T.T

You tell yourself that silence is just another kind of music.

The Rose Main Reading Room hums beneath its painted heavens, the fluorescents purring while the steady rustle of paper makes a weather of its own. Long tables shine with the soft fatigue of evening. You sit inside your lamp’s small island of gold, surrounded by acid-free boxes and foam cradles, and the old leather smell that books exhale after centuries of careful touch. Crusader-era manuscripts lay around you: a psalter whose spine looks like a healed wound, a fragment that keeps losing the same corner to time. Your pencil ticks against the edge of a catalogue card, a metronome for the work of naming what remains.

“Still here?” a passing guard murmurs, half-amused.

“Two more folios,” you whisper back, because quiet is a courtesy and a creed here.

You are cataloguing foliation and hand, measuring stitching, noting small miracles—a bird’s footnote scrawled by a monk, a thumbprint trapped in varnish, the way a word breaks mid-syllable as if the scribe was called to prayer and never quite returned to the same sentence. The work makes your shoulders ache in a way you welcome. There is comfort in the task of placing each thing in its lineage, of admitting it into a record that will outlive you.

When you look up, you are not alone.

A man stands two shelves away, where the shadows make a narrow valley. He is not pretending to browse. His eyes are on you—not rude, not hungry, not even curious, exactly; intent, as if measuring something only he can see. Dark coat, quiet hands, the posture of someone who has learned how not to take up space. He does not look like a researcher. He does not have a phone out. He watches you as if he has been waiting for you to lift your head.

You tell yourself it is harmless. People stare at readers all the time here—tourists hushed by the cathedral feel of the room, donors trying to fall in love with the idea of preservation, the occasional poet searching for a face to belong to a line. You lower your eyes and keep working. You do not notice your breath has shortened by a line or two.

You finish a note and rise to return a box to the cart for the vault. The room’s silence shifts around your movement. As you pass, something small strikes the parquet with a sound like a coin surrendering: a locket, iron-dark and oval, has slipped from the stranger’s pocket. It falls so near your foot that the briefest breeze of it brushes your ankle.

It springs open.

Inside lies a white lily, pressed flat, petals unfrayed, veins like the finest watermark. You expect dust; there is none. You expect the papery smell of old herbarium, and instead, a whisper of green and sweetness rises, distinct as if a florist had just broken a stem in the next aisle. Your chest tightens with a sudden, inexplicable ache. A thought crosses—ridiculous, out of nowhere—that you have seen this flower before, not as an object, but as an event. You steady your hand on the cart’s handle and do not move.

He is already bending, but you are quicker. You reach down and, without quite knowing why, pinch the locket shut before your fingers meet the petals. Cool metal meets your skin. The ache eases and then returns in the same second, like stepping in and out of sunlight.

“You dropped this,” you say, the line between habit and kindness thin in places like this.

His eyes lift to yours. Up close, they look dark the way wells look dark, because what they are holding is too deep to see. He takes the locket from your palm carefully. His fingers do not brush yours, yet somehow you feel the nearness of them like a small, retained heat.

“Thank you,” he says, voice soft enough not to disturb the quiet.

“It’s beautiful,” you hear yourself add, surprised by your own honesty. “Old?”

He studies the oval in his hand, as if confirming that it still exists. “Older than I am,” he answers, and a ghost of a smile almost happens before it isn’t allowed to.

You nod, already turning back to work, because there is safety in the lit rectangle of your table, and because something in his face presses against the part of you that does not wish to be seen. You slide the manuscript box back into its cradle. When you look up again—to be polite, to offer a small smile that says no harm done—he has stepped back.

“Forgive me,” he whispers.

It is not addressed to the room. It is not, exactly, addressed to you, either. It is the kind of sentence that knows it will have to be repeated one day and says it anyway.

“For what?” you ask before you can stop yourself.

He shakes his head once, an apology in the shape of refusal. “For being here,” he says, as if his presence itself were an offence—and then he is retreating toward the aisles, vanishing from your sight.

“Wait—” you begin, a reflex more than a choice, but the word falls empty in the air. He is gone by the time the syllable finds him.

You stand still a moment, the afterimage of him a smudge in your sight. The locket’s outline has been printed, briefly, into your skin. You rub it away and feel foolish for the superstition. The scent of lily is gone. You tell yourself you imagined it, that the room smells as it always does—paper, dust, the faint soap of janitor’s product, old wood. Your heart, however, is behaving as if you have run somewhere and cannot remember where.

A porter in a grey sweater pauses near your table, eyes flicking from your face to the boxes. “Need anything before we close?”

“No, thanks,” you say. “I’m just finishing notes.”

The lamps hum. The catalogue form waits. You sit. You try to find your place in the notes—binding threads, undecorated, later repair; rubrication inconsistent; marginal hand suggests—what? You pause. Your pen hovers over the inventory line for inscriptions, and you realise your hand has been writing without permission: All hours end—

You stop. You scratch it out. You do not know where the phrase came from. It feels as if you have overheard two people speaking and caught only the turn of a sentence as it slipped through a door. You look toward the shelves where the stranger had stood.

You tell yourself you should ask circulation whether he signed in, purely for the log, purely for the comfort of knowing the man was not a dream. You do not.

The psalter waits in its sling. You loosen the straps like a nurse unbinding a bandage. Your hands know the ritual, and your focus returns to its narrow rhythm: title, date, origin, hand, illuminations, marginalia. The work steadies you. You are good at this. You did not come here to be unsettled by strangers with antique lockets.

But the body is not a thing that agrees to be argued with. It holds onto what it noticed. As you move through the pages, you keep expecting to find lilies hidden in the creases, to see a petal stranded in the hairline crack of a gilded initial. When you do find a flower—a crude ink sketch, nothing like a lily—you almost laugh, except the ache rises again, brief and precise. You sit back and press your palm to your sternum until the muscle remembers the ordinary algorithm of beating.

Closing announcements float in. You begin to repack, placing foam where it belongs, easing the book back into its box so the spine won’t develop bad habits. You fill out the vault request and sign your name in block letters because they are legible, and because legibility is an ethic. You turn off your lamp, and the world dims around you. The ceiling seems farther away.

On your way down the aisle, you see a thin line of shadow on the floor where the locket fell. It is only a trick of light. You step over it.

In the lobby, the marble keeps its own cold silence. You show your badge; the guard stamps the time; the doors open on Fifth Avenue’s noise. Taxis weave their yellow lines through the dark streets. Winter has stripped the night down to its bare bones, and each breath leaves your mouth in a pale cloud, drifting ahead as if to lead you home. At the library steps you pause, glancing back through the glass.

The stranger is not there.

You tell yourself a story to keep the night in order. A man looked at you too long. A locket fell. You returned it. He left. People carry the strangest things in this city; you once found a pressed four-leaf clover in a mystery from 1968, a lipstick kiss in a law book, a ticket stub folded into a poem. A lily is only a flower. A locket is only metal. Forgive me is only a phrase.

You walk away, the ache in your chest softening at last. Buses sigh. A couple argues softly and laughs in the same breath. Someone’s radio survives on a balcony, trembling out an old song you don’t recognise. You slip your hands into your coat pockets and find the leftover heat of the reading room still clinging to your fingers.

At the corner, the light turns, and you cross. For a second, you think you see him reflected in a storefront window, coat a dark cutout against the crowd, but when you turn, it’s only the city being the city—faces that look like other faces, lives that pass near yours and keep on walking.

When you get home, your apartment smells faintly of paper, soap, and something green you cannot name. You set your tote on the table and pull out your notebook to make one last note for yourself to find in the morning: Check fol. 73 for marginal hand; gilding test; confirm watermarks. The pencil hesitates; you add, without meaning to: Ask about the man in the dark coat. You stare at the sentence until it blushes you into crossing it out.

You shower. You stand by the window with wet hair, the city letting down its own. You think of the locket. You think of his voice saying thank you, like the start of a longer sentence he never let himself finish. You think of lilies, though you have never been a lily person. You couldn’t even say what they smelled like, except that from tonight on, you would know them anywhere.

Sleep comes late. When it finally does, it brings you a corridor of stone and the sound of wind where a roof should be. Someone kneels where an altar isn’t. Someone is holding a white flower as if it were the last proof that something had lived. You reach for the stem.

You wake with your hand open on your sheets, palm empty, your chest sore from the pounding of your heart.

In the morning, you will tell yourself that silence is just another kind of music. Tonight, you listen to it and cannot quite decide what it’s trying to play.

Wonwoo has taught himself how to live with windows.

The penthouse is all clean angles and restraint—white walls, a long grey sofa that has never learned his shape, a table of black stone with no memory of meals. From this height, the city looks obedient: streets scrolling, lights ciphering meaning to anyone patient enough to read them. Wonwoo sits with his coat still on, because removing it would suggest rest, and rest is a language his body refuses to relearn.

He thinks of you in the lamp’s circle, the way your brow furrowed when a glyph misbehaved, the birthmark a crescent on your wrist. He has memorised these details before. He had promised himself that if he ever saw them again he would walk in the opposite direction. Mercy, he told himself, is distance.

“Leave,” he says into the glass, because sometimes words have to be spoken into existence to take.

The word does not move him.

He sets the locket on the table and does not open it. The iron oval lies there with quiet gravity, an object that survived not because it is strong but because it is stubborn. He turns away, palms the edge of the counter until his fingers ache, then wanders the perimeter of the room as if it might grow an exit he has not yet found.

Traffic rises and falls below him. Somewhere, a siren sounds thin and frantic through the dark. A helicopter scratches itself across the sky. In the kitchen, he fills a glass. He drinks, and the cold liquid does what it can to convince him he is only a man who happens to be tired.

He closes his eyes and the library returns in uncanny fidelity: plaster skies, green lamp shades, your hand steadying a page. Your voice was different this time—cultured, steadier, with the slight roughness that people who love quiet acquire as their own. You said, “You dropped this.” He had taken the locket back because that is what the scene required. He had said, “Thank you.” He had said, “Forgive me.” A liturgy of leaving. He did not leave.

The coat remains. The room keeps the shape of his not-leaving.

A memory opens without warning.

Heat pressed over the whole day. Leather tack slick with brine sweat. Camp smoke knitting itself into the wind off the water. A prayer bell somewhere, stubborn in its schedule, ringing a good hour into a bad one. Wonwoo stands with his helmet in his hands because his head is too loud to put it back on. Across the yard, a woman bends over a row of bodies. Bandages soak through before she ties the knots. She moves as if she is trying to teach the sand mercy.

You look up at him and shake your head once: no blood, not yours, not his. The look is not unkind; it just refuses to be fooled. You say, “You’re not wounded.” He says nothing because he has not been taught how to confess the kind of hurt that does not bleed. You gesture to his hands, raw where the reins cut, and add, “Sit. Let me at least wash this.”

Water is more miracle than metal ever was. He watches the red leech into the bowl as if colour is a sin that can be coaxed out with patience. You hum something under your breath that is not a psalm and not not a psalm. When he flinches at the sting of vinegar, you say, “I know.” The words are small, but they are a bridge, and he stands on them without remembering how his feet moved.

The din of the yard will not be argued with. He looks where you look and sees a boy—no beard, no story yet—trying to understand why his breath won’t stay. You touch the boy’s cheek and lie to him the way good people are allowed to lie. Afterwards, you stand very still and bow your head, and when you lift it, your face has put on its mask again. He thinks that if God is not paying attention to this, then God is inattentive.

He does not notice you have stepped away until you return. You place something in his hand, and he mistakes it for a piece of cloth until his fingers relearn petals: a white lily, fresh from somewhere that still believes in freedom. You say, “For the smell on your hands.” He brings it near because one learns obedience to simple instructions young. For a second, the air is only green and sweet and clean. He has the thought, reckless and exact: if he lives, it will be because of this.

Wonwoo opens his eyes to the present, and the locket is the only thing in the room that looks like it understands. He reaches for it and stops himself. The old discipline holds: do not invite the past closer than it already stands.

“Leave,” he repeats, softer, to no avail.

He goes to the bedroom and takes a suitcase from the closet. He lays shirts in rows, as if they were prayer beads. He chooses a passport. He does not choose a destination. He is a man who has learned to make departures look like decisions.

He sits on the edge of the bed and tries to learn the trick of imagining you safe without him. He pictures you in the library, frowning at a colophon, squinting at a watermark as if it owes you its genealogy. He pictures you on a city bus at noon, exactly the kind of person fate would never think to look for. The pictures do not hold. They dissolve into other scenes he does not want: the dull algebra of accident, the ugly lottery of crowds, the simple, indifferent math of illness. He presses his fingers into his eyes until sparks dance in his vision. He loosens his hands, and the room returns intact.

On the nightstand, a book he is not reading waits with patient disinterest. He flips it open and pretends the words are a river that might take him elsewhere. They are not. He sets the book down spine-open, hating himself for the small violence, and closes it again, apology mindless, automatic.

The suitcase remains open.

He goes back to the window because windows have, over time, been kinder to him than mirrors. The city stares back without blinking. He tracks the build of clouds over the river until he remembers to breathe in time with them. He counts seconds between siren dopplers. He speaks aloud because silence has begun to taste like hunger.

“I will not see you again,” he says to the glass, to the skyline, to the version of himself that once believed practice could make truth.

The sentence falls flat and fails to take root.

Another memory shifts.

Clay dust in his mouth. The glitter of grit when the sun loses patience. The way you held the lily by its throat so the stem wouldn’t bruise. You said, “All hours end, but love does not,” and he did not know if you were telling him a story or a diagnosis. He tucked the flower into the inside of his breastplate and later into a book and later into this oval of iron, and it never learned how to crumble. He did not either.

He picks up the locket and weighs it, pressing a thumb to its hinge. He does not open it. He will not open it. He presses it flat to the stone tabletop, the metal clicking quietly.

He imagines you sleeping. He imagines you waking. He imagines you stepping into the cold morning with your tote bag and your careful hands and the part of your mind that makes lists. He imagines the ache you must have felt—that brief press under the breastbone when the scent rose—because his own chest has not unclenched since.

He closes the suitcase and stands there with his hand on the handle until his arm shakes. He leaves it by the door like a promise, the kind he knows he cannot keep.

He turns off the lights, and the window becomes the whole wall. In the reflection, he looks like what he is: a man lonelier than furniture, a man practised at not reaching out. He thinks of every departure that did not save you and of every staying that did not either. He knows the math and does not believe in it.

“Mercy,” he says to no one, the word unfamiliar in his mouth but not unwelcome.

Wonwoo goes back to the table, takes the locket and slips it into his pocket. He shrugs out of the coat and finally lets the room meet him in shirtsleeves. He lines the suitcase against the wall as if squaring up a picture frame. He sits again, elbows on his knees, head bowed as if prayer is a posture that might still remember him.

Across the city, a bell rings. He counts its strikes and stops before the end, because endings have a way of calling themselves back when named. He closes his eyes, and the library lifts its green lamps like a field of patient stars, and you look up, and he is again the man who told himself he would walk in the opposite direction.

He does not.

You tell yourself that coincidence is just pattern wearing a disguise.

The archives settle around you —cooler than the reading room, the lights dimmed to gentleness so the vellum won’t remember the harsh sun. You badge in, sign the log and tug on cotton gloves. Tonight’s cart is a sober parade: folios in blue clamshells, a fragment pressed between mylar sheets, a chronicle whose spine sounds like crackling fire when it moves.

You take the top box and carry it to your station, a little world bordered by foam wedges, a snake weight, a pencil stub sharpened to a scholar’s impatience. The lid lifts with a quiet ceremony you never rush. Inside lies an illuminated manuscript; gold leaf glints only where the scribe needed heaven to make a point. You write the call number; you check the binding; you note the repaired cords and the honest stitches of someone respectful who came before you.

Leaf by leaf, you make a map of its small marvels: a capital that looks like a vine, a rubric whose red has faded into the gentlest rust, a fly wing fossilised in varnish like a tiny window into a different era. Minutes loosen. Your shoulders promise you they’ll complain later. You love them for it.

Halfway through, near the seam where a new hand begins, you find him.

At first, it is only the suggestion of a face, sketched in the margin like the pictures apprentices draw when sermons run long. Then the lines resolve: a brow, the set of a mouth, the improbable calm of eyes that have watched too long. A Crusader’s coif caps his head; a sword hovers beside him with the no-nonsense pride of a tool that has been told it is sacred. The style is quick and practised, the way a person draws what they know by heart.

You lean closer until the cotton of your glove brushes the edge of the drawing. The likeness is not perfect—that would be absurd—but it is too near to be coincidence. Your throat tightens and then, as if corrected by a librarian in your head, clears for sense.

Beneath the sketch, in a neat, unhurried Latin, a line runs parallel to the page’s edge, so faint you nearly miss it: Omnes horae finiunt, amor autem non. You mouth it softly. All hours end, but love does not.

You sit back and laugh under your breath. The sound skitters across the table. “Okay,” you whisper to no one, to the book, to the version of yourself that occasionally indulges in melodrama, “that’s a bit on the nose.” The joke doesn’t land anywhere. The face keeps being his.

“Everything alright?” a colleague asks from the next station, voice pitched.

“Found a marginal sketch,” you say, because that is all you can afford out loud. “Crusader. Very… committed chin.”

A soft chuckle, the community of people who have loved too many sketches to count. “Photograph it for the file,” she murmurs, and goes back to her pages.

You lift the snake weight from the box and take the institutional camera from its drawer. The red dot wakes. You angle the lens, shield the page with your other hand to avoid shadow, and capture the face and the line in two, three frames. You log the image, note the folio, add a line to your worksheet: f. 47r: marginal drawing of miles Christi; Latin aphorism beneath (ink, faint). You do not write: He looks back at me.

The rest of the manuscript behaves. It offers you saints with credible haloes, chalices that catch the light, and a map whose idea of the world is a lesson in humility. You finish your notes, return the pages to their foam, and tie the cloth tape into a bow.

You wheel the cart back through the aisles. On the way, you pass the small mirror the conservators use to check the angle of light. Your face looks like a person who has had too much coffee and too many hours, which is to say, like a person doing her best at the thing she is almost certain she was built to do. You add the box to the outgoing shelf, sign the ledger, and remove your gloves. Your fingers look more naked than they should.

At your locker, you pause. The archive hums evenly; the air stays the same temperature it was ten minutes ago; no new holiness announces itself. You close the locker gently, as if noise could hurt a page in your absence, and make your way up into the brighter world.

Night is a scroll you could read blind. The sidewalk is busy enough to be a lullaby. You stop at a deli for something careless and salty, you climb your stairs, you eat standing at the sink because the day has already used up your good chairs. You mean to watch something dumb and kind to your brain. Instead, you pull the camera file up on your laptop and enlarge the margin until the pixels argue with the ink.

He looks back at you. He keeps doing it.

You close the lid.

Sleep is a negotiation. You let the room darken one lamp at a time until the city is the only light left, a stripe on your wall. You lie down on top of the covers and listen to the radiator. Your body empties of the archive’s carefulness. Your mind does not.

When the dream arrives, it is not announced. You are simply elsewhere, as efficiently as a page flipped by a practised hand. Stone cools the air. A roof is missing where a roof ought to be. The sky is a dark river no one has bothered to name. He stands in armour the way a tree stands in bark—not adorned, only itself. A sword hangs at his side, less a threat than a vow.

He is not the exact man from the reading room, and he is also exactly him. His face is a ledger of distances. His eyes find yours, and something in your chest answers like a bell rung from inside. There is mud at the hem of his cloak. There is a scent of smoke and something green underneath it that your body calls lily before your mind has permission to.

“All hours end, but love does not,” someone says—not him, not you, not anyone you can locate—and the words line the air with a certainty you resent for how right it feels.

You reach toward him as if the gesture is older than you are, and he opens his mouth to say something that will change what your life is called. The dream does not give him time. It closes, the way a book sometimes refuses to be read past grief it did not earn.

You wake with your hand pressed over your heart, pulse kicking the inside of your palm. The room arranges itself around you: radiator, stripe of light, the faint city noise. You sit up slowly.

“Get a grip,” you whisper to the version of yourself that requires instructions.

Water helps. You drink from the tap and taste metal, Manhattan, and the ghost of mint from the glass. In the mirror above the sink, your face looks exactly like yours—which is to say unreliable as evidence. You go back to bed and pick up your notebook, meaning to write ‘buy detergent’ or ‘email mom about Saturday’ or anything that pins life to its sensible board. Your hand writes instead: ‘Omnes horae finiunt, amor autem non’.

You tuck the notebook under the pillow because some parts of you still behave like childhood and believe in proximity. You switch off the lamp and let the dark be the dark. Before sleep comes again, softer this time, you see the margin in your mind and the face in its sketch, and you tell yourself that tomorrow you will be rational, methodical, a scientist of paper.

Coincidence, you promise yourself, is only pattern wearing a disguise. And yet your hand, unconsulted, stays over your heart until you sleep.

Wonwoo walks the alleys the way a man relearns a prayer.

Smoke unspools from the quarter where oil pots were tipped, and the wind carries a brine that recollects better centuries. Mail bites his shoulders with its patient teeth. Every sound is too close to the ear—clatter of corrugated shields, horses stamping, a boy laughing like he has not yet been told what a trumpet means at night. He moves with his helmet under his arm to quiet the noise inside his head. In the crook of a shattered wall, a shadow shifts and becomes you.

You reach for his hands. Your veil pulls back enough to show the half-moon scar you keep hidden from strangers, the one he kissed last week behind the granaries when no one was watching. Your fingers smell of vinegar and clean cloth and the insistence of life. You do not waste his name on the open street; you touch his wrists where the leather rubs skin raw and say with your eyes what cannot be said aloud.

“Sit,” you command softly, as if rank does not exist here, as if the alley is a small republic for two. He obeys because he has learned obedience to what is merciful. You tip water into a basin, and the dust turns it the colour of blood; you do not flinch. You wash the burns where the sun rehearsed cruelty on him and bind the lashes the reins carved. Above you both, a muezzin’s call threads the sky, and farther off, a bell insists on Christ’s hour. Between them, your hum finds a third line—neither, both—and he steadies.

“Eat,” you say, pressing a fig into his palm as if sweetness can be smuggled into war. He almost smiles. Almost. Your gaze scans his face with the competence of a healer and the recklessness of a lover. Reckless because he is what he is—cross on his tunic, Latin in his mouth when the captains listen—and you are what you are—daughter of a man whose house gives water freely to the thirsty on both sides. Reckless because the ways you have touched each other would earn the kind of punishment that likes to call itself righteous.

He watches the way your throat moves when you swallow a breath. You have a way of standing that makes stillness look like a plan. He wants to tell you something simple—stay behind the thickest wall you can find; when the trumpet calls, make yourself as small as a prayer and twice as stubborn—but he has already learned you are not a thing that stays when pain is required to be shared.

He closes his eyes and presses his brow to your temple as if the air could be divided fairly that way. The street is briefly only the two of you and the small citizenship of light the moon grants the disobedient.

“Tonight will be bad,” he says, and his voice is steady because he has borrowed your steadiness.

“We have lived through bad,” you answer, not as a boast but as a measurement. Your hand lingers at his jaw as if memorising the map of a man that will be redrawn by morning.

He turns his face into your palm and would stay there if time were a thing he could argue with. But time is a governor who answers to no one, and the horn cuts your time in half. You tuck your veil, gather your satchel, and he almost grabs your wrist to keep you still. He does not, because he will not insult your courage with his fear.

The city tilts toward its pain. Torches leap into the dark. The air thickens with instructions shouted in three languages, each convinced it was first. He moves with his unit, and you disappear into the low doorway where the wounded already begin to be counted. He looks back once and catches the briefest glance you allow him, the one that says: I am here, and I will be until I cannot.

Hours are elastic when they are burning. The first rush is a mouth with too many teeth; the second is a tide that does not learn. He loses count of the men who call for mothers they made angry and for saints they have not spoken to since they were twelve. He does not lose count of where the doorway is that swallows you and returns you again and again with your sleeves red to the elbow.

Then the sky fills with arrows. They rise in a black, whispering cloud, obedient to a thousand thoughtless hands, and come down like rain. He has time to think this volley sounds wrong—the angle, the pace, the discipline of it is theirs, not yours—and in that same breath, he sees you break from the shelter with a strip of linen clenched between your teeth, running toward a boy whose chest is bleeding.

The arrow finds you with indifference. It enters at the side beneath your ribs, as if the space there had been kept clean for precisely this guest. For a second, you keep running because the body is dutiful; then your knees understand the new story and begin to tell it to the ground.

He is moving. He is faster than he has ever been when speed could have won him honour. He reaches you. Your mouth is trying to form a reassurance for him; blood interrupts your speech. He catches you before the street can claim you entirely and knows by the shaft, by the cut of the fletching, by the cheap glue, that the bow that sent this was strung by hands that share his bread.

“No,” he says. He looks toward the line of his comrades and does not see faces, only the general shape of betrayal wearing helmets.

“Help… him,” you manage, eyes sliding toward the boy you were running to save.

“You,” he answers, because grammar has no patience left for charity.

He breaks the shaft because he has done this for others, and your breath rasps hatefully at his competence. He lifts you, and the world shrinks to your weight and the careful task of not jarring you. He avoids your father’s doorway; he cannot bear for the last room to be the place where you have mended so much. He takes you to the ruined chapel on the edge of the quarter where children dare each other to pray and run laughing when they answer.

Roof gone. Altar split. Icons scraped until the wood confessed it was only wood. Moonlight through smoke draws streaks of light through the air. He lays you where an altar should be, careful as a scribe laying down gold leaf. Your veil slides, and he smooths it, because if he can fix this one small thing, then perhaps the larger thing will take the hint.

Your lips are pale. Your breath measures wrong. He looks for something to press against the wound and finds only his own cloth. He presses. The warmth of you runs over his fingers, honest as truth and twice as costly.

“It’s not deep,” you lie, because good people are allowed liars’ privileges when fear would otherwise win the fight.

“I will carry you out of this city,” he promises, and it sounds believable because he has not yet met the version of himself that knows what it is to be too late.

He looks around for anything worthy enough to be near you at this hour and sees a patch where small things have dared to grow in the cracks. He finds a lily among the stubborn blades—white, whole—and brings it to the altar ruins. He places it on your chest above the place where the arrow entered, and his hands shake with a fury that has run out of places to hide itself.

“Do you remember,” you whisper, and the whisper is so soft he thinks perhaps it is only something his mind imagined, “the cistern where the swifts drink at dusk? Take me there, in your mind.”

“I am there,” he says, because he can be two places at once if you ask in that voice, “the water is black and kind, and your hand is on my sleeve.”

Your eyes try to smile. He presses his forehead to your knuckles and feels the cool of your skin. Words pile up behind his teeth and refuse to go through the door. The ones that do cross are blunt.

“Why not me,” he begs to no one he has ever seen, “why not me?”

He looks up into the roofless dark and does what he has never done in this posture: he shouts at the God he serves.

“Is this Your mercy?” he demands, voice scraping, “Is this Your holy arithmetic? You preach love and then count like this?”

The chapel takes his blasphemy the way a sponge takes water—without argument, only absorption. He feels the exact instant when the warmth that used to rise under his breastbone at the name of Christ goes out, like a hand taking its heat away from his back. The absence is total and exquisitely precise. He does not care. He would burn any cathedral if a single stone would change its mind and become a body you could live in again.

Footsteps enter the ruin with the callous courtesy of soft leather. A figure stands in the crumbled doorway. Robe dark, hands clean, a tonsure that shines in moonlight.

“Son,” the priest says, “do not waste the little time grief gives you. There are accounts beyond this city. There are lives beyond this hour.”

Wonwoo turns in disdain.

“If you have come to make God legible to me, leave,” he says, “His book is closed.”

The figure steps closer, the moon stitching silver along his sleeve.

“Not to explain,” he answers, “to offer. You love her. Your face is the face of a man who has finally met what he was made to worship and has been told to let it go. I can let you keep it.”

The words fall oddly in the chapel, as if the walls remember other bargains and are bracing themselves.

“Keep what?” he asks, and the question is not an invitation so much as a dare.

“Time,” the priest says gently, “yours. Enough of it to see her again. Enough to be there when the world is kinder to the love taken from you too soon.”

Wonwoo lifts your hand and presses it to his mouth as if you can be convinced to stay by being told how necessary you are to the air he breathes. Your pulse brushes his lip.

“At what price?” He asks because even in blasphemy, he has learned to haggle.

“The coin you do not value now,” the priest answers, and the kindness in the tone is a precise cruelty, “your soul. It is already halfway out of your body. Let it go the rest of the way with my permission, and I will not count it as theft. I will count it as an exchange.”

He looks down at you, and his surroundings fade. He sees, with a clarity that will never leave him, the way your lashes have caught a grain of sand, the way your mouth shapes his name, the way the lily lifts and settles with the small, stubborn remainder of your breathing. He understands that there is no arithmetic that returns you to him in this hour.

He is a man carved to decide quickly under pressure; the habit keeps him alive longer than men with better stories. He sets his jaw.

“Say it,” the priest prompts, “agree, and what remains of this night will balance differently. There will be a path for you in the years. There will be—her, when the wheel comes round.”

He does not believe in wheels. He believes in the weight of you, and the smell of smoke, and the exactness of grief that has no patience left for theology.

“Yes,” he says, and the word is ugly and beautiful at once, “whatever I am, take it. Give me time to see her again.”

Something—not a wind, not a light—moves through the ruin, and the walls lean in as if to witness the change.

“Done,” the priest says, “and done again.”

Wonwoo looks back at you to memorise what he will spend the rest of his forever searching. Your eyes are on him. They are the clearest thing in the ruin. He leans until his brow meets yours again and says into your skin what the chapel does not deserve to hear and the city cannot punish because the hour is too far gone.

“All hours end,” he breathes, “but love does not.”

Your mouth moves, and he almost hears the answer he is waiting for. Then the lily stops moving. Outside, arrows learn another sky. He gathers you and the flower and the wreckage of his faith and steps into the remainder of the night as if it were a door he has only now learned how to open.

Rush hour makes a river of bodies, and you have long learned how to float.

The train bursts into the station with its usual rattle, doors gasping open to swallow the sea of people. Perfume, cold iron, and old brake dust braid the air. You step in sideways, shoulder-first, and find a sliver of space by the pole, knuckles whitening as the car lurches back into the tunnel.

He is three bodies down, the only one not negotiating for inches. The crowd eddies around him as if he has learned a private geometry of stillness. He doesn’t reach for the rail. He doesn’t brace his knees. The car lurches; your knuckles whiten; his balance holds as if the train is merely passing through him. When the lights strobe across his face, he looks up at the exact moment you do, and your eyes catch across the hiccuping fluorescent.

Your breath hitches.

You glance at the overhead map, at the ads—lawyers with too-perfect smiles, a new streaming show you won’t watch—at anything that might distract you. The train bumps through its stations, each name blinking past like a fact you will remember later. You pull your scarf higher.

The car is a choir of small lives. A woman taps a recipe into her notes app. A teenager falls asleep on a friend’s shoulder the second the doors close. Someone laughs into a phone and then apologises for the noise, like it’s unwelcome. You hold the pole and try to pretend you haven’t learned to listen.

When you look again, the stranger hasn’t looked away. A tunnel light slashes across his face; for a second you see him as a photograph—clean lines, more shadow than expression—and the ache you’ve been ignoring presses under your ribs again.

