#//Regardless of who snaps him back to reality; it is still a Very disorienting experience for him. v vulnerable too

[orphiicheartd]

Sometimes, Moze does find himself dissociating when he lets his guard down too much, especially while in stealth, being already so susceptible to that comforting feeling of nothingness he would slip into. Likewise, sometimes said state happens to trigger because of it, where he’ll feel himself so disconnected from himself, he will simply ‘disappear’ and sink into that numbing headspace until he’s forcibly snapped out of it, one way or another. He has yet to actually pull himself out of one of these episodes unaided.

[yeoldontknow]

Replay (M)

Author: @yeoldontknow​ Pairing: Junmyeon x Reader (oc; female) Genre: superhero au; angst; fluff; smut Summary: Junmyeon thinks of himself as cursed. Every time he touches things, he gets visions of all those who held it before him; when he touches people, he gets their lived experiences and all their feelings regarding those experiences. Junmyeon doesn’t like touching anything at all. Until one day he sees you. Until one day, he realizes he wants to touch you. Superpower: Psychokinesis Rating: NC-17 Warning: explicit sex Word Count: 10,960

This is not his house.

Yet, this is his kitchen. Or, rather, it was.

This space, tilted and cavernous, is not a tangible reality.

But it could be.

It could be - it feels frighteningly as though it is, and so it is the spoon that makes him unsettled.

Odd, he thinks, for such an otherwise empty and disorienting room. Truthfully, it should be the walls, the way they warp and the way they seem to move around him, mirroring the will of his actions rather than remaining still, that force him feel this way. Or, perhaps, it should be the way he knows this is his kitchen, the way he knows every contour and texture of the dining table, of the cabinetry, yet it is neither his nor anyone else’s that makes him feel empty. This space is a netherspace, a space made of everything and nothing. And so, it should be any of these things, perhaps even more so the mere knowledge that he is breathing without existing at all, that make him choke on bile but, instead, it is the spoon.

He knows this spoon, knows its weight, its size, and it's metallic taste as it sits upon his tongue. He hates this spoon, despises its simplicity and, paradoxically, its complexity; loathes how it controls the rhythm of his heart, and the speed of his blood, down to his very core. And its presence here, in this foreign, familiar place, makes his stomach churn with dread and his fingers yearn to sweat. They cannot, though, pores closed in refusal to do anything other than wait for the inevitable, and thus he is forced to remain swollen and limp, useless beneath the weight of his trepidation.

In a corner, tucked beneath the cover of darkness and leaning into the sliver of pale light like a phantom of malcontent, sits his father. An old man, a hollowed man, looking more like a creature of myth and fantasy than memory, his simply sits, and he simply watches. His eyes in their sockets have sunk deep, receded far back either by time or by regret, and make him look like a dead thing, an evil thing. Over time he has chewed his lips raw, the flesh red and torn and mangled, hanging loose as though he peeled them back to reveal his teeth. It makes him look like a skeleton. It makes him look like a beast.

Conversely, his mother sits at the table, a thing that stands on only two legs and seems to jut far out into an expanse of time or memory or, perhaps, into the open caverns of his heart. He knows it is his mother because of how she sits, poised and rigid and ready for a fight, delicate fingers reaching for the spoon without wanting to touch it. He knows it is his mother regardless of the fact that she has no face, no expression or mouth or eyes at all, she simply sits, facing his father and reaching for the thing that caused them to break.

Junmyeon knows he has a part to play, here and now, whenever and wherever this is. He’s done this thousands of times in his life, an action repeating without any reaction, a cycle he is forced to relive almost daily. He knows he has a part to play and yet he fights it, keeps his arms at his sides until keeping still causes him physical pain, makes his muscles twitch and his jaw clench. For as long as he can - maybe minutes, maybe even hours - he does not move until he is pushed forward by the force of his own, childish will and takes the spoon in his hands.

And all over again, he watches it all.

Tuesday. A breakfast. A gentle slant of sunlight. The number six, his six, his small, fragile age and his big, hopeful eyes.

His mother, pouring his cereal; he, waiting patiently. She holds this spoon in her hand while she shouts, while she cries - but mostly, she shouts. Words fly, violent and merciless at a terminal velocity. He bites his tongue. It bleeds. His father slaps the table, so hard that it breaks. His mother jumps, startled and fearful and angry. He tries to cry, he wants to cry. He finds he cannot.

He watches the spoon, how is mother points it at his father and yields it like weapon.

He watches the spoon. He wishes it would dissolve.

He watches the spoon. He hates it.

He hates them.

Junmyeon wakes with a start, eyes snapping open as his mouth gathers air into his stomach and lungs. On this, he chokes, chest clenching in shock at the sudden act of breathing. On this, he gasps, body forcing itself to become centered and calm as he presses his back into the bed. Staring up at the ceiling, he regards the painted concrete with tears in his eyes and counts backwards from one hundred in threes. This habit, one recommended to him by his childhood therapist, always follows the nightmare, even though it does not often work. The numbers, however, serve as a distraction to steady the thunderous rhythm of his heart as it battles fruitlessly against his sternum.

Sweat drips down the bridge of his nose and into his eyes, making him hiss at the sting. His skin has started to leak into the bed and through his clothes, though not from fever, and he has the passing sensation of being held by water. For a moment, he thinks this is what he’s turned the bed into: a sea of memory, neither happy nor fond, a tide of woe that laps eagerly in waves at his hands and feet. Hesitantly, he sits up and squeezes his eyes shut as he runs a hand through the damp strands of his hair.

‘Fuck,’ he whispers into the empty room, pinching his nose and focusing on the pressure.

Tucking his knees to his chest, he stays like this in the stillness and the quiet, eyes shut tightly as he listens to the blood rush through his ears.

It’s been one month since he’s dreamt of the spoon, dreamt of that morning. One month since the recurring nightmare has reared its angry head and reminded him of the day he discovered his power. He thought it had been over, thought his arrival at the Academy and into new scenery meant the memory had been silenced. The commencement of his classes on controlling his power had filled him with hope, made him connect the coursework to the silence in his mind, and allowed him think the trauma had departed from his memory forever.

Apparently, he was wrong.

Heaving a heavy sigh, he reaches over to his nightstand, fingers feeling around for his glasses. They glide down his nose, skin damp and unable to hold their weight, and he wipes his skin with his shirt before placing them back down. With his vision restored, he lets the clarity of the room settle against him like a blanket, relishing the understanding that comes with the sight of his own dormitory.

