#need him to shrug off his jacket & elegantly fold it over his arm before pinning someone to the ground w his umbrella

[rosemaze-reveries]

if i ever get reincarnated i hope its as his wristwatch

[doiefy]

blue // na jaemin

“The winter has passed and the spring has come We have withered and our hearts are bruised from longing”

- blue, bigbang

In which one ceases to age until they find their soulmate, with whom they then grow old. In which everyone has moved on without you.

genre: soulmate!au, fluff, angst, slow burn

pairings: jaemin x female reader (written with a female character in mind, but it can easily be gender neutral!), features relationships with other dream members, briefly mentions haechan x jeno

word count: 11.6 k

warnings: language, mentions of alcohol and smoking, mentions of war, mentions of death, discussions of Korea under Japanese occupation, some of the historical references may be inaccurate.

taglist (DM, comment or Ask to be added): @simplicitysbabe Big thank you to @neojaems​ for beta reading this for me !! <333

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Your test comes back blue.

When you rip open the envelope containing your results, you find the little coloured square hidden between pages and pages of lab protocols, testing procedures and other nonsense you know no one actually has the time to read. Then there are the stupid pamphlets, the ones with overtly bright and bubbly messages reassuring people that they’ll find their “special someone” soon, slogans most likely written by people who found their soulmates before they even turned twenty. You scoff, shoving the useless papers back into the envelope and recalling the first time you tested back in 1945, right after the war. The receptionist wrote your results down on a piece of paper and nonchalantly told you to have your emotional breakdown outside.

Now you stare at the blue marking on your paper blankly. It simply means you haven’t aged biologically in ten years, but when you haven’t aged in decades, it means nothing. While the world progresses, you remain frozen in the same body, playing a cruel game with fate. And as with any game that one cannot win, you’ve slowly become bored with it, allowing it to take its course while you sit idle nearby. You feel only disappointed, and not even perplexed or surprised in the slightest. Something about meeting Jaemin just seemed too good to be true; after a lifetime of misfortune and failure, something about the bad news feels… expected. Inevitable. As if unconsciously, you knew he wasn’t the one.

Na Jaemin is not your soulmate. And you spend the walk home contemplating how you’ll tell him this.

When you unlock the door to your shared apartment, you know he’s already home, and earlier than usual: his shoes are placed meticulously on the rack by the door and his jacket is hung up next to the messenger bag he takes to work. The living room smells faintly of the pine and vanilla candle you bought last month, and you smell traces of shampoo and bodywash from the bathroom.

“I’m home!” you call out as you kick your shoes off and put them neatly next to Jaemin’s. There’s a muffled response of your name before the door to your room opens. Then his arms are around you, his face buried in the crook of your neck as he mumbles a tired greeting.

“Bad day?” You ask softly, pushing all your other thoughts to the back of your head. He looks exhausted. His hair is tucked messily under the hood of his navy sweater, still damp from the shower he took earlier. His eyes lack the usual brightness you often find yourself so immersed in, replaced with the fatigue and weariness he almost never brings home.

“I hate this company,” he sighs as you run your fingers through his hair. You feel him relax in your arms a bit. “My boss is a dick, everyone in my department hates each other and the coffee tastes like actual ass. Maybe I should just quit while I still can.”

You frown. “Jaem, you’ve been with them for literally a month. You can’t possibly be thinking about quitting already.”

“A month! A month in and I’m already having mental breakdowns under my desk at lunch. Imagine what will become of me if I spend a year there,” he scowls, but his expression softens when you kiss him reassuringly on the cheek. “Alright, alright, fine, maybe not quit, maybe I’ll just take a long, long, vacation and then retire… Move to the countryside with you…” He trails off dreamily and for a moment, you lose yourself in the fantasy he’s painted for you. The mental image of a quaint house by the ocean is quickly shattered when you remember the test results hidden in your bag. The sunflowers you envisioned surrounding the cottage are blown away in the wind, their bright yellow petals swallowed by the blueness of the sky.

“Oh, you wish,” you laugh, quickly pressing your lips to his in hopes that he won’t see your expression, that he won’t see the sadness and regret you’re fighting to suppress. “Maybe, baby, maybe one day we can do that.”

“Maybe,” he laughs, his face lighting up with the energy and liveliness that has been missing. “But enough about me. How was your day, love?”

“Mm. The same old,” you say, pulling out of his arms so you can finally take your jacket off. You crash into the couch where you fold up your scarf and toss it aside. “Stressful.”

He stares at you for a hard moment, visibly concerned as if he can tell there’s something troubling on your mind. “Is something the matter?” He asks carefully, sitting down next to you. He holds you at arm’s length so he can look at you properly. “Is this about the test?”

“What? Oh, no, not the test. I doubt the results will come in until sometime next week.” The lie slips out easier than it should, and you feel guilt slowly start to twist your insides. Just a white lie, you tell yourself. It can’t hurt anyone but yourself. He’s been through enough today. He’s tired. Not tonight. It can wait. “I’m just tired,” you shrug. “I need some dinner and a nap, then I’ll be all good again. Do we still have anything in the fridge or should we order takeout?”

“I already ordered chicken from Yong’s. I had a feeling that today would be a bad day for the both of us,” Jaemin grins. His smile is smug at first, then endearing when he sees your shock.

You practically pounce on him in excitement, and the two of you go crashing into the couch cushions until you have him pinned beneath you. “Oh my god, I fucking love you, you know that?”

Jaemin groans, curling into himself as he gives you a wounded look. “And that’s how you show your love? By trying to break my bones?”

“Besides the point,” you huff. “You aren’t going to say it back?”

“Yes, of course. I love you too.”

Unsatisfied with his answer, you lower your face so your lips are hovering just inches above his. He looks up at you starry-eyed, his fingers ghosting over your cheeks; you can’t help but notice the way his gaze travels briefly to your lips.

Then you realize how dangerous this is. You know that he’s not the one. You know that you’ll eventually part ways with him when he finds out, no matter how reluctant you’ll feel. Every moment you spend with him like this will come back to haunt you when he’s gone. It will become another reminder of what you’re about to lose, yet here you are, falling deeper into his embrace, intoxicated by his scent and lost in the depth of his eyes. You are only tying more strings between the two of you, strings that will need to be stretched and snapped. You are only making it more painful for the both of you.

But for tonight, you don’t care.

“Say it like you mean it,” you whisper.

He holds your face gently, and those sparks you felt upon your first meeting with him are still there, igniting each time he looks at you, blazing into an open flame when he tells you, “I love you.”

You kiss him with more urgency this time, your lips meeting his in a clash of teeth and tongue. He puts his hands around your waist and pulls you impossibly closer to him. For just a moment, you’re focused on only him and his presence. For just a moment, you forget about everything; the sheet of test results is just another piece of paper in your bag, the blue mark just another colour. Because tonight, he is all that matters to you.

You met Na Jaemin almost three years ago.

Though the details have faded with time, you remember your first conversation well. It began at a friend’s art show beneath the golden glow of the studio lights, the two of you surrounded by brilliant splashes of colour and bold strokes of texture. Renjun had insisted on introducing you to Jaemin before you even arrived at the gallery, and you couldn’t have possibly refused. Your friendship with Renjun goes way back to the 40s, and you often think he knows you better than you know yourself. “I think he could be good for you,” he told you quietly just before leaving to speak with his other guests.

At first, Jaemin seemed timeless. It was as if he didn’t belong to any particular time period, as if he had lived to see several generations rise and fall, but had never risen or fallen with any of them. Dressed elegantly in a fitted turtleneck and a wool coat, he appeared youthful and contemporary; yet the way he spoke hinted at a certain maturity, at wisdom and sagacity. There was something charming about him too, something about the way he recounted events of the past and drew you in with only his words.

Next to a breathtaking oil painting of the sea, you discovered your commonalities. He was almost two decades younger, but like you, had spent his entire life searching for a partner without much success. You were delighted to learn that he had also worked in teaching—though he mentioned changing careers frequently whenever things became too mundane. He was effortlessly intriguing, and every word he spoke was lively and animated. He infused your conversations with colours, painted everything in bright yellows and aquamarines that matched the swirling paint strokes of the artworks around you, left you wanting to know more without even trying.

You left the gallery that night with his number in your coat pocket. Needless to say, Renjun was thrilled.

Weeks passed before you saw him again. Your busy schedules always managed to get in the way of your plans, but the two of you still kept in touch, chatting late into the night and well into the early hours. As the months went by, you dared to hope that maybe he was the one.

You immediately scolded yourself for being naive. With all your past partners, you had been hopeful in the same way, only to be let down in the end. Your test when you were with Donghyuck came back blue, as did the one with Mark. Both have since moved on, found their soulmates and written their happy endings. Even if you still stay in touch and meet up for an occasional coffee, you know that you are only a distant memory to them in some way or another.

The prospect of the same thing happening with Jaemin had never occurred to you—you’d been so caught up in getting to know him, so blinded that you’d completely forgotten. And then you saw him differently. As if he were a flame that could be snuffed out in an instant, a feather that could be sent flying with the slightest breeze, the slightest breath. You mulled over it for weeks and always did so silently, until it finally came up in conversation.

Almost a year had passed since you’d met him. With the summer coming to an end, the two of you had driven down to the Han River where you sat in the open trunk of his car, sharing a can of cheap beer from the convenience store. There were no words, only the faint melody of an old pop song buzzing from your phone and his hand around yours.

“Move in with me,” he said at last, glancing at you expectantly, trying to gauge your reaction. It wasn’t completely out of the blue—you’d been searching for a new apartment for weeks—but it still took you by surprise. “Too fast?” He asked when he registered your shock.

“No, not at all,” you shook your head and squeezed his hand. “Don’t get me wrong Jaem, I’d love to. It’s just, I don’t know about any of this. About us. If we’re actually…”

He hummed a quiet response, his brows furrowing slightly in contemplation. “Soulmates,” he said with a melancholic sigh. “You don’t want to go any further before we know for certain. I understand.”  

You nodded. “It always hurts, you know? You think you’ve finally found them only to realize you’ve been completely wrong the whole time.”

“I know,” he said, and his empathy flooded you with warmth and reassurance. “You always think you’ll be prepared for the next time. You always think it will hurt less as time goes by. But it doesn’t.”

“Exactly.”

You tipped the last of the beer into your mouth; it tasted faintly sweet on your tongue before dissolving into a pleasant bitterness that hit the back of your throat. When you were finished, Jaemin took the empty can and fiddled with the tab, bending it back and forth until it snapped off.

“I want it to be you,” he told you after a few minutes of silence. “I want it to be us.”

“And if we aren’t?”

He kissed you, hard enough for you to see stars. It wasn’t desperate or longing, but it seemed to convey a hundred different thoughts all at once, a hundred different emotions for you to decipher. When he finally pulled away, his voice was thoughtful and he was seemingly lost in a pleasant daydream. “Oh, love, the universe has already cursed us to search eternally. We may as well spend eternity together.”

“Seriously, Jaemin, what if we aren’t?”

The tremor of your voice snapped him out of it. The glimmer of hope disappeared from his pupils and the dream slipped from his hands.

“We’ve been alive for so long,” you continued, trying to keep your voice steady. “I don’t think I can go on like this. What if we aren’t meant to be? What will we do?”

You didn’t regret your time with Donghyuck or Mark or Jungwoo or any of the people you were lucky enough to have met, but you’d watched all of them from afar, watched them grow while you stayed frozen in time. Each new generation that came along was only a reminder of your loneliness. You felt a certain emptiness each time you invited new people into your life, one that deepened when they eventually left you behind. Or worse, when they gave you their pity. You couldn’t stand it when people told you that it was unfair or that you deserved better, all while they lived comfortably with their soulmates. You weren’t jealous, nor could you ever be angry at them for something beyond their control. Your anger was directed at the invisible forces that toyed with the world, the mischievous hands spinning the universe in some strange direction that left only you disoriented.

His expression took on a faint sadness and when he spoke again, his voice was calm, barely a whisper. “Then so be it. If you need to move on, it would be selfish of me to stop you from doing so.” He stared out at the waters wistfully, at the yachts sailing downstream. “And besides, you’re right. Maybe it’s time we settle down… even if it’s not with each other.”

Your birthday came a few months after that night, but you held off on testing. The bus you took home from work passed by one of the labs, but you never got off at the stop, always watched the doors open and close from your seat. The test isn’t that accurate anyways, you told yourself; it could produce only an approximate biological age, so maybe the longer you waited, the better.

But in the end, it was simply an excuse to escape reality, to avoid your confrontation with fate itself.

You moved in with him just before the end of the year.

New Year’s Eve wasn’t a big deal for you (you’d lived through too many for it to be exciting), but you spent the last minutes of the year with him, surrounded by cardboard boxes waiting to be unpacked. Jaemin had still made some sort of effort at festivities despite your indifference: pale pink and gold candles lit around the living room, golden champagne in delicate glasses set on the table.

You were almost asleep when the clock struck twelve, wrapped up in one of his oversized sweaters and a white throw blanket. The celebratory music blaring from the TV was muffled in your ears, a pleasant symphony that lulled you deeper into sleep until Jaemin awoke you with a kiss.