Two stops later, the crowd loosens. A seat opens between a man in paint-splattered pants and a woman corralling a stroller with one foot. You move without thinking. Your thigh finds the seat’s plasticky chill; your bag topples, and you fumble it back into order. When you look up, he is there, sliding into the space opposite yours with the same infuriating stillness, as if motion were a courtesy he extends only to others.

For a beat too long, neither of you remembers what people usually do with their eyes. You choose the train window and get only your own reflection. He chooses the floor and gets your shoes and the shadow your knees make. The train slows, throws a little fit, and then coasts.

You are not going to speak. It is New York; the social contract is mostly made of looking elsewhere. But your mouth, treacherous with curiosity, opens before your sense can close it.

“We keep running into each other.”

He studies the braid of your scarf for a heartbeat, then meets your gaze. His reply lands like a gentle truth.

“I’ve tried not to.”

A full train doesn’t deserve that line. It belongs somewhere with better acoustics—an empty church, maybe, or a stairwell that knows your name. You look down at your hands, and you notice, with a flare of embarrassment, that you’ve been pressing your thumb against your inner wrist, right where the small crescent of your birthmark lives. The skin there is warm, not burning, just the sensible heat of a body.

A busker boards two cars down and works his way forward. He sings about a city that both loves and forgets its people, and about someone who didn’t stay, and someone who did. The cup fills with coins and folded bills. He doesn’t reach your row; the doors open at the next stop, and the singer leaves.

You feel the pull of your stop before the announcement—your weight leaning minutely toward the doors, fingers checking the strap of your tote. A thought creeps in: touch his sleeve when you pass. Ridiculous. Intimate. You do not.

The chime first, the slide of doors after. You step out onto the tile of the underground.

You don’t look back. That, in itself, is a kind of looking. Your feet know the drill: up the stairs, through the turnstile, and the particular left that leads to the exit.

Blocks later, your front door comes into view. Inside, home is lights you forgot to turn off and the leftover warmth of your morning mug. You leave your coat open because the apartment’s heat is slow; you kick your boots into some semblance of order; you drink water and savour the day. You try to start a show and stare through it until even the recap would be embarrassed for you. The urge to call someone hums and fades; you do not want a conversation about strangers on trains. You want proof.

Your laptop makes its way onto your lap. You draft a message to a colleague—Maya would know which finding aids might hide a similar hand—but your fingers pause over the keyboard. This is not a question you are ready to ask out loud. You delete the draft and tell yourself you’ll walk it back tomorrow, when the day is bright and coffee makes your mind a stricter librarian. Eventually, the bed persuades you.

Sleep takes you in pieces.

Heather, springy, brushing your calves. The sky is stretched thin and blue. Wind shoulders the clouds from one hill to another. Your skirt is muddied to the knee. Your hands are stained with something that will wash if there is washing left to do.

The glen holds its light as if hoarding it for a longer winter. A dun horse at the edge, ears angled. A man swings down, and the ground welcomes him. Plaid slants across his chest, not decoration but statement. The steel at his hip is not silvered pride; it has the look of use. His eyes find you.

A whistle—two notes—human, not bird. You could hum it if someone woke you and asked. You do, but only in your head.

A low stone bridge, water bubbling under, white foam in the current. Your palm meets his wrist, then doesn’t, and then does again. He says something you don’t catch, and then you do; your name. Elspeth. It arrives in an accent you haven’t encountered, and it fits you better than anything you’ve been called all week.

Smoke, peat-sweet and stubborn. Laughter cut by the clap of hooves and the smell that arrives before men with bad intentions. A word you shouldn’t know—reiver—lands in your stomach. The hillside stiffens; the air goes tight as a bowstring.

He could run. He does not.

Beloved, the wind says—or maybe it is him, or the hill, or the piece of you that has always known the exact weight of that word.

You jolt awake. The radiator ticks. A siren makes a quick geometry across your ceiling. You sit up and press your palm against your inner wrist again, where the crescent lives.

You breathe slowly, like a person learning how again. The dream peels away, leaving only wet edges. You make yourself catalogue one detail at a time—bridge, plaid, the whistle, the river trying to win its argument with rock. You are not afraid of forgetting; you are wary of believing.

You reach for your notebook on the nightstand and write: Two notes—whistle? Bridge with three stones missing on the west side. “Reiver.” Ask archive about 16th-century Border skirmishes; oral histories? On the next line, a betrayal of sense slips out: Subway—man again. You close the notebook on the treason and slide it under your pillow, just as you did the night before.

The apartment’s temperature has changed by a degree while you weren’t looking. You pull the blanket higher and let the second sleep try its hand. The hills do not come back immediately.

Rain now, thin and mean, needling through wool. The horse’s flank is hot under your palm; his hide shivers. He stamps and tells you what he thinks of thunder. You can smell peat and wet iron and the small, sour breath of fear. Not yours. Not his.

His mouth finds a line you will always follow. Your forehead touches his, and the wind settles for one beat. It is not a kiss, but it has the decency to be more than not.

Voices on the ridge. Metal clanging against metal. He pulls back, and in that instant, you understand the exact size of a glen—large when you want to hide, small when danger wants to find you. You grip his sleeve. The plaid is rough and familiar. He says nothing; his eyes say everything.

You wake again, gentler this time. The clock tells a compassionate lie—there is still enough night left if you can convince your body to settle down. You lie on your side and you count your breaths. You count from your stop to his in reverse. You practice what you will say if you see him again in a context with more dignity than a subway car, and then you practice saying nothing at all. You practice having a spine. You let your hand rest on your wrist on the small crescent. The dark keeps your secret and calls it sleep.

Wonwoo walks along the long edge of Central Park, letting distance do what rest could not.

Pigeons argue about nothing with the commitment of politicians. A dog forgets its owner and remembers them again. He thinks, for a block or two, of breakfast. Somewhere up ahead, near the stone bridge, the sound finds him: a bagpipe lifting a thin, defiant ribbon of music into the crisp air, the tune stitching the present to a seam he has not touched in centuries.

He stops without choosing to. The note holds and turns, and the air goes green in his mind. The bridge becomes another bridge. The thin winter sun thickens. He remembers hills. The path drops its asphalt and becomes wet turf. The city’s edges fold.

Smoke from the hearth turns the rafters soft, and the room is warm with the kind of welcome that has learned to live through war. Your father claps Wonwoo’s shoulder, then nods—judgment rendered, sentence: bread. A platter lands on the table. Children orbit the benches; a dog claims the fire’s edge. You move through it all like the answering thought to a question a house has been asking for years. You set a bowl before him, gaze steady, mouth undecided between challenge and smile. Your father says, “You’ll take meat with us, rider.” Wonwoo inclines his head, grateful for simple orders. A woman presses a heel of bread into his palm. You sit opposite, your plaid a diagonal of loyalty across your chest, your dirk wearing its purpose openly. When Wonwoo reaches for the bowl, his sleeve rides back; your eyes find the iron oval at his wrist. He feels the locket’s weight confess itself to your gaze. He leaves it hidden; the hour is not yet ready for miracles.

The talk is practical—fences, weather, and the price of oats. The old man—chieftain not by crown but by the way the room adjusts itself to his breathing—asks where Wonwoo has ridden from and where he intends to ride next. Wonwoo answers with roads as if naming them is enough to prove he belongs to them. Later, by the door, your father leans close enough and says, “You keep your hands where my daughter can see them, aye?” It is not a threat. It is a contract written in the pen of affection. Wonwoo bows and meets your glance over the old man’s shoulder. Your eyebrows sign a private treaty neither patriarch will ever read.

—

You walk the ridge line as you name plants with lazy precision—bog myrtle, tormentil, whin—and tell him what each can heal and what each will ruin if you mistake one for the other. He does not pretend to know these things. At the burn, you squat, dip a hand, flick water at him just to see who he is when surprised. He takes it and does not retaliate. This earns him the reward of your laugh, small and not yet loaned to anyone else today.

You sit on a flat stone near the bank. You unsling your bow to tighten the sinew, and when the string sings, you hum the same two notes—habit or charm. Wonwoo could name nothing more dangerous than tenderness in a valley with too many places to hide danger. Still, he takes the locket from his cuff where he keeps it like a pulse and opens it into the air between you. The lily holds its impossible colour, the ghost of green rising patiently.

Your face alters without warning or apology. The planes of it remember other light. Your mouth loses its ready barbs and finds a shape he has not allowed himself to picture for years. You reach, but stop your hand an inch short, breath catching on the old edge of a name.

“Anna,” you say—no, you exhale—and then blink at yourself as if betrayed by your own certainty. Your eyes lift to his, cataloguing the exactness of his brow, the steadiness that is not calm but training, the mouth that has learned too many vows.

“Elspeth,” he replies.

You touch the locket then, and when he places it in your palm, the change is swift, undeniable, not subject to debate. Your throat works. Your lips brush the oval—an instinct so old it no longer asks permission from the mind—and the words you give him are not a test, not an experiment, but a verdict handed down by a court older than law: “My beloved.”

—

The shed is a square of stone pretending to be a room. Straw means well. A blanket tries its small, faithful best. Wonwoo unknots the ties of your plaid with the care of a man defusing a present. Your fingers, quick and sure, undo his buttons, the pads of them measuring the old ridges of work and war.

There is a moment of forehead to forehead, breath tangled, where both imagine they can bend the arithmetic of fate by the simple discipline of wanting. He kisses the small scar under your jaw—horse, fifteen, a dare—and the corner of your mouth where courage sometimes masquerades as insolence. You laugh once, surprised at yourself. When you draw him in, the shed becomes a liturgy the valley can hear but will not report. Straw scratches ankles; the blanket apologises; for a beautified span of minutes, their bodies outvote their times. He places his hand over the steady drum at your breastbone. Later, you lie on your sides, knees crooked, and the locket settles on your skin as if it has come home.

“Stay,” you breathe, voice roughened by joy and the knowledge of its scarcity, “let them take the hills and call them by the wrong names. We’ll keep what’s ours.”

“I will,” he answers, meaning it as fully as a man is permitted to mean anything.

—

The ridge smells different before Wonwoo knows why. He runs the ditch-side path, the gorse snagging at his coat. Hoof prints cut the mud into indentations. The first bodies are not yours. Mercy pauses to be counted and is found insufficient.

At the wall, men try to be taller than what they’ve witnessed. Some succeed only in being older. Your father places a hand on Wonwoo’s arm to anchor him and then removes it because anchors break ships as often as they save them. The old man’s mouth tries your name; the air denies him the right to finish it.

You lie beyond the lean of stones. The wound is unambiguous, the kind favoured by cowards. The plaid is a spill of pattern doing its best to keep the shape it was woven for. Your eyes are turned toward the burn. He kneels so fast the ground lowers to meet him.

“Beloved,” he whispers.

There is still heat in the skin at the hinge of your jaw. There is not enough anywhere else. The locket slips from your chest against his fingers and clocks the moment into his bones. He wants a hundred enemies; the hill gives him only the silent competence of harm already done.

“All hours end, but love does not,” he tells the air because the air at least has the decency to stay and listen.

He knows, kneeling there with the burn talking past you both, that whatever the hour asks, he will answer with your name.

The piper drags his last note through the cold and lets it go. A span of silence follows, and Wonwoo’s breath returns to him. The bridge ahead is stone again, not quarried out of some older memory.

He puts a hand briefly to his chest, where a flower once learned the inside of armour. His fingers find only cloth. He lowers his hand and keeps walking because walking is the one thing the present still allows.

You decide that the cure for dreams is daylight and data.

The archives receive you with their familiar hush as you badge in, sign the log, tug on your gloves, and roll a new cart to your station. Today, you have a plan: find what is real, so the unreal will quiet down.

The psalter from Scotland waits in a blue clamshell. The leather is a soft, weathered brown; the stitching is the competent work of someone who loved honest repairs. You loosen the straps and lock the book into its cradle.

Leaf by leaf, you take the measure of the hand. Initials that begin as threads and become branches. Margins spangled with minor wildlife—fish with human faces, snails winning races. The scribe’s black sits inside the page as if it were always meant to be part of the story.

Midway through the psalter, the margin begins to take itself more seriously. A slim line of text hides near the seam, ink faded to grey. You angle the page, lift one edge with a snake weight, and bring your face nearer than protocol prefers.

Omnes horae finiunt, amor autem non.

You translate without needing to: All hours end, but love does not. The handwriting is not the same as the Crusader sketch—this script is later, more practised, less impulsive—but the sentence lands like a stone in the same pond, rings spreading inward and out.

You do not breathe for a count of five. Then you do, because oxygen is necessary.

You photograph the line. You log the folio number. You write a sober note you can live with: Ps. Scot., f. 82v: marginal Latin maxim (same phrase as Crusader ms., different hand).

Maya drifts past in her sweater, tea in a dented thermos that has never met a dishwasher. She knows something is different about your silence.

“What did you catch?” she asks.

“A phrase,” you reply. “Seen it before.”

Maya leans in. Her eyebrows make a small, respectful arch. “Poetic scribe. We hate that.”

“Different hand,” you add, too quickly. “Different century.”

“So it travelled,” she murmurs. “You know how maxims migrate. Want me to run a quick search through the proverb collections?”

You should say no. You should keep your private superstition folded in your pocket like a receipt you mean to throw out later. You nod instead.

“Thanks,” you say. “And—Gaelic sources? Sixteenth century? I need to check something about Border sayings.”

Maya tilts her head with the fond suspicion of a cat. “Weird dream to footnote?”

“Something like that,” you admit, and the confession is lighter than you expect.

The day becomes a disciplined hunt. You pull the books you need—proverb anthologies, studies of marginalia, a slim monograph on how aphorisms travel in the edges of devotional texts.

Your notebook becomes a nervous system for wonder. On the left-hand pages you record the facts: call numbers, folios, dates, hands, and provenance. On the right, you gather the curiosities: quick sketches of familiar-looking faces, stray initials that ring like bells, the same line that keeps showing up. You paste in printouts carefully, and you draw arrows, trying to coax a map into existence.

Maya returns, depositing a small pile of books to the ever-growing pile on your workbench. “Latin proverb is not in the usual suspects,” she says. “Closest I can find is Augustine-adjacent formulations, but this exact wording is elusive. Might be a scribe’s home-cooked wisdom that got fashionable. Gaelic—there are a few love lines that rhyme hours with something like fate. Nothing this clean.” She sips her tea, eyes amused. “Who are we chasing?”

You could say nobody. You could say a stranger on a train. You say the part that is allowed.

“A margin,” you answer. “And a sketch. And now this.”

Maya’s kindness never clucks. “Okay. There’s a Scottish psalter fragment in microfilm with notoriously cranky margins. Want me to pull it?”

“Yes,” you say, so quickly you drop a pencil. It rolls to the floor and under the neighbouring table. You crouch to retrieve it and encounter, briefly, the world upside down: steel chair legs, the hem of Maya’s skirt, your own boots, the book’s cover. When you right yourself, the room looks new and somehow exactly the same.

Microfilm makes you submit to it. You thread the cranky spool, coax the machine into magnanimity, and scroll through the grainy spaces of the past. You tell your eyes to be patient. They obey for longer than you expect. Columns blur, resolve, blur again. You find a margin that looks like it was meant to hold something, but then changed its mind. The writing is too faded to be legible. You copy what you can, promise yourself you’ll request the reel again if sleep refuses you later.

On your next break, you check the database of image permissions and request a higher-resolution capture of the Crusader sketch. You hover over the form for a second and add, need to compare marginal phrases across holdings under the guise of professionalism.

You eat a sandwich at your station while flipping between tabs. Your inbox pings with two automated confirmations, a politely delayed response from Digitisation, and a one-line note from Maya: Border ballads—try Child #191; not our exact phrase, but kin to it.

Hours lengthen, then end, as they promise. The archivist’s closing call ripples through the room. You log folios, tie bows and put each book to bed.

Maya shrugs on her coat. “Text me if you find the Holy Grail,” she says, half-joking.

“It’ll be a footnote,” you answer. “But I’ll text.”

“Good. And… hey?” Her voice softens. “Don’t let it spook you. Patterns love parlour tricks.”

“I know,” you say, and you mean it. Still, your hand is on your wrist again when you answer, thumb circling your birthmark inexplicably.

Home is a topography of simple tasks. You hang your coat, set the kettle, and line up the mug. While the water boils, you type in a search on your laptop:  Iconography of Crusader knights, marginal portraits, typologies. What you get is a flood of serious men with serious swords and very little in the way of your certainty. You feel both chastened and emboldened. You will need better terms. You will need time.

Steam fogs the kitchen window. You drink tea and give your hands something warm to hold while your mind performs triage. You think of the train car and the balance of a body that did not negotiate. You think of the dream’s low bridge and the word you had no business knowing. You think of the locket opening.

You sit at your desk and begin an email to yourself so tomorrow-you will be greeted by the discipline of tonight-you: To do—Compare hand of Latin in Scot. psalter with fourteenth c. miscellany (NYPL Ms.). Check microfilm notes (reel 232A). Ask Maya to pull Child Ballads commentary. Look into medieval lily symbolism in border regions (funeral? courtship? joke?). You add: Silver locket?

The cursor blinks, patient. You delete the last line and retype it. You let it stand.

When sleep approaches, it does so with its own set of findings.

You close your eyes and try to say the Latin in your head without meaning it. It refuses to be only words.

All hours end, but love does not.

You do not know whose love the sentence claims. You tell yourself a story: a phrase travelled; a hand copied; a sketcher practised a face enough to discover a type; you are a person who wants the world to make sense and is therefore finding sense everywhere.

You turn onto your side and, to your own surprise, you almost believe yourself.

Your phone buzzes once on the nightstand. A message from Maya: Found a stray: French pamphlet, late 1780s, margin motto suspiciously similar to yours. Will request. Sleep. A beat later, another buzz: Also, get some air tomorrow. The living need maintenance too.

You smile into the dark at her friendship. You set the phone face down and count the day’s proofs like prayer beads. When you run out, you keep counting, and sleep takes that as permission.

You go because you promised Maya to be a person who remembers joy.

She insisted on sequins; you compromise with a velvet half-mask and a dress that has a semblance of behaving. The loft is already warm with people by the time you step out of the elevator—paper lanterns floating, a DJ in lace gloves keeps the room’s pulse steady, and champagne is poured in coupes because the birthday girl has a thing about stems. You have promised yourself an evening of disobedience from your research. You even left your notebook at home, a gesture that feels almost indecent.

Maya appears with a glass of the golden bubbles.

“Two hours,” she says, raising it towards you. “No manuscripts. No Latin. Only joy.”

“You wound me,” you protest, grinning despite yourself. “I was going to talk about watermarks.”

“I will throw you in the Hudson.”

“Fair.”

You let joy overtake you: dancing without choreography, laughing when a friend’s peacock mask loses a feather and the entire circle treats it like a fallen soldier, delivering a toast to a woman you like because she keeps plants alive and people seen. For a stretch of songs and sweat, you manage it—the losing of the day’s edges, the letting of your body choose without minutes organising the choice.

And then you see him.

Mask simple, black, no plumes or sequins to hide behind. Elegance that does not audition for approval. A suit that fits like it has known him longer than he has known himself. He stands a step back from the thickest current of bodies. The moment your eyes find his, your lungs perform their familiar trick of forgetting how to function.

Maya follows your gaze. “Well,” she murmurs into her glass, very pleased. “Somebody grew out of a manuscript.”

“He’s—” you begin, and have no noun that feels sufficiently cautious.

“Hot,” she supplies, utterly unscholarly. “Go.”

“No,” you say, but your feet, the traitors, are already moving.

You pass conversation as you cross the room—Oh my God, where did you get your mask, I’m quitting my job tomorrow morning, no really, he ghosted me but in a feminist way—and wonder which of these languages you speak tonight. When you reach him, he is watching the dancers.

“Hello,” you say, because it is the only honest beginning. “Do you always haunt parties you weren’t invited to?”

His eyes move to you but do not startle. “I was invited,” he says softly.

You laugh, a bit too brightly, because the drinks are doing their wet work in your blood. “To this one?”

“To this one,” he confirms. Under the black of his mask, his mouth curves in reluctant amusement.

“I like your mask,” you add.

“It does its job,” he says, which is to say: it keeps people from seeing him fully.

You are not going to do this, you tell yourself. You will not be the woman who forces a story to begin. You do it anyway.

“Dance with me?”

He looks toward the floor where bodies are twirling through the bass lines. He looks back at you, and whatever lives behind his eyes is carefully hidden before you can read it. “I don’t dance.”

“Liar.”

He bends his head, conceding the point in theory if not in practice. “Not tonight.”

“Then talk.” You take a small step closer. “You said something to me on a train.”

“I did.”

“Say something else, then,” you challenge, smiling because you do not want to admit you are shaking slightly.

He leans in, and the smell of him is the maddest sobriety—clean, faint traces of citrus, and a note that seems uniquely him. His mouth nears your ear, and when he speaks, it is no more than a whisper.

“You should not be near me.”

You flinch. Heat climbs the back of your neck. Offence and confusion arrive at the same time and cannot decide who will lead.

“Okay,” you say, and are proud, later, of the calm in it. “Then I won’t be.”

You turn, not dramatic, not wounded—just leaving, which is its own drama. You find Maya in the kitchen arguing lovingly with a bowl of olives. “I’m tapping out,” you announce.

She clocks you in an instant. “You good?”

“I’m a scientist of paper,” you say, as if that sentence answers anything. “I should go home and not talk to men in masks who think they’re prophets.”

“Do you want me to come?”

“Stay. Please. Dance for both of us.”

“Text me when you land.”

“Yes, Mum.”

You leave while the party is still going—lights still pulsing, gossip still benign. In the hallway, the air cools and quiets. The elevator’s mirror gives you back a face that looks a little bruised. On the street, wind scrapes the glitter from your hair.

He did not say I don’t want you. He said You should not be near me. Which is a different cruelty. Or a different kindness. You do not know which, and you keep not knowing all the way to your door.

Wonwoo has never liked rooms where faces are invited to hide.

But he is here because you are here, and because every other choice his discipline proposes collapses under the simplest weight of your presence. The mask is a courtesy to the evening. The suit is armour of a more modern kind. He stays at the edge of the room.

You find him. Of course you do. You arrive with velvet and competence and a drink that insists on being elegant. He prepares himself to be wise and is not.

When you ask if he dances, he wants to tell you about floors in other countries that learned his steps before he did. When you lean just enough, he wants to unlearn eight hundred years of caution. When you shine, he wants to believe in basic things like gravity and mercy.

Instead, he tells you the truth he has. You should not be near me. He watches the sentence hurt you, and he takes that hurt like the penance he was due for. You leave quickly, and the space where you stood fills with dense silence.

Music changes key. A woman’s laughter climbs the scaffolding and hangs a flag. The room takes on a sheen of unreality it cannot sustain. The smell of wax and wine and powder reaches across the years to take him by the throat.

Gold light everywhere, the candles unionised and overperforming. The ceiling at Versailles is a masterpiece of art. Silk is rehearsing its arguments with skin in every corner. A masked ball with a queen who needs to be consoled by extravagance. He is in borrowed livery, a tutor’s anonymity draped over a body that has learned to pass among ranks without becoming one.

You are standing off to the side, needle-proud and laughing with the kind of disbelief only people who have held hunger can afford. The dress doesn’t belong to you, not really, but you are wearing it as if philosophy had finally found a use. Your mask is an afterthought; your eyes do the work. He hears you before he sees you, and his body recognises the sound before his mind can catch up.

When he is near, you turn your face toward him. Your gaze strips him of disguise. It takes the powdered queue, the white gloves, the measured bow, and returns him to himself.

“Do I know you,” you ask, mischief rippling under the velvet of the question, “or do I only want to?”

“Both,” he says, because lying would be an insult.

“Geneviève,” you offer, tilting your mask, “for tonight.”

He does not mean to touch the locket. He has kept it tucked away. But your hand finds it—immediate—and the iron oval opens as if it has been waiting for your touch. The lily has endured another century; it breathes a green that refuses to fade. You don’t flinch. You press it to your mouth.

“I know you from somewhere I cannot name,” you murmur.

He should leave you in the light because darkness owes you nothing. He does not. He waits until the corridor behind the card room is draped in shadow and the plaster has given up pretending to be marble. He presses you to the wall, and you meet him with your mouth.

It is not a gentle kiss. It is an argument where both parties win. Your hands, work-strong, find the back of his neck; his hands, callus for different reasons, bracket your ribs. There are hitches and half-laughs and the slap of palm against plaster. He follows the line of your throat with his mouth, and you let your head angle in favour of the trajectory of his lips. His coat bunches under your grip; he lifts your skirts and discovers he has not forgotten how to worship with his hands. The corridor understands privacy. You pay for it with urgency and gratitude.

“After,” you whisper against his jaw, “tell me your true name.”

“I will,” he promises.

Revolution arrives like a joke. Pamphlets breed. Someone throws a rock harder than they meant to, and it hits the correct window to make everyone decide the reign should end. The crowd outside is its own orchestra—boots and the percussive clatter of intent becoming action. He turns to you to say, ‘Run,’ and finds your smile catching the light. You tug the locket once, as if to test whether the chain will betray you. It will not. You nod, and you both step into the night.

The air is hot with speeches. The mob is many things—hungry, right, wrong, bored, holy—and one thing always: indifferent to individuals. The press of bodies becomes a physics problem. Wonwoo keeps you against the wall, a poor shield against numbers. You try to laugh because laughter has saved you before. It cannot purchase the space you need.

He feels the exact moment when you are lifted off your feet by the wave of people. He has fought tides more merciless than men, but bodies become water when they decide to, and you are carried three steps away and then seven and then so many he can no longer count. The last time he sees your face that night, your hair has come down, and your mouth is open, and the sound you are making is silent. When he reaches the place where you were, there is only the emptiness of you, a shoe with a bent buckle and the old, precise quiet that grief uses to introduce itself.

In New York, a woman in a red mask trips over her own heels and laughs, and the echo is enough to make him put a hand to a wall to confirm the century. He breathes.

He told you not to be near him because the difference between a ball and a mob is sometimes only an hour. He does not follow, because he has followed you for too many centuries that did not forgive him for it.

Wonwoo imagines this city picking you up and putting you down somewhere that will be kind to your ankles. He imagines you at home, removing sequins and recovering your dignity, making a face at yourself in the mirror that only you are allowed to see. He closes his eyes long enough to let the old Paris light fade, then opens them to the honest dark of Brooklyn and begins the long, unwitnessed walk back to himself.

You decide walls are made for research you cannot fit on paper.

Maya is already at a table with her laptop open and a stack of requests flagged in neon tabs when you enter. She pushes a folder toward you.

“Paris, 1788,” she says. “Ledger and pamphlet. Same hand? You tell me.”

You loosen the string, lift the cover, and the smell of ink and old starch lifts too. The ledger is tidy: narrow columns, numbers penned neatly. On the back flyleaf, a different nature intrudes—looser script, impatient, someone who has waited for a margin the way the hungry wait for bread. The ink has browned to that particular polish you know.

Omnes horae finiunt, amor autem non.

All hours end, but love does not.

The stroke is not the same as the Crusader margin, nor the psalter, and the rebellion of differences only strengthens the fact of sameness. You slide the ledger aside and take up the pamphlet, a flimsy thing that once cost a coin and the courage to sell it. Inside, a rant about bread and taxes performs its righteous fury; on the last page, faint and sideways, your line again, as if someone couldn’t resist leaving truth amongst its siblings.

“Twice,” you say, voice low. “Two separate hands.”

Maya leans in, eyes narrow. “Travelling phrase, like we thought. But this—look.” She points to a purchase line midway through the ledger, written in another clerk’s tidier script. “Tutor for the Dauphin—interviewed at court by M.A.—payment delayed.” Her finger taps the name attached, half-legible yet still recognisable: Wonwoo. The shape of it kickstarts your heart.

“That’s not a French name,” you murmur.

“No,” she says, already opening a new tab. “But courts collected the exotic like hobbies. We can chase the paper trail.”

The day unfolds like a hallway with doors that keep opening. Microfilm reveals a broadsheet image of a masked ball, with labels scribbled later by some amateur historian—the Queen, the Austrian, the tutor, the girl with the ribbons. You print and circle and try not to draw lines to faces.

The second discovery belongs entirely to Maya. She materialises at your station and fans out a scan with a grin.

“Florence, 1765. Unknown painter—Lucia something the cataloger couldn’t untangle. But—”

The portrait is small, and it knocks the breath out of you. The subject is a man in three-quarter view, coat simply cut, jaw set, eyes turned slightly aside. He looks like the Crusader sketch taught itself oils. He looks like the stranger who keeps insisting on centrifuging your day into its own orbit. He looks like Wonwoo.

“Lucia,” you read, and the name rings familiar. “No surname?”

“Only ‘Lucia, apprentice to—’ and the master’s name is illegible,” Maya says. “But the museum note mentions a legend: the subject insisted on being painted by her, not the master. There’s a rumour of… well. Gossip. Liaisons. Forbidden this and that.”

“Of course there is,” you say, and it comes out soft instead of scoffing.

She taps the lower corner. “And look at the edge of the frame. Someone scratched a motto into the gesso before the varnish set.”

You squint. The letters are faint, slanted, an impatient hand carving where paint would later cover. You can just make it: Omnes horae finiunt— then the surface fades with age.

The third find is yours and nobody’s: a psalm leaf in a miscellany, the kind of anthology monks made to house what couldn’t find a home in holy scripture. The Latin rolls along until the scribe stutters into a story: a soldier made a vow to a woman not of his nation; God tested him; love proved itself and suffered anyway. It’s not a tale so much as the memory of one. You trace the words with your gaze until your vision blurs.

You become efficient in your descent.

Requests, scans, photocopies, a disgruntled printer that requires petting to behave—your arms fill with paper until the stack has a satisfying weight. You sign things. You label. You borrow the archive’s stapler.

“Wall?” Maya asks, seeing the way your notebook is not going to be enough.

“Wall,” you confirm, and mean the one at home.

You carry your bag toward your apartment and unload it once inside. On the largest empty wall—the one you’ve always promised a print you never bought—you tape the first anchor: the Crusader sketch, printed and trimmed, the line beneath it clear. To its right, the psalter photocopy with the same sentence in the margin. Below those: the Paris ledger’s flyleaf, the pamphlet’s last page. To the left: the Florentine portrait by Lucia.

You step back.

You add twine because you cannot help yourself. A string from the Crusader to the psalter, from both to the Paris documents, a neat angle toward Florence. The line crosses the portrait. You pin clippings along it: notes in your hand, Maya’s emailed references, a photocopy of the broadsheet and its scrawled labels—tutor?

In the far corner, you pin the psalm leaf with its tiny story about forbidden lovers. You stand on a chair and add one more photograph high above the others: a blown-up crop of the word Wonwoo in the ledger, letters fat with old ink, underlined by your pencil.

“You do know this looks like an obsession board,” Maya says over speakerphone later, benevolent and blunt.

“It’s a map,” you answer. “I’m trying to find the way out of a thought.”

“Or into it,” she says, and lets the silence settle. “I put in a request on Lucia. If they give us the verso image, maybe there’s an inscription. Artists wrote to themselves where nobody else could see.”

“Thank you,” you say, and mean it.

You make tea, sit on the floor with your knees up to your chest, and look at the wall. The repetition of the phrase is both reassuring and terrifying: comforting because patterns exist, terrifying because patterns can be cages.

“All hours end, but love does not,” you read aloud quietly.

Your phone lights with a text from Maya: Florence inventory list also has “consumption” by a sitter’s note—someone sick in the studio that year. Might connect. Sleep soon.

