Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

 ONE.

Living alone is… lonely. It’s obvious when it’s stated as blatantly as that, but somehow it surprises Chan all the same. Maybe it’s because living with Changbin and Jisung could be unexpectedly loud at times. Sure, they all knew how to give each other space or could easily spend hours in each other’s company without exchanging a single word. But Chan was just as likely to hear Jisung randomly squawk on one side of the apartment and hear Changbin wail back from the other just because the two of them were bored. He doesn’t really know why that’s their go-to solution for boredom, but he has long since accepted that his friends are a strange couple.

He liked living with them all the same, but there came a time when Chan just felt like he was imposing on the two. They never made him feel that way – Jisung even cried when Chan packed the last of his things into a cardboard box – but it’s just one of those things that are impossible to ignore. Chan was a third wheel and no one in the situation deserved having to deal with that.

So, he moved out to a small one-bedroom apartment that’s just a fifteen-minute walk away from his old flat and a full three minutes closer to the entertainment company he works at. It’s a nice apartment, if a little threadbare from how little effort he’s put into decorating it, but it’s lonely. He misses knowing someone is doing their own thing in the next room over. He misses hearing his bones crack after a particularly good stretch and hearing Jisung howl in disgust at the sound. He misses being able to wrestle someone into a reluctant hug as and when he feels like it.

It’s nice being able to laze around in nothing but a towel for a full hour after his shower, but Chan thinks he’d rather take the touch of another human instead.

His sleeping schedule doesn’t make things any better either. It’s not exactly a secret that Chan doesn’t have the healthiest internal body clock on the planet. He can’t really help it – he doesn’t ask to become inspired the most after midnight, it’s just what happens. Even if he’s fallen asleep at ass o’clock, however, Chan doesn’t tend to manage more than four hours of sleep at any one time. Pair that with the fact that no one else is here to keep him company and it makes for some really long days.

One night in late January some five weeks after he’s moved out, the loneliness hits particularly hard. It comes out of nowhere. One moment, Chan is taking a toilet break from the track he’s working on for the new girl group his company are set to debut and by the time he makes it back to his seat, he’s so overcome with the sharp sting of isolation that he can’t bring himself to put his headphones back on. He just sits there with his arms wrapped tightly around his torso as if that’ll somehow disintegrate the sharp shard of glass in his chest. He feels so impossibly small and removed from the rest of the world, so acutely aware of how he is just one insignificant speck of dust in the wide expanse of the universe.

So alone.

He wants someone to hold him. Not offer reassurance, not even breathe a word down his ear. Just hold him and remind him that he’s here and he’s real. That he’s seen.

The air in Seoul is different. Smoggier, rife with chemicals; it tastes like gunpowder on Minho’s tongue, coating the inside of his cheeks with a fine layer of grit. Beneath that, he can taste the restlessness of the city, like the current travelling through the streets is ramped up several amps compared to Gimpo’s. It loops around and around in a constant flow. Seoul is never truly asleep, not even in the dead of night.

Fortunately for him, it’s a big city with millions of people crammed into its grey buildings. Plenty of people fall asleep when they are meant to which means that Minho has a wide selection of meals to choose from.

He wanders through the city, his footsteps soundless against the tarmac. Occasionally, he slips into a house, lingers in the corner of a bedroom and watches its occupant shift uneasily in their sleep as they sense his presence, but then he’s off again, in search of something else. Jeongin likes to tell him that he’s too picky about his meals, that it doesn’t really matter who he chooses at the end of the day so long as he chooses.

Minho would like to disagree. Fear tastes differently when it comes from different sources. In children, it’s sweet and cloying, rolling into his eager mouth like a tsunami wave made of lemonade, sloshing against the sides of his stomach. For adults, it varies. Sometimes it’s bitter and tangy, with an acrid smell that he can’t ignore, and sometimes it’s rich like wine and tastes just as intoxicating. He’s very particular about what flavour he wants and when.

In the end, Minho chooses a nondescript apartment a few roads north of Cheongdam Station. He walks in through the shadows like he belongs there, scoping out the situation. A Korean male, around the human age of twenty to twenty five years old. Lives alone and has no partner, or at least none that’s over tonight.

He’s asleep but it’s a fitful slumber. Minho can sense the thoughts racing around inside that head of bleached hair: bits of music, disjointed melodies and the discordant notes of a piano, and beneath that, a persistent note of sadness. He wonders briefly what the reason for this is, in the passive manner of someone who doesn’t truly care, before melting out of the shadows and moving in for the strike.

There are many ways his kind feed off humans. Jeongin, he knows, doesn’t like to actually touch the humans – doesn’t like to touch anyone really, Minho included – and simply waits beside the chosen victim. Staring down at them with his eyes like a pair of pits, his breaths landing on their face. Watching, waiting, sensing them grow more and more restless until they want to wake up and confirm that nothing is there – and just as they try that, he strikes, clamping down on them until they’re frozen in fear. And then he takes that fear and eats it all up until he wants to move on, leaving the human to shake and swear and scramble to turn the lamp on.

But Minho is far too impatient for that. Once he gets to the bed, he spares the human only a cursory glance – fried blonde hair, eyebrows furrowed, a rather large nose – and then promptly climbs into bed beside him. His body takes on solid form and he slides his arms around the human, his grip tight. A rush of power stirs awake in him, straining against the rubber bands that keep it locked up in his brain and Minho is just about to set it free when –

When the human shifts and curls into him.

What in the literal fuck.

Minho freezes, staring at the curls in front of him in bewilderment. All the human does is let out a small snuffle and wrap his arms around Minho, pushing forward until their bodies are pressed against each other in two matching hot lines. He sighs in contentment and his thoughts follow suit, the sadness from earlier dissipating within moments.

Once again: what the fuck.

Minho is a fucking demon. Humans are meant to instinctively recoil from him, sensing his power, not fucking curl up in his arms and move closer. There’s no way this is actually happening. There’s no way this is fucking normal.

He forgets all about being hungry. All about eating in the human’s fear – because there is no fear, there’s nothing but satisfaction and it’s all so goddamn confusing and out of the blue that Minho just… lies there. His body stiff, his arms still locked around this human, his brain stuttering to a halt.

The human snuffles again. He squeezes Minho’s torso tighter and somehow manages to shuffle even closer, apparently determined to fuse their bodies together, and then nuzzles his chest. It’s only when Minho feels a foot brushing along the skin of his calf that he gets the sense to tear himself away.

He stumbles out of the bed, his heart racing. Quite frankly, he has no idea what the fuck has just happened and he’s not sure he wants to. He melts back into the shadows and flees the room.

Three days later, it happens again.

Minho stays far away from that entire district of Seoul for the next couple of nights, too disturbed by what happened in the apartment just off Cheongdam Station. Yet, even as he recoils from the memory, he can’t help but fixate over it. Over how pliant the human was in his arms, over how he burrowed closer to Minho like he couldn’t get close enough. Of his stupid fucking curly hair pushing into Minho’s face.

He knows he shouldn’t return to the apartment, but he does. It’s easy enough to retrace his steps, to steal in through the crack under the front door and then into the bedroom. The door has been left wide open, practically an invitation to come in. Minho does, cautious but unable to resist taking the human up on that offer.

He is not as eager to get things over and done with this time. He stays in the shadows at first, watching the human sleep with hawk-like eyes. After a few minutes, Minho tentatively reaches out, probing the human’s thoughts to gain a sense of how deep his sleep is. Once again, he is drifting along in that state of slumber where wakefulness is just a few loud noises away, but dreams are still bleeding images into his mind. Minho catches an image of sand sticking to pale palms, of the sun sinking into the sea.

It’s the perfect time to strike so when he’s ready, Minho moves forward. His steps are solid against the ground, his bare toes leaving indents in the carpet. He comes to a stop beside the human and studies him like one might examine a foreign species. Eyebrows stitched together, his mouth set in a pinched frown. Back bent low at the hips so that every breath Minho exhales stirs the strands of the human’s hair and fans across his features.

He’s good looking, Minho realises. His nose is very attractive although in a different way to Minho’s corporeal form, large and wide where Minho’s is slender with a high bridge. It suits him. Minho watches it twitch under his attention, but the human shows no signs of stirring.

In fact, he doesn’t seem to be aware of Minho’s presence at all which in itself is already odd. Humans are normally very attuned to their presence, even when they don’t believe demons to exist. The hair on the back of their neck rises and goosebumps erupt across their skin. They freeze, subconsciously aware of the proximity of an apex predator with its eyes on them. They try to escape.

This human does nothing of the sort. He simply sleeps on, blissfully unaware of the fact that Minho is but inches away, staring him down.

When it looks like things won’t change, Minho decides to go ahead with his plan. He slides into bed beside the human, their limbs knocking together under the covers, and puts his arms around him in a steel lock. The power to completely paralyse the human in place surges up within him, racing down his nerves to the tips of his fingers –

And the human sighs, burrowing closer.

Minho stops. The human moves closer still, his arms wrapping around Minho and then fisting the back of his shirt greedily, as if afraid he’ll disappear. Their legs tangle together beneath the covers and his head moves onto the same pillow Minho’s rests on, until their noses nearly brush. When he’s satisfied, the human gives in to a drowsy smile, his eyes still screwed shut.

Minho has absolutely no fucking idea what is happening right now.

He has no idea why this human is apparently completely unaware of the fact that there’s a demon in his room, why Minho’s power of paralysis fails to work on him, why he’s hugging Minho and why… Why Minho is letting him. Why he isn’t moving away, off to steal a meal from elsewhere. Why he’s still here.

All he knows is that he’s in a human’s bed and in a human’s arms and that this is the strangest thing that has ever happened to him.

That’s a lie.

Minho does know why. He’s just not so sure he wants to admit it yet.

After a few moments, he closes his eyes and melts away.

“Bro, you look fucking exhausted,” says Jisung when Chan stumbles into the studio, rubbing his eyes blearily. He offers his americano with a grimace, even though he knows Chan will just bat it away. He’s always hated how bitter coffee tastes. “How much sleep have you had?”

“I dunno, like two hours,” he says. “It doesn’t really matter.”

Jisung spins around in his chair so the back is facing Chan and then pushes off with his feet to roll across the floor. He only comes to a stop when he smacks right into Chan’s legs and ignores the resulting cry with a grin. Not for the first time, Chan curses the day Jisung blew his entire week’s wages on buying a fancy chair with wheels for work. All it’s done is make Jisung a menace. Or at least more of one anyways.

The menace in question grabs onto Chan’s fingers with his free hand and starts to tug on them like a little child. “It kind of does, hyung. How are you meant to function with no sleep?”

“It’s not no sleep. It was two hours.”

“Still sounds unhealthy to me,” says Changbin, strolling in with his own cup of coffee.

He sits down on the chair he’s claimed as his property – one without wheels, Chan is glad to say – and starts to load up their latest project. As Chan follows suit at his own desk next to him, he notices that the bloodshot eyes Changbin sports aren’t any better than his. He scoffs, raising his eyebrows.

“Like you’re one to talk,” he says. “You look just as bad as me. What’s your excuse?”

Changbin doesn’t bother answering that and merely shrugs, but Jisung grins wickedly, rolling over to them so he can hook his arms around Changbin’s neck and pull him close. Not particularly bothered by this, Changbin continues to type even from his awkward recline.

“That’ll be because of me,” Jisung says, the words coming out in half a song. “I couldn’t help it. Changbin just looked so good after his shower last night, how was I expected to keep my hands off him?”

Chan groans, regretting asking. “You guys are disgusting.”

“We just have very healthy sex drives, hyung.”

“I don’t want to know.”

“Very very healthy sex drives – “

“I said I don’t want to know!” he wails, clapping his hands over his ears.

Jisung barks out a laugh, the sound breaking through the shield of Chan’s hands. Even Changbin cracks a grin at his reaction although he does gently unlink Jisung’s hands from around his neck and guide him back to his own desk. Jisung protests the entire way, making grabby hands at his boyfriend and pouting to no avail. He manages to hook his fingers into the belt loops of Changbin’s jeans, keeping him grounded while he asks for a kiss. To top it off, he offers up his best set of puppy dog eyes.

Chan can see the resolve in Changbin fracture, even as he pretends it’s not. He looks away to afford the two whatever privacy they can get in their little basement studio, busying himself with getting properly settled.

Chan moving out from their apartment has been good for Jisung and Changbin. As much as they say they miss him – and Chan does believe them when they say they do, don’t get him wrong – having their own space has only strengthened their relationship. Chan is happy for them, if a little sad because he doesn’t have the same.

It’s mostly his fault. Between the amount of time he dedicates to his job and the number of friends and contacts he’s attempting to keep up with, there isn’t much room to fit in a significant other. Relationships take time and effort, two things Chan doesn’t have on hand at the moment. Most of the time, it’s something he can live with, but sometimes being around Changbin and Jisung just reminds him of what he’s missing out on.

It would be so nice if he lived with a significant other. If that were the case, Chan wouldn’t have to go and seek them out, clearing up his schedule to fit them in; he’d just come home and there they’d be, full of stories about their own day. They’d talk about them over dinner and curl up on the sofa to watch the next episode of whatever show they’ve decided to start together. And then afterwards, they’d move to the bedroom and maybe Chan would get to show them how much he loves them with his hands. Or maybe they’d just close their eyes for the night, their heads sharing the same pillow and the bed warm with two bodies.

“Hyung,” Changbin says, leaning over to poke his bicep. He snaps out of his thoughts to meet his concerned frown with a blink. “I’ve said your name at least five times. Are you sure you don’t want to just go home today and get some sleep?”

“We have an album to work on,” Chan says, shaking the lingering desire out of his head. He reaches for his laptop, stretching out the muscles in his neck in preparation for the long day ahead. “Don’t worry about me. Let’s just get on with what we have to do.”

Changbin stares at him, his eyes unreadable for a long second, before he retreats with a sigh. “If you insist.”

“I do. Anyways so I was thinking about the dance track we were working on last Saturday and…”

Minho manages to stay away from the apartment for a week this time. He doesn’t try to kid himself and pretend like he’s not going to go back. Even if he doesn’t want to admit it out loud, he knows why that is.

It’s apparent in the way that he spends the entire week leading up to his return gorging on meals. He rips through buildings in Seoul like a man on the brink of starvation, targeting anything that is in its most vulnerable stage of sleep. The dozing cashier on the graveyard shift at a 7/11, the drunk businessmen passed out on the pavements, the stressed student dreaming about failed tests at her desk. Each of them he approaches like a python with its prey, fastening his arms around them and squeezing them into paralysis. He senses their panic explode, hears the fragmented thoughts that ricochet around their conscious brains – snatches of prayers, desperately delivered orders to their limbs to just fucking move – and then greedily feasts on the fear that seeps out of them.

Each night he eats until his stomach can’t take anymore, until he’s ate so much that he’s lethargic and ready to drop dead on his feet. By the time he decides to brave the apartment again, he’s still so full that he doesn’t need to eat for another two days.

He enters the apartment like he always does, creeping in through the shadows. This time, however, he doesn’t get much further than the living room, stopping dead in his tracks. Curled up on the sofa, his legs crossed and fluffy socks on his feet, is the human. Wide awake and tapping away at the laptop balanced on his knees, his eyebrows furrowed as he concentrates on what is before him. He doesn’t appear to have noticed Minho’s intrusion.

Swallowing, Minho edges back until he rejoins the shadows in the corner of the living room. He’s no stranger to conscious humans – hell, like a lot of demons he knows, he even takes corporeal form and walks among them during the day – but it’s the first time he’s seen this human awake. Minho can’t stop studying him, his eyes roving over the figure before him: the round hunch to his shoulders, the bruises circling his eyes, the creaminess of his alabaster skin.

Soft, Minho thinks unbiddenly. He looks soft.

A trill cuts through the stillness of the apartment, making both Minho and the human jump from the sudden eruption of the noise. The human fumbles around blindly before he curls his fingers around his phone and answers the call. He hits the speaker button and sets the phone back down, immediately moving his hands back to the laptop.

“Hello?” he calls out.

Minho is tempted to answer back just for the hell of it. He bites down on his tongue before he can do that, not wanting to derail his plan.

The teeny sound of a voice is fed through the phone, gruff with sleep. “Channie-hyung, please don’t tell me you’re still working on that ballad for the new girl group.”

The human – Chan, apparently – pauses his actions, a guilty look flitting across his face, before he slowly returns to the keypad. “I’m not working on that ballad for the new girl group.”

“Now say it convincingly.”

“It’s just – I really think I’ve figured out what to do with the coda,” he starts, but his friend is already talking over him.

“I don’t care. You need to get some sleep man, you look like you’re ready to collapse nowadays. This isn’t healthy.”

Chan curls his hands into fists. They’re surprisingly manly for how small they are, his knuckles stark and the veins that trace the back of them all the more prominent when he tenses. Minho remembers how they grabbed onto the material of his shirt and held him tight.

“I’ve slept,” he says curtly. “I know how to take care of myself, Sungie.”

There’s a long pause on the other end. The human’s friend might be too far away for Minho to pick up on his thoughts, but he doesn’t even need his powers to deduce that he’s worried he’s overstepped. When this Sungie next speaks, it’s much softer.

“I know that, hyung. I just get worried about you is all. Especially when you’re all alone in that flat.”

All of the tension coiled up in Chan’s spine rushes out of him like air in a pricked balloon. He deflates, turning a wistful smile towards the phone. “I know. I’m sorry for snapping at you, I must be more tired than I thought.”

“Probably. At least promise me you’ll go to bed soon, please?”

A resigned sigh. “I promise.”

They exchange a few more meaningless words, dragging out the conversation for longer than it needs to be in the way humans tend to do before the person on the other side hangs up. Silence conquers the apartment once again, all the more apparent after the interruption. It seems to beat Chan down, pushing on his shoulders as he stares at his laptop screen with distant eyes.

After a moment, he shakes himself out of whatever trance he was in. Heaving another sigh, he saves the song he was working on and closes the lid of his laptop, packing it away. Minho watches him pad out of the living room, hears him putter around in the bathroom as he gets ready for bed. He doesn’t move until long after Chan has entered his bedroom, not until he is certain the other will be asleep.

Only then does he peel himself away from the wall and creep after him. From the sound of his thoughts, Chan is already asleep when he enters although barely just. Minho waits until he’s slipped under a little more before he moves closer. For a moment, he looms over Chan, chewing on his bottom lip as anticipation thrums in his veins, and then he slips into the bed.

His arms are solid when they wrap around Chan’s torso. Automatically, the urge to paralyse him strains against the confines of Minho’s brain, but he keeps the rubber bands tightly in place. He stares at the side of Chan’s face, waiting.

And then, as if on cue, the human lets out a soft groan and turns into his embrace, moving closer. His limbs slot into the crevices of Minho’s body easily and they’re just as soft as Minho remembers. They run warm, much warmer than he’d expect them to, but the heat is a pleasant one. He likes how it feels like there’s a small furnace pressed against him, heating him up inside and out.

He’s never been held like this before.

Maybe he once was as a child, but Minho can’t remember that. He doubts he was. Demons are not an affectionate species. They are not the maternal type and do not regard their offspring as anything more than a means to ensure the survival of their race. Once they can fend for themselves, they are left to do just that. The last time Minho saw his mother, he was seven years old. He met Jeongin some three weeks after that and… well, it’s like he said. Jeongin doesn’t like to touch anyone really. And in any case, he’s been in Busan for the past three years so he hasn’t been around for Minho to pounce on regardless.

So Minho has never been held before. Oh, he’s latched onto his victims like this, prefers keeping them close while he feeds on their fear, but he’s never been treated the same way. Never had anyone wrap their arms around him like they never want him to leave.

But Chan does just that. He’s the only person in this world who is stupid enough to not fear him enough to stay away and Minho thinks he might like it. A lot, actually. Enough to have ate so much this past week that he can clear out an entire night for this: to lie in Chan’s bed and within Chan’s arms without having to do anything but absorb the feeling. To admit he doesn’t want to leave them for a considerable while.

It’s probably not a very ethical thing to do. To sneak into someone’s room when they’re asleep and hold them for the sake of his own comfort while they sleep on, completely unaware. But then again, Minho’s a demon – when has he ever been ethical?

