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“Everyone has a fatal flaw.” She whispers into the blanket of darkness that shrouds them. She’s on her back, looking up at the ceiling, but Seven has been on his side looking at her for a while now. Even in the barely-there light of the moon, she’s stunning.
“Yeah?” He can’t help but smile at her, even if she isn’t looking at him to see it. The fact that he has the freedom to do this with her, to lay next to her in this bed as the moon rises high in the sky is like a dream in and of itself. More than he ever could’ve imagined for himself. More than he has ever believed he deserved. “Go on.”
“Well,” She turns her head to look at him and he feels his breath catch in his throat as she smiles radiantly back at him. “Zen’s is obviously his narcissism.” He can’t stifle a huff of a laugh that comes as a response to that and it seems to encourage her, so she presses on. “Yoosung is addicted to LOLOL. Jaehee doesn’t know how to set boundaries for herself. And Jumin’s is obviously his robotic lack of emotions.”
Seven laughs openly next to her, reveling in the moment at hand. Never in his life would he have dreamed of something like this— never would he have been bold enough to even imagine that he could have moments like this. It’s like every dream he never let himself have for his life but so much sweeter. “I can’t say you’re wrong about that.”
“I’m rarely wrong.” She teases, and it’s clear how at ease she is in this moment. After everything they’d gone through, every danger they had faced, every time he’d tried to cut their ties, she was able to be here and to let herself relax around him. She was able to be next to him with all of her walls down. It’s a gift Seven will never stop treasuring, will never stop recognizing as the absolute blessing that it is. “If ever.”
“Well, I don’t know about that…” She exaggerates a pout at him in response, turning her face back up towards the ceiling. It’s unbearable how much Seven enjoys it, unbearable how happy he feels at this moment. Maybe it’s because happiness is a foreign feeling to him after all these years, but he finds that he doesn’t know what to do with it. It feels like it’s pouring out of him, like he’s infusing happiness into everything around him because he simply cannot contain it all. “What about me?”
“Your fatal flaw?” She turns to look at him, bringing her whole body with her so that she’s fully facing him now, and her expression is serious, but still soft. There’s a fondness in her gaze, a warmth in her tone as she answers him gently. “You don’t think you’re worth anything.”
It hits home, but it doesn’t sting the way he would expect it to. It’s not because she’s right, even though she is, but because she says it in such a way that ensures there’s no barbs attached to it. There’s no sharp edges, no bite that could cut into him. It’s a simple observation of fact, said by someone who loves him so absolutely that she can’t really see anything he does as a flaw. And maybe that’s her fatal flaw, being blind to all the things about him that are terrible. If it is, he hopes she never changes it because he’s already eternally grateful for it.
It’s because she delivers it in such a gentle way that he’s able to make a joke out of it, to lighten the mood. “I’m pretty sure I call myself a God at least like four times a day.”
“Gods don’t sit in corners and try to make themselves as small as possible.” She reaches out to brush her fingers against his cheek, threading them into the hair by his ear.
He closes his eyes against the sensation, “This God does.”
“I noticed.” She hums in response, but he can hear the love in her voice.
And it’s true, she did notice. She had always noticed everything about him. From the first day, she seemed to have a read on him that nobody else had ever had. She had a way of putting his feelings into words when he couldn’t even figure out what they were. Nobody had ever been this in tune with him except Saeran, and they were twins. They were supposed to have that sort of unbreakable bond. But his bond with her was different. When it came to Saeran, he had always known how Seven was feeling because he had been feeling it too— two halves of the same soul, emotions bouncing between them like an echo chamber. She, on the other hand, had dedicated time to getting to know him, to understanding him and learning his tells. When she spoke about how he felt, it was because she had put in the effort to figure him out.
It was more effort than he had ever put in to figure himself out.
He had spent so many years hating himself for leaving Saeran behind, hating himself because his mother had taught him that he should. He hated himself for the secrets he kept, the lies he told. He never wanted to know who he was, never wanted to try and face himself and find out what kind of man he really was underneath all the masks. Because any man who could be okay with the things he had done couldn’t possibly be a good man. And then she had come along and started to remove his masks one by one, taking time to allow him to get comfortable with each new layer she revealed. And in the process he discovered that he wasn’t okay with the things he’d done at all. And that had been hard to swallow, but it had also made him realize that maybe he wasn’t the terrible person he had always thought himself to be.