“Soon,” you lie into the air. You reach for a roll of washi tape printed with tiny stars and add a frame around the Lucia portrait.

The longer you look, the less ridiculous the impossible appears.

You know exactly how to dismantle this: call it apophenia, a brain’s party trick; call it the librarian’s disease, seeing echoes where there are only habits; call it grief, though you could not say for what. You could go to bed and decide to be a citizen of sense in the morning.

Instead, you stand closer to the Crusader image until your eyes prick. You notice that your hand has reached up of its own accord to touch the paper, and you let it.

“Who are you?” you whisper, and the wall does not answer.

Days lengthen, and the board expands. You and Maya stop pretending this is a side quest.

At the Print Room, a clerk rolls out a folio of engravings from the 1790s. In the margin of one plate—a street scene of the Palais-Royal—someone’s pencil has circled a figure half-turned from the viewer. Underneath, a curator’s note: Unidentified man appears repeatedly in crowd scenes by three different engravers. You copy all three. In each, the man’s profile is familiar enough to make your hands tremble.

Maya raids auction catalogues: a lot description from 1901 lists a signet ring with lily crest, motto: Omnes horae finiunt, provenance estate of W. J. W., reclusive patron of letters. She points, eyebrows up. “J. W. W.—could be anything, but lilies again.”

At the Music Division, a box of field recordings from the Highlands coughs up a pencilled staff on the inside flap: three notes, marked shepherd’s call; two-note whistle. You hum it before you know what you’re doing.

In a drawer of ephemera, a battered prayer card from a New York funeral in 1893 bears a black border and a Latin line in glossy script. On the back, faded pencil: he never married. You photograph both the front and back, and feel disloyal for hoping the line belongs to him.

Maya, gleeful, produces a theatre playbill from 1892 with an advertisement: Patronage courtesy of W. Won. You want to be sensible; you fail.

A shipping manifest from 1847 lists passengers bound for New York; one entry is scratched out and re-entered as Mr. Woo (Won-woo?) with a clerk’s irritation sharpened into ink. It is nothing. It is everything. You copy it anyway.

In the Rare Map room, a 1780s pocket atlas has a bookplate: a lily stamped above a ribbon. The binding is loose; inside the back cover, someone has hidden a slip of paper with a line in French: Toutes les heures finissent… The ellipsis ends before the last part. You hold the slip with tweezers.

From Florence, the museum replies with a verso image of Lucia’s portrait. The back is plain wood, but in the corner someone—her?—has written in a quick Florentine hand: per lui, quando le ore non bastano (for him, when the hours are not enough). You stumble into a chair.

Maya tracks court transcripts from the Scottish Borders, 1546: depositions in a clan feud include a woman named Elspeth and a father who swore revenge. In a later hand, a justice notes: a wandering foreign knight, unnamed, absent from the hearing. A lily is doodled in the margin.

You request an 18th-century Paris police register—étrangers surveillés—and find a line promising in its mundanity: Won Wu, professeur, observé, pas dangereux. Someone else—later? Amused?—has pencilled a lily beside the name.

A conservator lets you examine a fragmentary locket in the study collection: iron oval, stiff hinge, glass gone. Inside, a ghost of fibre where something once lay. On the edge, a scratched quotation that time has chewed away; you catch only …am— non.

You add them all. The wall takes each piece of evidence. Twine multiplies; tape fights gravity; pushpins receive extra attention.

You try to be wary of seeing him where he does not belong. You and Maya establish rules: at least two independent items per leap; at least one primary source; no modern reproductions unless they can be traced. It doesn’t save you from belief; it makes the belief wear better shoes.

One evening, Maya sits on your rug with a legal pad and her sensible pen and plays devil’s advocate with tenderness. “He could be a type,” she suggests. “A composite face artists used. The line could be a fashionable phrase. Lily is common.”

“I know,” you say. “I know.” And you do. But you know, too, the way your pulse stepped sideways at each mention of ‘Wonwoo’ and the way the three-note whistle fit in your mouth.

“Can I ask—” Maya hesitates. “Were you baptised?”

The question rings unexpected. “No,” you say slowly. “My parents weren’t religious. They meant to—then didn’t. Why?”

She shrugs. “Only the way the psalm’s little story keeps framing the lovers in church language.” A beat. “Sometimes the absence matters as much as the presence, you know?”

You think about a priest-shaped figure in a ruined chapel you can’t possibly know and refuse yourself the luxury of thinking further.

On the fourth night, the wall crosses the line from research to company. You catch yourself greeting it when you come in, the way people greet plants or cats: hello, I have not forgotten you. You move the Lucia portrait half an inch higher because the string begs for a cleaner angle. You add a small envelope taped to the bottom labelled outliers, where you tuck things that might belong later: a 1931 Times clipping about an anonymous donor of lilies to a hospital ward each year on the same date; a 1917 photograph of a Red Cross station where a man at the edge looks mundanely like everyone else and also like him.

Your phone buzzes. Maya again: Pulled parish book from Paris—one page has a tiny note in the margin beside a death record: “trampled by the crowd.” Sending scan. Also: tea tomorrow. You need something green that isn’t a flower.

You type back: Thank you. For all of this. Then, after a fight with your dignity, What if he’s real?

Three dots pulse and pause. “Then the wall is a letter,” she sends, “and you’re answering.”

The room is very quiet after that. You switch off the bright lamp and leave only the string of fairy lights that outlines the map like a constellation. You sit on the floor, back to the couch, and let your eyes soften.

You think of the man in the mask saying he is keeping you safe and of the ledger saying his name anyway.

Wonwoo.

You let your head fall against the cushion and listen to the apartment’s small noises—the hum of the fridge, the elevator’s polite ding, the neighbour’s spoon in a mug—and you accept, not belief, but attention. It will have to be enough, until it isn’t.

Wonwoo lets the email sit unread for an hour, then opens it anyway.

The subject line is practical—Verso imaging request: “Portrait of a Gentleman,” Florence, c. 1765 (Lucia, attr.)—and the museum’s tone is all courtesies and professional jargon. They inform him, politely, that the Archives Department of a partner institution has requested a high-resolution image of the painting’s backboard. As owner of record and long-term lender, his consent is required. There is no reason to refuse. There are too many.

He stares at the thumbnail the registrar has embedded, a modest rectangle of oil: his own face, light fitted to cheekbone, mouth undecided. You had painted him honestly: without mercy, without kinked sentiment. The locket is not visible, but he remembers how it bumped lightly against his sternum when he breathed, how the lily inside—already impossibly old—scented even the studio’s chalk and linseed.

He types Approved and pauses. The cursor blinks. He adds two lines: Please handle with gloved hands; the lower-left corner is dry and will flake if flexed. Kindly share any new findings with the lender. He sends the email and is surprised by the steadiness of his fingers.

The room goes quiet, and the present loosens like an untied knot.

The studio smells of wet plaster and bruised rosemary.

Windows are cracked just enough to keep varnish from sulking, shutters are angled to persuade the light, a damp cloth is thrown over the basin. You stand on a box to make yourself taller. Your hair has come loose. You measure his face with your brush, not with your eyes.

Wonwoo sits on a simple chair, turned three-quarters, as you instructed. You scolded him for arriving in a black coat—dark, scuro, complaining men always think shadow is flattering—and draped him in a rough linen sheeting instead. He does not mind.

The locket rests tucked beneath the linen. He has told himself for days that he will not show it to you. He will be prudent. He will be a canvas that behaves. He will sit, and you will paint, and the world will allow him this anonymous human hour in which nothing catastrophic occurs.

Your assistant moves in the corner, grinding pigments, quick with the chore. You keep your brush aloft, eyes narrowing at the hinge of his jaw.

“Stand still, signore,” you say, not unkind, as if stillness were an etiquette you expect to be familiar.

The assistant peeks from behind the easel, the impetuousness of youth ungoverned.

“He is still,” the girl argues, “only not inside.”

You step around the scaffolding of the sitting. He had seen you already, in a market two mornings before, haggling for eggs, and his body had filled with the old recognition. Now, inches away, he avoids looking fully at you because he believes in survival.

Your brush lifts, tapping his jaw.

“Look at your shadow,” you instruct, “not at me.”

You pass near him, and reach to adjust the linen drape at his chest—only that—but your wrist grazes the cloth. The iron oval finds your skin.

It opens.

The lily is there, impossibly whole.

He watches your face remake itself around memory. The change is not theatrical. It is the click of a latch. Your mouth opens and does not need breath to speak the word it wants.

“Beloved,” you whisper.

The assistant looks from you to him and says nothing, because silence is an art and she is learning when to practice it.

He could tell you to put the locket away. He could laugh, as men do when frightened, and call it a poet’s plant. He could stand and leave the portrait a headless rumour in the corner of a room that will be whitewashed when the landlord decides. Instead, he rises too quickly for the scaffold’s sanity, closes his fingers around your hand, and you close your fingers around his.

The world creates a new space for the two of you.

In that expensive quiet, you make a plan. You will not say the word love again. You will starve the air of that sound. You will finish the portrait under your own steady hand. In the church of San Miniato, you will light a candle for someone else and stand near its smoke until you both smell it. You will, as if the verb had patience, wait.

It works, for a while, so long it feels like the beginning of winning. He poses; you paint; you hand yourself brushes from the tray; he brings bread from a man who lives a street away; you eat too fast and then apologise; he pretends he did not hear your apology and passes you another piece. You never say the word. Your hands say it on each other’s skin, in the laundry room, in the stairwell where light forgets to live.

Your cough begins like an afterthought. It quickly becomes more aggressive.

You lie to him at first.

“Florence,” you say, shrugging, “there is dust in this city.”

He believes you for precisely a week.

Then the cough keeps a laugh from you, then a street, then an afternoon. You clamp your jaw and paint faster, working light over his cheekbones. He spends money on doctors whom you charm into admitting the futility of their own profession. He opens the locket when you are sleeping and lets the lily steady the air. When you wake, he closes it as if he has been caught kissing the hem of a garment he should not touch.

The portrait reaches completion on the same morning your body decides to be honest with your lungs. You sign your name in the wet paint at the lower right, then write another message no one will see on the back. You cry and call it turpentine.

He keeps the word love out of the room, but thanks you in the language that lives under spoken languages. You hold his hand, and he lets you, because what else could he do? When you can no longer hide your need for air, you turn your face and fight with dignity. He sits on the floor by the bed because chairs make him too tall to bear the distance from your mouth to his.

One morning, you call him with two fingers. He bends until his forehead touches yours, and your breath warms his face.

“Even silence is love,” you whisper, “All hours end, but love does not.”

He says nothing, because he promised. He holds your hand until your hand stops being a hand and becomes a ghost.

Hope dies cleanly that time. Not like a candle. Like a door, latched.

Outside, carts complain about cobbles, and a man shouts about figs. Inside, the portrait dries.

Wonwoo understands, with a clarity that makes him laugh violently, what the priest in the ruin sold him: not reunion, only recurrence. If God did not end it, the Devil would not let it. The bargain was not to see you again and have you; it was to see you again and learn how to lose you correctly, in every dialect the centuries can invent.

He returns to his window now, not because the view comforts him; New York resists that duty.

He chose solitude after Florence. He chose it so thoroughly it felt like virtue. Centuries ran around him: wars burned, empires mispronounced themselves into extinction, cities learned steel and then glass and then learned to pretend they had invented both. He acquired things because the world respects owners; he declined joys. He learned how to blend in with the surroundings. He learned to dress as the decade required. He learned a hundred languages well enough to buy and acquire. He did not learn hope.

Two hundred and sixty years of silence: a number that sounds like legend yet feels like a kitchen timer if you live inside it. Then a library lamp showed your face and made a believer of him in the oldest superstition there is: faith.

He allows himself one small relief: you have not remembered. Not the hills. Not the chapel. Not Versailles. Not the morning when you signed your name and coughed a thread of blood and still smiled at him. The absence of recognition is the only mercy this curse presently offers.

His phone lights up again—a second email from the registrar, brisk and grateful: ‘We will proceed with care.’ He places the phone face down.

He gives the museum what they ask. He will watch the verso image arrive in an archive across the city and imagine your hand—the same hand that refused to tremble in Florence—catalogue it beside other evidence. He will keep his distance, because he understands, at last, the exact size of his curse: not to be denied you, but to know precisely how you are taken.

He touches the locket and permits himself one small hope: that you might go on not remembering long enough to live. He cannot stop the connection; the centuries have wired the route from you to him. But maybe the wire can hum under the floorboards without setting the house on fire.

He approves, silently, a thousand requests no registrar will ever send, because abstinence is the only mercy he can grant, and he will sign every permission, open every door, surrender every claim—so long as each act keeps you safe by keeping you from him.

You choose the café because it is familiar.

Steam fogs the front windows; milk hisses, cups clink, and the grinder whines. You order what you always order and stand at the end of the bar with your receipt in your palm, rehearsing errands, refusing thoughts of your wall. When the barista calls your name, you reach, and your sleeve knocks a napkin holder, and he is there, steadying it before it falls.

For a breath, the room unthreads.

He stands too close to pass for coincidence. The light snags on the angle of his jaw. He looks like the portrait you pinned above your desk.

“Wonwoo,” you breathe.

He dips his head at the sound of his name passing your lips. The smallest smile appears and is then removed with professional care. You hear yourself continue.

“You look exactly like someone in a Crusader portrait I found.”

He freezes. Not with offence. With recognition, or the fear of it. The silence he gives you has weight; it sets the coffee shop slightly off-kilter. Around you, spoons continue, a stroller squeaks, and still his not-speaking is louder than any other noise.

“Say something,” you whisper, because the quiet begins to feel like a threat you can’t stomach.

He blinks once, slowly, as if returning from deep inside himself. “Another time,” he says lowly, and steps back.

You follow the vector of his coat through the door. The bell above the frame rings. Outside, the day has taken on a grey hue. The sidewalk is slick with rain and thaw. He turns left. You turn left. He lengthens his stride. You match. He slips into the narrow run of an alley filled with dumpsters and steam pipes. You catch his sleeve and pull him to a halt.

“No,” you say. “Not again. Not this vanishing.”

He stops because you have asked him to, and because there is something about your voice that refuses to bend. You let go of his sleeve and step in front of him, back to the wet brick.

“Tell me who you are,” you say. “Tell me why I keep seeing you in places you have no right to be. Tell me why you look like a man drawn six hundred years ago by someone with a shaky pen in a monastery who did not know you would be standing here under a broken pipe in Manhattan.”

He leans his shoulder into the wall, studying your face, his mouth folding into a shape akin to grief.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says.

“You already are.”

He winces. “If I answer, I will hurt you differently.”

“Stop protecting me with abstractions,” you reply, sharper than you meant. “I’m not made of glass.”

He exhales. The air leaves him painfully. He searches for a sentence that won’t become a weapon in his mouth and fails.

“I have carried your deaths longer than any man should bear,” he says, as if offering the least damaging fragment of a larger truth.

The alley narrows. The sky closes in. Your mind rejects the syntax even as your bones behind it agree. You swallow the impulse to laugh; the impulse to cry shows up as heat behind your eyes.

“My deaths,” you repeat, slowly.

“Not here,” he says, almost a plea. “Not in this place with its bins and steam and other people’s ears.”

“Then give me something.”

He looks past you at the wet line of light where the street resumes. A muscle works in his jaw. He picks a stone from the ground in silence and sets it between you.

“I knew you at a time when the word for mercy had not been invented yet,” he says. “And again, when silk was a language for hunger. And again, when paint could not dry fast enough to keep the air in your lungs. You do not remember those rooms. It is mercy that you do not.”

You try to arrange your face into a shape that can take this in without breaking. It fails. You try a different tactic: the librarian in you, the scientist of paper you’ve trained yourself to be.

“Give me something I can check,” you say. “A name. A place.”

He lifts his hand as if to touch your cheek and thinks better of it. “I could give you a list and it would be a prayer you would not believe. Acre. The Border hills. Paris. Florence.” He stops, because the next word does not belong in this alley, on this day.

Something old moves through your chest. Your mouth finds rationality because it is the only raft in reach.

“You read the same books I did,” you manage. “You looked at the same images.”

“I looked at you,” he says, and the precision is unkind to both of you.

Anger arrives, faithful to its job of keeping you from drowning in other things. “Is this a game to you? Is this performance? Because if you’re going to gaslight me with poetry, I’m going to find a less handsome stranger to be haunted by.”

He laughs once, an ugly, involuntary sound, then shuts it down. “I deserve that,” he says. “But no. No games. I wish I could lie to you well enough to save you.”

“From what?”

He looks at your mouth instead of answering, and you realise there is a category of terror reserved for the moment when wanting and warning occupy the same square inch of air.

“Fate,” he says at last, embarrassed by how much work it took to be uttered aloud. “From me, when I am its instrument.”

“You’re not an instrument,” you say, surprising yourself with your conviction. “You’re a man in a coat in an alley who is terrified and pretending it’s policy.”

Something in his posture shifts. He leans closer without invading, the way a person does when the thing they need is too fragile to reach quickly.

“Do not try to remember,” he whispers. “Please. If you love your life—”

“I don’t remember,” you say, the truth leaving your mouth stripped of everything but its own nakedness. “I don’t. I only—” You touch your wrist, that small crescent, an old habit you refuse to name. “I only feel like I’ve been carrying a sentence I haven’t had the words for. And then I look at you and the words get close and—”

“And the room tilts,” he finishes, quietly.

You nod. The steam pipe sighs and shivers; a drop of water finds your hairline and slides down your cheek. He watches its path like a man with holiness before him and no right to touch.

“Tell me your name. Your real one,” you ask, because names are anchors, and you would like to stop drifting.

“Wonwoo,” he confirms.

The name falls between you. You say it once, soft, to see if your mouth will accept it, and it does, as if practised. He flinches at the sound.

“And mine?” you venture, half-mocking, half-terrified of the answer.

He shakes his head. “The one you wear now is the only one I will let myself say.”

“Why?”

“Because every other name is a curse that calls down storms.”

You ought to walk away. You watch yourself not. Your hand lifts and finds his face instead. Your fingers learn the curve of his cheek, the cool at his temple, the tense kindness of his mouth. He trembles under the touch.

“Why does it feel like I’ve done this before?” you ask in the space between his breath and yours.

“Because you have,” he says, breaking the rule he set himself a moment ago. “Because time is a wheel and I traded my soul for a seat on its rim.”

You take your hand back as if burned. He closes his eyes briefly, and when he opens them, there is that old, exhausted mercy in place.

“You’re scaring me,” you tell him, and this, too, is love’s honesty.

He nods. “I should. I am trying to.”

“Then why can’t I leave?”

He swallows. “Because I can’t either.”

You laugh—short, helpless, not unkind. “You are remarkably bad at keeping me safe.”

“I know,” he says, and the concession has its own bittersweetness. “Forgive me.”

“For what,” you ask.

He does not answer. He steps the smallest step closer, enough that you can count the flecks of gold the light coaxes from the brown of his eyes.

“If I kiss you,” you say, “does the world end?”

He lets out a breath. “It never ends,” he says. “That is the problem.”

“Then it won’t mind if I borrow a little.”

You rise onto your toes as he bends down.

The kiss is not the naive victory of movies; it is a slow catastrophe, careful, a question asked and answered in the same moment. His hand finds the back of your neck and then, remembering himself, gentles. Your mouth learns his name as a shape and then as a taste. The alley disappears like a curtain pulled on a bad scene.

When you part, your foreheads rest against each other. He speaks into the skin just above your lip.

“Come with me,” he says—plea, request, command, finality, a choice braided into a single sentence.

The thirteenth night leans close, all whispers and promise.

His home is spare, almost monastic—glass, steel, dark wood—yet there is a softness to the space, a hush that feels protected.

You don’t plan to cross the room as quickly as you do. You don’t plan the way your coat finds the back of a chair or how your lips find his again, harder this time.

His mouth is warm; he tastes clean, heady, addictive. He tilts his head, and you meet him, lips parting, breath mixing. You pull his bottom lip between your teeth and he shudders; you soothe the nip with your tongue slowly. He answers with steady pressure, then a tug, then the kind of open-mouthed kiss that leaves no room for doubt.

His hands stop hovering and find you—one at the small of your back, pulling you in, the other circling your waist and anchoring you to him. He learns the pace you like and matches it: press, glide, a brief retreat, then a return that makes you chase him. You fist his shirt and hold him there, kissing until your lungs ache, breaking only to breathe against his cheek before you find his mouth again.

You pin him to the wall, palms flat on his chest, boxing him in. He looks straight at you—wide, focused, thirsty—and waits. Your laugh slips out quick and bright, not nervous, just sure of yourself.

“Tell me to stop,” you murmur, already knowing he won’t.

“I couldn’t,” he says, voice rough, “my beloved.”

You don’t overthink it. Instead, you take his mouth again. He answers with a low moan, his lips parting, his hands tightening on your waist, surrender and need in the same motion.

You guide him along the wall, fingers curling in his shirt, hips close enough to feel his heat. When the backs of his knees hit the couch, you push lightly at his chest. He sits. You climb into his lap without breaking the kiss, knees bracketing his thighs, dress riding to your hips. You settle your weight over him until you feel exactly where he is against you; his clothed length pushing against your clothed heat. You set a slow grind and make him hold still for it.

Your hand comes up to his throat. You don’t squeeze; you don’t press. You place your fingers there to feel him—the jump of his pulse under your thumb, the swallow he can’t hide—your other hand fists in his hair to keep his face tilted to yours. He freezes for half a second at the touch and then yields, eyes on yours, chest lifting against yours. You keep kissing him, steady and deliberate, holding his throat while you move in his lap and take exactly what you came for.

“You’re shaking,” you say, and smile.

“I have been cold for so long,” he answers, “and then you walked in.”

You kiss the corner of his mouth, then the other, then the spot below his ear. You work down the column of his throat with an open mouth—tasting, learning—feeling him tense and soften, tense and soften beneath your tongue. Your hands slip beneath his shirt, mapping him: the ridges and planes of his muscle, the heat that gathers at his waist, the indrawn breath when your nails drag lightly over his ribs.

“Let me see you,” you whisper. He nods mutely.

You undress him button by button, slow on purpose, working down his shirt until it falls open and off his shoulders. When he’s bare from the waist up, you settle back on his thighs to take him in. You look first, then touch. You trace an old scar on his chest with your fingertip and follow another cut on his shoulder. His skin is hot and tight and responsive under your touch.

“You’re beautiful,” you say, and mean it.

Something raw and grateful crosses his face. “You are…” He stumbles, then finds the words. “You are the hour I never deserved.”

You slide to your knees between his legs without looking away. His breath hitches; his fingers curl around the cushion as if to brace himself. You undo his belt, then his zipper. When you free him, his cock is hot and heavy in your palm. You stroke him once, slowly, and watch his eyes half-close, his mouth fall open and then grit shut, your eyes holding a silent question.

“Yes,” he manages, “please.”

You lower your head and take him into your mouth—first the tip, then deeper—tongue flattening to lap, then curling to stroke as you sink and draw back in a steady pull. His gasp hits your scalp; his thighs tense. You wrap one hand around the base of his length and work in time with your lips, slow at first, then a little faster, keeping him where you want him while your other hand pins his hip when he tries to thrust up to meet you.

Eventually, that bracing hand slips away, dragging under your dress, under your waistband, until your fingers slide between your legs and find how wet you are. You rub tight circles over your clit, matching the pace of your mouth, shameless about the way you moan around him when the pressure lands just right. You take him deeper into your throat, cheeks hollowing, tongue pressing along the underside of his shaft; your fist twists as your lips glide, and his head falls back with a broken groan. The sight of your hand working yourself while you suck him turns his control brittle; the slick rhythm of your fingers and your mouth turns his restraint to tinder.

“Beloved,” he says, and then again—a reverent curse—“beloved.”

You hum, and the vibration makes him curse softly into his fist. You draw back to kiss the head, slow, teasing, then circle your tongue and take him in again, your throat opening. His head falls back against the couch; his chest rises and falls. You feel him fight for control because he wants to give you everything you have come to take. You thumb your clit harder, chasing a spark while you worship him with your mouth, and his hands shake, helpless, at the sight.

“If you keep—” His voice breaks; he tries again. “If you keep doing that, I will shame myself like a boy.”

You smile around him. “Good,” you mumble, and do it again.

His cock pulses on your tongue, and the sound he makes—choked, breaking—turns your bones soft. You ease your pace, then tighten it, merciless and tender, until his hand lands in your hair.

“Enough,” he gasps, “not like this—let me—”

You release him with a pop and rise, wiping the corner of your mouth with the back of your hand, your eyes never leaving his. You straddle him again and kiss him, letting him taste himself on your tongue; he groans into your mouth at the tang. Your dress slips off your shoulder; his hands follow the new geography, tracing your collarbone, cupping your breasts through the fabric of your bra, then under it when you guide him. His thumbs circle your nipples until your breath goes ragged. You roll your hips against him and feel his answering surge.

“Tell me what you want,” he says, voice gone dark.

“You,” you say simply before lifting your hips and pushing your panties aside to guide him to your entrance.

You ease down onto him in one slow, claiming thrust. The stretch steals sound from you; he catches the unvoiced cry with a kiss, his hands firm at your waist, holding you open, holding you steady. You set a rhythm, rolling your hips, rising and falling, taking him to the hilt and then almost out, your breath stuttering with each deliberate stroke. He watches your face like he is printing it on the inside of his eyelids.

“Look at you,” he murmurs, awed. “Look at what you do to me.”

Confidence lives in your spine. You ride him harder, your hands on his shoulders, fingers digging in when the angle hits a place that lights you from the inside. He meets you halfway, lifting his hips, driving up into you with control. Sweat beads at your temple; his mouth finds it and licks it away. You bite his lower lip; he gasps and laughs in the same breath, undone and delighted.

“Say it,” you pant, not sure what you want until it arrives. “Say you’re mine.”

“I have been yours in every century I dared to breathe,” he answers, broken and true.

You tip your head back and ride him faster, the wet sounds spilling into the quiet of the penthouse. Your body begins to tighten, heat coiling low, and you chase it with shameless focus. He slides a hand between you, fingers finding your clit easily—circling, pressing, dragging you closer to that edge with an understanding that feels older than this room—while his mouth lowers to your breast, lips closing around your clothed nipple, tongue teasing the nub until your spine bows. The double attention spins you higher.

“Yes,” you cry, “don’t stop—”

He doesn’t. He sits up, his mouth still at your breast, sucking and flicking in time with the steady pressure of his fingers against your core, and you cling to him as the wave suddenly overtakes you—hips stuttering, mouth open against his neck, a sound you do not recognise tearing from your throat. He holds you through it, whispering against your hair—praise, promise, your name like a blessing he can’t help repeat.

You are still shaking when he grips your hips and flips you gently, laying you back on the couch cushions. He kneels between your knees and drags you to the edge, one of your legs lifted, bent, carefully set over his shoulder. The position opens you and makes you gasp.

“Look at me,” he says.

You do.

He pushes back into you, the stretch fresh and exquisite. The new angle pushes another moan out of you; he swallows it with a kiss and sets a rhythm—deep, bruising, relentless. One hand locks around your thigh, holding you open; the other cups your jaw, thumb at your cheek, keeping your face tipped to his so he can watch your eyes glaze on every thrust. You meet him without flinching, hips rolling to take him, matching his rhythm.

“You take me so well,” he groans. “You were made for me.”

“Yes,” you gasp—because it fits, because it’s true.

He drives harder, and the couch creaks in gentle protest. The city blurs beyond his shoulder. He bites gently at your ankle where it rests against his collarbone; pleasure shocks through you again. You clamp your hand around his forearm and feel everything—muscle flexing under your fingers, the slick heat of his skin, the steadiness of his strength—and the way he looks down at you, wrecked and tender, tells you exactly what you are to him: threshold and home, both at once

“I would burn eternity for one hour with you,” he groans.

“Then stay,” you answer, not fully understanding the depth of your words.

The coil in your stomach builds again and you are greedy for it. He is unravelling too— jaw tight, breath ragged—and still he holds your gaze. When you come, it is with his name in your mouth, and when he follows, it is with your name in his—both of you flung and filled, both of you shaking as the orgasm rips through you, and his seed spills inside.

He collapses forward and presses his forehead to yours, both of you breathing hard, laughing once from the shock of relief. He kisses you again, slow now. Your leg slides from his shoulder; he catches your calf, kisses the inside of your knee, then the slick pulse at your throat, then your mouth.

“My beloved,” he whispers.

You touch his damp face, thumbs brushing the high bones of his eyebrows, and something fierce and uncomprehending rises in you. “I love you,” you say, stunned by your own certainty, “I don’t know why or how, but I do.”

He closes his eyes and kisses you, as if sealing the words between you. He doesn’t get up. He gathers you, turns you gently, and guides you down the dim hall with his body close to yours until his bedroom opens—quiet sheets, soft darkness. He lies back and pulls you over him, settles you on his chest, then draws the blanket up to your shoulders. One arm locks around your waist; the other cups the back of your head, his fingers moving slowly through your hair.

You match your breathing to his as you rest your head on his chest. City light lays pale stripes across his collarbone. He says your name once, then softer: “my beloved.” The tightness in your chest eases. Heat becomes warmth; urgency thins to ache; ache settles into calm.

Your eyes close. Your body gives in to gravity and the steady drum of his heartbeat. He keeps still, as if any extra motion might break the spell. You drift, then drop into sleep while his hand keeps its slow, patient path through your hair.

The dream does not announce; it floods.

The air inside the ruined chapel tastes like iron and smoke; a broken roof frames a sliver of night; the moon peers down. A lily lies crushed on the broken altar beside a strip of linen dark with blood. Your hands are slick—yours, someone else’s, his—and the pain becomes white.

Arrows. The shout of men who don’t know your name and wouldn’t care if they did. A face in a helmet. His face without it. The stunned way his mouth formed prayer and blasphemy at once.

Acre. Anna. Forbidden hands touching anyway in corners that pretended to be private.

—

The Border wind stings, your cloak a joke against it. His horse snorts softly, patiently. A shed, a sack of seed, a mouth greedy for silence and heat. You laugh into the curve of his jaw because for one hour, the world can’t find you.

A door bursts, boots, a curse. The blade you weren’t supposed to need. Blood on planks. Your father’s voice and then the silence that follows men who think they were aiming at someone else.

Scotland. Elspeth. Murder you didn’t see coming because love told you to look away.

—

A ceiling painted with people who never had to sweat. Wax breathes rich and heavy; silk argues with skin in every corner. Your mask is crooked; you don’t fix it. You don’t need eyes to find him. In an empty corridor, you learn the taste of your own name said with a mouth that your past remembers. Outside, the crowd becomes a tide; you are swept away. Feet, wheels, shouts, a fall; your shoe’s buckle bending under pressure.

Paris. Geneviève. Trampled by a revolution that does not pause for individuals.

—

Light muddied with clay dust. A woman standing on a box to be taller than her easel. His shoulders holding still for your brush. Your cough starts soft—scusatemi—then becomes a fact that the room has to organise itself around. He opens a locket: iron, humble, stubborn. Inside, a white lily refusing to brown. You press it to your lips. You tell him what you have no right to say out loud: Even silence is love. All hours end, but love does not. He holds the vow between his teeth and swallows it so you won’t die under the weight. You do anyway.

Florence. Lucia. Hope cut to the quick by consumption.

