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sailorsoons · 2 months ago

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Cherry Sours (l.c)

PAIRING: Mafia!Chan x f. reader

SUMMARY: Nothing in your life ever comes easy. Not family, not money, and certainly not jobs to pay the endless stack of bills. The only thing easy is the smiles you give Chan when he comes into your convenience store at the same time every Saturday to buy his cherry sours. And then one day you run into him where you're not supposed to, and everything changes.

WC: 27,990

AU: Mafiaverse, Cyberpunk, Strangers to Lovers

GENRE: Romance, hint of angst, smut

RATING: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging in and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately.

WARNINGS: Due to the nature of this fic, warnings are under the cut. This is far tamer than either of this fic's predecessors.

A/N: This fic, though a part of a greater "collection" of fics, can be read as a standalone. I do highly recommend reading Baby and Vengeance, though. They provide much more color to the characters you meet in this. Welcome back Angel, Baby and Soonyoung! This fic also introduces Jeonghan :)

A/N 2: Thank you @daechwitatamic for beta reading this absolute monster and being my biggest cheerleader.

MASTERLIST | ASK | FULL COLLECTION | ▷ NOW PLAYING | MOODBOARD

FULL WARNINGS: General violence associated with criminal behavior, depictions of murder, fight sequences, mentions of drug use/references to drugs, mentions of death, mentions of Syndicate War and its toll on the city, threats of physical violence, depiction of guns and knives, explicit language, some depictions of classism/reader struggling to make it by, Jeonghan is in his evil era, pls forgive him, some angst regarding reader's perception of the world/how she feels about her life, morally grey characters (but they're fun lmao), reader agrees to sort of be paid company for the night - nothing sexual happens but I don't shy away from the implication of escorting, Chan gets a bit possessive, a bit of a miscom trope, explicit sexual content including vaginal fingering, oral (m and f receiving), unprotected sex, light cum eating, use of 'good girl' a few times. I think this mostly covers the big things, please let me know if I missed anything.

SWEAT DRIPS DOWN KANG LI YANG'S FOREHEAD. Chan watches it sharply, tracking the bead as it travels from Kang’s salt-and-pepper hairline to his thick brow. Chan has to give it to the older man - he doesn’t reach to wipe the sweat. Instead, he tries to seem unaffected and relaxed, leaning back in his chair to view the cards in his hand.

Chan already knows what the cards are. Even if he wasn’t one of the top gamblers in the room, Kang is a terrible gambler - funny, considering he owns the ornate casino they’re sitting in. It’s just the two of them at the table with a single dealer, a woman dressed in a tight-fitted, all black suit. There are tiny LED lights stitched into the fabric, glittering subtle to make it look like she’s swimming in the cosmos.

The high rollers room is quiet, the heavy privacy curtains blocking out the noise from the main gambling floors. Only a few tables are open with dealers similarly dressed as the woman in front of him passing out cards. It gives the illusion that they’re surrounded by people who will mind their business, who will afford them privacy.

It’s supposed to put Chan at ease. It doesn’t.

He might be at ease if Kang weren’t sweating through his custom suit. He might be at ease if he didn’t recognize that the people at the tables around them were Patrons of the Yong Syndicate. He might be at ease if Kang’s fingers weren’t trembling as he moved his cards around to his preferred order, trying everything in his power to do anything but look around the room for what Chan knows is an ambush.

He’d have figured it out even if Jeonghan hadn’t given him a warning. The right hand man of Choi Seungcheol is full of secrets, and though Chan has no idea why he has so much knowledge of the Yong family, he’s thankful for Jeonghan nonetheless.

Chan sighs. Kang notices, steel grey eyes flickering up to Chan. “Worried you’ll lose another hand, Lee?”

Chan does not lose games of poker - not even a single hand. He lets people win, sure, but he does not lose unless it is a part of his game to win. Because that is what Chan is good at - winning. It’s why he’s one of the most trusted members of the Choi Syndicate, a powerful Chariot whose single job is to broker and secure alliances and business to keep the money and loyalty flowing into Choi Seungcheol’s pockets.

“Do you know why The Syndicates started calling brokers Chariots?” Chan asks. He flicks his finger upward and pushes glittering chips toward the middle to raise the bet. Kang shakes his head at Chan’s question and matches his bet. “In the old days, one of the cards in a tarot deck was the Chariot.”

The dealer burns the cards on the table and deals out anew. Kang looks at his hand, a ringed finger tapping against the back of his cards. His sweat increases on his brow and his eye twitches in the corner as he risks a glance to Chan’s left.

“I didn’t know that,” Kang says eventually.

“The Chariot,” Chan explains as Kang places a bet, “is a card that represents triumph through determination and overcoming obstacles. It’s what I do for a living - I overcome obstacles and move the Choi Syndicate in a positive, forward direction.”

“I see.”

“I believe that you think you do.”

Kang glances up as Chan slides chips onto the table. “Being a Chariot is more than being charming or letting the owner of a high-performing casino beat me at hands to earn his trust and make him feel confident.�� This makes Kang frown, his shoulders tensing. “It means knowing when someone is bullshiting me, and you, Kang Le Yang, are bullshitting me.”

“Excuse-”

“Three weeks ago you were more than eager to set up this meeting.” Chan presses on as the dealer moves the cards again, impervious to the crackling tension at the table. Kang is rippling with tension now, clutching his cards harder. “You’ve been wanting to lick the boot of one of the Syndicates since you opened this place.”

“Listen here, you-”

“The Tower of the Choi Syndicate was amenable to bringing on the Kang Family as a Patron serving under the banner of the mountain, so I agreed to meet with you, Kang Le Yang.” The dealer asks the men to reveal their hands, but Kang is staring at Chan, fury reddening his cheeks. “Imagine my surprise to find you less eager, and inviting me to your table with several men loyal to the Yong family in the room.”

Kang Le Yang’s face drains of color. He drops a hand from his cards to signal someone, but Chan tuts, stopping him. Chan reveals his cards - a straight flush. He doesn’t need Kang to drop his hand to know he only has a straight.

“You’ve been delaying talking about business for the last hour,” Chan observes, leaning back in his seat and leveling the older man with a heavy stare. “You’re sweating through your clothes despite the anti-perspirant modification your wife had you do three years ago, and you keep looking over my shoulder to the left, which leads me to believe you’re waiting for someone.”

“Get out of my establishment.”

Chan cocks his head. “Why? I haven’t cashed out my poker chips yet. Anyway, it looks like your wife isn’t done with playing her game yet.”

Kang spins around in his chair. He’d sat himself with his back to the entrance of the high rollers room like any good guest establishing trust would. He had given Chan a seat with a good vantage point to set the tone for confidence and to feel like he was safe.

Which meant Kang Le Yang had not watched his wife, Kang Daiyu, walk into the room and sit at a table of her own. She’s flanked by two of the personal guards belonging to the Kang family, but the player next to his wife gives Kang a glittering smile with all teeth when he looks at them.

When Kang turns to look at Chan, he is shaking and pale. “Get that demon away from my wife.”

“Her name is Angel, actually. The bible is confusing, I know.” Chan leans forward and pulls his winnings toward him. Kang doesn’t move, vibrating in his seat.

Most members of the Syndicate know the woman sitting next to Kang’s wife. Kang himself might not know her, not embroiled enough in Syndicate politics to recognize one of the Rooks of the Choi Syndicate, but he does. Which confirms Jeonghan’s contact was right - Kang Le Yang had been prepped and educated about the Choi family in a way that screams collusion with another Syndicate.

Lucky for Chan, Angel’s presence keeps Kang in his seat for the time being. Seeing one of the renowned killers of the Choi Family next to his wife is enough insurance that Chan has a few moments to spare before leaving - it was why he had Angel tag along in the first place.

“I’m going to take these poker chips, walk over to the teller and get my cash, and then I’m going to walk out of here and go home. Probably going to stop to find someone to take with me on the way because I need a good fuck after this bullshit.”

Chan points at Kang, the ring on his finger catching the light. It's a gaudy thing, all hammered gold and lapis lazuli with a chariot etching on the front. “And you are going to sit here and not do a fucking thing about it. And you’re not going to signal any of those Yong fuckers to touch me, or Angel is going to carve your wife open and play doctor with her insides.”

“You insolent-”

“Angel loves knives,” Chan interrupts. He looks at Kang seriously. Lets the casino owner see the weight of his words. “Her favorite is a pretty butterfly knife Yoon Jeonghan gave her, and that Yoon Minji taught her how to use. If that isn’t convincing, I urge you to call whoever you were waiting for to see who answers - the Yong contact you set me up with, or the Sentinel of the Choi Syndicate.”

Angel’s main purpose was to turn Kang Daiyu inside out if needed, but she was also an additional set of eyes and ears for Chan. She’d signaled Chan with a single flick of her hair fifteen minutes ago confirming that Soonyoung had removed whoever Kang was waiting for to come through the back door.

Everything about Chan’s demeanor seems unaffected, but he’s raging inside, heart pounding. He and Angel are the only two people from the Choi Syndicate in the room and they’re outnumbered five to one. Soonyoung is somewhere lurking outside the high-rollers room doing whatever it is the hired guns of the Syndicate do.

It’s not Chan’s best gamble, but he is making one right now. He is betting that Angel and Soonyoung’s reputation will be enough to terrify the casino owner into submission. Chan can be scary in his own way - he’s lethal too. But this is where he thrives, leveraging the names of two well known butchers that answer the call of Choi Seungcheol, ready to spill blood.

Kang might get to kill the three of them tonight, but not without irreparable damage. Damage he’s going to take anyway for letting them go, but not irreparable. He can survive a petty skirmish with the Yong family. He cannot survive a fight with two of the Choi Syndicates most lethal members and the long term fallout with Seungcheol.

The gamble pays off. Kang sags in his seat, the exhaustion transforming him. His apprehension turns to defeat and he nods, forehead in hand as he dismisses Chan. Chan gives him a charming smile, standing up and collecting his poker chips as he goes.

Despite his confidence that Kang won’t do anything stupid, Chan doesn’t let his guard down. He walks with even steps, fingers ready to reach for his weapon as he goes. The Patrons under the Yong’s dragon banner watch him go, confused.

None of them raise a hand to him. He gets the sense that they want to, but they haven’t been given the signal. They’re low enough on the totem pole in terms of Syndicate rank to do nothing, watching as Chan stops by the table Angel is playing poker at.

He bends down to kiss Kang Daiyu on the top of her hand politely, flashing her a smile. She flushes and fans herself as he says, “You never fail to look less than ephemeral, Lady Kang.”

It’s not untrue. Kang Daiyu has all the cosmetic enhancements money can afford, putting her appearance at somewhere around her late thirties while her physical age is somewhere in her early sixties. He still finds it uncanny, but he ignores the nervous flip in his stomach the proximity of her brings when he catches a whiff of altered pheromones, made to attract.

Daiyu smiles, her red lips sparkling. “Lee Chan, you tease.”

Angel makes a face behind her as she stands. In rare form, Angel is wearing a dress. She looks nice, which is disorienting and deceiving. Chan is used to seeing her wearing nothing but black tactical clothes or nondescript black pants and long sleeves. He’d made the mistake of asking her why she always wore black once. Because it shows blood the least had been her chipper response.

Chan winks at Kang’s wife because he can. “Until we meet again.”

She pouts. “You’re leaving so soon?” Her eyes dart to Angel and a flash of rage goes through them. “Ah, it’s always the youngest of the flock.”

Chan laughs. “I assure you, Lady Kang, nothing in the world could lure me into this one’s bed. I think I would find too many teeth and a very angry, very prickly boyfriend.”

If Angel is offended by implying she has too many teeth or that Chan thinks Vernon is prickly, she doesn’t say so. She is placid calm, watching him with even eyes as Kang Daiyu wishes him farewell and he sweeps by. She falls into step with him, saying nothing as her gaze sweeps from right to left, on high alert.

When they exit the high roller room, Chan is hit with a barrage of noise and visuals. The casino is space-dark and filled with intricate holographics casting blue and purple light around the shine and clamour of the slot machines. Above the casino floor, the ceiling seems not to exist. Instead, a whorl of stars and galaxies float above, giving the illusion that they’re looking straight up into the night sky somewhere undiscovered.

Soonyoung pushes off a slot machine, tucking his phone in his pocket. He’s dressed in all black as usual, and his silver hair is styled back and tucked behind his ears - longer than usual, like his girlfriend likes it. He falls into step easily with Chan and Angel, hands in his pocket, dark eyes like stormy seas sweeping the room.

Together, they head toward the teller. Soonyoung makes a noise in the back of his throat when he sees Chan diverting toward the glittering booth, a woman dressed in a space suit behind the counter.

“I’m collecting my chips,” Chan says seriously. “I won fifty thousand credits off that stupid fuck.”

“I’ll give you fifty thousand credits to skip it and get out of here. There are only three of us.”

Chan rolls his eyes, walking backward toward the counter. “It’s a gamble, but it’s not a bad one. Wait here.”

Soongyoung does not, in fact, wait where Chan tells him to. He follows in Chan’s footsteps up to the window, a dangerous shadow that makes Chan sigh. He knows it’s Soonyoung’s job to keep the Syndicate - and Chan by extension - safe. Soonyoung has only been the Sentinel of the Choi family for a few months, inheriting the position of militia leader when Seungcheol stepped in to lead the family business after his father’s passing.

Life has not been easy for any of them lately, least of all Soonyoung. Chan glances at his friend sidelong while the teller counts his chips. Soonyoung looks tired, circles under his eyes and a little watery at the edges. But he’s nothing like the mess he was last year, nothing like the shadow of himself he’d been before his girlfriend had made it back to him.

It makes Chan’s mouth twitch in a smile. He looks down at the counter, waiting for the teller. Seungcheol’s sister coming home and escaping the clutches of the Kim family had been the miracle that they all needed - and the start of the war that’s kept Chan busier than ever.

Syndicate war isn’t common. It always devastates the city’s infrastructure, makes the general population panic, and has been known to wipe out entire family lines. That thought alone makes Chan glance over his shoulder at Angel. She’s standing in the middle of the casino, her gaze everywhere and nowhere at the same time. She looks like that a lot these days. Lost and found. Swimming and sinking. Here and there. Burning and fading.

She’s the last of her family in more ways than one. She has no living relatives left that Chan is aware of, and though she’s not a Yoon by blood, she’s one of them by marriage and by Yoon Minji’s careful design. She’s one of two Yoon family members left in the city, the Wisdom of the Choi family and Seungcheol’s right hand man the other.

The teller hands Chan his money and asks if he needs an escort. Soonyoung snorts and pushes off the wall, sticking a stim pop in his mouth as he goes. “I’ve got it,” he assures them, narrowed eyes. “Have a nice night.”

Chan’s lips twitch again. He wishes the woman behind the counter a goodnight as well and follows Soonyoung, who charges toward the door. Angel is by his side in seconds, snapping from seemingly inattentive to alert.

As they walk ahead of him, Chan relaxes just a little. He feels safer when they’re around, though he can take care of himself well enough. His mother had been a Sword for the Choi family, a hired gun and excellent fighter both with her hands and with a knife. She’d taught him how to defend himself from a young age, giving him the tools to be scrappier than most of the other Chariots in the Choi Syndicate.

As a Chariot, it’s Chan’s responsibility to put himself in dangerous situations. He’s one of the few who has the audacity to go after deals and partnerships that put him deep in enemy territory - or walk through the doors like he did tonight to see if he can salvage a potential partnership anyway.

It’s what makes him so successful. He’s willing to do whatever needs to be done to help the family - and if he likes the feeling of winning impossible wagers, well that’s his own business.

Outside, the hiss of rain is hot on the pavement. Summer is bringing more and more rain to the city - not that it’s ever not raining - turning the world into a slick blur of watercolor. They’re in the Upper District of Hyperion, which means the storm drains actual work and the world doesn’t smell like piss and decay immediately when it rains. It doesn’t smell good, but it’s not as rotten as the gutters of the Lower District.

A car pulls up in front of the lobby doors. The driver steps out and pops up a black umbrella, looking like a black beetle as they make their way toward Chan and the others. Chan recognizes the man as one of the Choi drivers and relaxes, complying when he escorts the three of them to the car, holding the umbrella over their heads.

Inside, the interior is warm and smells like amber. Soonyoung shoves him to the side with a curse and Chan growls, moving to sit by the other window - until Angel opens the door and narrows her eyes at him. Which is how Chan, the youngest of his friends, ends up smashed in the middle between them.

He sighs and lets his head fall back against the headrest. “Can we go get fucked up?”

Soonyoung shakes his head and tells Chan his girlfriend is waiting for him at home. Chan eyes Soonyoung, whose focus is on his phone, the holographs floating above the screen showing news articles. He notes that Soonyoung doesn’t call Seungcheol’s sister Baby anymore, like the rest of them. Soonyoung says her name, rolling off his tongue soft, like it belongs to him.

Chan supposes it does.

He turns to ask Angel and she already shakes her head. “I’m meeting up with Hansol to go hunting.”

Chan doesn’t have to ask what Angel means by hunting. Ever since her stepmother’s murder the night the Kim Syndicate tried to take the Choi’s by surprise, Angel has been murdering members of the Kim family like clockwork.

Like Soonyoung, Angel says Vernon’s given name like it’s something precious. It makes Chan feel unsettled. He’s never had what either of them do with their partners, a missionary-like devotion to the people they love that borders on unstable.

The only thing Chan has ever been devoted to is his charm and his ability to talk people into a deal and into bed. He will be fucking damned if either of his friends who are in a relationship will rob him of that tonight, so he asks to be dropped a few blocks away from the casino at the corner of a strip of clubs under the Choi banner.

Soonyoung rolls down the window before the car rolls away. “Be careful,” the Sentinel warns. His dark eyes flash. “Remember our territory isn’t safe either.”

“God, you’re so serious these days.”

“Syndicate war is serious.”

“You sound like Baby.”

Soongyoung’s mouth twitches at the mention of his partner’s nickname. “Yeah, well she’s smarter than both of us.” Soonyoung looks at his watch. “Try to be no longer than an hour, Chan. You’re charming, I’m sure you can find some pussy in that time frame?”

“He’s also annoying,” Angel remarks from behind the window.

Soonyoung snaps his fingers and points to Angel, who Chan cannot see. “Right she is. Maybe make it two.”

“Thanks dad,” Chan growls. “I’ll come home when I want.” Soonyoung’s face darkens for a second, levelling Chan with a look that makes Chan happy. “But if you’re going to ruin your night worrying about me, I’ll make it two hours. Now leave.”

Soonyoung blows Chan a kiss and rolls up the dark window as the car’s tires hiss against the wet pavement.

Watching the car go, Chan has the brief feeling he should have gone with them. He is exhausted, pulling long, stressful shifts and spending longer and longer in clubs, casinos and anywhere that will accept his invitation to get more people across the finish line and united under Seungcheol’s family.

It’s not easy work. Times of unrest in the city don’t make people confident in doing business with the Syndicates until it looks like there’s going to be a winner. And right now, it’s hard to tell. The Choi family is doing a good job holding out against the pressures of the combined might of the Yong and Kim families, but two against one isn’t easy.

Stress knots in Chan’s shoulders. He rolls his neck, hissing when he feels the way the muscles coil. He’s fucking stressed. Everyone is. But the long nights weigh him down in a way that he’s not used to, and now he’s constantly walking across the edge of a knife.

Almost all of his meetings have been like the one with Kang. It’s not the first time someone has tried to maneuver him into a place where they can eliminate him, and it won’t be the last. He’s just glad that this time there was no bloodshed, unlike two weeks prior.

Determined to find someone to take home and destress with, Chan starts walking up the street. The neon lights of a corner store capture his attention and his steps slow as he thinks about it. He hasn’t eaten all night and his energy is plummeting. He pats around his pockets and realizes he’s out of stimpops. Sighing, he pivots and walks toward the door.

A blast of air conditioning hits him in the face and the airlock on the door hisses. Inside the convenience store is a cacophony of neon advertisements and rows and rows of product: snacks, medical supplies, books, food, technology, tobacco products, hygiene products.

Chan ignores it all in favor of going to the back wall, lit blue by the refrigerator lights. Multiple advertisements pop up on the screened fridges as he browses, each louder than the last. He winces, in a hurry to find the energy drink he wants so he can escape advertising hell.

Opening the fridge, he braves the cold as he snatches a cherry flavored energy drink that promises to wake him the fuck up with no added sugar or calories. He’s about to close the fridge when he thinks better of it and grabs a water as well.

He trots to the front of the store, head ducked down as he goes. There’s no one else at the checkout counter as he drops his shit on top, knocking over the can. He reaches to right it, but a hand shoots out to do it for him.

Chan startles, surprised at the human hand. Most convenient stores have little robots with singsong voices, but when he looks up at you, he freezes. You are certainly not a robot. Well - maybe you are. You look too pretty to be human, eyes glittering under the neon light above your head, casting you in a pink halo. You give him a shy smile, almost apologetic when you retract your hand back after fixing the can.

“Find everything okay?”

Chan just continues staring, items long forgotten.

Chan is so rarely thrown by a pretty face. He’s seen them all - natural and cosmetically enhanced, simple and exotic, friendly and not. He does a lot of business with a lot of people who make it their job to be pretty, whose entire purpose is to lure him in.

He’s pretty good at cutting through pretty, but you cut right through him, down to the arsenic filled core of him.

“Are you okay?” The question makes him blink a few times. Your mouth is downturned - still sweet and flush with sticky red like candy. “Sir?”

“Yes,” Chan answers finally. “Yes to both questions. Uh - found my shit and uh - sorry, that sounded rude. I found what I needed and I am okay. Yes.”

“This is my favorite flavor.”

Chan glances down at the energy drink. “Same.”

“You know they make a candy that tastes exactly like this but sour?”

He realizes that the candy you’re referencing must be what the sticky residue on your mouth is. Suddenly he’s never wanted them more. “And where would I find them?”

Your smile lights up the room and he swears his heart beats faster like he’s just done a line of frostbyte. When you point, Chan notices a tiny tattoo on your wrist. It’s in the shape of a red heart. The corners of his mouth quirk upward. Cute.

Following your direction, he walks back toward the candy aisle, hands perusing the shelf until he finds what he’s looking for. He picks up the box and shakes it as he approaches you, making you grin. Holy fuck he wants to keep making you grin.

Once you’re finished ringing his items, he hovers his phone over the pay station. The machine chimes and you slide his bag over to him, red heart catching his eye again.

“Enjoy your night,” you say.

“You too.” He steps toward the door and holds the bag up. “I’ll let you know if I like the cherry sours.”

“You will.”

Night air hits Chan in the face, humid and sticky. Even if he hates the candy, he’ll certainly tell you otherwise.

Instead of walking toward the club and cracking the energy drink, Chan calls one of the drivers for the Choi Syndicate to come get him. He passes the time by turning to look over his shoulder back into the interior of the store, but he can’t see you from where he stands.

Cute. You were cute. In a way that he can’t quite pinpoint, but that sticks with him even when he slides into the air conditioned interior of the car. Your candied smile and little heart tattoo haunt him all the way home, nearly making him forget about the candy until he’s keying into his apartment.

Tossing his shit on the counter, he reaches into the back and produces the little box. He gives it a shake, pleased at the rattle. Ripping the lid open with his teeth, he spits the spent cardboard on the counter and shakes out a few red, heart shaped candies. It immediately makes him think of your tattoo and he chuckles.

Chan pops a few of the candies into his mouth and gives a thoughtful suck, humming pleasantly. They are sour, making his eyes water for just a second before they turn sweet. The taste of cherry is perfectly balanced and doesn’t taste like chemicals like most other candies.

When he finally crawls into bed, Chan wonders if you taste as sweet as the cherry sours.

Chan doesn’t do drugs. Well - sort of. He eats plenty of stimpops and every once and a while he has to resort to frostbyte as a last resort. His job requires him to operate at a level of awareness for hours longer than normal, and even though he takes the supplements and does all the wellness shit in the world to keep him operating, sometimes an illegal stimulant is the best way to get it done.

It isn’t that he thinks drugs are bad - he just knows he has an addictive personality. Which is why Chan has been able to make a career out of high stakes and gambling, turning everything he does into a game. He is pretty good at not straying too far - it would cost him his life if he did - but he still gets a high from a closed deal, feels a rush of something strong when he wins.

He can’t not work. It’s what makes him one of the best Chariots in the Syndicate, and Seungcheol’s favorite. The others take too much time off, or are too patient, too okay with losing. Chan is addicted to the risk and reward of navigating backdoor deals and under-the-table transactions.

The inability to quit is why he doesn’t do drugs. Chan knows that once he starts, he won’t stop.

Which is exactly how he winds up at the same corner store every Sunday at 3:40 AM sharp. He doesn’t bother telling himself it’s because the store is on the way home and because it’s the only one that carries the new cherry sours he likes (he wouldn’t know where else to look for them, he hasn’t tried). Chan knows it’s because that’s the only time your schedule doesn’t conflict with his.

At least, that seems to be the case. He doesn’t have your schedule exactly - he has resisted doing that to feel less crazy. But Chan’s entire job is to be observant, and over a few weeks of trial and error, he knows for a fact the only time he is guaranteed to run into you is the late night hours of Sunday shifts.

You’re a breath of fresh air every time he sees you. He has no idea how you manage to be so sweet while working arguably the worst shift at a convenience store that seems chronically empty, but he likes it. You’re a tiny pocket of kindness in his overwhelmingly cruel world.

Tonight, Chan’s hands are shaking from post-adrenaline rush. He takes a few deep breaths outside the store. The air is heavy with the promise of rain, the smell of petrichor lingering. Better than the scent of blood that had filled his nose forty minutes ago. Chan hates the smell of blood.