Logically, he knows it is not the spoon that caused his parents to break, that turned them into people wholly wrong for one another. He knows this the same way he knows that he was the thing that made them stay together, their desire to protect their powerful, Legacy son a joint if not united effort. They had been fractured for a long time after his birth, their words steadily growing more violent, more spiteful, tearing each other apart as a fearful reaction in thinking their son could be powerless. They decided to tear each other apart rather than him, though he is not sure there was much difference in the result.

His mother loved him as best she could, which is to say she loved him dearly, with all of her heart, but without the expression of language. His father said he loved him, though the word always felt painful and slightly malformed coming from his mouth, as though there was a clause or condition to this love. His father loved him, but would likely love him more had he developed a gift. His father loved him, yet simply did not love him enough.

Fully awake and sobered by his reality, Junmyeon lets the memory play in his mind with all its correct shapes and all the right colours. He remembers the vinyl of the seats, the yellowness of the room making him feel ill and slightly blind. The green of the toaster stands out, its shade amongst the yellow enhancing its ugliness. His mother says something, words jumbled now after all these years but he knows the summary:

‘You think too loud.’

His father grunted, unappreciative and cold as he smoked his cigarette. ‘Then stop listening.’

After that, it escalates into something unrecognizable for a nuclear family. As a child, he didn’t think families were meant to be this way. As an adult, he just accepts that they are, but it’s the child in him that cowers away from it. It’s the child in him that suffered.

The spoon was discarded after the table snapped, dropped to the counter with a clatter that made Junmyeon start to cry. He doesn’t know why it was the spoon that did this rather than the shattering of the table, but it was the spoon.

The spoon.

The spoon went untouched for hours, forgotten along with his cereal. He waited in his chair after the fight had moved to the living room and, eventually, dissipated altogether. He waited patiently for his breakfast, waited for his parents to remember they had a child and that he was hungry. Eventually, he decided to make his mother proud, wanting to see her smile without it being limited to just her mouth. If he could acquire his own breakfast, he thought, perhaps it could reach her eyes.

When he touched the spoon, it felt as though he were falling through time. The earth no longer seemed to matter, the ground falling away from him while his fingers clutched the curved handle of the utensil. His body continued to fall, but his mind was rooted in the sound of his parents screaming. All over again, he listened to and saw their fight, feeling as though it were happening again and again.

He dropped to the floor at the same time he released the spoon, cowering away from it as he cried. Almost immediately, his mother ran to the room and gathered him into her arms. This too made him feel as though he were slipping, made him clutch her shirt to keep himself close but instead he heard and saw her weeping alone, locked in the bathroom as a means of escape. Junmyeon pushed against her, fighting this vision, but she only held tighter, whispering soft words in his ear to calm him down.

When his father entered, reaching for him and saying it’s clear he doesn’t want you, Junmyeon huddled into his mother’s chest, accepting this sad picture instead of what his father had to offer.

He still does not know what his father did or felt after the fight. He does not want to.

Now having fully relived this moment, partly against his will and partly because his mind would not be satisfied until he remembered it properly, he pushes himself from his bed and does the only thing that ever seems to make sense after this nightmare: he cleans.

Chemical cleaner eats away at the residue life leaves behind, dissolves the surface particles until all that is left is something fresh, something as close to new and blank as possible. Cleaning means he can erase memories, some that belong to him and too many that belong to others. Cleaning means he can erase people, means he can erase himself, if he presses the cloth hard enough to the surface. Sometimes, he can pretend it wipes away his skin. Other times, he pretends it wipes away his fingerprints. Doing this means space no longer belongs to him, means that his existence, and maybe even humanity's existence, has left no scars upon the earth. Like this, the world no longer belongs to him and thus it belongs to no one.

He finds it funny people are not aware of this, that people belong to the world rather than the other way around. People belong to the world, leave their stains on absolutely everything, even if they do not touch it. Fibers of their being - from their hair, their clothes, even flakes of their skin - pepper the world with their shadow long after they have departed. People belong to the world, they do not belong to themselves, and always, he is forced to acknowledge every intangible angle of their existence.

Junmyeon stays on his hands and knees until dawn, scrubbing away at the floor and, perhaps, scrubbing away at nothing, all traces of his bare feet long erased from the tile. He scrubs anyway, letting the sun blind him as he wipes and wipes and wipes. He cleans until his hands feel raw, reddened into cracks from the harsh base of the soap, and his nose hairs burn from the smell.

He cleans until he absolutely must stop, his first class of the day approaching swiftly.

And when he leaves, when he finally lets himself exit with bleary eyes and heavy feet, he realizes only too late that he’s forgotten his gloves - the very things that let him function in the world without reliving absolutely everything that does not, and should not, belong to him.

Clutching his Walkman like a cross, he listens to music to keep his feet moving, the voices playing in his ears helping him stay awake enough to move through the hoards of students without touching them. He’s good at this, weaving through and between people, the world, without touching or feeling anything. Even with his tired limbs and weariness haunting his bones, his steps are sure and confident enough he thinks he might make it to class without any incident at all.

But then a strong shoulder pushes into his - purposeful, cruel, and pointed - sending him careening into the wall and forcing him to reach out a hand stop his trajectory. The flat of his palm touches the wall, sends a shockwave up his arm that makes his eyes roll back into his head, and all at once he is there, yet he is nowhere at all.

The hallway looks golden with you in it, with you leaning against the wall and your fingers lightly grazing the surface. A girl is speaking to you, your friend, he assumes, and you are both present and unfocused. Your polite, distracted laugh tumbles from your full lips, empty and hollow, as you watch a boy gets mercilessly teased by David. He makes himself small as David taunts him, poking and prodding him and asking him to show off his power.

‘I have none!’ he cries, trying to lean away from David’s fingers. ‘I’m a Variant. I’m here to protect the community. Leave me alone!’

David scoffs, loud and cruel, voice echoing throughout this memory in inhuman clicks. ‘Who gives a shit about protection? All you’re saying is you can’t fight.’

‘Hey!’ you shout, eyes narrowed and a scowl hardening your soft features. ‘The hell is your problem?’

David rounds on you, but you do not move - you don’t even flinch. He opens his mouth to speak, but already his words are completed, and you cut him off.

‘That’s nice,’ you say sarcastically, and David eyes you conspicuously, unused to being interrupted. ‘If you’re done being a dick, we’re going to go now.’