Truth be told, after what he saw tonight, Minho thinks Chan might need this too.

“What you need,” Jisung says, slamming his lemonade down with a dramatic flair. The smiley face on the lemon printed onto its sleeve beams mockingly at Chan. “What you need is a nice, fat fuck.”

Chan grimaces over his skewer of beef. “Very classy, Sungie.”

“I’m being serious,” he exclaims passionately. Changbin piles meat and vegetables into a lettuce leaf and shoves the ssambap into Jisung’s mouth, but he just continues talking through it, his cheeks ballooned with food. “Sex is a good stress reliever and a great way to fall asleep. It tires you right out. It’s just what you need, hyung, trust me.”

Chan tries to fight back visible disgust at the sight of everything in Jisung’s mouth. Jesus Christ, how is Changbin so unfazed by it all? It’s so vile to see. Love truly does make people blind.

“Is sex all you ever think about?” he manages to ask.

Jisung looks at him blankly. “Yes?”

“Of course, it is,” he sighs. Why did he even bother to ask? Jisung has never hid what a horny teenager he is, even when he’s hit twenty years old. It’s a point of pride for him.

“You need sexing up,” Jisung reiterates.

“I really don’t.”

“That one girl from the company is really interested in you,” he continues like Chan hasn’t spoken. He shoves another piece of meat into his mouth, still waving his hand around. “The one from the new girl group with the short pink hair. She kept giving you the eyes in the recording booth the other day, I know she did.”

“She did,” Changbin pipes up to agree.

Chan glares at him in betrayal. He returns his focus to Jisung to shake his head. “I’m not going to sleep with one of our trainees, Jisung. That’s so fucking messed up.”

“She’s twenty years old!”

“I’m a senior producer. She’s not even debuted yet. I don’t care how old she is, I’m not going to get caught up in anything like that. One look her way and the next thing you know, there’s a blind item floating around about a newly debuted idol who’s slept with a producer for more lines.”

Jisung makes a face. “Boo, you whore,” he jeers, but he drops the topic all the same which means he knows Chan has a valid point.

To be honest, Jisung has one too. Granted, Chan might not need a fuck, but it’d be nice to have one. It’s been a while since he last slept with someone since he’s been so caught up in work and just generally throwing himself a pity party whenever he feels lonely instead of doing something about it.

But for some reason, things have gotten better recently. He can’t pinpoint it on anything specific, but it’s become increasingly often for him to wake up feeling much more rested as of late. Usually, he wakes up with loneliness already eating away at him, but those mornings are becoming increasingly sparser and he’s not sure why that is. Sometimes, he even wakes up thinking there should be someone in his arms, like they’ve just rolled out of bed and are waiting for him to join them for breakfast, even though he knows that can’t be true.

A part of him thinks that this is even more of a reason why he should take Jisung’s advice and just fuck whatever’s going on with him out of his system. He must be going crazy if he’s waking up thinking that he’s holding onto someone. And maybe if Chan weren’t so busy, he would be concerned about that – but it turns out he is busy and he doesn’t really care if he’s a little crazy as long as he’s still functional.

Wow. He should put that on a t-shirt or something. CRAZY BUT FUNCTIONAL. Sell it right next to the jumpers that read OK, BUT FIRST COFFEE. White suburban mothers from America would eat it right up.

“We just don’t want you to die lonely, hyung,” says Jisung, stealing a skewer from his plate. Chan watches his food go with a resigned smile. “You’re getting on in your old age.”

“I’m twenty three.”

“That’s practically middle-aged. I can hear your joints creaking, Channie-hyung. Creaking.”

Chan throws Changbin a pleading look. “Can’t you get him to shut up?”

“No one can get him to shut up,” he says, though the grin on his face says he hasn’t ever tried hard enough to test that hypothesis.

He rubs his hand across the nape of Jisung’s neck and Jisung sighs, leaning into the touch. Chan watches as he twists to offer Changbin a piece of Chan’s lamb skewer, Jisung’s eyes fixed to the movement of Changbin’s teeth as they trap a piece of meat behind his incisors and then drag across the wood. He feels like he’s intruding on a private moment, like he shouldn’t even be in the same city as them right now.

A familiar pang of loneliness hits him. He knows they don’t mean to leave him out when they get lost in small moments like this, but sometimes he can’t help but resent the two for being so in love. It’s not a nice feeling and Chan doesn’t like to admit to feeling it, but it’s happening more and more in the months since he moved out. He just can’t help but feel like he’s a million miles away from them, even when he’s sat just across the table.

Maybe Jisung is right. Maybe he does just need to have a good fuck.

He works out a routine quickly enough. Gorge on food for a few days, far more than he is used to consuming in one go, and then return to Chan’s apartment for a night or two to lie in his arms. To hold him and be held in turn. To count Chan’s breaths and feel his chest rise and fall in tandem with them, to absorb the warmth that is being pressed into him.

Demons are solitary creatures. They are not like lions who form families and coexist in prides, surviving as a team rather than on their own. They are tigers, prowling through the streets of the human world in search of their next prey. Whatever contact they have with others of their kind is fleeting, made even truer by the extent to which their lives span.

Chan is the first creature in a long time whom Minho has formed a connection with, however strange and one-sided that connection may be. He can’t get enough of him, even though he knows he should probably keep his distance. He can’t stay away.

On one unusually cold night for this time of year, Minho slips into Chan’s bedroom like usual. Their arms find each other and Chan tugs him close, murmuring his approval under his breath. This time, his hand somehow manages to slip under Minho’s shirt to press against the side of his ribcage, five small digits burning a brand into his skin. Minho shivers, but the touch is not entirely unpleasant so he doesn’t pull the hand away.

He settles into a familiar position, his eyes trained on the ceiling. When he concentrates, he can hear each of Chan’s breaths: the occasional stutter as he inhales, his lungs filling with air, and then the content exhale he expels back into the room. He’s completely relaxed in Minho’s arms. Every time Minho comes, the tension that lingers in his spine seems to flee him entirely. It’s just as confusing as when it first happened, but Minho has long since accepted it.

Beyond that, the fragments of Chan’s dreams settle somewhere in Minho’s mind, flashes of his friends and some girl with pink hair. If he wanted to, Minho could hone in on them until he’s painted a mosaic with all of the images, until he’s scratched out a door in Chan’s mind that lets him walk right into his dreams and explore them for himself. He knows it’s something Jeongin likes to do when he’s particularly hungry and wants to toy with his meals before he has them. He knows it would be as easy as a beat of his heart.

But Minho doesn’t care about feeding on Chan’s fear. He just wants to count his breaths. Just wants to confirm that he’s real and in turn be reminded that he is too.

After an hour, Chan snuffles and shifts until he’s on his side, his back facing Minho. The movement loosens the hold Minho has on him; it’s clearly something that displeases the human because he lets out a disgruntled noise and then shuffles backwards until his back hits Minho’s side. Taking the hint, Minho turns too until he can follow the curve of Chan’s spine, is fitted against it in a parallel line. His arm is hooked around his waist and each breath he releases stirs the bleached strands of Chan’s hair. He’s so close that if Chan moves even an inch back, they’ll be in Minho’s mouth. It should be uncomfortable, but all Minho feels is so incredibly warm. So incredibly wanted.

He closes his eyes, memorising the press of Chan’s shoulder blades against his chest as he slumbers in Minho’s arms. And somewhere along the way, Minho follows suit and falls asleep too.

Chan wakes up to arms around him.

It’s a pleasant way to start the day. A body pressed against his back, legs entangled with his beneath the covers, hot breaths travelling along the exposed skin of his neck. Something warm and soothing to counter the cold air that’s biting at his nose, something to turn towards when he wants to escape the discomfort of Seoul’s low temperatures. He grunts, twisting to his side to hide from the cold’s attack, determined to ignore the blare of his alarm.

“Turn that off,” the other person hisses, tugging the covers over their heads as if that’ll block out the sound.

Chan flings his arm out in the direction of his bedside cabinet to fumble for his phone and blindly drags the alarm to a stop with his eyes still screwed shut. He revels in the silence that quickly claims the room again.

Then he remembers he lives alone.

His eyes fly open in horror, He shoots up, fear ricocheting through his stomach and snaps his head to the side, praying that it’s just Jisung in his bed even as he knows that there is no way that voice could be mistaken for Jisung’s. Jisung’s voice is low and gritty whereas this voice is higher with a note of nasality that is entirely unfamiliar to Chan

Dreading the worst, he tears his covers back to reveal… a boy. Or, well, a man. He looks to be around Chan’s age, maybe slightly younger. Uncut brown hair flopping onto his face, a perfectly carved nose, downturned but full lips – all in all an attractive man, someone who Chan would do a double-take at if he saw him in the streets. That doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t have a flaming clue who the fuck he is and how he got into Chan’s bed.

“What the fuck?” he cries out. “Who the fuck are you?”

The stranger’s eyes snap open – and Chan immediately recoils, his breath catching in his throat. The fear in his stomach strengthens ten-fold and he thinks the force of it might make him sick.

The eyes that stare back at him aren’t human. They can’t be. Ringed with a tawny brown, the whites of the man’s eyes are coloured a deep amber instead and his irises are long black slits, sharp and dangerous. They look like a cat’s eyes, Chan realises. The stranger blinks and suddenly his eyes are normal, two dark brown pools in matching seas of white.

He sits up, his face unreadable. “What time is it?”

“Six thirty,” Chan automatically replies before catching himself. “That’s not important. Who are you and how the hell did you get into my apartment? And why the fuck are you in my bed?”

The stranger doesn’t answer for a long moment, simply sits there and appraises him. The weight of his eyes is oddly heavy yet sharp, like he’s cut through all the layers that make up Chan and stripped him bare within seconds. He shifts, uncomfortable with the attention.

“I’m your sleep paralysis demon,” the stranger finally says.

Chan blinks. “What.”

He rolls his eyes. By the time they’re looking at Chan again, they’re back to the cat eyes from earlier, piercing and predatory. “You heard me right the first time. I’m a sleep paralysis demon.”

There are a million and one responses that Chan could give to that. He could scream, loud enough to wake the dead and his neighbours, because there’s a fucking demon in his bed and he has no idea what it wants from him. He could call the police because there’s an insane man in his room or call the hospital because he’s clearly having a psychotic break and hallucinating things.

For some reason, he chooses to splutter, “You can’t be. I don’t get sleep paralysis.”

The stranger doesn’t seem fazed by this revelation. “I know that. My powers don’t work on you, it seems.”

“So why are you here?” he asks, bewildered. Surely if Chan is immune to his paralysis, he should go elsewhere to find someone who isn’t. Why the fuck would he be sleeping in Chan’s bed instead? And why the fuck is Chan wondering these things instead of kicking him out?

The demon shrugs. When he next blinks, his eyes are like Chan’s again, though the glint in them remains the same. “I like your hugs,” he finally replies.

For some absurd reason, Chan’s first impulse is to thank him for the compliment. Then he realises that the demon said hugs. As in, plural. As in, more than one. Meaning that this isn’t the first time he’s done this. And after that he realises that he hasn’t been imagining the feeling of just missing someone in his arms when he wakes up in the morning. It was the memory of the demon before him, tucked away in his embrace throughout the night and gone before Chan could wake and find him there.

“What the fuck,” he breathes, feeling lightheaded all of a sudden. He gropes around for a hold of the covers, fisting the material in his hands to ground himself. “You can’t just – you can’t just come into random people’s homes and hug them in the middle of the night!”

“Why not? You hugged me back.”

“I was asleep!”

“Didn’t stop you from liking it,” the demon points out churlishly.

Chan’s mouth falls open in offence. “I was asleep. It’s still weird and wrong.”

He gives into another eye roll. “I’m a demon. Wrong isn’t something that I particularly care about. And in any case, you liked it. You might be denying it now, you might not want to admit it, but it’s true.” All of a sudden, his demeanour shifts into something shier, his teeth biting into his bottom lip. Chan is half-surprised to find that they’re all straight at the edges instead of filed into points. Softly, he admits, “I only stayed because you hugged me back.”

It’s the truth.

Chan doesn’t know how he’s so certain of this or what about the demon’s confession leads him to believe his words. But just looking at him in that moment – his shoulders pulling in, the sharpness in his eyes dulling, the nervous twitch of his fingers – has the barbs in his throat falter, catching in and scratching up the roof of his mouth. There’s something achingly familiar in the demon’s vulnerability, something that reminds Chan a lot of himself.

He closes his mouth, crushing the retorts under his teeth to dust. When he opens it again, it’s to croak out a weak, “I don’t even know your name.”

The demon blinks and the vulnerability starts to splinter away. He straightens his spine, a fresh confidence settling upon his shoulders like a cloak. He holds out his hand and Chan automatically takes it, even as he freaks out over how utterly absurd and reckless this is.

“I’m Minho,” the demon offers and the smile he pairs it with is warm. “It’s nice to finally speak to you. Please take good care of me.”

This is absolutely insane. Chan should be running for the hills, not shaking the demon’s hand as though this is just another business meeting in a long string of many. He should be packing his things and moving back in with Changbin and Jisung before nightfall can arrive. He should be doing absolutely anything other than what he’s doing right now.

“I’m Chan,” he replies.

Minho merely laughs, the sound like a windchime fluttering in the breeze. “I know.”

Minho doesn’t return for another week. If he were any sane person with two working brain cells, this would be met with nothing but relief from Chan. What happened the other day was – well, it was just ridiculous, really. It should’ve been terrifying, but Chan is beginning to think there’s something seriously wrong with him because, aside from the initial surge of fear, he has since felt nothing of the sort whenever he’s thought about Minho. The man is a fucking demon for fuck’s sake. One who came to paralyse Chan in his sleep for whatever reason, couldn’t manage it and then decided to come back regardless. He should be dreading his return not… anticipating it.

He’s quickly realising he is a lot more touch-starved than he thought he was.

Each morning that passes without waking to find Minho next to him or feeling the residual warmth of his body leaves Chan feeling inexplicably disappointed. It’s just… It’s so lonely waking up to an empty apartment. And sure, maybe a normal person would just go out and grab a date to solve that, but Chan doesn’t really care for dating right now. He just wants some company when the nights are particularly cold like they are now, even if that company is a sleep paralysis demon with cat eyes.

Privately, he thinks he has more in common with Minho than either of them would like to admit. Sure, Chan’s off his rocker for missing that brief comfort the demon brought in the few minutes before Chan realised he shouldn’t have been there… but he recognised the look in Minho’s eyes as he defended himself. Minho is as desperate to be held by Chan as he is by him.

Lonely souls recognise lonely souls.

So despite all rational thought, Chan finds that he misses Minho. Or at least, he misses what Minho has been offering him these past few weeks. He thinks of those mornings where he woke up feeling content and ready to brave the world, moving through the city with the sort of calmness that only comes from a night of proper rest, and wishes Minho would just come back.

Please take good care of me, he said like he was a new trainee bowing to one of the company’s main producers. So where the fuck is he to take care of?

Each night Chan goes to sleep, his door cracked open in a silent invitation, and each morning he wakes up to cold bedsheets and a mouth rancid with disappointment.

He wakes up to the unwelcome intrusion of the cold. Chan groans, his eyes still glued shut with sleep and tries to tug the duvet back over his left side, only to be met with resistance. Distantly, he’s aware of the sound of another person’s breaths in the room, of the dip in his bed where they kneel beside him, but all he cares about right now is keeping the cold out. He pulls on the duvet with renewed effort, fighting against whatever’s pulling it away.

“For fuck’s sake, Chan, let me in,” a voice hisses.

He’s in the stage of sleep where he’s more pliant to demands so he obliges right away, letting go of the covers. A thought occurs as the other person slides into position beside him and he turns his head blindly in their direction.

“Minho?”

There’s a long pause. And then a short and shifty, “No,” is delivered with obvious guilt.

Chan’s face screws up in a confused frown. He swears that’s Minho’s voice. He might’ve only had the one conversation with him, but he doesn’t know anyone else with that unique a voice. Fighting against the tendrils of sleep tugging at his consciousness, he forces his eyes open enough to be able to squint at the figure next to him. Minho’s cat eyes are already looking right at him, glowing like two lamps in the dark. Chan is too tired to flinch from their unnatural stare.

“Yes, it is?” he says with obvious confusion. “You’re – you’re right there.”

Minho blinks and his eyes are brown again. “Go to sleep, Chan,” he says after a moment.

Chan thinks the suggestion over. It sounds like a good idea. He shrugs and chimes an okay! before snuggling in towards Minho, chasing the heat his body has to offer. Towards the end of the bed, he slides their feet together, pushing his cold toes into Minho’s ankles even as the other hisses at the sensation. He slings an arm over Minho’s torso and lets his eyes drift shut.

Minho is strangely stiff under his touch. Even with his eyes closed, Chan can see how tense he is and the thought niggles away at him, preventing him from sleeping.

“You can relax, you know,” he mumbles. “I thought you said you like my hugs.”

Minho is quiet for a long stretch of time. “Shouldn’t you be freaking out right now?” he finally asks. “I’ve just snuck into your bed again.”

He shrugs. “Probably. But you’re warm and I’m lonely so I don’t really care at the moment. Just hold me and go to sleep, I’ll freak out about this later.”

With that grand declaration out of the way, Chan finally gives in to the temptations of sleep and lets his mind drift off. The last thing he is aware of before he falls asleep proper is the slow turn of Minho’s body, the pressure of his chest against Chan’s, and a hand landing on his back.

When he next wakes up, it’s not because of the cold. The alarm on his phone blares, each ring increasingly louder and penetrating through the mistiness of his mind. Groaning, Chan tries to reach over to turn it off, only to find that he can’t move his arm at all. Hell, he can’t even feel it anymore. It takes a few seconds to realise that the reason for that is because it’s currently pinned down to the bed. It takes another set of seconds for him to open his eyes to confirm why.

All he can see of Minho is the side-profile of his face. The healthy glow of his tan skin, blemish-free and looking like it belongs in the airbrushed pages of a magazine. His hair, mussed with sleep and fanned out across the pillow they’re sharing. The perfect point of his nose and the crease in his brow from where he frowns gently in his slumber. As the alarm continues to wail on, the crease deepens until he snaps his amber eyes open, his mouth curling into a snarl.

“Turn that fucking alarm off,” he hisses, twisting in Chan’s direction. When he realises he’s already awake and looking at him, he falters, two pink spots in his cheeks. For a moment, all they do is stare at one another before Minho swallows, biting out, “Aren’t you going to get that?”

Chan throws a pointed look at where Minho is still crushing his arm to the mattress. “I might if you let me.”

“Oh.”

The pink flush to his cheeks deepening, Minho rolls over until he’s at the far end of the bed, his back facing Chan. Pins and needles run up and down the length of Chan’s arm now that blood has started to flow around it again and he winces, massaging it even as he reaches for his phone. He silences the alarm and then turns off the next two for good measure, knowing there’s nothing that can send him back to sleep now. He won’t need them today, that’s for sure.

He turns back to study Minho, half-formed questions on his tongue. Though the demon feigns sleep, it’s obvious from the set of his shoulders that he’s far from it. They only grow tenser when Chan reaches over to place a hesitant hand on the flat of his back, right between where the blades of his shoulders sit.

“You came back,” he says softly.

Minho still doesn’t dare to face him. “Yeah,” he says after a moment, affecting an indifferent tone. “I guess I did.”

The absurdity of the situation dawns on Chan. Here he is, sat in the middle of Seoul at thirty minutes past six on a Saturday morning with a demon in his bed and all he can feel is relief. He doesn’t even know Minho, has exchanged all of thirty words with him before today, and yet he’s happy to see him all the same.

“I must be insane for thinking this,” he says, shaking his head with a little laugh, “but I’m glad you did.”

That has Minho twisting back around, if only to deliver a withering look in Chan’s direction. “You have absolutely no sense of a survival instinct,” he gripes, his words cold even as his eyes flicker with relief. “Are you always this blindly trusting?”

“No,” he says.

“Then what’s so different now? Shouldn’t this be the one time where you shouldn’t trust anyone at all?”

Believe him, Chan is wondering that himself. All he can do is shrug helplessly and answer with complete truthfulness, “I don’t know. I just do.”

