, ignoring the screen entirely. Without another word, you turned on your heel, grabbed your bag, and opened the front door, stepping out into the hallway with absolute confidence. Keeho sighed playfully, shaking his head as he followed you out.

Dinner was fantastic, filled with good food and endless laughter across the table. But by the time you both left the cozy restaurant, the night air had turned distinctly crisp. As you walked down the sidewalk together, you subconsciously crossed your arms tightly over your chest, trying to block the breeze.

Keeho glanced over, his sharp eyes sweeping down your form for a second. "Are you okay?" he asked, keeping his tone light.

"Yeah, I'm fine," you nodded quietly, keeping your eyes trained on the pavement ahead.

Unfortunately for you, the tremor in your voice gave you away, and a sudden shiver ran visibly through your shoulders. Keeho raised an eyebrow, stopping in his tracks. He shook his head in utter disbelief, a fond yet teasing look in his eyes.

"Come here," he muttered softly. Unzipping his heavy jacket, he slid it off his arms and draped it gently over your shoulders, wrapping the warm fabric around you.

"Keeho, no," you started to protest, holding the lapels of his jacket in your hands. "It's fine, really—"

"Nope," Keeho interrupted firmly, cutting off your excuse with a gentle nudge. "Only a smile works with that outfit."

You stared at him for a moment, the cool air making your cheeks flush pink, before you finally let out a soft sigh. Slipping your arms into the oversized sleeves, you wrapped the warm jacket tightly around yourself. The scent of his perfume immediately enveloped you, instantly cutting through the chill.

"Fine," you laughed softly, looking up at him with a warm, genuine grin. "Thank you."

Keeho smiled, clearly pleased with himself, and wrapped an arm around your shoulders, pulling you close against his side as you continued walking down the street.

Theo

Theo leaned against a wall, checking his phone as he waited outside your house for your date night. Hearing the front door click open, he looked up and immediately froze. His eyes swept up and down your frame, taking in every detail of your outfit.

"Damn," he said, a slow smirk spreading across his face. "You look pretty hot."

A faint blush warmed your cheeks, and you tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. "Aw stop it you"

"I mean, you definitely look hot, but the weather out here isn't," he retorted, tilting his head toward the open doorway behind you. "You might want to grab a jacket."

You glanced down at your arms and shook your head, waving off his concern. "I'll be fine. I don't need one."

Theo raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms over his chest. "You're going to get cold, ask me for my jacket, and then I'm going to be the one freezing."

You gasped, placing a hand over your heart in dramatic offense. "Liar! I am not going to ask for your stupid jacket, and I'm definitely not getting cold."

He let out a short huff, a mischievous glint in his eye as he accepted the challenge. "If you say so. Let's go."

The two of you headed into the city center, enjoying a great dinner together as the evening flew by. However, as soon as the sun dipped below the skyline, the temperature dropped drastically, and your initial confidence quickly began to melt away.

Walking down the bustling sidewalk, you instinctively wrapped both hands around Theo's forearm, snuggling up as close as possible to absorb any stray warmth from his thick sleeve.

Theo glanced down at you, catching your subtle move instantly. "What are you doing?"

"Just cuddling," you replied smoothly, offering him a sweet grin. "Because I love you."

He chuckled softly, his dark eyes sparkling. "Are you cold?"

"No," you answered without a second of hesitation.

You kept walking, but a sudden, sharp breeze swept through the street, sending a violent shiver right through your body. Instantly, you pressed yourself even tighter against his arm.

"Okay, you're officially cutting off my blood circulation now," Theo pointed out, though he didn't actually pull away.

"Sorry," you murmured, but you refused to let go.

Theo glanced down at your bare arm and caught sight of the obvious goosebumps stippling your skin. A wicked idea clicked in his head, and he decided to push you to your absolute limit.

"You know," he started casually, "the weather is so nice right now. We should head down to the Han River and go for a little walk by the water."

Panic shot through you. The riverfront at night was notoriously freezing. You quickly faked a wide, dramatic yawn, rubbing your eye with your free hand. "Oh, wow... I'm actually getting kind of tired. Maybe we should just head back?"

Theo nodded slowly, playing along. "Sure, we can walk home."

You ground your teeth together, realizing that walking all the way back meant enduring another twenty minutes in the icy wind. "No," you gritted out.

"Why not?" he asked, his voice dripping with provocative amusement.

Not wanting to admit defeat, you remained silent and just glared at him fiercely. Theo chuckled, bending down slightly and cupping a hand over his ear, leaning in close to your face. "I'm listening..."

"I'm cold," you murmured under your breath.