Pushing yourself from the wall, the gold seems to follow your body and the movement of your silk blouse. David tries to call after you, but you aren’t touching the wall, not anymore, and Junmyeon does not get any more of your pieces. All he gets is David’s loud, grating voice.

It takes Junmyeon a full minute to realize David is speaking to him, here and now, in the present. It takes Junmyeon a full minute to realize he has seen you and, now, David wants to tear this luxury apart, shattering the reverie with his words.

‘Why are you just staring at a wall, loser?’ The voice is right behind him, slithering down his neck, and Junmyeon knows without question it was David who thrust him into the wall.

He doesn’t have it in him to care, though, not anymore. Not after he’s seen your face and heard your voice.

Taking his hand from the wall, he overturns his palm and stares at it, awed. The lines on his hand seem coarse and deep, his lifeline extending far longer than he thought it ever could.

‘Very original,’ he murmurs, halfheartedly, scanning his palm for any mark or trace of you.

David steps closer, trying to cage Junmyeon between his chest and the wall. ‘What did you say to me?’ he seethes.

Junmyeon says nothing, just slides away and dodges all contact, used to being compressed into tight spaces and skilled at breaking free. He says nothing as he walks, just keeps his head down as he stares at his palm, feeling like you were holding his hand when you weren’t there at all.

How long has it been since he’s felt something? How long has it been since he’s truly felt a person?

Too long, he thinks, and he finds himself suddenly filled with a terrifying sort of ecstasy as he continues his walk to class.

‘I wasn’t fucking done!’ David shouts after him.

At least this, Junmyeon thinks, they have in common.

With you in his mind, Junmyeon feels like he could never have his fill.

With you in his mind, Junmyeon feels like something is about to begin.

Weeks pass without the nightmare interfering with his sleep, the days running together in a welcome, monotonous blur. The longer he goes without the memory, the better he gets at controlling his power, and he often thinks on this correlation when he is alone and free to psychoanalyze himself in the dark. Still, he pushes the touch of others away, not yet brave enough to feel their skin, to let them wash over him as a means of possession.

Weeks pass and, still, he thinks of you.

In the quad on a warm, autumn day, he sits in the grass and distances himself from the crowd of students playing frisbee. Baekhyun, a boy he knows of and finds rather endearing, passes with his friends, his laughter raucous and boisterous, and Junmyeon feels warmed by the sound. He welcomes the noise, the volume. It makes him feel included even though he is entirely separate.

This kind of happiness is infectious, the contentedness that comes with separate togetherness making him feel bold and uncharacteristically lighthearted. With this kind of warmth, on his skin and seeping into his bones, he finds it easy to remove his leather gloves and lets his fingers thread through the blades of grass.

It always catches him off guard, how silent the Earth is, how peaceful. People run through and over the ground in shoes, covering their skin and leaving no trace of contact beyond their own fleeting impression. They disappear from it, no surface contact, no memory to leave behind, vanishing from it as though they hadn’t been there at all. Cocking his head back to bask in the sun, he smiles at the sky, at the nothingness, and lets this familiar touch reign over him.

‘J’ai un jardin,’ your friend intones dryly beside you, notebook held tightly in her lap. ‘Tu as un jardin. Nous avons un jardin.’

Running your toes through the grass, you lean back and smile at the sun. Beneath the rays, you glow, radiating as though lit from within, body becoming something ethereal. The earth seems to hold you, cradles you, turning you into something wild. Light creeps down your neck, making the shadows on your skin into mountains, and morphing your flesh into a terrain of its own.

‘Sounds like a Smiths song,’ you laugh, shaking your hair in the crisp breeze.

Beside you, your friend huffs. ‘Stop.’ Anxiously, she taps her pen against her notepad in a swift rhythm. ‘I need to practice this for my exam.’

‘Trust me, Lily’ you singsong, laying back into the grass completely as your hair fans out beneath you. ‘You have it.’

Regarding you cooly, Lily narrows her eyes. ‘Are you saying that because you're encouraging me or because...you know, you did the thing.’

‘Both,’ you hum happily, eyes closed in bliss.

Dropping her things, she settles down next to you with a longing sigh. ‘I don’t know why you put up with anything when you don’t have to.’

‘Why would I rush the things that bring me pleasure?’ you ask seriously, turning to look at her.

She remains quiet, silenced by this question, and you turn back to look at the sky, lifting your feet to wiggle your toes.

The sudden disconnect makes Junmyeon feel winded, chest rising and falling in a rapid rhythm as he lifts his hand from the ground before another memory can fire through his synapses. Once more, he regards his hand, sees it as something magical, something alien - as if, all at once, he suddenly does not know what to do with it. His hand felt the earth, but his mind and his heart saw you, learned you, and now he is sure of several things.

He is sure that you are wild, liberated and greedy in the way your flesh and bones grasp at pleasure. You take it, hold in your hands, and do not let go until you’ve had your fill.

He is sure that you are bewildering and bewitching, twice now interrupting people because you seem to have every answer, seem to know every word that falls from their tongues. You find the words that mean to fill their mouths and you steal them, scattering them in the wind to dissolve their hatefulness or enhance their beauty.

And, most importantly, he is sure you are the first thing he has ever wanted to hold.

Libraries are the loudest places.

For anyone else, he is sure it would be impossible to consider this a fact, but he knows it, he feels it. In a library the voice is silenced, and the mind starts to scream, tense in its inability to smear itself across the world. In libraries, memories are louder, brighter, more vivid simply because the voice is unable to dim the shade with its sound.

Junmyeon avoids libraries at all costs, avoids touching books without his gloves and knows that these are the very reasons he has to. This project, assigned to test his ability to control his power, is likely the most important one he will ever take. It’s unlikely his tutor knew this, probably picked the library because the quiet would give him the ability to focus. Instead, it feels as though he has been pushed out to sea in a storm without learning how to swim.

Ages seem to pass before he decides on a book, one with a brown leather spine and gold cursive font. It calls out to him, for some reason, stands out among all the rest as if compelling to touch it, to feel it, and to want it. Where all the other books appear dusty and old, this one looks clean, as if fondled with great care in the past few weeks.

Someone has held this book, many someones have held all these books, but this one is new. This one is fresh, and now he must prepare to hold the person that lives on the cover.

He musters up what he thinks feels like courage, what he thinks feels like strength, and slides the glove off his hand. Flexing his fingers, he hesitates before he reaches to touch it, eyeing it as though it will cause him great pain. And then, in one swift motion, he brings his fingers to the book and pulls it from the shelf.