Steeling himself, Chan enters the store. The bright lights make him squint, the flashing holograms and fluorescents above a little too much for his liking. You look up from the counter and his heart trips over itself, doubling its speed when you smile and wave at him. Friendly. Familiar.

Chan flashes you a smile in return, tilting his head in his own greeting before he ducks to the back where the freezers hold all of the drinks. He grabs his usual, taking his time as the advertisements beg him to pick their product. The cool air when the glass slides open is refreshing.

He follows the same route he does every Saturday night, moving from the fridges to the candy aisle. He glances over the top of the shelves as he goes, watching you. You’ve jumped up on the back counter, swinging your legs as you hold a tablet in your hand, the words of what appear to be an online book projecting above the screen.

You’re lost in your own world and he appreciates that. The first few times he’d come in here, you hadn’t let yourself be distracted. You’d stood and waited for him to grab his things and check out, every bit the customer service employee and attentive while someone was in your store.

Now? You let Chan do what he wants. It’s a recent development over the last two weeks, one that he thoroughly enjoys. Last weekend you’d been listening to music, humming sweetly as you sat and kicked your feet back and forth while he walked around the aisles to collect his usual.

Cherry sours in hand, Chan heads up to the counter. This part is bittersweet. He loves to chat with you, but he knows how short the shelf life of the conversation is, how quickly he has to say goodbye once he pays for the items.

As usual, you hop down from the counter. You give him a smile that lights up the entire store and it’s all Chan can do to not drop everything on the counter for you to ring up.

“How’s your night?” You ask, eyes flicking up to drink him in.

Terrible is the honest answer. Chan had nearly died under an hour ago, and had to murder his way out of a bad deal. It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last.

Instead, he says, “Better now. What are you reading?”

“Umm it’s some sort of ancient classic? It’s about two lovers who come from warring families.”

“Ah.” His mouth twitches. “Romeo and Juliet.”

“You’ve read it?”

He nods. “It’s one of the few books my mom owns.”

“Your mom owns books? Like physical copies?”

Chan winces. It’s easy to forget that something like a book is a simple possession to him and not the rest of the world. While most citizens of Hyperion only have access to the digital world, those with money and storied family history have access to things others don’t: physical art, tangible books and paintings, sculptures, gardens, decorations that are meant for looking and that don’t serve a purpose.

“Ah,” he scratches the back of his neck as he pays for the items. “Yeah. She’s very fortunate.”

You hum and he looks at you. There’s a look on your face he doesn’t understand. He stares until you look up at him and he shoots you a questioning look.

“You said she is very fortunate,” you point out. “So either you don’t share in the wealth - which I doubt because you’re always dressed nice - or you’re calling it hers because you don’t want to make it awkward that you own physical books and I can’t.”

Chan opens his mouth. Closes it. Your observation is dead on, leaving him at a loss of words for a moment, which is unfamiliar territory. But Chan is observant too, and he notices the way you say that you can’t own physical books. Not that you don’t. Because it isn’t a possibility for you, it’s not just something you haven’t been able to do yet. It’s something that you’ll never be able to do, a firm no.

“It’s the second one.” He opts for honesty here, in this space with you. He cheats almost everyone else, but he doesn’t want to cheat you. “I forget that it is incredibly privileged of me to just… have access to books.”

“I think it’s easy to forget what is normal for you isn’t the same for everyone.”

He doesn’t like where this conversation with you is going. He’s never talked to you this much at once, but it feels negative, feels like he’s putting distance between you instead of pulling you closer. So he switches to asking, “What do you think of it so far?”

“Despite its age, it's quite relevant. Family wars wreak havoc on everyone.”

He looks up at you sharply. “You’re referencing the Syndicate War?”

“Those are families, so I suppose they fall under the category.”

Chan narrows his eyes a fraction. You don’t look at him straight on, but your words hold meaning enough, even if you’re not brave enough yet to look him in the eyes and tell him. He doesn’t mind, hiding a small smile as he gathers his items.

“You’re not wrong,” he says evenly. You glance up at him. “About either thing.”

“Anyway, sorry to bore you. It’s a good book.”

“No apologies necessary, you’re far from boring. Have a nice night?”

You nod and step away from the register. He aches to stay, but he’s tired and the timer has burned out on this interaction. Chan turns to go, but stops when your voice calls him back from the register. “By the way?” He looks at you over his shoulder. “There is blood on your hands. I hope you’re alright?”

Surprised, he looks down at his hands. You’re right - there are smudges of dried red, not yet flaking from the rest of his skin. He looks back up at you to see real concern in your eyes. You’re leaning over the counter, hands pressed flat to the top to peer around the stand of phone charges that would otherwise block your view.

“Yeah,” he calls awkwardly, laughing a little. “Yeah, I’m alright.”

You chew the corner of your mouth. “Alright. Have a good night, Chan.”

“You too.”

Chan steps out into the humid air of the city, immediately cloyed by the sticky fingers of promised rain and heavy clouds. Instead of looking up to the swollen sky, he glances over his shoulder to look back through the door. He can’t see you, but he knows you're there, sitting and reading your story.

Fuck. Chan sighs. Like Romeo, he suddenly feels that his consequences too, are somewhere hanging in the stars.

Exhaustion burns your eyes. You press the heels of your palms into them, willing the burn to stop. When you remove your hands, they’re still stinging and likely red. Sighing, you slide off the counter and pull open the drawer behind the register. It’s creeping past three in the morning, and these late, never-ending shifts are starting to weigh down you.

They don’t weigh as much as the debt inherited from your father, though, so you squeeze some drops in your eyes, crack an energy drink and tell yourself that you at least have something to look forward to tonight.

Sundays are the only bright part of your nights. Maybe your life. It feels too heavy to admit that, though, so you pretend that seeing Chan for five to ten minutes once a week isn’t the only thing you look forward to for days at a time, even if it’s true.

You wish you had those fancy stimpops you sometimes see him chewing on when he wanders into the store. He always throws the paper stick out in the trash before he comes to the register, as though he’s too afraid to let on that he likes them.

In school, they told you stim was the gateway drug. Now, knee-deep in twelve-hour shifts split between two dead-end jobs, you know better. The real gateway to hard drug use is just surviving. Just waking up and existing in a world that grinds down anyone who dares to breathe too loudly. You don’t blame people for needing an escape - you need an escape.

Chan is that very escape.

You’ve never touched stim. Not because you don’t want to, but because the Taps in your neighborhood terrify you and the reward isn’t worth the risk. You can’t drown yourself in virtual reality clubs or AI lounges, either. Those require time and money, neither of which you have.

So you settle on what you do have: seeing Chan once a week in the dark hours of the night.

It’s not much, but it’s everything. Between dragging yourself through never-ending cashier shifts and folding sheets in the hotel’s laundry room until your hands are raw from the scrape of fabric, your world has shriveled to a pinpoint of focus to survive. You sleep. You eat. You work.

You think about Sunday when Chan will stroll in, grab his usual energy drink and box of cherry sours, and for a few minutes, you’ll remember what it feels like to want something just because it makes you feel alive.

And when he leaves, the moment will last for a single, ephemeral minute and then die, the embers of a fire gone cold.

A patron enters the store with a gust of rain and the melodic chime above the door. You don’t bother looking up, knowing it isn’t Chan. He arrives at a very specific time every night. No earlier, no later. You like that about Chan. It makes him feel reliable.

No one else is reliable.

You know little about Chan. What you do know is that he does something questionable, sometimes coming in with flecks of blood on his hand or on his neck where he thinks he’s scrubbed himself clean. You know that he comes from money - you’re not sure how many generations - with access to paper books, a luxury you can barely fathom. You know that he’s charming, and after the first few times he’d come in, he’d gone from shy to coy.

He’s also kind. At least, you think so. He always asks how your night is, lingering at the end of your conversation, as though he’s just as hesitant to go as you are to let him. It’s a little fantasy you play in your head after he leaves, taking his energy drink and cherry sours with him: who will break first.

Of course, you don’t think Chan is playing a game. You’d never assume that anyone with the access to the lifestyle he has would be interested in more than mindless flirting on their way home.

A man comes up to the register and buys a handful of food items. You scan them wordlessly, bagging them and handing them over the counter. He’s just as wordless, snatching them from your hands and turning on his heel to exit the store. He’s dressed nicely, evidence of tailoring and an old fashioned watch on his wrist.

That is Chan’s kind of crowd. People who move through the world blind to those beneath them, living in a bubble so self-contained they don’t even realize anyone unlike them exists.

This time when the door opens, you shoot a grin toward the door. Chan is already smiling when he sees you, lifting his hand in a small wave. He points to the back of the store, as though to tell you he’ll be with you in a moment after he grabs his things. You nod - because that’s what you always do. Because you’re just eager to see him, heart hammering as he vanishes down an aisle.

Advertisements yell at him as he goes. You swear you hear him tell one of them to shut up and the first genuine smile you’ve had all week breaks across your face. Heart skipping, you jump up on the counter behind the register, trying to appear calm. Watching. Waiting.

Chan will only be here for fifteen minutes, but you love all fifteen of them.

When he appears, it feels like your blood sings. You smile at him, sliding from the counter as he approaches. He’s dressed down today, not in his usual button up and blazer, but rather black slacks with a grey shirt tucked in, a leather jacket pulled over his arms. Beads of water cling to the leather from the rain, and his dark hair is damp and hangs in his eyes.

His hair has gotten longer over the last few weeks. You like it long, wondering if it’s as soft as it looks. You imagine it is, watching him as he brushes his hair from his forehead with the delicate tips of his fingers, looking up at you with a small smile.

“How are you?” He asks, voice warm.

“Good. Not working tonight?”

He looks down at his outfit. “Could you tell?”

“Mhmm.” You slowly ring up the energy drink first. “You’re usually dressed very fancy when you’re working.”

“I’m not always, I promise. That’s just for meetings.”

“So you are working, but no meetings?”

He winks and your heart sputters to a stop. You nearly knock over the box of cherry sours in your attempt to pick it up and ring it in. “Believe it or not, I’m just starting work.”

“At three in the morning?”

“Graveyard shift.”

“Well then I hope you have a good day.”

Chan pays, holding his phone up to the reader. You study him, drinking in each familiar part of his face, committing it to memory so you can think of him fondly until the next time you see him. His expressive eyes are downcast as he types something on his phone, the blue glow of the holoscreen bathing him in ethereal light. You admire the soft curve of his cupid’s bow, the angular cut of his jaw.

He’s beautiful in a world where beauty feels manufactured. You like the small scar on his face, untouched by lasers, left exactly as it is. You like the dark circles under his eyes, quiet evidence that nothing’s been smoothed or erased. You like the way his face shifts effortlessly from commanding to kind. Most of all, you like that it’s real. He’s entirely, unapologetically human.

When he looks up at you, you think you could fall into the dark depths of his eyes and never stop falling. Would do it, if it meant you could stay with him.

“I have something for you.”

His words break the spell. You blink, equal parts dazed and surprised. “Oh?”

“And I don’t want you to freak out when I give it to you.”

“Well I wasn’t going to, but now I think I might.”

He groans, still playful. He opens the lapel of his jacket, revealing a red, silk interior paneling. It makes the jacket that much nicer, an elegant touch to what otherwise looks nondescript. When his hand comes back out of his jacket, he’s holding a thin book.

Your heart catches as you stare at it. He holds it out to you but you pull your hands away like you’re afraid to be bitten. It’s a beautiful thing, thin and sleek with a red leather cover and gold filigree pressed across the front. Pressing your palms to your middle to keep them from shaking, you look at the cover where it says Romeo and Juliet back up to Chan, who is waiting.

“I can’t accept that,” you whisper, voice hoarse. “That is- Chan.”

“I promise that you can. I know it’s… look it’s not the only copy in my library. And I don’t say that as in ‘this means nothing to me because I have multiple.’ I mean that I can spare one, and I would like you to have it.”

In your little corner of the world, a paper book is a rarity. Only a certain level of the upper echelon have something so permanent. Everything that has always been available to you is digital screens and hollow imitations of art.

Chan’s gift - a real piece of art - hits you harder than you expect. It’s more than a gift. It’s proof that once upon a time, humans created something genuine, that humans were more than what they are now.

And Chan wants to just give it to you.

Gently, Chan leans over the counter and presses the book into your hand. You tentatively take it, pinching the tome between your fingers. He lets go, giving it to you without ceremony. There’s no bow, no note, just the weight of it in your hand.

You glance up at him. He says nothing, watching while he chews the corner of his lip. You turn it over in your hands and run your finger on the embossed title, feeling the groove of the letters. The gold glitters in the neon light of the store, flashing colors as it catches the lights.

Tears pool in your waterline, ridiculous and sudden and silly. He’s giving you this because he can, and crying feels like too much of an emotion in front of him, so you suck in a sharp breath and look up at him, giving him a smile.

“This is too much. I don’t know how to express my thanks.”

He shrugs. “None needed. I just want to know that you enjoy the physical version. It feels realer that way.”

It does, you want to say. You can’t find the words, throat constricting as Chan looks at his phone and sighs regretfully.

“I have to go.” You look at the clock. He is a minute over fifteen, one minute longer than he usually spares you. “Tell me how you like it in this version. Forgive me for all the handwriting in the margins and all of the bent pages - this specific volume has been very loved by me and I took a lot of notes when in school.”

Chan’s admission makes your heart beat harder, your fondness grow softer. He has no idea what this means to you, no idea how it’s already become your most treasured item, and it probably means little to him - almost nothing.

“Have a good night,” he murmurs, giving you a final smile before he gathers his items and heads out the store, leaving you teetering between bursting into tears and falling ridiculously in love.

Perched in the neon-drenched skyline of Hyperion, The Spire overlooks most of the city, boasting that it’s the tallest building in all of Hyperion. That’s true - for now. There are plenty of real estate and building architects interested in beating the luxury hotel’s claim to fame, but for now The Spire remains top of the list and top of the city, with its penthouse rented out to people you could never dream of knowing.

The building spirals upward like a helix, pulsing in the night like an aura as LED bands thrum from bottom to top. When you stand at street level and look up, the top of the building vanishing into the clouds, turning them blue and pink and purple as the LEDs flash.

You’re rarely at street level, though. Unlike the occupants who get to rent rooms and stay among the clouds, you exist in the bowels of the building, tucked deep below the guest levels in sublevel B6 of the Service Core. If the glittering building is the body, the Service Core is its nervous system, branching out like roots beneath the hotel.

There’s no glamour in the Service Core. Steam hisses as you enter into the cavernous, industrial laundry room. Above, the white-blue fluorescent lights flicker and hum. Where the hotel itself has so much color, the Service Core does not. Gunmetal walls stained with years of detergent runoff from the machines and the laundry room above, exposed pipes hissing and twisted overheard like a mechanical spider web - it’s far from the glory above.

The Service Core exists to serve a single purpose to the hotel - serve it. Kitchenstaff, waste management, laundry, engineering, housekeeping - it all exists on multiple sub-level floors. The Spire has a robust staff, churning people in and out to keep the thousands of guests above happy.

Weary and heavy-footed, you trudge to the folding station. The table hums and flickers as you approach and stick your thumb on the top of it, clocking in. Next to the table is a stack of linens that need folding. There are hundreds of types of robots that could do this for you, but part of The Spire’s pillars is giving back to the community and ensuring there are jobs for real people who need real money.

Except they don’t pay a real living wage.

Still, it’s a job. And a mindless one where you can zone out, grabbing a linen and placing it on the glowing grid of the folding table. The interactive surface recognizes the material easily and a folding guide pops up, showing you exactly which way to fold each part. You’ve been doing this long enough that you don’t need it, hands getting to work before adding it to the appropriate pile to be scanned and rated on quality of fold.

The air smells like ozone, bleach and burnt polyester. It singes your nose as you fold, but eventually you get used to it, the smell vanishing the longer you pull, fold, repeat. Pull, fold, repeat. The ambient sound of whirring machines, dripping condensation and chatter between tables brackets the soft thunk as you flip sheets over, pressing your fingers along seems, feeling the hiss and burn of silk against your fingertips.

Eventually, someone calls your name. You look up, eyes adjusting in the dim light as Cara clocks in to the table next to you. She’s dressed in the same drab, grey-blue uniform, her blinking name tag showing a little red heart. You’ve never added anything extra to yours, just your name.

“Yay, I get to work with you!” Cara gushes, brushing an auburn strand of hair behind her heavily pierced ears. “It’s been so long since I saw you!”

“You haven’t been taking shifts,” you note, arching a brow.

“Haven’t needed them until now. Ugh, I’ve been making really good money at that gig I told you about, but Bebito had some debts to pay off so…”

So naturally, Cara is picking up the slack for her piece of shit boyfriend again. You grimace but let her chatter on, filling you in on some sort of hotel staff drama dealing with names of people you don’t remember and faces you cannot recall.

Cara is pretty. The kind of pretty that gets in trouble, catching the attention of all the wrong people. Cara likes that attention, though - thrives on it. It’s why she sticks around with her deadbeat boyfriend who does nothing but low-level work for some minor Syndicates in the city and blows away his money. But the danger appeals to Cara - and apparently, the mind blowing sex.

It’s good to see her. When she goes weeks without a shift, you start to worry. You’re not friends, but she’s friendly. Kind. A flower in a world that rarely sees sun. It’s why she’s been plucked by another group of women in the Service Core to occasionally participate in the side gig she talks about.

“So I know you always say no,” Cara broaches, glancing side-long at you. “But Tivi dropped out of this high-level event we’re supposed to be doing in two weeks and we really need another girl. I swear it's safe. You just have to be pretty and stand there and sometimes sit on a lap.”

Your stomach turns sour. Cara has asked you a million times before. She makes good money being an accessory to powerful people who want to put on a show, but it’s far more dangerous than she lets on. Plus, you’ve never been keen on letting someone touch you for money, even if it’s just a hand on a waist or a brush of fingers on an arm.

Shamefully, a small part of you resists because you have Chan. You don’t need the attention of anyone else, patient like a planet eager to come back into its sun’s orbit again. The thought of someone else getting to smile at you and bat their eyelashes makes you squirm.

“I’m good,” you assure Cara. “Thank you for offering, though.”

Cara sighs, not disappointed, but a bit resigned. “Figured you say that. You ever change your mind though, you know where to call?”

“I do.”

“Good.”

You offer her a tight smile and nod, pretending to focus on the sheet in your hands. It’s soft, lavender-scented, obviously from one of the higher suites. It’s the kind of luxury you can only touch with gloves on. You slide it into the folded stack.

Cara’s offer lingers in your mind. You could do it. Just one night, one event. Stand there and look pretty. You’ve seen the other girls come into work with something new and pretty - sleek earrings, upgraded iris mods that glimmer behind their eyes like they’ve caught a glimpse of something you’re not invited to.

But the thought of someone else's hand curling around your hip, their fingers tightening like they own you, even if you’re just rented, makes you stop. You think about Chan and your throat tightens a little. He doesn’t know about these offers, you think. You’re sure he wouldn’t even be able to understand them. His world is books and soft silk. Yours is steam and callused fingers.

At the end of your shift, you wave goodbye to Cara, touching her elbow gently, happy to see her. You tell her to be safe and you head out, stopping only to check the glitching screens by the door to check your upcoming schedule.

You frown. Usually you’re scheduled for thirty hours a week, but it seems like you’ve only got ten upcoming. Ten doesn’t pay your rent. Ten doesn’t even come close.

Chewing the inside of your cheek, you head to the office tucked in the corner of the room, nestled underneath a tangle of pipes. The glass window is full of fog from the humid room, and inside is just as cloying and thick with steam.

“Ethel?” You ask gently, standing at the door. The B6 manager looks up over her foggy glasses. You jut your thumb backward toward the main floor. “I just checked the schedule and it looks like my hours are wrong.”

Ethel is a wiry woman with greying hair, gnarled fingers and swollen knuckles from decades of folding, and blotchy forearms from years of exposure to bleach. Now, she gets to sit in this small little room, the pipes clanging above her and the mold gathering in the corner giving her a wet cough.

“No,” she sighs. “Not wrong. Just received word this morning that we're cutting back hours.”

“What?”

She shrugs. “Corporate hierarchy. Costs are heavy. Syndicate war. The owner is a Patron to the Yong family. They’re not doin’ so good with them Chois.”

Everything in Hyperion starts and ends with the Syndicates. It's always been that way. In this city, three families reign supreme: the Yong family, the Kim family and the Choi family. As of a few months ago, all hell had broken loose among the top three families. As you understand it, the Kim and Yong families had joined forces against the Choi family when their patriarch finally passed, and they’ve been going at it ever since.

You have nothing to do with the Syndicates, have stayed away from them your entire life. But the Syndicates have never stayed away from you, every decision their Tower’s make trickling down to affect you, an ant beneath their boot.

This time, it seems the Yong family is going to step on you.

“I really need the hours…” You murmur, wringing your hands together.

“You and everyone else. Schedule is final.”

You leave The Spire the same way you came in - through the gutters. It’s not really a gutter, but the city drainage systems are so bad that it feels like it as you slosh through shin-deep rain runoff to get up to street level.

Outside, it smells like rain and something vaguely coppery, like blood or rust or both. You tug your jacket tighter and start walking, the wet smack of your boots on the pavement your only companion as the distant glow of buildings hover over you.

Your mind loops like a faulty video: cut hours, Syndicate war, Cara’s offer, Chan. Cut hours, Syndicate war, Cara’s offer, Chan. You’ve been careful, saving when you can and avoiding anything that is too dangerous or illegal, but being careful doesn’t pay your rent, especially in a city designed to make a criminal out of you.

At a crosswalk, you pause. There’s a newscast screen playing at one of the main squares. It’s mostly devoid of people, save the few walking with umbrellas along the street, making them look like beetles. The bright blue of the screen makes you squint against the night, shielding your eyes as you watch the scrawling text feed at the bottom of the screen.

Choi family suspected in retaliation event in Pearl District. 14 confirmed dead. Yong family still denies involvement in the death of matriarch Yoon Minji.

You look away, not bothering to look at the images of fire, blood and pictures of the fallen on the screen, not because you can’t stomach it, but because you don’t care. These people and their wars mean nothing to you so long as you can’t make a living under their thumb.

By the time you reach your apartment, your legs ache and the weight in your chest from the week has settled into something low and pulsing. Cut hours. Syndicate war. Cara’s offer. Chan.

You take the stairs. Every step up, you think about Ethel’s hands, bent, clawed, broken. You think about her arms, bleached with time. You think about her bent over her desk, crooked. Has she ever left B6 or the Service Core? Has she ever had dreams of being anything else?

You think about Chan. You think about the book he gave you, sitting under your pillow and protected.

Four days. In four days you’ll see Chan again. He’ll walk in from the rain and smile at you, asking you how your day is. You’ll tell him good, even though it’s not, and for the fifteen minutes that he leans against your counter, looking up at you with stars in his eyes, everything will be fine.

Everything is not fine.

The night had started out like normal - you’d gone from your last shift for the next few days at the laundry room to the convenience store, clocking in with heavy-lidded eyes and even heavier steps. But at least today was a Chan day, so it made it more bearable. Made it easier to pretend that for the next week, you weren’t going to be desperate for money.

It was a slow night, only two people coming in before three in the morning approached. Each minute the clock counted down, your heart picked up speed. You’d been looking forward to this for days, thinking of everything that you wanted to tell Chan about the little notes he took in his copy of Romeo and Juliet, thinking about gushing over the way each of the pages in the book he gifted you felt like heaven, the words typed so perfectly on paper, each one meticulously placed and -

When the door opens, you’re already smiling. Chan walks in, shaking off the rain. You start to lift your hand to wave when a woman steps in after him, elbowing him out of the way and barking at him to let her in before she drowns outside.

Your smile vanishes. It feels like someone has kicked you in the stomach, punching through to your very core. You can barely breathe as you watch Chan turn to her, shooting back a quip that has her rolling her eyes. Their affection and intimacy is immediately palpable, familiarity written in every shove as the girl walks by him and vanishes into the aisle.

He rolls his eyes and gives you a smile. You try to return it. You’re not sure if you do. He disappears down the aisle behind the girl and they restart their bickering, voices rising and falling in a steady cadence as they browse around the store.

Turning around, you press your palms to your cheeks. They feel hot-flash warm, your heart thundering in your chest, breaths coming in short, rapid bursts. Chan is with a girl. Chan has a girl. There’s a girl with Chan. A girl has Chan.

Every thought sputters like a broken engine, coming to life and cutting out, starting and stopping. When one thought begins, another one crashes into it, shattering it before you can fully get a grip on any of them and make them tangible.

A feminine voice makes you spin around, breathless. The girl is standing in front of you, bent down to look at the types of gum in front of the counter. She looks vaguely familiar, though you can’t put your thumb on it. She is gorgeous, the type of gorgeous that rips the wind out of your sails, that leaves you stranded in dead water.

Of course she’s pretty. Why wouldn’t she be? You’d always known what type of cloth Chan was cut from - it was the same type that you folded for the gods who stayed at the top of The Spire, the type you could only handle with gloves.

“Why are there so many flavors?” She mutters, scrunching her brow.

“Orange creamsicle is good,” you blurt, not really knowing where it comes from.

The girl flinches and looks up, eyes going round. “Holy shit,” she laughs. “There is an entire person there. I didn’t even see you. I thought most of these places had robots.”

“Well I’m human. Last time I checked, anyway.”

“Huh. What do you know? Good on this store.”

Of course she hadn’t seen you. You’re nothing but a ghost to these people. They don’t know the difference when you’re there or not, whether you live or die.

Except Chan.

The girl stands, groaning as she stretches. She tosses the orange creamsicle gum on the table, alongside energy drinks and a candy bar with a tiger on it. Chan appears behind her, his usual gathered in his arms. He adds his items to the collection and glances at her.

“Are you not paying?” He asks, deadpan.

“You said we had to make a pit stop. You’ll be funding this one.”