"What was that? I couldn't hear you," he teased, nudging you with his elbow. "Say it louder."

You groaned loudly, throwing your head back in utter frustration. "I'm cold! Fine, I'm freezing!"

Theo burst out into a loud laugh of pure triumph. Shaking his head, he unzipped his heavy jacket, slid it off, and wrapped it securely around your shoulders.

"'I won't get cold and ask for your stupid jacket,' my ass," he repeated, throwing your earlier words right back at you. Still, his hands were gentle as he rubbed your arms through the thick fabric to help restore your body heat.

"I hate you," you grumbled, burying your nose into the cozy collar. "But thanks for the jacket."

Theo smiled, leaning down to press a soft kiss against the top of your head. "You're welcome. Now come here—I'm calling us an Uber."

Jiung

Jiung stood in the middle of your apartment, leaning against the back of the sofa with his arms crossed over his chest. "Put on a jacket," he said, his tone leaving zero room for debate.

"Jiung, no," you insisted, smoothing down your outfit as you stood in front of the mirror. "A heavy jacket completely ruins the aesthetic of this top. It just doesn't work."

"You know what else won't be working? You, tomorrow morning, when you catch a cold," Jiung countered smoothly, stepping closer.

You rolled your eyes at his exaggerated warning. "You are being so dramatic right now."

In response, Jiung pulled out his phone, unlocked it, and held the screen right in front of your face. "Look at the weather app. Drop in temperature, high wind speed. This is scientific proof that you are going to freeze out there."

You casually brushed his hand away. "Please, meteorologists are just making educated guesses anyway. It’s fine."

Jiung stared at you in utter shock, his lips parted as if you had just insulted the entire scientific community. He opened his mouth to launch into a full debate, but before he could speak, you threw your hands up. "Can we please stop with the physics lecture? I'm starving, let's just go."

He gave you one last, long glance, letting out a heavy sigh before shoving his phone into his pocket. "Fine. But remember this moment."

When you arrived at the food spot you had chosen, the inside tables were completely packed. The only available seating was on the outdoor patio. At first, it wasn't too bad, but as you were both enjoying your food, a sudden breeze blew through the outdoor dining area. The temperature dipped rapidly, and a wave of goosebumps instantly broke out across your bare arms.

You tried to subtly rub your arms warm, your eyes drifting over to the brand-new, thick jacket Jiung was wearing. It looked ridiculously cozy. Clearing your throat, you took a small bite of your meal. "You know, this top is actually way thinner than I thought it was."

Jiung didn't even look up from his plate. "It's made of sheer mesh. Of course it's thin."

You pouted, crossing your arms tightly under the table while Jiung calmly continued eating. Scanning your surroundings for a distraction, your eyes landed on a couple sitting a few tables over. The boyfriend was gallantly taking off his jacket and wrapping it around his girlfriend's shoulders.

"Aw, look at them," you said loudly, nodding toward the couple. "That's so cute."

Jiung glanced over for a split second before returning to his food. "I bet he told her to bring a jacket three times before they left the house, and she wouldn't listen either."

You let out a small sniffle from the chill, turning your head away. When Jiung looked back up at your face, you quickly plastered on a bright, innocent smile, acting as if nothing was wrong.

He narrowed his eyes, but kept eating. A few minutes passed in silence until another cool gust hit the patio, and you sniffed again—louder this time.

Clack.

Jiung dropped his fork onto his plate. He looked you dead in the eyes for three agonizing seconds, his face completely unreadable. Then, standing up abruptly, he aggressively unzipped his brand-new jacket, tore it off his shoulders, and marched around the table to drape it heavily over you.

"Thank you, Jiung, you're so sweet," you offered, tucking your arms into the warm sleeves.

"Shut up," he growled softly, though there was no real bite to his voice.

He sat back down across from you, grabbing his fork again with a sharp exhaled breath. Looking across the table at his brooding expression, you smiled and extended your hand across the wood. Jiung looked at your hand, shook his head in resignation, and took it, squeezing your fingers lightly before returning to his meal.

Intak

You shifted your weight from one foot to the other, the thin straps of your heels digging into your toes as you stood in the endless line winding down the block. Wearing nothing but a sleek, short dress, the nighttime chill was already creeping into your skin, but you tried your best to hide it.

"Ugh, this line is absurd," you groaned, craning your neck to see the massive crowd ahead. You nudged Intak’s arm with your shoulder. "You’re an idol! Can’t you just walk up to the bouncer and pull the celebrity card so we can skip all this?"

Intak let out a soft laugh, turning his head to look at you. "Babe, I'm an idol, but I'm not Jungkook or Jackson Wang. We wait like everyone else."