With his eyes closed, he waits, holding onto the book tightly as he forces his mind to stay quiet. For a long while, the only sound in his head is the thunderous drum of his heart, deafening in its pace as adrenaline courses through his body. When nothing comes, not even footsteps of a person in this reality, he opens his eyes and sighs, releasing a breath he forgot he had been holding.

Touching feels easy, he thinks. Touching feels refreshing. A laugh builds in his chest, gleeful and excited, animalistic in its desire to tear through the world now that he can, until -

‘Breathe,’ he mutters lowly, voice tense and caught in the iron bars of his throat. ‘Just fucking...breathe.’

His black hair falls into his eyes, messy and unkempt as he turns the pages with quick fingers, teeth grinding over his lips as he fights back the tears. Words and instructions pass by at lightning speed, but he does not see them. None of the chapters are what he needs - he is not looking for words of encouragement or guidance, he’s looking for answers.

‘Prophecy, prophecy,’ he repeats, frantic with his speech and his hands.

For weeks he’s heard the whispers, seen the way people side step him as they pass. It isn’t that he minds terribly much, it’s that he likes the power, he relishes the control. This makes the rumours feel that much worse, makes them feel like liquid poison, an addiction and habit he cannot break. They burrow under his skin, mean to tear apart his genetics and build him into something else, something he has no choice but to be. Without answers, he gives over to all the darkness.

‘I don’t want it,’ he manages behind grit teeth. ‘I don’t fucking want it!’

But then, it isn’t even that he refutes darkness, it’s that he often welcomes it, and this scares him most of all. It makes him scared of himself.

Junmyeon drops the book with a clatter, stepping back and back with his eyes wide open and his mouth agape as he gasps for breath. Everything about the vision made him feel constricted, skin crawling with terror and chest tight with fear. The boy - he thinks he’s seen him before, thinks his name is Minseok, but he knows that he is scared. His body was heavy with the burden of power, the burden of great responsibility and Junmyeon thinks he’s never related more to a person in his life.

He continues to step back, pushing himself away from the book as best he can, until he bumps into something soft, something alive, something that releases a light ‘oof’ on impact. Whirling around, he pulls his glove from his pocket on instinct to cover himself, tugs it over his skin like he’s smothering his vulnerability, and looks at the person before, once again, all the air leaves his lungs.

This time, it does not escape on the wings of fear. This time, it is delivered directly to you and your parted lips on the back of ardor.

A long silence passes between you, neither of you really knowing what to say but jumbles of words, misshapen and fragile, build on his tongue. All of his words, he thinks, are gifts meant to be given to you, all of his ugliness and all of his goodness laid before you as an offering, not as an act of theft by your hands. He watches you as his heart beats out of his chest, trying to get to you, to feel you, while his tongue decides on his greeting.

After seeing fragments of you for so long, he finds he is wholly unprepared for the totality of your beauty. For years he has been painfully aware he has not touched or felt a person, and thus no one has ever touched or felt him. But he did not expect that he was not seen, that he did not want to be seen, and now, with your eyes on him, he wants to show you everything. He wants to make sure you see all of his parts.

He wants nothing more than to give them to you, so you can handle him and, in turn, teach him how to handle you.

‘It’s you,’ he breathes, breaking the silence with the thin splinters of his voice.

In the aftermath of his words he grimaces, unsatisfied with his voice and his tongue’s choice. For you, he wanted to be grand, he wanted to have an impact upon you that could at least measure up to the one you left on him. Instead, he appears meek and mild, wholly unlike the way he feels for you.

‘It’s me,’ you confirm eventually, a long pause hovering turning the air thick as you watch him, neither fully understanding nor fully put off by his exclamation.

‘I’ve been seeing you for months.’ Regretfully, he finds cannot help the awe that fills his voice, the way your majesty paints his words with devotion.

‘Ah,’ you giggle, glancing down at your feet. You don’t move from him, though, and he supposes these kinds of conversations are normal in this world, even if he is completely inexperienced with the pacing of his words. ‘So you saw me coming?’

‘No.’ He shakes his head vigorously, willing you to look back at him, wanting your eyes on him followed by your hands.  ‘Not exactly. Only where you've been.’

Returning your gaze to his, you smile, eyes wild and bright and playful. ‘Well, then you're lucky.’

Something about the way you say it makes him feel warm, makes him suddenly feel weightless, and he allows himself to get drunk on these sensations. ‘How so?’

With a few delicate steps you get close, the closest anyone has been to him in over a decade, and lean in to whisper in his ear. ‘Some would say that’s the most important part.’

It is both a great and terrible feeling, the warmth of your breath along his neck. Great, for he cannot recall the last time anything so sweet touched him like this, if ever. His avoidance of touch has meant that no touch has been made on him, every possible inch of his body and soul going neglected for years.

And terrible all at once, for he does not think he will ever get enough. He's had this, felt this, felt you, and now he is forced to address a side of his nature he's long kept buried beneath the dust of his skin: that, for you, for this, he is a greedy, gluttonous creature, and, of you, he wants it all.

Closing his eyes, he lets this feeling win him over, allows his body and his skin to surrender to it. Against his will, a soft sigh falls from his lips having fought its way from his soul and into the atmosphere. Beside him, you remain close and don't pull away, letting your breath bathe his skin. He thinks he could live and die like this, with you, in this simple pleasure. If you asked him to, he would say yes, willingly, proudly.

The pleasant bubble that took shape around your body and his heart is abruptly tarnished by the stern voice of a librarian.

‘If you’re going to talk this loudly,’ she whispers, annoyed, ‘I’m going to ask you to leave.’

Hands on her hips, she turns her cold stare to Junmyeon and then to you, before her eyes settle on the book long forgotten in the ground.

‘Out,’ she says, voice cold.

Junmyeon’s shoulders drop, not because of his accidental disobedience but because now you must depart from him so soon after he's found you. He wants to reach out to you, hold you close and keep you with him, even if that means seeing absolutely everything. Truthfully, he hopes you want him to see it, even if it's a gift he feels he could never deserve. But, instead, you surprise him, as he is quickly learning you are so wont to do, by taking his gloved hand in yours as though it is natural, as though it was always meant to be there, and leading him past the librarian with a quick ‘sorry!’

