Archive of Our Own

Kun can’t tell whether his new lab partner likes him or not.

Chittaphon sighs for the third time that morning, then not-so-gently bats Kun’s hands away. “No,” he says. “You have to do it lightly. Like this ‒ ”

He takes the petri dish Kun had been working on. Chittaphon leans forward, hyper-focused on spreading the sample over the agar with his inoculating wand. The tip of his perfectly sculpted nose nearly touches the agar, which can’t be hygienic, but Kun wisely holds his tongue.

After a second, Chittaphon sits back and nods with satisfaction at his work. “There. You see?”

Kun sees. The surface of the agar in the petri dish that Chittaphon had just worked on looks almost untouched, the scrapings only visible in certain lights.

“Oh, right,” Kun says, flustered. “Sorry ‒ this is all new to me. My last lab class was in high school.”

Chittaphon glances at Kun’s workstation, and Kun’s gaze follows. Before him sits a small mountain of ruined petri dishes, the agar looking as if a horde of goblins had gnawed on them.

“Really,” Chittaphon deadpans. “I totally couldn’t tell.”

Then, leaving Kun open-mouthed, he flips the tails of his lab coat and stalks away.

So, yeah. Maybe Kun can tell that Chittaphon doesn’t like him.

It’s not his fault that he’s in this job! (Well, a voice that sounds uncannily like Sicheng’s says in Kun’s head, maybe it is.) The scholarship Kun is on is only partial, covering his tuition fees and a small single room at the on-campus dormitory, but he has to eat. He’s human, after all ‒ unlike the majority of his peers.

Most of the other technicians are visibly supernatural, skin sparkling like diamonds in the sun, or wearing close-fitted surgical scrub caps that conceal writhing, snaking masses. Even those that could pass off as humans give themselves away sooner or later ‒ the other day, Baekhyun had screeched in laughter at someone’s joke and shattered every beaker within a six feet radius of him. Kun had spent the whole afternoon sweeping up glass shards.

Chittaphon, on the other hand, seems to be normal. At least, Kun thinks so? He isn’t quite sure what the appropriate etiquette is for asking if someone is a supernatural creature or plain old human, and with the way Chittaphon looks at him like he’s a wad of gum stuck to his shoe, he’s not about to try his luck and ask. Kun had wondered if the attitude was just reserved for him ‒ over the course of his first week of work, Chittaphon’s bland politeness had worn away to a blunt sarcasm that bordered on rude. Which was, in hindsight, fair, in light of Kun’s various bumbling attempts at anything lab-related. Even the other technicians give Chittaphon a wide berth, only approaching him when they need to.

But then Kun had overheard some of the gorgons gossiping in the corridor outside the bathrooms, and realised that they weren’t terrified of Chittaphon ‒ no, they were mocking him. Laughing at his worn, ill-fitting clothes and long, unkempt hair, making fun of the way he hunched over his samples, even giggling over how he sometimes stuttered, struggling for the right words to say. It wasn’t kind, and it certainly wasn’t nice. Chittaphon was admittedly slightly odd, and sometimes too curt to be polite, but he kept to himself, and didn’t bother anyone. He didn’t deserve to be the butt of everyone’s jokes. And so Kun had resolved, from that moment on, to be nice to Chittaphon, and to try to be friends with him and get him to open up a little.

So far, though, the plan is going abysmally.

Shaking off the thinly-veiled insult, Kun discards his ruined agar and hurries after Chittaphon. “So,” he says, rejoining him by the sink. “Any plans for the weekend?”

“Why?”

“I’m just… curious?”

Chittaphon side-eyes him suspiciously. Kun does his best to look genuinely interested and non-threatening.

“No,” Chittaphon eventually concedes. He turns back to washing his hands. “Not really.”

“More of a stay-at-home kind of guy, huh?”

“You could say that.”

Now, this is why Kun’s plan is failing. For every question that he asks, he receives a question back, or a short, curt answer clearly intended to end the conversation. If Kun were a lesser man, he would simply give up.

But Kun is not a lesser man. He actually wants to get to know Chittaphon ‒ yes, he may be kind of a stickler for the work, and socially awkward, but there’s a certain grace in the way he flits around the lab, a gentleness in the way he handles his tools. The way Chittaphon cares about his work is so deep it’s almost devotion, and Kun can respect that; is drawn to that, even.

So he soldiers on. “I get it,” Kun says. “The older I get, the more of a hassle I find it to go out. Getting ready is a whole other activity on its own.”

“I guess you must not go out at all, then.”

“What?”

Chittaphon takes his time to reply, drying his hands on a towel. “Because you’re already pretty old, right? What are you, thirty? Thirty-five?”

Kun blinks.

Then the indignation hits.

What did he just say?

“Actually,” Kun says, trying and failing to stay calm. “I think we’re both the same ‒ mmph!”

He’s met with a faceful of terry cloth. Chittaphon had thrown ‒ thrown! ‒ the towel in his face. Kun recoils immediately (this is a lab, who knows what bacteria are crawling around him) and flings the towel aside.

“Yuck ‒ Chittaphon, what ‒ ”

“The towels need to be laundered,” Chittaphon says, face impassive, like he hadn’t just covered Kun’s face in potentially life-threatening germs. “You probably don’t have any plans this evening, right? Clean this up, and don’t forget to lock up before you leave.”

“Me? You’re not ‒ ”

Chittaphon sweeps past him, tucking his hair behind his ear. Before Kun can protest any further, the door to the lab opens, and Chittaphon is gone in a whirl of white lab coat and dark hair.

Kun is left gaping after him. The door closes with an ominous thud that wouldn’t sound out of place in a prison. Left with plenty of cleaning up to do, though, all Kun can do is grumble to himself, then get to work.

😈

“You’re coming here,” Sicheng had said slowly, in a monotone. To be fair, he always spoke that way, but this time, it was tinged with a shade of incredulity. “To this place.”

“Yes.”

“To Weishen University for Creatures, Covens and Cryptids.”

“Yes.”

“Kun-ge,” Sicheng had said, the incredulity in his voice growing. “No offence, but you know you’re none of those things, right?”

Kun frowned. “Way to be non-discriminatory.”

“No, that’s not what I ‒ ” Sicheng sighed. He rubbed his temples, the beaded bracelets and jade bangles on his wrists clacking together. “You know we have a handful of human classmates, but this is unusual. What was wrong with your old university?”

Nothing, really. The university Kun had completed his bachelor’s degree at had a master’s in cryptozoology; he could have easily applied for that programme.

It’s just that ‒

“What kind of cryptozoologist would I be if I didn’t actually interact and live amongst the subjects of my study? I don’t want to be like my professors who know pack culture inside-out, but can’t even name a friend who’s a werewolf ‒ I want to understand them, Sicheng.”

“We’re friends,” Sicheng pointed out. “You understand me.”

“Eh,” Kun said noncommittally, because despite growing up together, sometimes Sicheng did and said shit that Kun could only put down to the fact that he was actually psychic. “I could understand you more. I could understand your community more.”

Sicheng wrinkled his nose. “You’re making it sound weird.”

“You know what I mean.”

Sicheng had wrinkled his nose even further, looking like a disgruntled baby chick. Eventually, he had sighed, and called for the bill, the exact amount of change already in hand even though Kun knew for a fact that he didn’t know the prices of what they had ordered.

“Well, if that’s your decision. Just a friendly warning, though, campus can get pretty… wild.”

😈

Wild is kind of an understatement.

“Relax,” Sicheng says under his breath. “Don’t look so scared.”

For the life of him, Kun doesn’t know why he agreed to this. It’s Saturday night at the tail-end of winter. He should be in bed, watching Jason Mraz’s concert for the twentieth time and curled up with a glass of red wine. Instead, he’s standing in line in a dodgy alley, freezing his balls off, to some place Sicheng had said was fun on the weekends.