“You’re insane,” Minho replies with a disbelieving laugh.

Now that’s something they can both agree on.

With their new arrangement comes a new routine that Minho falls into as easily as one might pull on their favourite jumper. He spends his days in the usual drab manner, either finding an abandoned area to doze away in or wandering through the streets of Seoul in his corporeal form, just another face among millions of others. At night, he feeds.

Where he was once a picky eater, he has become the exact opposite. He doesn’t care much for narrowing down the perfect meal, ducking in and out of rooms to sample people’s fears before deciding on which would satisfy him most. He preys upon whatever is available, eating until his stomach is full and a little beyond that too. He needs it for what is to come.

He’s even more impatient when feeding nowadays, not wanting to toy with his food like Jeongin delights in doing or even going through the hassle of climbing into bed with them and paralysing them in his hold. Instead, he reverts to the technique he remembers his mother teaching him, the one most of the older demons favour. He sits on their chest, the weight of him squeezing the air out of his victims so that the fear explodes out of them, potent and almost tangible in the air. He eats up every last drop like ambrosia before he moves on, already on the prowl for his next meal.

It takes him around two or three days each time to eat enough for him to be able to skip out on the hunt for the next couple nights. On those nights, he enters Chan’s apartment, waits for him to fall asleep if he’s not already, and then crawls into bed beside him. Each time, Chan welcomes him with a squeeze of his arms. Sometimes he even squints open his eyes to smile a drowsy hello and Minho will return it albeit in a manner that’s much more reserved. He can’t bring himself to be quite as enthusiastic as Chan is, even as he lays his head on Chan’s chest and listens to the melodic pace of his heart beneath all of that muscle and sinew. It’s a soothing sound, one that Minho times each of his breaths to, and eventually sends him to sleep.

That’s another thing that’s new about their routine. The fact that Minho falls asleep each night he’s over. Demons don’t need to sleep like humans do, their feedings being enough to keep their body regenerating and functional. They sleep to pass the time in daylight hours or as a hobby that gives them something to do. Whenever Minho falls asleep at Chan’s, it’s not deliberate. It’s just something his body naturally gives into. He’s not sure why that is and he doesn’t care to analyse it closely enough to figure out.

March bleeds into April and with it comes much brighter weather. Minho starts to wake up to the glare of sunlight in his eyes since Chan always closes his blinds the wrong way, a small gap between each slat that’s wide enough to let light through, and it’s only marginally less annoying than the alarm that accompanies it.

On one particularly bright morning, the glare of the sun drags Minho out from sleep unaided. He comes back to consciousness slowly, absorbing the world around him bit by bit. The reddish tint of the underside of his eyelids, the cotton material hooked under his fingers, the rustle of the sheets as Chan shifts around next to him. His elbow knocks into Minho’s upper arm and he instinctively mumbles an apology, even as Minho betrays no sign of being conscious. He stays in the bed and a skim of his thoughts tells Minho he has no intention of leaving anytime soon.

He opens his eyes to find that Chan is much closer to him than he expected. The two of them are on the edge of their pillows so Minho can see the side of his face in ultra-high definition. There are faint freckles dusted across the tops of his cheeks like sprinkles of sugar and a pimple growing at the edge of his jaw. There’s a hint of stubble just underneath the surface layer of his skin and a dried dot of toothpaste to the corner of his mouth. It catches Minho’s eye, a spot of pure white blooming on the edge of a pink mouth.

His eyes drift along the shape of Chan’s lips. They’re full, each side almost equal in size. The crest of it rises and falls in a pronounced Cupid’s bow and then tapers off at the edges. They’re slightly chapped, but it’s not noticeable unless someone is studying it deeply. As soon as the thought occurs to him, he drags his eyes away before Chan realises he is.

He makes a show of waking up, reaching his arms out high above his head and stretching. A groan tumbles out of his mouth as his muscles are pulled at satisfyingly and then he drops his arms back down, rubbing at his stomach in circles.

“What time is it?” he murmurs, his eyes falling shut again. “Why is it so bright?”

“It’s ten am,” Chan replies and Minho’s eyes snap back open.

He shoots up into a sitting position, startling the human beside him as he shrieks, “Ten am?”

Chan stares at him, bewildered. He stops scrolling through his phone, fingers still frozen in position. “Yes? Why, did you have somewhere to be?”

Somewhere to be. He’s a demon, why on earth would he have somewhere to be? It’s not like they have jobs or something.

“No, I just…” He starts to sink back down to his pillow, his cheeks reddening as he realises how loudly he overreacted. He pulls the covers up to his chin despite how warm he already feels and says, “I’ve just never slept this long before. I – I didn’t realise I could. Why aren’t you at work anyways? Don’t you always wake up at half six?”

God, maybe it says something about how far this has already gone if Minho knows when Chan’s day starts.

“It’s my day off,” he replies. His stomach lets out a small gurgle and the two of them look down at it in surprise. Chan’s ears turn as red as a cayenne pepper. “Looks like it’s time to make breakfast. Do you want anything? I might not be a great cook, but I can still cook a mean fry-up.”

Minho blinks several times in surprise. This is already shaping up to be the oddest morning he’s ever had. “Um – I.” He fumbles for a response before landing on, “I’m a demon.”

“Do demons not eat breakfast or something?”

As a matter of fact, they do not. At least, not the kind that Minho is anyways. He knows they can technically eat human food, they just don’t need to and rarely feel the urge to. But Chan is looking at Minho expectantly like this is a normal offer and he still has that dot of toothpaste clinging to the corner of his mouth and Minho doesn’t really have anything better to do so –

“Sure,” he says. “A fry-up sounds nice.”

He has no idea what a fry-up is or whether it sounds nice. It seems to be the right thing to say, however, because Chan smiles and it’s quite possibly the nicest smile Minho has ever seen, on a human or on a demon or otherwise. It’s brighter than the sunlight in this room and much nicer too; the sun doesn’t have dimples, after all.

It’s a Sunday morning and Chan is eating breakfast with a demon. Needless to say, this is the second weirdest thing to have ever happened to him.

The first is, of course, the fact that he regularly shares a bed with said demon. It turns out that Minho is right: Chan has absolutely no sense of a survival instinct. Instead of freaking out when he met Minho, he decided to welcome him into his bed and has continued to do so for several weeks. It’s stupid and illogical, but logic doesn’t really matter when it’s late at night and Chan feels all alone. All that matters then is having someone beside him, someone who’s warm and seeks Chan out specifically just because he wants to hold him.

It’s the oddest arrangement he’s ever had with someone, demon or not. He and Minho exist on the peripheries of each other’s worlds. Chan wakes up to Minho in his bed and returns from the bathroom to find him gone, then he gets ready for the day and heads off to work. Afterwards, he might grab a drink with some friends or come home and work some more. Then he’ll head to bed, his door left open just a crack, and then Minho will return when he’s half-asleep. Or maybe he won’t, but Chan prefers it when he does.

He knows absolutely nothing about Minho. How he spends his days, whether he has friends, whether he has family, whether he’s a good person. He knows nothing about him.

Yet in some ways he does.

He knows that Minho likes to follow Chan’s heartbeat whether it’s by resting his head on Chan’s chest or pressing his fingers against the pulse that ticks in his wrist. He knows his arms are strong and his legs are sturdy and that there isn’t a single callous on his palms. He knows the amber eyes that glow in the dark and the strong up-turned point of his nose and that he hates the sound of Chan’s alarm. He stretches in bed like a cat and grumbles under his breath in the morning and he looks at Chan like he can’t understand him in the slightest but really wants to.

And truth be told, Chan wants to understand him too. Which is why he’s having breakfast with a demon on a Sunday morning.

“How does it work then?” he asks, waving his fork around in a vague movement. When Minho hums questioningly around a piece of toast, he clarifies, “The whole sleep paralysis thing. How does it work? Why do you do it? Is it just like a game or something?”

Minho frowns, his eyebrows pinching together. They’re dark and sit strongly on his face, making him seem cold even though Chan believes him to be not.

“Of course it’s not just a game.” Something flickers across his face like he’s about to add another sentence onto that but thinks better of it. He continues, “For my kind, it’s the way we feed.”

Chan blanches. “Feed?”

“Not on humans, idiot,” he says, rushing to clarify. A side of his mouth quirks up in amusement. “Are you worried I’m going to turn around and gobble you up one night?”

He’s joking, it’s clear he’s joking, but fear spikes up within Chan anyway. He tries to tamp it down with a warning. “I can defend myself, I studied taekwondo.”

Yeah, for like three months.

It’s not like Minho needs to know that though.

The demon in question grins, the slice of his mouth razor-sharp across his haughty face. There’s something predatory about it and though Chan knows it should scare him even more, all it does is make something bubble in the pits of his stomach. He tamps down on that too, all the more forceful when Minho leans across the table to finger at the collar of Chan’s t-shirt, his eyes glowing amber again.

“Is that right?” he purrs.

A pink tongue swipes across his bottom lip and Chan doesn’t dare to move, his breath caught in the back of his throat. After a long moment, Minho’s thumb scrubs at the corner of Chan’s lip and he leans back, the tension shattering.

“You have toothpaste on the corner of your mouth, idiot.”

Suddenly, Chan feels like he can breathe again. He scratches at the corner of his mouth a little self-consciously, his ears burning, and manages to throw out, “Don’t call me an idiot when I’ve just slaved away at the stovetop for your breakfast.”

“Don’t be an idiot then,” he returns, his smile much more mischievous this time around.

Chan just sighs. It seems it doesn’t matter which species it is; if he’s in a conversation with someone, they’re going to clown him. He doesn’t know why he expected anything different.

“You never did answer my question, you know,” he says after a few minutes of them quietly eating their breakfast. “About the sleep paralysis.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No. All you said was that it’s how your kind feed. That tells me nothing.”

Minho rolls his eyes. “God, you humans are so obsessed with pedantics. It told you everything.” He sighs, stabbing one of his eggs in the middle and watching in delight as the yolk runs over his plate. “What do you feel when you experience sleep paralysis?”

“Uh… I wouldn’t know. I don’t experience sleep paralysis.”

He blinks. “Right. Well, what do you think you would feel? If you were sleeping and all of a sudden, it felt like someone else was in the room and that they were pinning you down and you couldn’t move. You couldn’t do anything at all except suffer through it.”

God, that sounds awful. Chan can’t help but shudder at the prospect of having that little control over his own body. And the knowledge that this is what Minho is made to do and tried to do with Chan… Well, it’s an uncomfortable avenue of thought so he decides not to wander down it.

“Panicked, I guess?” he tries.

“Scared,” Minho corrects. Something about his expression reminds Chan of his Science teacher back in middle school. It makes him want to laugh, but he tries to hold back on it. “You feel terrified. That fear is what we feed on. It’s what sustains me.”

Oh.

That’s decidedly less funny.

“That sounds…” When Minho’s eyes narrow into slits, back to brown but no less intimidating, Chan trails off, not wanting to misstep. He picks his next words slowly. “It sounds a little – mean?”

“Mean?” Minho barks out a laugh before he shakes his head. “Ah, Channie. It’s not mean, it’s the way the world works. Everything has its place in the food cycle. Humans just happen to be a tier lower than they thought.”

“Still… To deliberately scare people just to feed off their fear – “

“As opposed to what? Slaughtering them and eating them for breakfast?” He waves the bacon rasher on the tip of his fork pointedly and Chan bites his lip, not being able to counter that point. “If anything, our feeding is kinder. Sure, humans are scared while it’s happening, but they’re still breathing afterwards. They live, they move on. They brush it off as something scientific that their brains have cooked up and our kinds continue to coexist in peace. The system works.”

He doesn’t have a rebuttal for that. The thought of feeding on people’s fear still seems sinister and exploitative to Chan, but then again, Minho has made several points. Maybe Chan just doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that humans can be the prey.

He clears his throat. “Is that what you’re doing on the nights you’re not home then?”

As soon as the question leaves his mouth, Chan wants to crawl into a hole and die. Firstly, he can’t believe he just implied that this apartment is Minho’s home. Minho, his sleep paralysis demon slash cuddle buddy. Secondly, how he managed to come out with a phrase that sounds like a whiny, jilted partner, he doesn’t know. He sounds clingy. Like he’s dating Minho.

If Minho picks up on any of those things, he doesn’t betray it. All he does is shrug and tear into his bacon rasher with his teeth. Chan notices that one of his two front teeth is slightly longer than the other; it makes him look younger. More human somehow.

“Yeah, it is,” he says, his tone casual but in a way that dares Chan to criticise him for it. He raises an eyebrow. “Unless you want me to die.”

“Of course I don’t want you to die.” He cracks a smile, hoping to lighten the mood. “Who else would I have cuddling me at night?”

“Cuddling,” Minho echoes, revolted. “I don’t cuddle.”

“You do too.”

“I don’t!”

“Then what would you call it?” Chan asks, his smile deepening into a grin as Minho starts to splutter defensively. His cheeks flush pink and the colour suits him.

Minho sets his jaw in the manner of someone collecting their dignity. “I’m… holding you. That’s all. Hugging maybe.”

“Cuddling,” Chan corrects, creaking out a laugh when it has Minho huff in annoyance and pinken further. “Snuggling.”

“I do not snuggle!”

He lets out a loud laugh, the sound filling the entire kitchen. It’s maybe the first time the kitchen has ever heard the sound – Chan doesn’t tend to laugh so much in this apartment. He sleeps here, eats here, bathes here, but that’s all he does. It’s just as threadbare as when he first came. If he wants to hang out with someone, he goes over to theirs. He hasn’t put his print on it yet and probably never will.

But today he tosses back his head and laughs in his kitchen, the sound squeaky as he gasps for air, and when he’s stopped laughing, Minho is still there, a reluctant smile tugging on his mouth.

“I’ll kill you,” he warns, but the threat lands flat.

Chan chuckles. “I’ll look forward to it.”

Their socked feet knock together under the table. Chan doesn’t pull away and neither does Minho so their feet rest there, one slightly on top of the other. They finish the rest of their breakfast like that, passing teases and getting to know each other.

Chapter Text

TWO.

After that, Minho starts to hang around more often. Sometimes, Chan comes home to him watching tv with a bowl of popcorn balancing on his stomach, his feet propped up on the far arm of the sofa. Other times, he’ll be in the middle of working on a song and will turn around to find Minho suddenly there, just observing him in silence. One time, he even catches the moment in action: the way the shadows in the corner suddenly coalesce into a figure before Minho melts into being, blinking into view underneath the golden glow of the lamp. Chan blinks and rubs his eyes and then asks Minho to pass him the packet of chewing gum to his left.

He’s like a cat. He comes when he wants to and goes when he wants to. When he’s here, he doesn’t necessarily engage Chan in conversation and just likes to sit in the same place as him. He reads the books Chan still hasn’t unpacked from the box he stored them in and sometimes tells Chan about the stories they hold while they get ready for bed, his arms gesticulating in time with his recount of events, his eyes passionate. He picks out restaurants to order from when Chan has lost track of time and has forgotten to feed himself. He watches reality tv shows and shouts at the screen whenever a character he hates appears.

Minho once mentions to Chan that demons don’t really do much in the day so it’s nice for him to just hang around the apartment even when Chan isn’t there. And for someone who’s not always in solid form, his presence sure does leave physical traces.

Unwashed glasses from when Minho drank water and couldn’t be bothered doing the dishes. The shirt and trousers he usually wears screwed up into a ball somewhere as he prances around in Chan’s things instead. A small bookcase for the novels he’s unpacked, a snake plant on the coffee table to clean the air. Blankets strewn across the sofa, still rumpled from when Minho was curled under them.

It all happens so gradually and naturally that Chan doesn’t really notice it until one day, he realises he doesn’t dread going home. After they clocked out of work, Changbin said he could go back to their apartment for the evening, but Chan brushed the offer off without even thinking about it; it’s only as he’s turning his key into the lock that he realises why.

Heart swelling at the realisation that his apartment finally feels like a home, he opens the door with a broad smile, only to stop short at the sight that greets him.

“Is that a cat in my apartment?” Chan asks, still standing on the threshold.

Minho barely spares him a glance, too busy fawning over the scrappy animal on his lap. “Clearly it’s a kitten, Chan. Don’t your eyes work?”

On second thought, maybe Chan should’ve taken Changbin up on that offer to spend the night at theirs.

Pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers, he shuffles further into the apartment and shrugs out of his coat before he faces Minho and the kitten again. He prepares himself for the conversation ahead, already sensing that Minho is going to be deliberately difficult with it.

“Let me rephrase that,” he says. “Why is there a cat in the apartment?”

“I just said he’s a kitten.”

“Okay. Why is there a kitten in the apartment then?”

“Because I brought him in.”

“And why is that?”

He finally looks up, glaring balefully at him with eyes that match the animal’s in his arms. His body language is at such odds with the look he unleashes then, kept purposefully relaxed for the kitten while his face is ready to lash Chan with a thousand reprimands. It almost sets Chan off into a round of laughter. He keeps it down if only so he can pull off this conversation seriously.

“He was abandoned,” Minho says. “What was I meant to do, leave him in a box to starve?”

“You could’ve taken him to the shelter,” Chan suggests, only to receive another glare.

“I want to keep him.”

Chan raises his eyebrows. “You mean, you want me to keep him,” he corrects. Even as he says this, he already knows he’s going to agree. He can’t just re-abandon an abandoned animal. That would be so cruel.

“Is there a difference?” Minho retorts.

At this point, Chan is inclined to agree that no, there is not. He’s pretty sure Minho spends more time in this apartment than he does. If anyone’s going to be taking care of the cat, it’ll be him. It’ll just live in Chan’s home while he does.

He sighs, collapsing onto the nearest armchair. “Do whatever you want.”

“I didn’t ask for your permission.” Minho can’t help but slide in one last snarky remark. When Chan merely huffs a laugh, he adds on much more quietly, “Thanks. It means a lot.”

The kitten mewls as if in agreement. It’s a frail sound that just makes Chan’s decision to go along with the adoption all the stronger.

His eyes land on the pair, drinking them in. The path Minho’s finger takes along the spine of the kitten, the jagged edge to its ear where something has bitten part of it off, their identical amber eyes. If he were an artist, this would be the sort of thing he’d draw. The demon boy and his pet cat curled up on a sofa with a quilt blanket, the light of the tv flickering over their forms. And off to the side, there’s Chan. Just soaking it all in.

He thinks it’d make a pretty image, that. The three misfits: all craving affection, all receiving it within these walls.

Demons are a nomadic race. They do not tend to settle down in any one place and make it their home. Home itself is a strange concept to their kind, a word that their teeth bite into with awkward confusion. ‘Settlements’ are a more accurate term for the areas they make a habit of frequenting when they’re in the area, a place to be when they’re not out to feed. Minho has vague memories of running around Gimpo as an imp and has circled around most of Korea’s major cities since. Each time, he’s settled in some abandoned or disused corner somewhere, more shadow than he is man, and lived in the manner of someone who is ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

So he doesn’t really mean to make the apartment off Cheongdam Station his settlement while he’s in Seoul. Honestly, he doesn’t. It’s just a habit he falls into.

Where he once used to disappear in the mornings while Chan was in the bathroom, he stays and lazes around under the covers, drifting in and out of sleep while he listens to the human get ready for the day. It’s a nice routine to slide into. Chan likes to play lo-fi music while he putters around the apartment and he sings along to the quiet murmurs crooning out of his phone, his voice warming the air. Even when he’s wide awake, Minho likes to keep his eyes closed to just soak it in.

He stays in the apartment long after Chan is gone too. Now that they’ve taken in Dori, a lot of that time is dedicated to spending time with him (at least it is when Dori gives him the time of day – he’s grown into a bit of a brat and doesn’t always like to answer to Minho’s calls). Minho still leaves to wander the city, unable to deny his natural wanderlust, but more often than not, he finds himself drawn back to the apartment.

As a consequence, he’s in physical form a lot more nowadays. Enough so that Chan discreetly buys a few clothes that are more suited to Minho’s build than his own – though he has to admit, he prefers the way Chan’s clothes fall off him. Enough to leave physical markers that Chan’s apartment is his territory so that if someone were to walk in, they’d see traces of Minho all over the place.