Even through the fabric he can feel the warmth of your skin as it seeps through the fibers, spilling into his chemistry and filling him with a delight that is both unfamiliar and hypnotizing. Pushing through the library doors, he squints in the daylight, blinded now on all sides: by the light and by you.

‘You can ask me, you know,’ you announce, leading him down the library steps with hurried feet.

‘What?’ He glances sidelong at your profile, bewildered, and doing his best to keep pace with you who seems so gleeful in the thrill of disobedience.

‘That thing you want to say but are stopping yourself from...how do you put it?’ you tease, looking at him briefly with a smirk as you pull him down the path to the dorms. ‘“Releasing into the wild.”’

Junmyeon stops walking, the halt in his feet tugging you back. ‘How did you know I have…’

With a sigh, you turn back to face him. ‘I can alter perception for myself,’ you clarify. ‘Speed it up or slow it down, see what's about to be said, or will be said, and then return to normal time.’

It suddenly makes sense, the way you cut people off and know everything they want to say likely before the thought crosses their mind. For weeks he’s seen you as something remarkable, and now he gets to call you magical, impressive, exquisite.

‘That's wicked!’

You shrug, disinterested with a topic that focuses on yourself. ‘I suppose it will be useful someday. For now, I use it to hurry up boring conversations or you know, figure out what the cute guy wants to say.’

Several seconds pass before your words register in his mind properly. ‘You think I'm cute?’ he sammers, eyes going wide.

‘You are cute,’ you affirm with a laugh, reaching up to touch his cheek.

Junmyeon pulls away, eyeing your hand as though it is the source of his great undoing. ‘I want to ask you out,’ he says in a rush, the truth brought forward in his haste to avoid your skin.

He exhales heavily, alarmed that these words have burst into the world, abrupt and purposeful, a raw truth that he even he hadn’t been prepared to accept. For a moment, he considers this your true power, your presence a veritas elixir that makes him into a painfully honest, painfully fragile thing who has little to no control over his words or his heart. Though, he thinks you made it easy for him. Told him that you’d likely already seen the direction of this conversation and wanted to get to the good part, the best part. Likely, his favourite part.

‘You sort of already did.’ You drop your hand with a clenched fist that does not go unnoticed by Junmyeon. You clench your fist but you do not ask questions, and, for this, Junmyeon is relieved.

‘And what did you or...will you...wow,’ he laughs, shaking his head as if to clear away his confusion. ‘How does this work? What did you say.’

‘I didn't say anything yet,’ you beam. ‘I saw you ask but you hadn't yet, not here.’

‘So,’ he repeats, stepping forward nervously, letting himself feel warmed by your closeness. ‘What do you say?’

You enclose your hands in his gloved palms, twining your fingers together and looking deep into his eyes. ‘Yes.’

Junmyeon is three hours early for your date.

Sitting on a bench in the campus greenhouse, he stares at his hands and contemplates the deep edge of his lifeline. Rather, he contemplates the length of his life up until this moment.

Life, he thinks, is an endless series of touches either on the body or against other bodies. Life, he thinks, is a world made of fleeting grazes, hard grasps, and soft caresses. To not touch is to not exist, and now he understands he’s only been half alive until he learned he wanted to touch you.

This, he knows, is also only a half truth. It isn’t that he hasn’t wanted to touch, he has. If he’s being honest, he’s been desperate to feel anything other than himself for nearly his entire life. If he’s being honest, he thinks his entire life has been nothing but his body in a constant state of screaming, aching to be held without the trauma of seeing or feeling absolutely everything that does not belong to him. All he really wants is to feel the touch against his body and nothing else. Skin on skin is always so much more, too much more, and never gives him a chance to feel the person, or feel how he feels about them.

But you, you are consistent. You are consistently good, consistently beautiful, consistently wonderful. He’s touched you through and beyond memory, and he’s confident he knows exactly how he feels about you. Something about this should scare him, and it does just not in the way he assumed it would. This kind of fear comes with the honey of excitement, it turns the fear into anticipation and makes his body jittery beneath the weight of possibility.

‘Goodness, am I late?’

Your voice cuts through his thoughts, and, startled, he turns to see you in the entry. The light of the setting sun casts itself behind you, spilling over your hair and arms, between your legs, giving you wings. It takes him several moments to find his voice, happy to simply be silent watching you for the rest of time.

‘No,’ he offers quietly, regarding you fondly. ‘I was just thinking.’

Moving to sit next to him on the bench, you look up at all the foliage, eyes dancing as you take in the scenery.

‘It’s warm in here,’ you murmur, shrugging off your sweater and exposing the smooth skin of your shoulders.

Junmyeon frowns. ‘Are you uncomfortable?’

Folding your sweater in your lap, you turn to him with a sly smile. ‘No, but if you make me blush I might actually die.’

A surprised laugh tears through his chest, and he finds that he is the one who blushes as he looks down at his hands, shy and enamoured with you.

‘That,’ you giggle sweetly. ‘Don’t do that. It’s cute.’

Comfortable silence washes over the greenhouse, and Junmyeon looks at you while you look at all the trees and budding flowers. Even when you are quiet like this, silent and simply admiring this small sliver of the world with him, he finds you are pulling words out of his heart and into his mouth. Even when you are simply existing near him, he finds he wants to give and tell you everything, wants to tell you all the things he sometimes cannot even tell himself. And, he hopes that in giving you everything, you let him see even the smallest pieces of you.

‘You told me about your power,’ he begins after a long while, cringing at the way his voice echoes around the otherwise empty greenhouse. ‘But I never got to tell you about mine.’

‘It’s something to do with touch, right?’ you question, not turning to look at him. He’s glad for this, glad he can gather his thoughts without falling into your eyes. ‘Why you dodged me when I tried to touch your face.’

Your gaze moves to his ungloved hands, and this is when he feels you, feels you traversing the wrinkles on his skin, and he takes in a sharp inhale of breath. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to this, to the feeling of you.

‘When I touch things,’ he begins, slowly, ‘I get visions of the people who touched or held it before me. When I touch people, I see everything about them. I see their lives, feel their feelings, I get everything and sometimes it feels like nothing of me gets to stay.’ He glances down at his hands, feeling as though he is meeting your eyes on the way. ‘Like...my head has to make room for everyone else, and I disappear a little more.’

You release a gentle hum, keeping your eyes on his hands. ‘I imagine it’s made your world terribly lonely and also terribly full.’