All because Chittaphon had made a snide comment on his age earlier this week. Which ‒ no, Kun amends, that is not the main reason he’s here. It’s not even a reason at all! He’s new in town. It’s reasonable that he’d want to go out. And Sicheng had said he’d show him around, so Kun had taken him up on his offer and asked if there was anything to do tonight. Because Kun, despite whatever Chittaphon thinks, gets out. Sure, it might not be often, and sure, he might be losing all feeling in his toes and immensely regretting his decision right now (and for the past twenty minutes they’ve been waiting in line), but he’s going to suck it up and tough it out.

Because he’s not old. He can still do this. He’ll prove it!

“Hey,” Sicheng says, catching the look on his face. “Are you chickening out now? You were the one who wanted to come out ‒ ”

“I’m not chickening out!” Kun denies vehemently. “I’m just… concerned.”

He looks over his shoulder meaningfully. There’s a rowdy pack of what Kun suspects are werewolves standing behind them. They’re still in human form, but the obnoxious way they chest-bump each other and let out random howls is pretty telling. For some reason, almost all of them are shirtless.

Sicheng’s gaze lands on the pack, and a knowing look crosses his face.

“Oh, nevermind,” he says. “You’re just horny.”

Every hair on Kun’s arm stands, and he whirls on Sicheng.

“I am not ‒ ” he hisses. “Keep your voice down! Werewolves have superior hearing! They can hear up to ‒ ”

“Alright, alright, Dr. Doolittle. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”

Kun bristles. “Just ‒ what kind of place is this?”

“You said you wanted to get to know supernaturals, right? No better place to do that than After Midnight.”

After Midnight, from what Kun has gathered from a quick search on his phone, is the club on the fringes of campus that is especially popular with the supernatural students. There’s nothing that says humans can’t enter, but one quick scan up and down the line shows Kun that he’s the only one so far. He wonders why.

“Like I said,” Sicheng says as they reach the front of the line. “It gets kind of wild.”

He nudges Kun, and they show their IDs to the hulking mass of a bouncer. Kun’s mouth opens of his own accord ‒ he’s never met a dwarf giant, only read about them, and this is a fascinating specimen ‒ but before he can say anything, Sicheng grabs his arm and pulls him inside the club.

It takes a second for Kun’s eyes to adjust, but when they do, he feels his jaw drop all over again.

After Midnight is hopping. Apparently, supernaturals like to party just like humans ‒ there are flashing lights, a disco ball that rotates slowly hanging from the ceiling, and even fairy lights strung up near the VIP booths. The bass of the music is so loud that Kun can feel it reverberate through his body, and the floor is as sticky as any other club’s. The dancefloor is already crowded with supernaturals, too, gyrating and grinding up on each other.

Yet, there are noticeable differences ‒ trays carrying shots levitate and float across the club of their own accord. The fairy lights shift and pulse, each individual bulb flitting across the wall to settle somewhere else. Kun squints, and spies a couple necking on the dancefloor ‒ oh, no, nope, that’s a vampire, and that’s blood.

Also ‒ entirely unrelated, but still noteworthy ‒ everyone is outrageously good-looking.

Kun, in his plain button-down shirt and old sneakers, suddenly feels very out of place.

“So,” Sicheng says. “What do you think?”

“I think I need a drink,” Kun mutters, and heads for the bar.

One glass of red wine (Kun) and a bottle of peach schnapps (Sicheng) acquired later, the two of them find a standing table. As Sicheng surveys the rest of the club, Kun sips on his wine, then grimaces. It tastes like shit.

Sicheng catches his eye. “What, not up to your standards?”

“It’s fine,” Kun lies, and Sicheng snorts.

“Please don’t patronise me.”

“Fine,” Kun says. “It tastes like drain water.”

“Oh.” Sicheng’s face twitches with something like concern. “Well, there’s a wine bar not far from here. Should we go there instead? I know that this place isn’t really your speed.”

Isn’t really your speed? What’s that supposed to mean? Sicheng is looking pityingly at him now. The cogs in Kun’s brain turn. Hang on. Does Sicheng also think ‒

“You don’t think I’m too old for this, do you?” Kun blurts out, and Sicheng blinks.

“What?”

“You don’t think,” Kun repeats, raising his voice to be heard over the music and already regretting bringing this up in the first place, “I’m old, right?”

“Of course not,” Sicheng says loyally, just as a familiar voice pipes up, “Oh my god, is Kun-ge having a mid-life crisis already?”

Kun tries not to groan. He looks to the heavens for strength. When he turns around, there’s another guy standing there, hair a shock of platinum and dripped out in a leather jacket and artfully ripped jeans that must cost more than Kun’s monthly income. He’s smiling like the cat got the cream.

Kun glares at Sicheng accusingly. “You invited Yangyang?”

“No,” Sicheng says. “I didn’t know he was going to be here.”

“Some Seer you are,” Kun sniffs.

“You know my visions are fluid,” Sicheng says haughtily, then turns to Yangyang. “Yah, don’t you have some poor fangbanger to seduce?”

“Bro, please,” Yangyang says. “Been there, done that.”

His smile widens, revealing fangs for incisors and dried blood that’s settled in between the gaps of his teeth. Kun swallows, trying not to startle, or be squeamish (vampires need to eat, too!), but he doesn’t miss the way Yangyang’s eyes flicker down hungrily to the bob of his Adam’s apple.

“Ah ah ah,” Sicheng scolds. “This human is a friend, not food. Unless ‒ ” he glances at Kun “ ‒ he consents?”

“Uh,” Kun says. “I’ll pass, thanks.”

“You are so lame,” Yangyang whines. “It’s just a little prick, you won’t even feel ‒ ”

“No.”

“Ugh, fine, whatever.” Yangyang turns to Sicheng and tugs at his sleeve. “Help me get something to wash it all down, then.”

“What?” Sicheng is aghast. “You’re literally richer than both of us combined.”

“Please? The bar is so far away, and I’m lazy.”

Yangyang sticks out his lower lip, pouting. Kun’s seen him pull this move before on Sicheng’s circle of friends, to whom he’d been introduced, with varying levels of success (Hendery had cooed, while Dejun had hit the back of Yangyang’s head). He’s pretty sure that Yangyang’s got Sicheng firmly under his thumb, though.

Sure enough, Sicheng folds as easily as a house of cards. “Fine,” he grumbles. He makes a very big show of leaving their table to go to the bar. “But I’m putting it on your tab!”

“Get me the usual!” Yangyang shouts after Sicheng.

They watch him disappear into the crowd. Once he’s gone, Yangyang turns to Kun. “So? What’s this about you feeling old?”

“Nothing.” Yangyang gives him a look that indicates he doesn’t believe him, so Kun reluctantly amends, “Well… My co-worker kind of insinuated that he didn’t think I would have weekend plans because of my age.”

“And so you’re here at the club with a bunch of supernaturals to prove him wrong?”

“Yah, don’t use your powers on me!”

“Oh my god, for the thousandth time, vamps can’t mind-read, what are they teaching you in school nowadays?” As Kun begins to question the quality of his degree, Yangyang rolls his eyes. “No, dude, you’re just that obvious.”

“Well…” Unable to think of a comeback, Kun huffs. “I don’t care if he wants to call me old. This objectively sucks.”

And it does suck. Outside, it’s too cold. Inside, it’s too hot. Kun’s wine is terrible, and so is the music. Everyone here is objectively gorgeous and supernatural, and all the looks Kun has received so far have been ones of confusion or downright predatory-slash-hungry (case in point: Yangyang). He doesn’t even want to think about how much the taxi fare home will be.

Yangyang rolls his eyes again. For a hundred year old, he sure behaves like a Gen Z kid. “That’s because, like, you haven’t even had a drink yet.”

“I’ve had a drink!” Kun protests, and Yangyang screws his face up in disgust.

“What, this gross-ass grape juice? Nah, man, you need the good stuff. The powerful stuff.”

Alarm bells begin to ring in Kun’s head. What would be powerful to someone who has an unlimited alcohol tolerance?