—

You bolt upright in bed, chest heaving, as if yanked up from deep water. The ceiling is unfamiliar; the room is a smear of shadow. It takes a second for the shapes to settle, for memory to catch up. Your hands scrabble across linen: sheets, not banners, not hay, not cobble; your skin now, not then. You find metal on your chest—his locket, the locket—hot from the heat you’ve been leeching into it all night. You clutch it in your palm.

“Why do I remember dying?” The whisper rasps your throat. The question isn’t a question. It’s a verdict you’re begging him to appeal.

Wonwoo is already up, already there, hand warm on your back.

“Breathe,” he says, a gentle command. “In. Out. Slow. With me.”

You try. Air goes in the wrong way.

“Why do I remember dying?” The second time, your voice is stronger, angrier. Wonwoo closes his eyes—only for a blink—but you see it: the way fatigue drags across his face. He opens them on purpose. He keeps his voice low when he responds.

“Dreams borrow,” he says. “Sometimes they take more than they should.”

“Don’t make it pretty,” you cut in. “You sound like a doctor trying not to announce the end.”

He flinches—as if you struck him—and shifts. “Pieces,” he tries again. “Rooms. Hours. Sometimes the mind—”

“The mind?” You laugh, and it’s not happy. “Then whose blood was that? Whose shoe? Whose cough?”

He looks at your hands. You realise you’re gripping the locket so hard your knuckles have whitened. He looks back at your face.

“Yours,” he says. “But not this body’s.”

You swing your legs out of bed as the room spins around you. The cold of the floor on your feet is a small, clean pain that feels like proof you’re still alive.

“Tell me what you are,” you say, fighting for calm and failing. “Tell me what I am to you.”

Silence. It is not evasive; it is careful.

“I am a man who made a bargain he cannot unmake,” he says. “And you are—” He stops, jaw working, then: “You are the reason I regret it, and the reason I don’t.”

“So you’re not going to deny it,” you say, heart pounding. “Acre. Scotland. Paris. Florence. Those were me. Those were you.”

His breath leaves him as he nods. The room shrinks. Your pulse is ringing in your ears. Panic overtakes your senses.

“Get away from me,” you whisper, and you hate how your hands shake. “I can’t— if I stay here I’ll—”

“I’ll make tea,” he says absurdly, as if this were a typical emergency. “We can sit. You can ask me anything. I’ll answer—”

“Answer?” The word snaps. “With what? Fate? Destiny? We’re cursed!” You can’t bear how final it sounds now that you’re saying it out loud. “I don’t want this story.”

He nods as if you’re right to refuse it. “Neither did you,” he says softly. “Any of you.”

“Stop.” The syllable shakes. “Don’t call me that. I don’t want to be an any.” Your chest tightens. Tears threaten, but you refuse them out of spite. You cross the room. Your dress from last night is a dark puddle on the chair. You drag it on, zipper crooked, but you don’t care. You jam your feet into your shoes and leave a heel unbuckled. Your bag is where you left it. You grab it so hard the strap protests. The chain at your throat suddenly feels wrong—you hook a finger beneath it, yank the clasp free, and tear the locket off. You curl it into your palm and keep it there, fist closed.

“Don’t run,” he says. His voice breaks, trying to stay gentle.

“I have to,” you say.

He takes a step. Stops. Forces his hands to stay at his sides. “Then let me come with you.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.” The word tears. “I don’t know you. I only know what you make me feel, and none of it is safe.”

He nods like a man being sentenced and finding a way to agree. “You are you,” he says, a last try. “Only you.”

You don’t wait to see if he’s right. You run.

Wonwoo knows what it means to watch a woman run from him, who believes he is the danger. He has trained his muscles not to grab, his mouth not to beg, his feet to follow just far enough to be there when the world fails.

He snatches his coat but doesn’t put it on; the elevator is somewhere doing what elevators do: wasting urgency. He takes the stairs because stairs do not wane. He hears your feet banging into the concrete two floors below. He says your name, and the stairwell throws it back at him.

The morning has not picked a season. The street offers its usual chaos: a delivery van half-parked on the crosswalk; a cyclist angry at the van; a rideshare vehicle angled into an imaginary spot; a cab deciding laws are suggestions; a man with a coffee discovering the politics of gravity. The light at the corner counts down in red.

You are a streak of hair and white knuckles and the locket’s chain cutting a bright arc with each step as it dangles from your hand. You are not looking. You are not looking because the past is louder than the present, and you are trying not to hear it. He sees the car approach.

Not again, his mind says.

He calls your name. It is not a name, not now; it is a flare. You turn your face toward him—only a fraction—and that fraction is all it takes for you not to see the white sedan deciding amber means go.

The sound is wrong. It isn’t loud. A horrible soft-hard knock. It is the sound of something breaking that shouldn’t.

Your body lifts, not far. Comes down badly. A bag spills; your phone skitters; the locket catches itself against your body and refuses to fall.

He is there before his brain has finished issuing the order to move. His knees slam into asphalt; he doesn’t notice. He slides his palm under your head. He sees your eyes—open, unseeing; then blinking; then trying to decide whether to be here. He hears nothing else for a while. The city narrows to your breath, stingy, irregular. The rest is a blur.

A woman is sobbing too loudly for her size. “Oh my God, oh my God.” The driver is making a noise composed entirely of the consonants guilt values: I— I— I— A man says he’s a nurse and asks for gloves. Somebody yells at the sedan. Somebody else yells at the yeller to shut up and call 911. The light finally changes.

He puts two fingers on your throat. Pulse. Unreliable, thready. The locket is wedged between your hands and your chest; the chain has looped once around your wrist. He murmurs “Easy,” and with the same care he would use to free a snare from a bird’s leg, he unwinds the chain from your wrist and eases the locket from your grip.

“Stay,” he says. The word is a command, a plea, a curse. “Stay with me. Breathe. Again. Easy.”

Your mouth shapes something. He leans closer. You manage one word that breaks him:

“Why?”

He could say everything. He could say because the Devil bargains in fine print; he could say because I was a boy and grief was a god; he could say because I have hauled your deaths behind me and I am tired and still not sorry. He says the only thing that has ever been the truth.

“Because I love you.”

Your eyes finally focus. They find his and hold. In them, he sees the chapel, the hill, the corridor, the studio—but also the couch from last night, and your hand on his throat, your mouth saying yes, the way a woman claims her life and not a man. He thinks, with a calm he will later hate: If this is the hour, at least it had an hour before it ended.

Sirens sound. Blue light washes the street into aquarium gloom. A paramedic slides to her knees beside him. “Sir, I need you to step back.”

He doesn’t. He can’t. He looks up at her. “Gently,” he says.

Something in his voice makes her nod. She positions her hands where his were, enters the space he has been guarding. Another medic appears with a backboard and a C-collar. The nurse from the curb gives a brisk report; someone parks a police car at an angle. The driver keeps saying I didn’t see her as if the sentence could turn back time.

“Sir, are you family?” the other paramedic asks, efficient, compassionate in the way he was taught. “Do you know her name?”

Family. The word tears into his tissue. Eight hundred years of the wrong nouns. Lover, stranger, ghost, sin, miracle, curse. None of them buy him the right to touch you without being asked. He says your given name.

“And you are—?”

He opens his mouth and says, ‘I am,’ and finds there is no answer that does not make him look like a problem, or a liar, or a myth. His silence is its own confession.

“We’ll take it from here,” he says. “Please step back.”

He does, and it is the worst obedience of his life. His hands hang stupid at his sides; one fist sealed around the locket.

The collar goes on. The backboard slides under. They lift you, tuck blankets, strap, tape, check, speak to each other in crisp shorthand. Wonwoo memorises the cadence.

A police officer corrals the driver to the curb. The man is shaking, shock-pale. “Sir, had you been drinking?” “No, no, I swear—” “Phone?” “On the dock— look— it’s—” A witness inserts herself; the officer holds up a palm; the witness obeys. The city tries not to stare and fails.

They wheel you toward the ambulance. He follows as far as the doors and stops because a paramedic’s hand touches his chest.

“We’ll be at St. Luke’s,” she says, reading his face. “You can meet us there.”

“Please,” he says, and does not know which God might receive this. “Please let me—”

“Sir, we need space to work.” Firm, kind, final.

The doors shut. Blue light blooms again, then slides away as the ambulance pulls into the mass of cars. Wonwoo stands in the middle of the street and learns, again, how quiet faith can make a man.

The police begin their bureaucracy of mercy and blame. Statements. Cones. Photos. A chalk mark he hates on principle. The driver is crying for his mother; a witness tries to describe the geometry of the hit with their hands and fails. Someone thrusts a paper cup at him; he doesn’t drink.

The police finish with the driver and turn toward him. “Sir, can we get your statement?” He nods because he knows how to perform compliance. He tells them what they need—speed, colour, direction, timing—in a voice that doesn’t sound like the one he uses daily.

When they release him, he looks down. On the asphalt, a drop of blood seeps into the crevices.

He turns toward the direction of St. Luke’s and begins to walk. He does not run. Running has never made time kinder.

Behind him, the driver’s voice breaks into a new shape: apology or defence, he’s not sure. Ahead, blocks away, the hospital’s glass front shows as a set of doors that will ask him to explain who he is. Above him, the sky tries and fails to make up its mind. The first real rain starts, thin and hesitant, dotting his sleeves. He doesn’t bother to hide from it. He tells the weather, because it is the only thing that might be listening, the only sentence he can bear to let out:

All hours end, but love does not.

Wonwoo finds the church by accident.

On his way to the hospital, he cuts through a street he never takes, past a shuttered bakery and a florist hosing sleep from the pavement. A steeple interrupts the sky. The door stands open and warm air escapes—wax and old wood, the mild smell of incense. He steps inside.

The nave is small, the kind of parish that keeps its courage in votive glass. Red lamps bud along a side altar; a row of kneelers waits in the centre. Light filters through stained glass—saints, lilies, a shepherd with a lamb. He moves down the aisle and stops at the stoup. Holy water shines thin in the basin. He hesitates—half expecting it to brand him, to reject him. Nothing happens. He touches the water to his brow, his chest, his shoulders. He does not remember the words, but his body remembers the motion.

He kneels. His hands do not know what to do with themselves until they find the locket and hold it within their grasp.

“I do not know how to speak to You anymore,” he begins. “I haven’t since Acre.”

Memory cuts clean: a ruined chapel, you on the stones, a man in a priest’s habit with a mild voice and teeth he did not show. He sees again the moment his faith snapped. He had spat a boy’s rage at heaven, and a patient devil had caught it.

“I cursed You,” he says. “I did. I took what I was offered. I chose a lie because it looked like hope.” His breath trembles. “I have carried it for eight centuries. I have carried her deaths.”

He presses the locket to his forehead. The metal is cold.

“Take me,” he whispers. “Take me. Take my soul. Unmake what I am. Let her live. Let her be free from me.”

He lays down what he can: pride, grief, the strange vanity of despair.

“If there is a ledger—I owe. If there is a scale—put all my weight on her side. If there is a door—lock me out and open it for her.”

Silence greets him. Somewhere in the back, a pipe settles, a building’s old bones remembering the lack of heat. He kneels until the ache in his legs becomes the only clarity.

“I am not asking for forever,” he says, and is surprised to mean it. “I am asking for now. Let this hour belong to her. Take me.”

Footsteps. Soft, ecclesiastical, unhurried—the gait of someone who has walked sanctums before. A priest appears at the end of the pew: cassock plain, collar white. His eyes are gentle yet not naive.

“Son,” the priest says, and the word lands without condescension, “you look as if you have been fighting the sea.”

Wonwoo swallows. “I have,” he answers, and then corrects himself, “I chose the sea.”

The priest tilts his head. “And now?”

“Now I would drown properly, if it would save her.”

He expects questions—names, dates, doctrine. The priest, instead, sits beside him, as if the best way to hear a man is to share the bench that hurts his knees.

“Tell me,” the priest says.

So he does. Not the whole of it—not the ruin and the bargain and the centuries in the detail they deserve. But the shape. The hour. The street. The ambulance, the blood, the locket caught in your hands. He confesses without flourish.

“I have been wrong in so many directions,” he says finally. “I have been faithful to my error longer than most men get to live. If there is a way to pay—if there is a way to end it—ask it of me.”

The priest considers him in stillness.

“Did you know,” he says at last, “she was never baptised?”

The sentence is simple. It hits like lightning.

“No,” Wonwoo manages. “No. She—” He stops.

The priest nods, not surprised. “The cycle you fear—what the enemy twisted for harm—leans on vows and signs and sacraments he did not make, but loves to counterfeit. If she was never bound by that mark, then she was never caught in that wheel. The curse has no hold.”

The words are an opening. Joy doesn’t ring; it shudders through him. Fear follows swiftly, trained to keep up.

“Then what happens to her?” His voice cracks on her. “What happens to her soul?”

The priest looks toward the sanctuary lamp, small in its red glass. “Mercy is not a contract,” he says. “It is a Person. You brought her here when you said free. Trust that Someone heard and was already nearer to her than you could ever be.”

Wonwoo closes his eyes. He has trained himself to expect bargains. The priest gives him, instead, hope. He loathes it and loves it at the same time.

“I have nothing to offer but myself,” he says.

“That has always been the only thing worth offering,” the priest replies gently. “And you have already placed it here.” He nods at the locket in Wonwoo’s fist. “You carried a flower through centuries so it could remind you what a prayer sounds like.”

Wonwoo almost laughs, but tears stifle the sound.

“If she lives,” he asks very quietly, “may the wheel stop?”

The priest’s smile is small. “You cannot imagine how little power the wheel has in a hand that forgives.”

Silence again. The stained glass seems more alive and less like a picture. Wonwoo breathes in, and for the first time since he said ‘take me’, his lungs do not argue.

He looks aside to thank the man, to ask him—foolishly, ambitiously—for a blessing he has no right to expect.

The pew beside him is empty.

There was no rustle of fabric, no exit, no footsteps reversing down the aisle. Only a soft, lingering sense of a presence. The sanctuary lamp burns on. A draft moves through the church.

Wonwoo remains kneeling until his knees lose feeling. He opens his fist. The locket printed a crescent on his skin. He bows his head once more.

For a breath, the metal stays against his palm—then, without sound, the hinge loosens, the oval fractures hairline-fine, and the thing that survived centuries finally yields: petal to powder, casing to ash. Dust sifts through his fingers and settles on the wood below him, leaving only the crescent mark on his skin and the faintest scent of lily where nothing remains.

For a long moment Wonwoo doesn’t move. Something shifts inside him. Heat spreads under his sternum; his heartbeat changes timbre, less an echo, more present. The emptiness he learned to live around is simply… gone. He blinks, waiting for pain or penalty; nothing answers. He closes his eyes and feels, absurdly, like a man returned to himself.

He stays kneeling until he trusts his legs to carry him, then rises. The nave narrows to aisle, to door, to rain. Outside, the sky has finally made up its mind and unloads water heavily. The hospital is still far, a small glow at the end of the long street, but he doesn’t measure it—he runs, startled by how light the running feels, as if the weight he never sets down has lifted off his shoulders.. Each footfall is a ‘yes’ he cannot help saying.

And somewhere, under the fluorescent hush and soft metronome of a monitor, a pair of eyes open again.

A/N: Fun fact about me: I absolutely love Caleb Landry Jones and Luc Besson. When I heard they would work together again for a remake of Dracula, I went to see it as soon as it was released. Safe to say I loved it. Take this story as the result of what the movie did to me. 💟

Tagging: @tomodachiii

Send me your thoughts - feedback/fangirling is always welcome. Want to be tagged in future works? Let me know.

‘WHAT’ you gasped, not noticing you had barked it out until everyone turned around and glared at you.

‘i’m sorry?...’ your professor had stopped everyone to bring attention back, she gave you a quizzical look, ‘is there a problem?’

you shook your head, still surprised by your sudden outburst, ‘n-no, i apologize’ you hung your head in shame, red blooming on your cheeks from embarrassment. you had been dreading today, your world literature 1 professor had told you all a week ago that you would be paired up with a partner for your first project. your major in biology and minor in actuarial mathematics required some literature classes to help with ‘scientific writing and understanding’ as your advisor put it. so you figured world literature 1 was the easiest choice, it turned out to actually be hell on earth. your weakest subject was english and literature, you were never a reader growing up unless it was about different sciences, but you always opted for documentaries and videos than reading. growing up, you’d always dread english class, anxiously waiting for whatever science and math class you could have next.

when you tell people that your favorite subject is math and then science they would laugh and usually end it with an ‘i wish’, that was your english and history, you wish you could understand it better, but it always seemed impossible. what you were least expecting was getting paired with the best literature student you knew, jeno. he annoyed you at times, acting like a pretentious asshole going around and quoting shakespeare and some other century-dead author. when you went and quoted pythagroas near him it was now apparently a problem, you two bickered back and forth in class during group introductions about greek philosophers for almost an hour, debating if aristotle was more of a math genius or a linguistics expert.

after the heated discussion, jeno told you ‘i love a good debate, you have some crazy opinions though’ he ended up giving you his phone number. it was only the first week of classes, your first ‘friend’(?), you texted him that night, but no response came. the next week you were struggling with questions your professor had given you all to go with a reading.

you texted jeno:

‘hey is this correct? *PICTURE ATTACHED*

his response chimed on your phone five minutes later:

‘no’

and that was the only response you got, no help, no explanation, you didn’t even know what was wrong with your answer to begin with. fuck this, you ended up calling him, to your surprise he answered with a ‘what?’

you didn’t mean to blow up on him, but it just came out, ‘why can’t you be nice to me for one second and help me with this student homework?’

he sighed, making your ear vibrate with the sound, ‘take back what you said and i’ll help you’

you grumbled but obliged, ‘this homework and reading is not stupid, now please help me’

you guys ended up talking on the phone for almost two hours, discussing different themes from the reading, mostly arguing about who was right, but in the end jeno helped you get answers that were good enough. he talked you through the questions and the actual themes of the reading, the elements, and showed you how to better analysis pieces of literature. you were eternally grateful but absolutely mortified at the same time.

after that phone call, you were psyched, finally finding someone that could help you pass. you were always the person in math classes that everyone went to, you didn’t have to be that person for others anymore. although you remember all the emotional baggage and difficulty when trying to help others study and understand formulas, you wouldn’t ask much of jeno, only when you really needed it.

two weeks ago you found him in the library, doing homework with books scattered around him. the first thing you noticed were glasses that he had never worn before, big frames making his eyes look much bigger in such a cute way. you figured if you asked he wouldn’t mind if you joined him, and you figured that if you asked in an even nicer way, he could help you with the literature homework.

‘hey jeno!’ you greeted him, walking up to his table, he looked up, pink lips still in a straight line, ‘would you mind if i joined you?’

‘i guess not’ he shrugged and moved some of his books out of the way for you, now sitting across from him you smiled slightly and got out your own homework. abstract algebra was your favorite class so far this semester, you never thought getting homework would make you so giddy. you couldn’t believe some people found it excruciating, while it was just a ‘fun activity’ for you. you and jeno continue work in silence, you would steal glances every once in a while, his eyes scanning over the paper as he scribbled down notes and highlight sentences. eyebrows knitting together and whispering out words in order to analyze everything perfectly. you thought it was cute, his lips would curl up into a smile after every question got answered. sitting in front of him, you could see the perfect slope of his nose, his broad shoulders slouched as he leaned into the desk, his large hand brushing his black hair back sporadically. the golden ratio had nothing on him.

not long after the trance jeno left you in, you finished your math homework and now it was time for your enemy: literature. you looked up and glanced at jeno who was writing notes down, ‘hey’ he lifted his head, ‘do you think you could help me with this?’ you motioned down to the paper in front of you, he followed and noticed your blank page compared to his one that was filled.

‘did you even try?’ he questioned, ‘it looks like you haven’t even started’

‘well’ you started with a sheepish smile, ‘i did do the reading, but i could barely understand any of it’

he sighed, his hands reaching under his glasses so he could rub his eyes, ‘okay, and what part did you not understand?’

you grabbed your packet of papers and flipped until you found the sentence, reading out loud, ‘his sense of her inferiority—of its being a degradation—of the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit’, you looked up at him, offering the best pleading eyes you could muster.

he slightly rolled his eyes, ‘so, basically darcy should put away his pride of being in a higher ranking than elizabeth, but he cares more about her status than love. even while he is proposing, he still looks down on elizabeth and wants her to feel grateful that he is even considering her as a wife’

‘oh, i never thought of it that way’ you mumbled, looking down at your paper again.

‘don’t they teach you stuff like this in high school? god, i fear for your grade when we actually have to read and analyze a whole book and not just passages for exercises’

the sentence was a stab to the heart, taken aback you said nothing as shame burned through your body. growing up you’d have teachers, friends, and your parents comment on your lack of understanding for english and literature, but you’ve never heard a remark like this. it cut deep, you opened and closed your mouth, unable to give an actual response, incapable of making any snide comeback, you gathered your things, got up and walked away from him. before he started to see the tears that made its way down your face.

you avoided jeno as much as you could, you sat nowhere near him in your shared class, never looked in his direction in the courtyard and started taking different routes to other classes. it was working out great for the most part, that was until he had transferred into your biology ‘unity of life’ class three weeks into the semester, at the very last minute of course. rumors were going around that a lot of students had transferred out of his previous one due to it ‘being too hard’ and that the professor ‘was a nightmare’ and he needed a natural science requirement for his major, secondary education if you could remember correctly.

seeing him walk through the door of one of your favorite classes was a different type of personal hell, and you were having a great day so far. you softly groaned, trying to resist the urge to roll your eyes in annoyance. your desk partner seemed to catch on, jaemin turned to you, ‘whats wrong? forgot to do last nights homework?’

you turned towards him, ‘never, i was so excited for this assignment, i finished all the questions as soon as i got home… it’s just… that guy, the one who just walked in’ you glanced back to his lab table, jaemin followed with his eyes, ‘i’m in his literature class and he’s nothing but an egomaniac, basically called me dumb for not understand some passage from a book’

the blond haired boy frowned, ‘he might know some books, but wait until he gets a taste of a real challenge, he transferred too late into the semester, he’s fucked’. your lips twitched up into a smile. you met jaemin the first day of class, introducing himself as a veterinarian science major with a minor in biology. you two became quick friends after you got him coffee one morning, you ended up with two cups after the cafe got your first order wrong. he was nothing but thankful, long discussions in class that lead to topics that never related to science. you got to know him pretty well, often texting and meeting up for study groups with other students from class, you both always paired up in class whenever prompted.

‘that’s fair, would be satisfying to watch him struggle’ you whispered.

he giggled, ‘god you sound like such a sadist’

the professor pulled up his notes as he prepared for the beginning of class, ‘takes one to know one’

you opened your notebook to the current lesson: the cytoskeleton. the professor went through the slideshow while you happily took notes on cells and its structure and stabilities within the cytoplasm. once the professor was done with the lecture, he started asking students questions, seeing if they were paying attention.

‘okay, now what is a delicate coil held together by hydrogen bonding between every fourth amino acid?’ he looks over his roster of students, ‘jeno! why don’t you answer this for us’

on cue, everyone turned to watch him, his head shot up from his notebook in surprise. he obviously looked unprepared, hands nervously pushing his bangs back. ‘oh… um, i don’t know i’m sorry professor, i transferred late into this class and still need to catch up’ his hair looked wild as the tips of his ears shone a bright red.

the poor professor sighed, ‘does anyone want to help jeno out?’

you immediately shot up your hand, ‘y/n?’

you smiled dramaticly, before another breathe you answered, ‘alpha helix’

‘yes, thats correct! great job y/n… now you all need to pay attention, this will be on our first exam coming up in two weeks’ he went on about amino acids and different elements. jaemin leaned into you, ‘nice’ he whispered, a smile on his face. yeah, that would show jeno what you could do.

you peeked back at jeno who whispered ‘two weeks!?’ to himself looking distressed, you felt a pang in your heart. perhaps it wasn’t fair, stuff like this was never taught in secondary school science classes, obviously he was going to struggle. you weren’t going to seek him out and offer help though, he knew science and arithmetic were your strong suits, it was his turn to come running, beg for forgiveness and ask for help.

speak of the asshole, and it shall fart, jeno texted you later that night.

‘hey…’ you scoffed, the audacity of this guy, you resisted the urge to text him back a ‘you should know this already right?’

you texted back a simple ‘what?’

he immediately answered, ‘do you think you could help me with this bio homework and maybe study together for the exam ｡°(°.◜ᯅ◝°)°｡’. shameless.

giving him the benefit of the doubt, you relented. maybe it was an off day for him, ‘i guess, meet me in the library tomorrow, and we’ll start’ he hearted the message and that was the end of the conversation.

you woke up early the next day, grabbing every notebook you had kept over the years that could help jeno. you texted him right after noon, ‘this is an all day affair, meet me in an hour and bring me a caramel macchiato. don’t be late, pride & prejudice wasn’t written in a day’ he liked the message as a response. you left your dorm and headed to the library, setting up a space for a long study session. jeno comes right on time, with two coffees in his hand.

he places the bigger cup down in front of you, ‘large caramel macchiato, with extra caramel, extra vanilla, and extra drizzle’

you look up at him and give him a modest smile, grabbing the drink and taking a sip from the straw and swirling the ice around the cup, ‘thank you, lets get started’ he nodded and pulled out the chair next to you and sat down.

you got out all your notebooks, his eyes widened making you giggle, ‘jesus christ dude, how many notebooks do you have for this class?’

‘well, not all of them are from this class, i brought some from previous classes that i think could help you’ you handed over a stack of notes, which he begrudgingly took. ‘okay, now lets get started…’

you two had spent hours discussing carbohydrates, cellulose, and enzymes. sometimes arguing back and forth about answers, ‘okay so, a system of membranes that modifies and packages proteins for export by the cell?’ you asked jeno as he flipped through his notes.

‘um… integrins?’ he answered, totally unsure of himself in the process.

you smiled, ‘not quite, its the golgi apparatus, integrins are cell-surface receptor proteins… crazy how you don’t remember this from basic biology classes…’ you mumbled the last part.

but of course he still caught it, ‘what was that?’

you shrugged your shoulders, ‘i mean we learn about cells and stuff in secondary school… everyone knows that the golgi apparatus is the packaging and distribution center of the cells, i mean everyone talks about how the mitochondria is the power house of the cell, is that the only thing you remember from biology?’

his eyebrows shot up in surprise, ‘oh? so that's what this is about?’ he smirked, ‘you’re still upset about what i said last week aren’t you?’

your gaze diverted from his line of sight, thankful you wore your hair down this morning so he wouldn’t see the pink burning on the tips of your ears. ‘no… i’m just saying’

‘...saying almost the same exact thing i said?’ jeno smiled, and his eyes turned into crescent moons, happy that he caught you in the act, ‘understandable… well, uh, if you help me, i’ll help you’

you crossed your arms and narrowed your eyes at him, ‘not until you apologize, not everyone can be as good as you in literature’

‘okay, i’m sorry, you are a genius in math and science, now please agree’ jeno pleaded.

‘fine’ you answered.

another week passed and jeno finally felt comfortable taking the exam, on the other hand your literature professor started talking about a project for that class. jeno reassured you that he would help you in the best way he could, he helped you with literary analysis, notations, and rhetoric. you ended up getting an 85% percent on the most recent homework, excited to show jeno you made your way to the classroom.

‘so, jeno, i’ve been seeing you hanging out with that y/n person in our class’ you stopped before the entrance to the classroom, ‘they literally know nothing about literature and refuse to learn, how could you put yourself through that?’

‘oh, well, um, i don’t know, i’m just helping them with some stuff’ jeno answered. you peeked inside, he was with two other students, a girl and a boy, sitting together in a group.

‘must be pretty frustrating, i don’t know why they are even in this class, fucking moron, am i right?’ the girl responded and you could hear the others, but jeno, laugh.

you could feel your heart break as your mind begin to buzz. eyes watered, and you thought back to your discussion with jaemin, of course you guys were poking fun at jeno too, but nothing this extreme. ‘i mean, i guess one could think that, but everything about th-’ you couldn’t listen anymore, turned your heels and stormed off. stopping at the end of the hallway to through your graded paper away in anger and humiliation. after everything you both did for each other, it made your blood boil in anger and betrayal, you had to get back home. you paced to your dorm, keeping your head down so no one would notice you and your state of mind right now. skipping one literature class wouldn’t hurt.

so it did, and now here you are, sitting in your literature class with the professor reading out the pairings for the first project. for the rest of the week and over the weekend, you had ignored jeno’s texts and calls, you decided you were finally done with his games. ‘y/n and jeno’ the professor read out to the class.

‘WHAT’ you gasped, not noticing you had barked it out until everyone turned around and glared at you.

‘i’m sorry?...’ your professor had stopped everyone to bring attention back, she gave you a quizzical look, ‘is there a problem?’

you shook your head, still surprised by your sudden outburst, ‘n-no, i apologize’ you hung your head in shame, red blooming on your cheeks from embarrassment.

your professor nodded and resumed her list of partners, after she announced to the class, ‘now sit with your partners and discuss what you all want to do for your projects for the rest of class’

you groaned, you weren’t ready to face jeno yet, you probably never would be. you never wanted to see or speak to him ever again, you shuffled to his seat, taking your time to get over to him and sit down.

‘hey’ he said, ‘you’ve been ignoring me this whole week, whats up?’

fake ass bitch, you thought, he didn’t care, ‘nothing, just not a good week i guess’

he frowned, ‘damn, well, if it makes you feel better, i got a 90% on my first bio exam!’ he beamed, ‘so at least now you know your hard work is paying off’

‘that’s great, glad you’ve been getting at least something out of this’ you deadpanned.

he gave you a quizzical look, but decided to drop the subject, ‘so, for the project i was thinking about covering the tenant of wildfell hall’

you literally didn’t care and let him pick whatever, ‘yeah that’s fine’

his eyes narrowed, giving you a weird look again, ‘okay… so, the book has themes of double standards, religion, morality, and love. i can send you passages that we can cover for our project…’. jeno went on for the next thirty minutes with only little nods and comments from you, agreeing to anything he had to suggest. all you wanted to do was leave, once the professor dismissed class that's what you did, picking up your backpack and storming off with jeno still talking.

you rushed down the hallway, ignoring the calls coming from jeno behind you. with his crazy athletic built he eventually caught up to you, grabbed your shoulder and spun you around. you gazed up at him, he stared down at you, looking for any answer he could find. ‘what is your problem? i thought you’d be happy we were paired up?’ he started interrogating you.

you sighed, almost giving up, ‘jeno, can we just meet up later and talk about it? i’m exhausted right now’

he sighed and his hands fell from your shoulders, ‘i’ll text you’ he nodded, and you turned around and left. once at your dorm you threw your backpack to the side and climbed into your bed, taking a well needed nap. a few hours later, your phone vibrating next to you pulled you out of dream land.

3 missed texts from jeno:

‘y/n, are you able to come over to my apartment soon?’