“Happy New Year, Y/N.”

“Happy New Year, Jaem,” you mumbled, a smile ghosting your lips as you focused on the comfort you felt in his arms; on the new year, on your new home, new hope.

You know something’s wrong.

Jaemin doesn’t come out to greet you, even after you announce your arrival. He’s home—his shoes and coat are put away neatly like any other day—yet it’s deathly silent, terribly still. No music playing in the living room, no voice down the hallway. Only the occasional chirp from your broken smoke detector, which you’ve been meaning to fix for weeks. As you bend down to unlace your boots, you can’t help but worry.

You find him in your shared bedroom, sitting cross-legged on the comforter. The sun has almost set and the shadows stretch across the room, blanketing him in darkness and masking his expression with ambiguity. He doesn’t move when you turn on the lamp on the bedside table. He doesn’t move when you sit next to him.

There’s a familiar sheet of paper in his hands.

“Jaem, I…”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

It isn’t accusatory or hostile; his voice is laced with nothing but sadness, yet you feel so much guilt, guilt that closes around your throat and squeezes the air out of your lungs, leaving you breathless. You kept it from him for days, and now this is the way he must find out about it. From a piece of paper you were careless enough to leave where he might find it. From a piece of paper detailing the DNA extracted from a sample of your blood. You should have told him.

“I didn’t know how to,” you let out a shaky breath. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Are you serious?” There it is, the cold edge that begins creeping into his voice as he stares down at you. He flicks a finger in the direction of the date printed at the top of the paper. “It’s been a week, Y/N. You kept this from me for a week. Why?”

“I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you, okay?” It comes out sharper than you intended; you immediately begin to drown in guilt as soon as you see Jaemin’s expression fall. You didn’t mean to lash out, and now you make up for it by taking his hands in yours. They're ice cold. “Look, the day I found out, you were already tired from work. I didn’t want to bring it up and make everything worse—”

“So you lied. Said the results hadn’t come in yet,” he says flatly and you rush to defend yourself, only to realize that he’s right.

“I’m sorry.”

The rest of your words don’t come. With a tired exhale, you bury your head in your hands, too overwhelmed to say anything else. You can only hope that he’ll understand, that he’ll empathize and that he’ll forgive you, even if you don’t exactly believe you deserve any of it right now. You hold back the tears. Only when he pulls you into his arms do they fall. He takes your hands, gently pulling them away from your face so he can wipe your tears despite your protests. There’s no coldness in his expression now, only concern.

“I needed time to process everything,” you continue, but you choke on the words. “I couldn’t even accept it myself, I couldn’t—”

“I know, love,” he says quietly as his thumb brushes against your cheek. “I know. It’s alright.”

Your silent sniffles turn into unrestrained sobs as he pulls you into his embrace, your pent-up emotions finally released in the form of silvery streams on your cheeks. You aren’t sure how much time passes. The sun meets the horizon in a hazy line of faint pink and orange. The sky darkens. Outside, the city lights up in a multitude of hues, the amber light from the street below seeping into your room. The minutes go by, but Jaemin never lets go of you until your tears have run dry.

“Better?” He asks, albeit his voice is shaky, his gaze trembling when he looks up at you. You nod.

“We’ll figure this out,” his eyes seem to say. You can tell he’s just as terrified as you are, just as unsure and as lost. Though for now, you simply hold each other. You say nothing about the paper that lays discarded on the floor or what it entails, even if you both feel the need to address it, to face its implications. In this moment of brokenness, neither of you have the strength to do so.

You eventually collect yourselves. You make dinner and force yourselves to eat before passing a meaningless hour in front of the TV. You clean up, wash up. Sleep early in preparation for tomorrow. Jaemin never leaves your side.

“Where do we go from here?” You whisper into the darkness of your bedroom.

“Tomorrow, love,” you hear him say just before slipping into unconsciousness, into restless sleep.

According to Lee Donghyuck, the chances of meeting your soulmate are 1 in 10 000. Or at least, scientifically. Theoretically. Donghyuck was a man of logic and reason, and had your lives not revolved around soulmates like the earth revolved around the sun, perhaps he wouldn’t have believed in fate at all.

“Remove fate from the equation,” Donghyuck mumbled to himself thoughtfully, jotting a few numbers down on a paper napkin. “And let’s assume your soulmate is around your age.”

“Can’t you rule that one out too?” You pointed out,  but he was too busy, already lost in his thoughts.

“If your soulmate is determined at birth and instantly recognizable at first sight… And they’re actually alive somewhere in the world…”

You watched the quick movements of his blue pen with intrigue. He spun the pen restlessly, allowing its barrel to cross over and under and between his fingers, at times so quickly that it became nothing but a blur of colour. Finally, he scribbled a final verdict and inked two definitive circles around it. “If fate hadn’t been so kind, the chances would have been one in ten thousand. One lifetime out of ten thousand.”

“That slim? Ten thousand lifetimes, that’s nearly impossible,” you said, skeptical but amused at his train of thought nonetheless. You took the napkin from him and looked over his calculations, though some of the numbers were too big for you to check without a calculator. You trusted that Donghyuck had done them correctly though. “You know, if you told that to someone who’d spent a century searching for their soulmate, they’d probably beat you up. You’re lucky I like you.”

He giggled. “We’re lucky it’s only hypothetical.” He took the napkin from you and crumpled it, smudging the neon blue ink on the tips on his fingers.

With Donghyuck, things were simpler. He was young, young enough to not be in a hurry, young enough to speak his thoughts so freely. He never pitied you or worried about offending you, and he never treated you as if you were out of place among the new generations. He offered you perspective. You knew that you weren’t meant for each other, but you were still content to spend your time with each other. To wait together.

“So… I might have found a new place.”

You don’t miss the surprise on Jaemin’s face when you tell him over dinner. His eyes widen a bit in curiosity, his brows arching upwards and his mouth falling slightly agape. He sets his fork down against his plate, folding his hands together the way he does when he’s deep in thought.

“Already?” He inquires. Maybe you imagine a hint of disappointment in his voice, a slight dip in his tone. He looks at you with a sort of sadness, as if trying to imagine what it would be like with you gone, to come home to an empty apartment every night. “Seriously, Y/N, you’re welcome to stay if you need to. We said we would take the changes slowly.” His words aren’t just out of consideration for you.

More than a month has gone by silently, and within that time, the frigid cold of winter has finally given way to spring. Nothing has really changed when you think about it, as if your test results are meaningless. And you suppose that they have become just that, a meaningless scrap of paper at the bottom of the recycling bin in the kitchen. Jaemin still holds you the same way, though his touches are just a little bit more fleeting. Your conversations still extend late into the night, though they feel just slightly melancholic. You hang onto his every word even while telling yourself not to, that maybe there is no point in doing so when everything is already coming to an end.

“I don’t know if I’ll take it… at least not for sure. And even if I do, I won’t be moving in until April. I just thought I’d tell you ahead of time,” you tell him, reaching across the table to take his hand. “I mean this in the nicest way possible, but I think I need some time alone. So I can adjust to all of this.”

“No, I understand. It’s just a little jarring, you know? Don’t know what it’ll be like without you here.”

“It’s literally only a block away,” you giggle, and he smiles. “I’ll still be here.”

After the coolness of February comes grey skies and a drizzly March, heavy rainfall washing the white snow to grey slush. Eventually, the clouds part across the sky for the sun, allowing the brilliant blue of the sky to peek through. April comes sooner than expected, producing blooms of yellow and white in the flowery courtyards of your new apartment complex, bursts of bright colours along the cobblestone paths.

You stand surrounded by boxes in the middle of your new studio apartment, watching the people pass by on the streets below. The windows are cracked open for air and you can hear the bustle outside, the yells of the street vendors, an occasional shriek of a child’s laughter. The new bedframe and mattress you ordered stand leaning against the wall in the corner, waiting to be assembled. Jaemin stumbles through the door with another box and sets it down before dusting his hands off on his jeans.

“That’s the last one,” he says. He collapses on the couch that the previous owner left behind, out of breath. You sit down next to him, allowing him to rest his head on your lap. He finally looks around, then at you. “Everything you hoped for?”

You nod happily. “I’ll miss having you around though,” you chuckle, playing with the soft strands of his hair, freshly dyed—after losing a drunken bet to Renjun a week ago, he reluctantly let the latter bleach and tone his hair bright silver. But you think it suits him; it accentuates the darkness of his eyes and paleness of his skin, gives him a cold and chic edge offset by the gentleness of his smile.

“I’ll still be here,” he repeats your words from two months ago. “And you’ll be much closer to work, right? No more crazy subway routes and early mornings. At the cost of me being your personal alarm clock, of course.” He grins, and you smack him with a red throw pillow.

“I won’t miss that,” you roll your eyes teasingly.

“Whatever you say, love.” He lifts his head off your lap to press a kiss against your cheek.

You spend the rest of the afternoon with him, unpacking boxes, hanging up clothes, building the bedframe and fitting the mattress with clean sheets so that at least you’ll have somewhere to sleep tonight. When the sun sets, everything is lit in an ethereal glow, and you stare out the floor-length windows, admiring the sky. Jaemin joins you after a moment, wrapping his arms around you as the two of you rock back and forth to the steady rhythm of the music playing from his phone.

When he leaves in the evening, he gives you a final hug, jokingly telling you not to miss him too much. When he’s gone, you find yourself staring out the window once more, at the blocky silhouette of Jaemin’s building a few blocks away. He pointed it out earlier, thrilled that you could see so far from this high up.

You quickly learn that on cloudy days, it is nothing but a smudge of grey in the distance.

While Donghyuck always tried to ease your worries with reason and strokes of pen ink on his skin, Mark took you on long drives around the city, hoping that the wind blowing through your hair would clear your mind.

On late nights when you couldn’t sleep, you often found yourself in the passenger seat of his 1975 Hyundai Pony, listening to static-laced 80s rock music while he drove you around the streets of Seoul. He would always roll the windows down in the summer and watch the contentment on your face, one hand around yours while the other guided the wheel.

Mark Lee was even older than you—and with all the wars and tragedies he’d lived through, he understood what it felt like to be kept awake by the nightmares. To be kept awake by thoughts of loved ones being blown to bits, to be haunted with memories of the past. With how long he’d been searching for the right person, he knew the urgency you felt and the longing to finally settle down with a soulmate. He understood.

The stories he told you were woven between puffs of cigarette smoke and gentle kisses on your forehead. He told you about Canada and the mountains that surrounded Vancouver, where he’d spent some time in the 40s. He told you about his family, about his brother’s grandchildren who looked older than he did. It was strange, he’d admitted with a small laugh and sadness in his smile.

The two of you often pointed out buildings along the side of the road, reminiscing what stood in their place before the bulldozers and big trucks rolled in. Just down the street from his apartment, the old drive-in cinema was being replaced by an upscale theatre. Next to it, a park was being cleared for a new shopping centre. Even the studio he’d rented out last summer had been demolished so a new entertainment agency could build its empire. Once in a while, he would drive by and stare ruefully at the construction site—the classical compositions he’d once recorded there were being replaced by a new type of music, with catchy beats and pretty pop stars dressed in shiny outfits.

His music had been drowned out by a new industry, and likewise, many of the things you remembered from your childhood have been lost to time. Talking about the past with him helped you remember. It was a sort of reassurance even as you moved on.

Mark eased a bit of your pain, staying out with you until the early hours of morning to make sure that you were alright. The next morning, he would almost always call to ask if you’d slept okay, unless there was an issue with the old landline phone in his office. All concept of time disappeared when you were with him, along with your memories and the demons haunting your dreams. But eventually, he would drop you off at home and bid you goodnight, leaving you to watch him drive away. Eventually, the night came to an end.

He couldn’t stay with you the whole night, nor could he stay with you forever.

Your evenings are often interrupted by Jaemin’s messages asking you to come over. Sometimes he says that he misses you, or he wants to see you for dinner. Other times, he kisses you breathless against the closed door as soon as you’ve stepped inside, always with an unmatched fervour and urgency as if you might slip right through his grasp and disappear.

Tonight, however, it’s neither.

It’s half past midnight when your phone is set off in a series of quick vibrations. Wrapped in nothing but a towel with your hair still dripping, you type in a reply, hesitate, press send. You get changed, slipping into a pair of jeans and an oversized T-shirt before grabbing your keys.

Jaemin is uncharacteristically quiet when he opens the door for you, his gaze downcast so you can’t see his expression. He’s deteriorating; you can see it in the way he turns his back to you after locking the door, the way he walks inside with a halfhearted invitation for you to follow.

“What’s wrong?” You ask when you’ve sat down across from him.

“I think I found them,” he mumbles and you notice how he averts your gaze. “My soulmate, I mean. I think I found her.”

“Wait, then why with the long face? Jaem, that’s great—”

He cuts you off with a sharp bark of emotionless laughter. His expression turns bitter when he pulls his sleeve up to reveal a mark along his wrist: two linear streaks of dark purple that twist together like the centre petals of a rose. He stares at it, almost with contempt. Apart from the standardized DNA tests, markings are the only other way to identify soulmates, though they almost never show. No one has any proper explanation for them and you have no explanation for why Jaemin has one now.