He nods, at you, at nothing, and at himself. ‘I like nature,’ he continues, ‘because very little of humanity gets left behind on it. We destroy it but we don’t linger. It’s funny, that.’ He chuckles, the sound empty. ‘We walk through it with shoes, not traces of skin contact.’

‘I love being barefoot,’ you whisper, turning to look up at the class ceiling, taking in the tall trees and their large leaves.

The memory of your toes blossoms in his mind, and makes a smile spread across his lips. ‘I know.’

You turn back to him, then, eyes wide and full of understanding. ‘You saw me for months.’

‘That was one of the ways,’ he affirms, but he keeps staring at the trees, afraid that looking at you will stop his speech altogether. ‘Water is my favourite. It has no shape, holds no memories. It takes things in and doesn't give them back. When I swim, I hear and see nothing, and the world gets very quiet.’

Again, you hum, soft and gentle, and Junmyeon swoons slightly at the sound. ‘It sounds peaceful.’

He inhales deeply, his words almost at a close, and he readies himself to feel relief. ‘This greenhouse belongs to the science department, so everything here is touched with gloves. Apart from the benches, really. The last people who sat here were on a date too. I guess some people would call that fate.’

‘How did it go?’

‘Well enough for them, I suppose,’ he says, finally turning to look at you. Your smile reaches your eyes, blissful and serene, and his breath catches. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything so beautiful in his life. ‘When they got up they were holding hands. They felt happy.’

This answer seems to satisfy all the secret thoughts that run through your mind, and makes you blush, only slightly. The pink tints your cheeks and makes Junmyeon swell with admiration. Briefly, he wishes he were a normal man, someone who could take your hand without taking so much more.

‘This place feels like a church,’ you say, once more peering up at the glass.

‘Because of what I said or…’ His words die amongst the trees. All of him agrees with you but all of him needs to know that you understand why he needs it, and partly hopes you understand why he feels he needs you.

‘For lots of reasons,’ you explain. ‘If I speed up my perception, I can watch all of this bloom. It’s going to be beautiful.’

‘Can I ask why you agreed to go out with me?’ Tentative with his question, he wrings his fingers together and bites his lip, scared both of the truth and his reaction to it.

Leaning forward, you grip the bench and swing your feet, watching your ankles as they move backwards and forwards. ‘It was how you looked at me when you saw me.’

You seem to recede back into the memory, blushing once more at the feeling, and Junmyeon has to stop himself from pulling you close. ‘It was like you were looking through and into me. Like you already knew me, and were seeing me for the first time. The real me. I can’t tell you how vulnerable that made me feel.’

‘I’m sorry!’ he exclaims, embarrassed and starting to feel his own blush creep into his ears. ‘I just -’

‘Don’t be,’ you chuckle, looking at him once more, suddenly turning serious. ‘It made me feel vulnerable, but I liked it. I made that moment last far longer for myself than it actually did.’

‘You did?’ he mutters in disbelief.

‘You were seeing me like you’d known me for years. I at least wanted to catch up.’

‘I want to kiss you,’ he announces, suddenly wild and liberated in the wake of your truth. ‘But kissing you means I’ll be taking things from your lips.’

‘More than just my breath?’ you tease, playfully, though Junmyeon watches you with quickened breath as you start to lean towards him.

‘I can’t take that,’ he replies, sounding somewhat sad against his will, but he too leans into you, trying to close the distance with his awkward motions. ‘I’ve never really kissed anyone before.’

‘Then let me help you.’

Junmyeon’s breath leaves him the moment your lips touch, stolen and put back all at once at the sight.

The chocolate is inexpensive, yet it is a luxury for your university budget. It begins to melt the moment it touches your lips, becoming a cream that you lap at with your wet, needy tongue. The plump flesh is most now, dampened by your hunger, and you drag your thumb over your lips to wipe them clean.

He breaks apart with a gasp, heart racing and blood pounding. With this separation, he can see your mouth, red and swollen, and wishes he could remember how your lips felt against his, but instead he is remembering how your lips taste with chocolate on them, how they feel when they are wet. It takes all of his self-control not to lunge forward and capture your lips again, to pull them between his teeth to take and take and take.

‘Are you okay?’ Your own voice sounds tight, caught in your throat and he hopes it’s because you’re feeling the same way as he.

‘I’m fine,’ he says, feeling like an electric current is tearing through his system. ‘I just have to catch my breath.’

To him, it appears you are trembling, quaking in the aftermath of his touch, and he swoons, wanting to do it again and again, wanting to make your will bend against his. It dawns on him then that this is his power, not the vision and not the fear, but the feeling. In a world of sensations, feeling is his power, and he’s denied himself everything the world has to offer.

And as he thinks on this, as he realizes all his mistakes, feels like he could fall into you, wants to live inside you, simply because you smile and say, ‘Me too.’

It’s spring when he finally gets a handle on you, when he finally starts pressing himself against you with confidence.

He likes the way you mewl into his touch, the way you move forward and into his hands to get close, to keep yourself near. For months, his fingers wavered in their hold, pulled away too soon and before you could truly enjoy his caress - first out of fear and then out of boyish inexperience.

Now, after his midterms and against your door, his hands hold your hips, feel the bones beneath your skin, taking and claiming these pieces for himself. Now, against your door, his tongue fights yours as he swallows your moans, cock hard beneath his jeans and soul luxuriating in the sensation of your fingers scratching at the nape of his neck.

‘Fuck,’ he whines into your eager mouth, knee thrusting into your groin in an uneven rhythm. ‘You make me so fucking hard.’

Grinding into him, you break away from his lips with shallow breaths. ‘You’re getting good at this,’ you whisper, sliding your mouth along his jaw and leaving a trail of hot kisses on his skin.

‘Being hard?’ he says with a strained laugh, nipping at your bottom lip. ‘That’s all you, you tease.’

Months in and still he is not used to the feeling of you against his body, in his arms. Always, it strikes him that he may never get used to it, and accepts that he does not want to; how your breasts always push into his chest as your breathing becomes heavy, as you begin to capsize in your want. It’s a heady thought, one that makes him drag his tongue along your skin, makes him kiss your cheeks, and whisper loving words he did not think would ever pass his lips into your ears and, sometimes, onto your tongue.

‘No,’ you giggle, dragging your mouth to his ear. ‘Controlling your power. But you’re good at that too.’