“You’re such an ass,” he mutters, pulling his phone out. “All the money in the world and you always make me pay.”

“Right. I’ll remember that next time I get you a car for Christmas, Chan.”

He flushes and looks up at you. He has the decency to look flustered and chagrined. “Ignore her. She has no manners.”

“Bullshit!” She slaps his arm. “I took like four years of etiquette classes.” She gestures to you. “By the way, I had no idea there was a person here. I thought these places had robots.”

“Baby,” he sighs, paying. The term of endearment is the nail in your coffin. It feels like the world falls out from underneath your feet and it’s all you can do to not to turn around and burst into tears, fantasy shattered. “You’re being rude. She has a name.”

When Chan says your name, it doesn’t feel like a caress this time. It lands cold, impersonal. It doesn’t settle into your chest like it usually does. It slides right off. You're just… you. She’s baby.

She giggles as Chan shoulders past her to grab his things, but she doesn't even flinch. She grins at you, polite, cheerful, effortless, plucking her items off the counter like she owns the moment, like this is her story and you're just some passing name in the credits - you are just name passing in the credits. Then she skips off toward the door, the picture of ease, popping gum like punctuation.

She sings your name to get your attention. You blink at her, surprised she remembers it. “Amazing recommendation. Thank you!”

“Ignore her,” Chan says, voice soft, sheepish, cradling his items like they might shield him from how awkward this suddenly feels. “I know she’s hard to ignore. She’s a bit of a… presence.”

“Oh.”

It’s all you can think of. Chan wavers between where he stands and the girl at the door, who scrolls on her phone. “What did you think of the book?”

“What?”

He raises his brows. “The book I gave you.”

That catches the girl’s attention from the door. Her eyes dart between Chan and you, narrowing. Your hands shake, knowing the look when a shark smells blood in the water. “You gave her a book, Channie?”

If it’s possible, he goes several shades redder. She starts to walk toward the two of you again. Her gaze has gone from dismissive to calculating, eyes narrowed, pupils dilated like a cat that has discovered a new toy.

Before she reaches you, Chan steps back. He doesn’t say goodbye. Just gives you a look—something you can’t read anymore, not after what you’ve just seen. You stare back at him, hollowed out and unsure.

We’ll talk about it next time,” he says, voice soft and too fast. “Sorry again about her.”

Then he’s gone.

Your shift drags out like something dying. Each hour longer than the last. Everything around you is gray, dulled, like someone pulled the saturation out of your world. The only thing that stays sharp is the image of Chan, but not with you.

By the time you lock up and step outside, the air has cooled. The streets are quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that makes you feel like you don’t belong in your own life. Your footsteps echo against the pavement, louder than they should. You cross your arms tighter around yourself.

She called him Channie. He’d called her baby.

It replays again and again in your head. That voice. The way his shoulders didn’t stiffen. The way he didn’t correct her.

He gave you a book. But he let her call him that. He gave you something thoughtful. Quiet. Careful. And she still got to stand closer. Laugh louder. Be the one he left with in his orbit.

You think about Cara’s offer. It comes to you unbidden, pressing against all other thoughts until it’s all you can think of. It’s good money, a way out of your shortened hours, and… Chan isn’t yours. The fantasy is ruined. Shattered. Burned down.

Beneath the surface of the city, the subway smells like rotten rainwater. You ignore it, careful not to slip down the wet stairs as you go. Bundles of sleeping bags are shoved in the corner, people inside of them. There’s someone offering needles from his coat and a girl dressing in a translucent, LED body suit purring at people as they walk by.

You ignore them all, getting onto the subway, thankful when the doors suck shut behind you. The subway hums beneath your feet, a dull and constant shudder that rattles up your bones. You grip the cold metal pole beside you, staring at your own reflection in the window as the tunnel blurs past behind it.

Your reflection is washed out. Tired. Someone who works too long and too hard. Not someone like the girl Chan was with. Not someone who laughs like they haven’t a care in the world, not someone who argues over money despite it not being an object to them.

The train isn’t crowded. A few scattered passengers, most of them asleep or hiding in a corner away from everyone else. There’s a man whispering to what you think might be a ferret in his coat, but you’re not sure. At least he has a companion, even if it’s some lanky critter.

It feels like you’re not even on the train. You’re still stuck in that shop, watching Chan’s back as he walks away. Watching her walk toward him like she belonged there. Like you never did.

You close your eyes. You hadn’t realized how much of your hope had been pinned to the idea of him. To the what-if. The maybe. Maybe he saw you the way you saw him. Maybe he meant something when he gave you that book. Maybe you were different.

None of it was real. Like the idyllic fantasies in an alternate reality club. You suppose you’re no better than the people who get addicted to AI and alternate reality - you just didn’t need help to get there.

The train jerks, lights flickering for a moment overhead. You open your eyes again.

Cara’s offer, you think, not for the first time tonight. It drifts back to you like a ghost with impeccable timing. You look at your reflection again across the train. The lights smear across the glass now, and for a split second, you see yourself not as you are, but as you could be. Full of color.

Pulling out your phone, you text Cara and let her know that you’ll fill in for her friend. The train doors open with a hiss. You step out. You let the illusion of Chan shatter behind you without looking back.

Chan doesn’t get nervous.

At most, he’ll admit to heightened awareness. He knows when the air shifts, when the room tenses, when the eyes start to watch just a little too closely. But it’s not nerves. It’s instinct. Nerves are for the untrained. Nerves make one sloppy, make your hand shake. Nerves mean you’re not ready.

Chan is always ready.

Tonight, there’s something gnawing under his skin. A feeling he can’t quite name, sharp and low like the ache before a storm. He tells himself it’s the stakes—the weight of the meeting, the caliber of the people in the room. But even that doesn’t fully explain the unease.

This isn’t a standard deal, where he’s greasing the wheels of some shell corporation or smoothing over a turf-sharing agreement with one of the mid-tier syndicates. Tonight’s meeting is internal business. Formal.

He still doesn’t know why Jeonghan picked him.

Not that he would’ve said no. No one says no to Jeonghan these days. At least, not unless they have a death wish or a taste for public verbal shaming and potential Syndicate ruin. Chan had said yes immediately, without question, like a good soldier. But deep down, he’d said yes because it was Jeonghan.

Not the Wisdom of the Choi Syndicate. Not the youngest second-in-command in their history. Just Jeonghan.

The car is dead silent. Not even the soft hum of the radio. Just the city lights flickering past and Jeonghan sitting beside him, cold and unreadable. Not awkward, exactly. But heavy.

Oppressive.

There’s something new carved into Jeonghan. Something mean and sharp and hungry. It hadn’t always been like that. Chan remembers when Jeonghan used to laugh more, when his anger was calculated rather than constant, but the death of Yoon Minji had carved a hole in him. Killed him. Left something more sinister in his place.

Unlike most of Chan’s meetings, he is armed to the teeth. Layers of steel and weight hidden beneath his well-cut suit. Security is sure to check him at the door, but he still needs to try to get in what weapons he can. Tonight is not the kind of night that is safe. He doesn’t have Soonyoung waiting at the back door, and Angel isn’t sitting in the room with a gun pressed to someone’s wife’s stomach for insurance.

Angel has given Chan some insurance, though. She had gifted him a butterfly knife not long ago. Slim, elegant. The hilt is carved obsidian, etched with a pattern that shimmered in the light like wings in flight. Beautiful and cruel, exactly like her. It’s tucked deep into his boot now, strapped in place with anti-metal-detection mesh. One of a handful of things he’d rather die than be caught without.

A meeting with a distant branch of the Yong family had not been on Chan’s agenda at the start of the week. Chan had originally been slated for a meeting down near The Salts, but Jeonghan had added him at the last second, insisting that someone as charming and sharp as Chan needed to be a part of the discussion.

Unlike most of Chan’s deals, tonight isn’t about business or territory or partnership. It’s about influence. About getting someone on the inside to let Jeonghan and his Chois in to eat the Yongs from the inside out.

“Tell me again,” Chan says, voice quiet over the hum of the tires. “How’d you hear about Yuli having second thoughts about the current Yong leadership?”

Jeonghan doesn’t look at him. Just stares out the window, face cast in the blue glow of passing signs and headlights. His expression looks almost skeletal in the light, like the grief still hasn’t stopped hollowing him out.

Chan isn’t sure it has.

“Inside source.”

“I can’t imagine he was just… venting to strangers about how much he hates his family,” Chan adds.

Jeonghan finally turns, slowly. His mouth pulls into a humorless smile. “Inside source.”

Chan raises a brow. “Meaning?”

Jeonghan slips his phone into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, buttoning it with a deliberateness that feels almost threatening. When he answers, his voice is clipped. Cool. “Meaning stop asking questions above your station, Chariot.”

Chan bites back the instinct to wince. The title hits harder than the words. Not his name. Not Chan. Chariot. Syndicate designation. A reminder. Jeonghan is in Wisdom mode tonight.

The rebuke stings, but not enough to push him off balance. Chan swallows it. Focuses on the cold glass of the window instead. Watches the city bleed by in streaks of neon and shadow. He knows Jeonghan well enough to recognize the warning for what it is. A boundary drawn in blood and old loyalty. Just because they grew up together doesn’t mean Jeonghan won’t cut him down where he stands if he oversteps.

Chan lets it go. He’s known Jeonghan for far too long to let something so small eat at him. They’d grown up in the same rooms together, bled in the same combat classes, laughed at all the same jokes. Out of the hundreds of hands that belong to Choi Seungcheol, Jeonghan has always been the one Chan trusted most, even now, when Jeonghan teeters on the sharp edge of the knife he’s using to carve a warpath.

The car slows. They’re in a nondescript neighborhood on the far edge of town. It’s not wealthy, but it’s modest. Here, there are no flashing lights and neon holograms. There’s just buildings pressed together, cars lined up out front, like something out of a history book.

For a split second, the thought of books makes Chan think of you. It is fleeting. Heart pounding. There and gone again because as much as Chan wants to dive headfirst into thoughts and dreams of you, he can’t. Not right now.

The door is unmarked. Just black, steel-reinforced, and guarded by two men in identical suits, both broad-shouldered and blank-eyed. One of them steps forward as Chan and Jeonghan exit the car.

“Wisdom,” he says, voice even and polite. Manners is the name of the game here. “Weapons check, please.”

Jeonghan says nothing. Just holds out his arms. The sensor beeps several times on him. Jeonghan divulges an array of knives and a single gun. Chan notices a butterfly knife with symbols carved into it in one of the dead languages: brother.

His mouth twitches, knowing Angel’s work when he sees it.

Chan follows suit, keeping his expression neutral as the second guard runs a scanner over his body. A soft beep when it hits the knife at his hip. Another at the shoulder holster.

He surrenders both, smiling with professional ease. “Sentimental, not stupid,” he murmurs as they take the weapons.

The guard grunts and says nothing, stepping back and waving him through when he finds nothing else. They don’t find the butterfly knife in his boot. Good.

They step inside a dark home. Chan glances around, but it looks like a normal home. There are stairs to his immediate right that lead to the second landing, and a door to the left that goes to what looks like a study. Straight ahead, the house opens up into a living area with doors to other parts of the home.

It’s quiet inside. Chan feels tense as they are led through the house, not a single light on. He can barely make out the shapes of furniture, paintings on walls. They’re brought to a door at the far back of the house. Sound drifts up from the stairs revealed behind it when a guard opens the door, stepping down and into the dark.

Chan goes first, shooting Jeonghan a glance. The Wisdom’s face is unreadable.

Downstairs, the decor changes immediately. Chan is relieved to see that the lights are on, bathing the room in gold glow. He feels like he’s stepped backward hundreds of years in time, the old-world luxury of something like a speakeasy clashing with modern era touches. The room is small, but pristine, with black marble floors, warm lighting, oil paintings that don’t match the building’s exterior, and soft jazz playing from speakers Chan can’t see.

A woman waits for them just past the threshold, dressed in a carmine gown that clings to every curve in her body. There’s a slit up the side, showing a flash of tan thigh as she slinks over to them, a coy smile on her lips. She is stunning, reminding Chan something of a femme fatale.

“Gentleman,” she greets, voice like smoke. “Welcome. Can I grab you refreshments while you mingle? The next game starts in fifteen minutes.”

In the center of the room sits a long green felt table, crowded with men in suits and women who aren’t wearing much at all. The air buzzes with laughter, the clinking of chips, the soft background jazz that does nothing to dull the tension.

Jeonghan barely spares her a glance as he cuts toward the table. “Boulevardier.”

Her eyes cut to Chan. They are cat green and almost uncanny. “Whiskey neat, please. Yamazaki, if you have it.”

The woman bows her head, her gaze lingering a second too long before she drifts toward the bar in the back. Chan watches her go for a split second before he scans the room, drinking in all the details.

Girls circulate with silver trays carrying glasses of scotch, whiskey, and champagne. Some settle in men’s laps, some whisper into their ears, all of them part of the illusion of wealth, comfort, control. Chan steps forward, eyes adjusting to the dim glow-

He sees you and he nearly goes catatonic.

You’re dressed like the other women, but somehow even more out of place. Not because you don’t belong, but because he doesn’t expect to see you here, couldn’t even have imagined it. Not in a thousand years would he have made this gamble. You were never even in his odds of being here.

You’re standing near the far end of the room, your lips parted slightly in what looks to be mid-laughter in response to something the man talking to you has said. Chan’s chest tightens so sharp and sudden that he staggers, wondering if he’s having a heart attack.

You are painfully beautiful, dressed in a sapphire gown that ripples like water when you walk. He barely has time to register how perfect the cut of it is, the way it hugs your waist, the way you turn and it undulates like a living thing, turning you into a goddess of the sea. Maybe in another life he would appreciate how beautiful you are, but right now, he can’t.

This wasn’t supposed to happen, you weren’t supposed to be here - weren’t ever supposed to cross his path outside of that goddamn convenience store. He had prepared for tonight for days, planning everything perfectly, scripting each gamble and risk, calculating it to the fucking detail and it’s all for nothing, because you standing there in that fucking dress ruins it all.

Chan’s thoughts scatter like dropped cards. Jeonghan has already started the evening without missing a beat, greeting someone sitting at the table with a handshake dripping with charm. Chan tries to follow suit. His body moves, just barely, but his mind doesn’t, still stuck on you.

You laugh again and it feels like Chan has been stabbed.

What are you doing here? And worse, what does it mean that you are? Is this some intricate play by the Yong family? Are you here because you’re in trouble? Both are equally likely and send Chan down a violent rabbit hole of thoughts, chasing all of the possibilities. He suddenly doesn’t know if you’re a threat or someone who needs saving, and it rattles him to the core.

Chan finally starts to collect himself, dragging his eyes away from you, trying to calm himself. It’s too late. You turn to look at him, a fleeting glance that turns to shock. Recognition blooms across your face and if Chan wasn’t in such panic, he might grin at how cute you look when you’re surprised.

When you don’t smile at him, Chan cracks. He forces himself into a mask, but the damage is done. There’s already a hitch in his step, a breath he can’t seem to take. His hands twitch toward his chest as though he needs to search for a physical wound there, a gunshot he can’t see.

Chan is thrown off. Confused. Out of balance. Exposed.

The woman who took his drink order appears just as Chan siddles up next to Jeonghan. He can hardly hear what she says to him. Everything feels secondhand, the dissociation hitting him as he tries to shield himself from his own panic.

He accepts the drink and knocks it back before shoving the glass back in her hand and ordering another. He’s not even sure he says anything, just staring at the men surrounding the poker table, unfeeling and unseeing.

Jeonghan doesn’t look up at Chan right away. He’s mid-handshake with someone else, voice low and pleasant as he exchanges pleasantries. Every word from Jeonghan is barbed silk, and Chan should be at his side, watching and backing him up with easy charm, matching volley for volley.

When Jeonghan finishes his greetings, he sits in a high-backed velvet chair. His sharp eyes find Chan and narrow before they dart at the open chair next to him. Chan nearlys trips over his own feet as he scrambles to sit down.

Jeonghan watches him, his eyes sharpening like a blade sliding free of its sheath. “What,” Jeonghan growls lowly as he flashes someone’s wife a smile, “the fuck is wrong with you?”

Chan blinks. His heart’s been pounding for minutes, making him feel sick with adrenaline. “The girl from the convenience store is here.”

Jeonghan’s expression doesn’t change, but his voice is flat when he asks, “Who?”

“Cherry Sours.”

There’s a tick in Jeonghan’s jaw before he turns his head a fraction, gazing in your direction. It takes Jeonghan only a second to find you across the room where you’re struggling to keep up with the conversation the man at your side is having with you.

When Jeonghan turns back to Chan, his eyes are flint. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Chan doesn’t answer. Can’t answer. Jeonghan leans closer, his voice sharper than any blade Chan has ever known. “Why the fuck is someone you know here? Is she with the Yong family? Do you think we’re being set up?”

“I- fuck - I don’t know,” Chan admits. “I don’t know why she’s here. She’s only ever worked at the convenience store. I’ve never- Jeonghan, I don’t know.”

“Stop.” Chan shuts up. Jeonghan’s voice has the hard edge of the Wisdom of the Choi Syndicate right now. “You have ten seconds to get your head out of your ass. Or leave if you know you can’t do this. Now.”

Chan doesn’t move. His eyes flicker to you. You’re not looking at him but he can feel your panic from where he sits, matching his own. Can Chan do this? He doesn’t know, but he can’t leave you here. Not in this pit of vipers. Jeonghan leans back slightly, drinking in Chan’s deliberation.

“Decide,” he warns, voice like velvet. “If you fuck this up, I will remove you as Chariot myself, no matter the years between us, Lee Chan.”

It hangs in the air between them. Chan nods and straightens his shoulders, falling into the casual and cocky Chariot he’s trained to be. Jeonghan turns back to the conversation, smiling like nothing ever happened as he asks someone about how their kid’s play went.

Chan sits for a second longer, disengaged and heart rattling. But he doesn’t look at you again, taking in a deep breath as he tries to relax.

This time when the woman brings him his drink, Chan’s smile is lazy and flirty, winking at her as she walks away.

The low murmur of conversation quiets as a man that Chan recognizes as Yuli stands up from across the table, his arms spread like a gracious host. He has a glass of something expensive in one hand, his suit cut to perfection and his smile even more so.

“Friends,” he says smoothly, voice carrying over the music, “thank you for making the journey tonight. I know how busy our lives have become, so I consider your presence here a personal courtesy.”

A few men chuckle, raising their glasses. Others merely nod, already watching Yuli like players waiting for the first move on a board. Chan watches with absolute focus, chin slightly lifted. Yuli’s eyes skim across the room, assessing. Weighing. When they alight on Jeonghan and Chan, they pause only for a moment before he keeps going.

Jeonghan doesn’t move, but Chan knows that he saw the acknowledgement too, that Yuli knows the stakes and is interested in this dance.

Yuli continues, “Let’s not waste time. The table is ready, the cards are warm, and luck will favor the bold.”

Those who aren’t already standing around the table move to take seats. Chan shifts in his seat to make sure he clocks every single face at the table, going over their profiles in his head. He recognizes Yuli’s sister, Anita, her long hair piled high on her head. The table is mostly men, though there is a single other woman that Chan realizes is Yuli’s wife, younger than he expected, probably due to procedures.

No one in the room or at the table is high up in the Yong Syndicate. Here are all the blue collar workers, the men and women who are cousins of cousins, or Yong by marriage. Not blood. Who are Yong by long-association, perhaps. Distant family, who, when push comes to shove, have enough claim to Yong name that with the right support, could challenge the Tower.

As the final guests settle in, a few of the girls glide through with refilled drinks and practiced smiles, heels soft on the carpet. You’re among them. Chan doesn’t look. Not yet. Instead, he watches as Yuli retakes his seat and taps his finger on the felt, signaling the dealer to shuffle.

The game starts, though Chan already knows he’s playing far more than poker. He folds into the game like he’s never missed a beat. His smile is relaxed now, easy. He leans back in his chair like he owns it, lets his sleeves roll up just enough to show off the ink curling over his forearms. The men around the table are watching each other, sizing each other up, but not Chan. Not yet. He plays the part of harmless well.

The women, though, they pay attention to him. They give him smiles and ask him questions, let him shoot flattery their way. They eat it up, even if they know it’s fake. Fake or real, it doesn’t matter to them. Any of it feels good, especially from someone they’re not used to hearing it from.

Jeonghan, always sharper, plays the opposite role. Where Chan flirts, Jeonghan flatters. Where Chan jokes, Jeonghan probes. Together, they work the table like a duet, sowing discord, planting seeds.

“You can’t really be betting that much on that hand, can you?” Chan teases the man across from him. It’s some cousin of Yuli’s, with a watch too big for his wrist and a tendency to overplay. The man laughs, but it’s the uncomfortable kind. He folds. Again.

There’s a beat of laughter around the table and Yuli points a shaking finger at Chan like he’s a troublemaker, and then a new hand begins. Chan places his bet. Doesn’t look up. He doesn’t need to. He knows you’re still in the room. You’re lingering at the periphery, hovering like a ghost. You’re pretending not to watch him, and he’s pretending not to notice you. But both of you are failing. Badly.

Worse is that someone else notices you too. The man three seats down from Chan is watching you, interested. He’s older and heavyset, with a gold chain resting over his chest. Finally, he leans over and starts chatting you up, loud enough to cut through the din of conversation.

“You new?” He asks you. Chan remembers this man - he’s one of the owners of a strip of clubs under Yong jurisdiction in the Pearl District where Baby has made it all but impossible to do business with anyone but the Choi family. “I’d remember a face like yours. What’s your name, sweetheart?”

Chan watches out of the corner of his eye, his stomach souring. You laugh and it’s pitched too high to be normal or polite. You don’t give him your name, but you tell him yes you’re new and you’re learning poker. The man reaches out toward you, as though to guide you over to his lap.

It makes him break.

He doesn’t raise his voice. Doesn’t lean forward. He just lifts his eyes and says, “Hey.”

A few people on their side of the table still, looking up at Chan. The others are actively placing bets, chatter and music still going. You’re frozen in your spot, looking at Chan, mouth parted, breath quickening.

Chan tilts his head, smile lazy but eyes sharp. “Why don’t you come sit with me, gorgeous? I’m terrible luck without a pretty girl by my side.”

You blink. Clearly thrown. “I’m… um.”

The woman who greeted Chan at the door and who is clearly in charge of the provided women swoops in, a gentle hand placed on your shoulder as she lifts you up and guides you toward Chan. “She’d be happy to, Mr. Lee. Mr. Matsuo, why don’t you show me how to play?”

She is effortless in her chess game, this woman. She easily replaces you with herself, easing the annoyance of the other man while giving Chan what he wants. If he wasn’t so distracted, he would be impressed at the way she works a room, a weapon in her own right.

You stand there a second too long, but then you move, slow steps across the plush carpet until you’re beside him. You perch on the edge of the seat, hands in your lap, eyes avoiding his. You look like you want to melt into the floor.

“Better,” he says softly more to himself than anything else.

You hear him, though, asking tightly, “What are you doing?”

“Keeping you safe.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

Jeonghan gives Chan a single, sharp look. He knows the Wisdom is thrumming with rage, but he ignores it. Jeonghan ignores him in return, starting a conversation with Yuli like he is supposed to.

Instead of talking, you and Chan fall into steely silence. The cards hit the table in steady rhythm. Chips shift hands. Laughter spills out from somewhere on the other side of the felt table, sharp, hollow, and far away. You sit at Chan’s side, refusing to look at him directly. He doesn’t look at you either.

Not even when his hand brushes against your knee when he folds a hand, tossing his cards on the table. Noe even when he folds again, flicking his wrist with the same careless confidence he always wears when he’s working, letting them think he’s bad at cards.

Your eyes stay in your lap, eyes forward, throat tight. Chan fights the urge to reach up and brush his fingers across your back to tell you to relax. If he does, he’s not sure what would happen. It’s the one gamble he’s not ready to make.

Chan feels Jeonghan’s pointed stare on occasion. He ignores him, more aware instead of tension vibrating between you. It’s like a live wire, tense, thin and vibrating, so distracting that Chan might actually be losing his hand on accident instead of on purpose.

After three rounds end, Yuli stretches in his chair and calls for a cigarette break. Players rise, some lighting cigars, some leaning back to talk in low voices with their entourage. You start to rise, but Chan is quick like an adder, leaning in and growling, “Come with me.”

You don’t exactly say yes, but you stumble to your feet when Chan jerks his chair from the table, jolting you from the arm. He immediately feels guilty about it, reaching out to steady you. Instead, you snatch your arm from him and march toward a far corner of the room, half-screened by shadows and heavy drapery. The music is quieter there when he follows you over, the air a bit thicker.

He stops as you turn, and now it’s just the two of you, inches apart.

You look around. “Is this where you usually drag girls to whisper sweet nothings? Behind velvet curtains and poker chips?”

He exhales like he’s already tired of this. “What are you doing here?”

You blink. “Me? What are you doing here?

“I asked first.”

“Working. You?”

His eye twitches. “Working. You shouldn’t be here.”

“Is this what you do for a living? Syndicate bullshit and flirt with pretty girls and cheat on your girlfriend?”

That throws Chan for a loop. He stalls trying to catch up, not understanding at all.

“Don’t play stupid,” you warn. “You’re not stupid. Then again, I guess I don’t really know you, do I?”

Chan opens his mouth, then closes it again. “I’m so confused right now. Yes, my work is Syndicate bullshit. You never asked so I never told you. Also - what girlfriend?”

You take a step back. “I saw her, you know. The girl. From the store. The one you walked in with.” Chan sucks in a sharp breath. You glare up at him. “She called you Channie. You called her baby.”