“Don’t get me wrong, I think she’s great. She’s smart. She’s funny. We have the same mark so I know it’s her,” he says shakily. “But god, I must have really fucked up in a past life to deserve this.”

You feel dread. It hits you all at once, because the way Jaemin speaks is so distant and unnerving, as if he’s lost himself in a trance and forgotten all about you. You’ve seen this dazed look before, only twice, when he was truly distressed and truly lost. This isn’t like him.

He found her. He should be happy. You should be happy for him. He should be happy.

“What is it?”

“I think I’m broken. Something’s wrong with me.”

“What do you mean?” You ask, and you try to keep the urgency out of your voice for his sake. He doesn’t say anything. “Jaemin?”

“I don’t feel anything when I’m with her. Nothing.”

You don’t register his words. They don’t make any sense to you. They are barely coherent. No, you think. That can’t be possible.

“Maybe we rejected each other in a past life and then both offed ourselves. Or maybe this is just the universe’s way of saying ‘fuck you.’ Maybe—”

“Stop that,” you tell him firmly. “Whatever this is, there has to be an explanation for it. Marks don’t just appear out of nowhere, right?” You pause to take a shaky breath, suddenly realizing that your words aren’t meant to comfort only him. “We can look into it. We can figure out what’s going on. This is the 21st Century, remember?”

“But what am I even supposed to tell her?” He demands, his tone exasperated and his brows furrowed together. “‘I know you’ve been looking for me for your whole life, but I can’t see you as anything more than a friend, sucks for you’? What do I do, spend the rest of my life drowning in guilt and self-pity because I couldn’t love her the way she wanted me to? Because I could only pretend?”

You have no answers for him. Perhaps he hasn’t felt anything for her because he hasn’t let go of you. Perhaps it really was a mistake, a freak accident in the cosmos that put the wrong marks on the wrong people, designating a pair that was never meant to be. Your thoughts run wild, but you can’t put anything into words for him. Even if you could, you don’t think you would have the strength to say anything aloud.

Instead, you hold him in your arms, wiping away the tears of frustration that have formed at the corners of his eyes, running your fingers through his hair. You can only hope that his soulmate will do the same for him some day, perhaps in some future where the cruel forces watching over you cease their endless games. Genuinely, you hope.  

The tone goes off a third time. You glance at the clock across the room: 11 AM. He has to be up by now, you think to yourself as your fingers continue drumming a repetitive rhythm onto the kitchen counter.

“Hello?”

Just before the automated voice can tell you to leave a voicemail, he picks up. Donghyuck’s voice is groggy, as if he’s just woken up—or maybe he’s just about to go to bed. With his disaster of a sleep schedule, you can never be sure.

“Hi, it’s me.”

“Oh hey, you, I know you.” You hear him chuckle on the other end of the line. “How are you, Y/N? I haven’t heard from you in ages.”

“I’m alright, the usual, I guess. How about you? How’s Jeno?”

“Jeno adopted another cat because he’s fucking insane, so now we have three little furballs running around the house. But yeah, it’s going great! So great,” he drawls with a familiar bite of sarcasm. You smile to yourself. “If he brings home another one because ‘Oh Hyuck, look it’s so cute, can we keep it?’ I will literally choke him in his sleep. Anyways, what’s going on? You never call me.”

“You never pick up,” you huff, earning a small laugh from him. “Okay, I wanted to ask you something. What do you know about soulmate marks?”

Thoughtful silence. “Not much. I mean, I’ve got my theories, but nothing has really been proven. Why, did you get one?”

“No, not me. Jaemin.”

“Oh, Y/N… then that means…”

“It’s alright, don’t concern yourself with me, Donghyuck. I’m more worried about him, honestly.”

“Hm?”

“He found his soulmate recently, but it’s not exactly… it’s not going as expected, let's just say that. He said he feels almost nothing when he’s with her, and to make things worse, apparently now it’s mutual. God, Donghyuck, they’re so awkward with each other, it physically hurts me.”

Donghyuck is silent again, and you hear the faint clicking of his keyboard. You can almost see his contemplative gaze and the soft blue glow of his computer screen lighting his face. “Did they know each other at all before the marks appeared?”

“Yeah, they were coworkers.”

He hums. “Okay… that could be why. Marks have a tendency to appear if soulmates have been around each other for extended periods of time without realizing it. It’s like nature’s way of telling them that the person they’re looking for is right in front of them. As for why they haven’t felt anything for each other? I dunno… reincarnation can really fuck with people. Any previous sentiments for your soulmate stick with you as you pass on, even if you’re both reborn completely different people.”

I must have really fucked up in a past life to deserve this. Jaemin’s words echo in your head.

“Obviously, there’s still opportunity to fix things,” Donghyuck adds quickly before you can get too lost in your thoughts. “It just takes time. Honestly, I wouldn’t be too concerned”

“I know, I know,” you groan. “I’m just upset that after everything he’s gone through, this is the shit he has to deal with.”

“Yeah. I can’t even imagine.” He pauses. “You know, a lot of people would just run off if they were in the same situation. He’s lucky to have you.”

You give a breathless laugh and shrug. “I feel like it’s the least I can do.”

“You never give yourself enough credit,” Donghyuck says, a hint of melancholy to his voice. There’s a sudden noise in the distance that cuts him off, and he curses beneath his breath. “Shit, the new cat’s not trained yet and I think she’s doing something stupid in the kitchen. Jeno will kill me if anything happens to her.”

You suppress a giggle. “Go ahead. We can catch up some other time.”

“Of course. See you, Y/N.”

The line clicks.

If Donghyuck taught you to be hopeful and Mark taught you to be strong, Jungwoo taught you to be brave.

Kim Jungwoo was your first love, and in many ways, you consider him to be irreplaceable. Perhaps it had simply been the result of young naivety back then, but you thought he was unlike any other person you’d ever met. In hindsight, he was different. A bright light dancing his way into your life when you were only a child in the 30s, a free-spirited boy who went where he pleased despite living under such an oppressive regime.

The Kims lived only a few doors down. You frequently saw the boys in their front yard kicking a beat-up soccer ball back and forth between them. Jungwoo was the middle child, and he sat right in front of you in class, his back always perfectly straight against his wooden chair so as to avoid the teachers’ chastisement. He was a quiet boy, and he never said a word unless it was to answer a question. But even then, his voice was small—not exactly shy or scared, just quiet. He quickly learned to raise his voice when the teacher hit him on the back of the hand with a ruler and demanded he speak up, when the wood scraped apart the skin of his knuckles.

At the time, when Japanese was all too foreign on your tongue and you struggled to understand anything taught in class, you thought he was a genius. He always had the right answers when he was called upon and there wasn’t a trace of an accent in either of his languages. Not that you heard him speak Korean much; you didn’t dare speak it unless you were hidden in your own homes, where your parents could discuss the uprisings without having to worry about the police roaming freely outside. Though, they still spoke in hushed voices as if anyone could hear them, as if terrified for what could happen if someone did hear.

The first time you spoke to Jungwoo properly was in middle school. After a humiliating incident at school that left you in tears, he ran to catch up with you on the way home and spoke to you in timid Korean, offering to help. You were still teary-eyed and beyond upset, but you let him guide you through your homework. He rambled to you about the Japanese grammar you couldn’t understand and explained the mistakes you’d made for your teacher to lash out at you the way she had. It didn’t stop you from making the same mistakes the next day, but at least he was patient, unlike the adults at school.

“You’re not stupid,” he told you one afternoon on the way home. Again, you were in tears.

“But the teachers think I am,” you grunted. “And I feel stupid. I can’t understand a word they say. I never have the right answers. Everything I say is wrong. If that’s not stupidity, I don’t know what it is.”

“Y/N, all we do at school is memorize meaningless facts that don’t really matter,” he replied with a shrug. “Just because you can’t shove all that information into your head doesn’t mean that you’re stupid. Look at Doyoung. He was failing school but he’s still one of the smartest people I know. He just… learns differently.”

“So? That doesn’t make me smart either. They still think—”

Jungwoo scoffed. “Who cares what they think? I think you’re wonderful, and they’re the real freaks. Miss Ito, especially.” He wrinkled his nose. “She smells funny.”

“Hey, be nice, Jungwoo,” you chided, but you were laughing. He was effortlessly funny and it was such a pleasant contrast to the way he acted at school. He was always so disciplined and perfect when the adults were watching, but he seemed to let loose around you. It made you feel… special, in a way. Validated, accepted. Something you never felt at school.

You walked home with him almost everyday from then on. You became inseparable, even when your school shut down and sent all the students to gender-segregated schools, even when your parents worried that you were spending too much of your time with him instead of studying. Even when war arrived.

The Second World War plunged your lives into darkness; Jungwoo quickly became the only light to guide you. He was there for you while your parents were away, while they laboured in the factories making helmets and guns and bullets so that they could at least put food on the table. He was there when the light at the end of the tunnel went dim, though he was miles away from home.

Jungwoo had never struck you as a fighter or rebel, even if he had the physique of a soldier. He had the drive and the courage and the steel to fight, but you only saw gentleness in his monthly letters to you. The last letter you received from him still sits in a drawer somewhere, the last words he wrote sealed in a plastic envelope so that they won’t fade away.

You took the test a few months after the war ended, only because he had pleaded with you to do so. Even if I don’t make it home, he wrote to you in the same curving script he’d used to teach you years ago. Promise me.

When the receptionist gave you a piece of paper with an X marked next to your name—there were no colour indicators back then, only X’s and hollow circles—a part of you felt relief that you couldn’t quite explain. Another part of you was disgusted, convinced that you were being selfish and apathetic. You thought that maybe you had no regard for him; that you only cared for yourself and a stranger you were still searching for. He’d risked his life to join the rebel army, fought on the frontlines with the Allies, and you repaid him with nothing.

It would take you years to come to the conclusion that your reaction was only natural. It would take you years to heal and start seeing other people. In due time, you would stop frequenting the church in your hometown and your fingers would cease to brush against the memorial stone in the yard, upon which his name was carved. Just one name among many.

Jaemin’s hands are all over you: in your hair, around your throat, pushing you against the wall as he kisses you. His fingers tangle into your hair and he pulls on the strands, forcing your head back a bit so he can continue trailing his lips over your neck and collarbones.

“We can’t be doing this,” you tell him when you manage to pull away. His arms come around your waist anyways and he buries his head in the crook of your neck. You can smell the alcohol on his breath, and you glance behind him to see empty soju bottles on the kitchen counter.

“I’m not with Jieun,” he snarls. “Besides, like I said. I think we’re fucked. We aren’t meant to be.”

“Don’t say that,” you hiss, taken aback by his sudden coldness. “This isn’t fair to her.”

“It’s mutual, remember? I bet she’s out there doing the exact same thing with some other guy. She doesn’t need me.”

“Jaem—”

“We’re fucked. She told me she doesn’t need me, and I told her the same.”

You’re horrified. “You did what?”

“Hilarious, isn’t it? We had our first fight, and we aren’t even together yet.” He scoffs, pushing a hand through his hair in irritation. “Some type of soulmate.”

You’ve never heard him talk like this. He’s out of his mind. He’s lost it. “Fuck, Jaem, how much did you drink?”

“Not enough to feel better, clearly,” he snaps.

“Alcohol and whatever this is between the two of us isn’t going to make you feel any better. This isn’t going to fix your problems.”

“Then what do you want me to do?!” His words are sharp, his expression hard when he glares at you. “You tell me to move on and to give her a chance and to stop doing whatever—” he motions frantically. You’ve never seen him so wild, so out of control, and you’ve almost never seen him lash out at anyone like this. “—whatever the fuck this is, but do you even know how it feels? Do you even care?”

A sharp intake of breath, and then the world is crashing down around you.

The feelings you fought to suppress re-emerge, rising up to crush you and force you into relapse. Doubt. Regret. Guilt. The little voice in the back of your head is a raging monster now, and it shouts at you, screaming at you in a blind rage. Telling you that you’re heartless and self-absorbed and indifferent, everything you believed you were when Jungwoo died. Reinstating what you know isn’t true. You know he doesn’t mean it. You know that it’s just alcohol fueling the words spewing from his lips and nothing more, but they still bring back unpleasant memories, a sense of dread you can’t shake.

He realizes, albeit a bit too late. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

If you knew how much it hurts me to watch you do this to yourself. If you knew how much it hurts me knowing that there’s only so much I can do for you. “Don’t. I get it.”

For a few seconds, the room is silent, save the ticking of the clock behind you. It reminds you briefly of a memory that you can’t quite grasp, like a flash of deja vu before you spiral back down to the present reality where you stand in cold, frigid silence. The broken smoke detector chirps.

“I should go,” you say at last. You go to grab your keys from where you left them on the counter but he quickly stops you, his hand coming around yours. You look up at him in irritation, pulling away sharply.