Reaching a hand between your bodies, you cup his hardness, rubbing it in circles. The pressure feels like fire in his blood, makes him gasp for breath and rest his forehead against yours as he thrusts into your palm. Sliding his hands around your hips, he squeezes the supple flesh of your ass beneath the denim of your jeans before he lifts you, wrapping your legs around his waist. Nuzzling into your neck, he licks at your tendons before biting down as he walks you over to your bed.

A keening whine erupts from your chest, the melody to the rhythm of his heart, and he bites harder just to feel you writhe against him.

‘You got better at this, too,’ you moan, nails digging into his shoulder.

Licking the place he just marked with his teeth, he smiles into your skin. ‘I had a pretty good teacher.’

‘Damn right you did.’

Gently, he drops you onto the bed, stepping back to watch with adoring eyes as you pull your shirt over your head. The same way he will never get used to feeling you, he does not think he will ever get used to seeing you, vulnerable and exposed and his. About you, he is possessive. About you, he is greedy, and he thinks he could drink the sight of you as nectar without ever feeling starved.

Following suit, he pulls his own shirt over his head, and he's hardly tossed it aside before your impatient fingers graze along the taut muscles of his abdomen. This too, he basks in, reveling in the light tickle of your curious hands and nothing else. Against his skin, your hands are warm, feel akin to feathers, and this is the greatest gift of all: the feeling of you, here and now, unburdened by your desire.

With his head cocked back, he shuts his eyes and bites his lip as your mouth replaces his fingers.

‘Shit, baby, take off your pants.’

Beautifully obedient, you slide off the bed, standing before him with a smirk while your fingers work at the buttons of your jeans. In kind, his fingers reach behind you to unclasp your bra, grazing your smooth skin with his nails as he pulls the straps down your arms.

Bending to kiss your collarbones, his hands cup your breasts, massaging the flesh while his thumbs tease your nipples. A shiver runs down your spine, and he laughs into your sternum, husky and deep, as he reaches to hold your shoulder blades, taking one of your breasts into his mouth.

Your hands halt in the motion of pulling your jeans and underwear down, eyes closing in bliss as you bite your lip.

‘Myeon,’ you moan, hand threading through his hair.

‘I’ve got it from here, baby.’

With that he, pulls his lips from your skin and peers up at you through the thick curtain of eyelashes, kneeling before you with an impish grin. Keeping his eyes on yours, he shoves your hands away, taking the waistband of your jeans and panties to tug them down. His touch is delicate as he guides our legs out of the clothes, stroking the skin of your thighs before gently caressing the sensitive flesh behind your knees.

A loud whine escapes your lips, your hands fisting on the side of the mattress as you grip it tightly, thighs clenching together at the stimulation.

‘I can smell you, fuck,’ he bites out as he runs his nose along the inside of your hips, ‘and my mouth isn't even on you.’

Spreading your legs wide, he settles on the floor and presses his lips against your center, merely breathing against the wetness of your folds. For several moments he does not move, simply takes the tip of his tongue to graze along your slit before disappearing altogether.

Instantly your hand fists in his hair, desperate to tug him closer, to keep him where you want him most, and he laughs, the sound near enough for you to imagine him vibrating into you. At this thought, you moan.

‘And you said I was the tease.’ Your voice is thick, strained, and a surge of pride flows through Junmyeon’s veins.

Emboldened by your exclamation, he takes the tips of his fingers and deftly parts your folds. ‘Hold on to the bed, baby. Keep yourself standing.’

This is your only warning before his mouth descends upon you, tongue thrusting, hot and deep, inside you. He curls the muscle as he laps at your inner walls, humming in pleasure at the taste.

‘Fuck, Myeon!’ you cry out, voice loud before dying into a whine. ‘Your tongue, shit’

He sets a steady rhythm with his tongue, thrusting in and out as his other hand rubs gentle, barely there circles against your clit. Your fingers dig into the edge of the mattress, while your other hand keeps his head in place. It isn't long before your orgasm builds, starting in your thighs and working it's way to your center, burning through your muscles like wildfire. Against his tongue, your walls clench, aching to keep him inside you, before he stills completely and you ride against his face.

‘Myeon,’ you whimper, voice small and high as you linger on the precipice of your climax.

Junmyeon knows this tone, he adores this tone, and knows that you are close. He knows you are close and so he pulls away, removing his fingers from your clit to gently take your hand from his head. As he parts from you, your eyes open, chest heaving as you struggle to catch your breath.

He’s sure his mouth his glistening with your juices, he can feel you smeared all over your face, and he smiles, filthy and débauched as he watches you bite your lip at the sight. Licking his lips, he gets all of you, all of your sweet flavor, from his mouth before sucking you from his fingers.

‘Your cunt is so fucking sweet,’ he says, closing his eyes to relish the taste of you on his tongue. ‘I could eat you out for hours.’

‘Get on the bed,’ you command. ‘I want you to fuck me.’

Now, his confidence falters. This is entirely new territory, something neither of you have ever discussed, a desire that has gone unvoiced. He knows you've had other partners - saw them all on you the first time he kissed your breasts, the first time he touched hips to your folds. He knows you've had other partners and now, he is terrified he will not measure up. Between this and the thought of feeling someone else inside you, seeing someone else bring you pleasure, he fears he may break, shattering before you completely.

Rising to his feet, he chews the inside of his cheek and shoves his hands in his pockets.

‘If you're not ready -’ you start, but he cuts you off, horrified you might think he does not want you.

‘I'm ready,’ he chokes out. ‘Fuck, I think I've been ready since I first saw you. I just…’

As his words disappear, dying on his tongue before he can truly set them free, your expression softens. Reaching to cup his cheek, you step close, and he nuzzles into the touch, pressing a chaste kiss to your palm.

‘You can tell me,’ you say, gentle and soft, eyes warm and inviting.

He chuckles, though the sound is sad. ‘Are you saying that because you did the thing?’

‘I don't rush the things that bring me pleasure.’

Junmyeon shakes his head, coy smile playing at his lips. ‘You did when we met.’

‘Yes,’ you nod, lifting on your toes to kiss his nose. ‘Because I wanted to know if I'd have to do the asking.’

Your response is verdict enough, enough for him to wrap you in his arms and devour you. While his tongue searches the caverns of your mouth, your hands work at his jeans to push them down his legs with his boxers close behind.

You're a mess of tongues, lips, and limbs as you climb onto the bed, awkward and human and laughing. He hovers over you, smiling against your lips, as you scoot back against the pillows, heart swelling with devotion as he drinks the sight of you in. While you reach for your night table, he presses kisses against your neck and your breasts, kneading the flesh of your hips with his strong hands.