You rolled your eyes, but as another cool breeze swept through the alleyway, you couldn't stop the restless fidgeting, constantly shifting on your feet to keep your blood moving.

Intak’s sharp eyes caught every little movement. "Are you cold?" he asked, taking a step closer.

"No," you lied instantly, shaking your head. "I just hate waiting. You know I have zero patience for long lines."

"I told you to bring a jacket before we left," Intak argued, raising his eyebrows. "It's the weekend. The clubs are always packed, and I knew we’d be standing out here for a while."

"And like I told you before," you shot back, crossing your arms firmly, "if I bring a jacket, I have to carry it around all night. Then I'll get all sweaty underneath it while dancing, and it completely ruins the whole outfit. It's not worth it."

Intak stared at you, genuinely amused by your logic. "That is the most ridiculous reason I have ever heard in my life."

"Well, I don't want to hear it," you grumbled, turning your back toward the entrance to block out his teasing smile.

You both stood in silence for a few more minutes, until the voices of two girls chatting directly ahead of you drifted over.

"—yeah, last time we came here on a Saturday, we literally waited two hours in line before we finally got through the doors," one girl said to her friend.

Your jaw dropped. Two hours? You stared at the back of her head in sheer disbelief, and without even realizing it, your hands came up to frantically rub down your bare arms to chase away the sudden wave of shivering.

Intak tilted his head, watching your desperate attempt to generate friction heat. "You are being so stupid right now."

Before you could snap back at him with a sharp retort, Intak reached down, unzipped his heavy black outerwear, and smoothly slid it off his shoulders. But instead of standing there in a t-shirt, he revealed a second, slightly lighter bomber jacket zipped up underneath it.

You blinked, utterly bewildered by what you were looking at. "Wait... why are you wearing two jackets?"

Intak offered a satisfied, arrogant grin as he held the outer jacket open for you. "Because I know you. I always wear two jackets in case you pretend you're fine and end up freezing." He nudged the heavy fabric toward you. "Now, just take it and say thank you."

Defeated by the bitter cold, you didn't argue. You quickly grabbed the jacket, slipping your arms into the oversized sleeves and wrapping the warm, insulated interior tightly around your chest. The residual warmth from his body instantly seeped into your skin, and you let out an involuntary sigh of pure relief. It felt heavenly.

Intak smiled contently, watching your instant mood flip. He stepped up beside you, wrapping one strong arm around your jacket-swaddled shoulders, and pulled you close against his side. Leaning down, he pressed a warm kiss right against your cheek.

"Feel better now, my little drama queen?" he whispered with a laugh.

Soul

Soul proudly smoothed down the front of his brand-new jacket, practically beaming as he stood in the center of the room. The fabric was a wild, chaotic burst of bright neon colors, abstract shapes, and overlapping patterns that practically screamed for attention from a mile away.

You eyed him up and down, letting out a soft chuckle as you shook your head. "You are completely crazy for actually wearing something like that out in public."

Soul stood taller, puffing out his chest with an unmistakable look of pride on his face. "It’s not crazy, it’s fashion," he declared smoothly, before his gaze drifted down to your outfit. "Wait, are you really not putting a jacket on?"

You shrugged, casually checking your phone. "We're only going for a short walk outside. I really don't need one."

Soul glanced down at his wrist, checking his watch with a serious expression. "The sun is going to go down in a few minutes, and it's going to get cold."

You rolled your eyes, scoffing at his overly dramatic tone. "Great, now you sound just like Jiung."

Refusing to listen, you led the way out the door. But just as Soul had predicted, as soon as you stepped outside, the sun began to dip below the horizon and the temperature plummeted. Within minutes, a chilly breeze swept through the air, and you instinctively crossed your arms tightly over your chest.

Soul, on the other hand, was completely unbothered. He took a deep breath, admiring the evening. "Ah, the air feels so nice out here! And look at how pretty the sky is."

"Yeah, super pretty," you agreed quickly, nodding while subtly rubbing your upper arms to generate some warmth.

Soul turned around, his sharp eyes catching the movement. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," you assured him, plastering on a quick smile.

A few moments later, Soul suddenly stopped on the sidewalk and pulled out his phone. He aimed the camera up at the sunset, carefully adjusting his position to get a shot of the sky. He took his sweet time, tapping the screen, switching filters, and stepping side to side. Every second spent standing still made the cold feel ten times worse, and your patience quickly wore thin.

"Are you finally done?" you asked, your voice laced with obvious irritation.

"I'm trying to get a better angle," Soul replied casually, not even looking away from his screen.

"It's just a stupid sky," you blurted out, crossing your arms even tighter.