“It’s late,” he says shakily, almost pleading. “You shouldn’t walk home at this hour. Not alone.”

“I’ll call a cab,” you shrug before slipping into your sweater and pulling on your shoes. You bid him goodnight and leave him dumbfounded in the living room.

You return home to a sleepless light and endless thoughts in a cold bedroom. A broken record replays his words in your head again and again, until you see Jungwoo’s face floating above you in the darkness. His features are faint, like wisps of smoke that loosely form sad eyes and lips pulled downwards in a frown. And then he’s the one asking, “Do you even care?”

You have no answer for the annoying voice in your head. You stare at the lines of light drifting across the expanse of the ceiling, wide awake as the sky brightens outside.

“How long will you be gone?”

It was the 3rd of August 1995. You knew because the next day would mark 50 years since Jungwoo’s death. The next day, you would be going back to your hometown and laying flowers on the altar in the Kim family home, revisiting the memorial you’d left behind when you moved to Seoul.

You shrugged as Mark passed you his lighter. The old zippo produced a small spark between your fingers, and then the sting of smoke was filling your mouth and nose. You didn’t smoke regularly—you’d stopped years ago—but you sure as hell felt like you needed one tonight.

“I dunno,” you said, taking a long drag from the cigarette. “A couple more days after the ceremony? If I stay any longer, Doyoung might get upset.“

“Upset?”

“He doesn’t like seeing me. Said I bring back bad memories. I think I remind him of Jungwoo too much.”

Mark grimaced. “Well it’s scary, seeing a childhood friend who hasn’t aged in fifty something years… Must he like seeing a ghost.” He paused, tucking a stray piece of your hair behind your ear so that he could see your face. “My nephews feel the same way about me.”

“You remind them of something?” You asked.

“Their father, I guess,” he explained. “My brother… wasn’t the most understanding of them when they were younger. Whenever they see me, all they can think of is their childhood and his abusiveness.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

He took a moment of contemplative silence “No, not really. I mean, maybe it did at first. But it’s not like I go out of my way to avoid them just because of the memories they associate with me. That would be unfair for me.”

“It would be,” you agreed.

“So then why avoid Doyoung? What he thinks of you is beyond your control. If you remind him of painful memories, that isn’t exactly your fault.”

You sighed. “I don’t know. I just feel like staying out of his way might help him heal. Maybe it’ll help him move on from everything he’s trying to forget.”

“Oh, Y/N.” Mark took your hand with a breathless laugh. His smile was both sad and endearing, as if he were in awe of you—what for, you weren’t too sure until he murmured, “You’re too kind sometimes.” He paused to exhale, smoke escaping his lips and bleeding into the atmosphere, dispersing into the starry sky. He stared into the sky for a few moments, silent.

“But it’s not always up to you to heal their wounds. At some point, they have to learn to heal themselves.”

“What the hell happened to him?”

Jaemin looks like a mess. His hair is disheveled and swept messily all over the place. His skin is unhealthily pale, unusually warm to the touch beneath your fingertips. You can tell he’s had a little too much to drink; he sits on the couch in a daze, his eyes fixated on an invisible point in front of him as if searching for something that is no longer there. He yelps in pain when you wipe at the cut on his lip.

“We bumped into a couple guys at the bar. One of them took a swing at him,” Renjun explains as he passes you the bottle of disinfectant. You carefully apply a drop to a cotton swab. “And it didn’t help that he was also drunk. Thank god Lucas was there to break up the fight.”

“I wasn’t drunk,” Jaemin groans in protest. “Just tipsy.”

“Tipsy? You couldn’t even tell me Y/N’s number.”

“I don’t remember anyone’s number.”

“Well, you couldn’t tell me your own name either. Got any excuse for that one, smartass?”

You ignore their bickering and continue cleaning the cut on Jaemin’s cheek, holding him firmly by the shoulder so he doesn’t move. The cotton quickly turns light pink between your fingers. You briefly examine the red marks along his jaw where he’d been hit, frowning. Jaemin has never been one to get into fights and especially not while under the influence, but the bruises on his cheek and his knuckles suggest otherwise. Hell, he rarely even gets drunk, but it’s becoming more and more frequent, to the point where Renjun makes sure to watch over him whenever they go out together. He’s derailing, you think to yourself as you brush his hair into some sort of order.

“Okay, let’s get you to bed.” You put his arm around your shoulder and help him up to his feet, nearly staggering beneath his weight. Renjun rushes over to help you move him into the bedroom.

“You should probably go home. It’s getting late,” you tell him when Jaemin has been settled in bed. You glance at the clock hanging in the kitchen as you clean up the first aid kit on the table: almost 2 AM. “I’ll stay with him… make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“I really tried to keep him away from the alcohol tonight. I swear I turned away for only a second to deal with Yangyang and he— Ugh, I’m so sorry,” Renjun apologizes again, shaking his head. “This whole soulmate ordeal is really getting to him. I’m worried, Y/N.”

“You know how he is. He always figures it out one way or another” you reassure him. “I’ll talk to him again though. Maybe he’ll actually… listen this time.”

“Well, call me if anything happens. I probably won’t be asleep anyways.”

“I will. Thanks, Jun,” you nod appreciatively.

By the time Renjun has gone home and you’ve finished cleaning up, Jaemin is already asleep. He stirs when you switch off the lamp and reaches out for you in the darkness, fingers intertwining with yours. “Stay,” he mumbles, pulling you a bit closer.

“I’m not going anywhere.” You say as you admire the way the moonlight filters in through the windows and draws pale lines across his cheeks. Despite the cuts marking his skin, he looks so much softer now, innocent, in a way. Again, you’re reminded of the Jaemin you met at the art gallery. He was none of this. None of this pent-up frustration released in empty beer bottles, none of these crimson bruises marking his otherwise smooth skin.

“You have to stop doing this to yourself,” you murmur. There’s no reply at first, and you wonder if he heard you at all.

“I’m sorry,” you finally hear his voice: small, feeble in the darkness. His words become more urgent as he keeps speaking, spilling from his lips uncontrollably. “I shouldn’t have said those things about you. I wasn’t thinking. You know I could never mean it.”

You hush him, wrapping him in the security of your arms. A single tear brushes against the back of your hand, then another. “It’s alright,” you assure him as you rub soothing circles against his back. “You were going through a lot. I understand, okay? It’s okay.”

He shakes his head frantically, his tears falling in steady streams now. You let out a low hiss when you see them stain pink with the blood from the wound on his cheek. “Still, that shouldn’t be an excuse. I’ve managed to fuck up everything since all of this started. I hurt Jieun, I hurt Renjun, I hurt you. I can’t even go to work and look at Jieun without feeling like such an idiot and getting mad at myself for being such a child. Without feeling like maybe I deserve this.”

Your heart drops, then shatters into a million pieces at the bottom of a dark abyss.

“Look at me,” you plead as you take his face in your hands. “Look at me, Jaem, please.” He finally lifts his head, his eyes meeting yours in the stillness. All you can see is brokenness, defeat and regret, a look you knew well. It’s an expression that once followed you around for years, appearing in every mirror and reflection you passed by. An innate, intimate part of you that you despised so much until you came to accept it. “Listen to me, Na Jaemin. You are one of the strongest, bravest and kindest people I’ve ever met, and nothing will ever change the way I see you. You don’t deserve any of this bullshit. You don’t deserve this.”

“If you knew what I told her, Y/N,” he lets out a shaky breath. “If you knew what we told each other when we found out neither of us had any feelings for each other… maybe you would think differently of me.”

“If that’s truly what you believe, fix what you broke,” you say firmly. “Apologize to her. Make things right between the two of you, unless you want to go through this all over again in another life. Things will only get worse if you don’t address them now.”

“And if I can’t?”

“If anyone can do it, it’s you, Jaem.” Trembling, you press your lips to his temple. “Whether or not you end up with her, whether or not you think you deserve this, I love you. And that will never fucking change.”

He leans forwards, his forehead touching yours, his nose brushing against yours and his lips just inches from meeting yours. But he never comes any closer, and you feel no urge to close the distance either. Perhaps it’s a sign that both of you are already starting to let go, to drift apart; this moment is nothing romantic or lustful, nothing more than comforting each other in your brokenness. Nothing more than trying to help each other numb the pain.

“I love you.” His voice trembles, but his words are steady, deep-rooted in sureness.

“Then promise me you’ll try, Jaem. You’ll try to set things right, for both our sake.”

“For you, love,” he murmurs, so quietly that you can barely hear him. His voice is lost to the faint rumbling of the air conditioning unit somewhere outside and the distant noises of traffic. “For you, I would do anything.”

You wonder if he’ll remember any of this in the morning. You wonder if he’ll take your words to heart, or if they’ll simply be enveloped in dreams fueled by drunkenness, reduced by sleep to nothing but a blur.

...it’s not always up to you to heal their wounds. At some point, they have to learn to heal themselves

You’ve done everything you can for him, you decide. Even if you continue to walk by his side, the rest is up to him.

One Saturday morning, Jaemin shows up at your door dressed in black jeans and a button-down shirt, his hair swept up neatly. There’s a kind of brightness to him; it’s not necessarily hope or excitement, but certainly a change from what you’ve seen the last couple of weeks. He’s meeting Jieun for lunch, he tells you nervously. He wants to see you before he goes. You tell him you’re proud of him. That genuinely, you admire him.

The next time you see him, it’s at a floral shop. He’s in the middle of picking out flowers, and he flushes when he sees you. A single rose seemed too cliche, he tells you sheepishly, and asks your opinion. He thinks she’ll prefer something a bit more unique but equally tasteful, equally elegant. You recommend orchids or gerberas. They last longer than roses, but they convey the same message. When he’s gone, you buy a small vase of irises for your apartment; your living room needs a bit of colour.

Weeks later, you find a small package in the mail: a parting gift, you realize when you tear open the padded envelope. It’s nothing too special, nothing fancy or expensive—just a piece of blue glass wrapped in silver accents, attached to a delicate chain that you loop around your neck. When you hold the pendant up to the sun, its blue tint shatters into infinite colours, tossing specks of luminous yellow and orange all over your bedroom. More than just a singular colour, it reflects the other hues around you. And for just a brief moment, you think you see your own reflection.

You watched Jaemin move on just as you’d watched Mark and Donghyuck: from afar, with reserve but at the same time, excitement. Close enough for him to know that you were still there for him, but allowing some sort of distance that grew as the days melded into weeks and then months.

For the most part, he seemed to be alright. His texts were always cheerful, covered in happy emoticons—he used them when he was too giddy with excitement to type actual words. “We figured things out,” was all he said one night, and it was all you needed to hear to know that they’d be okay.

You started to notice the fondness he’d developed for her; it was subtle at first, just a hint of affection in his voice when he told you about her over the phone. Though slowly, it developed into something more. It was just as Donghyuck said: time had forged a relationship out of nothing, out of empty words and empty emotions, growing a garden from a barren piece of wasteland.

The first time you spoke to Kim Jieun, it was over the phone during one of your calls with Jaemin. She’d chimed in on your conversation at some point to say hi, and the way she spoke almost reminded you of Donghyuck: bright, cheery, a little sarcastic in a playful manner. You quickly learned that she was easy-going though brutally honest at times, well-mannered yet well-humoured. Most importantly, she wasn’t judgemental, and she didn’t treat you any differently from Jaemin’s other friends just because you’d been with him previously.

Of course, there was still a sense of yearning, a bittersweetness whenever you saw the two of them together. Your fingers always danced fleetingly along the screen of your phone before pressing like on the photos he posted to his social media. You saw him less and less, only occasionally running into him at the bakery you used to frequent together or at a friend gathering. For the most part, you let the past stay in the past. He seemed happy. And honestly, you were happy for him.

“I told you he’d be fine,” Donghyuck murmured to you at one of Jeno’s rampant parties, once most of the guests had trickled out for the night. The two of you sat on the balcony, watching everyone stumble around in their drunken stupor: Jeno was passed out on the couch with two cats sitting perched on his chest. Renjun was trying to braid flowers into Jaemin’s hair, which he’d recently bleached yet another shade lighter to match Jieun’s platinum locks. Out of the corner of your eye, you watched Chenle and Jisung exchange a few bills and bicker over a bet—Chenle was still in denial that Jisung had won, apparently.

“I didn’t doubt you for a second, Hyuck.”

“But you were worried,” he grinned smugly.

“Why wouldn’t I be worried?” You sighed and knocked back the rest of your wine before motioning for him to pass you the bottle. You swiftly poured yourself another glass. “If I couldn’t have my happy ending, at least I wanted him to have his. As… cliche as that sounds.”

Donghyuck raised a brow at you. “What’s to say that you won’t get yours too? They can’t keep you waiting forever. The longest it ever took for someone to find their soulmate was 241 years.”

“Goddamn, are you trying to make me feel better or worse?”

“Better, of course! Okay, what I’m trying to say is that it’s rare for anyone to wait longer than two centuries. If everyone lived for up to three hundred years, we’d have a lot of dictators and other crazies running the world. The universe would spontaneously combust.”