His footsteps have spanned the entire length of this unit. He knows how unorganised Chan’s medicine cabinet in his bathroom is. He knows how the middle of the sofa gives more than it should, sinking under their weight. He’s ate slightly burnt sausages in the kitchen and attempted to fry his own eggs for their breakfast, only for them to turn out rubbery and far too salty. (To his credit, Chan still tried his best to eat them anyway.) He knows where the blankets are stored and how the bookshelves are organised – mostly because he did it – and he knows that the hinges to the windows in the living room need greasing. The lightbulb for the coatroom flickers whenever they switch it on and a draft slips in under the front door in the evenings and there’s a stain hidden under the rug near the coffee table where Minho spilled half a can of Coke one night.

Minho knows this place like the back of his own hand. He’s never had something like that before. Somewhere that grounds him, that signals to the world that he is real and that he exists. The realisation makes him feel warm and fuzzy inside, like he’s drank several glasses of champagne over the course of the afternoon.

It’s their apartment. Theirs. Not the landlord’s, not Chan’s, but theirs.

It’s not just a settlement. It’s…

“Home,” Chan calls out warmly when he walks through the door after another day in the studio. He shrugs out of his coat and sticks it onto the peg next to the front door before adding, “Honey, I’m home!”

There’s a snicker to his words as he says it, clearly very amused by the domesticity, but when he turns and finds Minho peering at him over a book, his smile is warm. He comes over to drop heavily by Minho’s side and then shoves his head onto his shoulder, his arms sliding around him in a loose hold.

“Whatchu reading?”

“A book,” he replies, turning over to the next set of pages.

“What’s the book about?”

Minho simply grunts in reply, too absorbed in the scene he’s on to want to explain it. If he explains it, he’s going to have to put the book down so he can dedicate the proper time and effort into unravelling everything he’s read so far and he doesn’t want to do that yet. If he’s offended at the fact that Minho has ignored him, Chan doesn’t show it and merely lets out a soft chuckle.

His thoughts turn drowsy and he slumps against Minho like he’s boneless, still pressed up against him. Minho doesn’t bother shoving him away. Chan’s a comfortable weight against him. It’s nice to just have him there, even if he’s silent and lost in his thoughts.

The pleasant atmosphere is only interrupted when Chan’s stomach lets out a huge growl. He jerks, startled, and Minho grins like a shark at the sound, snapping his book shut.

“Hungry?” he asks, a light tease in his tone.

The tips of Chan’s ears are bright red. “A little,” he laughs sheepishly.

“We have some of the leftovers from the Indian place in the fridge,” Minho says, rising to his feet. “I’ll go and heat them up for you.”

There are many routines in Minho’s life now. There’s the one that cycles through his entire week, dictating when he wakes up, when he goes to sleep, when he feeds. Then there are smaller ones like how dinner unfolds. Whoever is sorting the food will do just that, whether it’s cooking or heating up leftovers or ringing up the takeaway they’ve decided on. The other person will set up the table to eat: two glasses, two plates, two sets of chopsticks. Afterwards, they’ll dish out the food, sit down and just talk about their day.

It’s a nice routine. Minho enjoys it.

“I’ve started a new show,” he tells Chan after they’ve discussed the song he’s producing for a R&B soloist. “I don’t know if you’ve heard it, it’s American. It’s called Charmed. It’s kind of old.”

“The one from the ‘90s about a family of witches?”

“Yeah, that’s the one,” he says enthusiastically. “It’s kind of funny how they portray demons though. Ah, the things humans cook up.”

Chan smiles, likely more in response to Minho’s amusement than due to his own. Seeming to realise something, he asks, “Wait. Isn’t Charmed in English? I didn’t know you knew English fluently.”

“I’m a demon,” Minho says like it’s obvious. “I know all human tongues. Sign language included.”

“Holy shit, really?” His jaw falls open in shock and his eyes blow wide like he’s never heard anything more impressive in his life. “That’s so cool, what the fuck.”

Minho preens, the admiration inflating his ego. It might be an ability that’s innate to his kind, but a compliment is still a compliment. He can’t be blamed for loving the admiration.

Apparently very interested in the linguistics of demonkind, Chan chews on his chicken jalfrezi with his eyebrows furrowed pensively. “Does that mean you have your own language as demons? Like something only you exclusively communicate in. Or do you just speak whatever language you want to and automatically understand what’s being said? French one sentence, Mandarin the next?”

“Not really,” Minho says, giggling at the thought. He hasn’t ever tried to speak French before, though he knows he could if he attempted it. He’s just never had the need to; there aren’t many French people in the middle of Korea. “My kind aren’t always corporeal remember? There’s no use in having a spoken language when you don’t even have a physical larynx.”

The furrow in Chan’s brow deepens in his confusion. “I don’t follow. How do you communicate then?”

“By picking up each other’s thoughts,” he replies easily. “When we’re formless, we can just sense what the other person wants to say or how they’re feeling.”

“You’re telling me demons have telepathy?”

For some reason, the revelation cracks Chan up. He bursts into a loud round of laughter, so boisterous that he ends up choking on his jalfrezi and inhales a piece of chilli down his trachea. The laughter quickly transforms into a coughing fit that sets Minho off, even as he moves around to pat Chan’s back. By the time he’s recovered, Chan’s face glows as red as the sunset outside.

He wheezes heavily and fumbles for the fridge door. There, he fishes out a carton of milk and takes a huge swig directly from it, moaning in relief as the cool liquid hits his tongue.

“Hold on,” he says in the middle of this, his body stilling all of a sudden. He pulls the carton away from his mouth slightly to fix Minho with an indecipherable look. “This whole telepathy thing… Is it just between demons or can you read anyone else’s mind too? Like – can you read my thoughts?”

“Yeah?” Minho answers nonplussed. His confusion only deepens when the reply plunges Chan into visible panic. “Are you okay?”

“You can read my thoughts?” he squeaks.

It strikes him a moment later just why Chan is so worried. Humans are much more private creatures than demons are. They’re cagey whenever it comes to their personal space; to find out that their private train of thought can be spied upon is the ultimate violation of that. Chan might’ve welcomed Minho to his apartment and into his arms readily, but his mind is another story altogether.

The thought of Chan panicking about that makes Minho panic. He doesn’t want Chan to be uncomfortable around him, like he needs to be on his guard. He likes the dynamic they have now. He doesn’t want that camaraderie to disappear into thin air like smoke.

“It’s not like how you think,” he rushes to clarify. Chan doesn’t relax at those words, but he does cock his head to the side, indicating that he’s listening. “I can’t read every thought in your head. It’s only ever the surface level of thought if that makes sense? Ah, I don’t know how to explain it, it’s kind of hard to put into words. It’s – It’s like…

“Say you had lost something important to you. A keyring from when you were a child, for example. I’d be able to sense from your thoughts that you were upset about something and I might see an image of the keyring, be able to pick up that it means a lot to you and that sort of thing. But I can’t hear actual words. I can pick up concepts and general feelings. But not your actual conscious stream of thought. That sort of thing is extremely rare and not something I’ve ever experienced.”

Chan frowns, tossing over the words in his head. He tries to digest it into something he can absorb. “So it’s kind of… abstract? More of an impression than something specific?”

“Yes, exactly! And even then, it’s like background noise. It’s like turning on the radio and having it at the lowest volume. I can tune in and turn the volume up if I really want to, but I don’t do that unless I’m feeding and need to be sure someone is asleep before I paralyse them. Or if I’m talking to another demon. I’m not, like, spying on you or anything.”

At that, Chan finally relaxes. He takes another sip of the milk and offers a smile, the edges stained with an apology. “I believe you,” he says.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” Minho emphasises.

The tips of his ears colour pink as he maintains a steady stare with Chan, but he doesn’t look away. He wants Chan to understand that he respects his privacy and boundaries. He needs him to.

Chan sits back down on his usual seat and reaches over to pat the back of Minho’s wrist. “I know,” he says simply.

The pressure of his fingers is so warm.

“This would be so much more convenient if you just let me handle it,” complains Minho, his bottom lip pushed out in the epitome of petulance.

He looks like the stock image for a bratty child. The scowl twisting his face, the way he balances at the front of the shopping trolley, his hands curled tightly around the rim while his feet are planted on the metal bar below. Even the t-shirt he’s borrowed off Chan is appropriately Gen Z, emblazoned with a print of the shocked Pikachu meme that Jisung bought for him as a joke for his birthday.

“I’m paying for our groceries,” Chan says resolutely.

“I’m trying to save you money,” Minho says.

“You’re trying to rob a store.”

“Semantics,” he replies, turning his nose up at the thought of bothering with such petty details. Chan wonders how he manages to avoid toppling over into looking like a snobby bratty child with a nose upturned that high. He’s practically looking up at the ceiling. “You’re so obsessed with morals and rules. You need to live a little.”

“Do you shoplift everything you get from a store?” Chan asks curiously.

Minho grins, the slit of his mouth wicked. “Might do.”

He shakes his head in disappointment. Honestly, he doesn’t know why he’s so surprised at the admission. As a demon, it’s not like Minho is beholden to human laws like paying for goods with money. Chan’s not sure he even knows how their currency system works. Still, he never expected Minho to be able to just grab something and take it with him by shifting forms. That’s so wrong.

(It also seems to go against everything he can remember from his Physics class in school – although admittedly that’s not a lot.)

“C’mon, Channie,” Minho wheedles, leaning over the trolley to bat his chestnut eyes at him. “Just let me do it for the things I want, at least. It’ll only be fair.”

“I said no, Minho.”

He leans back with another impressive scowl. If he were a different person, Chan thinks it might’ve intimidated him. All he feels is amused, however – something Minho clearly picks up on if the frosty glare he fires in Chan’s direction suggests anything.

“You’re no fun,” he laments.

“Hey, I’m letting you stand on the trolley even though it means I can’t see a single thing in front of me,” he says, feigning hurt. He navigates past a couple of harried mothers, one of whom shoots Minho and Chan a narrow-eyed, judgemental glare when she spots where Minho is perched. “I’m the life of the party.”

Minho rolls his eyes. “You eat raisin bran for breakfast. You’re not even invited to the party, let alone being the life of it.”

Okay, that one was actually unnecessary.

“Raisin bran is nutritional,” Chan says defensively.

He makes a face. “It also tastes like shit. I can’t believe you’ve actually fed me that. You must really want me out of your life.”

“How did you guess?” he deadpans. In retaliation, Minho leans over to flick his forehead as hard as he can. Chan just suffers through the assault like he does with most things. “And in any case, you’re not really one to talk. You’re the one feeding on people’s fears. I can’t imagine that tasting any good.”

“It can do,” Minho says, cocking his head in contemplation. He runs the tip of a pink tongue over the front of his teeth and Chan pretends not to notice. “It depends really. Some people’s fear tastes really sour – kind of like vinegar actually. I don’t like feeding on those ones. It’s too strong and it smells really bad. I prefer fear that tastes sweet and rich – ooh, like chocolate! Those ones are the best, I’d say.”

“Is there, like, a pattern to it or something? Some way for you to know whose fear will taste like what?”

“No, not really. It’s like a surprise buffet; you never know what you’re going to get. Wait, do those even exist?”

Chan shrugs. “They might do, I’m not sure. Kind of sounds like you’re describing a normal buffet to be honest.” He turns into the confectionary aisle and comes to a stop next to a set of shelves stacked with chocolates. “You want any snacks from here?”

Eyes lighting up at the display, Minho lets out a delighted squawk of a reply that Chan interprets as a yes and hops off the trolley to scurry around to his side. Chan starts to shuffle away to give him proper access to the chocolates, only for Minho to stop him with a hook of his arm around Chan’s waist. He shuffles closer until he’s flush with Chan’s back and can rest his chin on Chan’s shoulder, peering at the display from there.

“That one,” he decides, pointing one small finger at a Kinder Bueno bar. He then jabs it at a packet of M&Ms and then a Snickers bar. “That one. And that one. Ooh and that one,” he adds, catching sight of a packet of gummy bears on a nearby shelf.

“Let me just buy the entire store for you,” Chan jokes, already reaching for the items in question.

“I told you, you don’t need to buy these for me – “

“Minho, please,” he groans. “Let me be an upstanding citizen.”

Minho squeezes his waist and frowns into his shoulder, shaking his head. “No,” he says childishly. For some reason, he’s decided to behave extra petulantly today. “I don’t want to.”

“Yeah, well. We don’t always get what we – “

“Channie-hyung?”

He freezes in Minho’s hold at the sound of a very, very familiar voice. Shit. This is so not what he planned to happen when he brought Minho along for his weekly grocery shop. It’s the last thing he was aiming for actually. Fuck.

Chan slowly turns in the direction of the voice to meet Jisung’s wide-eyed look. Just behind him, his hands planted on the handle of their own shopping trolley, is Changbin who looks just as surprised to see Chan. Well, not Chan necessarily. But the person currently wrapped around him like a barnacle, blinking inquisitively at them.

“Hi?” Chan tries.

Just that one word is enough to condemn him. He’s fucked up. Everyone here knows it.

Before today, he has never breathed a word about Minho to his best friends despite talking about them at length with the demon in question. He’s not sure why that is, he’s just never felt the urge to. Maybe it’s because his arrangement with Minho is one he doesn’t know how to explain to anyone. After all, how is he expected to just announce to the world that he’s living with a sleep paralysis demon? They’d cart him off to the psychiatrist for it. So he just… hasn’t mentioned him at all.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Jisung says, his tone so sweet that Chan gets diabetes just from hearing it. God, he’s in for it now. “And with someone so new as well!”

“Jisung,” Changbin interjects warningly.

One glance at him and Chan can see that Changbin has taken pity on him, clearly not wanting to put him on the spot with Minho right there. When Changbin quirks his eyebrows, however, he knows he’s not gotten away with this scot-free. Oh, he’s still going to be dragged through the gutter with their interrogation. It’s just not going to happen now.

“I’m just saying I’ve never met them before, babe,” Jisung says, but the predatory glint in his eyes fades. The next smile he offers is much less sharp and closer to what Chan usually receives. It’s directed at Minho though. “Hi there. Nice to meet you. I’m Jisung, one of Channie-hyung’s workmates and supposed best friends. That sexy beast back there is my boyfriend, Changbin.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Changbin breathes out. It’d be a more convincing performance if he weren’t smiling while he said it.

Minho lets a loose chuckle slip and peels himself away from Chan’s back to step closer to Jisung. He shakes his proffered hand and returns, “I’m Minho. Nice to meet you too.”

“It is,” Jisung agrees because he’s Jisung and he has the confidence of a rock star in his heyday. “It’s a shame we didn’t meet sooner though. Any friend of Channie-hyung is a friend of ours. Just out of curiosity, how did the two of you meet by the way? I think hyung forgot to share some of the details with us.”

He punctuates this with a saccharine smile.

Panic floods through Chan like an electrical current. He tries to think of something non-incriminating to say. “Oh, he’s just my – my…”

“Roommate?” Minho tries when it’s clear he’s fumbling.

The wolfish gleam returns to Jisung’s eyes. “His apartment only has one room.”

“It’s a large bedroom,” Minho returns evenly.

Chan genuinely thinks he’s going to faint. He half-considers it too, picturing himself just swaying out of nowhere and dropping onto the floor like a sack of potatoes in the middle of the aisle. In the periphery of his eye, he sees the corner of Minho’s mouth twitch and realises he must’ve picked up on the image. At least one of them sees the humour in this situation.

The tension is finally broken by Changbin who gently nudges Jisung on the small of his back, interrupting his staring contest with Minho. “C’mon, let’s leave them to finish off the rest of their shopping. We still have our list to get through too, remember?”

“Ugh, shopping lists,” Jisung says, admitting a silent defeat. He rocks back on his heels until Changbin grabs him before he can fall and then slumps in his boyfriend’s arms, his head lolling back onto his shoulder. “I can’t believe we actually have shopping lists now. We’ve become old and domestic.”

“You are twenty years old,” Chan states.

“Yeah. Twenty years old with a shopping list.”

“At least it means you’re organised,” he offers.

Jisung makes a face. It twists into a grimace when Changbin gently pinches his side to prompt him to stand up. He lets out a shriek, jumping up to protect himself from the unfounded attack. Somehow this entails throwing his arms around Changbin and making kissy faces at him from three inches away. Chan and Minho watch them for a moment, revolted, before they exchange a glance and silently agree to make their escape.

When they’re a safe three aisles away, Minho finally speaks. “I like your friends. They’re nice.”

“They’re a handful,” Chan corrects, but he’s smiling all the same. He might not be the one who’s being complimented, but it’s always nice to hear someone admire his friends. “But I guess I love them. Just a little.”

“I can tell,” Minho says. The words are oddly wistful and the expression that accompanies them is distant, piercing through Chan like he isn’t even there. For a moment, he drifts somewhere where Chan cannot reach him. Then he returns to himself with a sudden shake of his head, turning to face him with a forced smile. “They love you too. I don’t even need my powers to sense it.”

Chan pinkens at the thought. He can’t help but feel proud about that too, as irrational as it is.

“Do you have friends?” he asks, pushing the trolley along. He realises how blunt the phrasing is two seconds after it leaves his mouth and one before Minho lets out a bark of laughter at his blunder. “I – Not that I think you don’t have any friends, you just never mention them at dinner so I just – “

“I get what you mean,” Minho reassures him, still chuckling. It dies down into a faint smile. “To answer your question, I do have friends. Or – a friend really. He’s called Jeongin. He’s a couple of years younger than us.”

“Is he a demon like you?”

“Yes,” he says softly before cracking a smirk. “And he’s a lot better at it than me. I’ve known him ever since I was seven years old and he was four. We used to run around Korea together, but he’s in Busan now.”

“Oh. Is there… any particular reason for that?”

Minho shrugs. “It’s just where he wanted to go, I guess. I wanted to stay in Gimpo at the time so I didn’t go with him. I’ll probably catch him around in a few years. It happens.”

The distant look returns to him, settling upon his features like a lick of paint. There’s something so gut-wrenchingly familiar about it, like Chan could’ve looked into the mirror at any point just a few months ago and seen it smeared across his own cheeks in a thick layer of acrylic. His heart twists. He reaches out to hook his pinky finger around Minho’s and leaves it there, looking straight ahead when Minho turns to face him at the touch.

The silence between them spans the length of their walk down the aisle. As soon as they roll into the main strip, Minho blows the air out of his lungs through pursed lips. With it escapes the heavy atmosphere.

“Are you sure I can’t just grab some of this and shift back?”

“I think I would want powers like Paige,” Chan says thoughtfully as Rose McGowan’s character magics a candle into her hand. The show calls it orbing: the ability to teleport objects from one place to another just by her command. “Imagine how useful it would be. You’d never lose anything.”

It’s a Wednesday evening and he’s returned from work to find Minho in a familiar position, sitting in the middle of the sofa with his legs folded beneath him and his attention devoted to the television screen. Dori has decided that Minho’s shoulder is his seat for the evening and occasionally gnaws at Minho’s hair; his owner doesn’t seem to notice, too busy stuffing his face with popcorn and watching the screen. His entertainment of choice for tonight is an episode of Charmed, a show he returns to often to laugh over their portrayal of demons.

Minho hums, making no indication that he’s paid attention to what Chan has said. He barely reacted to his return in the first place aside from shifting over to make space for him under the blanket and to wordlessly offer the popcorn. Chan isn’t too offended. He’s just as bad when it comes to his animes.

He sits quietly and watches the events onscreen unfold. He’s never watched Charmed properly and only knows bits and pieces from what Minho has told him so he has no idea what’s going on. All he can surmise is that they’re trying to take down some bad guys. Sounds easy enough to grasp.

When more of the sisters’ powers are shown in an action sequence, Chan starts to chuckle under his breath in amusement.

“What?” Minho asks, looking at him suspiciously from the corner of his eyes. “What’s so funny? They’re fighting, not cracking jokes.”

“Nothing. It’s just – earlier I said I’d want Paige’s powers. You know, the whole teleporting-orbing thing. But you already sort of have Piper’s power of freezing, don’t you?”

Minho purses his mouth in mock offence. “I can’t freeze my environment, Chan. I paralyse humans to feed on their fear. Get your facts right.”