‘plz stop being so stubborn its annoying plz just talk to me’

‘here’s the address lmk when ur on the way’

you texted him back:

‘sorry i was taking a nap’

‘i can be there in a bit’

you got up and got ready, grabbed your backpack and left for jeno’s. once you got there it took you a good five minutes to have the courage to knock on his door. hesitant you tenderly knocked on the door, after a second he opened up the door and let you inside without another word. he was in shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt and smelled immaculate, you gulped, raking your eyes over his body, strong arms and long legs, a face without imperfections. your heart burned in anger and panic, angry that he was so gorgeous it pissed you off, panic because all you could think was what the fuck am i doing right now? ‘do you want to sit down? i saw you brought your backpack, we can work on some stuff if you want?’

you nodded, walked over to the couch and plopped down, grabbing your backpack you opened it and got your laptop out, pulling up the notes from your calculus 2 class. jeno joined you on the couch, sitting a little bit to close for comfort, but you said nothing. his bare leg brushed against your clothed one, sending a buzzing sensation all throughout your body, trying your best to ignore him you stayed focused on your screen.

question 1: x³ + 2x² - 6z = 4 - 2y²

without a second thought you typed in the answer:

r³cos³0 + 2r² - 6z = 4

submitting it you smiled as the green checkmark popped up, correct on the first try. ‘damn, that’s crazy’ jeno broke the silence, you glanced over at him.

‘what?’ you said turned back to your laptop.

‘i literally understood none of that and you got it on the first try!? that’s literally fucking insane’

you laughed at his outburst, ‘it’s nothing really, it was kind of easy, just plug in the following x and y polar conversion formulas into the equation where possible, then you just rewrite everything and use the formulas to convert the equation into cylindrical coordinates’

jeno howled in laughter, which was contagious enough to make you laugh, ‘that’s insane, you’re amazing’

you cocked your head to the side, intrigued by his word choice, ‘oh? am i?’

his demeanor changed, the air felt heavy as he calmed down and moved closer to you. he leaned in, and you panicked, he glanced down at your lips and back up to your eyes. his long eyelashes met his cheeks, you followed suit and closed your eyes, ignoring the way your mind is screaming at you not to do this. heart says otherwise, as you could hear it beat in your ears, whole body buzzing as his pink, soft lips brushed against yours.

jeno moved in deeper, teeth clinking together as you ravaged your mouth, he was a starved man, and you were the last meal he would ever receive. it was warm and sensual, he reached around your waist and roughly pulled your torso into his. his nose bumped into yours as he moved his head slightly for better access, laptop completely abandoned to the side your arms lifted to his biceps, squeezing hard as you let out a soft moan. you broke the kiss as you pressed against his arms, your forehead leaned on his as you both caught your breath, between pants he smiled and laughed, you did not. anxiety ran your blood cold as now all you could think of was what he had said in the classroom about you. was this all a joke?

‘jeno…’ you started, and his smile faltered, ‘i can’t do this’ you stood up and grabbed your laptop and shoved it haphazardly into your backpack, heatedly rushing out of his apartment and down the hall to the entrance. again you ignored jeno as he called after you, his footsteps echoing behind you. you pushed the heavy door open and the air hit you with the wind flying through your hair. continuing down the lamp-lighted street, the boy was still trying to catch up to you.

‘y/n please, we forgot to talk about it’ he addressed your almost non-existent figure fading into the darkness.

he was hopeless by now, but still refused to give up, he moved again, ‘y/n!’

you stopped and turned around, walking up to him his build now growing hazy as water pooled in your eyes. ‘you wanna talk about it? you WANT to talk about it? FINE, you are such a stuck-up asshole, thinking i’m so stupid because i don’t have the best grade in our lit class. laughing about it with your friends when they call me a moron! you think you’re so great you didn’t even know what the chemical symbol was for sulfur, FUCKING SULFUR JENO’ you were yelling at this point, jabbing your finger into his chest with every emphasis in your anger. ‘you think you can play me in some fucked up game you have going on in your head, keeping me around so you can feel better about yourself and use me for help so you could pass an exam, i know i’ve asked you for help before, but at the end of it, all i wanted to do was be your friend, you could’ve said no, but i couldn’t. you gave me no choice but to give in with the deal that you’d help me in return, and you know what? i needed the help, badly. and you knew that and used it in a discussion with your friends that laughed at me because of it, you know how that made me feel? like absolute shit, i wanted to be your friend but all you have ever done was use me and hurt me, and guess what? you don’t have to fear for’ fingers motioning air quotations, ‘my grade because i got a good grade on my homework thanks to you, so thank you jeno! i really appreciate the help, i hope it really boosted your ego, maybe you can go fucking write a book about it or something, i don’t know and i don’t care, but i’m done’ your face was probably beet red at this point, while angry tear's avalanche down your face, you hastily whipped your face and snot that escaped during your outburst. his face focused into view, he was so pretty, and that made you tear up all over again, he could have been different.

he looked defeated, frustrated as his fists clenched into balls and relax over and over, ‘y/n, please let me explain, i di-’ you stopped him, placing your hand in front of his face.

‘do the math jeno, the probability that i would ever hear you out is slim…’ you turned and started walking away, briefly glancing back, he was still in the same spot. ‘it’s S by the way, the symbol for sulfur, maybe now you’ll remember it when you think back on this night… not so proud after all’ your voice cracked at the last sentence as your heart wrenched and stomach mangled, tears breaking through yet again.

you left him there.

you decided not to tell jaemin about what happened, but jeno’s absence was evident. you couldn’t sleep, all that replayed in your nightmare was his soft lips brushing against yours, and you swore you could still feel his strong arms pulling you forward, into him. the feeling that gave you clawed at your heart, beating you down every single time you closed your eyes and pictured his face smiling at you, laughing at you, annoyed at you. anything he gave you, you would take, no matter how much it broke you down. you liked him, no, you like him. even after everything he’s done, you still held a soft spot for him in your fractured heart. all the phone calls that turned into facetime when he would ask for help with math, and you had to show him the steps of a problem. laughing every time you would shake trying to hold your phone steady as he jokingly squawked, ‘keep still!’ when he would read passages to you over the phone late at night, and you’d have fallen asleep to his tender voice before he could even explain the motif. it had only been 5 weeks of class, but it felt like you had known him longer, despite your differences in subjects you both eventually subsided the arguments with long discussions and debates on why one answer was right and how the other was wrong. revelations that came to light after hours of going back and forth.

you stood in the shower, blankly staring at the white ceramic wall in front of you as droplets rained down. you thought about the day you and jeno were studying in the library, renting a study room within because you figured the discussion would be heated. it ended up in a feverish battle between the differences of cell adhesion and cell migration. by the end of it you were standing up, hands pulling at your roots in irritation trying to explain it to the boy sat down in front of you with a shit-eating grin adorning his face. ‘y/n, y/n, stop, stop, please, i can’t take it anymore’ he laughed, clutching his stomach, ‘i got it, while they are tightly associated, cell adhesion provides structural support and stability to tissues, while cell migration is the directed movement of cells from one location to another’

your arms dramatically dropped to your sides, ‘YOU KNEW THIS WHOLE TIME’ pointing, you accused him.

he laughed again at your reaction, ‘i just love seeing you like that, it’s cute, you know i just love a challenge’ he exclaimed going back to his notes.

you laughed to yourself, recalling the moment of the playful banter and subtle flirting that slipped out on occasion. you giggled, howled, and snorted a little too much at the memory, which silently followed into your heart sinking to the bottom of your stomach, the shower masking the uncontrollable sobs that carried through every limb, appendage, and bone.

jaemin went on and on about some story about his roommates, you paid barely any attention, eyes glued to the door as you waited to see if he would show up. the blond boy slurred his words, leaning into you now, trying to get you to look at him. you turned your body, he was giving you a pouty face with big, shining eyes, ‘i asked you a question y/nnie. were you even listening to me?’ he tugged on the sleeve of your hoodie, his strength made you feel like a rag doll.

‘i was… and the answer is yes?’ you said, unsure about whatever he was yapping about.

he beamed and clapped playfully, ‘yippie! i knew you could use a pick-me-up, i promise it’ll be fun, the party is saturday so clear your schedule, i’ll pick you up’

your shoulder shook as you lightly laughed at his theatrics, rubbing your temple in exasperation as to what you just got yourself into, ‘sounds like fun’. you barely noticed jeno walking in out of the corner of your eye. he looked worse than you did, a hoodie with a stain, sweats that looked they were able to fall apart, mis-matched socks and unkempt hair. he kept pushing his glasses up his nose and rubbing his tired eyes. your heart skipped a beat when you noticed his dark circles that almost matched yours, his being a little worse for wear. before he could catch you staring, you quickly focused your attention to the professor starting class, going through the roaster and continuing the lecture on cells.

‘can anyone tell me the variations in cell types? jeno, got an answer?’ the professor smiled at him, everyone turned to spectate and wait for him to answer, except you.

‘um, prokaryotic and eukaryotic’ he dragged, sounding uninterested despite getting the question right.

‘yes! very good jeno’ the professor praised, moving on to the next question. you started to sweat, angry that he got it right and yet you were now holding on your high c- in literature class. how come he could now catch onto science but yet, you were still unable to grapple with the concepts of a victorian classic novel? or maybe it was the fact you had skipped every class this week, refusing to work with jeno on anything, you noticed the text and calls from him were dwindling three days after the confrontation, however everyday he sent pictures of his notes and analysis on the reading and how the project was going. as pathetic as it was, you continue to lay awake in bed nearly every night rereading his text from that night:

i know you are angry and probably hate me right now and that’s understandable, but i don’t want to give up on you, on us. do you think newton gave up on the laws of motion after he failed on the first or second try? you aren’t getting the whole picture, plz give me a chance to explain, i don’t even know if you are reading this, but if you are, plz hear me out you got it all wrong about that day in the classroom, and if it felt like i was using you, i’m sorry. that was never my intention, i just like being around you, you are always quick-witted and i was just trying to taunt you so you’d pay attention to me because i really like you, ig that backfired badly lol. anyway, i hope this will change your mind, and you’ll reach out, i’ll give you time.

followed by a very unserious message that you couldn’t help but smile at:

oh, i almost forgot, don’t worry about the project, but you could come to class, i’m starting to fear for your grade again (,,>﹏<,,) (only kidding!)

another biology class and 2 skipped lit classes pass and the weekend was finally brought upon the world. you held the pleasure of assisting jaemin to a party hosted by someone he knew from one of his health classes. it took forever for you to pick out a cute outfit, but opted for a sleeveless shirt and basic jean shorts and a pair of white sneakers you found buried in the back of your small closet. you carefully did your makeup, usually not taking it too far, but this was special, and you needed to feel like a bad bitch tonight.

jaemin showed up an hour later, deciding to walk to the house 4 blocks down, saying he wanted ‘to get turnt with you’ and that he refused to drink and drive. you agreed, walking sounded better than looking for a driver or someone having to stay sober throughout the night. you exited your building and found jaemin’s car in the lot, he climbed out to greet you and whistled, eyes eating up your form, ‘damn, you look hot’

you smiled bashfully, ‘thanks jaemin, even nerds can be hot you know?’

he turned to lock his car, ‘i mean, yes, but like, you always look cute, but this is like the freaky side of you, it’s different… it’s nice’

you cackled, ‘please never call me freaky ever again, i’m going to revoke your brain rot privileges’

he admitted defeat and dropped the conversation, you both now walked down the sidewalk in perfect silence with the sun now set, surveying the rows of houses in different stages of life in the moon glow. ‘it’s this one’ jaemin nudged you, stopping, he pointed to the house on the corner, you nodded and wrapped your arm around his, linking together so you immediately wouldn’t get lost in the sea of a potential crowd. he opened the old, green door, and you followed, as expected there was a good amount of people attending and as the night worn on you figured more would pile in.

jaemin turned to you, ‘do you wanna go find some drinks?’

‘yes, please’ you quickly nodded as he pulled you through the throng of people, trying to find the kitchen.

once you were there, the host of the party seemed to also be there, ‘jaemin! glad you could make it man’ they dabbed each other up and touched shoulders embracing in a ‘bro hug’.

‘hell yeah, no way i’d not come for the first party of the semester, i brought my friend along with me!’ he pulled you closer to him, now giving you the floor as all attention was pulled towards you, wincing as jaemin jabbed at your side, urging you to get closer to his friend.

‘hi, i’m y/n’ you said giving him a genuine smile, holding out your hand.

‘oh my, you are gorgeous, and you came with this sleaze bag’ he nodded towards jaemin who just playfully hit his friends shoulder, ‘i’m donghyuck, but everyone calls me haechan, its a pleasure to meet you’ he softly took a hold of your hand and bent down to give it a little peck, you giggled at the eccentric greeting.

jaemin tore haechan away, ‘alright, not too much now’ he joked, ‘it’s time for shots’ haechan clapped and guided you both to the kitchen island that was filled with different alcohol, he picked out a clear liquid and poured them into plastic shot cups he grabbed from a neat stack. jaemin lifted up his cup, ‘fuck pharmacology’ you snickered at his comment and raised your cup along with haechan who nodded in agreement. on cue, you threw back the cup and shuddered as the sweet nectar burned your throat. ‘hell yeah! another! at the end of the night i want to be able to forget about fucking blood urea nitrogen and blood glucose’ haechan laughed and poured another in all 3 cups. after that it was another, and then another, and after about 6 shots you tapped out and opted for a gin and coke that haechan was more than happy to make for you.

more time had passed than you thought as more people flooded the kitchen, wrecking havoc on the choices of liquor, haechan handed you your cup and jaemin motioned for you both to move to the living room. people were dancing, some were playing beer pong off in the corner, and others were chatting on various furniture. ‘want to dance a bit?’ he whispered in your ear because of the loud music that made the floor vibrate under your seat, you could feel it rattling your brain. giving him a silent nod he grabbed your hand and led you through the crowd, finding a spot and finding the rhythm of the song. you bobbed your head to the beat and moved back and forth with jaemin in front of you, you always thought he was attractive, but you saw him nothing more than a friend, you felt comfortable around him. you nursed your drink slowly, already somewhat tipsy from the shots, you didn’t want to get drunk too fast or blackout. jaemin grabbed your free hand and twirled you around, dramatically moved your joined hands with fever. you laughed along with him, indulging him in an embarrassing, yet fun dance that probably made you both look wasted to others.

his arm snaked around your waist, pulling you close much to your surprise, pleasanton’tkissmepleasedon’tkissmepleasedon’tkissme ran rampant in your mind as he leaned towards your ear ‘don’t look now, but a certain someone is staring at you from across the room, you let out a strangled breath.

‘do you know who it is?’ you whispered back.

‘jeno’ he mused and your lively spirited fell.

‘whats up? something go down with him?’ he pestered.

‘um, kinda, its a long story’ you faltered and jaemin frowned.

‘damn, that serious? his loss, he can look all he wants’ jaemin wanted to be lighthearted, make you smile again and keep jeno out of your mind. you were grateful as he pulled you into another whimsical dance, the joyful nature of his was infectious.

after a couple more songs had passed, you had downed your whole drink and let go of jaemin’s hand, ‘i’m gonna go find haechan and have him make me another drink, it was surprisingly superb’ jaemin nodded and said he would stay in the same spot for your return.

you hastily made your way to the kitchen, apologizing to others you had to push through. the small room was almost empty, haechan was nowhere in sight so you looked for a different drink. ‘having fun with jaemin?’ a voice boomed from behind you, one that you knew all too well. you slowly turned to find jeno smirking at you, leaning against the fridge adorned in a tight white shirt and ripped jeans, oh fuck this stupid earth, he just had to follow you here looking like that.

‘yes i am, actually’ you stated matter-of-factly.

his lips twitched up in amusement, ‘is that so?’ he moved in closer, eventually trapping you between him and the liquor table. jeno’s soft brown eyes met yours, searching for something inside, however, his eyes told you everything, hope, they screamed. his hand lifted towards your face, slowly brushed against the skin lighter than a feather, taking a piece of your hair and pushing it behind your ear, ‘so he wouldn’t mind this?’. his eyes fluttered closed as he bowed towards you.

before he could seal the deal, ‘jeno’ you stopped him.

he sighed, defeated, ‘just please talk to me, you said the probability was slim, but not zero, let me explain’ jeno begged, his large hands caressed your cheeks tenderly, they were soft and warm.

you could blame the alcohol as you finally let him speak his case, ‘fine, we can find somewhere private’

he smiled, eyes disappearing in relief. he grabbed your hand, leading upstairs and into an empty room, he closed the door behind him as you took a seat on the bed, ‘alright, grovel and explain’ you lifted your phone up to check the time ‘you have 10 minutes’

he gave you a smug smile, ‘that’s all i need baby, you know i love a challenge’ you rolled your eyes at his attempt to uplift the tension fogging the air. ‘that day in the classroom, you obviously didn’t stay long enough to hear what i had to say about you, at first i didn’t know how to respond being put into that position was hard, you didn’t ‘put me through anything’ though, i had nothing but fun with you, even if it was frustrating at times. we always figured it out. but when i heard what she said after i wasn’t just going to allow it, i said ‘yeah i guess one could say that’ because these people literally do not know you like i do, i finished with ‘but everything about that is completely untrue, they are willing to learn, but it's just taking longer than some of us who take a bunch of english and literature classes. if you got to actually know her you’d see how bright they actually are. a literal math genius and a real mastermind of science, could answer any question from the top of their head, it’s insane. so while we are strong in this subject, they are just stronger in other fields’ he explained, watching you intently. you wiggled under his gaze, making you feel same, but itched for him to go on, ‘i then told her that she should not speak on things she knows nothing about and left because i will not associate myself with someone who talks like that about people i care about’ he emphasized the last words carefully, grabbing hold of your hand and lifting you from the bed, ‘y/n, i’m so sorry, it was never my intention to hurt you, ever. i care about you so deeply, you show up in every romance novel i read, every poem i skim, the stories i write… it’s all you’ jeno gazed down at you, his eyes now searching for an answer, hope, and panic could only be found in his as you studied his features in the warm glow of the moon peaking through the window.

‘you really said that? you defended me?’ you questioned him quietly.

‘yes y/n, i would never let anyone hurt you, even if you aren’t in the room, because in that case, they hurt me too’

you hummed, the haze of your brain clouded any judgment you held, he was something different, the greatest math problem that needed to be solved. ‘thank you jeno, i guess it’s now my turn to apologize’

he chuckled at you, ‘no need baby’ you laughed softly, ‘now, can we pick up where we left off? you know, someone once told me that pride and prejudice wasn’t written in a day’ he wagged his eyebrows at you, moving you into an embrace as he kissed the top of your head. you held on tightly, holding him as you buried your face into his chest swallowing his scent so you could save it for later.

the hug ended, but he still held you close in his arms, ‘i guess i could pick up another chapter or two’ he laughed at your poor pun and drooped down, so his lips could meet yours. it was messier than the first kissed you shared with him, wet and heated as you could taste the soju on his tongue. he moved at a faster pace, devouring you like an animal, jeno walked you towards the bed, you gave in falling down with him, with him climbing on top of you, never breaking away. teeth on teeth echoed throughout the room as you moaned, his hands exploring every part of your body, making your core burn more and more.

jeno dipped down to attack your neck in kisses and sucking at the exposed skin, hands finding a way to his hair and tugging slightly at the intimate feeling of him being closer than ever. ‘please, tell me you’re mine, please want me’ he breathed out, the air softly hitting your ear, making the hair on the back of your neck stand up. he was desperate, kissing you anywhere he could and waited for you to answer.

‘y-yes jeno, i’m yours’ you choked out, ‘i want you in every way’ satisfied with your response he growled and his mouth met yours once more, ‘p-please touch me’ you begged frantically, needing anything to ease the sensation that pooled in the pits of your stomach.

jeno hummed, fingers brushing up and down your exposed stomach, ‘where baby? use your words, remember what i taught you?’ it was your turn to make demands now, wasting no time you grabbed his hand and brought it down between your legs, he cupped your vagina. you groaned, you needed more. jeno grabbed the waistband of your shorts and pulled them down and threw them behind him, the cool air hit your core making you rub your thighs together in order to find little warmth.

he carefully pulled your underwear down, wanting to savor the moment of finally seeing you bare, he gulped, ‘god, you have such a pretty pussy’ he took his hand and rubbed the sensitive skin, ‘so wet. just for me, right? all for me baby’ you cried out at his words. he inserted a finger into your weeping hole, making you gasp out in surprise at the feeling of just one finger filling you up dangerously. as he pushed back and forth your legs trembled, he added another finger and brought his head down to your core, ‘i bet you taste amazing’ was all he said before he dove in deep, his tongue against your clit as he drank up your juices and sucked on the flesh.

‘f-fuck’ you mewled, grabbed a hold of his soft, black hair in order to keep you grounded, with every thrust he made as he fucked with his mouth you tugged on his hair, pulling when you would feel the band about to snap, jeno groaned, loving the way you’d use him for stability.

he stopped and removed his face, you whined from the loss of contact as his fingers also found their way outside of you, he smiled ‘don’t worry, my pretty baby, i’ll take care of you’. he threw off his shirt nearly getting drunker with the way you were taking him in, he loved being adored by you, in such a calculated way that made sense in every story. you followed suit and removed your top and bra, baring naked in front of him and laid back on the bed as he admired you from afar, ‘you’re so beautiful’ he breathed, discarding his pants and underwear he crawled back on top of you, whispering sweet nothing's as he peppered your collarbone and breasts with kisses.

‘are you sure you want this? it might hurt a little at first, but i promise i’ll go slow until you tell me otherwise’ he towered over you.

your glassy eyes met his in reassurance, ‘yes, jeno i want this’ you confirmed everything for him. he quickly lined up his cock with your cunt and gently pushed inside, his eyes never leaving yours. your hands grasped around his muscled biceps, digging your nails into them when the pain was strong. once he bottomed out he stopped to let you get used to his size, you shared sensual kisses and sweet touches, jeno doing everything in his power to make you feel loved and safe at that moment going forward, that’s all he ever wanted to do. for weeks, he had been beating himself up for taking the teasing comments way too far at times, poking fun at something you were obviously insecure about, but you did the same, he figured it was kind of the thing you two had. in reality, he wanted to push you to do better, making comments like that so you’d work harder and prove everyone wrong. no one could work with you better than him, so he had gone out of his way to ask the pressor to pair you up on the project, also making the forced proximity making you talk to him after you stopped answering his calls and messages. he should have gone a better way about motivating you, but now that he had your forgiveness, he could work on better strategies.

‘jeno, you can move now’ you rasped out, still holding on his arms like an anchor with a boat. he pulled out and pushed back in, taking it slow as you moaned at the feeling of him filling you up to the brim, jeno picked up the pace, setting a steady rhythm as skin clapping together filled the room, ‘oh fuck, just like that’ your chest heaving up and down.

he slammed into with vigor, bitting your bottom lip as you opened your mouth to let out a breathless moan, ‘yeah? you like that? fuck, you’re so tight, literally sucking me in, i never want to leave this pretty fucking pussy’ he husked, he licked your lips and kissed your jaw as he grunted, setting a faster pace, making you cry out in pleasure. he grabbed your legs and opened them wider, giving him better access to go deeper into your abused cunt. you cried as the flame in your belly raged with a thousand fires, ‘keep your eyes on me baby’ jeno demanded, automatically making you swallow as you moved your eyes to meet his, blown out pupils filled with lust as your vision of him became blurry as blissful tears threaten to fall with every snap on his hips digging into you. you’ve had flings and hook-ups before, but nothing as profound as this, the eye contact, togetherness of him never backing too far away from your hold, you were being wholly consumed by jeno. everything right down to your core, he was all you could feel, taste, see, and think about.

‘o-oh my god’ you sobbed, hips jerking up at the feeling of the ripples burning through you, the coil in your stomach tightening, craving to break open, ‘m gonna cum’ you clenched around him, making jeno hiss above you at the feeling of tightness around his throbbing dick.

‘go on baby, cum for me,’ he whimpered as the feeling for him also grew intense, the way your cunt hugged his dick was making his mind spin. jeno mumbled incoherently ‘i’m so close baby, let go, you can let go, i got you’ from his words and the way he pounded into you made you snap, legs trembling as liquid gushed from your core and past his cock and dripped onto the sheets. light-headed and dizzy you cried out for jeno as your orgasm burst over you.

you clenched again, feeling overwhelmed by the euphoric feeling, ‘oh, fuck’ jeno cursed as he stilled inside of you, painting your insides with his seed, he groaned at the sensation of finally filling you up and properly claiming you as his and his alone. he stayed there for a couple of minutes inside of you. savoring the static of the overstimulation and pleasure of release. you winced as the hot liquid poured out of you when he pulled out, the emptiness of it all. jeno watched as his cum slide down your hole and onto the sheet, he scooped up the remaining liquid that rushed out of you and shoved it back into your clit with two fingers, making you cry at the sensitivity. ‘fuck that was… one of the best experiences of my life’ he caught his breath and plopped down facing you, he gently caressed your chin, bringing your head to his as he softly left kisses on your lips, ‘let me get you cleaned up baby’

‘m tired’ you whispered, barely able to keep your eyes open.

‘i know, but let me take care of you and get you dressed, i know theres extra clothes somewhere around here’ he started rummaging around the wardrobes, digging into them in order to find anything adequate. ‘aha!’ he put on a clean pair of underwear and sweats, ‘i’ll be right back baby’ he left the room and came back after for what felt like an eternity with a warm wash cloth and clean clothes, ‘these are mark’s girlfriends pj’s i’m sure she won’t mind,’ he hummed, wiping you clean, and dressing you in the soft, clean clothes. he picked you up so he could throw the covers back, tucking you in with a kiss on the nose, ‘you’re so cute’

you lazily smiled at him, settling into the sheets as you clung onto his warm frame, ‘who’s room is this by the way?’ you whispered as jeno shut his eyes.

‘mark’s. doesn’t matter. you’re my girlfriend now right?’ he leaned his head on yours.

‘mmm girlfriend yes. mark who?’ words fell from your mouth as you yawned, sleeping coming to find you soon.

You met Jeno in your high school chemistry class and had clicked since. Some would mistaken you as a couple but you were always quick to deny the accusations.

Considering that most saw you two as a couple, you had decided to take advantage of your relationship spontaneously to get free ice cream. The idea wasn’t well prepared at all. Jeno had planned to propose in your local ice cream parlor and be rewarded with a sweet treat.

Well the two of you were clearly not aware how the plan would go.

“Are you sure this will work Jeno? Your ring doesn’t even look real.” You knew the plan was a dumb idea but you always listened to Jeno. 

Yes, he was your best friend. Yet, you knew he meant more to you. He was one of the most special people you had met. You just couldn’t put a finger on what he was to you.

He laughed at you, his infamous eye smile sending butterflies to your stomach. “Don’t worry, y/n. I got this. Even prepared my special vows for you.”

You didn’t have a response to his sudden confidence, only a blush that scattered your cheeks. When he reached over you to hold the door entrance to the ice cream parlor, your stomach only dropped further into your stomach.

Has Jeno always been this attractive? How had you not noticed how tall he was before? 

With all the thoughts rushing through your head, you had forgotten the main objective: free ice cream. That was all you were here for, not to develop feelings for your best friend. 

By the time you had come to your senses, Jeno was propped on his one knee, fake ring in hand.

“Y/n l/n.”

Well here goes nothing.

“I’ve waited my whole life for this moment. I know it’s not the most romantic but this is where we first met and I developed my love for you. There are so many hours I’ve spent thinking about you, yet they all stemmed from a couple minutes within the walls. I would do anything to spend the rest of my life with you.” He continued on for minutes reciting his script. Never stuttering once, it was as if he was speaking from his heart.

It was safe to say Jeno had a way with his words - even if they all met nothing.

You hadn’t realized it yet, but you had fallen in love with Jeno.

When you had finally recognized your feelings for Jeno, it was high school graduation.

In your mind, it was like the weddings that never commenced from your fake engagement. Walking down the same aisle, wearing expensive gowns, celebrating the start of a new chapter in your life. 

These scenarios would all seem fresh in your head if it wasn’t for the fact that Jeno had just begun a relationship with a girl in the year below. All you had known was him for the years prior to graduation. Now, you were clueless as to what would develop as you moved on in your life.

“I’m serious about her. I think I’m going to stay back a year before I head to college. I really think she’s the one.” Jeno had told you one of your sleepless nights on the phone. 

You took a deep sigh, clearly signalling you were not following his ideas. “Look, you have dreamed of moving away for years. Why change your mind for a girl you just met?”

He was clearly losing his patience with you. It was only a matter of time before he snapped after his numerous hours of convincing you he loved her. You would never agree with him, though. As long as he was with someone that wasn’t you.

“You just don’t get it. Maybe you’ll understand when you finally find someone that loves you.”

When he heard the immediate hanging up of the call, his emotions were too high to apologize. Jeno knew his words hurt you but he wasn’t in the right sentence to justify his actions. Time didn’t allow him to correct himself either, only progressing through the rest of highschool by never addressing him again.

But here you were at graduation, finding yourself after the ceremony looking for your parents talking to Jeno’s family. He stood beside them, his new girlfriend pressed tightly by his side. When your eyes flickered to make eye contact with him, he reflected a gaze of sorrow. You never returned the sorrow, your gaze only remaining lifeless.

After Jeno had uttered such nonsense to you, you had deemed him as nothing to you. Even if you had recognized your feelings for him, you couldn’t keep waiting. 

When you had finally let go of the petty teenage drama, an invitation to Jeno’s wedding had arrived at your front door.

You had come to the conclusion that you were in love with him. After continuously convincing yourself you needed to get over him, it was becoming more difficult to let your feelings for the boy go unnoticed. 

With the emotionless response you had given to Jeno after graduation, you had thought your relationship with him was over. And you were proven correct when you found that he had blocked you on every social media platform to ever exist.

You decided it was time to rekindle with your childhood best friend your senior year in college. But to no avail, you still remained blocked and found no new accounts.

So to find the invitation to his wedding - when you had moved far from home and started a new job - was a shocker, to say the least. Even if you hadn’t communicated in years, you were still on the backburner.

Now, you find yourself sitting in an assigned seat in the corner. Far away from any of his family, not needing a reason to explain why you had cut off all communication with Jeno, or rather, how he had done such. 

The only other person sitting by you was his youngest cousin he had always explained as a nuisance at family gatherings. She was sweet and you had told him he needed to treat her nicely considering her young age, but teenage Jeno didn’t know better. Even adult Jeno didn’t know better.

You had done a good job holding off any conversation for the first hour of the wedding, but you couldn’t stand the awkward silence and dwelling going on inside your head anymore. 

Why had you come just to realize you hated him? You had no clue. All you knew was that you wanted to talk to your best friend. He may not have earned his respect back but it was clear he felt the same way. There is only one reason he would even think to send a wedding invitation your way.

When you finally excuse yourself from the table for a drink, his cousin mutters something under her breath.

“What did you say?” Not sure if her words were meant for her.

She looks you in the eye, “Why did you leave Jeno? He was so happy when he was with you?”

Well clearly she was not in the loop. You dreaded talking about your past with Jeno. But you dreaded even more reminiscing on how close you used to be with him. 

“Me and Jeno were never together. I have no idea what you're talking about.” You tried to escape but her words only drew you in.

“Well, I know you weren’t dating, but you should’ve. He was so happy with you. He hated me but you made him realize his indifference. Now here you are with me, the least favorite family member, sitting in the back when you deserve to be down the aisle.”

It was clear her words were leading to the verge of your tears. Time was the only thing that stood between your face full of makeup being ruined. Before she could even allow more words to escape from her mouth, you found yourself making a run for the bathroom. 

You had managed to find a new seat along with some of your high school friends in another far corner. You couldn’t face the emotional damage that was Jeno’s cousin. Your friends knew better than to ask any questions about you two, instead opting to treat the experience as a reunion. 

As much as you didn’t want to, you had thought about her words. Did you really have an effect on Jeno?

He never told you he loved you, except in his vows. You remember every syllable that came from his mouth. Most importantly, “I love you.” They weren’t real, but they were the closest symbol of reciprocation Jeno had ever given to you.