“I know I’m barely even halfway there, but come back to me when I set a new world record,” you rolled your eyes, to which he responded with a small chuckle.

“So what now?” He glanced at Jaemin, who sat across the room with his eyes half-closed, an empty red solo cup in his hands. Jieun had her head on his shoulder, rambling drunkenly about something to Renjun. If you hadn’t known any better, you would have thought she’d been a part of the group all along; she fit in so seamlessly, and it warmed your heart to see her getting along with everyone.

“I don’t know,” you shrugged. “Nothing for now, I guess. Just waiting.”

“Whoever it is, I’m sure they’ll be worth it,” he hummed in reply.

“You think so?”

“People say that the longer you wait, the better. It’s all in your head, of course, but they have a point.”

You sighed, lifting your head to gaze at the stars hanging overhead. “I suppose they do. Maybe someday I get to find out.”

He patted you on the shoulder reassuringly. “You’ll figure it out. You always have.”

Donghyuck left a little later to get a drunk Jeno to bed, and then you had only the quietness of night to keep you company. Your mind drifted and you contemplated his words, repeating them silently to the wind. The night sky replied with nothing but a gentle breeze against your skin.

You could be patient, you thought as you watched the others inside. You fished the pendant out from beneath your shirt and stared at the reflection in the glass. It was as if you were grasping a piece of the night sky between your fingers: the stars and a crescent moon captured in a single, translucent oval. In the dark, the pendant appeared deep indigo, not too different in hue from the four coloured markings you’d acquired over the years.

But the sun would rise in due time, you thought to yourself mirthfully. Beneath the brightness of morning, you’d hold a different colour in your hands. You tucked the necklace back into the fabric of your shirt. You could wait.

read the epilogue, yellow

[jack-is-lost]

PATCHES & PINS (CH 1)

A/N: This story revolves around a transgender, female to male, original character. LGBTQ+ topics are a given within this story. Gender and body dysphoria will come up as well since he is not out to his family — only close friends. If you dislike such a story premise please understand you do not have to interact with it at all. Leaving hate comments will be removed. Of course, constructive feedback is always welcomed.  

Pairing: Eventually Marko x OTMC

Story is still in progress and updates will be slow

Eventually it will be posted on A03 once I’m a few chapters in

Currently on Chapter one | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 coming soon

Chapter one

My life, for the most part, has always been unusual — a little different. Despite having parents that looked like any successful mom and dad ought to, and an older brother willing to stick up for me, things just didn't go according to plan. 

You see, my mother was excited to have a daughter finally. Someone to doll up and buy dresses for, maybe even enroll in a dance class. A stark difference to her firstborn, Tyler, who was all about karate lessons and throwing the ball with dad. Which eventually evolved to working on cars as he grew older. Our mother wanted somebody to share girly interests with, understandably. And, for a while, she was able to have it. The baby pictures are proof of that. Yet, as I grew older and became more aware of what I liked, the fewer things seemed cookie-cutter-perfect for my family.

"Are you not taking your bag to school, Jacklynn?" The mentioned item was nowhere in sight as the youngest of her children poured coffee — the action resembling someone needing every drop left in the pot as if to survive.

"It's the last day," came the grumbling response after a long, soothing sip. "I doubt most kids will even be showing up."

"Yeah, about that," Tyler, the oldest, spoke around a bite of toast. "Can't I be a minority and just stay home?"

"No, you only have one day left, guys." She smiled at her two kids. A graduate who had already filled out college applications, and is ready to further his engineering career. The other, soon-to-be senior, that seemed to have no real drive in anything but drawing and reading — and staying up too late apparently.

"Seriously," she spoke up again as they sighed in unison, deflating with their last hope crushed. "You two will survive."

Tyler nudged his sister, who leaned across the counter, jostling the coffee dangerously enough to receive a seething glare. "Want me to take you?"

It wasn't like Tyler to offer that too often, "Sure."

They both pulled away from the kitchen and made their way to the door, hollering goodbyes as Tyler grabbed the keys — the other sibling still nursing the coffee.

"Don't stay out too late!" Their mom called back, knowing full well she wouldn't see her kids after school. It seemed the closer summer drew in — the fewer tests to study for and homework to do, the more they came home later.

Tyler stepped into the car, unlocking the passenger door as he slid inside his cherry baby — A beaming red, 1983 Audi Sport Quattro, followed by his sister plopping down less elegantly. He glanced at her while starting the car.

"Talk to me, Jay." It was the last day, after all. Weren't kids supposed to be excited about that? "What's bouncing 'round that head of yours." He barely received any notion his sister was listening till she drew out a long sigh, head hitting the back of the seat.

"I don't know, man." It was drawn out, tired. "Didn't get much sleep, I guess."

Tyler nodded while giving the steering wheel a turn, making his way down the road. The school building wasn't very far when on wheels, and he pulled into a parking lot marginally less filled than it ought to be.

As his sister made to get out, he placed a hand on her shoulder, their eyes meeting as she paused halfway out the door. "Ever need to get a chip off your shoulder come talk to me, okay?" Her eyes rolled to the side, and Tyler gave her a little reassuring squeeze, "I'm serious. What are big —"

"— bro's for? I know, I know."

Tyler chuckled as he released her shoulder, "Good. Now," he slammed the door shut and leaned over the roof, "Go sleep in class or something." That at least drew a chuckle out of his sister as she turned away from the car.

The last day of school went how one could expect it to go. Some teachers put on movies and had extra treats for their students. Others went over lessons in the last semester, hoping it would stick to impressionable minds before three months of freedom — minds that were only thinking about freedom and not math.

It was by mid-day when a note made its way into Jay's locker. In gruff, almost unreadable handwriting, it merely said, 'Meet us by the big tree'. Jay instantly knew who it was from and folded the paper up.

A long night was probably ahead.

When the final bell rang, Jay had to wipe the drool off an impromptu pillow-desk before heading out and down the hall. Many of the kids loudly boasted about their summer plans while cleaning out lockers, jostling each other, and hurrying outside. Jay maneuvered around the hoard and quickly escaped out a side entrance, locker already empty since lunch.

It didn't take long to walk a block to the park, down a jogging trail, before splitting off into a cluster of trees. There, in the center of it, laid a large trunk of a dead tree. Upon it splayed out a makeshift map, bags, and — unsurprisingly, two brothers.

"Finally," Grumbled Edgar while raising his head, a red marker still poised over the map. "Where's Sam?"

Jay stared, unaware that Sam was supposed to tag along for the stroll after school let out. "Was I meant to wait for him or?"

"Forget it," came the short grunt, and Edgar was back to the more important matter at hand as Alan turned around to face Jay.

"I'm sure he'll show up. He's got the same note as you," he started to unravel what appeared to be a chaotic ball of cord in his hands. "Oh, hey—" he stopped as a thought struck him, "—Still a no go on the knife?"

Oh, not this again.

Jay leaned against the bare trunk, arms crossed and brow lifted. "Alan, we've been through this. Keep me on the books, but hand me a knife, and someone will lose a finger."

Of course, no one knew if Jay meant their fingers or not, and that was on purpose.

"Maybe some training will help," Edgar spoke up again, pausing on circling locations. "You need to prepare yourself for—"

"— the unexpected. I get it, Ed." Jay cut him off while peering closer to get a look at the map.

"Edgar," he corrected with a tired mutter despite it being useless. They've known each other for an entire year now. One would think it wouldn't matter at this point.

Jay tapped a finger on the closest circled spot, the cemetery. "Thought you marked this off?"

"One can never be certain," He nodded to his own words of wisdom. "It is a common ground for the dead."

"I'd say," Jay suppressed a snort, "It is where the deceased go to be laid into the ground."

Rustling noises announced Sam’s arrival as he pushed through, almost smacking himself in the face with a thin branch. His strained voice drew attention to him. “Guys,” he dusted a leaf off his overly styled coat, “We really need to find a better spot to meet.”

Jay lazily offered a salute wave, “Hey to you too, Sammy.”

“I’m serious,” Sam huffed while taking up a spot near Alan, hands shoved into his pockets. “What about the shop? Y’know, with school now over and stuff?”

Edgar grunted in thought. “Yeah, that ought to be doable.”

“Your grandpa still against us being at the house?” Alan spoke up.

Sam gave a partial shrug. “Sort of,” he eyed the map, then glanced at Jay, who returned the unspoken question with a tired look. Sam returned to explaining when Edgar motioned for him to continue. “You guys can visit, as you have, but you can’t — you know —” he shuffled his hands for the right phrasing, “— bring hunting business there.”

Jay had never actually been to Sam’s place, but the stories shared made it sound like a lot of stuff went down there — destroying property kind of stuff. So Jay could understand what the man was trying to avoid. The Frog Brothers being walking time bombs of destruction, after all.

“The cemetery again?” Sam squawked at noticing it. “I am not doing that again.” The sound of Jay snickering redirected Sam’s defiant stare. “Make Jay do it this time.”

“Wait, wha—”

“—He doesn’t have the qualification for it, Sam.” Edgar cut in before an argument could occur. This only made Sam huff, arms crossed and brows furrowed.

“So? I didn’t either last year.”

Alan stopped weaving the cord at this point, placing it down on the dead trunk. “Jay needs the experience. It could be good for him.” He simply spoke, agreeing with Sam.

“Hey, Jay’s right here,” he had pointedly avoided parading around Santa Carla for a whole damn year. Sure, his knowledge of supernatural things is what drew the Frog Brothers to him in the first place — and the free charge of ordering books at their shop kept Jay in the circle, but he was a good year older than them and didn’t feel like playing make-believe.  

Sam smirked in the way that screamed challenging, “C’mon, Jay, or are you scared of the dark?”

Jay narrowed his eyes, “I know what you are doing.”

“Then prove me wrong,” Sam continued.

“No.”

Despite that, Jay found himself amongst the dead at one in the damn morning. It was eerie, the cemetery, sitting in absolute silence and blanketed by a coat of darkness. The only noise now filtering through was shoes scrapping against the ground and low grumbles around him, voices hushed as not to alert anybody — or anything. Even their flashlights were ordered to stay off unless it called for it, as directed by Edgar.

“Exactly what should we be expecting to find here?” Jay spoke up quietly while trailing behind the two brothers, hands stuffed into his jacket. It was chilly tonight.

“Any signs of the undead.” Edgar simply said without much explanation, to which Alan filled in.

“Disturbed graves, tombs broke, drag marks.” he ticked off like a list.

“Ah,” Jay deadpanned. “So zombies?” the brothers turned to him, the moonlight hitting their frames but leaving their faces shadowed. “What?”

“Could be vampires too.” Edgar simply grunted. “Fresh ones crawling out of their dirt bed.” Alan nodded along with his brother, and Jay sighed.

“Sure, yeah. That too,” It wasn’t like anything of the sort actually existed, but Jay would humor the guys. They put up with his oddities, after all, so he could continue to do the same for them.

“Didn’t any of your books mention that?” Edgar continued while turning around, walking along a worn-out path again, and avoiding stepping on actual graves.

“A little,” Jay admitted as they continued on their trek.

A majority of Jay’s supernatural books were all about how one became something, the signs, and lore behind creatures — not exactly if they crawl out of graves or not. It made sense, though, if considering how people feared vampires in the past. How they would stake and behead someone during burial just in case their loved one decided to raise again.

Same could be said about leaving a bell.

Alan suddenly crouched down near the edge of a grave. “Look,” his flashlight clicked on to bask the empty hole in light. Edgar followed promptly as Jay stared at the two figures eyeing an obvious dug hole for a burial happening soon.

“It might be a sign.” Edgar rubbed a finger over the crumbling edges, dirt smearing and falling back inside the pit.  

“Or,” Jay leaned over them to get an exact look at the perfect outline, “It is the groundskeeper getting ready for a funeral. There’s not even a casket down there.” Jay simply summarized before leaning back.

Alan clicked off the light and stood, “He’s right, Edgar. It is too perfect.”  

“Hey!” the voice resonated out, cutting the muffled talking off as a beam of light frantically flailed in their directions. “What are you kids doing?!”

Without a shared word between the three, just mere glances at one another, they quickly split. Or at least Jay tried to do just that, but the brush of Edgar flying past him in a rush entirely threw him off balance. It wasn’t until tailbone smashed into dirt that Jay even figured out what happened.

“Fuck…” he muttered, then covered his mouth as the light grew brighter over the grave from above, rushing footfalls growing closer before fading away in the direction the brothers ran. Once it was clear, the curse slipped again with more fever.  

Jay eased to his feet and stared above his head, the wall towering almost a foot over him. “They truly mean six-feet-under,” he muttered while raising a hand to the ledge, just able to cup fingers over the lip, only to stumble back as it gave away.

The recent rainfall was not making it easy.

Again Jay tried to grab, shoes scraping along the wall in an attempt to gain some height — thinking if he just rushed up the wall it would give him enough momentum, only to fall back against the adjacent wall.

“Shit — fuck,” Jay didn’t even care if his voice traveled that time. He was stuck in a damn grave, after all! Screw it!