“Um, no thanks,” he says. “I think I’ll just stick to my ‒ ”

Sicheng reappears at Kun’s elbow then. “Here,” he says to Yangyang. “Your usual.”

He sets a row of shots down. They’re all filled to the brim with a green, glittery liquid, so bright that it seems to be emitting its own light.

Kun looks between Yangyang and the shots, alarmed. “You drink these?”

“Yep,” Yangyang says.

“All of them?”

“Yep!”

“What’s in them?”

“That’s for you to find out!” Yangyang says cheerfully, and before Kun knows it, he’s shoved a shot glass into his hand and locked their arms around each other. “Bottoms up!”

The movement of Yangyang’s arm as he lifts his shot forces Kun’s arm up, and together, they knock back a love shot. Kun braces for the taste, but to his surprise, the liquid is delicious. It’s rich and deep like Kun’s favourite bordeaux, with a hint of sweetness that reminds him of the tangerines he used to pluck from the grove near his childhood home.

Seeing the stunned expression on Kun’s face, Yangyang winks. “Pixies, am I right? It’ll taste like your favourite thing in the whole world. And,” he lowers his voice. “If you drink enough of it, it’ll give you a hell of a trip after.”

“Wait, what?”

“What? Nothing! Here, have another!” Yangyang says, and grabs Kun’s chin to pour another shot down his throat.

Kun should probably tell Yangyang off for not letting him know he’s taking drugs, but the pixie dust infusion washes away the scolding. When Kun swallows this time, there’s a burn he hadn’t noticed before. It slides down his throat like honey to rest hot and sticky in his chest. He feels it stay there, warm and sweet, before gradually dissolving into a lifting, almost weightless feeling that spreads down to his fingertips and rises up like helium to his head.

Kun’s done weed before (recreationally, and only when he was really stressed out!) but this is nothing like that. Nothing.

“Whoa,” he mutters.

Yangyang grins. His blood-stained teeth suddenly don’t look so scary anymore. “Right? Whoa.”

After that, Kun accepts the shots from Yangyang a lot more willingly. When they run out of them, they send an exasperated Sicheng off for more, and finish those off, too. As Kun licks the dregs from his last shot glass, Sicheng tells him he’s buying his own drinks from now on ‒ at least, that’s what Kun thinks he’s saying. It’s hard to tell. The more he drinks, the more the feeling of weightlessness grows. Colours start to pop. Even the music is beginning to become tolerable. It feels like all the heavy, uncomfortable stuff ‒ moving to a new town, school, trying to fit in ‒ is slowly being drained from Kun’s mind, filling it with sugar and air, and he feels himself begin to physically relax.

At some point, Yangyang yells, “We should dance!”, and Kun nods fervently.

“We should.”

“Er, you two go ahead,” Sicheng says. “I’m not ‒ aiyah!”

Yangyang grabs him by the arm and drags them all out to the dancefloor. He bullies his way right into the middle of the crowd, where they form a small circle and begin to dance. Yangyang is an energetic dancer even while high, while Sicheng stands in one spot and alternates between cringing at the music and bopping awkwardly.

And Kun? Ordinarily, he thinks he’s somewhere in the middle, but tonight, there’s something in the air, in his bloodstream, that makes the music, like, pop. Tonight, he feels like he could fly; like he could do more. So, against the backdrop of his friends’ cheers, Kun gives himself over entirely to the music. He closes his eyes, letting the beat flow through his body, and lets loose like he never has before.

When he next opens his eyes, though, he realises that he’s been separated from his friends.

Kun should probably be wary. He’s in an unfamiliar club full of supernaturals, alone and utterly human, but the pixie dust waters down his sense of self-preservation into practically nothing. Kun blinks slowly as he sways on the spot, tiptoeing to peer over the tops of the heads of the supernaturals around him.

“Sicheng?” he calls. “Yangyang?”

No one hears him over the blaring music, of course. Kun feels his mouth push out into a pout, and drops back down to his heels. He doesn’t want to move, he was having such a lovely time dancing, but he thinks he saw one of the werewolves looking at him, and he’s not interested in that beefcake. He should probably go find his friends, right? Yeah. Yeah, he should probably find his friends.

So Kun picks a random direction, steps forwards and promptly collides with someone.

He rocks back on his heels. “Sorry ‒ ”

“Oh, honey, don’t worry about it,” the person says, voice silky smooth and velvet soft, and something in Kun tenses.

He slowly turns his head. Kun squints through the darkness, trying to see who he’s bumped into. A second later, one of the spotlights arcs in their direction, illuminating the stranger’s face, and Kun sees who it is.

For the third time that night, Kun’s mouth falls open of its own accord.

“Chittaphon?”

😈

Kun is right. It is his co-worker.

But also… not?

Chittaphon looks different. Drastically different. His hair, usually worn long, is cropped close to his head and styled in effortless waves that must have, in reality, taken hours. Gone, too, are the unflattering clothes Kun’s colleagues had made fun of. A sleek black top with artfully-placed mesh panels hugs Chittaphon’s slender frame, leaving nothing to the imagination, and a pair of leather pants hangs low on his hips. His skin, so pallid under the harsh fluorescent lights of the lab, is melted caramel here, glistening with glitter and a light sheen of sweat.

The biggest departure from Chittaphon’s usual appearance, though, is that his dull brown eyes are now an odd, piercing shade of blue.

Kun is momentarily struck dumb. “Uh, wow,” he says, “fancy running into you here,” and Chittaphon tilts his head.

“Sorry, honey, have we met before?”

Kun is thrown off-balance. What does he mean, have they met before?

Hang on. Does Chittaphon have a twin? A doppelganger? That would explain the frown on Chittaphon’s face right now. Or maybe Sicheng was right, and Kun really should have gone easy on the pixie dust. Because now his eyes and ears are playing tricks, masterful tricks, on him so that he sees his mean, no-nonsense co-worker walking around a random club looking like ‒ well, looking pretty damn hot ‒

Kun squashes the thought instantly.

“Sorry,” he says, flustered, “you just look like someone I work with ‒ ” and recognition washes over Chittaphon’s face.

“Oh, right! Kun, was it? The one who keeps messing up the petri dishes?”

Kun, who had been backing away, stops. He glances at Chittaphon, surprised and offended all at once.

“I’ve been improving,” he says, just a touch defensive, and Chittaphon laughs.

“Of course you are. He doesn’t say it, but he thinks so, too.”

“Who?”

“Oh.” Chittaphon smiles secretively. “A mutual friend.”

Kun has completely lost the plot. He waits for Chittaphon to elaborate, but he just keeps smiling that odd smile, fixed and unmoving. Kun is both intrigued and unnerved.

“So, um, Chittaphon ‒ ”

“It’s Ten, actually,” Chittaphon interrupts. He’s still smiling. “Here, it’s Ten.”

Oh god. Is this a role-playing thing? Has Kun just accidentally stumbled onto his lab partner’s preferred weekend activity? Not that Kun is judging ‒ really, he swears ‒ but there’s no way this isn’t weird. Running into a co-worker in the wild is already bad enough, but in a club? Where they’re dressed to impress and on the prowl?

At least it would explain why Chittaphon looks so different tonight. Like, he’s cut off all his hair, and Kun didn't know they made contacts that blue. He must be really committed to the bit.

So, partly because he’s a decent human being and partly because he doesn’t want Chittaphon to skin him alive come Monday morning, Kun decides to play along.

“Okay.” Kun pauses, then tacks on, “Ten.”

Ten’s smile widens. It looks almost feral.

“So, wanna dance?”

It takes several seconds for Kun to realise that Ten is talking to him.

“With me?” he blurts out, and then immediately wants to smack himself for how monumentally uncool he sounds. “Uh ‒ sure?”