Even if the words were never truthful, it was only a matter of minutes before you heard his real vows come from his mouth. Watching him walk down the aisle, all you could picture is what your wedding with him would’ve looked like.

If you had ever told Jeno your real feelings that day. Maybe if you were truthful, maybe if you had listened to his cousin, maybe if you hadn’t cut him off, you could be descending down the aisle. 

Instead, here you are, sitting isolated from your best friend, wondering what he even thinks of you. Does he know that you're here? Did he invite you or had he been forced to by his parents? All this clouds your mind as you watch the bride approach Jeno, joining hand in hand.

Jeno stood tall on the altar. His black suit defines his build. It was obvious that he had grown into his body well since you had last seen him. As he took a deep breath, you knew it was ready for him to begin his vows, for real this time.

“The love of my life.”

Tears began to blind your vision. You couldn’t stand hearing what was about to come from his mouth. All you could make out was the movement of his lips as ringing stormed your ears. 

If you weren’t so scared you would’ve told him how you felt. 

If you had been mature you wouldn’t have let him give up on his dreams.

If you cared more about yourself you wouldn't have allowed him to let you burn on the backburner after all these years.

If you had listened to his cousin you would understand that you were important to him.

As you watched him slip the ring on to his now wife, you knew time was up. There was no reversing what you hadn’t done, only reminiscing on what you could’ve.

Jeno was now no one to you. Just a friend in the past who you would tell others you don’t talk to now.

All the years of unreciprocated love would never rekindle. Maybe one thing you should’ve done was listen to him. “Maybe you’ll understand when you finally find someone that loves you.”

You lightly shove her, rolling her seat away before you pick up your phone to see the notification you received. 

[2:42 PM] jaem:  you still in class 

[2:42 PM] you:  sadly yes  this has quite literally been the longest day of my life 😖

[2:43 PM] jaem:  once it's over you should come over and maybe sit on my face to make you feel better 😇

Your stomach somersaulted, and you put your phone down, taking a breath before picking it back up.

[2:45 PM] you:  jaemin i stg  i hate you 

[2:46 PM] jaem:  no you don't 

[2:47 PM] you:  now why's that 🤔

[2:48 PM] jaem:  cause i just got more of that blue coffee strain that i've been waiting to smoke just with you 🙄

You can't fight the smile that comes to your face.

[2:49 PM] you:  ig i'll be over in 20 🙄

"I'll see you guys later," you tell Meera and Rina as the three of you reach the student parking lot.

"Where are you going?" Rina asks before you begin to depart from them.

"To see her man," Meera teases, resulting in you flipping them off as you walk in the opposite direction, towards Jaemin's.

[3:04 PM] 

The door to the house swung open before you could even raise your fist to knock. Jeno stands in the doorway, looking like he's on his way out. 

"Hey, Jen," you greet him.

"Hey," he smiles at you. 

"You going out?" you ask. 

"Yeah, I'm heading to the gym with Hyunjin and Bomin," Jeno answers, "Everyone else is already out and probably won't be back until later, so..." he looks you up and down, and smirks, "You two have the place to yourselves for a bit. I'll see you later."

"I'll see you, Jeno," you say, looking at the Taurus suspiciously as he walks to his car.

Just as you're about to walk into the house, Jaemin appears in the doorway.

"What's wrong?" Jaemin asks, seeing your expression.

"Jeno. He was being weird," you say as you enter.

Jaemin shrugs.

"Did you tell him?" you ask, following him into the kitchen.

"Tell him what?"

"About this—Us?"

"No," Jaemin says. "But I mean it's not like we're being the most discreet. So if he were to notice something and ask me about it, I wouldn't lie to him."

"Jaemin," you whine.

"What?" he mocks your tone. He sweetly smiles as he grabs your hands, "You're telling me Rina and the rest of the council don't already know?" he asks.

"Their nosy asses pried the information from me," you mumble. but if we all recall correctly, there was no real prying involved. 

"It's not like we're doing something wrong. We're both consenting adults. What's the point in having this terribly kept secret?" he says, placing a kiss below your jaw.

"Because.." you can't find the words, "It could make things weird."

"How?"

"We're friends, Jaem," you try not to let a moan interrupt you.

"And?"

"This isn't exactly what friends should be doing,"

"I mean, it can't be too bad, if it feels so good," he says in your ear. "But if you don't wanna-" he begins to pull away from you.

"No, no," you tug on his shirt, pulling him back to you, bringing a smile to his face, "Never said that." You press your lips to Jaemin's before he leads you to his room.

[5:27 PM]

You stir in your sleep, grumbling when you feel the pain in your shoulder from lying on it for too long.

Registering the soft beat of the music playing in the room, you begin to blink your eyes open, remembering this isn't your room.

You find Jaemin with his back to you, sitting a little further down the bed, his laptop in front of him.

"Whatcha working on?" you ask, alerting him you're awake.

Jaemin lowers his laptop screen as you try to peek over his shoulder but only get a glimpse of the pictures he was editing. 

"Hey!" you frown.

"It's a surprise," Jaemin tells you.

"Jaemin," you pout.

"Two weeks isn't that long, sweetheart. You can wait," he shrugs.

"Booooo. You're no fun," you roll your eyes.

Jaemin stands to place his laptop on his desk. He shoves his hands in his pocket as he walks back over to the bed but only stops at the foot, silently staring at you. 

"What?" you ask, worried you had smudged mascara under your eyes or something.

"Nothing. I just like looking at you," the corners of Jaemin's lips curl up. 

"What, you think half my makeup on your pillow and bed head is hot?" you joke, suddenly nervous, feeling like he's looking into your soul.

"Yeah, cause you're hot," he grins.

"Shut up, Jaemin," you turn your back to him. 

"No," he grabs your hip, rolls you onto your back, and hovers over you, "I like getting you all like this," he grins, "All embarrassed and flustered. It's adorable." 

"Now you're just teasing."

"I thought you liked it when I teased you."

Your face grows warm as he smiles at your flustered state.

Jaemin leans down and kisses you, your hands instantly finding his hair. One of his hands travels down your body and reaches under your shirt, the feeling of his fingers trailing up your torso sending goosebumps all over your skin. Jaemin hums approvingly when he finds you wearing no bra and cups your breast in his hand. You give up the fight for dominance, letting Jaemin's tongue slip past your lips. He lightly traces his finger around your areola, slowly circling the perky bud. He teasingly pinches your nipple between two fingers allowing a moan to slip out of your mouth.

"Do you want me to stop teasing you now?" Jaemin asks.

"No. Please keep going."

"Look at you, baby. Already so desperate for more."

Jaemin slowly trails his finger down your stomach toward the waistband of your sweatpants. He moves his hand to your thighs, softly squeezing them while pulling them apart. Jaemin's hands purposely take their time as he traces the apex of your thigh before cupping your sex over your clothes. He watches your reactions as he runs his finger along your slit, making you feel how uncomfortably wet your underwear has gotten.

A whimper from you brings a dangerous smirk to Jaemin's face.

"Jaem, please no more."

"No more what?"

"Teasing. Please just touch me."

"Like this?" he slips his hand into your pants, softly petting your clit.

"Yes, please just like that," you tell him.

Jaemin hums, feeling the wetness between your legs, easily slipping a finger in before adding another.

Your soft whimpers start to grow louder. Jaemin quiets you with a finger to your lips.

"Shh, some of the boys are back," he tells you, "So if you don't want them to hear you, you're gonna have to be quiet, okay, bunny?"

Unable to produce any sounds other than moans, you just nod. Your eyes roll back when the heel of Jaemin's palm rubs against your clit while curling his fingers expertly. Your fingernails dig into his bicep as you feel the pleasure coursing through your veins.

Jaemin enters a third finger, loving the feeling of your soft walls pulsing around his digits.

You bury your head into Jaemin's neck, trying to muffle your moans with his shirt, resorting to biting down on his shoulder when that doesn't seem to work.

Jaemin groans, feeling the way your body reacts to him, "Fuck, baby, you gonna cum for me already?"

You just nod, holding onto Jaemin as that coil in your stomach grows tighter. Jaemin hears your muffled pleas, your body unable to hold back from squirming as you feel your orgasm approaching.

Your legs close around Jaemin's hand, his fingers still wiggling inside of you as you cum. You curl yourself into Jaemin, letting yourself revel in the high and come back down.

Feeling Jaemin press kisses to your temple brought your face out of his neck to let him kiss your lips instead. You whine into his mouth as he slowly moves his hand away from your sensitive pussy.

"Did so good for me, angel," he says, looking at his fingers, glistening with your slick before taking them into his mouth.

Such a sight shouldn't turn you on as much as it does.

You grab his face and bring his lips back to yours. You feel his body pressed against yours but still want him impossibly closer. You almost don't hear the knock on the door, too preoccupied with thinking about his dick growing hard against your thigh.

With an annoyed grumble, Jaemin stops kissing you and purposely pulls your legs over his lap when he tells whoever's on the other side of the door to come in.

"Renjun wants to know if you're throwing for drinks," Chenle enters without looking up from his phone.

"How much?" Jaemin asks.

"$10," he replies.

Jaemin reaches into his pocket and gives Chenle the cash.

"What about you?" Chenle then asks you.

"What about me? This isn't my party. I don't live here."

"You might as well. You eat our food and smoke our weed." 

"Our?" Jaemin furrows his eyebrows.

"Come on, Chenle, don't act like you don't love seeing my pretty face all the time," you grin.

Chenle rolls his eyes, "I don't know how you put up with her," he says to Jaemin before leaving.

"You love me, Lele!" you yell after him.

Once the door shut, Jaemin turns back to you, cupping your jaw. But just as he was about to kiss you, your phone rang.

"Hello?" you answer.

"I'm here," Meera says.

"Okay, I'm-" you're cut off.

"Hi, Meera," Jaemin says, taking the phone from you.

"Hi, Jaemin. You kids have fun?"

"Yeah. Only smoked a little, then was able to get some edits done since someone decided to take a nap," Jaemin teasingly pokes your sides. 

"Was she snoring?" you hear Meera ask.

"Excuse you. I do not snore," you defend.

"No, but you talk in your sleep sometimes," Jaemin tells you. You gasp, shocked at this new information. "Don't worry, baby, it's cute." he kisses you.

Meera gags from the other end. "Alright, I'm hanging up now. Tell her to hurry up!" she says before ending the call.

"Wait, you're leaving me?" Jaemin whines with a pout.

"Uh, did you think I was wearing this tonight?" you motion to your shirt and sweatpants.

"I don't see anything wrong with this," Jaemin shrugs.

You roll your eyes, "It won't even be that long. I'll be back here in two hours tops," you kiss the pout on his lips before leaving, and meeting Meera outside. 

You had barely just gotten into the car when Meera recites, "'Don't worry, baby, it's cute.'"

"Don't start," you warn her.

[10:35 PM]

Now when you said two hours, you probably should have clarified that that would be how long it would take you to get ready. But considering your best friends tend to lose track of time when alcohol is involved, taking a few shots before heading out should have been the first indicator that the night would start later than you originally anticipated.  

Before you even entered the house, you were worried the boys would get a noise complaint, but none of them seemed to share your concerns, as most of them were well beyond gone by this point.

It doesn't take you long to find Jaemin since he's seated in front of the TV in the living room, playing Mario Kart with Jisung, Haechan, and a few others.

Jaemin glances at you before taking a double take as Rina drags you along to the kitchen. You smirk, winking at him as well.

"Dude, come on, we're waiting on you," Haechan nudges Jaemin, breaking him out of his daze.

"Give me a second," Jaemin quickly stands from the couch and makes a beeline for the kitchen.

Jaemin finds you, along with Rina, pouring a mix of things on the counter into plastic red solos.

You down most of what's in your cup, thankful you can't taste the alcohol, and actually enjoy the drink before turning around and almost crashing into Jaemin.

"Hi," he cages you against the counter.

"Hello," you smile, holding onto his shoulders and balancing yourself. 

Jaemin can tell by your bubbliness and grin on your face, you're further on the tipsy side.

"I think it's been longer than two hours you've had me waiting, pretty girl," Jaemin tilts your chin up toward him before letting his eyes fall down the rest of your body, taking in your outfit.

"I'm sorry," you say sweetly, "Someone couldn't decide on which shoes went with her dress," you look over at Rina.

"Look, if I wasn't satisfied with my outfit, I would've made it everyone's problem tonight," Rina says before knocking back a shot and wandering off to socialize.

Jaemin can't take his eyes off you. The haze from smoking just minutes before you arrived now has his mind clouded with nothing but thoughts of you. "Couldn't even be mad if I tried," he brings his lips closer to yours, "Not when you look this fucking good. All I wanna do is-"

"Jaemin, get your ass in here before we start without you!" you hear Minjeong's voice yell from the living room.

"We aren't finished," Jaemin says to you.

"I'm not going anywhere," you tell him.

. . . 

You had lost track of time about three drinks and two spliffs ago. 

Smoke filled the kitchen, the one window open all the way, doing next to nothing to actually air out the room. You could feel yourself getting higher with every passing second you stayed in there.

You're brought out of your daze when Kayla approaches your corner, "Hey, have you seen Jaemin?" 

"I think he went to get more drinks out of Jeno's car," Eunji answers. 

"Why?" Rina jumps in to ask. 

"Nothing urgent. He just owes me a rematch," Kayla answers with a smile before walking off.

Rina nods suspiciously, eyeing the girl as she floats around the kitchen. 

"Is she trying to make a pass at your man?"

"What? No, he's not even—Wait," suddenly, a sick feeling rises in your stomach, and you doubt its from the alcohol, "No way she is-"

"You remember freshmen year?" Eunji asks. 

"Her and Jaemin freshmen year?" Rina emphasizes. 

"Okay, but that was years ago," you say. 

"And I hear she still doesn't stop boasting about hooking up with Jaemin. Like she was the one to discover the eighth wonder of the world or something," Aeri tells you.

You laugh, "I mean, it is that good-" Rina pinches you, disparaging your joke, wanting you to be more serious about this. "Ow! What!? You really think I'm worried? I trust Jaemin already has in mind who'll end up in his bed by the end of the night anyway," you smirk as you finish the rest of your drink. 

"Yeah, but Kayla doesn't think there's anything to stop her from restaking claim on that eighth wonder." 

"Enough with that fucking analogy," you hop off the counter, now clearly annoyed. 

You were not jealous. No, no, never that. But you couldn't admit out loud that your friends' words helped stir the feeling of possessiveness boiling inside of you. 

Jaemin enters the kitchen with cases of beer, settling them on the table before his eyes scan the room. Once they find you, he smiles.

In your peripheral, you see Kayla approaching Jaemin, and you're already moving across the tiled floor to Jaemin before you can even think about it. 

Neither Jaemin or Kayla have the chance to say anything as you kiss Jaemin, catching him and everyone else off guard. But shock quickly leaves Jaemin's body when he feels your lips against his, and kisses you back, grabbing your waist.

You circle your arms around his neck, deepening the kiss and letting Jaemin's tongue slip into your mouth. The both of you are too caught up in the heat of it to care for all the people witnessing the entire thing.

Coming back to reality, you pull away with his bottom lip between your teeth, making him slightly groan. Jaemin looks at you with a dark gaze before you slip out of his arms. 

You wipe off your lipgloss from the corner of his mouth, turning to Kayla, "You said you were looking for him for something?" you ask before walking away, leaving her and Jaemin both speechless.

Returning to your friends' corner of the kitchen, you quickly search for another drink. Aeri immediately hands you hers, and you knock back the liquor. 

"That was…" Jisung's at a loss for words.

"Unexpected," Yangyang finishes.

"Hot," Eunji says.

"Unexpectedly hot," Rina partially jokes.

You don't hear Jaemin approaching you from behind and jump when you feel his chest against your back.

"Come to my room in five minutes," he says in your ear.

By the time you turn around, Jaemin's already walking away, shooting you a wink as he makes his way up the stairs.

"There's no way you actually believe that. Rise of the Skywalker doesn't have shit on Rogue One!" Minjeong continues.

You used the heat of Minjeong's Star Wars debate with Keeho to unnoticeably slip away from the party.

You follow the familiar path to Jaemin's room to be quickly pulled inside before you can even reach for the doorknob. Jaemin's door slams shut with your body pinned against it. You can feel your pulse rapidly beating the closer Jaemin's face got to yours, his lips only a breath away from yours.

"You really thought you could do something like that and just walk away like it was nothing?" Jaemin asks lowly. 

"Kayla seemed like she had something important to tell you," you shrug, "What'd she have to say, anyway?"

"Wanted a rematch in Mario Kart," he says. 

"So why are you in here with me and not out there giving her what she wants?" you ask. 

"Cause I already know what she wants. But I've made it very clear that me and her are just friends."

"So are we," you say. 

"But this—you and I—is different," Jaemin says.

"How?"

"Because it was freshmen year, and Kayla and I were never really seeing each other. Just fucking."

"Ah, yes. Just good, meaningless, hot sex," you nod.

"Exactly. Meaningless," Jaemin made sure to enunciate every syllable of the last word.

"Are you saying this means something?"

"Yeah, it can," Jaemin's gaze drops to the floor for a second, "If you want it to," he sheepishly smiles at you.

You smile as you slide your hands up to Jaemin's shoulders and kiss him. The loud music playing and noisy people in the house all fade into oblivion with Jaemin's lips pressed sensually against yours.

Jaemin brings you to his bed, sitting on the edge before pulling you into his lap. Jaemin roughly grabs your thighs in his hands, sliding up your skin higher and higher. Your fingers tangle in his hair, bringing him impossibly closer. He cups your jaw, pushing his tongue past your lips, tasting the mix of juice and alcohol lingering with a hint of smoke on your own.

"Gotta admit, though, you're even hotter when you're jealous," he grins. When Jaemin leans in to kiss you, he finds himself chasing after your lips.

"Jealous??" you raise your brows, "Nah ah, I don't do jealous. Possessive, I'll take, but jealous??" you scoff.

"Well, whatever you wanna call it, angel," Jaemin slowly guides your hand down his body, "Just know that it's all you—only you who's doing this to me," your hand lands right over the zipper of his jeans, allowing you to feel the outline of his cock, growing hard.

A grin breaks out on your face, and you grab Jaemin's neck, pulling him back in, roughly kissing him. 

He falls back onto the bed with his lips still on yours. Jaemin slips his hand between your bodies, feeling your wetness through the thin layer of cotton.

"Already such a mess for me, angel," he teases.

"S'all just for you."

Jaemin pulls your panties to the side, satisfied with the warm slick he feels on his fingers. Your breath grows uneven when he slowly circles his thumb around your clit.

"Want me to do something about that?" Jaemin asks.

"You can do whatever you want," you try to keep yourself together.

"I want you to sit on my face," Jaemin says between kisses.

You freeze and pull away from him. You don't know how to react other than to burst out into laughter. Jaemin only smiles when he hears your laugh, but the look in his eyes tells you he isn't just saying some stupid shit cause he's high.

"You're serious?" you stop laughing.

"I was pretty serious earlier, and I still am now. Besides, when have I ever said something didn't mean," Jaemin tells you while rubbing his hand up and down your back.

You tug your lip between your teeth, growing excited at the thought; your underwear definitely ruined at this point.

All you can do is say, "Okay," with a nod.

Jaemin's hands that were previously toying with the material of your skirt are now bunching up the fabric, pushing it up your hips.

You slide your underwear down your legs without breaking eye contact with him, dropping them somewhere on the floor.

Jaemin places his hands on your hips once you crawl your way up his body. He smirks, licking his lips, about to direct you onto his mouth before you stop him. "Wait."

"What?" 

"I've never done this before," you tell him, sitting back on his chest.

"Do you want to?" he asks, softly running his hands over your thighs.

"I mean, yeah."

"Then, come on and take your seat, princess," Jaemin grins. 

"What if I hurt you?"

"You're not gonna," he softly smiles, "But even if you do, I wouldn't mind suffocating by these thighs," he kisses your inner thigh. 

"Jaemin," you whine. 

"I'm just kidding...partially." 

"You better start kicking and screaming if something's wrong," you tell him sternly.

"I will. I promise." 

You begin to lower yourself onto Jaemin's face, but then he wraps his arms around your thighs, bringing you down onto his tongue. You moan loudly, feeling the wet muscle lick between your folds, and Jaemin moans too. The taste of you flowing into his mouth like a never-ending fountain. 

"Jaemin—ah," you grab onto his hair, "that feels so fucking good." 

Jaemin hums in response, swirling his tongue around your clit. You throw your head back, and your hips start mindlessly rocking against Jaemin's tongue. You hear a muffled groan from the man beneath you, and you lift yourself off his face. 

Jaemin has a drunken grin on his face while his mouth and chin are wet with your juices, his hair stuck up in different directions from you pulling on it. 

"Why'd you stop?" he asks, breathless. 

"I don't know, I got scared. I thought you couldn't breathe," you said. 

"Baby, I'm fine. Don't worry about me," Jaemin says, eager to get you back on his mouth. "You're thinking about it too much again."  

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Just focus on me," Jaemin tells you before lowering you back onto his mouth. 

You sink your teeth into your bottom lip as Jaemin captures your clit between his lips. Jaemin never takes his eyes away from your face, watching the worry melt into bliss. You can't help your hips from moving on their own accord, riding Jaemin's face as you chase your orgasm. 

Teasing your slit with the tip of his tongue, you feel the vibrations from beneath from Jaemin laughing at your protests against his antics. The wet muscle slips inside of you, feeling your soft walls pulsing. 

"Yes-fuck, Jaemin," you screw your eyes shut and throw your head back, "Please, don't stop," you move your hips faster. 

But then Jaemin locks his arms around your thighs, keeping you from moving.

Because of how laid back he usually is, it becomes easy for you to forget that Jaemin is no stranger to the gym and frequently visits along with his best friend. A broken moan rips from your throat, feeling Jaemin use his strength to restrict your movements and keep you right where he wants you. 

"Cum for me, angel," he says, briefly coming up for air.

Your fist in Jaemin's hair roughly grabs at his roots, causing him to moan against your clit, the euphoria shooting up your spine like an electric shock. You can feel his arms flexing around you to keep you from crushing his head as he laps at your folds.

It wasn't until Jaemin felt your body trembling and your hips attempting to pull away from his mouth, did he free you from his hold. You exhaustedly collapse onto the bed next to him.

"Oh my fucking god, Jaemin," you pant, your eyes fluttering shut.

Jaemin laughs, rolling over to face you. He cages you in with his arms and studies your fucked out state from your hazy eyes to your thighs slightly twitching, still reeling from the intensity of your orgasm. He lowers himself to kiss your face.

"You feeling okay?" Jaemin asks.

"Much better than okay," you tell him.

"Good," he kisses you, "Come on," he then moves off you.

"Wha- Where are we going?" you sit up.

"Back to the party?" he says.

Your eyes fall to the bulge in his pants before flicking back to his face.

"I'll be fine. We've been missing for too long anyway," Jaemin began straightening out his clothes.

"Jaemin," you pout, grabbing his hand.

"Aht, don't worry about me, angel," he tells you, "I definitely got what I came for," he says with a kiss.

You grumble, knowing his ass is just as stubborn as you. It's become abundantly clear that he enjoys giving more than receiving, but you can't help that it makes you want to give just as much if only he would let you.

Jaemin watches you start the search for your underwear before stopping you, "Leave them," Jaemin says, "They'll only be coming off again later," he smirks.

You look at him with your mouth slightly open, already feeling the heat pooling in your lower stomach all over again. He gives you a second to pull yourself together before taking your hand and leading you back out to the party. 

"Did your room somehow move across the city? The fuck took you so long?" Ningning asks the second you and Jaemin enter the living room, snatching the rolling papers out of Jaemin's hands.

"Sorry, got sidetracked," Jaemin says, sitting on the couch.

"Sidetracked fucking-" Haechan starts before Meera slaps his arm.

"Leave them alone," Meera scolds her boyfriend.

Jaemin didn't give you a chance to think before pulling you down into the spot next to him, keeping his arm around you.

For the remainder of the party, Jaemin mostly stayed at your side, keeping you within arms reach until he could have you to himself for the rest of the night.

[9:51 AM] SATURDAY

When Jaemin woke up, he knew he was fucked.

You were peacefully sleeping beside him, your chest slowly rising and falling with every breath you took. Goosebumps appear over your arms and legs as the AC kicks on, and your hardened nipples poke through the t-shirt Jaemin gave you to sleep in. 

"Fuck," he lowly curses to himself, desperately willing away the boner growing in his underwear. 

Jaemin could take care of it on his own. It's not like he's unfamiliar with having to slip away from you to take care of an issue that was indirectly caused by you. The first instance being all those months ago, when you first started messing around before you made it clear you were just as open to giving as you were receiving.

Now would be no different, except Jaemin can already imagine the pout forming on your face if you were to know he did so himself instead of letting you. But Jaemin couldn't find it within himself to wake you, knowing how quickly you knocked out last night after he completely wore you out. So a solo quickie in the bathroom is what it's gonna have to be for now.

One problem, though, is you're lying on one of his arms. 

Trying his hardest not to wake you, Jaemin tries first, slowly moving away from you toward the edge of the bed so he can quickly take back his arm.

Jaemin starts to hear soft murmurs fall from your lips as you begin to stir, and he stops moving. Once he confirms you're still asleep, Jaemin tries again, almost getting his arm completely free. 

But as a chill runs through you, you move back, seeking the warmth of his body again, putting Jaemin back at square one. 

With all the sudden movement, your eyes flutter open, and you look over your shoulder at Jaemin. 

"Good morning," you smile, seeing he's already awake.

"Morning," Jaemin tries not to focus on the fact that your ass is flush against his erection, "Sleep well?" he asks. 

"Uh huh," you nod through a yawn before stretching, causing your ass to rub against Jaemin's crotch. "Seems like you did, too," you raise an eyebrow, now, very much aware of his hard cock resting against your backside. 

"Would've taken care of it if you weren't holding my arm hostage," he tells you. 

"What would you need to do that for when I'm right here?" you twist your torso, even more, to look at him. 

"Didn't wanna wake you," he says. 

"Would've been the best way to wake me," you press your lips to his.

You slip your hand between your bodies, finding his clothed cock and palming him over his boxers.

Jaemin groans into your mouth, tugging your bottom lip between his teeth as he ruts his hips into your hand. You push the waistband of Jaemin's boxers down far enough to let his length spring free, grasping his throbbing cock in your hand.

"Fuck, angel," he groans as you twist your wrist, slowly jerking him.

Jaemin's free hand trails up the backs of your thighs before sneaking between them to discover you must've had a dream as good as Jaemin's, considering how wet you already are and he hasn't even done anything to you yet.

"Dream sweet dreams of me, bunny?" Jaemin teases.

"Uh huh," you mumble against his lips.

"I make you feel this good in your dreams?" he asks, moving your panties to the side and rubbing your clit. 

"No, this is so much better."

A moan bubbles in Jaemin's throat, feeling you squeeze the base of his cock. You try not to lose concentration and swipe your thumb over his slit leaking with beads of precum, and a raspy curse falls from Jaemin's lips.

"Fuck, sweetheart, you're gonna be the death of me," he says.

"Jaemin, please."

"What, pretty girl?" he asks, "You know if you want something, all you gotta do is ask for it."

You whine, hating that Jaemin loves putting you on the spot like this because he enjoys seeing you all flustered.

"I want you."

"I'm right here, baby," Jaemin says softly, "You want me to do something to you?" he asks, teasingly tracing the seam of your lower lips. 

"Yes."

"You wanna feel me inside?"

You nod.

"Like this?" he asks, sinking two fingers into your pussy.

You hum, your eyes fluttering shut; Jaemin all too well-versed in knowing how to play your body like a fiddle.

"More," you tell him.

"You want my cock, angel?"

"Yes," you nod, "Please." 

Jaemin wastes no more time with your panties, pulling them to the side and lining his cock up with your entrance.

The raw feeling of skin against skin without the latex barrier causes you to become more and more grateful for the conversation you and Jaemin had a few weeks ago about using condoms, knowing neither of you are sleeping with anyone else, and you completely trust Jaemin. Because the feeling of him entirely—every ridge, curve, and vein—buried deep inside you had your head spinning.

You sharply gasp, arching your back as Jaemin slides into you. He buries his head into your neck, sinking his teeth into your skin. Your eyes roll back, and you try to grab onto whatever you can.

Resting his hand on your hip, Jaemin slowly slips out of your pussy before filling you right back up.

"Jaemin~" you mewl.

"You like that, princess? Is this what you wanted?" he asks.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes—thank you, Jaemin," you screw your eyes shut and grab onto his arm.

"Anything for my angel," he kisses you.

Once Jaemin finds a steady rhythm to work at, he grabs your leg, pulling your knee toward your chest. The new position allows you to feel the delicious drag of his cock against your walls. Your shallow breaths quickly melt into small whimpers and moans as Jaemin toys with your clit. Reaching behind you, you grab his hair, your lips meeting in a sloppy, desperate kiss. Jaemin angles his hips, hitting your sweet spot with precision, making you moan.

"Jaemin, oh my god-"

"I know, sweetheart, I know," he slows down, "But if we don't wanna wake anyone, you gotta be quiet for me," he tells you.

You bit down on your lip, suppressing the noises threatening to spill from your lips. You could hear how uneven Jaemin's breathing had become as your walls pulsed around him.

"You're doing so good for me, baby," he kisses your cheek, "You gonna cum?"

Untrusting of your voice, you only nod.

"You feel so good—fuck. So fucking tight and wet," Jaemin rasps in your ear while working your clit with his thumb.

You force your face into the pillow, muffling your cries as you cum around Jaemin's cock.

You can hear the heavy breathing and grunts from the man behind you, feeling your pussy choke his cock in a vice grip.

"Shit," Jaemin hisses, slipping out of your overstimulated cunt.

You quickly replace Jaemin's hand with yours, curling your fingers around his shaft. You move to situate yourself between his legs, taking his dick into your mouth without a second thought.

"Fuck, angel," Jaemin runs a hand through his hair, "You're so fucking good for me," he throws his head back against the headboard. 

You flicker your eyes up toward him, taking in the way his brows furrow and abs contract with every slow movement of his hips.

"You're gonna make me cum," he warns, stroking the back of your head.

You moan, taking more of him down your throat until tears are pricking at your eyes. You use your hand to squeeze the base of his cock while you hollow your cheeks around the rest of what you can fit in your mouth. Jaemin lifts his head, looking down at you, lost in your own little world, seemingly enjoying this as much as he is. 

That was enough for Jaemin to shoot warm ropes of cum down your throat.

Jaemin's sensitive cock twitches against your tongue, watching your pretty lips slide off his dick, licking the drops of his cum off the corners of your mouth before swallowing.

"Since when were you such a morning person?" Jaemin asks, catching his breath.

Sitting up on your knees, you crawl into his lap. "I'm not. Just a really horny one," you wrap your arms around his neck.

Jaemin laughs against your lips, holding your hips.

A knock on the door startles you, pulling you away from Jaemin. "If you two are done fucking, breakfast is ready," you hear Rina's voice.

"Oh my god," your eyes widen, "I wasn't even that loud, was I?" you ask in horror.

"You weren't exactly quiet," Jaemin says.

"Yeah, no thanks to you," you roll your eyes.

"So now this is my fault?"

"Yes," you answer, getting off him.

You stand and suddenly become aware of the ache in your legs. Jaemin places his hands on your hips to steady you, ready to follow you out.