The tearing of the condom foil halts his actions, brings him to his knees and sets a pout on his lips.

‘You'll have to do that for me,’ he whispers, shy and bashful at his lack of experience.

You, however, are confident and sure with your motions as you roll the condom down his hard member. At your touch, he takes in a hiss of breath, squeezing his eyes shut at the stimulating pleasure before opening them again. Training his eyes on your fingers he watches, hoping to learn this in case he ever gets to have you again.

Task complete, he brings his gaze to yours as you lean back, arms wrapped around his neck and taking him with you on this glorious trajectory. He swims in you, feels now, for certain, that he is held by by water - held by you, floating in your gaze, keeping you within his soul, and knowing this is truly how it feels to drown.

You bring a delicate hand to the hardness of his cock, positioning him at your entrance as you spread your legs wide to accommodate him.

‘Are you sure?’ he asks, not for himself but because he needs your consent, needs to know you want him as badly as he wants you.

Leaning up, you wet your lips as your breathe into his ear. ‘Take your time, with me. I want to make this last.’

Junmyeon whines as he pushes into you, grateful for the lining of the condom that separates him from the warmth of your walls, sure that if it was not there he would likely die. Pressing his lips into your neck as he buries himself to the hilt, he chokes out a gasp when he feels himself wrapped around your tightness. And it’s when you clench around him, when skin meets skin and his eyes roll back into his head, that he sees it.

It isn’t that the sex is bad, or that it is terribly sloppy, it’s that it is boring. On your back, you hold onto him as he brings himself to orgasm, the fire in your center fading with each passing thrust, until you find yourself faking every moan that falls from your lips. He is close, so close, to all the right places inside you, but just far enough away that you are constantly teased and left ignored. Eventually, it becomes hard to focus on anything other than the desire for him to come, to shudder to a halt within you, so you can finish yourself off, alone and in peace.

You know you could tell him where to go, how to fuck you just the way you like, but, truth be told, you don’t even really like him that much. Part of you thinks you knew it would be this way from the beginning, but you hoped. Always, you hope. Usually, you are let down.

It’s the sensation of your teeth biting his lips, and your hips grinding up against him to get him to move, that brings him back to reality. He holds you down to the bed, hands pressing you firmly into the mattress, grounding himself in the feeling of you beneath him, and he lets all he's seen of this vision settle like dust in his mind.

Sex for you had been a disappointing, otherwise boring, experience, at least from what he could see. All the ways he thought this, that being inside you and living inside you, would be a torture don't come to fruition at all, the image of someone else’s hands on you igniting a blaze within him to make sure his touch his perfect. For you, he wants every touch to be the best, better than the last even if the last was his, and now he lets a smirk play on his lips as he leans back to look at you.

Pulling out of you slowly, he watches the way your expression morphs in pleasure at the sensation before wrapping his hands around your knees and lifting them to his shoulders. Your eyes go wide, surprise and excitement swimming in your irises, and he leans down to kiss you deeply, letting his tongue have its languid fill of you.

‘Are you sure?’ he asks again as he pulls back, this time letting darkness fill his voice. He moves his hips in a slow circle, teasing your entrance with the hardness of his tip.

‘Yes,’ you whimper, clutching his biceps in anticipation.

With that, he thrusts into you hard and deep, setting a punishing rhythm that sends your bed smacking into the wall. Instantly, your nails dig into his skin, eyes rolling back from the pleasure as you feel him move inside you. His breath comes in shallow pants, remembering all the places he felt you liked to be touched, making sure to hit each one with deadly precision. In time with his movements, your walls clench around him, hips raising to meet his as best you can.

‘Fuck,’ he moans, lapping at your lips as he fucks into you roughly.

‘Myeon,’ you cry out, eyes locking on his.

And that is when he sees you, watches you study him and watch him, pupils dilated and eating away at your vision until your irises almost black. He keeps his pace while you bite your lip, brow furrowed in concentration as you hold onto him tightly, fading beneath him while paradoxically becoming fully alive. A small whine breaks through your throat, fragile and brief, and he knows you’re slowing this down, making this last as long as possible.

‘Come on, baby,’ he chokes out, holding onto your hips as he fucks you harder, slowing his rhythm to ensure his thrusts are pointed and sharp. ‘Eyes on me.’

You’re drowning in it, he’s sure, the sensation of him hitting all of your most neglected parts and stretching you with his fullness. To him, it appears as though you are floating, hovering in a space that feels much like a dream, and your hands grip him desperately, turning him into your tether. He thrusts and thrusts and thrusts, until he watches you come back to him, your eyes watering and starting to close in ecstasy.

Now that he has you, he decides he wants to keep you, wants you to know that he’s the only one who gets to touch you now, the only one who gets to make you feel this way. And so he brings his hand to your clit, rubbing the swollen nub in fierce circles. This touch forces your eyes open before they roll back in pleasure, your moans becoming steady and erratic in their volume.

‘Jun - Jun, I’m going to -’

‘I know,’ he says, tapping against your clit in time with his thrusts. ‘I can feel you getting close. Come for me.’

Leaning down to capture your lips, he sucks on your bottom lip before he pulls back with dark eyes. ‘Come for me and make it last,’ he demands.

Your orgasm hits you hard, the same way it hits him, your walls closing on around him as your back arches off the bed and your voices resonates around the room with your cry. Against his shoulders, he feels your legs go tense, clenching around him as though you mean to choke him, and remain that way for minutes. Your hands squeezes him, leave crescent moons on the flesh of his arm where it does not break and small smears of blood where it does, before you relax against his body, becoming pliant and soft, shivering as he fucks into you to reach his own climax.

In the wake of your orgasm, you stare up at him, smile serene and vision cloudy, looking slightly drunk as you writhe beneath him in the aftershocks of your pleasure. Reaching an arm that appears heavy, you wipe the sweat from his brow, you stare into his eyes as he thrusts once then twice, and comes with a moan that sounds close to a sob. He shudders against you, gasps into your neck as he rides his high with weak, messy thrusts before he stills against you, clutches you and breathes.

Like this you remain for a long time, simply breathing together, his fingers stroking the skin of your neck and yours mirroring in the action in the soft hair at his neck.

‘I saw you,’ he says, eventually, interrupting the contented quiet with his weak voice.

‘I know,’ you say, kissing his forehead. ‘I saw you, too.’