It only occurs to Kun when Ten takes a step forward that maybe he doesn’t have the purest of intentions. It’s clear from his outfit that Ten wants one thing tonight, and one thing only. Kun should be flattered that Ten had asked him to dance ‒ he keeps himself in shape, and he showers at least once a day ‒ but, like, he’s more than just a piece of meat. Ten also hasn’t exactly been the friendliest person to him since he started his job. Kun doesn’t know how to feel about all of this.

But then Ten winds his arms around Kun’s neck, pressing himself flush against his body, and Kun knows exactly how he feels about that.

Ten peers up at him through his lashes. “Is this okay?”

“Uh,” Kun says, valiantly trying and failing to get his mind out of the gutter.

It's a less than enthusiastic response, but the way Ten smiles up at him prettily makes Kun forget all about the red flags that this situation is raising. Ten, a distant, sober part of Kun’s mind registers, is actually really attractive. Who knew that those loose-fit sweatshirts were hiding a body that lithe, or that his bangs were shrouding a face that delicate? Who cares that canoodling in a club might be an HR violation? Who cares that Ten is really Chittaphon, who normally can't tolerate Kun, in disguise?

He seems to be tolerating Kun well enough now. The music throbs all around them, gritty and dirty. Ten begins to move in time with it, his arms still slung in a loose circle around Kun’s neck, and it might be Kun’s woozy, drug-fuelled haze, but he swears Ten’s putting on a show. Ten lolls his head to the side, and Kun gets a front-row view to the gorgeous line of his throat. His breath comes out in hot puffs that tickle the side of Kun’s neck, and Kun’s nerve endings light up with anticipation and electricity. More than once, their eyes meet, Ten’s half-lidded gaze heated and alluring, and when he wets his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue, Kun almost forgets to breathe.

He couldn’t look away even if he wanted to. Ten doesn’t just look like sex; he is sex.

Then, as the song swells into a chorus, Ten’s hand deliberately trails down Kun's chest. Kun is so startled that he jerks backwards, and almost crashes into a floating tray of drinks.

Ten grabs him before he can make a mess. “Careful there,” he giggles. “That’s not how I wanna get you wet tonight.”

Kun blushes furiously at the innuendo. He hopes to god Ten can’t see it in the dim lighting. “Sorry. I’m not used to it. It’s, uh, my first time here.”

“Is it?” For some reason, Ten seems amused by that. “And what do you like about this place so far?”

“Um.” Kun wracks his brain. Fuck. His heart is beating like crazy. The pixie dust is making it really hard to think. “You?”

It’s the right thing to say. Ten makes a shrill, delighted noise. The hand still draped over Kun’s shoulder curls around the back of his neck, sharp nails digging into his skin.

“Cute,” he coos. “I could eat you right up.”

Something in Kun clenches. At the same time, another spotlight glances over Ten’s face, and his blue eyes seem to sharpen.

“You like that? You like it when I call you cute?”

How did he know? Kun ducks his head, embarrassed. “It’s alright, I guess.”

“What about handsome? Because you are, you know.” Kun feels the prick of something sharp beneath his chin and finds his head being tilted up by Ten. “God, your face. Loveliest I’ve seen in a human.”

“Thanks,” Kun says stupidly. “You’re very pretty, too.”

Ten’s answering laugh tinkles like wind chimes. “I know.”

They continue to dance, little more than swaying on the spot. Ten keeps looking up at Kun, then away, something teasing in his gaze, something knowing. The intensity of his stare makes Kun’s insides twist. As the song winds down, Ten pulls himself closer, chin tilted up, eyelashes fluttering, and desire flashes through Kun.

He licks his lips, nervous. “Can I ‒ can I kiss you?”

A smile spreads across Ten’s face, slow and syrupy.

“I was so hoping you’d ask,” he breathes, and leans up to press his lips against Kun’s.

It’s not Kun’s first kiss, but it’s by far the best. At the first touch of their lips, sparks fly and scatter throughout Kun’s body, lighting him up like a livewire. He can’t help but gasp at the sensation, and Ten takes advantage of it; he takes Kun’s lower lip between his teeth, and at Kun’s second gasp, slips his tongue inside. Ten takes Kun’s chin in his hand, tilting his head to his liking, and kisses him with a single-minded focus that he usually reserves for his petri dishes. Somehow, Kun can’t find it in himself to care about the comparison. It’s just so fucking sexy, the way Ten knows what he wants and takes the lead, and Kun is helpless to do anything but follow. Every brush of their lips, every twist of their tongues, every touch sends another wave of pleasure, charged and coiled and warm, throughout Kun’s body. He gives himself over to Ten’s hungry, insistent mouth, and slowly but surely sinks into an ocean of mounting desire.

The tiny, sober part of Kun’s brain, though, is wondering what the fuck is going on. Do he and Ten have some kind of amazing animal magnetism? Is the pixie dust elevating the experience? Or has it just been that long since Kun got laid, and anything and everything ‒ including his colleague in role play ‒ is turning him on?

Ten makes a frustrated sound. “Stop thinking so much,” he orders, and does something with his tongue that has Kun ascending to a higher plane.

You know what? Kun thinks, dazed. Never mind. Who gives a fuck if it’s chemistry, or the supernatural shit he ingested, or latent horniness. The things that Ten is doing to him are unlike anything he’s ever felt before. They are not of this realm. They go beyond mere human comprehension. Ten kisses him with a growing sense of urgency, and the heat coursing through Kun’s body flares, his lust condensing into a visceral ache. Crowded in a humid room, a song from the eighties blaring from the speakers, Kun feels like he’s melting into a puddle and lighting himself on fire at the altar of Ten’s feet all at once. He wants. He wants more.

Then, as if he read his mind, Ten’s lips brush the shell of his ear.

“Wanna get out of here?” he breathes, and Kun nods so fast he thinks his neck might snap.

Getting out of here means going into the alley behind the club. It’s illuminated by a lone streetlamp, but the light isn’t doing the location any favours. Kun barely has time to take in the overflowing garbage disposal, or the dirty ground, when, in a surprising show of strength, Ten shoves him up against the graffitied wall. All thoughts about the less-than-sanitary conditions of their chosen spot fly out the window when Ten recaptures his lips and moves down to his neck, teeth scraping against the thin skin.

“You smell amazing,” he tells Kun.

Kun is so distracted that the compliment doesn’t immediately register. “I do?”

“Delicious.” Ten places his nose next to Kun’s pulse point, inhaling. “Like spun sugar, god.”

The top note of Kun’s perfume is sandalwood. He turns his head, opening his mouth to correct Ten, only to have him crash their mouths together. Ten kisses him like he’s ready to devour him whole, shamelessly feeling him up now that they’re alone. He sucks bruises into Kun’s neck, rucks up his button-up to trail a hand down his chest and abs, and grabs and kneads his ass. All Kun can do is cling onto Ten and try to keep up, but when he pushes their crotches together, Kun can’t quieten the moan that escapes from his mouth.

“So pretty,” Ten purrs. “Make that sound again.”

Kun obeys, and then again, and then again, because Ten makes him, draws these sounds out of him unbidden. Plus, the louder Kun is, the more Ten seems to like it, and the hotter it becomes. Ten presses Kun back into the wall, slotting his thigh in between Kun’s legs, trailing wet, sloppy kisses from Kun’s mouth to his neck and back again. Kun’s been hard since the club, but he can feel the outline of Ten’s desire against his thigh, growing with each undulation of his hips. Lust settles like a fog around Kun’s head, thick and potent, and when Ten begins to undo Kun’s belt, it takes all of Kun’s willpower not to drop to his knees right there and then.

“Um,” he gasps. “My place is ‒ it’s not far ‒ ”

“Hm? Oh, no, honey, we’re fine here,” Ten says, and slides a hand down the front of Kun’s jeans to cup his cock.

A frisson of want rocks through him. Kun gasps, and the back of his head thunks into the brick.

“Fuck ‒ ”

“Finally.” Ten sounds ‒ relieved? “God, I’m so hungry.”