As you make your way downstairs, the smell of weed hangs heavily in the air, and you can hear some sort of disagreement in the living room over the music playing from the kitchen, letting you know almost everyone is awake.

Great.

"Good morning," you enter the kitchen with Jaemin close behind you.

"Must've been a good morning for you indeed," Meera says, and you pinch her as you pass by her.

"Save me a seat," Jaemin whispers, kissing your cheek and lightly tapping your ass before joining the wake and bake sesh going on in the living room. 

You can feel the eyes on you as you move around the kitchen, making yourself a plate of food. Rina, Meera, and Kali all wait until you sit down before they begin.

"So, last night was…interesting," Meera starts.

"What makes you say so?" you ask.

"For starters, you missed everything with Kali and Chenle last night-" Rina begins. 

"Aht, aht, this wasn't even supposed to be about me, and there's nothing to even tell," Kali cut her off. 

"That game of truth or dare said otherwise..." Meera mumbles behind her coffee mug. 

"It was your idiot boyfriend's idea to play that stupid game," Kali spits back defensively.  

"Well, it certainly is surprising to still see you're here this morning. And that shirt is looking vaguely familiar. I'm pretty sure I remember seeing Chenle wearing it when I was here yesterday," you tease Kali.

"I was too fucked up to go home last night, and he let me borrow it so I wouldn't have to sleep in my dress," Kali explains.

"Sounding familiar?" you ask Meera.

"Just a little," Meera nods. 

"Anyway, what we're actually here to discuss is whatever almost went down last night between you and Kayla," Kali says.

"Oh my god," you roll your eyes, "Whatever over-exaggeration Rina already told you, just imagine that but ten times less dramatic."

"Oh, come on. The look you had on your face, if Kayla had been two seconds faster, her ass would've ended up knocked out right in that spot," Rina says, pointing to almost the exact same spot you kissed Jaemin last night. 

You laugh before flinging a piece of bacon at Rina.

"That is so, not what would have happened," you shake your head, "But it doesn't matter now anyway since Jaemin made it very clear, they are nothing but a memory in the past." 

"How clear?" Meera asks. 

"Clear enough, I forgot why I was even bothered by the third time he made me cum last night," you grin as the memories flash back in your mind. 

[4:26 PM] TUESDAY

A soft knock on your door brings you out of your slumber. You mumble a response to whoever's on the other side of the door, telling them to come in.

Jaemin's voice fills your ears as he calls your name, and you lift your head to look at him.

"Jaemin?" you rub the sleep out of your eyes.

"Hi, sweetheart," he sweetly smiles at you.

"What are you doing here?" you ask, afraid you forgot plans you made with him.

"Eunji said you weren't feeling good, so I came to check on you," Jaemin says, and before you can ask, he tells you, "I caught Rina on her way out and she let me in."

"You didn't have to come all the way over here, Jaem," you smile at him, "I'm fine," you say before groaning as your muscles contracted, "This shit ain't nothing I'm not used to," you bury your face into your pillow, wishing the pain would quickly pass.

Spotting the bottle of Motrin on your nightstand, Jaemin asks, "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"No, not really," you finally feel the tension ease up.

"You sure, baby?" Jaemin rubs your leg soothingly. 

"Unless you have something in mind, Nana," you smirk. 

Jaemin grins as he pulls your legs apart, situating himself between them, and hovers over you. He lowers himself to plant a soft kiss on your lips. The quick little pecks quickly escalate into a full-on makeout, your legs locking around his waist as he grips your thigh.

"Someone's eager, huh?" 

"Maybe I'm just a little needier today," you tell him. 

"Not an issue for me at all," he says, slipping his hands under your hoodie.

Goosebumps rise on your skin, feeling his fingertips softly brush your sides, sliding your hoodie up your torso. Jaemin starts kissing down your body, beginning to reposition himself between your legs.

"Jaemin, wait," you stop him, and he snaps his head up at you,

"What? What's wrong?" he asks, concerned.

"I'm on my period," you tell him.

Jaemin nods, "I know. I figured that much when Eunji said you could barely get out of bed today because how bad your cramps were," he kisses your lower stomach. 

Compared to your previous hookups, Jaemin had already exceeded your standards, and even now, he continues to raise them.

Wow, the bar really is in hell.

But as you stay quiet, still taken aback by his response, Jaemin pulls away from you.

"But, obviously, if you don't want to, I understand, baby," he kisses your hand.

"No, I do. It's just…"

"What?"

"I don't know. Other guys made me feel weird about it. So I guess I wasn't expecting you to not care."

"Of course I care," he softly kneads your thigh, "that's why I want to."

"What about the mess?" you pout.

"You really think a little blood bothers me?"

"Evidently not," you say, "But I just put these sheets down," you whine. Now it seemed like you were the one making up excuses. 

Jaemin laughs, "I could always go grab that towel from my car," he says, "Or better yet…" he gets off you and disappears into your bathroom. You hear the shower turn on before Jaemin comes back. Sitting up on your elbows, you watch as he grabs the back of his shirt, tearing it over his head. "Come get in the shower with me," he instructs before dropping his pants, leaving himself naked in front of you.

Jaemin smiles as you gawk over his figure before he leaves your sight, going into the bathroom. You rise from the bed and begin undressing as you follow his steps.

Entering the bathroom, you feel the humidity clinging to your skin as you close the door. Jaemin stands under the shower head, letting the water run down his body as he watches you through the glass door, undressing yourself the rest of the way. More steam pours out as you open the door and step into the shower. Wet strands of hair hang over Jaemin's eyes as he stares at you through his lashes. 

Watching the water roll down the contours of his body has you pressing your thighs together.

"It's rude to stare, angel."

"Sorry," you snap out of it, shaking your head.

Softly smiling at how cute you are, Jaemin holds his arms out for you, "Come here."

Shortening the already small distance between you, you walk into his arms and let him embrace you. Water dripping from the ends of his hair land on your nose and cheeks with how close you are to him.

You grab Jaemin's face as he circles his arms around you. You bite down on his lip with a squeal, feeling the water hitting your back when he switches spots with you, putting you under the stream of water. Jaemin laughs as he directs you to turn away from him and pull your back against his chest.

"I've got you, sweetheart. Just relax for me," Jaemin kisses the side of your neck.

You let the warm water cascade over you, seemingly easing your tense muscles as Jaemin kisses your skin.

You lean against Jaemin's firm chest as he snakes his arms around you. His hands slowly move from your hips, sliding up your torso to cup your breasts. You begin softly mewling as Jaemin kneads the tender flesh. He feels your hardened nipples under his touch and softly tweaks them between his fingers, making you moan and arch into his hand.

"Oh, baby," he coos, "You're so sensitive," you felt him smile against your ear.

"Feels good," you crane your neck to look at him.

"Yeah, want me to keep making you feel better?"

"Please," you nod at him.

Jaemin presses his lips to yours as one of his hands slips between your thighs. You whimper, shuddering in his arms, feeling his middle finger softly stroke your swollen clit.

You grab Jaemin's hair, deepening the kiss as you roll your hips against his hand. He smiles against your lips, swallowing your moans when he sinks one of his fingers into your warm cunt.

"Yeah?" Jaemin asks, watching your brows furrow as your mouth drops open, silently moaning.

"Yes, Nana, please give me more."

"As you wish, sweetheart."

Jaemin adds two more fingers at the same time, your pussy sucking in his three digits. Your back arches away from his chest, and Jaemin flexes his arms, keeping you flush against his body.

The pain in your lower abdomen subsided, quickly replaced by the coil in your stomach tightening.

Jaemin ignores the fatigue in his arm, still curling his fingers against your gummy walls, repeatedly hitting your sweet spot. He uses his other hand to focus on your clit, pressing his fingers to the stimulated bundle of nerves and rubbing calculated circles.

"Jaemin, please, oh my god-"

"Gonna cum for Nana?"

"Mhm—I'm so close."

"Go on, baby, let go for me."

Jaemin lets you rest all your weight on him as you slump against his chest, letting your orgasm wrack through your body. He kisses your shoulder, easing you through your come down.

Turning your head to find Jaemin's lips, you slip your tongue into his mouth. He softly wraps his hand around your neck to keep you there, tangling his tongue with yours. You rest your hand over his, holding your throat, saying, "Please, fuck me," you whisper against his lips.

"I love how pretty you sound begging for me."

"Please, Nana, I need you so fucking bad." With how unpredictable your emotions have been all day, you thought tears might actually start falling from your eyes if he kept teasing you like this.

"It's okay, bunny. I'm right here."

Jaemin has no trouble guiding his cock into your pussy as he holds eye contact with you, watching your face melt into bliss. A low growl-like sound emits from Jaemin's chest as he buries himself inside you.

"Holy fuck, princess, you feel so fucking good. I could keep your pretty little pussy wrapped around me all night."

The thought alone causes a new wave of arousal to flood between your legs, and you're thankful for already being in the shower.

"Jaemin," you moan.

"Not if you keep saying my name like that, though," he groans, slowly adjusting his hips. "But that's okay, baby. You can cockwarm me another time," he says, and your walls flutter around him, "Of course, you'd like that," he smiles.

Anything you had thought of saying is erased from the forefront of your mind, feeling Jaemin draw his hips back before pulling you back onto his cock. Fully sheathed inside you, it feels like he's impossibly deep inside your guts. Beyond the running water and yourself, you could hear wet skin hitting against each other as Jaemin pounded into you from behind. You don't have much to ground yourself with, holding onto the tiled wall.

"How're you feeling, bunny?" Jaemin asks against your neck.

"Good. So fucking good," you cry, "T-Thank you…thank you, Nana," you stutter as he slows down, the tip of his cock softly stroking your sweet spot.

"Nana's got to make sure his princess is all taken care of," Jaemin kisses your temple.

"Nana, please," you pant.

Jaemin smirks, watching your eyes roll back when his hand returns to your neck. This time gently squeezing the sides of your throat.

"You close again, angel?" he asks in your ear. 

"Please," you beg.

"Touch yourself for me."

"Jaem-"

"You wanna cum, don't you?" he asks. You nod, and Jaemin guides one of your hands to your core, "Then let me feel you make your pretty little pussy cum on my cock."

It was hard enough to stand on your own, let alone focus on touching yourself. In contrast to Jaemin, your fingers weakly rubbed your clit with sloppily uncoordinated circles.

"That's my good girl," Jaemin hums, feeling the way your pussy chokes his dick as he thrusts into you. "Cum for Nana," he tells you.

"Jaem!" You desperately reach for him, one hand tangled in his hair while the other left red scratches down his forearm. 

With your legs shaking from the intensity of your orgasm, Jaemin secures his firm hold to keep you upright. His soft grunts fill your ears as your pussy pulses around his cock, making it harder to resist the urge to cum inside you. You feel Jaemin's cock twitch against your walls, brushing your abused g-spot when he quickly slips out of your cunt. You hear Jaemin's breathy moans as he jerks himself in his hand, cumming on your lower back.

"Fuck," you tiredly fall against the tiled wall.

"How are you feeling now?" Jaemin asks, pulling you away from the wall and turning you to him.

"So much better," you say through shallow breaths. "Thank you, Jaemin."

He kisses your forehead, "Now let's actually get you cleaned up."

[6:42 PM] SUNDAY

"Ow! You just pricked me!" Haechan exclaims. 

"If you weren't moving, I wouldn't have," Rina grits through her teeth. 

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Haechan asks.

"Of course I fucking do. This is my major!" Rina now purposely pricks Haechan's arm with a sewing needle, "Mimi, I swear to god, I'm going to sew your boyfriend's mouth shut," she turns to Meera on the couch. 

"I'd really appreciate it if you didn't. Hyuck's real good at using that mouth for more than just talking," Meera smiles proudly.

"Oh my god, please stop," you cover your ears and roll off the couch. 

Not wanting to hear what Haechan could have possibly said back to his girlfriend, you go down the hall to bother Kali and Jaemin.

You peer your head into the bathroom to see Jaemin leaning over the side of the tub while Kali washes the dye out of his hair with the detachable showerhead. 

"Hey, pass me that towel," Kali points to the towel hanging on the door.

Handing her the towel, you ask, "How're you doing, Jaem?"

"None of my hair has fallen out yet, so that's a good sign," Jaemin replies. 

Once Kali rings all the water out of Jaemin's hair, she securely wraps the towel around his head and allows him to stand to his full height. 

"Can I see?" you ask like an impatient child. 

Kali pulls the towel off Jaemin's head, ruffling his hair to get the rest of the water out. 

"Oh my god," your eyes widen. 

"What do you think?" Kali asks. 

"You like?" Jaemin asks, wiggling his eyebrows. 

"I love," you nod, fighting very hard to resist the urge to run your fingers through his vibrant pink hair yourself.  

Throwing the towel back on his head, Jaemin follows you down the hallway back to the living room.

"Jaemin, please tell me you're done," Rina sighs.

"Kali still needs to cut and blow dry my hair," Jaemin answers. 

"Damn it. Where's Jeno when you need him? What about Renjun? Is he still studying?" Rina asks.

"I'm not even here," Renjun quickly passes through to the kitchen. 

"I'm still right here, you know," Haechan places his hand on his hip. 

"Can I get confirmation from all of you you're coming up to lake house this weekend?" Chenle says the moment he enters the house.

"We're doing that this weekend?" Rina stops hemming Haechan's pants. 

"This is the last week of the semester. Did we not agree this weekend after Jaemin's exhibit?" Renjun asks. 

"That's this week too??" Rina stands up. 

"Yup," Jaemin nods, ringing the water out of his ears. 

"Oh my god, I don't have anything to wear for any of this," Rina frustratedly ran her hands through her hair.

"This might be a crazy idea, but you could always make something," Chenle says. 

"With what time? I still have to finish this and three other outfits for this final project by Wednesday," Rina says. 

"Don't you also have to finish my dress for Thursday?" you wonder out loud. 

"Fuck!" Rina stomped her foot. 

"Hyuck, take off your clothes," Meera stands from the couch. 

"Right here in front of all of them, baby? You know I'm not opposed to putting on a show as long as everyone else is okay with it." Haechan says, reaching for his girlfriend. 

"No, dummy," she lightly pushes him away, "Take off these clothes and go put some of your own back on, so Rina can take a break," Meera says. 

Rina sighed, "I can't-" 

"You need to take a break before you stress yourself out more than you already have. I'm not too bad with a thread and needle so I'll help you with whatever, okay?" Meera offers.

After Rina agrees to taking a brief break, a joint magically appears with the words, "Don't say I never do anything for you," from Chenle.

"Shit, I really needed this," Rina drops her head to the back of the couch as she expels the smoke from her lips. "Jaem, you want?" she asks as she passes the joint off to you. 

"You know I could never say no," he replies. Joining the rest of you in the living room, Jaemin comes over to you and moves your legs out of the way, making room for himself on the couch, and you hand him the spliff. 

"Thank you, beautiful," he takes the joint from you.

Your eyes find themselves glued to Jaemin, watching him take a long drag, letting the cherry burn bright orange for a few seconds. You take in the way the pink fringes of hair frame his face, the new color and cut complimenting him well.

But you're torn out of your thoughts when the front door opens, and Rina jumps to her feet, "Jeno, thank god! Please, I need you, please!" she begs.

"Didn't think she'd be so impetuous when she confessed this," Meera mutters before being met with a pillow to her face, thrown by Rina. 

"Uh..yeah sure. What do you need?" Jeno asks. 

"First, your measurements," she spins him around and starts measuring his shoulders.

Jaemin makes himself comfortable, draping himself on top of you. 

"I've missed you," Jaemin mumbles into your neck. 

You laugh, softly threading your fingers through his damp hair, "How? I've been here for the past four hours."

Jaemin lifts his head, "Yeah but I couldn't give you much of my attention. I'm sorry," he pouts.

"Babe, what are you sorry for? I'm fine, not upset," you reassuringly smile at him. 

"Still, four hours I spent not really with you...Not touching you," you notice his eyes fall to your lips, "Drove me to near insanity." 

You press your lips to his, and Jaemin hums, satisfied into your mouth. 

Jaemin only stops kissing you when he's hit in the back of his head with another pillow thrown by Rina, "If you two are not going to be of any help please exit my workspace and go get a room," she says.

"Gladly," Jaemin gets off the couch, grabs your hand, and leads you to his room. 

"Wait, Jaem, I still need to give you a blowout," Kali called after him.

"Don't worry Kal, I think I have that covered," you wink as you follow Jaemin up the steps.

"Oh my god, you guys are so gross!"

[7:36 PM] THURSDAY

"How late are we?" you ask as you exit Eunji's car. 

"Only a few minutes, but we look good, so there's nothing wrong with being a little fashionably late," Eunji says. 

"Especially you," Eunseong says to you, "Rin, you absolutely outdid yourself. And when the fuck can I get one of these?"

"Please give me at least a week before I can make anything else with these hands," Rina said as you all entered the art gallery. 

"Did we miss anything?" Eunji asks when you all find Meera and Haechan first. 

"Just some rich white woman's speech," Meera answers. 

"Perfect, so we missed nothing," Ningning laughed. 

"Where's Jaemin and the rest?" you ask.

"Last we saw Jaem, he was over there. Everyone else is everywhere else," Haechan tells you. 

The other three stay back to keep talking with Meera and Haechan as you break off from them to find Jaemin. You tried prioritizing your search for him but couldn't but get distracted by the exhibits around you. The sculptures, paintings, photographs, and drawings displayed all over the gallery had you in awe of the work created by your fellow classmates.

Your eyes land on a picture that seems familiar to you. Getting a closer look, you realize it's a picture of Haechan and Meera from a few months ago when you all went to a music festival. You remember that day vividly. It had only been the second day of the festival, and half of you were struggling to cure hangovers from the previous night. Meera and Hyuck seemed to be the only ones sober enough to actually enjoy the performances as they sang and danced with one another. It was the intense passion the two have for one another that you could feel through the picture. Jaemin makes the point to emphasize the emotions in the photo with everything out of focus, your two friends being the center of it all. 

You continued looking at the rest of Jaemin's work and noticed your appearance in the photos becoming more frequent as you moved in what you assume is the chronological order of when the pictures were taken. 

Jaemin sees you as he speaks with a few sponsors and swiftly excuses himself. He tries to push every inappropriate thought he has, seeing the high slit in the dress and material accentuate every curve of your body.

"He's got a good eye, don't you think?" Jaemin asks you.

"He does," You turn to him and smile. "I'm curious, though, why us?"

"We had to choose an emotion we see every day; happiness, anger, sadness, frustration, fear, love," Jaemin tells you, "I know none of us would put up with one another if we didn't like each other on some basis, but I think the way we express our love to one another is comical, but I also think it's beautiful."

"I love that," you smile. 

"Can I show you my favorite one?" he holds his hand out for you.

Taking his hand, you let Jaemin lead you through the rest of his collection until he stops in front of one of the pictures. It was a photo of you. It was big enough that it would take up most of your bedroom wall. You know it was taken not that long ago, remembering that outfit and the party you wore it to. With everyone else dancing, smoking, and drinking around you, you had been the only thing in focus. You can even bet you knew what song you were dancing to by the smile on your face. 

"Jaem, when did you take this?" you ask him. 

Jaemin smiles, "You and Aeri were too far into the song to even notice," he shrugs, "I don't know, I just couldn't take my eyes off you and just took this on my phone."

This is quite literally the most beautiful picture of you ever taken, and Jaemin just snapped it on his phone amid the chaos you remember of Eric's party while most definitely not sober. 

"Why include this picture?" you ask. 

"It's my way of showing everyone else the way I see you," he said. 

Oh….Oh?

You have no chance to say anything as an older woman approaches the both of you, "Jaemin, I'm still finding it hard to believe these weren't done by a licensed professional with this level of artistry," she says, looking around at his work before leaning into Jaemin and speaking lowly, "I'm not really supposed to say anything now," she looks around, "But that summer internship is practically yours already." 

"Wow, that's so great to hear, Mrs. Walters," Jaemin smiles as he shakes her hand before she turns to you. 

"Oh, and I recognize you from most of the photographs. Is this your girlfriend?" she asks. 

You look at Jaemin, and he looks at you before smiling and squeezing your hand. 

"Yeah, she's my girlfriend," Jaemin says. 

"How wonderful. Such a beautiful couple," Mrs. Walters smiles at you. 

You both thanked her before she was called away, "Again, amazing work, Jaemin. Can't wait to work with you this summer. And lovely meeting you, sweetie." 

You nod, barely hearing anything that had just come out of her mouth, still hung up on what had come out of Jaemin's 

He just called you his girlfriend?? Jaemin? Girlfriend? You?…Jaemin's girlfriend. 

You thought you might possibly explode from the sheer happiness boiling inside you. 

You don't realize you've been smiling at Jaemin for quite a minute until your cheeks start hurting. You need to tell someone right now before you absolutely lose it in front of Jaemin and everyone else. You attempt to walk away until Jaemin pulls you back to him instead of letting your hand go. 

"Girlfriend—You just…called me your girlfriend," you stumble over your words.

"I did," Jaemin nods, "Was that okay?"

"Say it just one more time for me."

"My beautiful, gorgeous girlfriend."

"I love it," you kiss him, "Now please let me go scream about it in the bathroom." 

Jaemin laughs, kissing you one last time before letting you go. 

You immediately find Rina by a sculpture that very closely resembles Jeno. How many side gigs does this man have? But you waste no time asking questions about it right now and link Rina's arm, taking her to the bathroom. As you pass Eunji talking to Kara by the bar, Rina snatches Eunji, bringing her along.

"What happened? What's wrong?" Eunji asks as you start pacing around the bathroom.

You stop in your tracks, "Jaemin just called me his girlfriend," you tell them.

Rina's eyes widen before she screams, inducing you and Eunji to scream as well.

The acoustics in the bathroom make the three of you sound like a party of twelve until you realize that you three aren't alone as Meera and Kali exit the big stall, followed by a cloud of smoke. 

"Congratulations, babe. I'm so happy for you," Meera throws her arms around you. 

"Jeno said people can hear us out there," Rina reads the text he sent, "But who cares cause my baby is finally boo'd up!" she grabs your face and kisses your cheek. 

"Okay, guys, I just needed to get out there before I literally passed out but I'm good now so we should get back out there," you say. 

"Anyone want a hit before we go?" Kali takes her cart out of her bag.  

"Don't mind if I do," Rina takes the pen.

"Where'd this come from?" you ask before taking a hit. 

"…Chenle gave it to me," Kali answers. 

"And the pieces fall into place," Meera mumbles.

"What??" Everyone snaps their attention to her.

Meera brushes it off, "Nothing." 

. . . 

You made sure you didn't get too high, considering you're still out in public at a somewhat formal event. You returned to Jaemin and stayed by his side the rest of the night, your hand in his.

As you all exit the gallery and fill out into the parking lot, Jaemin asks, "Can I drive you home?" 

"Yeah," you nod and start walking to Jaemin's car. 

"Hey! You two, we have an early morning tomorrow, so you better-" Eunji yells after you. 

"He's only driving me home!" you yell back. 

As he drives, Jaemin rests his hand on your thigh, keeping the other steady on the wheel. You can't tell if he's doing it purposely or not, but with each soft squeeze or subtle inch he moves his hand up higher you bite your lip harder attempting to keep your composure. You can feel your insides quivering as you refrain from pressing your thighs together. You look over at him and already regret that decision with how fine he looks in the light of each passing streetlamp. 

Stopping at a red light, Jaemin turns his head to see you already looking at him. He softly smiles at you and takes your hand from your lap, interlacing his fingers with yours. He kisses the back of your hand, keeping his hand in yours as the light turns green. 

Jaemin reaches your street and parks a few houses down from yours. 

"Thank you for coming tonight," Jaemin says. 

"Baby, you know I wouldn't have missed this for anything," you say before kissing him. "Too bad you can't come up. Eunji's making us clean the whole house before the trip."

"And I'm driving tomorrow, so I really should go home and get some sleep," Jaemin says but makes no move to leave you.

You kiss him and unbuckle your seatbelt. But before you can exit the car, Jaemin locks the door.

You laugh, "Jaemin."

"Don't go just yet."

"Okay."

He leans over the console and grabs the back of your neck, crashing his lips into yours. 

Jaemin lowly curses, pulling away from your lips, "Guess if I can't bring you home with me, I'll just have to take you in here," he licks his lips, "Get in the backseat."

"Unlock the door," you tell him. 

He unlocks the doors, and you exit the passenger's seat. Jaemin comes around to your side of the car and grabs your waist before you get into the back.

"Wait, let me look at you for a minute," he practically undresses you with his eyes, "Really regretting not following you into the bathroom instead. Would've loved the chance to fuck you in this dress tonight. Goddamn," Jaemin rasped, and you could feel yourself getting wetter with each of his words, "And Rina made this?"

You nod, smoothing out the dress, "Perfection, ain't it," you sway.

"You certainly are," Jaemin kisses you, "Remind me to thank Rina," he kisses your neck, "And possibly apologize for when the day comes and I tear this thing off you," he firmly grabs your ass, "Too bad it can't be today," he pouts.

Jaemin follows you into the backseat of his car, closing the door behind him. You push his jacket off his shoulders, tossing it to the front seat to keep it out of the way.

Jaemin cradles the back of your head as you lean against the window, keeping you from hitting it as you're too distracted with kissing him. You wrap your arms around his neck while sucking his bottom lip into your mouth. He pulls away, and you tug on his lip with your teeth lightly before letting go.

"Allow me the pleasure of making you cum at least once tonight," Jaemin says, rubbing his hand up and down your bare thigh.

You all but moan at his words. Nodding, you say, "Please, Jaemin."

Eager with anticipation, you watch Jaemin's hand slowly glide up your inner thigh, gently guiding your legs apart. His hand disappears beneath your dress, inching closer to where you desperately need him.

Jaemin inquisitively hums when his fingers brush your slick-covered folds, making you shudder.

"No panties, angel?" Jaemin asks. 

"The lines would've ruined the dress," you say, trying to keep your hips from chasing after his hand.

Jaemin groans, clenching his jaw, "I really should have fucked you in that bathroom," he says. As he feels your slick dripping onto his hand, Jaemin continues to egg you on with his words, "Would have bent you over that countertop, fucked you from behind. Make you look at your pretty face while I ruin your pretty little pussy." 

You let out a pathetic whimper as your legs shut with Jaemin's hand still between them, using the pressure of his fingers against your clit to provide yourself with some sort of relief. 

"Oh, you really would have enjoyed that, wouldn't you?" Jaemin smiles, pulling your legs apart. "If only all those people knew my pretty angel was such a slut," he says, sliding a finger into you. 

You moan, throwing your head back, and Jaemin's lips attack your neck. He sinks his teeth into the sweet spot below your ear, and you arch into his touch, grabbing his hair.

Kissing his way back up your throat, Jaemin studies your face as your expression twists with pleasure.

"This is definitely a sight I can't get tired of," Jaemin kisses your jaw. "My baby taking my fingers so well," he adds a second before adding a third.

"Jaemin—fuck, please don't stop," You bury your face into Jaemin's neck as you grind your hips against his hand.

"I would never, bunny," Jaemin quickens the pace of his fingers while keeping your clit stimulated with his thumb. You reach for Jaemin's wrist to ground yourself and can feel the muscles flexing in his forearm as he feverishly finger fucked you.

"Please-oh my god, I'm so close," you gasp.

"Yeah, baby? Cum for Nana." 

You cum with a cry of curses, and your entire body feels white hot. Jaemin continues to finger you, and you can hear the obscene squelching of his fingers pumping into your sopping pussy as you cum on his hand. You start to toe to the border of overstimulation as your body shakes, and you push Jaemin's hand away from your pussy.

"Okay, it's okay, angel," he says, snaking his arm around your waist and pulling you fully into his lap. You keep your head buried in his neck, securely curling your arms around him. Jaemin hugs you tightly, softly rubbing his hand up and down your back.

You finally lift your head and rest your forehead against his.

"You okay, baby?" he nudges your nose with his.

"Yeah," you smile. You grab Jaemin's jaw and kiss him passionately. "But I should probably get going before Eunji sends out an APB for me," you joke.

"I know," Jaemin laughs, "I'll walk you to the door."

He holds your hand the entire five-second walk to your front door. 

"Goodnight, Jaemin," you kiss him. 

"Goodnight. I'll see you tomorrow," he kisses you one last time before heading back to his car. "You're also riding with me, by the way, if that wasn't clear already," he points at you. 

"I didn't think you'd have it any other way." 

"Goodnight, angel," Jaemin winks as you turn your key in the door. 

You're met with Rina and Eunji in the living room, sorting their freshly cleaned clothes as they pack their bags. 

"Did you two get lost or end up taking the long way home?" Rina asks. 

"Jaem must've missed the exit," you say.

"You left before us," Eunji narrowed her eyes.

"Must've missed a few exits," you shrug, "Jaemin loves the dress by the way," you say as you head to your room. 

"I knew he would," Rina grins. 

[8:12 AM] FRIDAY

Having been awake for the past hour and a half, courtesy of your beloved roommate, you, Rina, and Eunji are running on schedule for once and had all your things downstairs, waiting for Jaemin, Haechan, and Chenle to arrive with the rest of your friends. But with it being so early and having to wait for everyone else to get picked up before you three do, you end up falling asleep on the couch, vowing to only close your eyes for a few seconds. 

30 minutes later, you wake up to the sound of a car horn honking outside before Rina has the chance to let you know herself that everyone's outside.

You grumble, rising from your nap, "That better not be-" 

"You already know it is," Rina says as you follow her outside with your things to greet your friends. 

"Hyuck, unless you've mastered how to drive with only one hand, I suggest you take that one off the horn before you lose it," you say, annoyed as you roll your suitcase towards Jaemin's car

The Gemini sticks his tongue out at you, and you flip him off. 

"Come on, baby, play nice," Jaemin says, picking up your things and packing them into his trunk.

"It's too early in the morning for his shit," you scoff. 

Jaemin's able to remove to scowl from your face with a kiss to your lips before you're startled by another car honk. 

"Sorry, hand slipped," Haechan smiles as you narrow your eyes. 

"Jesus, Rina, what the hell do you have in here? We're only staying for five days, not three weeks," Jeno says as he carries her bag to the back of Jaemin's car.

"Not even that much. You know, the essentials; clothes, toiletries, makeup, my rolling tray, my bong-" Rina starts listing off before Kali interrupts. 

"Wait, where's Eunji?" Kali asks, sticking her head out of Chenle's car. 

That is a great question. 

"Why do things with us always have to be like herding sheep," Renjun shakes his head, slumping against Haechan's car. 

He's right. It's like a class field trip, even with only the fourteen of you, always bound to lose track of at least one person. 

Just as Meera starts taking a head count, Eunji reappears with a coffee in hand. 

"Are we waiting for something?" Eunji asks. 

"Yeah, you," Yangyang says. 

"Well, I'm here now. We can go," Eunji smiles once Jisung helps pack her duffel into Chenle's car. 

"Let's make sure we have everyone first." 

After you count the five heads in Chenle's car, four in Haechan's, and the last five, including yourself, in Jaemin's, you climb into Jaemin's passenger seat. 

"Hey, I thought you said I could have shotgun," Jeno says. 

"I said you could have shotgun on the way over here. I already promised it's hers for the next few hours," Jaemin tells his best friend. 

"Sorry. Girlfriend rules," you tease Jeno with a wink. 

"Girlfriend rules," Jaemin shrugs.

Jeno shakes his head with a laugh and closes your door before getting into the car next to Rina in the seat behind you. In the furthest backseat, Eunseong finally wakes up when Jeno slams his door a little too hard. 