He fights the urge to press the heels of his palms into his eyes, unsure how he is having this conversation at this event. “She’s not my girlfriend,” he hisses, looking around to see if he’s drawn any attention yet. As always, Jeonghan is the only pair of eyes on him in the room. “She’s not even someone I like,” he rushes on. “Her name’s Baby. That’s just what people call her. She’s the Architect of the Choi Syndicate.”

You stare. “Her name is Baby?”

Chan pinches the bridge of his nose. “That is what you’re focused on right now?” You stare at him and he nearly growls. “Yes, technically it just stuck when we were kids because she was the youngest - well I’m younger, but she was babied a lot - look, it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t calling her that because she’s mine, and if I did, there is an insane blondie who likes guns that would murder me for it.”

You look away, jaw tight. “I thought…” you start to say something, then stop yourself. You shake your head, furious again. “Never mind.”

Chan’s heart is pounding. Everything he’s wanted to say since walking into this room is tangled up in his throat, clawing to get out. “Is that what bothered you? Thinking I was dating her?”

You flinch. He sees it. Sees the way your fingers twitch, the way your chin lifts like you’re bracing for a hit. “No.”

He laughs, then. The fight goes out of him because he sees the lie. Sees the vulnerability, the bitter edge of jealousy. It makes his heart flutter, realizing that you’d been mad at that. Before he can retort, someone calls for another round. You pivot on your heel, marching away and leaving him with his chest tight with everything left unsaid.

Slowly, he follows you back to the table.

When Chan slides into the seat for the next round, he’s still out of sorts. This time, it’s less panic about you being in the room and more about knowing you’d been jealous of Baby. It makes him spiral. What does you being jealous mean? He’d seen the hurt flicker across your face, so honest and raw and-

He cannot think about it right now. He needs to focus on the task at hand, even though your jasmine perfume is making it hard to think and you’re sitting so close to him that he can feel your warmth.

“The Tower has been levying heavy taxes on your businesses, right?” Jeonghan asks Yuli mildly. The question draws Chan’s focus to a needle point. Jeonghan shuffles his cards, not looking up. “A few weeks ago I saw the outcry from businesses. Steep taxes.”

Yuli’s expression tightens. “The Tower has to make a lot of decisions.” It’s a generous answer. “It is… perhaps short-sighted, though.”

Chan tries to focus. He really does. But the man next to him - Daesik, some mid-tier Yong affiliate - leans in toward you. “You know,” he offers, “you could sit on my lap the next round. Chan seems to be losing hands left and right. Maybe you could bring me luck.”

You shift uncomfortably, not responding. Chan tenses. Daesik notices, grinning. “Unless you’re taken? Are you two a thing? I thought you were hired company.”

Again, you say nothing. You stare straight forward, lips pressed in a firm line. Rage makes Chan’s hand shake, and he clenches his fists. “She isn’t available.”

Daesik looks at you. “That true?”

“Yes.”

“Could have fooled me. The way he’s been ignoring you all night, I figured you were up for grabs.”

“Well she’s not,” Chan clips. The words come out harsher than they should, but he’s already too gone to reel it in, composure cracking. “So fuck off.”

The table goes silent. Chan already knows he’s misstepped. Chan never missteps, and yet it’s all he’s done tonight, one wrong foot placed after the other.

Yuli leans back in his chair, his smile thinning. “That’s a rather pointed tone, Chan.I hired her for everyone’s entertainment. Daesik is a guest. Just like you. If he wants her attention and she’s on my clock, I expect her to oblige.”

Across the table, Jeonghan doesn’t speak, but Chan catches the flick of a finger against his glass, a silent warning: pull back. Now.

Chan tries. “She shouldn’t be here,” he says, quieter now, aiming for diplomacy. “It was a miscommunication. She’s not… that kind of staff. Not really part of this.”

Yuli’s eyes flash. “You’re saying I made a mistake?” His voice is low, but cutting. “That I hire incompetents? That I’ve hired someone inexperienced for a party of this caliber?”

“No,” Chan answers quickly, though the tension in his voice betrays him. “That’s not what I meant.”

Yuli leans forward now, elbows on the table, smile gone entirely. “She’s here. At my table. Wearing what I assigned them to wear.”

The air curdles. Chan feels the tension shift and his hand goes to your back, flattening his palm against your spine. You’re rigid, but he feels you lean into the touch, seeking safety. Your hands shake - he can see them - and he curses at himself for putting you in this position.

Jeonghan sets his drink down pointedly, eyes fixed on Yuli with a patience that is menacing. His smile is slight, but Chan knows that smile. Knows the violence in it. It’s Jeonghan’s smile before it rains blood.

“I think,” Jeonghan says softly, “we have overstayed our welcome. Come on, Chan.”

Jeonghan stands with measured grace. Chan rises, tight-jawed and unable to look at you. As he turns from the table, he realizes you’re still sitting. He hesitates, waiting for you.

“Let’s go,” he urges, quiet but firm.

“No,” Yuli announces. “She’s not going with you. I have paid her to be here tonight. She’s here under contract, and you-” He gestures lazily between Jeonghan and Chan. “You’re both leaving.”

“She’s not staying.”

Before Chan can get another word out, Yuli lifts a hand and the room fills with Yuli’s personal bodyguards, hands brushing over their jackets. Chan moves instinctively, only to feel Jeonghan’s palm grab the back of his neck, scruffing him.

“Careful,” Jeonghan growls.

Chan’s hand is on your wrist. He feels you trembling under his touch, rooted between wanting to go with Chan and knowing that if you do, there will be violence.

Yulie’s voice sharpens. “Remove your hand from her. Take her with you, and I’ll consider it theft.”

“She isn’t your property.”

“And yet,” Yuli says, rising to his feet with the theatrical air of a man who loves having the final word, “I have rented her. So is she yours? No. She stays. You go.”

Silence.

Chan’s fingers twitch. Sweat drips down the back of his neck. He can feel it beading in his hairline. Now, his heart beats as adrenaline surges through him. He’s ready for anything, eyes drifting around the room as he makes everyone a mark, ranking them in the order they need to fall.

He smells blood in the air and he’s ready for it, grip tightening on your wrist to pull you down and shield you before he acts.

Jeonghan exhales once through his nose and steps forward, light and lethal. “Yuli,” he says, almost kindly. “I suggest you let the girl come with us.”

Yuli’s grin drops. “Or what?”

“You know what.”

Yuli narrows his eyes. “That a threat?”

“No. A reminder.” Jeonghan’s voice stays soft. “I know about Arkos. The safehouse. The twins.” Yuli freezes, his face leeching of all color. “I have all the information and the addresses, the schedules. Copied on two separate drives. One is in my personal safe, and the other is with my sister. Who do you think is faster? My sister who is already in Arkos on vacation, or you driving three hours from Hyperion?”

A hush ripples through the room. This is why Yoon Jeonghan is the Wisdom of the most powerful Syndicate in Hyperion. This is the man that Yoon Minji trained to perfection to take her place, wicked sharp and more lethal than any amount of brawn or weapon could make a human being.

Chan had no idea Angel was in Arkos. Doesn’t even know if Jeonghan is bluffing or being serious. That’s the thing with Jeonghan - you never know, so all of his threats are real.

Yuli looks split between murderous and panicked, his chest heaving as he figures out what to do. He seems to weigh his options, trying to puzzle out if Jeonghan’s threat about Angel is accurate.

Jeonghan cocks his head. It’s sharp and predatory. “You think I came without insurance?”

Yuli doesn’t move for a moment. Then, his tongue runs over his teeth, followed by a sharp, bitter exhale. “Fine. Take the bitch.”

Jeonghan doesn’t speak. He simply turns, his every step calm, deliberate. Measured. A man walking a highwire and pretending it’s solid ground. Chan mirrors him, shoulder squared, jaw locked. You stick close, nearly tucked beneath his arm.

No one dares stop you.

As soon as you hit the stairs, Chan feels your body press fully into his side. He slips a hand around your waist, grounding you. You're trembling faintly. His own hands aren’t much steadier. The scent of jasmine hits him hard, a knife under his ribs. The desire for you is so strong he closes his eyes for a half-second, breaths deep.

It’s not the time, so he shoves it down.

Outside, it feels like surfacing from underwater. The night air bites, cold and honest. The car is idling, a driver opening the door while one of Soonyoung’s Swords stands with his hand in his jacket, ready to draw if he needs to.

Chan gets you into the car first, palm steady on your back as you climb in. He makes sure to block the doorway, shielding you in case anyone decides to shoot you all from behind afterall. You say nothing. Instead, you curl in slightly like you’re bracing for an aftershock. He slides in beside you, surprised when you reach for him, almost on autopilot.

He lets you. The scent of jasmine hits him again when you lean into him, still shaking.

Jeonghan slides in on the other side of Chan, shutting the door with a bang that feels louder than a gunshot. You flinch and he murmurs a soothing word, tucking you into his side. It’s the closest he’s ever been to you and he hates the circumstances, hates that somehow, he’s run out of luck afterall.

The car pulls forward. Nobody speaks. The silence is brutal.

Your fingers tremble in Chan’s lap. He tightens his grip around you, light enough to not hurt, firm enough to try and tell you that he’s got you. His other hand rests in his lap, still shaking, still wanting to draw blood.

You shouldn’t have been there. He still can’t figure out why you were there in the first place. He should have walked out the second he saw you, should have left when Jeonghan told him to, cut his losses and not gambled-

“Hello.” Jeonghan’s voice slices through the quiet like a knife on silk. Chan’s stomach knots as he glances where Jeonghan has leaned forward, his eyes alighting on you. “I’m Jeonghan. Can I call you Cherry? Chan calls you Cherry.”

You give him a tiny nod and he grins like the cat that ate the canary. “I would say it’s nice to meet you, but you and your stupid lapdog of a boyfriend have thoroughly fucked up my night.”

Chan’s jaw clenches so hard it aches. He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t defend. There’s no point. Because Jeonghan’s not wrong, and Chan is just trying to keep you breathing next to him long enough to fix whatever the hell he’s gotten all of you into.

Wind makes the building creak and groan. You have long since gotten used to the moaning whispers of your apartment walls, just hoping that the old building doesn’t decide to give up and fall down on top of you.

It’s entirely possible. A few months ago, a building just like yours, old and out of code and full of people had collapsed in on itself, killing hundreds, people missing for days. The pile of rubble and rust is still there, the dust hanging in the air like the ghost of the screams of those trapped inside.

The city just… never did anything about it. The Choi Syndicate had attempted to buy the land with the intention of removing the rubble and recovering the bodies, but this strip of neighborhood belonged to the Kim family.

The Choi Syndicate.

A flash of fear and fascination goes through you. Never in a million years would you have thought that Chan was a member of the Choi Syndicate - a high ranking one, no less. When he had stepped foot into the party a few nights ago, your entire world had shattered. You had seen him and frozen in place, confused, elated, then terrified all at once.

And he’d been with Yoon Jeonghan, the fucking Wisdom of the Choi Syndicate.

You don’t know how you didn’t put it together before. Polished, charming Chan. Smooth-talking, flirty Chan. That night he had come into the store with the girl he called Baby should have been the night you put it all together. Now you know why you thought she looked familiar, her face plastered in news articles and all over screens while posing next to her brother, Choi Seungcheol, at events across the city.

Chan worked for - no, was friends with - some of the most dangerous and influential people in the city. Chan was dangerous and influential. And yet you had never known, both of you existing in your tiny bubble of cherry sours and a single, gifted paperback book.

Nausea makes your stomach roll uncomfortably. That night exists as a nightmare now, equal parts terror, intrigue and embarrassment. Fear at how close you had come to being caught in violence you’ve only seen on the news, intrigue at the way Chan had held you close and called you his, embarrassment that you’d been there in the first place.

You haven’t talked about it. Didn’t talk about it on the drive home where you muttered directions to your apartment, Jeonghan muttering a comment about how Chan should move you somewhere that wasn’t a health risk. Didn’t talk about it despite Chan forcing you to exchange phone numbers to make sure you were safe. Didn’t talk about it because you answered none of his calls and none of his texts.

Didn’t know what to say. Still don’t. So the texts and calls go unanswered, despite the gnawing desire to pick up the phone and hear his voice again, to pretend that it’s him murmuring in your ear that it’s okay like he had that night, pressed against you and warm. Safe.

But the world doesn’t pause just because your life has fallen apart. The world has never paused for you. So you peel yourself off the single chair in your apartment and get ready for your shift at the convenience store.

The floor is cold beneath your feet. You flick on the bathroom light and wait for the flickering bulb to turn on. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. It depends on the fluctuating power grid and the need for power in the Upper District and beyond.

You dress quickly and in layers. It’s cold and rainy today, a tropical storm blowing in cold hair from the far coast and chasing away the sticky humidity temporarily. It’s a simple outfit: black pants, a work hoodie with a peeling logo on the chest, and a windbreaker that you found in the lost and found bin at work two winters ago. It’s missing a zipper, but it helps with the wind.

Your backpack is already half packed. You shove a bottle of water, a granola bar - because you’re not allowed to eat anything in the store on shift for free - and the keys to your apartment. The keys are a bit of a joke, considering anyone could kick your door down with a solid attempt.

Out the door and into the hall, you lock the door behind you. Not that you have much to protect, outside of the single paperback book that burns in the back of your mind, hidden under your pillow.

The hallway is dim, lit by a single buzzing ceiling fixture that casts long, flickering shadows down the hall. Mrs. Han from 23B is arguing with her dog again, her voice echoing from the apartment next to you. You start the trek down the stairs - all twenty three flights. The elevator had long since fallen down the shaft, killing the people inside of it before you ever moved in.

Twenty three lights is a lot. But it gives you time to zone out and focus only on the movement of your legs, only the burn in your thighs and the quickness of your breath as you wind down and down and down.

Finally when you reach the bottom, you’re sweating. You adjust your backpack, strap digging into your shoulder, and push the door to enter the main lobby. The door groans when you push it and slams behind you, vibrating in the metal frame.

Outside the world is wind and mist. It still smells like smog, familiar and acrid. Your breath mists as you make your way to the subway. It’s a few blocks away, the path caved through cracked pavement, hissing cats, Taps in alleyways pushing paraphernalia and explosions of neon from screens and advertisements for pleasure clubs and alternate reality lounges.

When you pass a Tap, you faintly wonder whose banner they’re under. You remember Jeonghan saying that this was Kim territory, so you assume them. It makes you give them wide berth, suddenly wary of every member of a Syndicate in a way that you weren’t before.

The subway station looms ahead, a smear of purple and blinking neon. You head down the stairs, feet tapping against the wet tile, and scan your card at the station gate. The turnstile sticks, like always, and like always, you lift a leg to kick at it until it gives.

A man is arguing with a holographic advertisement as you pass. The hologram doesn’t see him - doesn’t know he’s there. How could it? Still, the man yells something unintelligible at it, his frame crooked and leaning heavily to the side like a reed under too much water weight.

The train arrives with a gust of wet, sour air. You step inside and grab a pole, swaying when the car lurches forward. Ads scroll past the digital screens overhead, pushing plastic surgery, new modifications, biotech pills. It’s interrupted by a headline about a Kim family member being arrested and immediately released the same night.

Nothing new. Everything new. You wonder what that means for Chan. Does something like that affect him? Did he have something to do with it? You have all of these new questions, but you’re unsure if you want any of the answers.

You ride in silence, watching the city shapeshift as you cross districts. Graffiti fades into clean walls, grime into polished chrome. The Upper District arrives like a clinical slap to the senses: clean lines, glowing storefronts, security drones.

It’s drier here when you exit the station near the convenience store. You blend into the night, invisible to the partygoers heading to clubs a single district over and the suits exiting from buildings after insane hours at work.

The store comes into view, its bright signage a familiar beacon. You let out a breath, thankful that you can return to the routine and try to forget about Chan, maybe. This is a place you know. Here, you understand the shape of things, what they’re made of.

Inside, you’re greeted by the soft hum of refrigerated cases and the scent of cleaner. It’s almost comforting. Almost. You clock in at the back, scanning your finger on a screen similar to the one you use at the laundromat. You pull on your store-issued apron, fingers tying it around your back before you pass Eren with a nod as he heads out, wordless and tired.

At least working the graveyard shift means quiet hours. No one should bother you, allowing you to do stock or to scan items in inventory. It also means all the time in the world to think, which is exactly what you do as you attempt to lose yourself in stocking shelves and fridges.

No matter how hard you try, your thoughts go back to him.

To Chan.

Chan, with his easy grin and soft eyes, who liked to buy cherry sours. Chan who offered pieces of himself in small, delicate conversations and light teases.

Chan, who was a high-ranked member of the Choi Syndicate. Who walked into that party like a blade wrapped in silk. Who had growled a warning at those men and who clung to you so hard you could still feel the imprint of his hand now.

You see the memory in your mind’s eye: Jeonghan’s gaze, sharp as glass, the casual way the men talked about you like you were a piece of furniture in the room, Cara’s panic as she watched Chan take you. The way Chan stood too still, too tense, like he had been preparing to start a war if they took you away from him.

It’s embarrassing to realize how much you hadn’t known about him. And how could you, really? You’ve only talked to him for fifteen minutes at a time over the last few weeks, needing inference and his idle conversation to give you clues about himself.

Still, you had trusted him. Trusted that despite the fact he was clearly not like you, that he was at least similar in soul. It was a dramatic kind of trust, but a quiet one. One that said you see me and I trust you to keep seeing me.

You’re restocking instant noodles when the door chimes and you hear the rush of wind. You glance up, half-expecting some salaryman or a sleepy student, but your heart lurches violently when you see him. He’s standing just inside the door, dressed down in a hoodie, but there’s no mistaking him. He looks tired. His eyes scan the store until they land on you, and his shoulders drop just slightly, like he was holding his breath.

You straighten up too fast. The cup noodles clatter onto the shelf. “You should not be here.”

“I wanted to talk.”

“I don’t.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” He holds up his phone, annoyance twisting his face. “You haven’t answered me in days.”

You scoff. “Did you really expect me to? After—what, that? After finding out you’re not just some guy who likes sour candy and books, but someone who gets invited to parties by Jeonghan?”

“I didn’t lie to you,” he says quietly.

“No,” you agree. “You just let me believe you were harmless.”

His face screws up. “Whatever version of me you conjured up isn’t my fault. I never implied I was harmless. I never implied anything.”

It stings because it’s true. You feel bitter about it, knowing how right he is. You shove the cup of noodles on the shelf and walk toward the counter, needing to put something between you, needing a shield.

“Well, you can’t just show up here.”

“Please just let me-”

“I’m not ready to talk to you.” The silence that follows is loaded. He watches you, eyes round. Hurt. “Please.”

He looks like he wants to say something else, but the words don’t come. He gives you a last look, eyes unreadable, and then turns to leave. The bell jingles gently in his wake. The silence that follows is heavy with tension.

You press a hand to your chest, trying to steady the sharp rhythm of your heart. You feel strung out and hollow, as if he’s somehow taken all the air with him when he left. Sinking behind the counter, you try to steady your shaking hands. You hate that you’re still shaking. Hate that part of you had wanted him to protest more, but begrudgingly appreciate he respected your request.

For a while, you sit there. You watch a moth flutter around a neon sign, oddly grounding. It’s quiet and for the first time in a few days, you don’t have any thoughts. No worries, no sounds, just the blue light and a single moth, fluttering as it chases something.

You peel yourself off the floor and go back to stacking ramen cups and wiping down the counters. The rhythm of work helps. It always has. Your hands remember what to do even when your brain is fogged and aching.

When the door opens this time, you don’t hear it, too caught up in the wet slosh of the mop in a bucket, eyes staring but unseeing as you press the mop into the tile door. When you come around the corner, you pull up short at the three men standing in the doorway.

Your blood runs cold.

Had more time passed, you might not recognize the man from the party a few nights ago. His name doesn’t stick - David, Donnick, Daesik. The man who had nearly started a fight with Chan over you, his hands in the pocket of a sleek jacket, like he’s attending a business meeting. There’s a tilt to his smile that makes you tighten your grip on the mop, skin crawling.

“You’re easy to find.” His eyes slide over the shelves before they make their way back to you. “But I realize that people like you don’t know how to disappear. You’re really not of this world, are you?”

Your throat tightens. “Can I help you?”

He raises an eyebrow, like the question amuses him. “You’re certainly going to.”

Terror makes you take a step back. You pull the mop in front of you, a shield or weapon you’re not sure. Your heart kickstarts, pounding so fast you swear you can feel it in your toes.

“I didn’t do anything to you,” you murmur, quiet.

He shrugs. “I’m insulted. I deserve an apology.”

“Fine. I’m sorry.”

Your phone is sitting on the shelf right next to you. You make the mistake of looking at it. He notices and you both act at the same time. He lunges for you and you leap for the phone, both of you crashing into the display. You scream as you both go down with the shelf, a tangle of limbs and chips.

It hurts, but you hit dial anyway. Daesik rolls on top of you, pinning you down by the forearms. You’re still holding the phone, unsure if it’s connected. You can’t hear anything over your own screaming and thrashing, lifting your hips and kicking your legs as you try to throw him off of you.

Daesik leans down, a smile twisting his face. You seize the opportunity and throw your head forward, your forehead connecting with his nose.

Pain explodes. Your ears ring. Your vision sputters. All you can see is red, head spinning as you fall backward, dazed from the hit. Someone is yelling and you feel a boot on your hand where it holds the phone. Something loud slices the air - your screaming, you realize.

And then something crashes, glass exploding inward. Daesik is off of you and for a moment, the world is nothing but glass glittering like rain as the window shatters inward. You hold an arm up, feeling the bite of shards cut into your arm where it’s exposed.

A car is idling in the front of the store. You’re less surprised at the car and more surprised to see Chan sliding over the hood, planting his foot into the chest of a man with enough force to send him flying into the drink fridge, the glass door cracking under the impact. The man crumples and remains motionless.

Another figure steps through the wreckage behind him, someone you don’t recognize. She’s grinning, eyes manic. Her eyes gleam with something sharp and hungry, and the moment she moves, you understand why. She doesn’t fight like a person. She flows, quick and precise, slipping past a punch and lashing out with one arm.

Red erupts from the man's throat. You gasp. You hadn’t realized she was holding a knife. Hadn’t realized she was already cutting him again. Again. Again. Fast, brutal slashes that seem almost too fluid to be real. With each flick of her wrist, more blood arcs through the air. The man crumples, clutching at his neck, choking on his own breath as he drops to his knees.

Daesik tries to scramble up, but he’s too slow. Chan slams into him like a freight train, taking him back down into the carnage of shelving and snacks. You roll away from the chaos, gasping in pain. Vomit climbs up your throat, head throbbing as you try to gain your bearings.

You sit upright and the room swims. Through the blur, you see Chan pin Daesik to the ground, one knee crushing into his chest. His hand is steady. The blade he holds is pressed flush to Daesik’s throat. His face is unrecognizable, fury distorting every line of it, a rage that is burning, holy, inhuman.

“I told you once,” Chan seethes, spittal flying. “Not. Yours. Say hello to all the other Kims and Yongs we’ve sent to the fucking afterlife.”

He drags the blade across Daesik’s throat. You turn away before you see it. You don’t need to. You hear it. Smell the iron and salt of it.

The store is a disaster of glass, blood, and chaos strewn across the floor. None of it feels real. Not yet. You sit curled up in the wreckage, your arms wrapped around your ribs, body aching in more places than you can count. Your breath comes in short, ragged bursts. You try to focus on anything that isn’t the iron tang in the air or the sticky warmth drying on your skin.

Footsteps approach, crunching through the destruction. Someone crouches in front of you and then you hear Chan’s soft, “Hey.” You look up at him, eyes scanning his face. There’s blood splattered across his tan skin. You don’t think it’s his own. “I’ve got you.”

Chan licks his lips and reaches for you and then hesitates, hovering just shy of touching you. “Can I? Are you hurt anywhere I can’t see?”

You nod. “I think I cracked a rib. My head hurts really bad.”

Chan’s eyes flit to your forehead and his mouth twitches. “Did you break his nose?”

“I think so.”

“Good girl.”

A shadow moves past behind him. Light, purposeful steps. “Gnarly. Is she coherent?”

Chan glances over his shoulder, exhaling. “Yeah. Angel, easy.”

Angel crouches beside him, resting her chin on one hand like she’s studying you. She has the same blood smeared across her sleeves, same wild glint in her eyes. She smiles. Not mocking. Not cruel. Just… weirdly friendly.

“Good job breaking his nose. Pretty decent for your first time.”

The woman - Angel - offers you a hand. Her nails are painted and glossy, the juxtaposition against the dried blood on her wrist making you oggle at her.

“Don’t worry,” she winks. “I only use the knife on people who deserve it. Cherry, right? That’s what Jeonghan called you.”

Cherry. Jeonghan had called you that a few nights ago, implied that Chan had been calling you the cherry sours girl.

You nod slowly.

“Cute. Jeonghan liked you, so you must not suck.”

For some reason, the thought of Yoon Jeonghan signing off on you is not at all comforting.

Chan sighs. “Angel, please.”

“What?” she grins. “I’m being reassuring.”

You look at her hand. Then back to Chan. Then slowly, cautiously, let her help you to your feet. Pain radiates down your side and you wince, hissing through your teeth. Chan’s arm is under you instantly, steadying you.

“I’ve got you,” he says again, softer this time. “I promise.”

Angel steps back with a hum, eyes flicking around the store. “Jihoon is going to fucking kill us. Do you think Kero will come burn the place down?”

Chan glares at her. “We’re not burning it down.”

“Oh, so now arson is too far?” She gives him an innocent look. “Where was that energy ten minutes ago when I drove a fucking car through the window?”

“Yeah, what the fuck was that? That’s my car, Angel.”

“Tell Baby to buy you another one! She loves giving people shit on Christmas.”

You let out a small, choked laugh before you can stop it. A ridiculous sound. But you’re suddenly grateful for her madness, because it’s easier to focus on that than the blood drying on the floor.