Kun doesn’t have time to ask what he means by that, because Ten starts stroking him through his underwear. Ten must have a midas touch for cocks, or something, because heat doesn’t just pool in Kun’s belly ‒ it rises like a tsunami, roiling and coiling and so intense that Kun feels it everywhere, his lust and want dredged up from his very core to burn him up from the inside out.

Then, just when Kun is about to come in his pants like a teenager, Ten leans up and kisses him.

It’s nothing like the others they’ve shared. No; this kiss is everything Sicheng’s secret stash of romance novels could ever dream about describing. It’s breath-stealing. Dizzying. All-consuming.

But not in an entirely sexy way.

Kun feels like all the air is being sucked out of his lungs. No, not just air ‒ his warmth, his desire, his very essence. The feeling of weightlessness multiplies tenfold, and the cloud of pixie dust that’s started to lift descends once again.

Something is wrong.

“Hey,” Kun mumbles, words muffled against Ten’s lips. “What…?”

He tries to twist his wrists out of Ten’s grip, but Ten just tightens his hold and pushes Kun backwards. Kun goes with an oomph, the exposed brick rough against the back of his hands. Under ordinary circumstances, it would be hot ‒ is still hot, with the way his cock traitorously twitches ‒ but Kun’s heart is racing for all the wrong reasons. He feels dizzier than ever. His ears fill with the beat of his own blood, and something more ominous: a low, feral growl that seems to be coming from Ten’s throat.

Oh, god.

Something is very, very wrong.

Terror begins to bloom in Kun’s chest. He tries to struggle, but it’s no use; he’s got no strength. In the meantime, Ten kisses him, mouth insistent and hot and demanding. But kiss doesn’t feel quite right; it’s the wrong word for what they’re doing. What Ten is doing is taking, consuming, devouring, and Kun ‒ gullible, stupid Kun ‒ is utterly helpless to stop it.

The longer Ten kisses him, the weaker Kun feels. His body gradually goes limp. Black spots appear in his vision. Nausea builds in his belly, claws its way into his throat. He’s so light-headed that one push, one shove, and he thinks he’ll shatter into pieces.

Then, finally, mercifully, Ten breaks the kiss with a smack.

He withdraws his hand from Kun’s jeans, and releases his grip on his wrists. Without Ten holding him up for support, Kun lists backwards, and slides down the wall.

“What…” Kun’s chest clenches around nothing. Every word is an effort. “What did you do to me?”

Ten tsks. In the blink of an eye, his whole demeanour has changed. Gone is the man who had so efficiently and ruthlessly seduced Kun; now, Ten looks down at Kun dispassionately, his expression bored.

“Silly boy,” he says, voice dripping with disdain. “Didn’t your parents ever warn you about stranger danger?”

Kun struggles to hold himself up. It’s a difficult feat; what little of his legs he can feel, feel like jelly. The rest of his body is heavy and numb. His vision, already compromised, begins to swim.

Kun’s words come out in a slur. “But you’re… you’re not…”

You’re not a stranger, Kun wants to say, but he’s beginning to realise that’s not quite right. There’s no warmth in Ten’s eyes. No familiarity. No, just a vacant sort of pity that flickers, then disappears when Ten takes a step back. Haloed by the light of the lone streetlamp, he looks radiant; he looks like something not of this world.

“It’s really too bad,” Kun hears Ten sigh. “And you were just starting to grow on him, too.”

The last thing Kun sees is a pair of cold blue eyes, and then everything goes black.

😈

Something is moving.

Kun, still halfway between wakefulness and sleep, mumbles out a curse. Maybe if he squeezes his eyes shut tight, it’ll go away, and he’ll be able to pass out again.

No such luck. The moving stops for a little bit, then starts up again. It takes several seconds for Kun to realise that the movement is his phone vibrating with an incoming call, and several more for him to grope around his mattress to locate it.

He answers the phone with his eyes still shut. “Hello?”

“Kun!” It’s Sicheng. “Are you okay? Where have you been?”

“I’m fine.” Kun is not. His head feels stuffed with cotton wool; his mouth is bone-dry. “What’s going on?”

“Where are you?” Sicheng demands, and Kun frowns at his agitated tone.

“My room? I just woke up.”

“Your ‒ ” Sicheng sucks in a breath. “You just woke up? I’ve been worried sick!”

For someone who rarely raises his voice, this is Sicheng’s equivalent to yelling. Kun cranks an eye open. A tiny ray of light peeks through a gap in his curtains from an angle that means it’s already morning.

“What? Why?”

“I’ve been calling you non-stop for the past day!”

Kun shoves his blanket off and climbs out of bed, wincing. There’s a slight throbbing pain in his temple, and his body is surprisingly sore. One night out and he already feels like shit. Is age catching up to him already?

“Relax,” he says, stumbling over to the window. He draws the curtains open, grimacing at the sudden burst of light. “I just saw you last night.”

“Huh? Kun, it’s Monday.”

“Monday?” Kun wheels around. “What’re you talking ‒ ”

That’s when he catches sight of his laptop. Specifically, the date showing on its screen. Sicheng’s right. It is Monday.

It’s Monday, and he’s going to be late for his shift at the lab.

“Oh,” Kun realises. “Shit.”

“Wait.” Sicheng’s voice grows suspicious. “Were you passed out all of yesterday? I knew Yangyang’s pixie dust drinks were bad news ‒ ”

“Fuck, Sicheng, I gotta go. I’ll call you back later, okay?” Kun says, speech rapidfire, and hangs up.

He races through his morning routine, brushing his teeth and combing his hair at the same time. He makes it to the lab in under fifteen minutes. Sure, he hasn’t showered, and he’s pretty sure he’s worn two different socks, but at least he’s here. If he times it right, no one will spot him sneaking in late.

Kun tiptoes up to the door, peering through the small panel of glass. He can see his colleagues seated at their stations, heads down as they work. Everyone seems to be accounted for.

Everyone except for ‒

“What are you doing?”

Kun jumps about a mile into the air. Chittaphon stands behind him, already in his lab coat, his arms folded and wearing that pinched expression that seems to be expressly reserved for Kun.

“Sorry,” Kun says instinctively, even though there’s nothing to apologise for, really. “I ‒ ”

“You’re late,” Chittaphon says. Kun opens his mouth again to apologise, but then Chittaphon’s nose wrinkles delicately. “And what’s that smell?”

Kun snaps his mouth shut.

“Um. Well, it’s kind of a long story ‒ ” he begins, but Chittaphon cuts him off.

“I don’t have time to hear it. We just received a new shipment of samples that need to be tested by the end of the week, so we’d better get started.”

He sweeps past Kun into the lab. Kun hangs back for a second, sniffing his shirt discreetly. He doesn’t smell that bad, right? Right?

“Kun!” comes Chittaphon’s voice, annoyed, and Kun inwardly groans and traipses into the lab.

Here’s the thing: lab work is boring. As a newbie, the tasks he’s been assigned are relatively repetitive and low-stakes, ranging from paperwork to taking out the trash to spreading slimy samples across petri dishes. Chittaphon watches him inoculate for a bit before leaving with what might have been an approving hum (aha, Kun thinks triumphantly, I am improving), but again, it doesn’t take much cognitive effort on his part, and so his mind wanders.

Specifically, to what happened over the weekend.

He remembers Sicheng picking him up at his dorm on Saturday night. He remembers them waiting in line to the club, grabbing a couple of drinks, and bumping into Yangyang. And then ‒ nothing. It’s all a blank.

Maybe there’s something on his phone that can fill in the gaps?

After making sure that Chittaphon is busy talking to another one of the lab assistants, Kun sets down the inoculating wand and pulls out his phone. In the mad rush to leave for work, he hadn’t had time to check his notifications, but what he sees now makes his brow crease in confusion.

Thirty missed calls from Sicheng. Twice as many texts and DMs from him, most of them variations of Where the hell are you and Please don’t tell me you’re dead and one If you don’t text me back, I’m going to make missing posters with the most unflattering photo of you I can find.