“Ooh, sorry,” he says, rolling his eyes. “My bad.”

“Yeah, you should be sorry. You’re almost as bad as this show at getting demons down right. Humans always have to make us out to be the bad guys, it’s so predictable.”

“Hey, I never said that you’re a bad guy!”

At that, Minho tosses him a smile and leans into his side, tilting his head to rest it on Chan’s shoulder. Chan adjusts to make the angle more comfortable for him and then wraps his arm around Minho’s waist to keep him close. The change in position results in an indignant meow from Dori for the disruption who decides to enact his revenge by migrating to the top of Chan’s head. He sighs, accepting his fate for the rest of the episode.

As soon as the ending credits are onscreen, Minho straightens up from his position and Chan takes this as his cue to grab Dori and deposit him onto the sofa.

“This cat, I swear to God,” he grumbles, only to have Minho jab him in the side none too gently. “Ow! What was that for?”

“Don’t talk about my son that way,” he reprimands.

“I take care of him too,” Chan says, rubbing his side with a disgruntled pout. “So I can talk about him however I want when he decides to sit on top of my head. He’s our son, not just yours.”

Inexplicably, the retort has Minho’s cheeks colour. He flicks a popcorn kernel at Chan to cover it up, but there’s no hiding it. He’s blushing. Chan wonders whether it’s because he got a little too domestic with that comment – but then again it’s not as though they haven’t been living in each other’s pockets for the past few months. Domesticity is nothing new to them.

Maybe it’s because Chan’s words implied some sort of permanence? As soon as he thinks that, his mind starts to wander too close to questions he has no interest in letting bother him, not wanting to worry over what the future might have in store for them. He squashes down that line of thought before it can sweep him away. Just like how he scrubs away any observations of how pretty Minho looks when he’s flustered.

They polish off the rest of the popcorn in silence until all that remains are the kernels that never popped. Chan has never been fond of them, but Minho tosses them into his mouth with a grin to answer his grimace at the sight. While he snacks on them, Chan slips into the kitchen to whip up his dinner. He’s too tired to make anything difficult so cup ramen it is. Minho follows him in, leaning against the counter to watch him.

“I’m going to watch another episode in a bit if you want to join me,” he says eventually.

“I don’t really know what’s happening in the show, but sure.”

“Eh, it doesn’t really matter. I just like seeing what demon they’re going to include next.”

The kettle whistles to declare that the water’s ready and Chan picks it up, cocking his head in curiosity as a thought occurs to him. “Actually I’ve been meaning to ask you about something that’s sort of to do with that. You know how Charmed has all of these demons and warlocks and whatnot? Do those things actually exist? I mean, I know demons exist. But is everything else that’s supernatural in pop culture real too? Vampires, werewolves, ghosts. That sort of thing.”

He’s wondered about it sometimes whenever he suddenly remembers that Minho is a demon. By now, it’s something Chan has long since accepted and no longer fazes him. Water is wet, Chan is Korean and Minho is a demon. Even so, the reality of his nature will randomly strike Chan out of nowhere; Minho isn’t human and there are beings just like him all over the world. What else could be out there?

Minho chews on a popcorn kernel contemplatively.

“I mean, I don’t know about everything that’s out there obviously, but a lot of it is just stories. For example, ghosts aren’t real. Paranormal activity can usually be chalked up to bored demons, not the spirits of people who have died. Werewolves don’t exist either as far as I know – you can’t change the biology and species of a human just by biting it. But I’ve heard that there are some demons out there who can possess wolves and other animals so maybe that’s where the myth comes from? I’ve never met one though. To be honest, a lot of these supernatural creatures humans think up are based off other kinds of demons. Like I’m pretty sure the vampire is based off Eastern European demons who feed off blood instead of fear.”

“So they do technically exist then?”

Even though he’s the one who asked, the confirmation sends a chill down Chan’s spine. It’s one thing to know that demons like Minho exist. Minho is harmless, not something that exists in horror stories and thrillers that keep you awake at night. But to know that there is so much more out there that humans are unaware of is daunting.

“In some form, yeah.” Sensing Chan’s trepidation, Minho moves closer to him to place a hand on his arm and says softly, “Hey, don’t freak out about it. They won’t hurt you. All they’re doing is living on earth like everything else here.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s just… Knowing that all of this is out there and I can’t even see them. Demons and witches and warlocks – “

“Oh no, warlocks don’t exist,” Minho corrects, even though that’s not the point. He sighs, moving his hand to rub the back of Chan’s neck comfortingly. “Look, you’re overthinking this. Think of demons as just another version of the human species. There are different races of humans all over the world with different cultures and customs. It’s the same thing for demons. It’s the same thing for dogs and cats and fish. Just about anything in the world really. It’s nothing to be scared of.”

When he puts it like that, Chan feels ridiculous. With all of the media the film and book industries pump out about supernatural creatures, it’s easy to think of them as something unnatural. But it’s like Minho said – demons are just another species that Planet Earth houses. Sure, Chan might not know everything about every last one of them, but there are millions of species across the planet that he has no idea exists. Why is this any different?

And in any case, he’s the one inviting a demon into his bed every night. Is he really in any position to fear the rest of the race?

“You’re right,” Chan says, meeting Minho’s eyes with a rueful smile. “Sorry, I don’t know why I freaked out all of a sudden. I was being stupid.”

“Maybe it was just a delayed reaction of how you should’ve been when we first met,” he suggests, smirking.

Chan can only roll his eyes. Okay so maybe he didn’t react to any of this like a rational, well-adjusted human being would. What of it? It’s not like it’s done him any harm. He sends Minho a withering glance, the smile that’s fixed upon his lips belying his show of annoyance. Minho returns it with further amusement.

What happens next comes on all of a sudden. One moment, they’re sharing a grin and the next second, Chan is struck with the realisation of how bright Minho’s eyes are. They seem to almost shine in the dim lighting even when they’re just plain brown. Chan can’t seem to look away from them, even when the moment stretches on for too long and the smiles have long left their mouths. He just stands there and stares at Minho while he stares back.

It feels like they’re trapped in the gap between two seconds: their bodies turned towards each other, Minho’s hand warm on Chan’s neck.

Then Minho blinks, his pupils transforming into two slits. He clears his throat and steps out of Chan’s space, looking away.

“Your ramen is probably done by now,” he mutters.

He tosses the rest of the kernels into the bin, dumps the bowl into the sink and then leaves for the living room, all while avoiding Chan’s eyes. Chan watches him do it, his mind still frozen in that stretch of time where they were staring at each other.

The nape of his neck feels so cold.

We’re roommates, Minho said to Jisung when the younger demanded to know how he and Chan knew each other.

His apartment only has one bedroom, is how Jisung replied. In his head, he tacked on: They’re fucking.

Maybe Minho should be surprised by how loud and vivid the thought was, much harder to ignore than anything Chan has let slip, but the stories that he’s heard from Chan explains a lot. Jisung is loud and expressive, the embodiment of chaos in human form. It makes sense that his thoughts are like a blaring foghorn, screaming out into the world to announce his coming. It’s not the clarity of his thoughts that surprises Minho.

It’s the fact that he can’t get it out of his own head.

They’re fucking.

The words are constantly there, crashing around his brain. He can’t seem to push it away, can’t drown it out with anything else. All it does is bounce back again, taunting him.

Minho opens his eyes in the morning to see Chan’s t-shirt pulled up slightly, revealing the hard ridges of his abs and a trail of fine hair that disappears under the waistband of his pyjama pants. They’re fucking. He shoves the coffee he made into Chan’s face, laughing as he recoils from the smell. They’re fucking. Curls into his side while they watch a movie. They’re fucking. Tugs on the dry strands of his hair to relieve his migraine. They’re fucking. Watches him play with Dori after he comes back from work. They’re fucking.

Even when he’s not around Chan, the thought returns to haunt him. One night when he’s hunting, he wanders into an apartment where the occupants are decidedly not asleep. He leaves before he can see anything other than a flash of tanned skin and catch no more than a broken moan, but it does its damage. Even when he’s feeding hours later, all he can think is they’re fucking they’re fucking they’re fucking.

He’s no stranger to intimacy. He’s laid with a few demons before, he knows how it goes. He knows what he likes and what turns him off. He’s not by any means a novice to sex.

That being said, he’s never slept with a human before. He’s never slept with Chan before.

But he wants to.

He really fucking wants to.

The desire burns him up on the inside. For the most part, he can ignore it. But there are times when Chan does something stupidly attractive – like lean back on his chair in a certain way or smile at him hard enough for both dimples to frame it – and it spikes up within him so sharp and potent that Minho can scarcely stand to be around him. It runs under his skin like a fever, itching to be set free.

They’re fucking.

The alarm forces him awake one morning to find himself in a precarious position. He’s draped over Chan, pinning him down to the mattress while he clings onto him like a limpet. His nose rests in the crook of Chan’s neck and each inhale draws in the smell of him – the citrus soap he uses, the sweat from his slumber – and it has Minho’s barely-coherent mind spinning. He can feel something stiff and hot poking into his hip and then –

They’re fucking.

Before Minho is conscious that he’s even done it, his hips stutter forward. The movement sends a thrill of desire shooting through him and he lets out a small moan, his eyes still screwed shut. He hears Chan’s sharp inhale.

And then: “M – Minho?”

He crashes back down to earth.

Minho’s eyes fly open and he jerks back, realising what he’s just done. All traces of sleep flood out of his system. He meets Chan’s drowsy bewilderment with warm cheeks. Before the human can ask him just what the hell that was all about, he melts away.

“Hey loser.”

It’s the only warning Chan gets before Jisung rolls across the studio with as much force as he can muster, crashing directly into where Chan sits at his own desk. He groans at the impact, pushing the younger away from him, only to have Jisung roll back and sandwich one of Chan’s calves between his own.

“Go and bother your boyfriend,” he says, pushing Jisung away from him with one finger on his forehead.

Jisung tips his head back to snap his teeth at Chan’s finger. He laughs when Chan snatches his hand back. “I don’t want to, I see him all the time. Speaking of which, when are you going to bring your boyfriend around to our apartment? I want to see if he likes anime.”

Chan doesn’t bother correcting him on his mistake. As inaccurate as it is, letting Jisung and Changbin think that Minho is his boyfriend is the easiest route to take. It sounds much saner than the reality of the situation, that’s for sure.

Just like he knew they would, the next time they saw each other after that incident in the supermarket was dedicated to nothing but an interrogation. As soon as Chan walked through the studio doors, Changbin wrestled him to the ground and then had Jisung pin him down by sitting on his stomach. Once he was at their mercy, they fired question after question at him about Minho until they deemed that they knew enough.

Chan doesn’t know how he managed to blag his way through it. He tried to keep things as vague as possible when explaining how he and Minho met – saying the truth would have resulted in nothing but Changbin hunting Minho down to beat him up, after all – and altered a few facts to present Minho as a human. To be completely honest, it did leave a sour taste in the back of his throat to have to lie so blatantly to his own best friends, but he really can’t see any other alternative. What else can he say?

After torturing him with the cold shoulder for a little and convincing him to pay for no less than three of their meals, Jisung and Changbin have moved beyond their hurt at Chan hiding something so big from them. Now they’ve set their hearts on wanting to meet Minho properly. Chan isn’t necessarily opposed to this. It’s just that – well, they can’t meet Minho if Minho isn’t around to meet.

And he isn’t.

Hasn’t been for two days now actually.

Which totally isn’t having Chan freak out or anything.

“He’s not in town right now, Sungie,” he says, hoping the despair he feels at the situation doesn’t leak into his voice. “He won’t be back for a few days.”

“Well where is he then?”

Chan has no idea. Ever since Minho disappeared the other morning – literally blinking out of existence when Chan’s eyes were barely open enough to catch him leaving – he hasn’t seen any indication around the apartment that he’s been back. No unwashed dishes, no paperback books left on the countertops. Even Dori has noticed his absence, mewling sadly at Chan’s ankles when he goes home.

He has no way to contact him. Nothing to do except stay put like a sitting duck, waiting for Minho to return to him. A part of him is scared that he never will.

“Busan,” he finally says when Jisung nudges his ankle for an answer. “He mentioned Busan, I think.”

His expression must give something away because Jisung frowns, leaning closer. “Did something happen between you two?” he asks.

His tone is gentle which makes Chan feel even worse; Jisung is rarely gentle. His energy is too explosive for that. Chan is too used to his words erupting out of him to know what to do with the careful hand that lands on his arm. It makes him want to open his mouth and just admit everything. How Minho has disappeared, how Chan misses him, how he’s scared that loneliness is going to devour him a thousand times more painfully now that he’s gone.

He blinks, forcing the words back down his throat. Then he drags his mouth upwards into a smile and squeezes Jisung’s hand.

“Nothing’s happened,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. He’s gone down to see a childhood friend, that’s all.”

Dissatisfied with the reply, Jisung’s frown deepens. “But. You look sad. I don’t like it.”

“I just miss having him around,” he says truthfully.

That breaks through to him. A grin spreading across his mouth, Jisung waggles his eyebrows. “Feeling sad and horny, are you?”

“Is your brain ever out of the gutter you dropped it in?”

“Nope!”

Chan rolls his eyes, trying to hide his laugh. He pushes Jisung away from him again, a wordless suggestion that he returns to his own desk. This time around, the younger lets him and scoots back over to his usual spot although all he does when he gets there is prop his head on a fist and stare at Changbin, tapping a pencil against his songbook in thought. Oblivious to the eyes on him, Changbin stays hunched over his laptop, his forehead knotted in concentration.

They end up working until a little after ten in the evening, having really hit their stride in the last couple of hours. When Changbin suggests Chan goes back to their place for the night, he decides to accept, not wanting to face the prospect of spending another night in an empty apartment. He makes a quick detour to pick up some of his things and bring Dori along with him and then settles in for a night in with his best friends.

It’s almost like old times. Chan drops off his stuff in Jisung’s room, his old room having been converted into a home studio, and then joins the others in the kitchen to microwave some popcorn and whip up homemade nachos. They crack open a few beers and pile onto the main sofa to watch a horror movie, hip pressed against hip underneath a ratty blanket that Changbin has carted around since he was a child. Like always, Chan and Jisung are the only ones who jump at the right times – Jisung once lets out a bloodcurdling scream that blows out Chan’s right eardrum – while Changbin outright laughs when the witch suddenly appears onscreen.

“Please say you’re going to sleep in Changbin’s room with us,” Jisung says when the final credits are rolling across the screen. He tugs on Chan’s sleeve with a whimper. “I need both of you to protect me from the witch.”

“How do you know she isn’t right behind you?” Chan asks.

Changbin chooses that moment to press his cold fingers against the nape of Jisung’s neck. He lets out another scream and flies into Chan’s arms, causing the two of them to cackle madly. Dori yowls in disapproval and stalks out of the room.

“That was a good one,” Changbin snorts, high-fiving Chan over Jisung’s shoulder.

Jisung twists around to glare at him. “You’re such a prick, Seo Changbin. I’m not letting you come anywhere near my fucking ass for the next week, I swear to God.”

“Oh really?” he snickers. “Let’s see how long you manage to stick to that.”

In the end, Chan does spend the night in Changbin’s room. Not because he’s scared of The Conjuring – although he’d be lying if he said he doesn’t flood each room he enters with light just to make sure nothing is hiding there – but because he misses having someone in the same bed as him. Even if it’s a tight fit to have the three of them in a double bed and he’s convinced Jisung’s butt is going to have to be surgically removed from his side at this rate, the loneliness he’s felt creeping up on him in the past couple of days has subsided.

It’s stupid really. Minho doesn’t spend every night with Chan even now. He still leaves for a couple of nights at a time to feed so it’s not like Chan doesn’t know how to sleep alone. It’s just that… At least he knows Minho is coming back on those nights. Right now he has nothing.

That’s not strictly true. Chancing a glance at the two shadowy figures beside him, Chan realises that even if Minho never returns, he still has his best friends. It’s not the same thing, but it comes close enough.

On the fourth night after he left, Chan dreams of Minho’s return. The cover of his duvet is disrupted, but only for a moment. A body slides in beside him, hot and familiar, and the scent of Chan’s shampoo stirs the air. He lets out a grumble of noise and moves closer to Minho, gathering him in his arms and squeezing him close. He feels so real, almost like he’s genuinely here.

Then Chan realises he’s not dreaming.

His eyes snap open to meet Minho’s, glowing in the dark like two yellow stars. He starts, his grip on Minho tightening.

“You’re back,” he finally manages. “You came back.”

There are many things Minho could say in reply to that. He could apologise for leaving without a word. He could explain where he’s been. He could tell Chan that he’s only here to say goodbye.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “I am.”

“Please don’t leave me like that again.”

Minho has the decency to look ashamed. “I’m sorry. It’s just… What I did the other morning, I…”

“It’s fine if you had a wet dream, Minho,” Chan says. His ears warm in embarrassment at the matter-of-fact manner in which he’s worded it, but they’re grown adults here. There’s no need to make a big deal out of natural things. They should discuss this properly instead of beating around the bush. “It happens.”

Minho looks at him with unreadable eyes. Finally, he says, “I don’t dream, Chan.”

“Oh.”

The fogginess of sleep is rapidly seeping out of Chan’s mind, but even then, he can’t figure out what this can mean. He could’ve sworn that Minho was asleep the other morning when he was pressed up against Chan, moaning in his ear. If he says he wasn’t, then what does that mean?

“I wasn’t lucid,” he continues, “but I wasn’t… dreaming. I was awake. I just wasn’t thinking properly.”

“I – I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

The silence that stretches between them feels like it lasts millennia. Entire stars are birthed and destroyed in that time. Galaxies form and expand, dust clouds swirl from a pinprick in the continuum into the length of several solar systems. It’s like all of time passes in the moments they spend staring at each other, the weight of it pressing down on their bodies.

And then Minho breaks the spell, sitting up to face away from Chan. The set of his shoulders is defensive but proud, as though someone has jammed an iron pipe along the path of his spinal cord.

“Your friends think we’re fucking,” he states. If Chan thought he was being blunt earlier, then Minho is about as sharp as a brick to the face. “And I know this is probably not what you want to hear, but I… I wouldn’t be opposed to that being true.”

Chan sucks in a breath, his eyes wide. “You want to sleep with me?”

“Yeah,” he says, his voice growing smaller. “I’m not saying that I need to do it or that I expect you to sleep with me, but it’s getting harder for me to hide it nowadays. And I understand if that makes you uncomfortable, but please – please don’t send me away.” His voice breaks and he lifts a hand to scrub at his face. “I promise I won’t do anything, just please – I need this, I – “

Any shock he feels fades to black. Chan sits up, reaching for Minho and then pulls him into a hug. The demon is tense in his hold like he can’t bring himself to relax when showing such vulnerability to someone else, but Chan squeezes him tightly to his chest anyway. He shushes Minho when he tries to apologise and rocks them back and forth. As the minutes trickle by, his t-shirt grows wet against his collarbones.

“I’m not sending you anywhere, Minho,” he says when he seems calm enough to pay attention. They’re still wrapped up in each other. “You don’t understand how difficult these past few days have been for me. Not knowing where you’ve been, thinking that you might never come back… It made me really upset.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I just – couldn’t be around you when I was so…”

“Don’t apologise,” he says. “I get it. I wasn’t blaming you when I said that. I just wanted you to know that I need this too. I need you too.”

Minho is quiet for a long moment before he admits, “You’re the most important person in my life.”

The confession has Chan’s heart twist in his chest. He doesn’t know everything about what a demon’s life entails, but the bits that Minho has revealed makes it sound awfully hard. It’s a lonely life to live. Chan would never wish it upon anyone.

“You’re important to me too,” he says.

Maybe Minho is not the most important person in Chan’s life. But he thinks, with time, he could be.

“You’re not – put off by what I feel for you?” Minho asks timidly. “I mean, we share a bed. I wouldn’t blame you if you were.”

“Not really,” Chan replies. “I’m actually kind of flattered to be honest. And to tell you the truth, I’d be lying if I said the feeling wasn’t sort of mutual.”