“Come on,” Chan murmurs, guiding you toward the back door. “Let’s get you out of here.”

“Where are we going?” you manage.

“Somewhere safe.”

Angel trails behind you, humming as she steps over a body. “I’ll drive.” Chan shoots her a look. “Right, no car. So are we walking, or?”

You do in fact, take a car. You have to walk a few hurried blocks first, getting away from the scene of the crime as sirens scream in the distance. Angel makes a quick call and a sleek, black car pulls up to the curb for the three of you.

You barely remember getting into the car, or Angel tossing a bloodied blade into the glove compartment like it’s a pack of gum. You don’t remember the way the city lights slid across the windows or how Chan never let go of your hand, not once. Only when the car begins winding through tree-lined roads and passing silent iron gates do you begin to come back into your body.

“Holy shit,” you mutter, looking out the window. “What is this place?”

An entire jungle exists here, snatches of drives leading up to secluded houses. It’s beautiful in a way that feels haunting, old trees, stone paths. You’ve never seen so much green in your life, breath fogging the window as you pass through the tropical paradise, tires hissing on gravel.

“Go to my house, please,” Chan tells the driver.

The car turns down a near-invisible path in the trees. You watch as the world vanishes into a world of palmetto and palms. Chan’s thumb strokes back and forth on your hand, but he says nothing, frame vibrating with tense silence.

Chan helps you out of the car, his hand gentle at your back. Angel remains in the passenger seat, grinning as the car pulls away back down the path before it vanishes.

His house is nothing like you imagined. Not glass and steel or sharp, cold edges. No guards posted out front. No high walls. Just… nature. Dense tropical trees surround the house on every side, vines thick with dew, leaves rustling overhead in the cool air.

The house itself is low and sprawling, dark wood and warm stone, glowing from the inside with soft amber light. Plants hang in pots by the porch. There’s a hammock slung between two posts. Wind chimes stir gently in the breeze.

You stare.

“What? Chan asks, a little shy.

“This is beautiful.”

“Oh, uh. Family home. A lot of us um - live on property. Angel and Vernon are just up the road and Baby and Soonyoung are in the main house.”

Inside, the house is warm. It looks lived in and cozy. There are books everywhere, some open, some dog-eared, some stacked haphazardly beside a record player. A large worn couch faces a fireplace filled with glowing coals. A low table holds three mismatched mugs, one with tea still in it. There’s a blanket thrown across the back of a chair and a pile of laundry peeking out of a hallway basket. On the wall hangs a corkboard with photos pinned to it.

A home. One where generations have lived. Chan is pressed into these walls, his entire family’s history all here.

You swallow hard as he leads you to the couch. It smells like cedar, citrus, and something distinctly Chan. He helps you sit with a soft grunt. Your ribs pang and you curl your arms around them. He murmurs that he’ll be right back before vanishing down the hall, returning just as quickly with a med kit and a bottle of water.

“Let me see,” he says gently, kneeling in front of you.

You hesitate, then pull your shirt up just enough to reveal the bruises blooming across your ribs. His fingers brush your side with clinical precision, but you still feel the tension vibrating under his skin. His eyes are laser-focused, intense and dark. He doesn’t press hard, but his fingers map the edge of the damage.

“I don’t think anything is broken,” he murmurs, looking up at you with pinched brows. “Angel will bring Dr. Ymir to confirm, though.” He gestures to your head, where you realize it’s cut. “May I?

You nod and he cleans it, his touch careful. He works in silence, tension thrumming between the two of you all the while.

When Chan finally speaks, it’s pained. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want this to happen and it did and… that’s on me.”

You look at him. Really look at him. His jaw is clenched. His hair is still mussed from the fight. There’s a smear of blood, some on the collar of his shirt. And yet his eyes are full of something unbearably human.

“I didn’t know,” you whisper. “Who you were. What you were part of. I just thought… you liked cherry sours and paperback novels.”

He huffs a faint breath. “I do. I also happen to kill people who try to hurt the ones I care about. It’s not mutually exclusive. Does it… change anything?”

What is there to change? You almost ask, but don’t. You think about his question. Then ask one of your own, “Is it always like this?”

Chan tilts his head. “Like what?”

“People showing up. Trying to hurt you. People like Angel cutting throats and then offering to make tea.”

He snorts. “I can’t lie and say it’s not. It’s worse than usual right now. The family is at war and well…” He chews his lip. “I am so fucking sorry I brought you into this. Had I just… left you alone at the party…”

After a beat, you reach for his hand and squeeze. “I’m glad you didn’t.” He looks up at you. “Leave me alone at the party, I mean. Thank you.”

“It was selfish of me. The thought of someone else touching you…” He sighs again and stands up. You wish he would finish his train of thought - want to beg him to finish. “You’re safe now, but you should probably rest. Dr. Ymir will come around to make sure your ribs aren’t broken and to check if you have a concussion. We can figure out what to do then, alright?”

You nod. Let him take you to one of three rooms - this one is clearly his. It smells like him and there are more books scattered around the room, his sheets rumbled. It’s full of earth tones and soft orange light. It’s so different from the cutting edge modern that you’re used to, feeling like you’re stepping back through time to something soft. Homey.

Chan helps you lay down and brushes his fingers across your forehead gently, like he doesn’t realize he’s doing it. “Rest. I’ll wake you when the doctor is here.”

You lose track of time in the days that follow. The world outside Chan’s house might as well not exist. The estate is so wrapped in dense greenery and quiet security that it starts to feel like a dream you haven't quite woken from.

Dr. Ymir arrives a few hours after the incident. She’s tall, sharp-eyed, and whip-smart, her touch clinical but not unkind as she checks your ribs, bruises, pupils, and reflexes. She doesn’t ask questions. She just hums quietly to herself, pokes you exactly where it hurts most, and tells Chan she’ll be back tomorrow. No broken ribs, no concussion, just a hard fucking head.

“Don’t let her do anything strenuous,” she says as she packs up her kit. “No stress, no stairs, no sharp objects.”

“So no Angel. Got it.”

“She’s surrounded by you,” Dr. Ymir replies dryly. “Which is worse.”

Chan scowls. You hide a smile, deciding that you like this family doctor very much.

That becomes the rhythm of your days: Ymir visits. You heal. Chan hovers. He won’t let you lift anything heavier than a fork. He follows you from the bedroom to the living room like you’re made of glass. He brings you snacks you didn’t ask for, fluffs the pillows behind you, and glares at them like it’s their fault you’re uncomfortable.

One night, you catch him asleep in the armchair beside the bed, his neck bent at an awful angle, arms crossed, a book half-open in his lap. You stare at him in the low light and wonder how long he's been sitting there watching over you.

On the fourth day, you surprise him in the kitchen. He nearly drops a glass when he sees you, rushing to make you sit down at a rustic wooden table.

“Chan, I’m fine.”

“Sit down.” He helps you sit and brings you a cup of coffee. “Drink your coffee and let me helicopter in piece.”

“At least you’re self aware,” you mutter into the mug, taking a sip. It’s sweet, flavored with cinnamon.

Finally, he sits next to you with his own cup. He looks good, dressed in a wrinkled t-shirt and pajama pants. It’s such a stark contrast to the polished Chan that you’ve always known, but you like this version of him. It feels real, now, this thing between you. You don’t know what to name it - don’t think you can give it a name - but there’s something there, buzzing.

You talk about books, about music, about everything except the night that got you here. You start to learn the layout of his home by touch and scent, by the warm corners where he likes to sit and the strange half-painted canvas hanging in the hallway, abandoned.

“Soonyoung,” he deadpans when he catches you looking at it. “Don’t ask.”

On the fifth day, your morning coffee is interrupted by the sound of a car pulling up in the driveaway. Both of you lift your heads. Chan is already moving toward the door, fingers twitching like he’s looking for a weapon. Before he can get there, the door swings open and Angel is stepping inside, dressed in an all black rain slicker and grinning.

“Hello, Household of Chan!” She moves to the kitchen, opening cupboards with practiced ease, clearly a frequent visitor despite how little she acknowledges it. “You look way better. How are you feeling?”

“Umm, better,” you offer, eyes darting to the door where Jeonghan enters like a shadow. He makes you shiver. Chan tries to shut the person behind Jeonghan out, but there’s a tussle at the door and a man with silver-blonde hair enters the room after shoving Chan out of the door. “Definitely better.”

“Hello, Cherry,” Jeonghan says, his tone light but there's an undercurrent of something else. It’s hard to tell what. “Long time no see.”

“Hi.”

The blond man tumbles into the room, still smacking at Chan. “Damn, no wonder you kept going to that goddamn convenience store. She is cute! Congrats.”

You blink, unsure if you should be offended or flattered. He doesn’t give you time to think, slinging himself onto the chair next to you. “Name’s Soonyoung,” he announces, voice practically vibrating with enthusiasm. “Don’t let Chan’s little ‘I’m too cool for everyone’ act fool you. I’m the fun one.”

You can’t help but feel a slight chill run through you. You know who Kwon Soonyoung is. The Sentinel of the Choi Syndicate is a known entity in the city, a violent predator who has been the thorn in the sides of the Yong and Kim families for months now.

“Soonyoung,” Chan says, voice low, “tone it down.”

Chan comes to stand behind you. You feel the heat of him on your back, a comfort that you lean into instinctually. Tentatively, he sets a hand on your shoulder, squeezing. Soonyoung’s stormy eyes lock on to the action and he grins, sharp.

“Sure, Chan,” Soonyoung gives him a cheeky look. “Just making sure she knows what she’s dealing with. Don’t worry, I’m mostly harmless.”

“Mostly harmless?” you ask, knowing this is someone who’s not mostly harmless at all.

“Mostly. You’d be fine. Probably. My girlfriend said you’re normal.” He takes the mug of coffee that Angel offers. He notes your confusion and clarifies, “You met her at the convenience store. That creamsicle gum, by the way? Fucking excellent. Do you have any more?”

Ah. This man belongs to Baby. You cannot imagine how. She seemed refined, regal, like someone who comes from a long line of divinity. This man is brutal, rough around the edges, a storm of blood and steel.

“Soonyoung,” Chan sighs, exasperated.

It’s late morning by the time you all move to the living room and settle, the sun filtering lazily through the wide windows of Chan’s living room. The tropical trees outside cast dappled shadows across the floor, branches swaying gentle in the breeze.

You’re curled up into one end of the long, sun-warmed couch, your knees tucked under you, a blanket draped over your shoulders. A mug of tea - made by Angel - rests in your hands, warm and comforting.

You don’t say much. You don’t need to. The others do all of the talking for you. Not that they talk over you or around you - they talk at you plenty, keeping you in the loop and trying to catch you up to speed on their world.

Across from you, they move with the ease of people who’ve known each other their whole lives. Soonyoung is sprawled across the rug like a lion in the sun, legs stretched out, gesturing wildly as he recounts something that makes Angel snort. She’s perched on the arm of the chair Jeonghan’s taken, leaning over to flick Soonyoung on the head when he gets too dramatic. It only makes him louder, more animated, like being the center of attention feeds something inside him.

Jeonghan, of course, is the calm in the chaos. Quietly smug, lazily amused, his eyes half-lidded as he listens. He’s more relaxed now, a layer of him melting. There is still something hard, there, an exterior you don’t understand. But you watch the way his affection shines through when he tilts his head and listens to Angel talk. At some point, you realized they’re adopted siblings. Once you notice, you cannot help but see the synchronicities in their movements and habits.

And Chan - he’s warmer too. He sits next to you, legs pressed against yours in a way that is overwhelming and distracting. His arms are crossed loosely over his chest, a half-smile on his face. This is the Chan you know from the convenience store.

You realize that your Chan is the same as their Chan. That this unpolished, open version that the people who he’s known his entire life is the same version of him that he gifted you. Even if it was only for fifteen minutes a week, between fluorescent lights and discount candy, he gave you this version of himself, freely, quietly, without expectation.

The thought drives you mad. Makes the room spin with possibilities. If that Chan was real, and if he looked at you then the way he’s looking now-

He is looking at you now. His gaze has drifted, as if drawn to you by an unknown power. It catches and it holds, his eyes never leaving yours. Everything recedes to a distant hum, the chaos of laugher, the quiet brush of leaves against the window - it’s all eclipsed by the weight of Chan’s eyes on yours.

His smile softens and you melt.

Chan doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. His gaze dips briefly to your hands curled around your mug, then flicks back up to your face, almost shyly. It’s absurd, the way your heartbeat reacts. How quickly it speeds up.

When he meets your eyes again, there’s a question there. He straightens a little, uncrossing his arms like he might reach for you, like he wants to press you even closer to him and-

Jeonghan’s voice breaks the moment. “I have socialized enough.”

When you turn to look at Jeonghan, his gaze is pinned on you, a lazy smile spreading across his face. He’s read the moment, sees whatever is brewing on your corner of the couch. Soonyoung complains, but Jeonghan’s kicks at him playfully as he stands.

“Take me home, children.”

Angel unpeels herself from the arm of the chair like a cat, eyes flashing as she winks at you. Perhaps she noticed, too. “Bye, Cherry.”

Soonyoung gets to his feet and pouts. “Bye.”

The door clicks shut with the soft finality of departure. Now, silence. Chan hasn’t moved. The air is thick with something unspoken, something that’s been humming between you for days - no, longer. For weeks. In stolen fifteen minute increments.

He leans a little toward you, eyes half-lidded, dropping down to gaze at your mouth. He stares down at you like he’s memorizing you. Like he’s spent every spare moment these past few days trying to keep his hands to himself and is now dangerously close to giving in.

Your heart thuds.

“Chan,” you murmur, not really sure if you’re asking a question or making a statement.

That’s all it takes. Your voice. His name. He moves.

One moment there’s space between you, and the next his hands are cupping your face, and his mouth is crashing into yours like he’s breaking through the surface of water he’s been drowning beneath. It’s not tentative, not careful. It’s raw, heated, desperate. Like he’s been holding this back for far too long and the dam has finally, finally broken.

You gasp into him, the sound swallowed by his lips, by the way his fingers tighten like he’s scared you’ll pull away. But you don’t. You can’t. Your hands rise of their own accord, curling into the fabric of his shirt, grounding yourself in him, anchoring yourself to the moment.

He pulls back just enough to breathe, his forehead resting against yours, your breaths tangling. His eyes are wild, pupils blown wide.

“I can’t,” he pants, voice ragged. “I can’t do this if you don’t want this… whatever we exist in. You asked me if my life was always like this. I was honest: it is and it isn’t. You’ll never be entirely safe if you’re with me, but I will do anything to make it so.”

“I feel safe. Even at that stupid party. You made me feel safe.”

“I’m serious,” he whispers. “I know we haven’t talked about it all or what happened or what comes next. But I can’t be half in, half out with you.”

You don’t respond right away. Your hand finds his, lacing your fingers together, grounding him. Grounding yourself. “I’m good right here.”

He makes a sound, somewhere stuck between relief and desperation. His lips find yours again, softer this time, needy.

Chan presses into you, pinning you against the arm of the couch. Your arms loop around his neck, pulling him in tighter. His mouth is hungry and warm, tongue brushing against yours as he drinks you in. It’s different now. Still tender, but deeper. Slower. Lingering. Like he’s learning the shape of your mouth, committing the taste of you to memory. His hands slide down, framing your waist like you’re fragile, like he’s still giving you the chance to stop him.

Instead, you curl your fingers into the collar of his shirt, pulling him down with you as you shift backward, sinking into the cushions. He follows, a soft groan escaping him when your hips press up, a whisper of friction that ignites something low and molten between you.

“Bedroom,” he rasps against your neck, kissing a path just under your jaw. “Not here. Not the couch.”

You nod, breathless, letting him pull you up to your feet. His hands are secure and careful, his mouth returning to yours even before you take a single step. The walk to his bedroom is a blue, a mess of heated kisses and tangled feet. By the time he nudges the door open and manages to get you onto his bed, you’re already trembling with need for him.

He pauses once, hovering above you in the amber light of his room, his chest rising and falling as he pants.

“You sure?” His voice is rough.

You reach up, threading your fingers through his hair. “Come here.”

His mouth is on yours again, hungry now, unrestrained. Clothes are pulled away in slow, dragging touches, and brushing over skin and leaving goosebumps in their wake, despite the warmth of his palms. Your eyes alight on the ink on his arms, fingers tracing delicately. There’s a mountain range covering the circumference of his forearm, all black ink and white highlights.

“Pretty.”

“Steadfast is the mountain,” he answers. It sounds practiced. A mantra.

He straightens, standing at the foot of the bed, lit only by the low lamp in the corner of the room. The shadows fall just right across his cheekbones, but it’s the smile on his face that steals your breath. That crooked, boyish grin you find so fucking charming.

Without a word, he reaches forward and grabs your ankle, pulling you toward him with one smooth tug. You yelp, half-laughing, but he just raises a brow, clearly pleased with himself as your legs dangle a little off the bed. His fingers curl around your ankle, and he brings it to rest on his shoulder, pressing a kiss there, light, deliberate. The heat of his mouth lingers longer than it should.

“So pretty,” he murmurs.

His mouth starts moving again, this time lower. A trail of kisses down your calf, his lips brushing each inch with slow reverence, only interrupted by a sudden, playful nip to the meat of your leg. It makes your leg twitch. Makes your stomach flip.

You bit your lip, watching him with heavy-lidded eyes. His mouth leaves fire in its path, makes you tremble. It feels good, his breath skating across your skin, his touch reverant, like you’re something to be cherished.

Chan sinks to his knees at the edge of the bed, settling between your legs like he belongs there. The carpet muffles the sound of him shifting forward as he slides your leg over his shoulder, resting your calf against his back. When you prop yourself up on your elbows to look at him, your breath catches.

Gone is the playful boy from the convenience store. In his place is pure hunger. Adoration. Focus.

His palms slide along the curves of your things, slow and meticulous, like he’s memorizing the shape of you. His thumbs draw tiny circles near your knees, then move inward, kneading softly, coaxing you open. His hands feel too good, making your eyelids flutter.

You can’t help the sigh that escapes you. “Feels good.”

He hums in response but says nothing else. Instead, he dips his head down and kisses your thigh, then the other, then the space between, mouthing over your already damp underwear. You curse, head falling back heavily as Chan’s tongue laves over the fabric, soaking it with a mix of spit and your arousal.

Hooking his fingers in the sides of your underwear, he pulls them slowly down. He tosses them somewhere behind him and presses your legs apart, hands firm, eyes dropping to take in the sight of you, wet, aching and already trembling for him. He groans under this breath.

“Fuck.”

You bite your lip. Your heart’s hammering. The room pulses with tension.

And then he leans forward, and his tongue meets you, slow and deliberate. The first stroke is long, flat, dragging through your folds like he’s savoring you. You moan softly, your fingers fisting the sheets. He doesn’t stop, tongue exploring, teasing, avoiding your clit just enough to make you whimper.

“Chan,” you whimper, voice no louder than a whisper.

“Good girl,” he mutters, giving your cunt a long lick. “Say my name just like that.”

You do. He groans, diving back in, tongue circling your clit now, the pressure just right. Every slow, slick stroke sends heat coiling in your stomach. You can’t think. Can’t breathe. All you can do is feel.

His warm hands ground you, one gripping your thigh, the other stroking slow, soothing patterns into your hip. It’s overwhelming. It’s perfect. You’re melting and coming undone in his hands, and he’s barely started.

A breathy whine leaves your mouth when Chan starts to eat you out properly. You drop down to the bed, unable to keep yourself propped up. A hand shoots to his hair, tangling your fingers in the silky threads as you tug. He grunts in appreciation, his tongue rolling up and down your slick pussy.

When he fastens his mouth on your cunt and gives a gentle suck, you nearly die. It feels so good, your thighs shaking around his thread. He hums, satisfied, tongue prodding your entrance teasingly before dragging up to circle your clit lazily.

“Tastes so good,” he mutters, more to himself than you. He lets a glob of spit drip onto your clit, his tongue chasing it. “Fuck.”

“Shit,” you squeak, feeling your orgasm loom closer. “I’m gonna- fuck.”

“Good.”

He buries his face in deeper, picking up pace. You drip into his mouth and he swallows it down, not shy about the way his mouth sucks at you, loud, wet, lewd. You’re shaking underneath him, barely able to breathe, his tongue sliding back and forth over your throbbing clit.

Chan dips his head low, suctioning his mouth to you, sucking harshly from entrance to clit. It sends you slamming into your orgasm, thighs twitching around his head, body shaking, back spasming. He continues to mouth at you, tongue circling your entrance, catching every drop of you.

When he’s done, he presses hot, open-mouthed kisses on your inner thighs, marking you with spit and cum. You don’t care, and you definitely don’t care when he hovers back over you, mouth shining in the orange light with your arousal.

Lifting your head, you crash your mouth into his, tasting yourself on his tongue, tangy and heady. He groans, letting you consume him as the two of you shuffle up the bed. His skin hot against yours, stomach jumping underneath your touch as your nails scrape down his front to press firmly against his sweatpants.

Chan lets out a needy moan. You grin, wicked and spurred by the sound. You squeeze him through the fabric, reducing him to a whining mess, his head dropping down to your shoulder as he pants, letting you give him the barest amount of friction.

His hips twitch into your hand, little jerks of motion as your hand shocks his system. You love the way sounds for you, love how he sounds throaty, voice broken, mouth desperate where he plants kisses on your neck.

“Let me taste you,” you murmur, pulling at the band of his sweatpants. “Please.”

Chan peels off of you and shuffles up the bed. You blink at him, stars in your eyes, watching with swollen lips and your mouth parted as he knees next to you. He tucks his thumbs into the waistband of his sweats and peels them down, revealing his thick, heavy cock. It bobs, dark tip swollen and beading with precum.

Your mouth waters. You remain laying on the bed, batting your eyelashes at him as you reach for him. He’s hard in your hand, warm to the touch. He pants heavily as you stroke his velvety shaft, his head falling back a little, throat exposed, eyes fluttering shut.

Chan is beautiful like this, on his knees, hands fisted against his thigh as your hand pumps him leisurely. Your hand rounds the top of his cock, thumb brushing across the sensitive tip, smearing his precum down his shaft. Then you’re rolling on your side, guiding him toward your mouth and he shifts, shuffling to accommodate the space.

“Fuck,” he hisses, air slicing between his teeth.

Your lips close around Chan, the familiar weight of him settling on your tongue. You trace the underside of his shaft, slow and deliberate, feeling the warmth of his skin. His breath hitches, a quiet tremor running through him as you draw him in, your movements steady, unhurried.

You pull back, a thin thread of saliva glinting briefly before it snaps. Lying back, you meet his gaze and murmur, “Use my mouth.”

“You’re gonna kill me,” he heaves.

Still, he complies. He shifts closer, one hand steadying himself as he looks down at you, eyes dark with want. You part your lips, tongue extended, an open invitation. He shakes his head, almost disbelieving, and brushes the tip of himself against your tongue.

You give him a single, wet lick and he’s cursing again, laughing at the way you make him fall apart. This time, he sinks into your mouth carefully. You’re mindful of your teeth, suctioning your cheeks as he slides

in. It’s a challenge for him, every inch making his cock twitch.

His free hand drifts downward, fingers grazing your thigh before slipping between your legs. He groans at the wet mess he finds there, fingers slipping against your clit. You hum around him, hips twitching as you spark with pleasure. The dual sensation, his slow thrusts in your mouth, his fingers working your cunt, sets your nerves alight, a soft moan vibrating against him as he presses deeper into both your mouth.

Chan drags his fingers down, pressing them to your entrance. You nod, mouth full of cock, desperate for his fingers.

“Want my fingers?” You hum, looking up at him with a watery lash line. “Good fuckin’ girl.”

His fingers grow more deliberate, parting you with a gentle insistence, exploring your slick heat. He curls them just right, finding that spot that makes your hips buck involuntarily. Your muffled gasp around him only spurs him on, his touch steady but relentless.

Each stroke is precise, his thumb brushing against your clit in tandem, building a rhythm that matches the slow rock of his hips. Your body tenses, thighs trembling as he pushes you closer to the edge, his fingers slick and unyielding, drawing out every shudder and pulse while you struggle to keep your focus on the weight of him in your mouth.

Chan pulls out of your mouth. You protest but he shuffles down the bed and hushes you with a kiss. “I’m not cumming in your mouth.” You pout and he laughs, fingers working your cunt. “Think you can take me?”

“Please.”

He surprises you by laying next to you, reaching over and grabbing you and rolling you on him. Your knees settle on either side of his waist, your chest pressed against his. He grins down at you, hands skimming down your sides to your waist where he squeezes before continuing to your ass, dragging his nails across your skin.

“Don’t tease me,” you whine, rolling your pussy against his wet shaft.

“You don’t tease me!”

“No fun.”

Reaching between you, Chan strokes himself, spreading slick down his shaft. You lift your hips just a little, letting him press his tip against your entrance before you sink down on him slowly. You moan in tandem, his cock stretching you to the fullest. Inch by inch, you take him, until he’s fully sheathed, your body flush against his, breaths ragged.

The fullness is overwhelming, Chan buried deep, your chest pressed to his. For a moment, you stay still, breaths intertwining, lips brushing but not quite kissing. It’s raw, close, the heat of him grounding you.

His hands find your thighs, gripping firmly as he begins to move you, lifting you along his length before pulling you back down. His hips rise to meet you, a steady rhythm that sends sparks through your core. You gasp, a shiver racing through you, and you match his pace, fingers curling into the hair at the base of his neck. Your knees dig into the mattress, giving you leverage to rock against him, each motion drawing a soft groan from his lips.

Chan’s thrusts deepen, deliberate, each one stoking the heat coiling low in your belly. You lean forward, lips grazing his jaw, his pulse thrumming beneath your touch. His grip tightens, one hand sliding to your hip, guiding you faster, harder.