"We there yet?" Eunseong groggily asks. 

"We're just about to leave now, babe," Rina looks over her shoulder at Eunseong. 

She nods and lies back down, "Wake me when we get there," she quickly falls back asleep. 

[1:52 PM]

Chenle takes out the keys to his uncle's lakehouse and enters, all of you following in behind him. 

"We've already agreed that the drivers get their own rooms. But the rest of you guys have the other five to choose from-" Before Chenle can finish, Rina grabs your hand and pulls you up the stairs to look for a room. "The biggest one is mine!" Chenle yells after you two.  

You trail behind Rina as she looks through each room you pass before finding one with a good view of the water.

"This one is definitely ours!"

Rina was quick to stake her claim on this room, unpacking her things as soon as she decided. 

A knock from the other side of the door, followed by your name, catches both of your attention. 

"I wasn't sure where you wanted me to bring your bags, so I'm just gonna leave them out here, okay?" Jaemin says. 

"Okay, thank you!" you yell back to him. 

"Oh, shit, I totally forgot about you and Jaemin," Rina says. 

"I already agreed to room with you, it's fine," you tell her. 

"But that was before he was your boyfriend," she says with a smile, "So it's fine, go stay in his room and leave me here all by my lonesome," she dramatically sighed. 

"Shut up, Rin, I'll stay if you really want me to," you say, and she victoriously hugs you, "But I can't promise I'll be actually sleeping in here much," you tell her honestly. 

"That's fair." 

As everyone else claimed their rooms and began unpacking their things, you wandered around the house looking for Jaemin. You reached a room a few doors down from yours, which was slightly open, and peered your head in.

"Jaemin?" you call out to him. 

"Mhm?" you hear him respond.

You enter the room and find him lying on the bed with his eyes closed. You quietly tiptoe over to him and gently climb onto the bed.

"Tired, baby?" you ask. 

"Just a little. Nothing a quick nap can fix," Jaemin says.

"Do you want me to go?"

"Now, why would I want that," he wraps his arms around you and pulls you closer to him. "Did you come to apologize for leaving me for Rina?"

You whine, burying your head in his chest, "Oh my god, don't you do this to me too. I already feel bad enough as it is."

"I'm just kidding, baby," Jaemin rubs your arm, "It's fine, seriously."

"Well, Rina's fine with compromising and giving me up for a few nights if you'd still have me."

"I'd take you any and every way I possibly could," he says suggestively. 

"I thought you were tired," you say. 

"Mhmm…" Jaemin rolls over, lying on top of you, "I'm confident enough in my abilities to make you cum at least once without exerting too much of my energy."

"I'd like to see you try."

[9:20 PM]

"Hey, Ji, where'd you put that bottle of pink whitney?" Eunseong asks. 

Jisung wordlessly moves across the kitchen to the cabinets and reaches to the highest shelf to grab the bottle. 

"You little shit..." Eunseong narrows her eyes 

"It was Renjun who said to keep it as far away from you as possible," Jisung says. 

"That bitch!" she snatches the bottle from Jisung before searching for Renjun. 

You grab your drink and follow everyone else back outside. Stepping out onto the porch, you find Jaemin right where you left him with Rina, Yangyang, and Ningning. 

"Is that what I think it is?" you ask, inserting yourself into the conversation as you sit on Jaemin's lap. 

"If you're thinking tabs of LSD, then yes, it is," Yangyang holds up the baggie of illicit substances.

Jaemin smiles adoringly, watching your eyes widen.

You gasp, "I'm not gonna lie, I've always wanted to try them."

"You wanna trip with me?" Ningning asks, excited. 

"Tonight?"

Before anyone can answer you, Kali and Eunji drunkenly run out of the house; Eunji with the bottle of alcohol in her hand. 

"Nah, tomorrow night. I think some of us have already reached our limit," Yangyang says with a laugh, watching the girls stumble over their own feet as they neared the shoreline. 

"Oh god, what are those two doing?" you ask, concerned for your friends. 

"You guys broke out the pink whitney without me!?" Rina exclaims, standing from her seat and following them toward the bonfire, bringing Ningning in the process before Yangyang trails behind as well. 

Being left alone, Jaemin takes this as an opportunity. He brings your attention to him, softly bouncing his leg beneath you. 

You smile, turning to him before you lean in and kiss his lips, cupping his face. You taste the smoke still on his tongue mixed with the bitterness of the beer he's been drinking. Jaemin slides his hand on your lower back down to grab your ass, making you moan into his mouth. You feel Jaemin's other hand on your leg slip beneath your skirt, firmly gripping your upper thigh. 

But before things can escalate even further, Eunseong runs out of the house. Spotting the two of you away from everyone else, she nudges you before slurring, "You two better get your pretty asses up and join us."

"For what?" you ask.

"Skinny dipping!" Eunseong sprints towards the lake. 

Watching your friends leave trails of clothes along the shoreline and hearing them laugh and splash around leads you to stand from Jaemin's lap and step off the porch. You turn back to him before pulling your shirt off, revealing your bra. 

"You coming, Nana?" you smirk teasingly. 

Jaemin rises from his seat, stalking after you as he takes off his shirt. Once he starts following you, you continue to strip, leading him toward the water where the rest of your friends are. 

[11:16 AM] SATURDAY 

Jaemin watches as your chest rises and falls slowly with each gentle breath you take. His eyes scan the rest of your body, suddenly finding it hard to resist his urges.

The first time the topic came up, Jaemin wasn't sure if you were serious. But when Jaemin brought it up again a few days later, you confirmed the truth with him.

"Would you actually be into being fucked awake?" Jaemin asked. 

You looked up from your phone and then around the room, not knowing where this was coming from. 

"Yeah…" you answered, "I've obviously never tried it but I don't know, the thought alone kinda excites me," you told Jaemin, "Why?" 

"I mean, if you ever do wanna try-" 

"Yes," you didn't even let him finish. 

Jaemin laughed, putting his arm around you, "Okay, princess, I'll keep it in mind." 

Still asleep, you kick the covers off you and move into a more comfortable position as you hug Jaemin's pillow closer to you. The innocent thoughts of how adorable you look were quickly interrupted by sinful ones as a shirt you stole out of Jaemin's suitcase rose up your hips, uncovering your bare lower half.

After your late night swim, the two of you jumped into the shower together before heading to bed, and you had only threw on one of Jaemin's shirts to go to sleep, not feeling the necessity to cover much more of yourself.

As Jaemin rises from the chair to near the bed, your words replay in his head. Just as he's about to climb onto the mattress, he freezes when you roll onto your back, still asleep.

Perfect.

Jaemin gently parts your legs even wider to make space for himself between them. He slowly kisses his way up your thighs, carefully placing your legs over his shoulders so he doesn't wake you yet. Jaemin smiles to himself, seeing your folds already glistening with the morning sunlight entering through the window.

Jaemin uses two of his fingers to part your folds and gives an experimental lick to your clit. Flitting his eyes back up to your face and seeing your eyes still closed, Jaemin resumes, flattening his tongue against your slit, He softly sucks your clit into his mouth, and your breathing becomes shallow. Your thigh twitches, and Jaemin rubs your leg as he teases your hole with the tip of his tongue. Tasting your essence on his buds leads Jaemin to slide his tongue inside you.

Your hips start subtly moving against his face, but he can tell you're not awake yet with how relatively quiet and motionless you still are.

"Nana," you murmur. Oh, so you definitely are dreaming about him. "Please," you whisper.

Jaemin circles his arms around your thighs, pulling you closer to his face, pushing his tongue deeper inside you, wiggling the muscle against your velvety walls. Your back arches, and you start to squirm.

He doesn't care about not waking you anymore, already feeling the way your pussy gushes around his tongue.

Your eyes finally flutter open, and it registers that Jaemin really has his head between your thighs, and you're really waking up to him eating you out right now. You almost cum from the sight alone.

"Oh my god, Jaemin," you throw your head back.

Jaemin moans into your pussy, the vibrations from his mouth sending shocks of electricity up your spine, and your hand flies to his hair, roughly tugging at his roots.

Your legs became restless, yearning desperately to cum on Jaemin's tongue. He pushed your knees to your chest, digging his fingers into the soft plush of your thighs.

"Please, Nana, m'so close," you mewl.

"Cum for me, bunny," Jaemin mumbles against your folds before delving his tongue back in.

Jaemin holds your legs as they start shaking, unable to hold yourself together any longer as your orgasm hits you.

Your hips thrashed against Jaemin's mouth, dragging out the high of cumming on his tongue as long as you could before oversensitivity took over you.

"Holy fuck, Jaemin," you huff, trying to catch your breath.

"Best way to wake you, huh," Jaemin kisses your lips.

"Definitely was," you nod.

[7:09 PM]

After getting ready in your partially shared room with Rina, you both head downstairs, along with Eunji. Jaemin welcomely invites you into his space when you sit next to him, and he snakes his arm around you. 

"Are we all taking some?" Renjun asks. 

"No, not everyone wants to, but even if they did, I don't think we'd have enough anyway," Yangyang answers. 

"How much is this supposed to be?" you ask, taking a tab.

"Less than 15 mcg. Just a microdose," Kali answers. 

"I'm surprised you're sitting this one out. Thought you'd be the first one to want to try acid," Meera says.

"I'm fine being a trip sitter this time. I've already tried it," Kali says.

"When??" Ningning asks. 

"Few weeks ago, me, Yangyang, and Lele had our first trip."

"Lele," you and Meera gave each other a look. 

"Don't start," Kali scolds the both of you. 

"Are you ready?" Jaemin asks, holding his finger up with the tab.

"Yeah," you excitedly smile.

You both place the tab under your tongue and let it dissolve, everyone else doing the same shortly after.

"Okay, now what?" Eunji asks.

"We wait."

. . . 

"Are you okay?" Rina asks you.

You aren't sure exactly when it started to hit, but since you had just been staring at the pattern of Jisung's hoodie because the lines started shifting and warping, you know it's starting to take effect.

You snap out of your daze and bring your focus to Rina, returning to reality with a giggle.

"Yeah, I'm great," you nod, taking a sip of water.

"Yeah?"

"I promise, Rina," you pull her in for a hug, "You know I love you, though, right."

"Of course, and I love your crazy ass just as much," she leaves a smooch on your cheek.

Jaemin enters the kitchen finding you and Rina having your moment in the corner. "Everything okay?" he asks.

"Yeah," you answer, "Are you?" you break the hug, suddenly concerned about him.

"Yeah," Jaemin softly smiles before pulling you into him, "I was just missing you."

"Aww," you gush, kissing his cheek.

"Alright and I'll take that as my cue," Rina reassuringly squeezes your hand before heading back into the living room.

"How are you feeling?" Jaemin asks you.

"Good. I just feel so…good," you sway in Jaemin's arms, your body seemingly unable to stay still.

"Yeah, me too," he nods.

Jaemin wordlessly stares back at you with his dilated pupils as you study him entirely. You can't get your eyes to stay focused on one thing. From the locks of hair flopping back over his forehead as Jaemin runs his hand through it, to the shade of pink his lips have turned as a result of him mindlessly tugging them between his teeth.

"You look really pretty, baby," he tells you.

"Do I not always?" you ask teasingly, leaning against the counter.

"You already know you do," Jaemin nods, "I just can't get over this skirt," he ghosts his fingertips up your bare skin before softly squeezing your thigh.

"Don't start unless you're gonna do something about it, Nana," you smirk suggestively, placing your hand on his chest.

Before Jaemin can respond, Eunseong finally figures out how to connect her phone to Chenle's sound system, and you hear music playing from the living room.

You gasp as the first beat drops, "We need to go, I love this song," you grab his hand and lead him back into the living room.

You couldn't possibly describe the way your body feels right now, with yourself pressed so close to Jaemin's right now as the music and lsd continue to course through your veins. During the transition to the next song, you turn to face Jaemin and wrap your arms around his neck.

You continue to dance in his arms as you subtly break away from the group, Jaemin pulling you aside.

"What?" you ask him.

"You were the one staring at me," Jaemin says.

"Cause you were doing it first," you retort.

"I like looking at you," he smiles.

A beat of silence passes between you two as you stare at your boyfriend. You can't seem to focus on only one feature of his face, "Jaemin."

"Yes, baby?"

"You're very pretty too," you tell him.

"Thank you, sweetheart."

"And I really wanna kiss you."

"Right here in front of everyone, baby?" he asks jokingly. 

"Who cares. It's not like it's anything they haven't seen before," you say.

Jaemin only keeps smiling as he cups your jaw and pulls you in for a kiss. It feels like a jolt of electricity surging through your body, Jaemin's lips on yours.

You moan into his mouth and curl your fingers into his hair, deepening the kiss. As Jaemin's tongue swipes the seam of your lips, he reaches his hand down to grab your ass, and you can already feel warmth pooling in your lower stomach.

"Hey, if you two are gonna start this take it somewhere else. We have children in the room!" Eunji says, covering Ningning's eyes as she giggles, peeking through Eunji's fingers.

"Don't gotta tell me twice," you intertwine your fingers with Jaemin's and make your way upstairs to his room.

You can still hear your friends' laughter and the music from downstairs as the door closes behind you. You moan around Jaemin's tongue when he pushes his knee between your legs, and you grind your hip against his thigh.

"Fuck," Jaemin rasps, "I wanna fuck you so bad."

"Nana," you whine.

He laughs, "What, angel? You know I need to hear you say it."

"I want you to fuck me. So bad, please, Jaem."

Jaemin hums, watching you crane your neck as he tilts your chin upward, "Gonna let me touch you?" he kisses your neck, "Taste you?" he glides his tongue over your skin, "Fuck you?" he says in your ear, leaving you completely soaked.

"Oh my god, please, Jaemin," you desperately drag your hips against his denim-clad leg.

"Love the way my pretty girl begs," Jaemin flexes his thigh to make you shudder, "Get on the bed for me, sweetheart," he tells you. 

Jaemin watches you make your way over to the bed. You teasingly crawl sensually toward the pillows, purposefully swaying your hips, causing your skirt to rise up over your ass a bit. 

You playfully yelp when you feel Jaemin grab your ankles and pull you back toward the edge of the bed. Jaemin pushes your skirt up to your hips and hooks his fingers in the band on your underwear, pulling them down your legs and tossing them to the floor. 

You push your hips back toward him, silently begging him to do something. All the while, Jaemin's eyes were trained on your drooling pussy, leaking with arousal, yearning to be touched. 

Jaemin's thumb runs up your slit collecting your juices on his finger before rubbing your clit. You whine, and it brings a smile to Jaemin's face. He teasingly circles your entrance with the tip of his middle finger before he slips the digit inside of you. Your arms no longer support your upper body, and you drop your head to the mattress, deepening your arch as you feel two of his fingers scissor against your velvety walls. Jaemin watches, entranced with the way your slick coats his fingers as your pussy sucks them in farther. He thinks he can stand here and play with you all night if you'd let him, but the more he hears your desperate pleas of his name, the more Jaemin's resolve weakens. He takes his hand away, and you frustratedly huff. But before you can complain any further, you feel Jaemin's tongue licking a fat stripe from your clit to your slit. 

"Fuck, Jaemin," you grab onto the sheets to brace yourself. 

His fingernails leave little crescent shape indentations on your skin as he firmly grips the plush of your ass. Jaemin traces the outline of your labia with his tongue before weaseling the wet muscle into your pussy. You push your hips back even further against his face, allowing Jaemin's tongue to reach deeper inside you than before. 

You bite down on your forearm, needing to sink your teeth into something. You're unable to keep your body still, so deeply immersed in euphoria. Jaemin roughly brings one of his hands down on your ass, making you moan louder from the pleasurable pain before it fades away. He smirks against your skin, slapping your other cheek, and you cry Jaemin's name.

"Feeling good, sweetheart?" Jaemin asks, replacing his mouth with his hand to speak in your ear.

"Yes, Nana. You're making me feel so good," you arch your back against his chest as he curls his fingers inside you.

"That's what I love to hear. It's all I want; to make you feel good."

"You do, Jaem. Like no one else. You're too good to me," you roll your hips into his hand.

"Too good, mhm?" Jaemin kisses your jaw, "I'm only giving you what you deserve, princess. It's pathetic no one else has ever been capable enough to receive the pleasure of doing this to you—make you scream, make you cry, make you shake." he chuckles as he curls his fingers, massaging your sweet spot, "And they definitely never will now."

"Jaemin, please," you gasp, "I'm so close."

"Is that right? Gonna cum for me, pretty?" he asks, and you frantically nod.

He then drops to his knees and shoves his face back into your pussy.

So close, on the verge of tears, you claw at the sheets, your spine extending even further to move your hips as your grind against Jaemin's tongue. You can feel a mess of fluids slowly making its way down your inner thighs, but Jaemin couldn't care less about his saliva mixed with your juices, dripping down to his face. He spreads your lips and continues flicking his tongue against your clit.

"Fuck, right there," your eyes roll back.

Jaemin firmly wraps his hands around your thighs to hold you as still as possible as he makes you cum. Your toes curl, and you bury your face into the sheets, cumming on Jaemin's tongue.

You think you're going to sink into the mattress beneath. Your thighs shake and attempt to free out of Jaemin's hold once you begin to feel overstimulated. Jaemin leaves one last kiss on your clit before letting your body tiredly collapse onto the bed.

"Aww, come on, sweetheart," Jaemin rubs your thigh, "You're not tapping out on me already are you?"

"Fuck no," you hiccup, "Just catching my breath."

"Good. Cause I'm far from done with you," Jaemin says, joining you on the bed.

You straddle his lap while working to get his shirt off. You tug your lip between your teeth, letting your eyes ogle over his muscular form. Your thighs quiver just from thinking of the things you want him to do to you and the things you want to do to him.

"You're so hot, Jaem," you run a hand down his chest, "It drives me fucking insane."

"I can tell you the feeling's definitely mutual," He cups your ass.

You thread your fingers through the short pink hairs at the nape of his neck, pressing your lips to his passionately. Jaemin moans with a grin when you pull his hair, tugging his head back and giving yourself access to his neck. While you're marking up the side of his neck, you feel Jaemin's hands on your waist, fumbling with the zipper of your skirt.

Kicking off your skirt, you reposition yourself between his legs and leave a trail of kisses down his abdomen. Jaemin watches as you unbutton his jeans and slip your hand into his pants, grasping his cock in your hand. He groans when your squeeze the base before freeing him from his confines, dropping the rest of his clothes to the floor along with yours.

You begin slowly stroking his dick, smearing the beads of precum leaking from the tip along his length. Flickering your eyes up to his face, the corners of your lips turn up as you slide his cock into your mouth.

"Holy shit, sweetheart," Jaemin's lids flutter shut.

You hum, taking more of him into your mouth. Bobbing your head up and down, you twist your wrist, using your hand to cover the rest you can't fit in your mouth. You feel your spit pooling from the corners of your mouth and the fatigue in your jaw, but ignore it for the sake of feeling his dick grow heavier against your tongue.

You feel Jaemin's fingers tangle in your hair, pulling your head back. You release his cock from your mouth with a wet pop, letting it spring back against his lower stomach before standing at full attention. Jaemin pulls your top off you, dropping the last article of clothing between you to the floor.

You take your seat back in his lap while Jaemin's hand finds its way back between your thighs.

"You ready for me, bunny?" Jaemin asks, crooking two of his fingers against your gummy walls.

"God, yes please, Jaem. Need to feel you filling me up so bad," you curl your arms around his neck.

Jaemin hums before taking his fingers away and using your slick on his hand to pump his cock a few times. You lift yourself out of his lap to assist him in guiding his cockhead to your pussy.

Your jaw drops, silently moaning as you sink down onto his dick, letting him stretch you open.

"Oh my god."

"How's that, princess?"

"So good. M'feel so good…n'so full," you slur.

You raise your hips just to sink right back down, to be filled right back up to the hilt. You can't tell if it was the new position or the fact that you're still tripping, but regardless of what it was, you felt like you were on cloud nine.

"God, what a sight you are," Jaemin's hands roamed all over your body. He kneads your breast in his large hands, tweaking both your nipples between his fingers to get a reaction from you. You sharply moan and drag your hips against his.

"Fuck, Jaemin."

"What, baby?"

"Take me," you whisper against his lips.

Jaemin quickly gets you on your back, stroking deeper inside of you before kissing your lips. The kiss is soft and sweet, a great contrast to his next actions. Jaemin pulls out of you, leaving you empty before manhandling you onto your front and pulling your hips into the air. Always being told how much Jaemin loves seeing your face when he makes you cum, you wondered what changed his mind. But it isn't until you lift your head to be met with the sight of you and Jaemin on the bed in the mirror's reflection.

You smirk and lower your upper body to the mattress, arching your back even further to wiggle your ass toward Jaemin. Your eyes meet his in the reflection, and your excitement reaches its peak. Your body jolts forward as a moan slips from your lips when Jaemin smacks your ass before he fills you up again.

You try your hardest to keep your eyes on the mirror, seeing as Jaemin has not taken his eyes away, watching you completely falling apart.

"Nana, please," you bury your face into the sheets.

"You know I'll do anything for you. But you gotta keep your eyes on the mirror for me. Need my angel to see how pretty she is while I ruin her."

"Nana.."

"Can you do that for me?"

"Yes."

"Good girl," he slaps your ass.

Jaemin slides his cock almost all the way out, only leaving the tip before slamming back into you.

Jaemin pulls you back against his chest, and you try to keep your eyes open, feeling how much deeper his cock reaches at this angle. Jaemin slides his fingers into your mouth, and you moan around his digits before he takes them away to rub your clit.

You cry out for your boyfriend, reaching your arm behind and grabbing his hair. Your head rolls back against his shoulder, and your hips start moving in sync with Jaemin's, sinking down every time he raises them, allowing him to hit your sweet spot with precision.

"Please, Jaemin, please, please. Can I please cum?"

"Of course, bunny," he smiles, "Let me see your pretty face when you cum," he cups your jaw, turning your face forward to look at your reflection in the mirror.

The image in front of you is one you would never forget. Strands of Jaemin's rose-pink hair were darkened by the sweat that ran along his hairline. His muscles bulged from holding you up and working his fingers on your clit. Aside from that, you didn't think watching yourself get fucked would turn you on even more. But seeing how your body twitches in his arms, your thighs shaking, and your back arching away from his chest, you find yourself stumbling closer to the edge.

Jaemin watches as the smile stretches across your face, noticing how intently you're staring into the mirror.

"See how beautiful you are," he brings his hand to your neck to watch your eyes roll back, "Taking my cock like a good girl."

You bite your lip with a smile as your pussy flutters around Jaemin's dick.

"Yes, yes, m'your good girl, Nana,"

"Yes you are," he kisses your temple, "Now cum for me," he says in your ear.

With a few more deep thrusts and flicks on your sensitive nub, you cum, keeping your eyes locked with Jaemin in the mirror as you do. Jaemin's fingernails dig into your hips, trying his hardest not to cum just yet.

Your body falls forward, and Jaemin quickly slips his cock out of your pussy, starting to slowly stroke his length.

Once you catch your breath, you roll onto your back to see Jaemin touching himself. You wrap your hand around his dick, taking over for him, seductively looking up at him through your lashes.

"You really want more?" he asks.

"Of course. Especially if you're the one giving it to me."

Jaemin grabs your hips to readjust your body in a better position for the both of you. You direct his cock to your pussy, easily able to slide into you with assistance from your previous orgasms.

You grab the back of Jaemin's neck and kiss him as he bottoms out. You delightedly hum into his mouth, feeling him fill you up again.

"Fuck. You feel so good," Jaemin drops his forehead to yours. 

"Please cum with me," you whisper against his lips. "Cum inside me."

Jaemin raises his head to look at you. "y/n," you know he's being earnest right now, but his tone really couldn't have turned you on even more. "Are you serious?" he asks. 

"Yes," you nod. "Want you to fill me up so bad," you cup Jaemin's face.

Jaemin's cock twitches against your walls, and he groans, his eyes seemingly becoming impossibly darker. He grabs your jaw and crashes his lips into yours.

"You close, angel?"

"Yes."

"You gonna take it like a good girl."

"Yes! Please, Nana, please."

You choke on a moan as your body is hit by the wave of ecstasy. Your legs lock around Jaemin's waist, and he ruts into your heat, chasing his own release.

"Fuck," Jaemin rasps. His hips stutter, and warm ropes of his cum coat your walls.

You pull Jaemin closer and kiss his lips. The both of you struggle to catch your breath for a second, but once Jaemin's cock goes soft, a bit of clarity returns to the both of you.

"How are you?" Jaemin asks.

"So good. So fucking good," you nod at him.

He pulled out of you, and his cum immediately started leaking out of your pussy. You bite your lip to stifle a moan when Jaemin brings his hand to your cunt and spreads your lips apart to watch your pussy clench around nothing and force more of his cum to drip down to your puckered hole. Jaemin uses his fingers to swipe up the mess he helped create between your thighs and brings his cum coated digits to your lips. You eagerly took his fingers into your mouth, sucking off his cum mixed with yours. You moan when he takes his fingers away, leaving a string of spit connecting from your mouth to his hand.

"I'm so proud of you, baby. You did so good for me."

"I can't thank you enough, Jaemin, for everything."

"Oh, angel, come on-"

"I'm serious. You have given me so much, Jaemin. And I don't know how else to tell you I'm truly grateful for everything you've done for me."

"You make me indescribably happy, y/n. Genuinely, I cannot put into words how much you mean to me and how much I want to be yours."

"I thought it was made very clear when you became my boyfriend that you are very much mine. As I am yours."

Jaemin smiles and your heart flutters. Cupping his face you kiss him again, holding him close as if he would just fade away if you didn't.

But as much as you don't want to, you pull away from him.

"I'll be right back," you say against his lips.

Jaemin whines, "Don't leave me."

"I'm gonna be right back, love. Just let me go to the bathroom."

"Fine," Jaemin kisses his teeth.

Flickering in the bathroom light, you gasp, seeing your reflection. Now being in good lighting, you can see how badly your makeup has been ruined—what was left of it at least. Mascara and eyeshadow smudged around your eyes, your blush completely gone, and splotches of your lipgloss in places all other than your lips.

When you come back out of the bathroom, Jaemin watches you move around the room, quickly redressing yourself in the first clothes you can find.

"What are you doing?" Jaemin asks as you slip your underwear back on.

"I'm tired of all this back and forth. I'm getting my shit from Rina's," you say, throwing on Jaemin's shirt.

"Fine, but don't take too long."

"Don't tell me what to do," you playfully wink at Jaemin as you leave the room.

You hadn't had the chance to check your phone, having lost track of it just as you had lost track of time. But you think it's late enough that Rina had gone to bed since you found her door closed.

You softly knock before turning the handle.

"Rina, you sleeping? I'm just taking my shit to Jaemin's-" You're cut off when the door pushes back and slams on you.

Your jaw drops as you hear voices behind the door.

"Now, I know damn well-"

"Hey, what's up?" Rina partially opens the door, slightly out of breath.

"Everything okay?" you ask her.

"Yeah. Are you okay? Do you need anything?" she asks.

"I'm fine. I just wanna bring my things to Jaemin's room."

"Oh, okay," she widens the door, moving aside to let you in.

You suspiciously eye her as you walk into the room and start collecting your things.

"Were you watching something?" you ask, seeing her laptop open on the bed with snacks scattered around.

"Yeah, just put something on to go to sleep."

Being your usual nosy self, you peer at the screen, "Jujutsu Kaisen 0, huh? Jeno put you on?"

"Yeah, he was telling me all about it the car ride up here. Thought I'd check it out."

"Mhm," you nod. Then your eyes land on a shirt that was peeking out from under the bed. "This is Jaemin's," you pick it up.

"You must've left it when you were changing earlier," Rina says. 

You shake your head, "I would remember if it was this one, cause it's one of my favorites. But I haven't been able to find it because his best friend, Jeno Lee, has been holding it hostage." you say before eyeing the closet.

Rina attempts to keep you from opening it but you were faster than she was.

"Hi, Jen," you smile, opening the closet.

"Hi, y/n," Jeno apologetically smiles. 

"You mind just passing me that," you point to your suitcase by his feet, "Then I'll let you two get back to...your movie." Gathering everything you could carry you head out of the room. "Goodnight, you two. And uh if you need it, Meera has a huge ass box of condoms, pretty sure she'd spare a few for you."

"Get out!" Rina rushes you out. 

Just as you get out to the hallway, you meet Kali, coming from the direction of a room that is not hers. 

"Uh oh," Kali freezes. 

"Isn't your room—And Chenle's room…What the fuck is in the water?" you question aloud. 

"Please don't say anyth-"

"For tonight, I won't. But if you're up here and those two are—who's trip sitting the others?"

"I left Meera and Hyuck in their room watching some documentary but Jisung and Eunseong are still down there with Eunji Yangyang, Renjun, and Ningning."

"Oh okay. Well I got my own man to get back to so you enjoy the rest of your night wherever that may be But tomorrow we are definitely debriefing," you pointedly tell Kali before heading back to Jaemin.

You return to your room and immediately start telling Jaemin about what happened.

"Babe, you will not believe what just happened," you say, entering. But before you can continue, you find Jaemin half-dressed at the desk, with his rolling tray out, "Na Jaemin, what do you think you're doing?" you ask, placing your hand on your hip.

"God, you sound so sexy saying my name all authoritative and shit," Jaemin says, turning to you as he wets the ends of the papers with his tongue, "What?" he throws up his hands innocently, "A little post-sex spliff with my baby ain't gonna hurt no one."

[3:37 PM] SUNDAY

"What time did you guys end up sleeping?" you ask Meera as you head over to your seat at the dining table, only to have Jaemin pull you down into his lap instead. 

"Around 9 this morning," Meera answers. 

"Anyone know where Eunji and Yangyang are?" Rina asks, taking a seat. 

"They're still asleep on the couch. Eunseong said they didn't start to come down until a few hours ago," Haechan answers, "When did you guys finally crash?" he asks you and Jaemin.

"Sometime after 10 this morning. I could still feel the buzz but my body was fucking exhausted," you say, and Jaemin laughs beside you before you elbow him in the ribs. 

"I wonder why," Haechan snickers. 

"I'll tell you, Donghyuck," you start, "Because I spent hours wth my boyfriend in his room fucking until the sun came up."

"At the table?? Really?" Rina raises her brows. 

"He wanted to know why. Do you wanna tell him why going back to your room wasn't even an option?" you ask Rina. 

Briefly disregarding your last comment, Haechan's still hanging onto what you had already said, "Wha-How did we all just move past what you just said," he asks, "You two are-He's your-She's your-

"Just spit it out, dude. Cause yeah, she's my girlfriend."

"Wow. Things are moving along a lot faster than I expected," Haechan says to Meera. 

"Okay, what the fuck do you two keep going on about with that?" Rina points at the couple. 

"Nothing. It's just we kinda have a little bet on who else in the group would get together and how long it would take them." Meera says.

"And?" Jaemin asks. 

"I at least expected you to be single longer than Jeno," Haechan says. 

"I don't think you'll have to worry about that for much longer," you say, smirking at Rina from across the table. 

"Oh my god," Rina throws her head into her hands, "Was I really this annoying with you?"

"No," you smile, "Which is why I'm going to be so much worse." 

a/n: i honestly wasn’t planning on writing a second part which is probably why it took so long but i seriously wanna thank y’all who waited patiently 🫶🏽🫶🏽 thank you for reading. feedback is appreciated <33