Minho reels back to stare at him. His eyes are brown now, making him look like just another guy with his heart held out as an offering in the palm of his hand. He looks incredulous, studying Chan to make sure he’s not just pulling his leg.

Chan sits there and lets him do it. He makes sure to make his thoughts as transparent as possible, drags up his memories of all of the times he’s noticed how pretty Minho is or thought about the fullness of his mouth, only to have stamped his desires away at the time. He tries to infuse it with everything he feels for him – things that can’t be expressed in words or images but exist in the abstract.

The anticipation that bubbles up in his stomach when he’s opening the front door to the apartment. The fond smiles he directs at Minho when he’s fawning over Dori, filling up Chan’s camera roll with yet another impromptu photoshoot of their cat. The warmth of his skin in the middle of the night, the breath that stirs the back of Chan’s neck. Seeing him in Chan’s clothes, smelling Chan’s soap cling to him after a shower. How happy he is when he goes to sleep with Minho by his side and wakes up to him grumbling over the alarm.

All of these things that he hasn’t given himself the chance to untangle and decode but knows he feels anyway; everything he associates with Minho and this tiny apartment of theirs. He thinks about it all.

Minho blinks and his eyes are amber again. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Chan echoes.

“You really don’t want me to leave, huh?”

“I think I would cry if you did,” he says honestly.

Minho giggles, a shy and sweet sound like the song of a nightingale. “Well, we can’t have that, can we?” he asks, his features brightened with mischief. “Guess I’m just going to have to stay.”

His mouth stretches out into a smile. “I guess you are.”

Maybe it’s because Minho has been brave enough to admit to his own attraction for Chan or maybe it’s because Chan has stopped trying to ignore his own growing feelings for the demon, but as the days after Minho’s return pass by, Chan can’t seem to stop noticing him. Small details that he glossed over previously now stand out with vivid clarity in his mind’s eye. The mole on the tip of Minho’s nose, the raise of his eyebrows when he laughs, the muscle of his thighs. How his lips purse when he’s concentrating and the way one side of his mouth hitches higher in his amusement. How soft his skin looks when he’s elected to go without a shirt in the heat.

He can’t stop tossing the images over in his head, committing them to memory. It’s frustrating. Minho is ridiculously attractive, that’s always been a fact. But now it’s a fact that Chan can’t ignore.

It brings back the memory of Minho’s confession from the night of his return: how he admitted to wanting to sleep with Chan and how it was getting harder for him to hide the part of him that desires for that. The more these details of Minho stick to Chan’s mind, the more he realises how true the words are for him too. Now that he’s unlocked the possibility of being with Minho, there’s always a traitorous voice whispering in his eardrums about it.

Sometimes, he wonders whether he’s somehow regressed to his sixteen year old self. Other times, he wonders if this is a sign he’s been hanging around with Jisung too much again.

For the most part, Chan tries to make peace with it. After all, it’s not like he just likes Minho for his body. As quickly as his physical attraction to Minho makes itself known, so too does the realisation that he wants Minho in his life for a long time. Not just as someone to kiss or fuck, but as someone to wake up to afterwards. Someone to keep close to his chest and heart.

Everything that has been brewing inside of him – the heat that prickles in the depths of his belly whenever he sees Minho laid out in a certain fashion as well as the glow that he radiates with when they sit and exchange idle chatter – slowly starts to settle into something that Chan can make sense of. He thinks he understands now. He was a little slow to catch up, but he’s nearly there. He’s almost at the finish line.

From the tentative smiles he receives from Minho sometimes, he thinks he’s not the only one who’s realised this.

Their first time happens when Minho returns halfway through the night after a short feed. Chan welcomes him back with a smile smeared across his lips and a hug. Somewhere along the way, their mouths find each other, moving against each other lazily like they’ve done this half a million times before. They haven’t. It’s their first kiss and maybe there aren’t a thousand fireworks tearing apart the sky, but there’s something better. There’s Chan’s hand on the side of his face and liquid warmth flowing through his veins, the sort he associates with the hot chocolate Chan sometimes makes when it’s cold. There’s Chan’s breath on the side of Minho’s nose and the slickness of his tongue and how solid he feels under the span of Minho’s hand.

The longer they kiss, the more Minho feels a pool of heat spool at the pit of his stomach. And then somehow, their hands are tugging off each other’s clothes and Chan is kissing down his bare body, his mouth wet and hot on his skin. His fingers are gentle but purposeful as they part Minho’s thighs, his teeth catching on his flesh to decorate it with violet clusters. Minho’s fingers tangle in the messy strands of Chan’s hair and guides him to where feels best.

He moves inside of Minho, his hips canting forward, and has Minho see more stars than exist in the night sky. He moans Chan’s name brokenly, reaching for him with senseless hands. Running them over the broad span of Chan’s shoulders, pressing them against the small of his back and feeling how his muscles shift beneath his palms. Fingers curl around Chan’s damp curls and push his head closer until their mouths meet to breathe in the same air.

“Chan.” He whispers the name like a prayer. “Chan, Chan, Chan.”

He grunts, the sound spilling into the cavern of Minho’s mouth. “I’m here,” he gasps. “I’m right here.”

Afterwards, Chan wipes them both down with a wet cloth. He’s particular diligent with Minho and the attention feels good so he preens, stretching out his body in offering. Chan chuckles and then drops a kiss to a random part of Minho’s stomach. He then leans over to press another to his lips.

“We should probably shower,” he says, “but I’m kind of too lazy to want to do that right now.”

It’s just in line with what Minho is thinking. “We can do it in the morning,” he says, wrapping his arms around Chan’s neck and tugging him closer. “Just hold me for now.”

“I can do that,” he says.

As Minho drifts off in Chan’s arms, he marvels at how far they’ve come since they met each other. To think that he first wandered into this apartment seeking nothing but another feed. Little did he know what he was setting into motion all of those months ago. His life has completely transformed since then; where he once merely went through the motions of surviving, he is now so much happier. So much more content. Never in his wildest dreams could he have pictured himself here.

It’s not just because he has Chan now although he’d be lying if he denied that he’s a huge part of it. It’s the other things too.

It’s having someplace he can call home, can leave his print on and announce to the world as his property. It’s having somewhere he can rest at night instead of prowling through the streets, seeking people to scare and feed on. It’s about watching Dori grow up, running a finger along his chewed off ear and marvelling in how he’s made it so far. It’s about checking out books from the library when he’s run out of new ones to read at home and appreciating Chan’s body in the gym and befriending Jisung and Changbin when they insist on meeting him.

Fry-ups on a Sunday morning for breakfast and the heat of the sun on his face when he wakes up to its rays of light. Each annoying trill of Chan’s alarm and the neckline of the t-shirts he borrows from the other’s side of the wardrobe. The sweets Chan insists on paying for whenever they go grocery shopping and the half-finished instrumentals he sometimes lets Minho listen to whenever he wheedles Chan enough. The Snow filters he likes to play with on the iPhone he’s permanently borrowed from the backroom of an Apple store. The iced americanos he’s willing to stand in line and pay for at a café.

So many small, mundane details. They all come together so perfectly. Minho never realised life could be this colourful, this fulfilling. He never realised this could all be for him.

Chapter Text

THREE.

“Dori-yah,” Minho coos. “Come to Appa.”

Dori pauses in the middle of biting his favourite squishy ball to blink at him, unimpressed, as if to ask whether Minho really believes he’s worth abandoning his task for. Minho clicks his tongue and holds out his hand in offering, a plea on his face. He even slips off the sofa to get down on his knees and reach out, clicking his tongue once more. He’s not above pleading for his baby’s attention.

Dori evaluates him for a second longer before meowing dismissively and turning his back on Minho. He sinks back, the humiliation strong.

“You’re such a brat,” he hisses at Dori’s back.

He gives no indication of hearing that. Minho casts an exasperated look at the cat and then reaches for his phone to take photos of Dori ignoring him. He manages to whittle it down to just six pictures that he sends off to Chan through KakaoTalk accompanied with an appropriately dramatic message of how unloved and unappreciated he is by their son. He makes sure to include no less than five crying faces afterwards.

As if sensing this slander, Dori suddenly yowls and speeds over to Minho’s lap, determined to clear his name. He drops his phone in surprise to run his hand along his back.

“Yah, what’s this?” he huffs. “Two seconds ago, you didn’t want anything to do with me and now you want my attention? Well, maybe I don’t want to give it now. Have you ever thought about that?”

Dori mewls again, but the sound is much more pitiful this time. Minho pauses, staring down at him. This isn’t a case of Dori being playful. He’s pushing forward frantically, pawing at his t-shirt and huddling as close as he can. His fur looks like it’s almost standing on end. He’s scared.

It’s as Minho thinks this that he realises he can feel eyes on them.

His head shoots up and he twists around to narrow his eyes at the rest of the apartment. For the most part, nothing seems out of the ordinary. It’s like any other Tuesday morning: just the two of them keeping each other company throughout the day since Chan is busy in the studio. Then his focus catches on the far corner of the living area, the part that’s just out of reach from where the light from the windows can directly reach. It’s always somewhat shaded, but even with that in mind, it appears darker than usual. Minho’s face settles into a snarl.

“I know you’re here,” he bites out. “Show yourself before I make you.”

For a moment, nothing stirs. Then the shadows in the corner shift, forming the figure of a young man, and someone steps out into the light. Dark, slightly overgrown hair, sharp cheekbones, fierce eyes like a fennec fox. His mouth turns down at the corners, making him appear all the more imposing against the magnolia wallpaper.

“Jeongin?” Minho says, surprised.

The demon breaks out into a smile and it’s just as charming as Minho remembers. His eyes brighten with a glint of mischief that is familiar to him.

“Missed me?” he answers.

Minho can’t help the delighted laughter that leaves him in reply. He gently deposits Dori onto the floor and rises to his feet, darting across the apartment to pull Jeongin into a hug. He only realises his mistake when Jeongin makes an aborted noise in the back of his throat and turns as stiff as a cadaver in his hold. Apologising, Minho takes a couple of steps back.

“Sorry,” he says. “I forgot you’re not a fan of contact.”

He’s gotten so used to being around people who are fond of skinship that it’s become second nature for him to indulge in it himself. Nowadays he’s always hanging off Chan in some manner – or hugging Jisung or stretching his legs across Changbin’s lap. And if he’s not doing it, then one of the others has taken the liberty to return the favour. At this point, it’s something he does without even thinking. He’s forgotten that not everyone appreciates such a physical show of affection.

Now that they’re apart, the tension easily leaves Jeongin’s body. The younger shrugs, unbothered. “It’s fine. I guess that answers my question in any case. Looks like you have missed me.”

Minho laughs again, shaking his head. He looks at Jeongin with a soft smile, wanting nothing more than to gather him into another hug, but he holds back out of respect. God, he never expected this turn of events. He can’t believe Jeongin is in front of him again, he had no idea he was planning on travelling up north so soon.

“Oh wow,” he marvels, drinking him in. “You’ve grown so much. I can’t believe you’re taller than me now, you brat.”

“Well, we couldn’t both run around looking like imps forever.”

For that smart comment, he earns a swift punch on the arm. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t like bodily contact, he can suffer through it for that cheek.

“So what brings you up here?” Minho asks. He hasn’t stopped smiling since he recognised Jeongin. His cheeks are beginning to ache from it, but he couldn’t care less. “I thought you were down in Busan.”

Jeongin shrugs. “Just wanted to check in on you, I guess. It’s been a while so I thought I’d drop by. Took me a couple of days to find you though, this city is so damn big.” As he speaks, Dori tentatively creeps over, his curiosity having been piqued by Minho’s warm reception of Jeongin. He curls around Minho’s leg to peer up at Jeongin who notices the new company and glances down. “I didn’t know you were fond of pests, Minho.”

He rolls his eyes. “He’s not a pest, Jeongin. Dori’s a cat.”

“You know its name.”

“Well, that’ll be because I’m the one who named him.”

Jeongin raises his eyebrows. “You named a human’s cat.”

“I named my cat,” Minho says.

There’s an awkward silence. For the first time since Jeongin arrived, Minho feels uncertain, his teeth coming down to dig into his bottom lip. On the other hand, Jeongin looks perplexed, his raised eyebrows now slowly coming together in a frown.

“You own a cat,” he says slowly.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

To be fair to him, it’s a valid question. Demons don’t tend to own pets – why would they? Pets can’t shift back and forth between forms like them; carting them around on their travels demands patience and effort, two things their kind don’t care for. They also require to be regularly fed and looked after. And in exchange for what? Companionship? What use is that to a demon? For most of their kind, the answer is none. Pets are demanding creatures who are quite simply more trouble than they’re worth.

Still, even as an imp, Minho had a small affinity for animals. He remembers chasing after stray cats with Jeongin when he was eight years old or wandering off on his own to seek them out, his eyes glowing like theirs. He remembers breaking apart fighting dogs and tracking the progress of a spider’s web in the corner of a warehouse he once settled in. Pets may provide no benefits for him, but when he found Dori in a rain-splattered box in an alleyway, scared and distrustful, he wanted to take him in anyway.

“I like him,” is all he replies.

Jeongin doesn’t seem any less confused. He decides to drop the topic for now, but what he pursues instead is unexpected. It seems the time for niceties is already over.

“You smell weird,” he accuses.

Minho blinks, now just as lost as he is. “Weird?” he echoes.

“Yeah. Like you’re – dying.” He takes a long inhale, his eyes fluttering shut before they open again in scrutiny. “Are you feeding properly?”

Minho’s heart skips a beat. A pinprick of fear spikes inside of him. He doesn’t let it show on his face, his expression remaining unchanged. “Yes.”

Incredulity conquers Jeongin’s features and he bristles, offended. “You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not,” he denies – but even if his voice remains steady, his thoughts choose that moment to give him away.

He’s suspected it for a while now. A few months ago, he and Chan watched a movie where the protagonist’s father was ill and had been hospitalised for it. Minho isn’t sure what about one of the scenes struck him so suddenly – all the man did was fall asleep after a heartfelt conversation – but Minho remembers how clearly he thought: That’s me.

Sure, he’s not weak and frail. In fact for human standards, he’s at the peak of his physical health. But Minho isn’t a human. He’s meant to be strong and unstoppable, a force of nature that can tear through Seoul if he sees fit. Humans are supposed to be wary of him, even when he’s just a shadow in the corner of the room, able to sense the raw power that is coiled up in each of his cells. All of those things have faded over the past several months, dwindling away as he’s settled into his new life. He never thought much of it – what difference did it make to him now?

But then he saw that one little scene in a movie he doesn’t even remember the name of anymore. And he remembered that he isn’t supposed to fall asleep every night without meaning to. That such a habit isn’t normal for his kind, even if he has forced that routine upon himself. For a time, he assumed he only slept so much and for so long because he was so relaxed next to Chan that he couldn’t help it.

And then everything clicked into place.

It should frighten him. But it doesn’t.

He knows that it won’t be the same for Jeongin though and above all, that is what concerns Minho the most. That is what has guilt colour his mind, tinged at the edges with panic. He sees Jeongin’s nostrils flare in annoyance, can taste the rancid mix of his emotions – his anger at being lied to, his worry over what Minho is doing to himself, the lemon zest of his confusion.

Not wanting the situation to escalate, Minho scrambles to find control over the conversation. Dori meows again, pressing closer to his leg as he picks up on Minho’s distress.

“Listen, it’s not as bad as you think – “

“You’re dying,” Jeongin spits, the words as hard as stone. “And you’re lying to me about why. And you have a fucking pet cat of all things – which, by the way, you’re not telling me what on earth possessed you to get and – “ He cuts off, casting his attention around the room as if he’s suddenly realised something. When he next speaks, his voice is much quieter but there’s a controlled rage to it. “Is this where you live?”

Not have settled. But live. The difference says a million words.

Minho doesn’t say anything. He can’t find the words in him. But he doesn’t need to – his face says it all.

Jeongin laughs disbelievingly. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Jeongin, don’t overreact.”

“Don’t overreact?”

It’s with the worst timing in the world that a key turns into the lock for the apartment then. Both of them freeze, their eyes snapping over to the front door. It opens to reveal Chan, whistling a cheery tune from behind the cover of his mask. He has several shopping bags in his left hand, his keys twirling around the index finger of the other.

Minho belatedly remembers Chan texting him earlier this morning to let him know that Jisung has caught the flu; seeing as how Changbin has taken the day off work to take care of him, Chan said he planned to be back in time for lunch and would work from home instead. At the time, Minho was delighted, but with Jeongin here and in this state, he’s quickly realising that this is the worst possible turn of events that could’ve happened.

Chan stops dead in his tracks when he sees the pair of them in the middle of the living room, the tension between them palpable in the air.

“Um. Hi?” he tries uncertainly.

In the corner of his eye, Minho sees Jeongin’s face contort into a snarl, obviously having come to a conclusion of what’s going on by himself. He pulls in on himself like he’s preparing to pounce and – Minho doesn’t think. He just moves, appearing in front of Chan a fraction of a second before Jeongin can reach him, his hands already pushing the demon back. He hears Chan let out a squeak of surprise, stumbling back.

“Jeongin,” Minho says harshly. “Don’t.”

Don’t hurt him. I can’t let you hurt him.

He must hear the desperation in Minho’s thoughts because Jeongin falters and the aggression recedes. His body is still coiled like a predator, ready to spring forward when he deems the time is right, but Minho knows he can talk him down from that. Jeongin’s eyes find Chan over Minho’s shoulder and glint dangerously.

“Channie,” Minho says after he’s sure Jeongin won’t make any sudden moves. “Can you please let us have a few minutes alone?”

“But – “

He can feel Chan’s reluctance at his back. The taste of his worry is as heavy as syrup on Minho’s tongue and tough to swallow down. He reaches back blindly until he can brush his fingers against Chan’s right hand.

“It’s okay,” he says softly. “I’ll be fine. Just give us a moment to talk please.”

It’s clear he doesn’t want to, but after a moment of deliberation, Chan finally edges out from behind Minho. He keeps as far from Jeongin as he can, eyeing him with obvious wariness and slips into the kitchen to put away the groceries. The door shuts behind him, a quiet noise that rings out across the apartment.

When Minho looks back at Jeongin, it’s to find the younger studying him. Anger still simmers beneath the surface of his skin, but there’s something contemplative about the look he delivers.

“You love him,” he states.

Swallowing, Minho nods. He hasn’t admitted it out loud yet, but it’s a truth he’s known for a while now. He loves Chan. He loves him with everything within him.

Jeongin’s eyes flitter to the closed kitchen door and then back to Minho. “He loves you too.”

And this, too, Minho knows. He’s sensed it in the rose pink hue of Chan’s thoughts when he returns from work in the evenings, heard it in the sentimentality of the songs he’s created for his artists. Seen it in the way Chan looks at him in the morning, felt it in the kisses he leaves on Minho’s body when they fall into bed together. Chan might not have admitted it yet either, whether it’s to himself or just to Minho, but he loves Minho. Loves Minho like Minho loves him.

“He’s the reason you’re doing this.”

And the thing is Minho can’t even deny it.

“It’s not as bad as it seems,” he starts.

Jeongin’s face crumples. “Yes, it is as bad as it seems. You’re dying, Minho! You’re killing yourself for a fucking human of all things – “

“Don’t talk about him that way.”

“I’ll talk about him any fucking way I want. He’s the reason you’re dying – “

“God, Jeongin, do you have any idea how long it would take me to die from this? I’m still feeding, just not every night. I can still function, I’m still perfectly fine. What’s the difference if I die in two hundred years instead of five?”

“The difference is that you’re throwing your life away for something so, so stupid – “

“It’s not stupid,” Minho snaps. Pressure builds behind his eyes, but he tries to keep it at bay. His breath quickens, growing ragged as he struggles to stay in control. He wraps his arms around himself and swallows the lump in his throat. “Everything I’ve built up for over a year, it – it’s important to me. Chan’s important to me. He – He cares about me. He holds me, he sees me – “

“So do I,” he protests.

“Jeongin, you were in Busan for the past four fucking years!” Minho shouts.

Something about his tone has Jeongin falter, the fire in his eyes dying down. His mouth opens, but nothing but air leaves him. Minho’s eyes flash, angry and amber, and he trembles with the fury of a vengeful god. The air shakes with his rage before he reels it back in and forces his voice to calm down.