Kun shakes his head. It’s not like him to abandon his friends on a night out; no wonder Sicheng was worried sick. He resolves to bake a bunch of pineapple buns for him as an apology, when he spies a text buried in the flurry of Sicheng’s messages that he’d scrolled past.

It’s from Yangyang.

so who was the blue-eyed hottie? don’t worry, i won’t tell sicheng hahaha

Hottie? What blue-eyed ‒

Kun goes rigid. All at once, the events of Saturday night at the club catch up to him.

The pixie dust drinks. The dancing. Chittaphon.

No ‒ Ten.

The sound of glass shattering causes everyone’s heads to turn. Belatedly, Kun realises that the petri dish he’d been holding onto has slipped from his grip and fallen to the floor. He feels his face turn red. Mumbling a quick apology, he runs to get the broom and dustpan, only to be confronted with the object of his current freak-out waiting for him.

“Kun,” Chittaphon says, face stony. “Care to explain what happened?”

Kun would love to, but he can’t. Not when the memories of what transpired between him and his co-worker are crashing into him with the force of a bullet train. Not when he remembers how Chittaphon, or his alter ego, had basically done something to him and his body that definitely wasn’t within the realm of normal. Not when the one thing that he recalls with a startling clarity is the sheer terror he had felt looking up at Chittaphon as he lay on the filthy, cold ground, vulnerable in every sense of the word.

Chittaphon’s eyes were blue then. Today, they’re a muddy brown.

Those very same eyes blink. “Are you alright? You don’t look so well.”

A stunning observation. Kun’s palms have gone clammy. His chest feels tight.

Chittaphon’s forehead creases. “Kun?” he says, and Kun’s stomach rolls.

“I need ‒ I need some air,” he manages, and, turning on his heel, flees from the lab.

He walks as quickly as he can, breaking out into a run when he hears the lab door open behind him and someone call out his name. Letting his feet lead him, Kun runs outside, feeling the fresh, warm air caress his face. He has no time to appreciate the pleasant weather, though; he sprints down the stairs and across the street, his legs feeling like they’re about to give out from under him. Kun doesn’t stop until his breath can no longer keep up with him. He doubles over, wheezing, hands on his knees and trying to process what he’s just remembered.

Who is Chittaphon? Who is Ten? And more importantly ‒ what did they do to him?

“Kun? Are you ‒ ”

Kun yelps and jumps. When he straightens, he realises that Chittaphon has followed him. Instinctively, he backs away.

“Stay back!”

“What?”

“You heard me! Don’t ‒ don’t come any closer!”

Chittaphon’s eyes widen at Kun’s agitated tone. He holds his hands out, as if to show that he’s not a threat. Kun could scoff if he weren’t so scared. He knows better now.

“I’m not going to,” Chittaphon says, voice low and soothing, as if trying to coax a frightened animal. “Did you take something? Is there anyone that I can call?”

“Did I take something?” It’s intended to come out sarcastically, but Kun’s shaking so hard that his voice wavers. “Just whatever you gave to me on Saturday night!”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t pretend like you don’t know! Saturday night, at After Midnight. We ‒ we…”

Kun, suddenly, and in the middle of his panic-induced hysteria, is hit by a wave of awkwardness. Because how is he supposed to describe hooking up with his co-worker (which surely must be frowned-upon), with said co-worker?

Chittaphon, on the other hand, looks completely lost.

“We what?”

“We…” Kun dithers, swallowing thickly. “... danced.”

He’s not convincing anybody with that tone. Chittaphon’s eyes draw into a V, and Kun cowers. He wonders what Chittaphon is going to do to him now. It’s broad daylight, but horrible crimes have been committed even in the day. Kun just hopes that it’s at least quick, and painless ‒

“You must be mistaken.”

Wait. What?

“Huh?”

“You heard me,” Chittaphon says. “I’ve never been there in my life.”

Kun almost laughs in disbelief. What a bald-faced lie. Surely he must be joking.

One look at Chittaphon’s face, though, tells Kun otherwise, and any semblance of humour fades away.

“That’s ‒ what’re you talking about? I saw you. We bumped into each other on the dancefloor, and then you dragged me outside to ‒ to ‒ ”

“To what?” Chittaphon asks. His voice has gone from perplexed to irritated. “I just said ‒ ”

Kun is so appalled at the blatant denial that he bursts.

“You ‒ you pinned me up against the wall! You held me down! You did something to me!”

Kun’s voice climbs in pitch and volume, sharp and accusatory, cracking on the last word. Passersby on the street turn to look at them. A flock of birds startle from a nearby tree, taking flight to a cacophony of chirps and squawks.

Chittaphon, meanwhile, remains unfazed by Kun’s outburst. He stares at Kun, long and hard.

“Kun,” he says at last. “Are you on drugs?”

Kun chokes, because what the fuck?

“What? No!”

“Because the employee handbook clearly states that you can’t work if you’re drunk, or high, or otherwise incapacitated. If you need a refresher on the rules, I’m happy to ‒ ”

“I am not drunk, or high, or ‒ or any of the above!”

“Your behaviour suggests otherwise,” Chittaphon says in that mild, soothing, utterly aggravating tone, and Kun is seized with the urge to tear out his own hair.

“You were there! I swear you were there.”

“And I swear I wasn’t.” Chittaphon fixes him with a piercing look, and Kun is violently reminded of the way Ten had looked at him when they first met. “You are aware that there are shapeshifters present on campus, right?”

Kun’s heart thuds to a stop. Shapeshifters? Of course ‒ he’s a fucking cryptozoologist. Why hadn’t that occurred to him in the first place?

“Yes, but ‒ ”

“Maybe someone thought it would be fun to parade around in my likeness for the evening. Have you ever thought about that?”

Chittaphon raises an eyebrow, challenging, and Kun realises ‒ no. He hadn’t thought about that.

Embarrassment flashes all the way down to his soul. “Well ‒ no, but…”

Kun hesitates. His brain whirs, trying to recall his first-year subjects. Shapeshifters couldn’t suck the living life out of their prey, could they? And at the club, didn’t Ten recognise him? Or was he remembering that wrong, too?

Seeing his perturbation, Chittaphon sighs.

“You know what? Take the rest of the day off. Come back when you’re feeling better.”

Wrapped up in his thoughts, Kun doesn’t even notice when Chittaphon reaches out a hesitant hand as if to pat his shoulder, only to pull it back at the last second. With one last troubled look in his direction, Chittaphon goes back inside, leaving Kun doubtful, distressed, and ‒ concerningly ‒ more intrigued than ever before.

😈

For the rest of the week, Kun assiduously and obsessively spies on Chittaphon from afar.

He feels slightly guilty at not coming in to work, but Chittaphon said to come back when he was feeling better, and he’s not. Feeling better, that is. He’s still pretty jumpy, and sometimes when he’s just about to fall asleep, a pair of icy blue eyes pops, unbidden, into his consciousness. And, okay, maybe Kun should be at home recovering from his mildly traumatic event, but how can he sit still while knowing that his boss might be a man-eating, soul-sucking creature in disguise, mingling with unsuspecting victims entirely unchecked?

So Kun follows (read: stalks) Chittaphon.

Chittaphon’s routine is like clockwork. Each day, he arrives at the building where they work exactly ten minutes before nine. Aside from eating lunch for half an hour under the shade of the tree Kun hides behind when watching him arrive at work (Kun has to hide in the shrubs for this part), Chittaphon remains in the building for the whole day. He leaves between seven to eight, walking home to his apartment that is conveniently located on the ground floor, and which offers Kun an all-access view into his combined living-dining-kitchen area which is overrun by three cats and their cat towers.

Kun kind of feels like Nancy Drew, if Nancy Drew were also a creep.