“Fuck,” he murmurs, voice strained. “Just like that.”

His words send a jolt through you, your walls clenching around him, earning a low growl. You’re close too, the pressure building with every thrust, every brush of his cock against that perfect spot inside you.

A hand slips between you, fingers finding your clit, circling with just the right pressure. Your hips stutter, a whine escaping as the sensation pushes you to the edge. You gasp, digging your nails into the back of his neck. He doesn’t let up, his thrusts relentless, jostling you, fingers working you until your vision blurs.

It hits you first, a wave crashing over you as you tighten around him, coming undone. Your moans are broken, hips jerking as you ride your high, thighs burning, trembling against him. The way you throb around him sends him over the edge. With a choked groan, he thrusts deep a final time, spilling inside you, heels digging into the mattress.

You remain tangled limbs, you on his chest, both of you panting and slick with sweat. His arms wrap around you, loose but warm. As your heartbeats slow together, his hand begins to trace patterns up and down your spine.

After a while, Chan shifts beneath you. He leans back, looking at you. You smile, resting your chin on his chest. You’re so close you can count each one of his silk eyelashes.

“So… you’re staying, yeah?” His voice is small when he asks. Hesitant. “I don’t mean just until you’re feeling better. I mean that I want you here. With me. We can figure out what’s next. I just…”

“I’ll stay,” you whisper. Then grin, quoting Romeo and Juliet when you murmur, “For parting is such sweet sorrow.”

That gets a grin out of him. “I have lots of books for you to read.”

“I’ve noticed. You have… more books than I thought possible.”

“They’re yours. Anything of mine belongs to you.”

Your hand slides up his chest, resting over his beating heart. “I just need this.”

“You have that. You’ve had that since the first night I walked into that store and you recommended cherry sours.” He pauses. “You know that store is not remotely on my way home, right?”

“What?”

He grins. “I go out of my way every week to go there. Just to see you. It made me happy.”

Your heart thrums in time with his. “Me too.”

“Thank you,” he murmurs as you rest your face in his neck, snuggling closer. “For offering those cherry sours that night. For staying.”

You press a kiss to his collarbone, unable to articulate just how thankful you are for him, despite everything.

Angel stands in front of you, her arms crossed as she watches you with an intensity that makes you want to run. Her arms are corded muscle, winding with black ink. She has an image of an angel falling down her forearm, the feathers drifting upward toward a starry sky. Most members of the Syndicate are tattooed, Chan included.

Your eyes drift over to him, drinking him in. He’s squaring off with Soonyoung a few mats over, sweating through his tank top, arms up. His tattoos flex as he throws a jab, glistening under the neon lights and sweat.

“Come on,” Angel instructs, tapping her foot impatiently. “Eyes here, not on your sweaty rat of a boyfriend.”

You shift awkwardly. “I don’t know how I am ever going to be able to throw a punch like that. You make it look easy.”

“I’ve been hitting people since I was ten. I punched the Tower in the stomach when we were kids once.” Your eyes go round and she grins, all teeth. “Watch me.”

She changes her stance, twisting her arm as she slowly goes through the motion of an exaggerated jab. “Always follow through. You need to punch through something, not at it.”

You try to replicate the movement. The move is clumsy and Angel winces. “Try again.”

Before you can try again, a loud thud echoes through the gym. You glance over to see Soonyoung in the background, pinning Chan down to the mat. Chan is stomach down - you have no idea how that happened - growling and trying to throw Soonyoung off of him.

Soonyoung is grinning, clearly enjoying every moment of it. “Nice try, Chariot.”

“A bit of advice.” Angel’s voice brings you back to the present. “Don’t be stupid like your boyfriend and challenge the Sentinel every morning. He gets his ass beat most days.” She gestures to your hands. “Try again. Hit me like you mean it.”

Soonyoung helps Chan to his feet. Claps him on the back. There’s so much love in these walls, even when throwing punches and trading blows. You look at Angel and make a fist, retaking your stance.

Then you throw a punch like you mean it.

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jayblanc · 1 year ago

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Chinese Censorship of the 2023 Hugo Award Nominations

Back before the 2023 Hugo Nominations were conducted, I noted that the Chengdu Worldcon Hugo committee had inserted a worrying clause indicating that local government officials could invalidate nominations for breaching the norms and standards of China. I suspected this would result in arbitrarily applied censorship to control the ballot. I am sad and unsurprised to discover I was correct.

The 2023 Hugo Nomination vote data has been published (https://www.thehugoawards.org/2024/01/2023-nominating-and-final-ballot-statistics-published/), and includes notation where nominations were excluded from the ballot. Those with normal reasons, such as being in the wrong category or not being published in 2022 are identified with their reasons for exclusion. This time there are a number of nominations that are merely marked at "Not eligible".

Here is the list of those nominations, that would otherwise have been placed on the final 2023 Hugo Award Ballot.

Babel - R.F. Kuang - Best Novel: Very likely excluded for referencing student revolution, and the use of language and translation as coercive tools of oppression. Color the World - Congyun "Mu Ming" Hu - Best Novellette : A story about perception of, aid of, and discrimination against disability. Congyun Hu has left China and now lives in New York. Fogong Temple Padoga - Hai Ya - Best Story : Either there is something in the original Chinese that was not translated, there's a taboo subject that elides my reading, or this otherwise innocent looking near future tale of cultural building restoration was written by the wrong person. The Art of Ghost of Tsushima: Dark Horse and Sucker Punch Games - Best Related Work : The video game Ghost of Tsushima was subject to directed social exclusion for it's depiction of the Mongol invasion of Japan. Sandman, Amazon Studios: Best Dramatic Presentation (Long and Short) - A diverse and divergent cast, includes subject matter and social issues that are currently taboo in China. Paul Weimer - Fan Writer: Publicly Critical of holding a Worldcon in China. Xiran Jay Zhao - Astounding Award: Qualifying work "Iron Widow" is reimagined story of Chinese Empress Wu during a fantasy/mechanical alien invasion.

This raises a lot of questions as to if this basically taints the process, and what can be done about it.

#hugo awards #babel #r.f. kuang #color the world #mu ming #congyun hu #fogon temple padoga #hai ya #Ghost of Tshuima #Sandman #neil gaiman #paul weimer #xiran jay zhao #iron widdow #censorship #china #chengdu 2023 #worldcon

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hrtwayne · 3 months ago

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Paper Rings || Alexia Putellas

Pairing: Alexia Putellas x Girlfriend!Reader

Summary: Where sometimes it was necessary to take a break from work before it became too late to fix your relationship.

Note: English is not my first language.

Warning: Mentions of neglect and lots of comfort!

Masterlist | Women's Football Masterlist

IT WAS AROUND 7:15 PM when a light rain began to fall over the city, turning the streets into reflections of the turmoil you and Alexia were experiencing in your relationship. It was the eve of your anniversary, and Alexia was stuck at training camp while you were practically living at the hospital. There had been a promise that nothing and no one would stop the two of you from celebrating the date, but at that point in the relationship, neither of you seemed willing to give in or apologize.

Walking through the well-lit streets of Barcelona, you were wrapped in a faded hoodie and your trusty gray sweatpants. You took in the small details of that part of the city—growing up in a relatively upscale neighborhood, you knew you had the privilege of walking after dark without fear.

It wasn’t the first time you walked through that area. It was probably the third time you'd stopped at that same restaurant, ordering the same dinner you were supposed to share with your girlfriend. You would leave Alexia’s portion on the table and lie in bed with that overwhelming feeling of emptiness you hated to experience.

In that moment, you allowed yourself to take a deep breath and try not to think about Alexia and how the entire situation—marked by neglect—was steering your relationship toward failure. You wanted to forget the chaos surrounding you, how a small fight had become a snowball of problems, and how work had been the final straw.

On the other side of the city, Alexia had just finished filming the last batch of media content for the team. With a tired sigh, she pulled out the phone from the pocket of the sweatpants that belonged to you. The player noticed how that invisible wall between you was becoming more solid by the day—she could count on one hand the nights when you had exchanged more than two words. It hurt to know that everything could fall apart with the snap of a finger.

That night in particular, Alexia was ready to fix things with you. She wasn’t willing to lose the one person who had shown her the best side of life. She quickly said goodbye to the girls from the team and remembered a flower shop she had discovered a few blocks from the apartment she shared with you.

With her hands shoved deep into her jacket pockets, Alexia drove for several minutes.She was anxious enough that it became increasingly clear you might not accept her apology.

The flower shop’s window was filled with colorful flowers, but it was the red tulips that caught her attention. Alexia remembered how you always smiled when receiving flowers, especially tulips.

As she stepped inside, a gentle scent of fresh blooms surrounded her. The store was cozy, with wooden shelves filled with arrangements and vases.

Then she saw the owner, a middle-aged woman with graying hair tied in a bun. The woman was arranging a bouquet of white roses, but when she saw the player, her eyes lit up with recognition.

"Welcome, dear. Can I help you with something?" the woman asked, with a kind smile.

Alexia hesitated for a second, feeling a little exposed under the woman’s perceptive gaze.

"I’d like a bouquet of red tulips, please."

The florist nodded, as if she already knew exactly what Alexia needed.

"Red tulips… a beautiful choice. They symbolize true love, you know?" she said, selecting the most vibrant flowers.

Alexia seemed surprised by the comment.

"I... didn’t know. I just know they’re her favorites."

The woman smiled, as if sharing a great secret.

"Sometimes, the little things matter the most. A bouquet can say far more than words—especially when words are hard to find.

Alexia felt a lump in her throat. It was as if that woman could read her thoughts.

"It’s... complicated. We’re going through a hard time, both of us busy with work. We barely have time for each other."

"Love needs care, just like flowers. If you don’t water them, don’t give them light, they wither. But with a little care and attention, they can bloom again," the woman said as she handed Alexia the bouquet, her eyes full of wisdom. "Don’t let the small things destroy a love like that, dear."

Alexia held the bouquet carefully, feeling the weight of those words.

"Thank you. I... needed to hear that."

"You’re welcome, sweetheart. Just remember—love is like a flower. It needs time, patience, and a little faith."

After paying for the flowers, Alexia left the shop with renewed determination. She knew it wouldn’t be easy to balance a career and a solid relationship, but she was willing to try. The red tulips in her hands were her first commitment.

A soft, almost imperceptible sound echoed through the apartment, like someone had come through the front door without wanting to be noticed. You frowned, thinking your mind was playing tricks on you.

A few seconds later, a tall figure appeared in your field of vision. Alexia stood just a few steps away with a slightly hopeful look and a gentle smile. Your heart skipped a beat when she pulled a bouquet of red tulips from behind her back.

"Hey, love," Alexia said, placing the bouquet in your hands. "I’m sorry it took me this long to realize our relationship was being neglected," she whispered, wiping away a solitary tear that ran down your cheek.

You took a deep breath, trying to compose yourself.

"You brought my favorites," you murmured, locking eyes with her.

Alexia smiled shyly before kissing your forehead, making you sigh in contentment.

In a matter of seconds, you leaned in, capturing Alexia’s lips in a lingering kiss. It was slow, as if both of you were trying to savor the overwhelming sensation. Alexia buried her hand in your hair, cherishing the softness of your skin and the warmth your body radiated. Her heart felt like it was about to burst.

You wrapped your arms around Alexia’s waist, pulling her closer, eventually making her sit on your lap. Both of you seemed to be lost in the sensation—every sigh, every shiver, every breath. With a reluctant sigh, Alexia pulled away, remembering that you both needed air, and began to scatter kisses across your face and neck.

"I’ll never get tired of kissing you," Alexia admitted, her lips just inches from yours.

#woso imagine #fem reader #woso x reader #alexia x reader #barcelona femeni #woso fanfics #alexia putellas x y/n #alexia putellas x reader #alexia putellas imagine #barcelona women #gxg #imagine

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sesbianlexicon · 6 months ago

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YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL AND NOTHING HURTS (1)

Pairing: Sevika x Alternate Universe!Reader Synopsis: After following a Piltover councillor, the leader of the Firelights, and a furry little man to Hextech's failsafe underground, Sevika finds herself suddenly transported into an alternate universe where Hextech… never existed. In this world, she does not have the burdens of Zaun on her shoulders. Instead, she has you. Contains: Mature language, mentions of death and violence, moments of intense anxiety and panic, kind of ANGST? Kind of? Honestly it gets kind of comedic at one point I swear Word Count: 6173 Note: As much as I love a good smut fic of Sevika, I require angst because her existence is so unfortunate and beautiful and UGH I just want my wife to be HAPPY. I had this in my drafts for like 2 months and I finally finished it. It's kind of all over the place but IDGAF I had a vision and RAN with it. Enjoy my first Sevika fic!

The world cracks, and Sevika cracks with it.

She feels her mind splinter, scattering like shards of glass in every direction. It’s followed by an odd, ineffable sensation that mimics pain, one that exists out of time. It’s as if she’s just been hit, is being hit, and has been enduring the same relentless blow for years, all at the same time.

Sevika stifles a groan and presses a hand to her temple, trying to focus on her vision that is flooded with bright, blinding light. Her attempts to open her eyes only make it worse— shapes and colors in front of her seem to flare and split, as the pain sharpens at the back of her head. And then, the tension snaps. The world slams into focus with a flash. As if nothing ever happened.

Sevika gasps.

Her body weakly rocks back and forth as she struggles to steady her ragged, uneven breaths. Reality slowly returns to her perception. The sounds of glasses clinking and the hum of human conversation rushes back to her ears, and potent, malty smells fill her nose.

She realizes she is sitting down, her legs pressed against the edge of a circular table. She doesn’t remember sitting down. Where the fuck is she?

Sevika’s eyes flicker around her surroundings, taking in the lively atmosphere.

She’s at a bar. No, she is at the bar. She’s at The Last Drop.

Except it’s not The Last Drop, because there’s no way it is. The layout is similar, with the multiple round tables and the stools surrounding it, the familiar red wooden walls, and the underlying scent of alcohol in the air— but that’s where the resemblance ends. The rest is completely different. The bar is alive with warmth and health, filled with people laughing and talking and not shooting shimmer down their veins. Everyone looks… Cheerful. Friendly. Happy.

Sevika’s eyes travel to the ceiling above, made of sleek glass panels, framed by twisting steel designs in ornate patterns. Sunlight pours through the transparent roof, providing a warm, brilliant light for the bar. The sky is bright. The air is crisp. The people are breathing.

This cannot be The Last Drop.

Sevika sweeps the room again, confusion overwhelming her. She can’t seem to get her thoughts straight— she searches the bar, grasping for something familiar. She doesn’t understand who these people are— until she lands on a figure standing behind the bar counter, mixing drinks and chatting with a customer. She freezes.

Vander.

The sight of him is enough to knock the air out of her lungs. It’s him, unmistakably– broad-shouldered and wrinkled, filled with the gentle authority she gave up on years ago. She feels her body pulse as she blinks rapidly, wishing for the vision to disappear. But he’s still there, with his greying hair tied in a man-bun, laughing earnestly as he hands out two fizzing blue drinks to the customer.

The sight of Vander, standing there, alive and whole, sends Sevika into a spiral— she can’t fucking focus. She can’t breathe, can’t think.

Her body sinks, and she slams her hands on the table in front of her to ground her, hard enough to rattle the surface. The impact shakes through her, her palms burning with the force of it.

And she feels it. She feels it. Both sides. Sevika looks down at her body. It’s still her own, she’s certain, and yet—

Her left arm.

Flesh. Veins. Fingers. Bones and all.

For a long moment she just stares at the shape of her limb, her mind coming to a blank. She slowly flexes her fingers experimentally, watching them open and close with shaky precision. She clenches them and feels the crease of her flesh, the pressure on her joints, and her nails digging into the soft curve of her hand. She unfolds it, sunlight reflecting on a gold band circling her ring finger.

Her heart stutters.

She turns her hand over, palm to sky, and with her right hand she traces the unbroken, flawless skin where there should have been cold metal. Something catches in her throat.

“What the fuck,” she chokes.

What kind of sick joke is this?

Panicking, she pushes herself up from her seat, the stool scraping loudly against the floor. The sound starts to repeat in her head, ringing loudly as her head spins. She closes her eyes to stabilize herself.

This is not happening. No, this is not happening. This is—

“Sevika?”

She snaps towards the voice.

And she sees you— you’re the customer from the counter, the one that was talking to the very well and alive Vander.

She looks at you up and down. You’re wearing a fitted, v-necked green vest over a cream blouse. High-waisted trousers tucked into your laced boots, with a belt that has trinkets and whatnots tied to a small metal loop. Brass accents glint at your cuffs, shining along with the two drinks in your hand. Sevika’s eyes linger on the golden band that glints in your ring finger.

You're younger than her— late-twenties at most, with a soft face and lively eyes that glow in the sunlight. You’re shorter, too, almost comically so compared to her towering frame. You don’t have a fighter’s build, nor the hard edge of someone who’s been through hell. Usually, someone like you would carry at least a small shiv for protection in a place like this, but you lack in defence, staring up at Sevika with such a pretty smile.

Who are you?

“Are… you okay?” You ask, stepping closer.

For a long moment, she doesn’t respond. Her jaw tightens as she fights the instinct to start throwing things. She just stares at you—confusion and disbelief battling for a position in her expression. There’s no way she knows you. There’s no way you know her. There’s no way someone who is as pleasing to the eyes as you would beam at her in such a darling way, talking to her as if you’re… concerned.

Who the fuck are you?

“I got us two of Vander’s specials,” You say, as if to remind Sevika of your obvious errand. You shake the glasses, making the ice in the colorful liquid clink with each other. “Honestly, he could charge double for these and I’d still call it a bargain.”

Sevika’s chest beats faster and faster, her breath coming and going in short rapid fires as her gaze flickers from you to Vander, still standing behind the bar. Her head starts to ring again, the pain returning, like aftershocks rattling through her head. She staggers back, holding her head.

“Sevika?” Your voice echoes into her ears. “You’re scaring me.”

Sevika shuts her eyes tightly and lets out a shaky sigh. Confusion and aches etch in her mind as she stumbles through her memories. Why is she here? Shouldn’t she be… what was she doing before this? She was… she was following the Piltie motherfuckers and that Firelight, wasn’t she? She remembers getting to the underground base where she saw the Hexcore, and then, and then—

The last thing Sevika expects is warmth.

She feels your hand against her shoulder. The drinks have been abandoned on the table, your thumb rubbing the fabric of her leather jacket. There’s softness in your eyes, looking at her with an expression she hasn’t seen in a while. She pauses at the unfamiliarity of the light touch. It’s gentle, almost too gentle, as if it is meant for someone fragile.

Sevika is the furthest thing from fragile.

And yet, here you are.

She jerks away from your touch, and you flinch back at her sudden reaction. Your brows furrow as you retract your hand, studying Sevika’s disoriented, almost horrified expression. You haven’t seen her like this— well, ever.

Although she doesn’t miss the way her pain has stopped, she feels uncomfortable at your contact, which seems to be a complete shock to you. She watches hurt ripple across your face, your fingers gripping each other, as if to hold yourself back.

“Sev…” You start, but you keep your hands to yourself.

Sevika steps back, not enjoying the tenderness in your voice. It’s cautious and slow, as if she’s some delicate thing that might rupture at the wrong word. She’s unsure of what to do, what to say— she’s always so sure.

Sevika is not someone to walk away from her problems. She’s never been one to shy away from a fight. So she surprises herself by walking away from you. She practically stumbles as her body moves instinctively, carrying her towards the door. She knows exactly where it is and it only confirms the distorted truth— this really is The Last Drop.

She shoves the door open and steps outside. She hears your voice call out to her, but the heavy panel slams behind her, pushing her onto the street— only to see her world turned upside down.

And the thing is, Sevika has pictured this before. She’s seen this image through her closed eyes, in dreams that replay over and over at night. The scenery of Zaun’s streets bustling with people and kids— kids running and jumping around. The neon-colored chaos and violence she’s grown accustomed to are nowhere to be found— and in its place are plants, lush and spreading, and fountains bubbling with clear, unsoiled water. The once cracked sidewalks, the filth-stained ground, are now scrubbed and tiled— with flowers that bloom in the corners of the buildings.

Sevika has lived her whole life for this world.

She lingers by the door in a haze until a person comes up to ask her, politely, to step aside so others can enter the bar. She barely makes out what he says but moves anyway, slowly stepping forward into the sunlight. It stings against her smooth skin and she goes rigid. The warmth is foreign as she becomes aware of how she is breathing— in, out, in, out— without feeling like her lungs are being stuffed with fumes.

She passes by dialogues of curiosity and affection— people chatting softly, people responding with laughter— followed by excited clicks of heels and footsteps on the pavement. It’s so lively yet so peaceful, that she can actually hear things through the air— birds chirping from the sky, winds rustling through the leaves, and faint, upbeat strumming of strings.

Sevika turns towards the song, finding the jolly voice somewhat familiar. She follows the sounds of the stringed instrument, finding her way to a small crowd. She peeks through the standing audience to see children seated around to listen to the rustic music, all their attention fixed on the performer. Standing in front of them, singing with unrestrained joy, is a furry little creature.

And Sevika remembers.

Without a second thought, she marches right up to him, ignoring the gasps and shouts of the audience.

“You,” She barks, standing right in front of the startled Yordle. “Where am I?”

The yellow creature stops playing with a startled jump and clutches his banjo. He lifts his fluffy head and looks up at the heckler in offended confusion.

“You know what I’m talking about. You were there!” Sevika snatches the banjo from his hand.

“Mercy me!” The furball shrieks, his green eyes darting between her and the instrument. “I haven’t an ounce of what you’re talking about, young lady!”

Sevika’s grip tightens. “With Hextech. The—” She falters. She doesn’t even know exactly what it was. “The underground. I was there.”

The Yordle’s face changes in an instant at the mention of Hextech. His well-groomed mustache twitches as his eyes widen in horror. A curious horror, though horror nonetheless. He shakes his head as if to make sense of her words.

“Oh, dear,” He nervously mutters under his breath. “You mean to tell me that you have also crossed timelines?”

Sevika blinks. “What?”

The Yordle looks past Sevika, and she glances back with him, remembering that they still have an audience. Usually people scram at the smallest sight of violence— but the people and children have remained in their places, confusion etched on their faces.

The furball clears his throat, his posture straightening before snatching the banjo back from Sevika with a swipe. “Well, folks, the show is over for today, but I will be back tomorrow with a better performance. Don’t worry!”

His cheery demeanor seems to ease a couple members of the audience as they shuffle away, their chatter rising with some frowns towards Sevika. Once the last couple children wander off, the furry creature turns to Sevika, lowering his voice.

“You must follow me.”

“I must say, your presence is rather unorthodox.”

Sevika scoffs, her boots echoing against the metal floor as she follows Heimerdinger through Jinx’s hideout. It’s odd to see the place so… clean. No more scattered blueprints or half-built bombs littering the ground. And the last time she saw it, there were glowing doodles everywhere thanks to Jinx’s newest recruit.

Though it’s not completely organized— tools scattered across the table, books open and stacked in dangerous, tipping ways, and multiple candles left unattended, letting the wax drip on loose papers. Some things can’t be changed.

Heimerdinger hops through the workshop towards a familiar figure hunched over a workbench, his concentration on carving something on a small stone-like item. His braided white hair is tied back into a ponytail, which sways as he leans closer to inspect his work. The scratch of the carving tool pauses when he hears Heimerdinger’s presence, turning towards him as he wipes the sweat off of his forehead.

“Professor, I—” The boy pauses, his eyes snapping to Sevika. His initial shock quickly morphs into anger, dropping his work on the table. “What is she doing here?”

“Well, it turns out Miss Sevika here arrived with us at the Hextech’s failsafe underground.”

Heimerdinger hops over to the blackboard, grabbing a piece of chalk and scrawling something on the surface. “The anomaly of Hextech has scattered us from our proverbial reality— and since you were in close proximity, you were caught in the ripple effect.”

Heimerdinger turns to see his pupil and Sevika glaring in silence. “...It seems the two of you are familiar with each other.”

“Oh, we’ve met,” Ekko spits, getting up to stand his ground. “You followed us? Even after Silco’s death, you’re doing his dirty work.”

“I followed you because if the Piltover council and the Firelights are mixed up in something, Zaun needs to know. You’re not the only one fighting for freedom.”

“Freedom?” Ekko walks right up to Sevika, his gaze unwavering right in front of her face. “You think what Silco did was freedom? Peddling shimmer, rotting out the Undercity from the inside? Silco’s leadership was control, not liberation. And now that he’s gone, you’re walking around with your leash in your hand.”

“Watch your mouth, boy saviour.” Sevika’s hands clench by her sides. Ekko does not back down. Neither one of them has forgotten the lives they’ve taken from each other.

Heimerdinger clears his throat. “This tension is… unexpected. But let’s focus on the matter at hand, shall we? I do not condone Miss Sevika’s covert actions, but the fact remains that she is here. She may yet provide insights or skills valuable to understanding the anomaly.”

“I doubt that,” Ekko sneers, heading back to his table.

Sevika scans the workshop. Bits of inventions and gadgets fill up the space, and while she doesn’t completely understand all the scribbles and equations on the chalkboard, she understands their goal is to get back home. As her gaze drifts across the cluttered space, her eyes land on a shiny flat piece of metal left on the counter.

She sees herself reflected on the surface and moves closer. Her face catches her off guard— it is undeniably her— although her hair is cut in a bob, shorter than she’s ever had it before. It frames her face which looks a bit younger than she is. Her body is less muscular than before, but it doesn’t seem like she completely skips working out either. Her clothes fit her in a comfortable way that’s far cleaner and more put together than she’s accustomed to. And her left arm. She can’t get used to that at all.