Soul lowered his phone, turning around to face you with a raised eyebrow. "Why are you in such a rush all of a sudden?"

You just shrugged, keeping your lips pressed shut so he wouldn't hear your teeth chattering.

A knowing smirk slowly spread across Soul's face. He closed the distance between you, taking a step closer to tease you. "Wait... are you cold?"

"No, I'm not cold," you snapped back, trying to stand tall and fight it off.

Soul tilted his head, looking down at you with a completely dry, deadpan expression. He gestured casually toward your chest. "Your nipples are so hard I could literally hang a shirt onto them."

Your jaw dropped. You looked down at yourself, instantly flushing bright red, before rolling your eyes in utter defeat. "Okay, fine! You're right, I'm freezing! Can we please just hurry up so we can go back home?"

Soul let out a loud laugh of pure triumph, thoroughly enjoying his victory. "Go home? Nah, I have an even better idea."

Before you could ask what he meant, Soul unzipped his loud, chaotic jacket, slid it off his arms, and draped it heavily over your shivering shoulders. The sudden blast of trapped body heat made you let out a soft sigh of relief.

Before you could even thank him, Soul backed up a few steps, whipped out his phone, and began dramatically snapping photos of you in the oversized, neon-patterned jacket.

"Yes! Look at that!" Soul cheered, directing you like a fashion model. "Honestly, you look way better in it than I do!"

You just offered him a tired, amused smile, pulling the bright jacket tight around yourself as he continued taking photos all the way down the block.

Jongseob

The quiet hum of the elevator filled the small space as the numbers ticked down toward the lobby. Jongseob leaned back against the handrail, his hands tucked casually into his pockets as his eyes drifted over to you.

"You're going to regret not bringing a jacket," he stated plainly.

You shook your head, stepping up to the small wall mirror to make a quick adjustment to your hair. "I won't. Look at this outfit—a bulky jacket would completely ruin the entire look."

Jongseob tilted his head slightly, his expression entirely unbothered as he repeated himself with calm certainty. "You'll regret it."

"Can you please stop saying that?" you asked, turning back to him with a gentle laugh. "Let's just go and enjoy our evening, okay?"

He just offered a faint, amused smile as the elevator doors slid open.

The two of you stepped out into the night and made your way toward a lively street food market. The air was filled with delicious smells, bright lights, and the hum of chatter, but it was also noticeably chilly. You made a bee-line for a drink stall and bought a hot cup of coffee. The second your fingers wrapped around the paper cup, you realized just how freezing your hands actually were. The deep, comforting warmth radiating into your palms felt like heaven.

You stood there for several minutes, simply holding the cup with both hands and soaking in the heat, making no effort to actually drink it.

Jongseob paused beside you, watching you stare blankly down at the paper cup. "Are you actually going to drink that, or just stare at it?"

"I'm drinking it!" you claimed quickly, clutching it tighter. "It's just... still a little too warm right now."

He raised an eyebrow. "It's hot coffee. That's usually how it works."

You rolled your eyes at his deadpan response, but to save face, you took a tiny, careful sip.

As the two of you continued walking down the row of street food stands, you stubbornly refused to let go of the cup, using it as your sole source of heat against the dropping temperature. You kept both hands wrapped tightly around the cardboard sleeve, keeping it pressed close to your chest.

Jongseob glanced over at the colorful food stalls, then down at your hands. "Aren't you hungry? All you've had so far is that coffee."

"No, I'm totally fine," you lied, offering a quick smile.

Before you could change the subject, a sudden gust of wind swept through the market aisle. Your shoulders hitched, and Jongseob's sharp eyes immediately caught the telltale reddish tint at the tip of your nose, followed by a slight snip.

He stopped walking. Slowly stepping closer, he leaned down slightly, looking right into your eyes. "Are you cold?" he asked, his voice dropping into a soft, deep register that made your heart skip a beat.

You swallowed heavily, trying to keep your chin up. "I'm fine, really."

"Here," Jongseob said smoothly, reaching out his hand. "Let me hold your coffee for a second so you can grab some food."

"No! Please don't!" you blurted out instantly, pulling the hot cup back toward your chest like a lifeline.

Jongseob tilted his head, a knowing, victorious smirk slowly spreading across his lips.

You let out a long, defeated sigh, finally dropping your shoulders. "Okay, fine... I'm cold."

He let out a low chuckle, shaking his head. "Why didn't you just say so?"

Without another word, Jongseob unzipped his jacket, slid his arms out, and draped the warm, heavy fabric gently over your shoulders. The sudden wave of trapped warmth immediately cut through the chill, and you instinctively pulled the lapels tight around yourself.