“Need a lift?” came a voice from above, and Jay shot his gaze upward to see a hand reaching down toward him. The moonlight didn’t offer much else to see but light curls and the frame of a coat.

Even if it were the security guard, Jay knew this would be his best bet. It wasn’t like waiting till daylight to be discovered was an option. It would not help much in regards to needing to be home before Jay’s parents could find out he even snuck out.  

He reached for the hand, feeling leather against palm and uncovered fingers wrap around his wrist. It took only one good heave, shoes against the wall and other hand clinging to the edge, to be entirely pulled out. Despite mud caking Jay from front to back, he could even feel it in his shoes; it felt good to be back on the surface. It wasn’t like he had a fear of enclosed places, but it still sucked regardless.

“Thanks,” he looked over at the stranger, still only catching the slightest glimpse of a smirk within the darkness. It was hard to make out any features, and the way the guy stood didn’t help anything.

“Were you takin’ a dirt bath?” he joked inquisitively, and Jay chuckled under his breath.

“No, not exactly.” Who would want to do that in a cemetery anyway?  

The beam of a flashlight washed over them again as rustling sounds drew near, and Jay stepped away from the pre-dug grave. Definitely not wanting to repeat that incident all over.

“Looks like we should start running,” spoke up the other guy, head turned away from Jay to peer toward the security guard.

What was once hidden was now lit up like a spotlight. A smooth curved jawline, willowed eyes bright with brown, and curly dirty blond hair glowed on display for a split moment. Until the flashlight jostled by the running security guard fanned over the area. And Jay would be lying if he said he didn’t stare.

“Avoid any more holes, yeah?” he easily teased before seemingly stepping in a direction with no real speed.

Jay floundered for a moment before taking off after him. “Wait.” Jay didn’t know the grounds that well, and the two idiots that did had left him.

The guy laughed while reaching behind him, grabbing Jay’s wrist again with no problem, then started to run as the worn-out guard hollered something. He seemed to avoid any lifted tombstones, flower arrangements, and small fences like it were daytime. All while Jay tried his best not to stumble, gaze more on the ground than anywhere else.

When they neared the exit gate, chained to prevent people at such odd hours to visit, he let Jay’s arm go and placed both palms out while crouching down. Jay didn’t have to ask and quickly stepped into the waiting hands. He felt the guided push upward as his own hands grabbed for purchase, trying to avoid being nicked by the gothic-style fence. Yet, as Jay’s leg swung over, his pants snagged and ripped — the gravity of his body spilling over the other side holding little resistance.

Surprisingly Jay landed on his feet, if not a little wobbly, and quickly looked through the fence to see the guy still standing there undeterred. “You coming?”

“Don’t worry about me,” he simply said. Jay wanted to comment, but the sight of the guard pushing past the nearest tombstones shut him up. “Go.” he laughed again — actually laughed as if nonplussed by the whole thing. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep him distracted.” Then he turned around and fanned his arms out as if directing air traffic before darting down the side of the fence.

And that was the last Jay saw of the guy before quickly hiding behind the bushes lining outside of the cemetery, not wanting to be seen as the flashlight shown in his direction.

The walk home was slow as he picked flakes of mud off his jeans. Jay could feel the dry mess on his face and in his hair. A shower was needed as well as a talk with the Frog Brothers tomorrow. No way were they getting off free from abandoning him in the damn graveyard! Even as he climbed back through the bedroom window, Jay was envisioning how he’d throttle them. It wasn’t until he was in the shower, scrubbing extra hard to clean the grime off, that his thought wavered to the stranger.

“Why was he even there?”

[missymephistopheles]

Blood Tastes Like Copper

I’m really proud of this, so I’m posting it here as well.  Warning for adult themes and descriptions of injuries (not gore).

               Dark couldn’t even recall what had started this particular fight.  All he knew was that it had gone on long enough for the fresh bruises to begin blossoming into a deep purple hue, and that he was beginning to allow a few of Meta’s blows to land.  Fortunately Meta seemed just as drained, his hair plastered back with sweat and his attacks significantly weaker.  He was breathing heavily, mouth gaping open and fangs bared.  The two had thrown aside their armor and weapons to settle things personally, and Dark was somewhat appreciative of the view that ended up providing.  

               Meta looked positively vicious, eyes alight with fury and wings flared out.  He’d discarded his outer jacket and the armored vest beneath after insisting Dark do the same, in the interest of an honorable fight.  The black shirt beneath stuck to his skin with sweat, showing tantalizing hints of the muscle underneath.  Meta dashed at him again, throwing another precise punch that Dark managed to intercept.  Meta was faster, but Dark was stronger.  Dark grabbed Meta’s wrist and flung the other man away.  Meta managed to roll into a handspring, flipping elegantly back onto his feet.  Without even a moment’s hesitation he took another run at Dark, landing a brutal kick into the other’s side.  Dark fell onto his side, curling in on himself and wheezing.

               “Alright, ok!  You win, quit kicking me!” Dark squealed, holding a hand out to intercept any errant attacks.  Meta stepped back, folding his arms and glaring down at Dark with a mixture of irritation and contempt.  He certainly hadn’t escaped unscathed, however.  His right eye was blackened and swollen, and his lip was split, dripping blood down his chin.  Dark himself was already thinking of what cosmetics he was going to use to cover up his bruised cheek, and was sincerely hoping that the warm blood streaming from his nose wasn’t an indication of any broken bones.  

               “Finally you have the sense to stay down,” Meta growled, wiping at the blood on his chin.  He only managed to smear it across one side of his face, though he didn’t seem to really care.  Dark watched the rapid rise and fall of the other’s chest for a few moments, before trailing his gaze up to Meta’s battered face.

               “I have to say, I like this look on you,” Dark purred. Meta’s lip curled in disgust, and he turned on his heel to gather his things and leave.  A hand around his ankle stopped him.  “I’m joking, you giant prude.  Sit for a while; you look like you might pass out.”  Meta paused, and sighed, backing up a few steps and sitting beside where Dark lay, keeping a good foot of space between them.  

               “Let me make this painfully clear: I do not find you fit to even clean my boots with that filthy tongue.  So if there is any shred of sincerity in your consistent lecherous comments be assured that it will remain purely within your depraved imagination,” Meta snarled.  Dark blanked out slightly after the first sentence.  He cursed himself for even entertaining the thought of allowing such an inferior reflection dominate him in any capacity.  No, he was going to corrupt him, make him discard his ridiculous morals and become the tyrant they both knew he was.  And then what?  Dark had never thought past that simple plan, nor did he ever stop to wonder why he even cared.  An uncomfortable tightness rose in his chest, unrelated to the bruise forming on his side.

               “You have a real fear of sexuality, don’t you?” Dark quipped, hoping Meta would attribute the strain in his voice to their fight.  Meta gave him a look of pure confusion that quickly morphed to outrage.

               “I have no such thing,” he hissed, clenching his fists. “I am simply tired of your entirely unwelcome advances” he continued, evening his tone.  Dark narrowed his eyes and sat up.

               “Unwelcome, huh?”  Dark shrugged, and pulled the hem of his shirt up to wipe the sweat from his face.  He spent a distinctly unnecessary amount of time rubbing at his face, exposing as much of his torso as possible.  “Sure, I’ll stop then.  I know when a joke has gone too far” he said, pulling his shirt away from his face and very nearly cackling when he saw Meta’s eyes snap back up to meet his.

               “Excellent,” Meta responded curtly, looking straight ahead. Dark silently scooted closer, ignoring the jittering feeling in his limbs.  He leaned towards Meta, stopping an inch away from his face.

               “I got your eye pretty good,” he laughed.  Meta only looked at him, close enough to catch the others scent over the smell of the disturbed grass around them.  He smelled of copper, sweat and cologne.

               “I am only going to ask you once to back off,” he said lowly.  

               “Oh my, I’m positively shaking in my boots,” Dark drawled.  “What are you going to do about this?”  Dark slipped a finger under Meta’s chin, turning his head to face him and grinning wildly.  Meta’s pupils turned into pinpoints and he tackled Dark with a snarl.  The two grappled for a moment before Meta rolled back to his feet and managed to pin Dark’s neck with his boot.

               “You disgusting little…” Meta trailed off, too riled up to properly articulate his rage.  Dark grasped Meta’s ankle and yanked, pulling him off balance and onto the ground.  He scrambled over to pin Meta down by the shoulders, steeling himself to the flurry of blows and kicks to his stomach.  Meta was practically frothing at the mouth at this point, wings fluttering about wildly as he resorted to sinking his clawed fingers into Dark’s shoulder.  

               “What is your damage?!” Dark screeched.  Meta’s thrashing slowed, and eventually ceased. He released his grip from Dark’s shoulder, fingers tipped in speckles of blood.

               “You,” he said, seemingly too tired to even inject anger into his tone.  He lay there catching his breath for a moment, giving Dark a steely glare. “What do you even stand to gain from tormenting me?”

               “Because it’s amusing,” Dark lied, meeting the other’s stare with his single eye.  Meta snorted, scowling deeply.  

               “You pathetic wretch.  You truly need attention this badly?” he jeered.  Dark only continued to stare.  Meta looked truly malevolent, his fangs grit and bared, his face smeared with blood and marred by bruises.  His eyes were like fire-polished glass, bright white and blazing with fury.  A terrifying thing of beauty.

               “Why do you keep giving me so much of it then?” Dark spat, letting genuine anger creep into his tone.  Meta blinked, his rigid expression relaxing into one of blank confusion.  

               “Pardon?” he said, narrowing his eyes to slits.  

               “You’re always jumping at any chance to fight with me. Do you want to beat the snot out of me that badly?  Or do you want me to kick your shit in?” Dark hissed, grabbing Meta’s collar and forcing him to keep eye contact.  Meta grimaced at their proximity but resisted the urge to head-butt him.

               “You go out of your way to infuriate me.  And your constant inappropriate behavior is exceedingly unsettling,” he muttered.

               “It isn’t anywhere near constant.  Or are you reading a little too far into things?”

               “It would be impossible to interpret your disgusting displays as anything else,” Meta snarled, once again baring his admittedly impressive set of canines.  His breath smelled of stale blood and metal.

               “Hey, I’m only messing with you on occasion. Anything else is wishful thinking.”

               “You are participating in such a display at this very moment!” Meta snarled, darting forward until their foreheads ground together.

               “And you’re acting like an aggressive idiot,” Dark shot back, wincing at the slight head-butt.

               “You are driving me mad!” Meta shouted, gripping Dark’s neck with one hand.  Dark refused to release his hold on Meta’s shoulders, instead giving him a harsh stare. Meta visibly faltered.

               “Same here,” Dark growled, levity gone from his tone. He could feel Meta’s claws leave shallow cuts as they slipped away.  

               “Are we at an impasse here?” he muttered, allowing his hand to rest onto the grass.  Dark swiftly moved to pin Meta’s hand down.

               “We could be.  Or we could tip the scales,” Dark spoke in a dangerous tone.  Meta glanced at his hand and then looked back to Dark, alarmed.  

               “What are you-?”

               “Quit playing dumb, it doesn’t suit you,” Dark snapped, leaning slightly forward until the tip of his nose brushed against Meta’s.

               “Unhand me before I-!”

               “Before you what?  Manhandle me and run away?”

               “I flee before you can violate my personal space!”

               “So why are you still here!?”

               “I don’t have a fucking clue!” Meta screamed.  Dark’s eye widened at the uncharacteristic outburst, and the two stayed silent and stock still for a moment.  They could each feel the other’s breath on their lips.  Suddenly Meta shrugged Dark’s arm off of his shoulder, pushing the man off of him and onto his side.  Meta was quick to dart after, forcing Dark to abandon hope of recovery by straddling him and pinning his arms down at his sides.  Dark’s mouth gaped in shock.

               “What on earth is your problem-?”

               “Shut.  Up.” Meta snapped, pressing his lips against Dark’s.  Dark very nearly jerked away in shock, but he quickly relaxed, obliging the chaste kiss.  He slipped a hand out from Meta’s grip and curled it around the back of his neck, pressing them closer.  He felt the smooth enamel of Meta’s teeth brush against his lower lip, and he pulled back for a moment.

               “Put those fangs to use,” he whispered.  Meta’s only response was to gently worry at Dark’s lower lip with his incisors, opening his eyes to gauge his response. His look of mild boredom spurred Meta to bite down lightly, scraping the inside of the lip enough to draw a pinprick of blood.  Dark quietly gasped, opening his mouth just enough to allow Meta to slip his tongue through.  He lacked any sort of finesse, but his raw passion left Dark gasping for air with bruised lips.  The blood still oozing from their respective injuries mingled and smeared over their mouths, the overpowering taste of copper both mildly nauseating and intoxicating.

               “What a mess,” Meta muttered, causing Dark’s lips to move along with his in an involuntary silent mimicry.  He brought a hand up to Dark’s chin, gripping it and tilting his head upward.  Meta took care to use only the pads of his fingers, keeping just enough space between skin and claws to prevent drawing blood.  He lapped the blood away from Dark’s face, sweat and blood burning his taste buds as he trailed down to the other’s neck.  