She stares at the reflective surface, inhaling sharply, before moving on to a notebook spread open on the counter— sketches of the abnormal Hexcore cover the pages. Her mind flashes back to the memory of her mind exploding into bits and pieces. She swallows.

“I’m afraid this is a timeline where Hextech was never invented.” Heimerdinger says, noticing Sevika’s darting eyes. “And without a creation so prodigious as the Hexgates… no anomaly.”

“So you’re recreating it.” Sevika closes the notebook. “How long?”

“A couple weeks, at least.” Ekko begrudgingly answers.

“Weeks,” Sevika mutters under her breath. She does not have weeks to waste. She needs to go back— Zaun needs her. Jinx needs her. Isha needs her. What is happening to her original body if she is here? “What can I do to get this done faster?”

“You?” Ekko scoffs. “Unless you know how to punch your way out of this universe, you can wait until we’re done with the machine.”

There is an edge of sarcasm in his words, almost a playful jab, but Sevika can also sense the venom in his tone. He’s clearly dragged down by the weight of the situation, in contrast to the furball’s worry-free attitude.

But he’s right— Sevika doesn’t know much about magic or technology. Most she can do is minor adjustments on her prosthetic arm. All the creating and inventing the machinery stuff, that’s… Jinx’s field. But there must be something she can do— she’s not the one to wait for problems to be solved.

“You think I’m just going to stand here twiddling my thumbs?” Sevika crosses her arms. “I didn’t survive Zaun’s trenches by waiting for miracles.”

“Well,” Ekko breathes, his expression unreadable. “This isn’t Zaun.”

And fuck. Yeah. This isn’t Zaun.

Sevika’s frustration presses heavy on her chest. The usual pulse of urgency thrumming her veins, one that is always telling her to get up, to fight, to survive— seems to fade for a moment, replaced by an unknown stillness. She can’t do anything here. She doesn’t have to. The mere thought of that drives her insane.

Before she can respond, she hears the sound of the door, followed by hurried footsteps and sounds of metal items rattling. A short figure enters, holding two boxes that obscure their face.

“Ekko, I found— woah.” She wobbles a bit as the boxes sways to the side, before she manages to drop the boxes on the floor with a thump. Her vibrant blue hair gives her away.

Jinx.

Sevika falters at the sight of her— healthier than Sevika remembers— her skin glowing, her cheeks plump, her frame no longer as scraggly as before. The annoyingly long braids are nowhere to be seen, replaced by rather cute space-buns with a streak of pink. There’s an innocence to her expression, the eagerness to prove herself completely gone. Instead she looks untethered—freed— from the usual chaos of her mind.

She looks at Sevika with a tilt of her head. Sevika pictures a doe. Soft and curious.

“Sevika?”

“Jinx.”

The name doesn't even suit her anymore. Jinx looks confused, almost a bit hurt at the name and— oh. She smiles in gentle understanding.

“Powder, actually.” She offers. “I guess you’re… different, too.”

Sevika frowns. She turns to Ekko. “She knows?”

“He wasn’t exactly being secretive about it,” Jinx— No, Powder— chuckles, pushing the boxes filled with metal trinkets and parts to a corner. “And I’m smart enough to figure it out. Plus, I just heard about you terrorizing our professor in front of The Last Drop. I knew something was wrong.”

Sevila can’t even imagine a world where her fight with a Piltie by the bar could be considered ‘something wrong.’ And she is. In that world.

“The news has spread already!” Heimerdinger nervously chortles. “I do hope you haven’t scared away my audience for tomorrow’s performance.”

Sevika ignores him, her attention all on Powder.

“So, you’re just helping him with all this?” She waves towards the machinery.

“Well, he’s not going to figure it out himself.” Powder grins at Ekko. He returns a small smile and a tender gaze— Sevika almost wants to laugh. The leader of the Firelights and the Jinx? Absurd. This whole situation is absurd. She needs to get back home.

Ekko notices Sevika’s judgmental stare and his lips curl back to a frown.

“Just stay out of the way. We’re close to cracking this, and the last thing I need is you throwing off my balance.”

Sevika’s mouth opens for a sharp retort— but Heimderdinger quickly interjects, sensing the imminent fight.

"Perhaps, Miss Sevika, it would be wise to allow Ekko to continue his work without further interference. I know this isn’t ideal for you, but for now, patience may be the best course of action."

Her gut twists in frustration. Easy for the Piltover motherfucker who’s lived for hundreds of years to preach about patience. She isn’t built for waiting— waiting never got her anywhere.

“I’m not going to sit around for a machine that might not work.”

“It’ll work,” Ekko bites. “And I don’t need your help here.”

Sevika’s eyes flick between the three of them— Ekko, defiant, Heimderinger, a bit skittish, and Powder, sympathetic. Sevika has nothing else to say. She exhales, loosening her fists, letting the tension slip away.

“You could go home to your wife,” Powder suggests, nodding towards the ring on Sevika’s left hand.

The tension comes back. The word ‘wife’ should mean nothing to her, and yet, the moment it hits the air she pictures you and your stupid little face, wide eyes and slightly parted lips, staring at Sevika with darling concern. As if the words you’ve wanted to say had been stolen from your throat.

It sickens her.

She runs her thumb over the ring on her finger. Its warmth is indistinguishable from her own skin. She remembers the matching ring on you.

“She is not my wife.”

Powder shrugs. “She was really worried about you. Especially after she heard you attacked the professor.”

“I barely touched him,” Sevika huffs. Heimderinger’s mustache twitches.

“If you don’t act normal, she might figure out what’s going on.” Powder grabs a pen and scribbles something on a piece of paper.

Normal is the last word to describe this situation. Normal is the last word to describe your relationship with her. How would she ever act normal here, with you?

“Here.” Powder tosses the paper to Sevika. “That’s your address.”

Sevika crumples it in her hand.

“I am not going to my house.”

Sevika finds herself in front of her house.

She stares at the crumpled piece of paper with her address on it, hesitating by the door. Because it’s not really her house— she almost feels like she’s intruding. But it’s late, and she’s tired, jaded— but she doesn’t want to be at the workshop anymore. And she can’t stand being in the middle of the sanitary, warm version of Zaun. Faces of people she’s buried, people she’s left behind walk around with a smile on their face. It’s nauseating.

Sevika has nowhere else to go.

And she would be lying if she said she didn’t want to see you again. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t know why. She crushes the piece of paper and jams it into her jacket pocket.

She twists the handle and steps into the house. The sense of wrongness only deepens at the sight of the interior. The floors gleam, the furniture is neatly arranged, and the air smells of— food. Good food. Nothing like the usual scent of dust, blood, and grease of her typical home– she barely calls it a home. More of a hideout. She moves deeper into the living room, trying to place the strange layout.

She would have moved to this proper place if she had never left Vander, never lost her arm, and never worked under Silco. It’s a house she feels misplaced in. The kind of house someone who had their shit together would own— who cleaned, who cooked, who cared. The kind of life Sevika doesn’t know how to live.

And then she sees you. Laying on the couch in the living room, reading a book in your nightgown by the candlelight. Although she was expecting it, she is startled at the sight of you, so comfortable, so safe in the middle of the house. She catches herself staring.

You look up from your book. "...Hi."

Sevika blinks. She doesn't reply.

“I thought maybe you were spending the night somewhere else,” You mumble, setting your book down by the side table. You weren’t expecting her to be home today— you thought she wanted to be left alone after whatever she had gone through at Vander’s bar. You push yourself up from the couch.

“Um,” Sevika tries as you walk closer to her. “You’re… here.”

“I mean, I wasn’t going to wait for you in the bar the whole day.” You retort, your tone sharp at first but it soon morphs into regret. You’re confused about her behaviour, and you’re sort of pissed at her for leaving you like that, sure, but you shouldn’t snap at your wife. “Are you… feeling better?”

“I’m fine.” She says a little too quickly.

You don't look convinced, standing right in front of her with furrowed eyebrows.

“Vika, you don’t look fine.”

Sevika stares back at you at the nickname, her stoic expression faltering. She feels nauseous again. She’s unsure how to exist with you in her space— always filled with so much concern, sympathy. It’s… uncomfortable. She feels like a cornered animal, a pathetic prey when she is with you.

“I said I’m fine.”

Her voice comes out in her usual harsh way. Your face twists. And for the first time in her life, she regrets it.

Back in Zaun— the real Zaun— the line between fear and respect had blurred. Everyone feared her, therefore respected her. It was how everyone treated her, how they always acknowledged her presence yet at the same time tried to stay out of her way. The satisfaction of knowing she could control everything that happened in a room was what she was used to.

Somehow, she doesn’t want that kind of control over you. She doesn’t want to make you cower or fear her. The thought that she might be doing exactly that— making you feel small, making you regret being near her— it’s as if her body rejects it. She doesn’t want you to look at her like that.

But just as soon as your face shows that flicker of distress, it suddenly shifts into a look of disbelief.

“Are you on drugs?”

Sevika stares blankly. You have the utmost sincerity in your eyes.

“What?”

“If you’re on some kind of street drug, you can tell me. I won’t be mad.”

Sevika holds back her amusement. As if anger, from someone as small and harmless as you, could scare her into hiding something as common as drugs. As if you could intimidate someone like her. She almost wants to laugh at the height difference between the two of you right now.

“I mean, I heard about the ruckus with Professor Heimerdinger and—” You ramble, your mind trying to justify your wife’s behaviour. “It’s one thing to pick fights after being drunk, maybe, but without a single drop of alcohol? The professor has done so much for Zaun and you respect him a lot. It’s just so unlike you.”

‘You don’t know me,’ Sevika thinks, but she bites back her tongue.

“You’re so… so rigid, and every time I look at you, you look like you’re worried I might uncover some sort of secret.” Your eyes narrow as you grasp at clues to come up with a theory. “And you flinch every time I touch you!”

“I’m not on drugs.” She wishes she were. “I’m just tired.”

You frown. She’s been tired before, and she’s been stressed before. But she’s never been like this. Avoidant. Blurry.

But it doesn’t seem like she wants to talk about it— or she’s willing to confess anything. Maybe she really is just tired. She certainly looks like a completely different person. She looks… sad.

You just sigh. “Do you want me to be worried?”

That is the last thing I want. “No.”

“Okay…” You cross your arms. “Are you hungry?”

Starving. “No.”

The two of you lock eyes, before you step back with a reluctant nod.

“...Okay. Go wash up.”

Sevika buffers at your command, watching you retreat back to your couch. You pick up your book again, although your focus is elsewhere. She knows you’re holding back your questions— and it almost pisses her off. Why are you so careful, so considerate towards her?

It’s not like she’s ever earned that kind of care. Not from anyone. And definitely not from you.

The silence stretches between you, and all she can hear is you flapping the pages as you pretend to read. Sevika would prefer your anger— she could handle anger. She understands anger.

But this patience makes her skin crawl.

Sevika turns sharply and strides towards the hallway.

Your eyes remain fixated on the words of the book, but your ears listen to your wife’s footsteps, which pauses a couple of times before finding the bedroom. There’s the creak of the closet doors, the rustling of clothes, before she finds her way to the bathroom. The hesitancy in her steps are enough to embolden your suspicions— and while you don’t want to push her, your curiosity and concern remains.

As soon as you hear the water running, you spring up, tossing the book on the couch, before making your way toward the bedroom.

Snooping is wrong, you know that— but your worry overwhelms your morality. You see her jacket, carelessly draped over the edge of the table in the room. Sevika never leaves her jacket lying around— she knows you’ll make her hang it up anyways.

Your fingers twitch at your sides. With a glance toward the hallway, you step closer to the table.

Her jacket is heavy in your hands, the worn leather supple and wrinkled. You unfold and dig into the pockets, finding a few coins, a lighter, and—

A piece of paper.

You frown at its state, crumpled, as if someone had been squeezing on it continuously. You unfold it, smooth it out, until you can make out the writing scribbled across the surface.

It’s your home address. Confused, you turn the paper around, but there’s nothing else— just the address of the house you and Sevika have lived in for three years— why would she need this?

You squint at the uneven handwriting— It’s Powder’s. You’d recognize it anywhere. The hurried strokes, the exaggerated loops— you’ve seen her writing many times during the Innovator’s Competition in an index card set beside her wild invention, describing it in great detail.

Did Sevika meet up with Powder after the meltdown at Vander’s bar? But it must have been after all the fuss with Professor Heimerdinger, and someone told you that the two of them left together. So, Sevika and Professor Heimderdinger went to see Powder, who gave her the address to her own home?

You shove the paper back into her jacket, returning it to its original place on the table. You’re missing a huge part of this weird equation— and your confusion remains. Perhaps you’re even more confused than before. You take a deep breath before heading to bed, crawling on the soft mattress. You’ve had a long, off day.

When the sound of water finally stops and Sevika steps out of the bathroom, you’re still in deep thought on the bed, fingers idly playing with the hem of your pajamas. She walks into the bedroom in a loose tank top and sweatpants, the fabric hanging comfortably from her form.

She glances at you, her damp hair clinging to her face, before sitting down on the edge of the bed. You expect her to join you under the covers, to settle into the space you’ve shared countless nights before. But instead, she just stays there, her back to you, her shoulders taut.

“...You okay?”

She exhales sharply, almost like a scoff. “I just need a minute,” She mumbles.

Sevika has been through girls before, at Babette’s— she’s no stranger to how a girl feels by her sides at night. But she’s never had someone so determined to comfort her like this. And knowing her relationship with you, knowing that she’s somehow married to someone like you— it’s different. It’s horrifying.

Somehow you seem to recognize that— and she feels your presence shift towards her from behind, the mattress dipping slightly under your weight. She breathes as she feels your hand move to her shoulder, letting the warmth brush against her like you’re testing the air between you.

Her body stiffens under your touch. You can feel the tension of her defined muscles beneath her skin, as if she’s bracing for something sharp, something brutal— but you keep your hand steady, fingers tracing slow, deliberate patterns on her back.

You worry she might pull away. But then, so quiet you almost miss it, she exhales. It’s small, broken in half, but it’s enough to soothe the suspense. You keep going, outlining the curve of her spine, watching her shiver— and the tightness of her body begins to fade in pieces, bit by bit.

She leans back towards you and you draw closer, hand brushing her nape of her beck. You let the moment of stillness, of uncertainty pass, before she finally turns toward you. Soft. Fractured. Unfamiliar.

She stares at you, searching for something, unsteady, as if she’s not sure what she’ll find. It resembles the look from before, the one from the bar— but you don’t look away. You’re searching too.

When your lips meet, it’s strange— she’s being so gentle. Modest with her ability to love you. Her touch is light, testing— and for a split second, it feels awkward. Almost as if it’s the first time.

But then she moves her hand and brushes against your arm, fingertips barely grazing your skin, and you liquefy— it’s enough to deepen the kiss, slowly, naturally— as she pulls you closer, and the warmth between you grows. Her breaths are uneven, blending with yours as you feel her tongue slip in— and you’re gone. The world narrows until it’s just this moment, just the two of you.

And somehow it’s not urgent nor overwhelming— it’s not the usual excitement she brings in her kisses. Instead, it’s like she’s carefully learning the parts of you, afraid to miss a single detail. Her hands slide up your sides, not rushing, not pushing— just anchoring herself to you, grounding both of you into a comfortable position on the mattress.

When you finally pull back, your foreheads rest together. Her breaths are hot and close against your cheek, and you share the same air, your chest heaving up and down, shallow and quick. The silence lingers, but then you start to laugh and she smiles too.

And everything falls back into place.

She’s yours again.

You’re a fast sleeper, gone just as soon as you hit your head on your pillow. But Sevika lays awake, listening to the unchanging sound of the clock echoing from the living room.

Every time she closes her eyes, she feels it— a certain weight pressing against her chest, filled with thoughts she doesn’t want to entertain. She shifts slightly, careful not to disturb you, her gaze fixated on a certain grainy spot on the ceiling.

There’s an emptiness inside of her. She’s lived her whole life for Zaun. For years, she sacrificed everything for a better life. She always believed that the people deserved a better Zaun. That she deserved a better Zaun. And now that she has it—

She’s not sure she deserves it.

She feels the soft, comfortable blanket around her and grips it tightly.

This could have been her life. This is supposed to be her life.

Sevika feels you shuffle beside her, still asleep, turning to sluggishly hug her large frame. She tenses at first, unable to move, but soon feels your chest against her left arm, pressing in and out on her muscles as she hears the mellow sounds of your breaths. You’re warm. You’re beautiful. She lets your touch engulf her, and closes her eyes.

Sevika does not fall asleep. But as she lies there, with the warmth radiating from your body, she feels herself melting onto the bed, her body relaxing like it has never before. The weight in her chest lightens at the mere presence of you, and the gnawing emptiness inside feels… a little less hollow.

And for once, nothing hurts.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Hey ladies thank you for reading my unedited silly convoluted fic filled with my love towards Sevika. Get ready for part 2 which is angstier. Crying. Also I wrote most of this during final season and almost failed my final. But I will never fail the WLW nation. XOXO BIA <3

Likes, reblogs, and comments would be SO SO appreciated!!!

PART 2: YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL AND EVERYTHING HURTS (COMING SOON)

#arcane fanfic #arcane #arcane s2 #arcane x reader #arcane x you #sevika angst #sevika #sevika arcane #sevika x reader #sevika x you #sevika fanfic #arcane spoilers #wlw #arcane women #arcane angst #angst #fanfic

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theenglishnook · 1 year ago

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The Influence of Language on Thought and Perception

The Influence of Language on Thought and Perception Language, the fundamental tool of human communication, is not merely a medium for expressing thoughts but a profound shaper of cognition. The intricate relationship between language and thought has been a subject of fascination for scholars, linguists, and psychologists. As we delve into this complex interplay, we uncover how the languages we…

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these-godforsaken-halls · 1 year ago

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you know that study with russians and the color blue

something that’s been bugging me all day: how would you teach perspective drawing in a society that existed entirely within, say, a varied-gravity spaceship? so much of how we understand perspective is based on the existence of the horizon and our relationship to it. what if there’s no horizon? vanishing points as a concept depend on having a ground to be parallel or perpendicular to.

#or the two colors blue #depending on the language you speak #constructs informing our supposedly objective perception <3333 #i #love being human

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obeymeshallwedateaddict · 8 months ago

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Hello! May I request Lucifer, Diavolo, and Barbatos with an MC who had a crush on Barbatos, but hides it? Not very well, like you could tell they like him but they want to stay civil just in case Barbatos doesn’t like them back, that kind of thing.

If not that’s completely fine! Thank you!

Hello! Here is your request. I hope you enjoy it.

Summary: Lucifer's, Diavolo's and Barbatos' reactions to MC having a crush on Barbatos

Contains: Fluff

GN! reader

You can find more of my work here: Masterlist

The fantastic tree Vs MC's attraction to butlers

You tried to be composed. Tried was the keyword, but your cheeks warmed whenever Barbatos looked your way, and your pulse sped up when he came close. The others noticed these tell-tale signs, though you hoped you were subtle. The situation could be… a bit embarrassing, after all. What if Barbatos didn’t feel the same way?

Lucifer:

Lucifer wasn’t blind. He had noticed how your gaze lingered a little too long on Barbatos or the way you’d fluster slightly when the butler was around. In classic Lucifer style, he remained outwardly neutral, but deep down, he found it rather amusing. In his mind, he didn’t doubt that Barbatos was aware of it, too. After all, nothing escaped Barbatos's attention.

One day, Lucifer decided to tease you a bit. “You seem a little… off today. Is there something on your mind?” His voice was even, yet there was a glint in his eyes.

Your cheeks colored instantly. “Oh, no! Just… thinking about, uh, some things,” you stammered, averting your eyes.

“Is that so?” Lucifer’s lips curved slightly as he leaned back, looking amused. “I imagine some things can be quite distracting.” He let the words linger just enough to make you glance nervously in Barbatos's direction. Lucifer’s smirk only deepened.

Diavolo:

Diavolo was nothing short of delighted by the entire situation. He’d picked up on your bashful glances early on and found it charming. For him, it was a rare source of entertainment in an otherwise regimented day of royal duties. Diavolo had a soft spot for you, and a little innocent teasing wouldn’t hurt.

One day, as you all gathered for tea, Diavolo nudged you with a knowing grin. “You always seem so polite around Barbatos,” he said warmly. “It’s sweet how you hold him in such high regard.”

Your face turned red as you tried to laugh it off, saying, “Oh, well, Barbatos is… He’s… a remarkable butler.” You fumbled with your words as Diavolo chuckled. “Indeed, he is.”

He looked to Barbatos, hoping his loyal friend might catch on, but Barbatos maintained his usual serene expression. Still, Diavolo was certain Barbatos wasn’t unaware of your little crush.

Barbatos:

Barbatos had indeed noticed. He was too perceptive not to. The subtle hints in your body language, the occasional stammer, or the way your gaze lingered before you quickly looked away—it didn’t take long for him to catch on.

Barbatos respected your desire to stay composed and civil, and he didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. But he couldn’t deny he was somewhat intrigued. He found your earnestness endearing, and perhaps he even felt a hint of warmth himself.

One day, as you were in the kitchen together, you almost dropped a tray when Barbatos leaned in to help you with the teapot. He gave you a gentle smile. “Do be careful. I would hate to see you hurt yourself.”

The way he looked at you made your heart skip a beat, but you tried to nod coolly. “Of course, Barbatos. Thank you.” You barely managed to get the words out.

Barbatos’s calm, kind smile lingered as he took in your flustered expression. He spoke in his soft voice, “It’s always a pleasure working with someone so… attentive.” His words were vague but held a subtle hint that made your cheeks flush even deeper.

Later that day…

Lucifer and Diavolo exchanged a knowing glance. Diavolo chuckled and leaned toward Lucifer. “I have to admit, this situation is more entertaining than I expected.”

Lucifer smirked. “Indeed. Though I suspect Barbatos will handle it with his usual grace.”

Diavolo nodded, watching your attempts to avoid Barbatos’s gaze with growing amusement. “Let’s just say, I think we’ll see some interesting developments very soon.”

---

Barbatos, meanwhile, simply observed you from across the room, an almost imperceptible smile on his face. He had all the time in the world, and he was more than willing to see where this went.

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nothorses · 1 year ago

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I think the thing about it for me is that transmascs have the fundamental right to tell you what our experiences with misogyny and male privilege are, not the other way around.

You don't know what we go through unless we tell you. I don't know what other transmascs go through unless they tell me. Cis women, other trans people, even people with the exact same identities, the exact same life trajectories- none of us know what another person is experiencing or has experienced, let alone how they have interpreted and internalized those experiences, unless they tell us. Even then, we will only ever have access to an imperfect version of that true experience filtered through several layers of language and our own perception & biases.

Does this clash with what feminism says about men's experiences? Yes, absolutely! A lot of (generally mainstream) feminism believes that women Know what men experience better than they themselves do, colored as those experiences are by bias and privilege. And this is a fundamentally isolating, egotistical belief. It cuts us off from each other, it prevents us from connecting, and it shuts down meaningful conversation before it can happen. It says women are pure and perfect, and men are sullied by privilege; that anyone touched by privilege cannot be trusted, and should not trust themselves.

When cis men say they've never experienced privilege, the answer should not be, "you don't know that," it should be vulnerability & curiosity. Why do you think that? I find that hard to believe for these reasons, but I want to know more. I want to co-create understanding with you. Are you curious about me, too? Will you offer me this same kindness? (And if not, they're probably not worth your energy!)

And y'know what, maybe they haven't actually experienced the things you think they have! Maybe the framework you are using is imperfect- maybe it works on a systems analysis level, but it doesn't apply universally. Particularly when we're talking about marginalized men!

This idea that experiencing privilege means you cannot be trusted, ever, to understand that privilege or to know when you have or haven't experienced it? It's so fucking dangerous. Case in point: transfems should be able to talk about the ways in which they might have experienced male privilege without it immediately discrediting everything else they have to say, up to and including about their own identities.

We cannot operate like this. A framework that denies people's self-knowledge will never be capable of liberating anyone.

So yes, actually, some transmascs may experience conditional male privilege at times. But will you, do you believe transmascs when we tell you that we don't?

#transmasc #transandrophobia

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prisvvner · 20 days ago

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✫・゜・ ☆ﾟ. ʜᴀɴᴅʟᴇʙᴀʀꜱ & ʜᴇʟʟꜰɪʀᴇ

─── pairing: biker!ryomensukuna x mechanic!femalereader

─── synopsis: you used to run tokyo’s streets. now you build the monsters that do. but when a rider in black shows up on a hayabusa with eyes like blood and a smirk like a loaded gun—something starts ticking again. something you swore you buried.

─── content: 5.3k words, street racer au, strong language, swearing, mention of hidden trauma, street culture

─── author's note: if you’ve ever felt like your own space could betray you… if you’ve ever been haunted by a smell, a memory, a sound that doesn’t belong—this one's for you.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ masterlist ⊹ ࣪ ˖ part one ⊹ ࣪ ˖ part two ⊹ ࣪ ˖ part three

You don’t just look at the Hayabusa.

You read it. Like a grizzled detective leaning over a blood-streaked crime scene where the echoes of violence still hang heavy in the stale, suffocating air. It’s a map—scratches and bruises scribed in black smoke and the bitter, acrid tang of burnt rubber—a silent manifesto of reckless speed and desperate survival. The matte black paint isn’t just a color; it’s a shroud hiding a wild animal clawed raw and bleeding beneath its cold armor. Every nick, every gouge in the frame is a confession inked in steel, a tattoo burned deep by collisions and near misses, a warning smeared with grease and grit.

The air presses against your skin, thick with the sharp scent of gasoline and the oily residue of a hundred late nights—of lost bets, broken promises, and the kind of desperation only the underground knows. There’s grit in the atmosphere, like dust kicked up by speeding tires and the ghost of burnt clutch plates still lingering in the shadows.