Disappointingly, there’s nothing out of the ordinary. Chittaphon still eats lunch alone, and still ignores the mean-spirited whispers that trail after him, and which even Kun can overhear from the bushes. He eats dinner at home, then spends an inordinate amount of time playing with his cats and brushing their fur. Chittaphon goes to bed before midnight each night, which is kind of early, but at least it leaves Kun free to catch the last bus home. The wildest thing Kun sees Chittaphon do is yell animatedly at an episode of a trashy dating show, and even that isn’t suspicious, because Kun, bored, also can’t help but watch along, and he agrees: one of the guys is a real prick.

The only difference, which wouldn’t have been noticeable if Kun weren’t paying close attention, is how Chittaphon looks. As the week goes on, the cheeks of his face grow sunken. His skin takes on a sickly pallor. Kun wonders if Chittaphon’s caught a bug, or something, but he doesn’t see him taking any medicine, or blowing his nose or whatever.

Friday night sees another uneventful stake-out. Chittaphon had gone to bed earlier than usual, shutting the door behind him and leaving his cats outside. The smallest one ‒ Levi, Kun thinks ‒ had mewled loudly, scratching at the door, and Kun had waited to see what would happen. After several minutes, though, the door remained firmly shut. Figuring Chittaphon must have fallen asleep, Kun had gotten up and left.

On the bus ride home, he thinks.

Hypothesis: Chittaphon is human, and Ten had been a role-playing alter ego that he refuses to acknowledge in public. The evidence? Chittaphon’s denial of ever being at the club. His perfectly normal, non-supernatural life playing out under Kun’s close watch. It would’ve also been easy for Chittaphon to change up his look with a wig or contacts.

On closer inspection, though, this theory doesn’t hold up: it doesn’t explain how Ten had rendered Kun a weak-kneed mess in a sexy and unsexy way, and so quickly (despite what Sicheng says, Kun refuses to believe that he’s just that horny). Kun’s gut (unscientific, yes, but it’s there for a reason) is also telling him that Chittaphon was telling the truth when he said he’d never been to the club before, and, honestly? Someone like Chittaphon would never dream of setting foot there.

Okay. Alternative hypothesis, as suggested by Chittaphon: it was a shapeshifter. Plausible in theory, but not in reality. Kun is certain that Ten had recognised him. And if it was some random shapeshifter, they wouldn’t have known who Kun was, or his infamous manhandling of petri dishes.

Alternative alternative hypothesis: Chittaphon is telling the truth, and he’s not Ten. Ten is someone ‒ or something ‒ else entirely.

Call it scientific curiosity, or call it what it is (stupidity), but Kun is determined to get to the bottom of it.

Which is how he finds himself back at After Midnight the following evening, alone.

And, humiliatingly, being denied entry.

“C’mon, I was here last week!”

The bouncer is the same dwarf giant Kun had seen on his first visit. He ignores Kun, waving a posse of drunken witches through. Kun, who’s been standing in line for an hour, seethes. He didn’t even ask to see their IDs, what the fuck!

Kun tries again. “I was with my friend, remember? Sicheng? Tall, willowy, has an ear that looks like an elf’s, despite having no blood relation to them at all?”

Judging by the bouncer’s stony look, he either doesn’t remember, or doesn’t care.

“Listen,” Kun says, frustration growing. “I’m looking for someone. I just need to go inside for, like, ten minutes, I swear, and then I’ll leave ‒ ”

“Excuse me,” a snippy voice says. “Are you quite finished? Some of us actually want to go inside.”

Kun turns around, ready to give whoever is so rude to interrupt him a piece of his mind, but the words dissolve like ash on his tongue. Standing there is the most gorgeous person Kun’s ever laid his eyes on. Hair a little long, slightly tousled. Tattoos of butterflies and words too small for Kun to make out running up and down his arms. He’s wearing a slinky sheer top that shimmers like the surface of a restless lake. His lips look kiss-bitten, a pretty, attractive scarlet, and topping it all off is dark eyeshadow smoked out to frame a pair of crystal eyes.

Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.

“You,” Kun says menacingly, and Ten blinks.

“Me? Hey, what ‒ oof!”

Kun knows better than to make a scene in public, so he grabs Ten by the wrist and drags him out of the queue and away from the crowd. Ten’s petite enough that he goes easily, trailing behind Kun until he stops, about a block from the club.

“What did you do to me?” Kun accuses, and Ten’s eyes, which had looked vacant, light up in recognition.

“Oh, it’s you. So sorry, you looked different the last time. You feeling okay? Now, you look kind of… scruffy. ”

His eyes linger on Kun’s beat-up sneakers and the ketchup stain on his sweatshirt. Kun, whose patience has already been tested enough times tonight, feels even more aggrieved.

“No, I’m not feeling okay! No thanks to you.”

“Oh?”

“I’m not going to ask again,” Kun says in his most authoritative voice. He takes a step forward, crowding Ten against the brick wall. “The other night. What did you do to me?”

Unfortunately, Ten doesn’t seem the least bit intimidated.

“Shoving me up a wall?” He visibly fights down a smile, and Kun wonders how someone so annoying can be so attractive. “Why, I’m flattered ‒ I’ve never had anyone come back for more.”

“Shut up! I’m not ‒ I don’t want more.”

That’s not entirely true. He’s been in Ten’s presence for less than two minutes, but inexplicably, Kun already feels drawn towards him like a compass needle pointing north. There’s something just so magnetic about Ten ‒ the way he leans against the brick wall despite being dragged here by Kun, as casual as anything. The arrogant tilt of his head as he surveys Kun through half-closed eyes that have been smoked out to sultry perfection. The smirk that now spreads slow and easy across his face as he watches Kun watching him, equally aggravating and inviting. There must be at least an arm’s length between them, but to Kun, it feels like Ten’s smouldering gaze is as tangible as a caress.

In an effort to cull his swell of desire, Kun’s eyes dip. They linger on the body glitter dancing along the column of his neck, trail down Ten’s svelte body visible through the metallic fabric, and his stomach swoops so suddenly it feels like a physical tug.

In his periphery, Kun sees Ten’s smile widen.

“Are you sure about that, honey?”

Ten steps forward. At this distance, Kun can count each mole scattered across Ten’s neck. He looks downright delectable, a special treat wrapped up in the prettiest silver foil, body open to receive Kun. The memory of how Ten tastes floods his mouth, and, heart picking up in speed, Kun’s lips part of their own accord.

Then he catches a knowing glint in Ten’s eye, and abruptly comes to his senses. Kun rears back.

Or at least, he tries to.

Because ‒ and there’s no other word for it ‒ Kun’s stuck.

He literally cannot move. The lower half of his body remains frozen in place, rendered immobile by some unseen force. Kun, taken aback, tries to swing his legs into motion. His feet don’t move an inch.

“And where do you think you’re going?” comes Ten’s voice. “We were just starting to have some fun.”

Kun jerks his head up. Ten looks slightly miffed, his lips pursed in a pout. One of his hands is extended towards Kun, his fingers trembling with exertion, and that’s when Kun puts two and two together.

“This is ‒ this is you?”

“Fun party trick, huh?” Ten says proudly, and has the audacity to wink.

Kun is not feeling particularly flirtatious right now. Ten is turning out to be a lot more dangerous than he thought ‒ seducing people is one thing, but controlling them? It suddenly occurs to Kun that as much as making a scene in front of strangers was bad, going off with Ten is a million times worse. Because now he’s alone, the proverbial fly stuck in the honey, at the mercy of someone unquestionably beautiful, and unquestionably dangerous.

This is fucked up. This is beyond fucked up.

“How are you ‒ ” Kun swallows his rising panic. “You couldn’t ‒ you can’t ‒ ”

“I could, and I can.” The corners of Ten’s mouth curl up. “What’s wrong, babe? Don’t tell me that you’ve got that pretty little head of yours all in a tizzy.”

Ten reaches out to stroke Kun’s hair. Kun leans back as far as he can, his fight or flight instinct coming out with claws.

“Don’t ‒ don’t you dare touch me ‒ ”

Ten’s smile fades. “Excuse me? You were practically begging for it last week. You were practically begging for it just now.”