               “Shit,” Dark breathed, resisting the urge to press his body against Meta.  Meta smirked against the cool skin of Dark’s throat, parting his lips to lightly scrape at the delicate flesh with his fangs.  He moved his hand from Dark’s chin to rest on the grass, giving him full access to continue gently biting and sucking at the other’s neck.  Meta slightly sunk one of his razor-like canines into the skin, causing Dark to gasp loudly and arch his head back, showing off the unblemished alabaster tapestry of his neck.   The submissive display was rewarded with another harsher bite, though Meta carefully gauged the strength as to not inflict an actual wound.  The beads of blood gathering in the shallow punctures were greedily lapped up, and Dark shivered at the warmth of the tongue on his naturally cool skin.  

               “You kinky bastard,” he laughed, voice awash in giddy energy.  He felt a short burst of warm air as Meta quietly snorted.

               “Hush,” Meta commanded, his tone soft and sultry. He shifted so that his lips hovered over the crook of the man’s neck, and hesitated.  “Let me know if it becomes too much to bear.”

               “Hm?”  Meta’s only form of clarification was once again sinking his fangs into Dark’s neck, only this time it was with a measured and agonizing slowness.  Dark bit his lip and reached a hand up to grab a fistful of Meta’s wild indigo hair, pressing him forward and urging him to bite down ever harder.  The pain was sharp and electric, darting up the side of his neck from the deepening wound, but it wasn’t quite enough yet.  It was just pushing to the precipice of Dark’s outer limits of tolerance, but he wanted desperately to teeter at the very edge.  He shoved Meta’s head forward, forcing his teeth slightly deeper and hitting his limit.  He cried out in a mixture of pain and satisfaction as Meta quickly pulled his fangs out with a sickening wet pop.  

               “You are utterly deranged,” Meta grumbled, licking gently at the wound before blood could begin streaming out.  Two cold hands grasped either side of his face and pulled him up to face Dark.

               “Let me get a look at you,” Dark purred.  The tips of Meta’s canines were stained rust-red, and his lips were slick with blood and saliva.  He panted slightly, skin burning under Dark’s hands.  His usually crystal-clear eyes were hazy and slightly unfocused, clouded with a number of emotions Dark didn’t recognize, though he hoped at least one was something along the lines of desire. Dark gave a wide, manic grin, showing off his smaller, pure white fangs.  “Gorgeous…” he whispered, drooling slightly.  He reached a hand to the hem of Meta’s shirt, slipping a few fingers beneath the fabric.  Meta leaned back slightly, looking from the hand to Dark.  

               “Go ahead,” he muttered, looking away with reddened cheeks.  Dark slid his hand up further, savoring the ridges and bumps of the man’s hard abdominals. Dark himself was rather toned, but Meta trained himself ruthlessly day in and day out.  And now Dark had the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of that labor. Dark suddenly yanked the material upwards, leaving the shirt resting just below the pectorals and making Meta let out an undignified squeak as cold air hit the exposed skin.  The muscle was lithe and lean, seemingly tensed and ready for attack at any moment.  Though that could describe the man himself as well.  Meta had a raw ferocity and power about him, allowing him to be commanding and intimidating despite his slim figure and small size.  He was more like a cat than a bat in that aspect; able to be calm and fluid while retaining the impression that he could be ripping at your throat in an instant.  His volatile temper only added to that feeling.  

               Dark lightly pressed a hand to the skin just under where the fabric stopped before slowly trailing downwards, allowing his fingers to follow the contours of Meta’s torso.  He stopped just above the hem of his pants.  Dark looked again at Meta, and was met with a steely gaze that seemed to be daring him to try something.  He got one finger hooked under Meta’s belt before a hand closed around his wrist with an iron grip.

               “I am not one for exhibitionism,” Meta said evenly, though he seemed slightly thrown off by Dark’s boldness.  Meta extricated himself from Dark’s grip and stood, pulling his shirt back into place and straightening it.  

               “Don’t leave now!” Dark groaned, already missing the other’s heat.  Meta said nothing as he walked over to where his armor laid, wings melding back into his cape.  He slid his helm back on and slipped his jacket over his shoulders, not bothering to close the front.  The remaining armor was unceremoniously dumped into the void of his cape, and he strode back over to loom over Dark.

               “I am going to go get myself cleaned up,” he said. He paused for a moment, before adding, “And if you are inclined to help me clean up your mess…” he folded his arms, “…the door will be unlocked.”

               “We wouldn’t be getting very clean then,” Dark tittered, smirking.  Meta gave him a distinctly unperturbed look, and gave an obvious glance to a lower bit of Dark’s anatomy.

               “Indeed.  Then I would suggest you wait before following me.  And consult a physician if four hours pass without change.”

               It was Dark’s turn to flush red.                              

[hardcore-evil-regal]

A Different Life Or Maybe Not - Chapter 7

A Different Life Or Maybe Not

They Call Me the Cavalry (BadassNinja)

Chapter 7: It's a date

Summary:

The girls go shopping for dresses, and Melinda goes on her date.

Notes: So I kinda struggled to write the date and I've been really busy with school and so many different stories on the go at once so I'm really sorry for the long time between updates. Thank you if you have stuck around with me long enough for this update, it means a lot to me. I hope it's worth the wait :)

You can keep reading this here or on AO3 or ff.net

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter 7

“No,” she says flatly eyeing the dress Natasha is holding up with disdain.

“Really? It’s totally your colour,” Natasha laughs as she puts the bright pink dress back on its rack.

Melinda rolls her eyes preferring not to dignify the joke with a response as she continues to sort through the rack of dresses which she is currently looking through.

“Here, go and try these,” Maria tells her as she dumps a couple of dresses in her arms suddenly and pushes her towards the change rooms.

“What I-”

“Just try them on ok Mel,” Maria cuts her off with a stern look.

“Fine,” she huffs before reluctantly picking out one of the free change rooms.

“I don’t like it,” is the first thing out of her mouth as she draws the curtain back revealing the first dress.

Both of her friends evaluate her critically as she avoids fidgeting with her hands.

“Agreed,” Natasha says nodding her head, “too much black. Try some colour.”

She’s about to argue that she rather likes wearing the colour black before Maria opens her mouth.

“Yeah, more colour. You always wear black.”

Rolling her eyes she draws the curtain back across, placing all the black dresses to one side before trying on the coloured ones.

“No,” Natasha says right away as she reveals the dress. It’s salmon pink with a low neckline and sits just off her shoulders.

“Yeah, not my colour,” she grimaces looking down at the flesh coloured garment.

It makes her look washed out and is just all sorts of wrong. Pulling the curtain back across she tries on the next one.

“That’s not too bad,” Maria says thoughtfully as she looks her up and down.

“If I was going for a sixties housewife look,” she deadpans with hands on hips.

Natasha snorts before shooing her off to try on the next one.

“Now that could be considered acceptable,” Natasha nods as she carefully turns around for them.

“Uh, if we were going to work at a strip club maybe,” she replies back snarkily.

The dress is short, incredibly so. It barely makes it to mid thigh and the plunging v-neckline is so deep she’s pretty sure any lower and her navel would be on display. Turning back into the change room she ignores the cat calls of her friends as they have a bit of fun at her expense.

“No!” both her friends cry as she pulls back the curtain.

“I don’t even know why you put this in the pile,” she looks at Maria.

The dress is probably the worst one of the lot, it’s strapless and orange and just so very horrible. It provides no shape to her figure, is an awkward length between her knees and her ankles and is generally just a terrible colour on her. Securing the curtain back across, she pulls off the ugly dress with pleasure.

Their eyes light up as she steps out and does the compulsory turn for them to see all aspects of the dress.

“It’s perfect” both her friends decide as she smooths down the front of the dress with her hands.

The deep wine red colour of the dress suits her perfectly and it hugs her figure in all the right ways. Coming down to reach mid thigh, there is a slit along her left thigh to allow her easier movement, something which she appreciates greatly. The v-neckline is modest without being excessively so and shows off just the right amount of skin. The slim rope braided straps over her shoulders hold it up, with the braided straps elegantly separating over her shoulders into their individual strands to hold up the low back of her dress, two  meeting in a v at the middle and the other two going straight down. The dress appears almost to be like a wrap dress in the way the fabric crosses over itself and folds. The girls are right, it is perfect.

“Great, so we’re done?” she asks hoping that they can finish shopping.

“What? No!” Maria says crushing her hopes of an early reprieve. “We aren’t finished until you have at least five new dresses.”

“Five!” she says, horrified by the idea of having to go through this process for longer.

“Yes five,” her friend agrees as Natasha snickers beside her.

“Traitor,” she glares at Nat.

“Go on,” Maria tells her pushing her back into the changing room, “we need to pick at least four more dresses.”

---------------------------------------------------------------

Three hours, a few dozen stores and entirely too many dresses later, she is finally free. All collapsing onto her lounge they take a minute before she hauls herself back up to go and sort through her new clothes. The sound of footsteps behind her tells her that the girls have followed her as well.

“So which one are you going to wear tomorrow night?” Natasha asks her as she begins taking her new dresses out of their bags, her friend sprawled across her bed.

“Hmm,” she mulls over the question still a little undecided. “Which one do you guys think?”

“The first red one,” Maria says without pause, pushing Natasha over a bit so she could lie on the bed too.

“This one?” She asks holding up said dress.

“Yep,” Maria confirms resting her chin on top of her hands as she lies on her stomach.

Natasha turns her head to look as well and gives an awkwardly angled nod of approval as well from her position starfished on her back.

“Alright, this one it is,” she agrees as she hangs it up on a coat hanger, ready for tomorrow.

“Pair it with those nice black pumps that you have too,” Nat tells her flopping her hand up to gesture towards Melinda's wardrobe.

Smiling to herself Melinda walks over to her wardrobe and bends down to pick up the aforementioned shoes.

“These?” She teases her friend dangling them just above her face.

“Hey!” The redhead swats the shoes away from her face, “yes, those shoes.”

Chuckling to herself she takes the shoes away from her friend’s face and puts them aside with her dress for tomorrow night as well.

“What about your hair?” Maria pipes up to which Natasha nods along vigorously to.

“Just thought I'd leave it down and curled,” she shrugs not having really given it much thought.

“Yeah you could do that,” Maria says though she doesn’t sound entirely convinced, “or you could put it up and show of the low back on that dress.”

“It’ll drive him wild,” Natasha smirks wiggling her eyebrows at her.

She throws Natasha a look as Maria shrugs her shoulders.

“Just consider it,” her friend tells her.

---------------------------------------------------------------

At exactly seven o’clock she hears a soft rap of knuckles on her door. Swiping her purse from the kitchen counter on her way, she opens the door with a soft smile.

“Hi,” he smiles at her, stepping back from the door as she steps out.

“Hi,” she replies shutting the door behind her and locking it.

“You look stunning,” he tells her running his eyes appreciatively over her figure, enjoying the low back of her dress on display with her hair pinned up.

“You clean up pretty nice yourself,” she smirks returning the compliment.

He's dressed smartly in black slacks with a white shirt, the first few buttons undone  allowing a small expanse of skin to peek out, and a matching black jacket. Her compliment causes him to grin and he offers her his arm as they walk towards the elevator. Her hand rests lightly on his forearm as they walk making idle chatter. Usually she isn't one for small talk but she quite enjoys getting to know Alex better. And that is what tonight is about; getting to know one another better. There are no expectations, no pressures. If things don't work out then she will not be disappointed and they can just go back to being friendly neighbours.

---------------------------------------------------------------

“I thought we were going to dinner?” She looks at him with a raised eyebrow.

He smiles a little sheepishly shrugging his shoulders, “I guess I just wanted to impress you.”

For some reason his admittance makes her cheeks flush a light pink and she tries to hide the smile tugging at her lips. With her hand on his forearm she allows him to lead her to their seats. After several minutes in which they converse quietly the lights around them begin to dim gradually fading into darkness and she can't help her small intake of breath as the domed ceiling above her is illuminated with constellations.

“Consider me impressed,” she whispers in his ear lowly as they are taken on a virtual journey through space.

Stars and planets fly past them, meteors and asteroid belts, black holes and entire galaxies. It truly is a sight to behold.

Sitting beside her shrouded in darkness with only the lights of the constellations surrounding them illuminating her face, he's glad that he decided to bring her here tonight.

When they walk out of the planetarium around an hour later she feels almost overwhelmed from all of the sights of space. Alex smiles at her, dark eyes warm as they walk back to his car. It's not like she was expecting tonight to go poorly, but already it's outdoing her standards for first dates. The restaurant he takes her to is a classy French establishment with a lovely peaceful ambience. They order wine with their meals and share their desserts. She even indulges him in allowing him to feed her some of his chocolate mousse, teasing him just a little as she swipes her tongue along her bottom lip to to lick up the chocolate, his eyes falling to her lips at the action. A short chuckle escapes her breaking through the slight tension rising up between them and he releases a low chuckle of his own as he leans back running a hand through his hair.