You drop low, chest almost touching the concrete floor, fingertips tracing the front fork with the careful precision of a surgeon hunting for a bullet lodged too deep to be seen. There’s a tremor under your gloves, barely perceptible. A ghost in the machine. A bent axle, coiled like a trap waiting to snap. Bearings grinding thin, whispering their slow death in a language only broken things speak. You don’t deal in maybes. In your world, maybes are the difference between shattered bones and scraped knees bleeding on cold asphalt.

Your fingers curl around the brake lever. It folds beneath your grip like a whispered lie, soft, unreliable, no bite, no fight left in it. The warning is clear as a siren in the dead of night: this bike is done dancing with the devil.

Your eyes flick to the chain—loose, slack, stretched thin beyond salvation and coated in a metallic dust that catches the dim light like rusted ash. One cruel twist of the throttle and the whole damn thing could erupt, chrome shrapnel scattering like broken dreams, pride shattered, blood spilled like ink across cracked concrete.

The garage hums around you, a low mechanical heartbeat beneath the flicker of tired fluorescent tubes that buzz like angry bees. Shadows twitch on peeling paint and cracked tile, crawling like black veins over concrete walls. Somewhere in the background, a radio spits out a static-laced blues riff—slow, mournful, like a ghost drifting through the grime and oil.

“You see everything.”

The voice cuts through the thick haze behind you—low, smooth, like velvet dipped in a blade’s edge. It slides under your skin, raising goosebumps along your spine, sharp and unsettling in its calm.

You don’t turn.

“Yeah. And you’re fucked if you don’t listen.”

A slow, dangerous smirk curls through the darkness in his voice. “Good. I like things dangerous.”

The weight of him settles into the air behind you, dense and dark as a storm cloud pregnant with lightning. Not loud. Not flashy. But heavy, like the eye of the storm, poised to either pass in silence or tear everything apart.

You keep working. Wrench in hand, grease grinding into your nails, sweat tracing dirty rivulets down your temple and into the collar of your jacket. The night stretches out, hours folding into one another as time slips through cracks in the concrete floor like spilled whiskey. Every turn of the wrench peels back another layer of neglect and damage, revealing the raw, brutal heart beneath the scabs of rust and oil.

The sharp bite of metal on metal fills the cramped air, mingling with the acrid scent of burnt oil and the faint tang of ozone, prickling at the back of your throat. Your breath comes steady, measured, because machines don’t plead and don’t lie. They listen better than people do, if you know how to hear them.

You don’t say much. Words are wasted on things with no soul.

Your hands are steady, gloved fingers peeling back the bike’s guts with merciless intent. The rattling clatter of loose screws and nuts hitting the steel bench punctuates the silence, broken only by the dull scrape of your wrench against stubborn bolts. Every exposed surface speaks of violence—cracked piston walls splintered like fractured bone, brittle seals swollen and stretched thin like skin pulled taut over a wound, bolts stripped bare, their heads chewed down to jagged nubs, torque marks scarring the metal like failed promises.

You breathe it all in, every sour note of this machine’s decay, but you don’t curse. There’s no room for anger here. This isn’t just a repair job. It’s a reckoning. A resurrection on the edge of ruin.

“This bike’s begging for one,” you mutter, voice low and rough, half prayer, half threat.

Behind you, the room shifts. He leans in close, and suddenly the stale garage air is tinged with something hotter, sharper—his presence like a flame flickering in the gloom. You feel the heat rolling off him in waves, the faint scrape of his boots against the cracked floor. His breath, heavy and slow, brushes the back of your neck.

“And here I thought you were just a pretty face with a wrench,” his voice is smooth and dangerous, like velvet wrapped around a razor.

You pause, grabbing a rag from the bench, rough and stained with grease and sweat. The fabric catches on a jagged piece of metal as you wipe your hands slow and deliberate, smearing dirt and oil across your skin like battle scars. Then, without turning fully, you flick a sharp glance over your shoulder, eyes cold and steady.

“Flatter me again and I’ll double my rate.”

His grin curls, sharp edges, like broken glass catching the light—all danger and teasing promise.

“Triple if I flirt harder?”

The challenge hangs between you, electric and taut, humming like a live wire about to snap.

“You wouldn’t survive triple.”

The silence that follows is thick, charged, like the moment before a thunderclap. The air snaps tight between you, stretched so thin it vibrates with unspoken warnings and a pulse of something fierce and volatile, waiting to explode.

He shifts beside you, his movement slow and deliberate, stalking the garage like a predator scenting fresh blood. The dim light catches the sharp angles of his face, shadows tracing the edges of eyes that burn with quiet hunger and calculation. His boots scrape lightly against the concrete, a soft rhythm under the hum of flickering fluorescent bulbs. He doesn’t rush, he owns this space now, prowling your territory with casual menace.

His gaze drifts toward your workbench—a cluttered altar of wrenches, sockets, and grease-stained rags. Like a hunter drawn to the scent of prey, he edges closer, fingers twitching as if to touch.

“Didn’t peg you for sentimental,” he mutters, voice low and rough, laced with a dark amusement.

You straighten up, wiping sweat from your brow with the back of your hand. The sticky heat of the garage clings to your skin, mixing with the grit embedded beneath your nails.

“Don’t touch unless you wanna lose a finger,” you warn, voice steady but sharp.

But he’s already found what you thought was hidden. A faded photograph, shoved behind a battered tin of bolts. The edges are worn, curled from years of neglect, but the image inside still burns bright: you, younger, eyes wild with fire, clad in blazing red leathers that scream rebellion and speed. One hand thrown up in a defiant victory, the other clutching a trophy taller than your waist—a symbol of triumph and desperation, like a weapon forged in adrenaline and danger.

He lifts the photo slowly, turning it over in his hands like a rare artifact. “This you?”

Before he can linger too long, you snatch it back with a quick flick of your wrist, sliding it out of sight and back into its dusty hiding place. “Ghost from a past life.”

His smirk tightens, just a flicker in the dim light, less amused now, more calculating.

“You don’t ride anymore.”

Your jaw clenches but your voice stays even. “Never said that.”

“But you don’t race.”

The words hang heavy between you, a silent accusation. You say nothing, letting the quiet fill the space.

He glances back at the Hayabusa, its matte black frame gleaming faintly under the flickering garage light, battle scars mapped across its body like old war wounds. “You miss it?”

You slam the tail section shut with more force than necessary, the metallic clack ringing sharp and final.

“Miss dying for a crowd that forgets your name before the smoke even clears?”

His laugh is low and gravelly, like stones grinding together in some dark cavern. “Guess we share that.”

No questions follow. No explanations. Some ghosts don’t need chasing—they linger, silent and watching, waiting for the right moment to strike.

You jab a thumb toward the wall. “Grab the compressor. Hose too. Blow the carb clean. If you’re gonna loiter, earn your keep.”

He raises a brow, slow and skeptical like he’s testing how far he can push before you snap. But then he moves. Lazy grace, too confident by half. Like he’s used to giving orders, not taking them.

“Bossy,” he says, dragging the hose toward you with one hand. “I like it.”

You don’t look up. “You’d better. I’m not done tearing this girl apart.”

And she needs it. The Hayabusa lies half-dissected on the lift—frame exposed, guts splayed like a crime scene. Oil puddles beneath her like blood from a fresh wound. You’ve got your arm shoulder-deep in the heart of her, coated in carbon and fury.

The hours grind on.

Fluorescents above buzz and flicker like dying fireflies, their strobe-white glow making shadows twitch on the walls. The whole shop hums, tools singing metal songs, sockets clicking, torque wrenches hissing satisfaction. The scent of gasoline, hot rubber, and brake fluid settles into your lungs until it feels like you’re breathing the road.

He helps. Clumsy at first. His fingers are made for breaking things, not fixing them—but he listens. Watches. He picks it up fast. Muscle memory formed in darker trades, maybe, but it transfers.

You show him how to thread the new chain, precise teeth on the sprocket, tension perfect. You show him how not to crush the gasket when it seats—just enough pressure, no more. You guide his hand when it falters at the torque wrench, make him feel the difference between over-tightened and just right.

He doesn’t flinch when you curse, loud, sharp, colorful. Doesn’t blink when you chuck a wrench across the bench after a bolt seizes. Just raises an eyebrow, like you’ve confirmed something he already suspected.

He doesn’t talk much. Just studies you.

Not the way men look when they’re hungry. Not the way they look when they’re sizing you up.

It’s colder than that. Calmer. Like he’s reading you. Trying to find the kill switch.

You catch him staring when you’re hunched over the front brake calipers, sweat beading on your neck, grease smearing your cheekbone. You turn, meet his crimson eyes head-on.

“You gonna tell me your name,” you ask, wiping your hands on a rag, “or should I keep calling you asshole?”

He leans against the lift, thumb idly tracing a long scratch on the tank.

A beat. Then—

“Ryomen Sukuna.”

It’s smooth, like silk pulled over barbed wire. A name he wears like a weapon, not an introduction.

You pause. The name’s unfamiliar. But the weight behind it isn’t. That’s a name you feel more than hear—like it drags history behind it. Something bloody. Something earned.

You grunt, ducking back down. “Alright, Sukuna. Don’t make me regret knowing it.”

Time keeps moving. You both don’t.

The engine finally hums again, deep and dangerous, like a wolf waking up from a long, bad dream. You run your palm along the fresh-tuned frame, every bolt exactly where it should be. The tire's mounted. Chain tightened. Carb purring like it’s forgiven you. She’s not showroom-ready. But she’s alive.

You lean back on your heels, finally breathing, bones aching in that good, honest way. Then you pull the keys off the hook and toss them at him without ceremony.

“Don’t fuck this up.”

He snatches them one-handed, spinning them once between his fingers before pocketing them with a casual flick.

“I won’t.”

He means it. Not cocky. Not bluffing. Just... certain.

You narrow your eyes, step close. Close enough he smells the sweat in your collar and the iron on your skin.

“You break her again,” you murmur, voice like steel dragged across pavement, “you better break with her.”

A silence falls. He doesn’t smirk this time.

He just looks at you. And something shifts in his face—like a mask slipping, just a crack.

“You’ve got fire,” he admits. “Most people just run on fumes.”

Not a compliment. An observation. A diagnosis.

You cross your arms, oil smudged on your forearms, grit streaking your jaw like war paint. You’re a mess. You’re a monument.

You grin, all teeth and defiance.

You snort. “Keep talking pretty, and I’ll make you change the oil too.”

He grins again, feral and quiet. But this time, there’s something else in it. A trace of something older. Sadder.

“Been through worse,” he says, tapping ash to the floor. “Besides… I like getting my hands dirty.”

You watch him swing a leg over the Hayabusa like he’s done it a thousand times, like the machine already answers to him.

Helmet in one hand. Keys in the other. His spine relaxed but alert. The kind of stillness you only see in predators and people who've survived too much.

He turns to look at you.

And the rest of the world seems to stop.

Dawn bleeds pale orange across the sky, brushing the tops of the buildings like the city’s just been set on fire, but slow and quiet. The light hits him from behind, outlining him in gold like a painting half-finished. His shadow spills long and thin down the alley, stretching toward your boots.

The street is dead quiet. Not even the hum of distant traffic. Just the lingering smells of scorched rubber, oil, sweat, and adrenaline, wrapped in silence like a noose. Your arms are crossed tight across your chest, muscles taut from hours of grinding metal and holding yourself together. Shoulders aching. Fingernails black with grease. The collar of your shirt sticks damp to the back of your neck.

But you hold his stare. Unflinching. Daring him to speak. Daring him not to.

And he studies you.

His gaze doesn’t wander, doesn’t stray. It stays right there, locked on you. Heavy-lidded, unreadable, but not indifferent. Focused. Like he’s memorizing your silhouette, committing the way you look in this exact moment—oil-slicked and half-lit, raw and sharp around the edges—to something deeper than memory. A possession. A warning.

There’s no smirk. No cocky retort. Just a silence so dense it’s almost intimate.

You raise a brow, the weight of exhaustion tightening your tone. “What?”

Still, he doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even blink. His mouth twitches at the corner, maybe a smile, maybe not—just a flicker of something restrained.

Then, finally, he slides the key into the ignition.

The Hayabusa growls like it’s been waiting to be unleashed, low and guttural, the kind of sound that echoes in your ribcage more than your ears. Headlights flare on, slicing clean through the alley’s dim blue gloom, catching in your eyes like a dare.

He throws the helmet on, visor down in a single smooth motion, and suddenly his face is gone. Replaced with glossy black and the faint reflection of you, standing still in the half-light, arms crossed like you’re holding yourself together.

Then—he's gone.

Tires spit gravel, the back wheel biting into the street with a snarl. The Hayabusa launches forward with a howl, the roar of the engine echoing down the narrow spine of concrete and brick. It’s a scream and a promise. It’s a goodbye.

He disappears around the corner like a shadow chased by dawn.

No words.

No promises.

Just the echo of what could’ve been, tearing into Tokyo’s sleeping veins like a blade in the dark.

You stand there long after he’s gone, the engine’s growl still ringing in your ears like the aftershock of thunder. The morning air clings to your skin, cooler now. Emptier. The warmth of his stare lingers like phantom heat across your collarbone.

Then you exhale, slow and sharp. The kind of breath you forget you were holding until your chest aches.

Your fingers curl around the edge of the steel garage door. The metal is cold beneath your touch, damp with dew. You hesitate, just for a beat—just long enough to wonder what that look really meant.

Then you drag it down hard.

CLANG.

The slam echoes off the walls like the full stop at the end of a sentence no one dared to finish.

5:04 AM.

The sky is just beginning to bruise, streaked purple and dull gold. The city’s not awake yet, just turning over in its sleep, unaware of what passed beneath its nose.

You dig your phone from your pocket. The screen is smeared with oil and lit by that faint, ghost-blue glow. Your thumb hovers for a moment, then you type:

[You, 5:05 AM] sleep in don’t come till 2 long night. i’m dead.

No fluff. No punctuation. Just the kind of message Inumaki knows better than to argue with.

You rub your face with both hands, dragging grit across your skin, smearing sweat and grease like war paint. You don’t bother washing up. You just want to be horizontal and unconscious.

The fire escape creaks as you climb it, an old, rust-bitten ladder of metal and memory. You move slow. Everything aches. Every step a reminder of how long the night was, how much you gave to that bike, to that man, to whatever the hell is now coiled like a spark plug in your chest.

At the top, you slip through the narrow window you left cracked open hours ago. Inside, your place is still and silent. Your world.

You kick off your boots. Let them thud to the floor. Peel off your jacket and let it drop like a shed layer of armor.

No lights.

No shower.

Just the magnetic pull of the mattress dragging you in like a riptide.

You collapse half-on, half-off. Muscles giving in. Limbs heavy. Breathing uneven.

Your eyes fall shut, but behind your lids, he’s still there.

That stare.

That silence.

That flicker of something he didn’t say, and you didn’t ask for.

You wonder, in the fading haze before sleep:

Was he looking back because of the bike?

Or because of you?

But then your thoughts scatter like dust in a crosswind, and the city forgets you ever burned this hot.

☆☆☆

The late afternoon sun leaks through your apartment windows in thick, syrupy streams, like molten gold bleeding in from a world that feels too far away. It casts long, jagged shadows across the warped floorboards, beams of light stretched thin and tired, like fingers clawing for warmth they’ll never reach. The dust in the air floats slow and aimless, suspended mid-flight like the moment before a sigh. Tiny particles catching and refracting light, turning the quiet into something reverent, like a chapel with no god.

The heat sits on your skin like a memory you didn’t ask to keep—humid, sticky, the kind of summer air that doesn’t move, just settles. It presses into your pores and seeps into your bones until even your breath feels heavy. The ceiling fan turns above you, but it doesn’t help. It only circles the warmth, pushing it down like a hand on your chest.

Outside, the city hums its usual dirge. The distant drone of engines sounds more like insects now, hollow, persistent, mindless. A car horn blares somewhere in the distance, long and aggravated, then cuts off like it gave up mid-thought. Down the block, a stray dog starts barking—sharp, staccato bursts of frustration—but even that sound doesn’t last. It’s all consumed by the slow churn of city noise, swallowed like everything else.

Up here, you might as well be floating in space. In the liminal quiet between sleep and the waking world. The apartment is cloaked in a hush that feels almost sacred, broken only by the lazy whisper of your own breathing. The only illumination comes from the light bleeding across the walls, slanting like sunbeams from an old projector, painting gold onto the clutter: an abandoned wrench glinting with oil, a half-empty mug with its rim kissed by cold bitterness, the ghost of steam long vanished.

You’re sprawled on the bed, half-curled into yourself, asleep, but only just. It’s not the kind of sleep that restores. It’s the kind that traps you. You hover in it, adrift in a sea of static. Somewhere between a dream and a memory. Your nightgown, an oversized band tee, clings to your frame like a second skin. The scent of motor oil and exhaustion clings to the fabric, a talisman from a night that never quite ended. Your fingers twitch. Your jaw clenches.

Something moves in your head. A flicker. A whisper. Then—

Knock.

Not loud. Not frantic. But sharp. Three taps.

Precise. Intentional. The kind of knock that doesn’t ask. It announces.

You jolt awake like a wire’s been pulled. The silence beforehand was thick, dense with heat and sleep. But now it feels heavier. A presence. The knock echoes inside you, reverberating not just in your ears but in your ribcage. A sudden, crystalline awareness prickles across your skin.

Your eyes blink open. The ceiling above you glares down, cracked and water-stained, a faded map of damage and neglect. Every vein in the plaster looks like a scar, a roadmap of everything that’s ever gone wrong inside these walls.

Your breath catches in your throat. It takes a second too long to remember where you are.

Another knock.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Measured. Unyielding. Not desperate. Just… relentless. It knows you’re in there. It always did.

You swing your legs off the bed. The movement feels underwater, thick and delayed. Your bare feet thud against the dusty floorboards, cool against your skin, grounding you with a shiver that runs all the way up your spine. Every joint protests. Every muscle creaks. You’re not rested. You’re worn thin, like brake pads that should’ve been changed months ago.

You move through the apartment, slow at first, then faster, crossing the room like you’re chasing a thought. Past the cluttered table stacked with receipts, loose bolts, engine manuals with pages stained and dog-eared. The sink is full of silence and a single mug with coffee scum dried into the curve.

Down the narrow staircase now. The old wood groans under your weight, each step a tired exhale. The air shifts—cooler, somehow. Expectant.

The knocking stops.

You freeze at the door. Your hand hovers above the lock. The wood in front of you is aged, the grain splintered from years of weather and neglect. Scratches mar the surface like fingernail gouges. You stare at it like it might open on its own.

Then you twist the latch.

And open it.

The man on the other side is an anomaly. A foreign object in your world.

He’s too clean. Too calm. Like he walked out of a different narrative and ended up at your door by mistake. Black windbreaker zipped to his collarbone. Worn sneakers, meticulously untied. Dark curls flattened from wind and rain. He carries no badge, no name tag. Just a simple cardboard box, held in both hands like an offering.

And a ribbon. Purple.

You fixate on that. It gleams faintly in the evening light. Thin. Velvet. Delicate enough to look ridiculous in this part of town.

He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t ask your name. Just holds out the box like he knows.

“Delivery for you,” he announces. Crisp. Clipped. Not unkind, but devoid of warmth. Like he’s already halfway gone in his mind.

You take it. His fingers brush yours—cool, firm, electric in the worst way. Then he turns. No signature. No clipboard. Just the sound of his footsteps fading down the to the corner like the tail end of a warning.

You shut the door. Lock it. Slide the bolt home. Press your back against the wood like it might hold you up.

Your pulse is too loud. You can feel it in your gums.

You carry the box upstairs like it might shatter. Like it might detonate.

The ribbon slips off with a whisper, unraveling across your fingers like a secret that’s waited too long to be told.

You open the lid slowly. Cautiously. As if the air might change.

Inside, purple lilies. Not just any lilies. Those lilies.

Their scent hits you like a slap. Heavy. Sweet. And wrong. Beneath the floral perfume, there’s something bitter. Something that clings to the back of your throat like smoke from an old cigarette. Like memory.

The petals are vibrant but flawed. A few edges browned. A single bloom starting to curl inward on itself, petals folding like hands in prayer, or defense. The stems are bruised, faintly crushed near the base. Like someone held them too tightly before letting them go.

You don’t touch them.

You don’t have to.

Your jaw sets. Your lips pull into that old shape—a half-smile that tastes like rust. The kind of expression you wear like armor. Crooked. Defensive.

Of course it’s him. Always theatrical. Always sending messages wrapped in flowers and sealed in silence. Not love. Not regret. Just the echo of his own ego.

You place the box on the counter like you’re laying down a loaded weapon. It sits there, lurid and loud in its stillness. The light hits the petals, throwing jagged shadows across the kitchen wall like stained glass from a church long abandoned.

You don’t look at it again.

You move.

The shower hisses to life, steam flooding the small bathroom almost instantly. You step under the scalding stream like it can burn away the scent of lilies. The memory of his hand, once, threading a flower into your hair like a promise made in a burning house.

You scrub until your skin is raw. Until your chest unclenches. Until your hands shake.

You step out. Leave the mirror fogged.

You don’t want to see yourself.

Throw on jeans stained with engine grease and a shirt from a band you no longer listen to. Twist your braid tighter than it needs to be. Pocket your keys with trembling fingers.

Out.

The city is cooler now. The sky streaked in bruised blues and greys. The bakery glows on the corner, a beacon against the dark clouds. You walk in. The air smells like sugar and something safe. The barista doesn’t ask questions. She just hands you your coffee and pastry with a look that says I get it. You grunt thanks.

The kouign-amann flakes on your lips. You barely notice.

Because the alley still lives in your mind. The heat. The silence. Sukuna.

His name isn’t just sound. It’s sensation. Metallic. Final. Like a blade resting on your collarbone.

And worse, he saw you. Not just your face. You. Beneath it. And something inside you cracked in response.

You shove the thought down, lock it behind your teeth, and swallow hard as the garage yawns open like a beast waking from slumber—wide, slow, and reluctant. The rolling metal door rattles up into its housing, each gear-grind and screeching hinge echoing off concrete like a warning shot. The fluorescent lights overhead flicker to life one by one, buzzing like angry insects, their glow sterile and cold.

Then the scent hits.

Hot oil, old sweat, scorched rubber, iron filings. The unmistakable cocktail of your world. Sharp. Real. Grounding. It wraps around you like a weighted blanket stitched from memory and muscle memory. This place smells like control. Like effort. Like something you can fix with your hands.

Inumaki’s already there, crouched next to an engine block half-gutted on the bay floor. His hoodie’s two sizes too big, sleeves rolled to the elbows, grease smeared across his cheekbones. One hand wields a wrench with the easy precision of someone who grew up knowing what torque feels like. The other clutches a rice ball, halfway devoured, flecks of seaweed stuck to his lips.

He glances up. Bleary eyes, dark under the weight of too many nights like this. No words. Just a nod.

That’s all you get.

That’s all you need.

You exhale, the breath leaving your lungs in a low hiss, like pressure bleeding from a sealed valve. Then you move. Toward the work, into the rhythm, under the hum of lights and the low thrum of classic rock playing tinny through a speaker in the corner. Time loses shape as your hands busy themselves with bolts and belts and busted parts. Every click and clang, every knuckle scrape and socket slip, layers over the noise in your head until it's nothing but static.

You work until the sky bleeds into darkness. Until the sounds of the city go soft and distant, swallowed by the belly of the night. Until your body feels wrung out, empty. Until your thoughts slow enough to stop circling the drain.

By the time you drag yourself back up the stairs, your limbs are trembling with fatigue, every joint aching like rusted hinges. It feels like hauling a corpse behind you—one made of yesterday’s grief and this morning’s dread.

You reach your apartment door. Push it open with a shoulder. Flick the switch.

The light stutters on.

And you freeze.

The box is gone.

The lilies—those too-vivid, too-alive lilies—are no longer tucked neatly inside cardboard. They’re arranged now. Carefully. Deliberately. Placed in a glass vase you forgot you even owned. Centered on the counter like a shrine. Like a message.

You hadn’t touched them. You know you hadn’t. You didn’t even look at them after you left. You were in the garage the whole time. Working. Focused. Present.

…Weren’t you?

Your breath catches mid-step, your spine locking as a slow chill climbs up the back of your neck. You scan the room. Every shadow. Every corner. The silence is suffocating, too intact, too untouched.

But something has been touched.

Your fingers curl slowly at your sides. You step forward. Each movement a little more cautious, like the air itself might shatter. The lilies look the same. And somehow, entirely different. The scent is stronger now—richer, thicker. Like it’s been stirred. Sweet rot masked by floral perfume. Like perfume trying to hide the smell of something buried too long.

Then you see it.

Tucked between the stems.

A sliver of white, barely peeking out from the bloom of a petal, folded once, sharp and clean, like a pressed knife.

Your pulse thunders in your ears.

You reach out. Slow. Like it might bite. Your fingers brush the edge of the paper, and even that feels intimate, like interrupting a conversation not meant for you. You pluck it free. It’s warm from the heat of the lilies. Or maybe just your hand.

You unfold it.

No name. No seal. No symbol.

Just two words, penned in a hand you know too well.

Be there.

And beneath it, a time.

A place.

That’s all.

The note is silent, but your blood isn’t. It roars in your veins, crashing through you like a storm surge. The paper trembles between your fingers, delicate and weightless. But it might as well be lead.

It’s not the wind.

It’s not fear, either.

It’s something else.

That slow, crawling certainty. That sharp edge of recognition.

Because you already know.

Not the details. Not the plan.

But the shape of it.

What’s coming.

And who.

Your jaw clenches. Your breath stutters out.

Of course.

Of course it’s him.

You press the paper flat against the counter, staring at it like it might rearrange itself. But it doesn’t. It just waits.

And so do you.

Until you move.

Because you will.

You always do.

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