“You’ve always been fine with what life’s like for us. That’s fine, I get it. It’s what we’re made to do. And before I came to Seoul, I’d resigned myself to it too. But have you ever considered that maybe I don’t want to feel that way? I don’t want to be resigned to the way my life is. I don’t want to live the rest of it wandering around in the day just to feed at night and repeat the same endless cycle for half a millennium. I want more than that. And Chan, he – you might not like it, but he gives me more than that. He makes me happy.”

“He’s not even going to stick around for that long,” Jeongin bites out, “even if you do spend the rest of his life with him. Which isn’t guaranteed by the way. Who’s to say he won’t just walk away from you when he gets bored or finds someone else? Even if he doesn’t, he’ll still die before the end of the century. You’ll have cut your life short for someone who’s already dead in a grave. For something so – so – fleeting.”

Minho smiles, the curve of his mouth a sad little thing. “I’m okay with that.”

Jeongin snarls, “Then you’re an idiot.” The snap of his teeth has a vicious bite.

“Maybe.” Minho shrugs. “It doesn’t change anything. Everything I have here… This apartment, Dori, Chan – they make me feel like I actually mean something. They make me want to actually live in this world and not just… exist in it. You have no idea how much that means to me. It doesn’t matter how fleeting it is. And if keeping this means I have to skip out on a couple of feeds and miss out on a couple of hundred years, then… That’s fine with me. It’s what I’ve chosen.”

Still seething, Jeongin glares at him, his midnight eyes glazed with a clear sheen. Something spills onto his cheek.

With a start, Minho realises it’s a tear. Jeongin’s crying. It’s the first time he’s ever seen him cry since they met sixteen years ago. His face crumples from the force of it and his shoulders fold under an invisible weight.

“I don’t want you to go,” Jeongin says brokenly.

Minho sighs, the fight leaking out of his body, and pulls him into a hug before he can think better of it. For once, Jeongin doesn’t shy away from his touch and instead reciprocates it, clinging onto him like he’s scared Minho will disappear if he doesn’t hold onto him tight enough. He folds himself into Minho’s arms like a young imp.

“I’m still here,” Minho murmurs. “I’ll be here for a long time.”

“Not as long as you should be.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. There’s nothing he can say really – it’s the truth. Neither of them can deny it; it’s just that Minho happens to have already made peace with how things will eventually end for him and Jeongin doesn’t want to. But the time for that is dozens of decades away, far beyond the horizon. He’ll come to terms with it eventually. For now though, all Minho can do is hold onto Jeongin, keep him close and remind him that he’s still here.

The rest of the day pans out in a much less volatile manner. Once Jeongin has stopped crying, they enter the kitchen to help Chan put away the rest of the groceries although it’s mostly an excuse to open up the conversation for an apology. Jeongin stays a step behind Minho, hiding behind him in an unusually shy manner, and can’t quite meet Chan’s eyes when he’s mumbling his sorrys and introduction. He has nothing to worry about: Chan brushes it off in his usual forgiving manner, offering a comforting smile to set him at ease.

“I was actually planning on cooking something,” he admits. “It’s a recipe I found on YouTube and I can’t promise it’ll turn out edible, but you’re welcome to try some if you want.”

Minho doesn’t know whether Jeongin has ever eaten any human food. Either way, Jeongin politely declines although he does stay in the kitchen while they cook. Although, given that it’s his recipe, it’s mostly Chan cooking while Minho helps him out with prep and keeps the countertops clean. Jeongin watches them work together like a hawk.

After they eat, they venture into Hongdae for a few hours and cycle through some of the trendier shops. Minho and Chan’s favourite argument about whether it’s okay for him to just grab what they want instead of paying for it is once again revisited, though by this point, Minho just says it to tease him. They then spend a little while in a cute artisan café where Jeongin keeps trying a few sips of Minho’s hot chocolate until Minho just buys himself another one. To round off the day, they go back to the apartment where they watch a couple of Marvel movies to pass the time before night falls and Jeongin leaves to feed.

“Are you coming?” he asks quietly, casting a furtive look towards Chan.

He’s warmed up to him throughout the day, but Minho can tell it’ll take him time to move beyond tolerating Chan into actually liking him. That’s fine. As long as he doesn’t try to attack Chan, Minho is okay with whatever he can get.

He smiles sheepishly. “I already fed last night. It’s enough to last me for two days.”

“That’s not healthy,” Jeongin says.

He doesn’t argue the point any further, however, and melts away before Minho’s eyes. Sighing, Minho turns around to gather the mugs of cold tea on the coffee table, ready to tidy up as quickly as possible so his head can finally hit his pillow. It’s been a long day. He finds Chan already there, looking up at him with an unreadable look.

“He’s right, you know.”

Minho sighs again, already knowing how this will pan out. He’s too tired for this. “Chan, I don’t want to do this right now.”

That doesn’t seem to matter to him. He lets go of the mugs to stand and properly face Minho, growing visibly upset.

“You never told me it was killing you,” he says, his voice low and clipped in a way that tells Minho that he’s trying hard not to raise it. “The way you made it out to be – I thought it was normal. I thought that’s how you all feed. Gone for some nights, back for the others. You never told me you were dying.”

“It sounds worse than it is.” He repeats what he said to placate Jeongin earlier, but all Chan does is react in the same way.

“It’s exactly as bad as it fucking sounds, Minho!” he shouts. Just as quickly as his voice rose, he falls quiet. Tears glimmer in his eyes and he drags his hands over them, trying to stop them from falling before gravity can get to them first. “You can’t do this. You have to stop.”

“No. I don’t want to. You can’t make me.”

“Minho, please. I can’t be okay knowing that I’m the reason you’re going to die – “

“You won’t even be around long enough to see me die, Chan,” he says, frustrated. “I’ll age to, what, twenty five in human years? The peak of my physical strength or what have you – and I’ll stay looking like that for as long as you know me. You won’t know the difference. It’ll be fine.”

“But I do know!” he exclaims. The tears he tried so hard to stop spill overboard and he sucks in a shaky breath, plunging on as though they’re not there. “Minho, you don’t understand. You once told me that I’m the most important person in your life. Well, you’re one of mine. I love you so much. I can’t let you do this to yourself because of me.”

“You don’t have a choice, Chan. It’s not your decision.”

At that, Chan begins to sob openly. The sight of it has Minho’s heart crack with tiny fissures all over its surface and he moves forward, folding Chan into a hug. Chan clings onto him much like Jeongin did earlier, his hands fisting around the back of Minho’s shirt in an echo of how he did all those months ago when Minho first slipped into his bed. His tears wet the side of Minho’s neck.

“I love you,” Chan whispers. “As long as you’re in my life, I’ll be happy. It doesn’t matter to me if you’re not here at night as long as you’re still here. So please. Don’t hurt yourself for me. I’m not worth it.”

Minho’s first instinct is to protest. He knows Chan just wants the best for him, but how can he ask such a thing? Those nights he stays home aren’t just for Chan. They’re for him too. Falling asleep in Chan’s arms is Minho’s favourite part of the day; waking up to his sleepy smile and kisses the perfect way to re-join the world in the mornings. There aren’t enough words in the dictionary to describe what it means to Minho to be able to have this.

But Chan is still crying in his arms and Minho doesn’t need to read his thoughts to understand his distress. So he squeezes Chan closer and ducks his face into the crook of his neck, breathing in the smell of Chan’s cologne and soap and sweat.

“I’ll think about it,” he promises.

It might not be the answer Chan wants, but it’s the only answer Minho can give.

As the weeks go on, Minho begins to spend more nights feeding. It’s still not every night, but it’s much more frequent. Some nights, the feeds don’t last very long and he’s back well before dawn, crawling into Chan’s arms to paw at his chest and demand to be held. But he’s still feeding more. It’s all Chan can ask for, even if the entire thing leaves him feeling conflicted.

On the one hand, he misses having Minho around. It’s selfish to admit it, but he’s grown used to having Minho in the bed when he slips into slumber. His body is a comforting presence at Chan’s side. He likes smelling Minho in their bedsheets and running his fingers through Minho’s hair when they’re dozing away, eyes still shut while he hums a song under his breath. Sometimes Minho will hum along, his voice much higher and sweeter than Chan’s. On the nights he’s gone, it takes Chan much longer to fall asleep.

On the other hand, it’s amazing what even this small increase in feeding has done for Minho. There’s already a healthier flush to his cheeks and there’s more energy in the bounce of his steps. He seems stronger, livelier. Seeing him so alive makes Chan feel as sad as it pleases him, if only because he never realised how much the reduced feeds were affecting Minho until now. To think that if it weren’t for Jeongin, he never would’ve.

“You’re good for him,” the demon in question says one day.

Chan jumps, startling away from where he’s peering over his laptop at Minho tickling Dori’s stomach. When he looks over his shoulder, Jeongin is standing right behind him. He wasn’t there a moment ago, but that doesn’t mean much when it comes to Jeongin. Chan doesn’t know how long he’s been watching him from the shadows.

In the time since Jeongin arrived, Chan has come to understand how much of a demon he truly is – and he does mean that in technical terms. It’s only with him around that Chan has been able to grasp how it actually feels like to be around a demon.

Jeongin has no qualms about lingering in their apartment in his non-corporeal form until Minho narrows his eyes at whatever dusky spot he occupies and demands him to make himself known. His irises are so dark that they’re nearly black and they take up the entirety of his eyes, leaving no white to be seen. There’s something predatory about their hard gaze and about Jeongin himself that has Chan’s defences stay up in a way they never have been around Minho. He observes the world like he knows he’s at the top of the food chain, lithe and in complete control. A tiger in his kingdom.

Chan remembers that Jeongin said something and blinks. “Um. I’m sorry, what was that?”

“I said you’re good for him,” he repeats, moving to sit on the chair on Chan’s right. He keeps his eyes trained on Minho, now cooing over Dori and puckering his mouth up for a kiss that the cat never delivers. “I’ve never seen him this happy before.”

“Oh. Thank you. But really, I have you to thank for that. I had no idea he was meant to feed every night until you came and it’s only since he started feeding more regularly that he’s been a lot more energetic.”

He shakes his head. “That’s not it. Even when he was feeding every night, he was never this… free-spirited. It’s because of you that he is.” Jeongin glances his way, his mouth curling into a smirk. “I suppose you’re not all bad, Chan – for a human, that is.”

Chan chuckles, the tension that often settles on his shoulders when Jeongin is around dissipating slightly.

“You’re not that bad for a demon either,” he jokes. “Although Minho is still my favourite.”

“I’d be annoyed if he weren’t.”

He hums, his attention returning to Minho. An unfinished song is still open on Chan’s laptop, something that he’s working on for an album for himself, Changbin and Jisung that the company has given the green light on. He really should focus on it properly since he means to have it done before the end of the day, but he can’t stop looking at his boyfriend. At the laugh etched upon his lips and the way his hair flops into his eyes and the fact that he’s real, that he exists.

Chan loves him so much. He never expected to, even back when he knew of Minho’s attraction and attachment to him. He knew that Minho was important to him, yes, but he hadn’t yet grasped how important he was.

In the weeks that followed Minho’s return, the bubbles of happiness that bounced around inside of Chan whenever he was around the demon continued to grow and grow in size until he couldn’t ignore them any longer, until denying them their name was a fool’s errand. And then one day, Minho returned from a feed and Chan kissed him hello and everything fell into place. He hasn’t looked back since.

It’s still strange to believe that this is his reality now. Instead of returning to an empty, lonely apartment, Chan has a family and a home. He’s not a third wheel when he’s around his best friends, he has his own partner to be sickening with (although with Jisung involved on the other side, that doesn’t account for much – Chan and Minho are still nowhere near as bad as the other two).

“He’s happy,” Jeongin muses quietly. His voice startles Chan again, even though that wasn’t the demon’s intention. When he looks at Jeongin, he’s still studying Minho. “But he could be happier.”

Chan’s expression twists in confusion. “What do you mean?”

Seeming to remember that he’s there, Jeongin snaps out of whatever daze he’s in and straightens up from his contemplative stance. He flashes a smile that shouldn’t be as endearing as it is on someone so dangerous.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “I’m just thinking about some things.”

Chan frowns, ready to ask more questions. If it’s about Minho and his wellbeing, he wants to know everything. But before he can do that, Jeongin transforms, turning into nothing but air. Chan looks at the empty spot where he once sat and is left to wonder what he meant by that all by himself.

Without much more than a day’s notice, Jeongin leaves Seoul. He assures Minho that it’s only temporary and that he intends on being back before the end of the month, but it’s still hard to see him go. Minho has grown used to having him around again and seeing him leave so quickly reminds him of how much he’s missed Jeongin while they were in separate cities.

The departure has him mope around the apartment for so long that Chan ends up taking him out to a cat café. At least there, he can mope with some furry companions. Later, they meet Jisung and Changbin for coffee and the fresh company also helps to assuage the pangs in his chest. He might not have Jeongin here with him, but he has other friends, something that wasn’t true the last time around. He’ll be okay.

True to his word, Jeongin returns just a few days shy of the close of the month. Seoul is in the throes of a heatwave that evening, the temperatures sticking to the mid-twenties even when the cool relief of night arrives and the air is all the muggier for it. To escape the heat, Minho seeks out a shower to cool his skin, but it doesn’t work out so well when Chan slips in a mere three minutes afterwards.

In his defence, Chan has been extremely dedicated to his gym routine recently. Minho can’t help it if his mind and body are appreciative of that. Very very appreciative.

That being said, when he leaves the bedroom in nothing but a pair of boxers to find Jeongin in the kitchen chewing on a handful of Cheerios, he freezes. “You didn’t hear any of that, did you?”

Jeongin pops another Cheerio into his mouth and slowly mashes it to a pulp with his teeth. “Kind of impossible not to, to be honest. You’re very vocal.”

“Oh my God.”

Minho’s cheeks feel like they’re on fire. They stain as red as desert dust, the colour leaking across the rest of his features. He’s not embarrassed about the fact that Jeongin knows he’s slept with Chan – they’re partners, who else would Minho sleep with? – but he was particularly needy this time around. That sort of begging is meant for one man’s ears only.

“Please pretend like you didn’t,” he says, mortified.

Jeongin smirks, his inky eyes dancing with mischief. “I don’t know, I feel like I could get a lot out of this blackmailing material.”

“Why you little – “

“Babe?” Chan’s voice calls from the bedroom. “Is someone in the apartment or something? Who are you talking to?”

“No one,” he replies, moving closer to Jeongin so he can better aim a kick at his knee when the younger mouths babe with a look of disgust. “It’s just Jeongin. Apparently he’s back in town.”

“Oh right. Tell him I said hi!”

Minho turns back to Jeongin. “Chan says hi.” Jeongin’s only reply to this is an eyeroll, but it’s not as disgruntled as it once was so Minho lets it slide, moving onto another line of conversation. “Where did you run off to anyways? Don’t tell me you grew sick of Seoul that quickly.”

“Maybe I just grew sick of you.”

He aims another kick at his leg, but Jeongin manages to dance away in time with a laugh. He rewards himself with another Cheerio.

“I went up near the DMZ,” Jeongin says after a moment.

Minho’s face doesn’t hide his surprise. Neither of them have ever been that far north in their life. They made it as far as Chuncheon once, but soon looped back down afterwards. He’s heard tales about better meals lying up north, but he’s never cared enough to seek them out to confirm it.

“That’s different,” he says. “Why did you go up there all of a sudden?”

“I was looking for someone I met a couple of years ago in Busan. He was originally from Seoul, but he spent a few years running around Pyongyang when he was around ten years old. Last I’d heard, he’d gone back up north to settle near Daegang-ri.”

“Did you find him?”

Jeongin nods. Now that Minho is properly studying him, he can see a twitchiness about him, like he’s sitting on information he really wants to share and is working himself up to the point where he can reveal it. Even as he thinks this, Jeongin anxiously nibbles on another Cheerio. Minho didn’t realise he even knew what a Cheerio was.

“Yeah, I did,” he says. He licks his lips. “Look, you’ve probably already guessed this, but I didn’t surprise Yedam with a social visit. He told me something once that I wanted to chase him up about.”

Minho raises an eyebrow. “I’m assuming you’re about to tell me what it was?”

He nods slowly, but when his next words leave his mouth, it’s in a rush. “He said he’s heard of a demon who became human.”

Everything in Minho’s world slows down. The clock pinned above the television freezes between its tick-tock. His heart comes to a halt in his chest and his breath stays trapped in the column of his throat, fluttering between his mouth and lungs like a delicate butterfly. Time ceases to exist.

Then Minho whispers, “That’s not possible.”

“Maybe not,” Jeongin says, “but I asked him and he told me everything he knows. I’ve spent the past few weeks chasing up leads and seeing if they took me anywhere and I think – “ He reaches into the pocket of his trousers and extracts a small, folded sheet of paper. “I think I’ve found the answer.”

The flap of paper flutters gently in the pitiful breeze that creeps in through the open window. Minho stares at it, his entire world zeroing in on that small white square pinched between Jeongin’s fingers, ready for the taking. All of a sudden, he feels afraid.

“Why are you giving me this?” he asks, his eyes flickering up to meet Jeongin’s.

He smiles. Though it’s sincere, there’s also something a little fractured about it. A little heartbroken. “I know you, Minho. You make a few snarky comments about humans here and there, you use your powers to bend the rules a little, but you said it yourself. You don’t want this. Being a demon has never made you happy. You’ve never liked it the way I have. So if this is what makes you happy, then… then I’ll do whatever I can to help it happen.”

Minho’s eyes start to sting. He blinks, hoping that he won’t do something as stupid as cry and subject Jeongin to such an awful display.

“I love you so much, you know that?” he says.

Jeongin giggles, his eyes rolling along a familiar path. “Of course I do. Stop being such a loser and take the paper. My hand’s starting to ache from holding it out for so long.”

Minho shakes his head in wry amusement, but nevertheless, he reaches out for it. His fingers close around the gift and though it weighs no more than a feather, it sits heavy in his palm. His heart starts to beat again. His breath expels from his lungs. The clock ticks on, beckoning on a future that’s suddenly a lot more uncertain for him.

Not very long ago, there lived a demon. Not much is known about him other than a small collection of facts. First, that it is said he settled in Seoul although rumours speculate that he was born in Kaesong where his mother is thought to frequent to this day. Second, that he is said to have been exceptionally beautiful, even for one of their kind. Third, that he answered to the name Hyunjin.

Sometime during his life, Hyunjin met a witch. Not the sort of sham that travels around with circuses or sets up shop in Itaewon to swindle foreigners for their loose pocket money, but the real deal. Perhaps the witch, like many others, was drawn in by Hyunjin’s beauty – or perhaps the witch was much the opposite, sneering at the demon’s pitiful attempts to beguile him. Whatever the case was, the witch harnessed great power and transformed the demon from his natural state into that of a mere human, cursed to walk the earth this way until the end of his days. The spell has never been reversed since.

And now Minho is sitting cross-legged in their bed, his thumb smoothing the edge of a folded piece of paper in his hand, with a Gangnam address for someone called Kim Seungmin. The witch some say transformed Hyunjin and can apparently do the same for Minho if he asks.

Chan has no idea what to think. All he can somehow manage is, “I didn’t know that witches were real. I thought you said they weren’t.”

Minho frowns, shaking his head. “No, I didn’t. I said warlocks aren’t real. I didn’t say anything about witches.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Yes. Warlocks are usually made out to be dark and evil people. Usually, they’re people who only have their powers after making a pact with some sort of demon. In reality, that’s not physically possible.”

“But witches are,” Chan states slowly.

He doesn’t know why he finds that so hard to believe. It’s just that… In the natural order of things, witches belong in fantasy novels like Harry Potter or in fairy tales. They’re old women who live in cosy cottages and cast spells. How can they be real? Even as he thinks this, he recognises the irony of such disbelief; his boyfriend is a literal demon, after all. They’re about as make-believe as it gets.

Minho nods, too distracted to pick up on the sarcastic edge to Chan’s reply. “Yeah, they’re real. To be honest, witches are just humans who are born with an affinity for the natural world, that’s all. A lot of humans are practicing witches. It’s just that most of them don’t have enough power to do what they mean to. An honest to god witch is fairly rare – and a powerful one is even rarer.”