The conversation between them flows easily as they talk about a wide range of topics from preferred alcoholic beverages to favourite Avengers. He's a Captain America fan and she finds herself smiling as his enthusiasm for the patriotic hero reminds her of a particular former partner. When she mentions collecting trading cards he laughs off her teasing suggestion with a reassurance that he is only a moderate fan, no costumes and trading cards for him. At her reveal of Black Widow being her favoured Avenger she receives an expression of raised eyebrows and a playful comment that she could probably pull off a good Black Widow. She smirks back with a cryptic look. If only he knew the half of it. Also, she is totally not telling Nat that she just said she was her favourite Avenger because then her friend will be completely insufferable. Natasha does not need her ego inflated anymore than it is.

As he walks her to her apartment door she cannot help the slight flutter of butterflies in her stomach. They both know what comes next.

“Thank you for tonight,” she tells him sincerely, a small smile on her lips as he smiles back at her.

“It was my pleasure,” he replies taking a tentative step forward, closer to her.

Close enough that she can feel the warmth of his body radiating off him. His dark eyes lock on hers, their gaze intense as she waits for him. Tilting her head up in invitation, he leans forward, one hand cupping her cheek gently as the other holds her waist lightly, his lips brushing over hers in the barest of touches. When she doesn't back away, he presses his lips more firmly to hers, warm and wet and tasting faintly of chocolate. His hand on her waist tightens fractionally as his other hand brushes a thumb over her cheek, tongue swiping over her bottom lip just as she'd teased him in the restaurant earlier. When they part he watches as she smiles up at him through dark lashes, cheeks tinted a most delightful pink.

“I'd like to do this again sometime,” he shares unable to resist brushing his thumb over her cheek just once more.

“The kissing or the date?” She asks with a playful tone and smirk drawing a chuckle out of him.

“Both,” he admits unable to stop looking at her.

She bites her bottom lip and he can't help thoughts of soothing it better from popping into his mind.

“Ok,” she says simply with a small smile after a few seconds of deliberation. He cannot help the wide smile that splits his face as he bids her goodnight and she turns from him with quiet good night of her own, closing the door being her as she enters her apartment. His lips still tingle from her kiss as he walks the seven steps over to his own apartment and he cannot wait for when he will see her again.

---------------------------------------------------------------

She's not surprised by the two intruders in her home as she shuts the door behind her, placing her purse on the counter and releasing a sigh.

“I suppose you want a mission report?” She turns to them resignedly.

“All the details,” Maria orders as she accepts the drinks Melinda passes them.

“ All the details,” Natasha reaffirms as if Maria's statement wasn't clear enough.

x

x

Notes:

Please leave me a comment? I haven't been getting many so I'd love to know what you guys think of this.

[drreporting]

Convalescence Pt.10

“Ah ha, I was right,” Amelia said as she looked through the chart, “The bladder numbness, the pins and needles, it all points to inflammation. Did you do the MRI?”

“Yeah, I’ll go get it now,” Derek told her, leaving her alone at the front desk with the chart. As Amelia pondered over the rest of the information in the chart, someone slowly neared her, looking over her shoulder.

“Whatcha looking at?” the guy, donned in navy blue scrubs, asked.

Amelia looked up at him, noticing his icy blues first, then his five o’clock shadow, before lastly admiring his hair. He was remarkably attractive, to say the least. Not to mention his accent was charming. “A patient chart.”

The guy looked down at her with a far too cocky smile. “Patient charts are for doctors, not patients with a walking stick and pretty blue eyes.”

“Very funny,” she humoured, rolling her eyes, “But I am a doctor with a walking stick and pretty blue eyes, not a patient.”

The guy laughed. “I don’t know who you are at all,” he stuck his hand out, “we should fix that over drinks, err...”

“Amelia,” she answered, taking his hand in hers and shaking it, “And I don’t drink.”

“I don’t drink either, Dr. Amelia,” he said, not wanting to let her hand go, “Not anymore.”

“You’re just full of tricks, aren’t you?” she retorted, letting him hold her hand still.

“Dr. Nathan Riggs,” he introduced himself, finally letting her hand go once he did, “Maybe we can go for dinner instead…”

“I don’t think…”

“What are you doing?” Owen growled as he stood between the two, “Get your hands off of her.”

“Owen, relax,” Nathan tried to tell the trauma surgeon.

“I’ll relax when you’re fifty feet away from her,” he bargained, folding his arms across his chest.

“Owen,” Amelia tried to call, “Calm down, we were just-”

“So you don’t want me talking to anyone here?” he inquired angrily, “They’re not all your property, mate.”

“No, they’re not,” Owen agreed, “But I don’t want you even breathing in the same room as her.”

“Why?”

“She’s married,” he growled, “To me.”

Nathan furrowed his eyebrows before looking over Owen’s shoulder at her. “I don’t see a ring on her finger, or yours, mate.”

“Say that again and I’ll punch you in your face,” Owen warned. Nathan kept his gaze, the two of them in a stare off.

“Whatever,” Nathan muttered, eventually leaving the tense situation.

Owen turned around to face Amelia now. “So you have your ring off for a couple days and you already start flirting with other guys?”

“Owen, what?” she exclaimed, “I wasn’t flirting with him; we were just talking.”

“Something you seem to be doing with everyone except me,” he snidely retorted, leaving after the comment. Amelia stood there in shock, trying to process everything that had happened in that short space of time. One minute, Owen hated her, the next minute he was willing to punch guys just for simply speaking to her. It was frustrating and tiring.

---

Friday 8th July 2017.

Tim walked into his office with pep in his step. After his plan to get Amelia to walk had worked out, and then his plan to get Owen jealous by getting Derek to get Riggs to speak to her, they were right on track for his next manipulative plan. He wanted to see how they’d operate around one another, post-sex, and now was the perfect time to test that theory as Amelia was walking on her own again.

“Are you guys happy?” Tim asked, “Because I’m happy.” Both Amelia and Owen looked at him with confused expressions.

“Why would we be happy?” she inquired.

“Good point,” he agreed, pulling out his notepad, “Let’s jump right into it then. Is there anything anyone wants to say before we begin?”

“I’m sorry for overreacting on Sunday,” Owen mumbled.

Amelia looked over at him. “I’m sorry for not talking to you. I know I should, I just…”

“Well, you’re talking now, I guess,” he shrugged.

“We’re talking now, yes,” Tim confirmed eagerly, excited to start the session.

When Amelia and Owen exited the therapist’s room, they felt oddly light. They’d talked about DC, eventually coming to the conclusion that both parties were right in that situation, and they talked about the accident, which was a little harder to speak about. It was very difficult for Amelia to open up about how she felt but, once she did, once she bared the darkest parts of her feelings for that entire incident, she found that Owen, too, felt the same way. He felt all the angst and pain and even more, considering he was on the viewing side of the entire thing. They both walked out of that room having a better understanding for each other. Which was good, because Tim was expecting them to go on a date tomorrow and not hating each other’s guts might’ve helped with that.

“I don’t know how to dance,” Amelia groaned as Owen dialled the number on the call card that Tim had given him.

“That’s what you said on our wedding day,” Owen chuckled.

“That was unprofessional, slow dancing,” she further complained, “This is a dance studio with a professional instructor. Plus I didn’t have an injured foot back then.”

“Your foot doesn’t look injured to me,” he snidely replied, looking down at her shoes and seeing how well she was walking in them. “Hey, good afternoon, is this Charlie?”

---

Saturday 9th July 2017.

“This is clearly some sort of sick, couples’ therapy dancing thing,” Amelia muttered under her breath as she and Owen stood in a line which consisted of five other unhappy looking couples.

“I think you might be right,” Owen whispered back, eyeing one couple in particular that had been arguing since they came into the studio ten minutes earlier.

“Okay,” a guy said as he and another woman entered the room, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, “My name is Charlie and I’ll be your instructor for tonight, so let’s get right into it. I’m gonna teach you guys the basics and then leave you to dance on your own. Easy stuff.” As Charlie glazed over the crowd, he noticed Amelia and Owen in particular, the couple that his friend had told him about. Smiling mischievously to himself, he took his partner’s hand and demonstrated the simple, slow moves he wanted from everyone, before encouraging them to follow the next song he was about to play.

Turning towards Amelia, Owen offered a shy smile. “Doesn’t look too hard.” They took their places and waited for the soft flow of music to begin.

My funny Valentine…

Owen placed his hand on her back, her hand on his shoulder, and their free hands meeting on the other side. Together, they danced to the music, their footwork a little wobbly at first. As the song progressed, they felt themselves relax, and small smiles began forming as little mistakes were made here and there.

“Don’t look at your feet,” he advised her.

“I don’t want to step on yours,” she shyly admitted.

Sweet comic Valentine…

In his army green t-shirt and brown leather jacket, Owen looked everything but perfect. Especially with the running shoes that matched nothing he was wearing, shoes he opted to wear because he didn’t want Amelia to feel awkward about having to wear running shoes. They turned elegantly, their bodies in tune with the slow music as the warmth between them grew more powerful by the second.

You make me smile with my heart…

Owen almost jumped out of his skin when he felt Charlie push him closer to Amelia.

“Your form is a little off,” Charlie lied, “You need to be closer.” He took Owen’s hand and moved it to her lower back and took Amelia’s hand and moved it closer to his neck. With the new positions and closeness, the couple found their heartbeats growing steadily along with the warmth between them.

“Look at me,” Owen gently insisted, “If you keep looking at your feet, you might actually step on mine.”

Taking a deep breath, Amelia looked up at him, not regretting it at all.

Your looks are laughable…

From there on, their dancing became near perfect, from their breathing to how their feet moved; everything stayed in sync. Owen often talked about her eyes, how they glistened and popped in certain lights, but she had never taken the time to notice how his eyes shone as he looked at her with that sombre, admiring look. His eyes were a mesmerising icy blue that she’d never truly appreciated till then.

“Everyone is looking at us,” Owen whispered, snapping her out of her trance.

Amelia squeezed his hand slightly and smiled. “Really,” she chuckled softly, “I didn’t notice.”

Yet you’re my favourite work of art...

His eyes darted to her lips as the song came to an end, the temptation to kiss them unbearable. He wondered if she felt the same way.

Although the song stopped and the room became silent, the couple kept their positions. From this close, they could both hear the laboured breathing of one another as they stayed rooted in their position. Amelia couldn’t stop looking at him, even after the song had finished. The only time she looked away was to look at his lips. She wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was.

---

“My feet officially hurt,” Amelia groaned as she and Owen made the slightly long trek from the van to the front door. He chuckled as he quickly glanced at her and saw that she’d ditched the running shoes and was walking barefoot, although Callie had specifically told her not to do that yet.

“Charlie was very creepy,” Owen said, grabbing Amelia’s hand and swinging it in between them like a child. He held her hand partly because he wanted to catch her quickly if she fell, but mostly because he was on a high right now and he had the urge to hold it and feel her warmth again.

“Very, very creepy,” Amelia agreed, trying not to think much of him holding her hand and failing miserably so. She couldn’t stop thinking about kissing him since the beginning of the night and it was beginning to drive her crazy.

“Tonight was fun,” Owen said once they reached the front door, “We should do something like this more often.”

“Yeah,” she said, “I don’t want to sound cheesy, but I don’t want tonight to end.”

“Neither do I,” he agreed, his thumb rubbing along her index finger. “But Maggie probably has stuff to do tomorrow. I don’t think we should keep her…” It was then that he noticed the intense gaze she had on his lips. “Amelia…”

“I know, I know,” she sighed, her eyes unmoving, “No kissing, no touching, no…”

“No sex,” he finished for her, his eyes darting to her lips now too.

“I mean, we don’t have to…tell him,” she suggested. “He’s not our father or anything.” Owen knew the drill with her. She’d move closer to him, let their noses touch and then he’d end up instigating the kiss. It always happened. But it was different tonight. He found himself moving closer to her, contradicting his earlier statements completely.

“I want to fix us,” he said, “And his methods have been working so far, so I think we should stick with it. And we have a track record of fixing our problems with sex.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” she agreed. For a moment, she looked like she had given up on the idea, but then he noticed the lustful gaze had returned. “Although…we’re not necessarily having any problems right now, are we?”

Owen chuckled at her smart ass remark, finding himself losing his willpower the longer they lingered out here. “We aren’t.”

“So if we…” she tiptoed and nuzzled her nose against his “…it’s not necessarily because we’re…”

“Having problems…” he finished again for her, watching with hooded eyes as she closed the gap and kissed him once, testing the waters. Slowly, her hand slipped up his neck and to the back of his head as she kissed him again, this time longer.

She could feel him resisting, so she paused. “Tell me if you want me to stop.” After a long pause spent contemplating the pros and cons of going against their therapist’s advice, Owen shut his brain off as he grabbed her by her waist and turned, pressing her in between him and the door. His hand went to her cheek and his thumb brushed against the skin there as he kissed her this time. He scooped her up and wrapped her legs around his waist before stripping off his leather jacket and hers. He managed to lose his shirt somewhere between the trek from the front door back to his truck, but he didn’t care. Forbidden sex makes the soul forget a lot of things.