Terrible circumstances do not make terrible people. She had said that to him once, trying to soothe him when he’d been inconsolable. At the time he hadn’t understood what she’d meant and it had felt like she was patronizing him. But now he understood that he had managed to become a good person despite the tragedies of his past. It gave him hope that Saeran could still become a good person, too.
“What about you?” He reaches up to place his hand over hers where it’s still resting gently on the side of his face. “What’s your fatal flaw?”
“Oh,” She bites the corner of her lip. “That’s easy. I’m in love with a God.”
There is absolutely nothing Seven can do to stop his heart from flipping in his chest at the words, not that he’d even want to if he could. He wanted to live in this moment, in this feeling for the rest of his life. If he could use his brilliant mind to create a machine that allowed him to freeze himself in a moment in time, he would choose this one. Wrapped up away from the world, just the two of them together, happy. “A God, huh? That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Oh it is, it’s terrible.” She draws her hand back and flips over onto her back again, draping her arm dramatically across her forehead. “You’ve heard the stories, haven’t you? People who are in love with Gods are forced to spend half their life underground! Or smited by other Gods because of their jealousy! It’s a terrible burden to bear.”
And this is exactly why he was helpless to do anything other than fall in love with her. She had the perfect ability to be silly in a serious moment, to lighten the mood and keep him laughing, even when the pressure got too heavy. She said just as many off-the-cuff things as he did and she was the only one who could even come close to matching his sense of humor. He was helpless to do anything other than fall in love with her because her soul seemed to be on the same wavelength as his, constantly reaching out for him and meeting him in the middle, drawing him closer. She somehow managed to always be exactly what he needed, even if he didn’t like it at the time.
“Well,” He tucks his arm up underneath his pillow and settles a little further into the bed. “Is this God worth it?”
“He is.” She confirms almost breathlessly, purposely not looking at him.
He can still see the smile on her lips, even as she stares determinedly at the shadows dancing across the ceiling above them. “And does this God love you back?”
“I think so.” She whispers, “But he’s very fickle, you see.”
This time, it’s Seven who reaches out first. His hand cups her cheek easily, like it was always meant to cradle her so gently. He turns her to face him again and once again, she turns her whole body, leaning forward so that she’s only a foot or less away. Her eyes find his and it takes everything in him not to have his breath completely stolen out of his chest as he whispers. “Fickle? How so?”
She reaches up to take his hand in hers, drawing it towards her mouth. “Well, he acts like he loves me.” She presses a kiss to one of his fingertips, gentle as a feather and yet it makes his finger tingle. “He does all these really nice things for me.” Another kiss to another finger. “But then he tells me that he doesn’t want me.” She kisses his third finger, her eyes locked on his the entire time. Seven is fairly certain he’s not breathing at all anymore. “He tells me to leave him alone.” A kiss to his fourth finger. “But he always shows up when I need him, despite all that.”
The last kiss she gives him is pressed to his palm and Seven feels like his entire hand is aflame from her affection.
“You know I didn’t mean that—“ He rasps, his voice as weak as he feels at this moment. He feels like he’s one gentle breeze from cracking completely and baring his entire soul to her. He’d do it in a heartbeat, honestly. There’s not an ounce of fear in him anymore, not where she’s concerned.
“Why are you talking about yourself?” She teases, holding his hand gently between both of hers against her chest and curling around it as if she were protecting something precious. “I’m obviously referring to Zen.”
She laughs openly as Seven pulls his hand back away from her. The sound of her laugh is bright and warm, just like she has always been, and he continues to find it a balm for his battered soul. He shifts towards her quickly and she moves in sync with him, falling onto her back as he props himself up above her, staring down at her lovely face. She’s smiling beautifully up at him, her cheeks flushed from laughing, her hair fanning out on the pillow around her head.
She’s a vision. She’s always a vision, really. He’s thought that since the very first day when he had pulled up her picture online after she’d stumbled into Rika’s apartment, but he had never thought it more than he did now. There was a light in her eyes that he recognized as pure joy and he wanted to keep her looking like that forever. He would do anything, would give anything— including himself— to keep her happy and smiling for the rest of time. Even if that didn’t include him— though he wished desperately, painfully that it would include him. He’d never feared much before, but suddenly he found himself fearing the idea that she would forget him so much that it was almost debilitating.