“And this Kim Seungmin is one of them?”

“Apparently.”

The two of them stare at the address on that piece of paper. Messily scrawled like whoever did it is unfamiliar with how to use a pen but tried their best anyways. It’s such a small and innocuous thing, but it somehow succeeds in capturing every last bit of their attention. Chan manages to drag his eyes away to try to gauge what Minho thinks, but all he can see is a face that has carefully been made devoid of any emotion.

“You know you don’t have to do this, right?” he says softly. Minho makes a questioning noise, lifting his eyes to look at him. Chan licks his lips and continues, “You being a demon has never been a problem for me. I don’t care if you’re going to live for hundreds of years. I don’t care if you’ll stop ageing while I end up with grey hair and a back that keeps giving out every three seconds. I’ll still love you.”

“I know,” Minho says simply.

“So don’t… Don’t feel obliged to do this if you don’t want to. I love you as you are. I always will.”

Chan’s not going to lie: it would be nice if this Kim Seungmin were a real witch and could actually make Minho a human. Not because his demonic nature has ever been a problem, but for the simple and selfish reason that it would mean no more night-time feeds. Chan would spend every evening with Minho in his arms and wake up to his grumbles and frowns every morning at six thirty. He can think of nothing better.

But this isn’t the time to be selfish. This is Minho’s entire being they’re talking about. He knew Minho was a demon from the get-go. He hasn’t loved him any less for it. And like he said earlier, he can deal with not having Minho in the nights as long as he still has him. What Chan wants in an ideal world has nothing to do with it to be frank.

“I understand that,” Minho says after a few minutes of thought. “But… I think I want to try this. Not because I love you, but because – because I love me. And I don’t want to be a demon. Sure, it comes with a lot of benefits, but it also comes with a lot of cons too and I can’t… I can’t spend hundreds of years feeling like the way I used to. I don’t think I can survive it.”

His eyes turn stormy and distant, travelling to somewhere Chan has never been. Quietly, he reaches out until his hand covers Minho’s, the gentle touch bringing Minho back to him. The address crinkles against the duvet covers beneath their weight.

“If this is what you want,” he says, “then I’ll support you.”

Minho nods, lifting his chin with steely resolve. “Yes. It is.”

And just like that, the decision is made.

Kim Seungmin lives in a picturesque neighbourhood of Seoul. The street is lined with two rows of identical houses, each door painted the same dark brown with a number printed towards the top in gold script. Young trees sway in the breeze on the pavement, spaced out with exactly four houses between them. The ground is free of litter but decorated with chalk drawings, the evidence of young children out to play. It’s the postcard for young family domesticity.

For Kim Seungmin specifically, there is a small plot in the garden in front of his house that bursts with life. It’s somewhat kookier than the neighbouring homes although all the cosier for it. Vegetables thrive under the tenderness of the sun, flowers preen in their beds beneath the windowsills. There are colours everywhere. The pastels of the pink dahlias and sweet peas, the vibrant green leaves. A wrought iron gate, around waist-high, is painted a pale yellow and guards the pebbled path to the front door.

When Minho approaches the house, he can see two figures behind the slats of the gate. One of them is a man crouched beside one of the patches, dirt smeared across his cheek and all over his hands and clothes. The other is a little boy, no more than five or six, who vibrates at the speed of light while he fawns over whatever the man is plucking free from a stem.

“He’s so big!” he shrieks, the exclamation so high-pitched that it nearly breaks the sound barrier. “We grew him so well, Appa, didn’t we? Didn’t we, didn’t we?”

“It was all you, my lucky charm,” says the man. “You’ve watered the patch so well.”

“Oh my gosh, I did, didn’t I? I made sure the soil was never thirsty. I did my best and it worked!”

The boy beams, a gap in the far corner of his smile. He plucks the fruit out of his father’s hands and hugs it to his chest, squealing happily. Minho’s mouth involuntarily twitches into a smile, though it fades when the boy’s father suddenly stiffens and spins to face him. The cool look he sends Minho is at odds with his warm features.

“Can we help you?”

Minho licks his lips, stepping closer until his toes are nearly pressed to the gate. Now that he’s this close, he can sense the power that’s embedded into the iron to keep Minho and others like him at bay. Even if he wants to, he can’t move beyond it. A tight expression flits across the man’s face at the same moment Minho feels the barrier push against him. He straightens up.

“Yongbokkie,” he says calmly. “Go inside to find Appa and show him your eggplant.”

“But Appa hates eggplants! He says they’re icky.”

“He’ll like this one,” he assures him, offering the boy a smile. “It’s the one you grew after all.”

Seemingly placated by this, the little boy darts inside with another squeal, yelling for his other father’s attention. The two of them watch him go before the man turns back to face Minho. He flicks an eyebrow upwards like he’s unsheathing a knife.

“Now then. What on earth is a demon doing outside of my house?” he asks conversationally. “This is no place for you. You’re not welcome here.”

Minho smiles thinly. “I’m guessing you’re Kim Seungmin then.”

“Maybe. Depends on who’s asking.”

This is it. It’s now or never. Nervousness flutters in Minho’s throat like a hummingbird and he licks his lips, anticipation gliding through his veins. He can feel his heart pick up its pace, slamming against his ribcage in a frenzy.

“I’ve heard stories,” he says, “that you once turned a demon into a human.”

Seungmin’s face doesn’t even twitch. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean. I can’t help you.”

He’s lying. He has to be. Minho didn’t come all the way here just to be told that it’s all for nothing. He hasn’t gotten his hopes up this high just to have them snatched six feet under. This is the right place. It has to be.

“His name was Hyunjin,” he continues, only for Seungmin to brush him off as though he is merely dusting the dirt off his hands.

“I think you should go home.”

“Please,” Minho says, desperation spiking within him. “I know you know what I’m talking about. Please, you have to help me, I can’t do this anymore.”

“I can’t help you,” he repeats. His face is impassive and emotionless, like Minho isn’t just a handful of feet away from him, throwing his pride away to grovel at his gate.

“I’ll do anything! I’ll give you anything, just please – “

“Listen kid, I’ve told you I can’t – “

“Money, whatever the fuck it is that you want – “

“For the love of God, would you just – “

“Appa,” a high voice interrupts. They both cut off to find Yongbok at the entrance to the house, watching them with his hands behind his back. He rocks on his feet, his freckled face cocked to the side. “Why are you yelling?”

Seungmin visibly tucks his irritation out of sight and attempts a carefree smile. “It’s nothing, Yongbok-ah. Appa’s just trying to sort something out. Go back inside, love, I’ll be with you soon.”

“Appa told me to tell you to come in to help us make dinner,” he says, not moving an inch. His eyes flicker over to Minho and he smiles in the warm way children do. “Hello there. Do you want to eat dinner with us too? We’re making a tuna bake and salad!”

“No, he doesn’t,” Seungmin says sharply, throwing Minho a dark look as if he thinks he means to accept the offer.

He planned nothing of the sort, but before he can defend himself, they are interrupted with a fresh call of Seungmin’s name by someone new and then a second person joins Yongbok on the doorstep. His blonde, shoulder-length hair is partly pulled back in a half up-do, a few strands left down on either side to frame his face. And oh, what a face it is. A strong nose, two full lips, magnetic eyes; he’s probably the most beautiful person Minho has ever laid eyes on.

Somehow without even asking, Minho knows that this is Hyunjin.

Just as soon as he thinks this, Hyunjin must sense Minho’s nature in turn because the genial curiosity on his face shuts down into something less welcoming. He gently steers his son to behind his legs and then urges him to go and wash his hands inside. As soon as Yongbok is out of view, he steps out of the house until he stands just a few footsteps behind Seungmin. His eyes narrow into slits.

“What’s going on?” he demands.

Seungmin scoffs, his shoulder rising and falling in a shrug. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it, I can handle it.”

But Minho isn’t paying attention to Seungmin anymore. All he has eyes for is Hyunjin. The softness of his features, the gentle manner with which he carries himself even as he regards Minho coldly. The mocha-coloured cardigan wrapped around his shoulders and the faded leather of his sliders. The black smudge of a mole under his eye. He can’t stop staring, but not for the reasons one might think. Oh, Hyunjin is still a beautiful sight to behold, but that’s not what has Minho transfixed. It’s because, as breath-taking as he might be, there’s no denying that his beauty is now so incredibly human.

“Please,” Minho says, his voice low. “I’ve heard stories about you. About how you were once like me until a witch transformed you. Until he did.” He gestures to a scowling Seungmin. “I’m desperate. I don’t want this life anymore. I never did. I want to be human, I want to – I want to stay at home with my partner at night. I want to grow old with him. Please, if there’s anything you can do, anywhere I can go…”

He doesn’t like begging. Begging doesn’t become a demon. He’s not sure who taught him that lesson – whether it was his mother all of those years ago or Jeongin when they were little imps and Minho was an even poorer demon than he is now. Demons do not beg, they take.

But Minho will get down on his knees for this if he has to.

Hyunjin stares him down with impassive eyes. At last, he turns his head in Seungmin’s direction and then jerks it down in a rough nod. “Open the gate.”

“I don’t know what stories you’ve heard,” Hyunjin says, placing a cup of jasmine tea in front of Minho. It’s in a pretty china set, as equally quaint as the rest of this house, and steaming hot. He can see the smoke wafting off it in picturesque Studio Ghibli curls. “Or where you’ve heard them from. But I guess it doesn’t really matter because I’ll tell you the truth now anyways.”

This is how the truth goes, apparently.

Around twenty years ago when Hyunjin was no more than fifteen years old, he was wandering the streets of Seoul one winter night, hungry but not wanting to feed, when he saw a van zip around the corner and crash into a car that had been travelling in the opposite direction. The car spun, its wheels skidding across the ice on the road until it clipped the curb and flipped upside down. Most of its occupants died upon impact, but there was one who was still alive.

His grasp on life was weak and fading fast, but Hyunjin ran forward and dragged him out of the wreckage anyway. And when the boy’s heart failed, he breathed the air from his own lungs into the boy’s mouth and beat his chest until it rose and fell of its own accord again.

“I fell in love with him,” Hyunjin says. “Not then, but afterwards. I kept an eye on him to make sure he recovered well and when I was sure it wouldn’t give him a heart attack, I made myself known to him.”

“I knew you were there the entire time.”

“Yes, well, I didn’t know that back then, did I? Either way, I made myself known and after he let me have it for following him around, we became friends. It didn’t take me long to fall for him after that.”

It turns out it was the same for Seungmin too. When he was brave enough to admit to his feelings, they tentatively struck up a relationship, curious to see where it would go. As time passed, their bond grew stronger. It was no longer the sweet, awkward puppy love of teenagers; the two of them wanted to live and grow old together, even though they knew it was impossible.

But one day, Seungmin felt a fresh source of power sprout within him. He didn’t know where it came from or why it bloomed within him and he still doesn’t to this day. But once he felt its life within him, he instinctively knew that if he nurtured it properly, he could use the power to make their desires manifest into reality. It didn’t take much longer for him to try.

“And it damn near killed me for the second time when I did,” he says with a grimace. Without glancing sideways, he seems to sense Hyunjin’s growing upset at the memory of this because he leans over to squeeze his partner’s hand. “It’s not a small feat to change the very nature of a being. It requires a lot of energy and willpower. I had a lot of power, especially since I’d died once and was brought back to life so it’s a lot easier for me to harness natural energy than it would be otherwise. But I hadn’t practiced back then. I just followed my gut instincts and ended up letting too much power flow through me in a completely uncontrolled manner. It was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced.”

Minho doesn’t know much about witchcraft, having never met a witch before today, but he can only imagine how disastrous that must’ve been. Witches are attuned with nature – and nature can be as deadly as it is beautiful. It has no mercy for anyone. It’s a wonder that Seungmin is still here.

And yet Minho dares to hope.

“You said ‘back then’,” he points out. “Does that mean you could do it now without… being so badly affected?”

Seungmin narrows his eyes in thought. “Well, yes, most likely. I’ve had a decade and a half to develop my abilities. But it’ll cost you.”

“Seungmin,” Hyunjin scolds.

Neither Seungmin nor Minho pay him any mind.

“I meant it when I said I’ll give you anything. I’m serious about wanting this. I don’t want to be a demon. That’s – that’s not who I am anymore.”

Hyunjin offers him a sympathethic look like he knows exactly how Minho is feeling – and to be fair, he does. He, of all people in this world, knows the gravity of the choice Minho has made. He knows what he’s giving up and what he’s gaining in return.

Seeing him here just strengthens Minho’s resolve all the more. He wants what Hyunjin has. A nice home in a nice neighbourhood with a vegetable patch out front, a lively child and a loving husband, ornate china sets and a wall decorated with crayon drawings. Maybe the specifics aren’t the same, but the general gist of it is there.

“I wasn’t much of a demon either,” Hyunjin says. “I hated feeding. Seeing humans unable to move while I fed off their fear… It just made me think of how awful I’d feel if I were in their position. To be honest, I’m glad I was lucky enough to leave that behind. I don’t think I could’ve kept it up for much longer if I hadn’t met Seungmin.”

The feeding has never been the issue for Minho. He has no qualms about feeding on a human’s fear as long as it’s not Chan’s – even if he could paralyse Chan, he would never entertain it – because he knows it’s just the way things work. This is how demons were created to be.

It’s the loneliness that cripples Minho. He can’t go back to a life of that all-encompassing loneliness. Wandering around the cities of Korea or venturing into the neighbouring countries, all to find more humans to feed off while the rest of the world passes him by. Occasionally seeing Jeongin whenever they decide it’s been a while since they last met up. Remembering everything he’s had and no longer does. It’s something like that that would break Minho.

He can’t go back to the prospect of that future. He won’t go back to it. The next time he walks out of those doors, he intends to be human.

It’s been nearly two weeks since Minho left for Kim Seungmin’s and Chan already misses him. Maybe it’s ridiculous how quickly he falls into that blackhole, but he can’t help it. Minho brings so much life to the apartment. Whenever he’s gone, the silence is so much more deafening.

It’s not like he’s left forever. He hasn’t wiped himself from the face of the earth like last time, especially now that he has a phone to constantly text Chan with (mostly to complain that he’s bored while Seungmin sorts out the process of transforming him and also to demand for pictures of Dori). And this time around, he also has Jeongin constantly hanging around the apartment so he’s not even completely alone most of the time.

Still.

He really misses Minho. He just wants to hug him and smell his shampoo. And maybe kiss him a little on his cheeks and laugh when Minho responds by shoving him away, only to pull him into a proper kiss a heartbeat later. And maybe hold his hand while they watch an anime together, curled up on the sofa with their favourite blanket wrapped around their shoulders.

“You do realise I can sense how sickening your thoughts are right now, right?” Jeongin interjects from where he’s currently stretched out on said sofa. His eyes are closed, making him look like any other twenty year old on this side of Seoul. “You’re so pathetic.”

Chan sighs, pulling his knees to his chest. “I miss him.”

“He’s less than half an hour away.”

“I miss him,” he insists.

Clearly not in the mood to deal with Chan’s moping, Jeongin’s only response to that is to dissolve into his non-corporeal form and escape the apartment. Even though he can’t see the moment he leaves, the shift in the air tells Chan he’s alone. He sighs for the tenth time in the past five minutes and rolls his cheek across the top of his knees forlornly. He can’t believe there was once a time when he was regularly alone in this apartment. It seems so long ago now, though it was just last year.

A series of knocks lands on the other side of the front door. Chan heaves another sigh, just to be as dramatic as he feels, and slowly clambers to his feet to answer it. When the door swings open, a familiar face is on the other side.

“Minho?”

His boyfriend smiles, the upwards quirk of his mouth as warm as ever. “Surprise.”

Quickly recovering from his shock, Chan lets out a delighted laugh and pulls him into a hug, all but crushing him to his chest. Minho squawks in protest, but his hands find the back of Chan’s jumper and squeeze him back just as tightly. He fits his chin onto Chan’s shoulder and breathes out a happy hum against the shell of his ear. He then kisses it after a moment’s thought.

“I’ve missed you too,” he says.

“This apartment is so boring without you,” Chan complains.

Minho chuckles, drawing back to look at him properly. It’s as they’re gazing at each other that Chan realises there’s something different about Minho’s eyes. The brown is warmer than he remembers, his gaze not as piercing. There’s a softness to the rest of his face too, just subtle enough that it’s only noticeable if someone has memorised his features, and his body feels less wiry. He’s never been afraid of Minho’s nature like he should be on a primal level, but this is to a different extent entirely.

Chan’s breath catches in his throat. “It worked,” he whispers.

A broad smile conquers Minho’s face as he nods. “It worked,” he confirms.

For all he’s said that he doesn’t care about whether Minho is demon or human, the news has Chan’s heart buoyant with joy. He laughs, hugging Minho so hard he lifts him clean off his feet and ends up spinning the two of them around. Minho echoes his laughter, just as elated, and when they come to a stop, he puts his hands on either side of Chan’s face and kisses him deeply. It tastes like peppermint. It tastes like coming home after a long day at work to a warm apartment.

When Minho pulls back, he says, “It took us longer than we expected to sort everything out. Passport, birth certificate, qualifications, that whole jazz – not to mention Seungmin cultivating all of his power in preparation for the transformation. Oh! And he even called in a favour with a friend to get me a job at the animal shelter over by the train station so I can actually help you pay towards the apartment now. Turns out becoming human is much more bureaucratic than I thought it was.”

“To be honest, it’s bureaucratic either way.”

“Ew, gross,” he despairs with a scrunch of his nose, but he can’t stop smiling as he continues his explanation. “After we got that sorted, Seungmin had to adjust the process so that he could harness the years I was giving up by turning human just in case he ever wanted to give them to someone. But we did the transformation this morning and it was only somewhat painful for the two of us to experience and recover from. So now you’re looking at Lee Minho: born and raised in Gimpo twenty three years ago. Very much human and intending to stay that way.”

“Lee Minho. Isn’t that the guy who acted in Boys Over Flowers?”

Minho pinches his side for the tease and Chan snickers, pressing a kiss to his mouth in apology. Minho sinks into it with a sigh, his fingers running through Chan’s freshly dyed hair. He changed its colour the other night after Jeongin suggested they do something to take his mind off Minho for a short while. God, he really has been annoying these past couple of weeks.

“I like your hair when it’s black,” Minho murmurs in approval. He pulls back to smirk mischievously. “I bet it looks even better when it’s on my pillow.”

“Lee Minho,” Chan says with a scandalised gasp. “Are you trying to get into my pants?”

Minho responds by sliding his hand under the waistband of Chan’s joggers to rest it against his bare ass. The touch is barely risqué, merely suggestive, but Chan’s pulse quickens all the same. He feels the blood in his body heat up as he meets Minho’s sultry look.

He doesn’t bother with words. He just gathers Minho in his arms, grinning at his boyfriend’s delighted shriek, and rushes to the bedroom as quickly as he can manage.

By the time they pull away from each other, night has well and truly fallen. After he’s wiped them both down, Chan cracks open a window in the hopes of enticing some fresh air in and to disperse the heavy smell of sweat and sex that lingers in the aftermath. Minho tugs him closer as soon as Chan gets near enough to the bed and then settles in his arms with a content sigh.

“Goodnight, Channie,” he murmurs. “I love you.”

He presses a kiss against Minho’s temple. “I love you too. Goodnight, baby.”

Chan secures his arms around Minho as tightly as he can manage before it becomes painful and lets his eyes drift shut as sleep rushes to claim him.

Tonight, he’ll fall asleep with his boyfriend in his arms. And tomorrow morning he’ll wake up to the sound of his alarm and the downwards turn of Minho’s mouth as it disturbs his sleep. And after he silences his phone, he’ll lean over to press a kiss to Minho’s frown, morning breath and all.

His boyfriend will crack open his eyes in time with the slow spread of his smile and the morning sun will fall into his coffee-coloured irises, making them shine. He’ll slide his arms around Chan and the two of them will take a few minutes to simply lie there like that. Holding each other, seeing each other, reminding one another that they exist and that they matter.