You glanced up at him through your lashes as he smoothed the jacket down your arms. "Aren't you going to say 'I told you so'?"

Jongseob gave you a playful wink, wrapping an arm around your swaddled waist to pull you close. "Nope. I'm saving that for later."

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@dreamerliya

@jiungs-wednesdaygirl

@alienslostinworld

@cheezeit-k

@halaziasupremacy

You sat on the edge of the seat beside him, your legs pulled up to your chest, watching as he reloaded his guns with precision born of routine. Boothill didn’t look at you—he rarely did when the job was done and the silence crept in—but his voice still filled the space.

“Didn’t I tell ya not to jump in like that?”

You looked down, your hands tightening around the seams of your jacket. “You were getting overwhelmed. I wasn’t gonna run.”

His eyes finally flicked toward you. “Running ain’t cowardice, kid. It’s survival. You run so you can shoot another day. I ain’t trying to bury another body.”

“But there’s no one left to bury me,” you whispered. “If you go, there’s nothing else. So if you’re riding into Hell, I’m coming with you.”

Boothill’s jaw tightened. He muttered something about “darn stubborn kids” under his breath, stood, and pulled his red scarf off his neck. Without a word, he draped it around your shoulders and gave your head a ruffle.

“Then you ride behind me. Never in front. Got it?”

You nodded.

He didn’t smile, but the way he holstered his gun told you he’d accepted it. Maybe not happily—but fully.

The Coreflame of Strife burned somewhere in the heart of the world, and Mydei was chasing it with the tenacity of a man who had died and come back too many times.

And you were right behind him.

“Turn back,” he said again, standing in the shallow basin of some lost battlefield, the scent of ash still clinging to the rocks. “Your blood isn’t meant for this war.”

“I don’t have anything left to go back to, Mydei,” you said, voice shaking from exhaustion but not fear. “And I’m not letting you go out there alone. Not when you’re the only person who ever gave a damn.”

His eyes narrowed, glowing faintly in the rising dusk. He could’ve left you behind. He’d done it before to others.

But he never spoke those names aloud like he did yours.

“You follow me into Hell,” he said, “you might never find your way back out.”

“I’d rather burn with you than run by myself forever.”

For a moment, silence ruled. Then Mydei unclasped his cape and swung it around your shoulders, golden edges trailing in the breeze. He touched the side of your face, firm, like a vow.

“Then we burn together, Guardian’s oath.”

Blade wasn’t a man anymore. He was a weapon shattered a thousand times and reforged to cut through everything, even his own past.

And you—somehow—chose to walk beside that.

He sat silently sharpening his cracked sword in a dim corridor of the Stellaron Hunters' hideout. You sat cross-legged across from him, arms bandaged, not from battle, but from your desperate grip on staying close to him.

“You think following me will fix you?” Blade asked coldly, not looking up.

“No,” you said, unwavering. “But being left behind will kill me faster.”

Blade’s eyes lifted, red and seething with memories. “You don’t understand. I don’t want salvation. I want the end.”

“I don’t care. I just… I don’t want to lose someone else.”

Blade’s lips pressed into a line. He remembered what it felt like to carry loss in every breath. And he knew that kind of grief, once born, never died.

“You’ll break,” he warned.

You shrugged. “Then break me. At least I’ll still be with you.”

For the first time in what felt like lifetimes, Blade offered something other than pain—his sword. He laid it between you.

“Then hold this with me. Not as a warrior. As someone who remembers.”

You reached out, fingers brushing the hilt. His hand covered yours.

For the moment, broken things stood together.

The Sweet Dream Special was silent except for the clink of glass and the soft hum of machinery. Gallagher mixed drinks with the same care he gave to his sidearm—silent, precise, distant.

You leaned on the bar, watching him.

“You gonna tell me to run again?”

He didn’t answer. He poured a shot and set it in front of you—[your favourite drink]. You blinked.

“I know what it’s like,” Gallagher finally said, eyes never meeting yours. “To have nowhere else. To want to follow someone just so you’re not alone. I did that once.”

“What happened?”

“I lived.”

He leaned forward, voice low and full of memory. “It’s not the worst thing. But it is the hardest.”

You clenched your fists. “I don’t want to live without you.”

Gallagher’s eyes softened. “Kid… I’m not a hero. I’m just tired. And if you follow me, all you’ll find is regret.”

“Then I’ll carry it with you.”

A long pause. Then, he reached into his coat and took out a spare flask. He placed it gently in front of you.

“Then at least learn how to mix something worth dying for.”

He turned away, but his voice lingered.

“You stay behind me, yeah? If someone’s gonna fall, it’ll be me first.”