“First of all,” He tries to sound stern and fails miserably. He’s too happy himself at this moment, still completely overflowing with it. “Zen would never tell you that he doesn’t want you.” She laughs again underneath him, her shoulders shaking as her eyes blink closed. “He’s still hitting on you every time he talks to you, even though you have someone else.”
“That’s all you have to say about that?” She manages to ask after her laughter dies down. Still, she sounds breathless as she talks and Seven has to convince himself not to just stay here and watch the rise and fall of her chest as she tries to catch her breath.
“Second of all,” He presses on, leaning just a little closer to her. She opens her eyes and takes in a breath as she looks at him, realizing just how close he is, and it makes something inside of him swoop. “I’m pretty sure this God loves you, too.”
“You are?” She reaches up to place a hand on the back of his neck, connecting them. It’s an anchor, something that reminds him that she’s real and she’s here, that he didn’t push her away after all the terrible things he said to her. It’s a physical reminder that she loves him, that she wants to be here with him.
Everything in him revels at the feeling of it, at the knowledge that he’s allowed to have this. After a lifetime of being denied anything he had ever wanted, after years upon years of having everything that mattered to him taken away from him and twisted, he’s finally been granted one single, solitary thing that he’s allowed to keep. And it’s the most precious thing he’s ever had the fortune of being around. It’s still strange to him, still hard to fight his natural reaction to push her away, even though he only wants to be closer, closer, closer.
“If I may be bold enough to speak for him—“
She pretends to consider this underneath him, tilting her head to the side and putting on a thoughtful face. After a moment, she lets out a breath. “Well, you don’t know him, but I guess you could give it a try.”
Seven makes a point of sighing at her response and the grin he gets in response is so bright, it feels like the sun came out in the middle of the night. “I guess I’ll just be taking a stab in the dark here, but I think that he has always loved you, he just didn’t know that he was allowed to love you.”
“Well, next time I see him, I’d like to tell him that love doesn’t have stipulations like that.” Her fingers brush gently into the hair at the nape of his neck, her nails scratching gently at his skin and it makes a shiver wrack down his spine. He swallows around a lump that’s forming in his throat. “Love doesn’t tell you that you aren’t allowed to have someone.”
“Well, maybe he’s realized that.” Seven closes his eyes as she continues what she's doing, his arms feeling weak as they continue to hold him above her. “Maybe he finally got the courage to love you properly. Maybe he didn’t think he was good enough for you— maybe he wasn’t good enough for you—“
“He was.” She cuts him off before he can go any further and he’s thankful for it because he thinks he might’ve been about to ruin the moment with the old fears that he hadn’t quite gotten rid of yet. They fit him like a glove, used to wrapping him up and holding him tightly. It was hard to shed them, no matter how badly he wanted to. “He still is. He always will be.”
Seven takes in a shuddering breath and opens his eyes to look down at her again. She’s still smiling at him and he wonders how that’s possible, how she has managed to smile at him through everything. Her smile had become the light at the end of the tunnel, the beacon that had led him to safety when he had been in his darkest hours. Her smile had been the thing he had clung to when everything else had been falling apart around him because she graced him with it so easily and so freely, a gift that she just gave to him without asking for anything in return.
“Well if you say stuff like that, I’m positive that he loves you, too. Whoever he is.” What he wants to say is that there’s no way he couldn’t love her, too, that there wasn’t a single part of his heart, his soul that didn’t absolutely belong to her,
What he wanted to say was that she was everything to him— his hope, his future, his stability. Everything he needed to get through whatever could possibly come up in the future was her and her stubbornness, her unwavering faith in him. Being around her made him feel like he had gained a sort of superpower— it made him feel like he was invincible, it made him motivated.
“Seven?” Her voice has dropped to a whisper, so intimate that it makes him feel like he’s melting into a puddle at her feet. “Can I tell you something?”
“Anything.”
“I wasn’t talking about Zen.”
The smile that comes to his face almost feels natural, despite all the years he had gone without smiling like this. “You weren’t?”
“I was talking about you.” She whispers like it’s actually some big secret that she’s letting him in on, like she’s his conspirator, telling him something that nobody else is supposed to overhear.
“Me?” Seven leans down the tiniest bit closer, his heart clenching as she tilts her chin up to keep eye contact with him. “Well then I think I’m very qualified to talk for him. And in that case, I’d like to assure you that he absolutely loves you, more than he’s ever loved anything else.”
And then he closes the small distance between them to kiss whatever response she could’ve had right off of her lips.