“That was before you completely fucked me up, you freak ‒ ”

The second that word is out of his mouth, Kun’s entire body seizes up.

His breath escapes his lungs in a pitiful wheeze. Kun struggles against the invisible bonds uselessly, and flinches at the expression on Ten’s face. The look in his eyes could freeze hell.

“Oh, no,” Ten says quietly. “Don’t go turning this around on me.”

“What ‒ ” Kun’s voice catches on the growing branches of his dread. “What’s happening?”

“You know what I hate about you people? Nothing is ever your fault.”

Ten twists his wrist, and Kun’s body sways with the movement. He feels like a marionette, limbs hanging heavy and hapless as Ten puppeteers him. Ten flicks his hand, and Kun swings wildly to the right. Fear and a lack of breath begin to constrict his chest.

“You are so entitled. You take and take without ever thinking about anyone else. Not so fun when it’s me taking it, is it?”

Ten flicks his hand again, this time causing Kun to swing left. The movement causes Kun to stumble into the brick wall he’d crowded Ten up against, and knocks all of his remaining breath out of him.

“Let me go ‒ Ten, let me ‒ ”

“Do you think it’s fun, going out night after night trying to sustain myself? Do you think I deserve this?”

“Ten,” Kun gasps. “Ten, I can’t breathe.”

Ten doesn’t seem to be paying him any attention. “He certainly doesn’t ‒ hell, he doesn’t know,” he’s saying, frustration palpable. “And he shouldn’t have to.”

Kun has no fucking idea what he’s talking about. He’s got bigger problems to worry about. It feels like vines have wrapped around his torso, thorns digging into his flesh. He’s growing light-headed. Above, Ten looms over him, looking heaven-sent in that outfit. Kun had always imagined angels, if they existed, to be harrowingly beautiful; even more so when they were an angel of death.

“Please, I ‒ ” Kun’s throat feels like sandpaper. His voice is less sound, more air. “Please. Please, Chittaphon ‒ ”

All of a sudden, the pressure around Kun’s body disappears, and he crumples to the ground. Oxygen, sweet and burning like hellfire, rushes into his lungs. He claws at his throat, relishing the rawness, eyes watering and spilling over to darken the pavement beneath his hands and feet as adrenaline roars through his veins. For a few seconds, all he can concentrate on is the steady beat of his heart ‒ a sign of life, and what this encounter had almost cost him.

Eventually, Kun raises his head and asks in a ruined voice, “What are you?”

Above him, Ten looks stricken. He glances down at his hands, and Kun sees that they’re trembling. But then Kun blinks his tears away, and the next thing he knows, Ten’s face has pulled back into a snarl.

Ten crouches down and takes Kun’s chin in his hands. His voice is a harsh whisper, but his grip is, oddly and undeniably, gentle.

“Don’t come looking for me again if you know what’s good for you,” Ten says, and then he’s gone.

😈

Okay.

Okay, so that was not Chittaphon.

Because Chittaphon is undeniably human, and that ‒ that Ten thing obviously isn’t.

What Ten is, though, eludes Kun. He pores through old course notes and textbooks to no avail. He goes on the internet, and while he finds creatures possessing characteristics similar to Ten’s, none of them are quite identical to what he can do.

So, at the end of his rope, Kun turns to the one place that has never failed him: the library.

Where, it turns out, it’s not so much of a mystery after all.

“Ah,” Hendery says sagely. “A nightwalker.”

Hendery is the one person in Sicheng’s friend group that Kun hasn’t really gotten the chance to know. He’d been awfully quiet when they first met, which wasn’t due to shyness, as Kun had suspected, but an ill-aimed silencing spell. By their next gathering, the curse had worn off, and Hendery had dominated the night’s karaoke session, rarely letting go of the mic. He was offbeat, and definitely a character, but they didn’t get to see each other much. Aside from slaying at old-school Cantonese ballads, Sicheng had told him, Hendery was busy trying to keep his grade up in his witchcraft classes.

And, as it turns out, moonlighting as a campus librarian during the night shift.

“Sorry, a what?”

“Nightwalker,” Hendery repeats. “Yes, it’s spelt how it sounds. No, the people who coined the name obviously didn’t think about how it kinda sounds like a name for a hooker.”

Kun blinks, surprised. He hadn’t expected such a quick response after relaying, in the vaguest and most non-incriminating terms, what he was looking for.

“Is that a… demon?” he asks uncertainly.

“Close, but not exactly,” Hendery says. He’s not looked Kun in the eye since he walked in, too busy jabbing at his phone’s screen as he crushes some teenagers in League. “You ever heard of Jekyll and Hyde?”

“Isn’t that a storybook?”

“Tsk, Kun-ge, you should know by now that all fiction is rooted in some truth.” Hendery reaches over the counter to boop Kun on the nose without taking his eyes off his game. It’s both patronising and impressive. “Anyway, here’s everything we have on them. There isn’t a lot of information.”

He snaps his fingers, and a small pile of scrolls appears out of thin air. They settle with a thump on the counter, sliding off each other so that Kun has to grab them before they fall to the floor.

“Wow ‒ thanks. How did you ‒ ?”

“We have a really good online catalogue, and sometimes I read through the summaries for fun when the internet is down.” Hendery finally looks up, his gaze suspicious. “Why do you wanna know about nightwalkers, anyway?”

“Um.” Kun waffles. “I thought they could be a good topic for my thesis.”

“The semester just started,” Hendery points out, and Kun begins to sweat.

“Well, it never hurts to get a headstart, right?”

The look on Hendery’s face looks like he’s just sucked a lemon.

“Sure,” he says dubiously. Kun’s pretty sure he hears him say nerd under his breath as he turns away, but he’s just relieved that Hendery seems to have bought his excuse.

Anyway, he’s got bigger fish to fry right now.

The scrolls that Hendery’s pulled for him don’t seem to have been touched in ages. Parts of the strings tying them together crumble at Kun’s touch, and unfurling the scrolls sends up clouds of dusts that have Kun sneezing. They must be ancient, too ‒ everything is written in the archaic language, and Kun finds himself having to pause and open up his dictionary app several times to decipher what a certain character means.

After several painstaking hours, though, Kun knows he’s hit the jackpot.

Psychokinesis. The ability to exude pheromones that lull their prey into a false sense of security. An unusually alluring appearance. Two consciousnesses living in the same body, with one entity present during the day, and the other emerging only at midnight, the former entirely unaware of the latter. Every description of nightwalkers checks all the boxes, matches what Ten can do down to a T. The scrolls even go as far as to hypothesise that the nightwalker is merely an extension of the host ‒ Kun reads the characters for repressed and manifest, but the rest of the writing is too faded to be legible. He frowns, and takes a picture of the scroll. Food for thought for later.

What’s lacking in the material, though, is what exactly nightwalkers must do to survive. Kun is pretty sure that the first night he met Ten was a preview of what that might be. But the scrolls offer little to nothing about the process of feeding, or what kind of food the nightwalker requires to sustain itself. And maybe the reason for that, Kun realises with a chill, is because there are no survivors to tell the tale.

Except for him.

Hendery wanders over Kun’s table just as he finishes reading the last scroll. “How’s it going?”

“Well, actually. Thanks ‒ these were very helpful.”

Hendery cracks a grin. “No problem.”

Kun helps him to roll up the scrolls. “Do you need help putting them back?”

“Nah, man,” Hendery says breezily. “Just one snap of my fingers, and they should be back in the restricted section soon. Look ‒ ”

He clicks his fingers, and the scrolls vanish.

A second later, Kun sees them in the distance over by the reception, where they fall with a clatter to the floor.

Hendery whips around at the sound. “Shit,” he curses, and runs off. By the time Kun catches up to him, he’s busy gathering the scrolls up into his arms, and Kun stoops to help him again.

“Thanks ‒ you can just leave them on the cart over there ‒ ”

Kun grabs an armful of scrolls and deposits them onto the cart Hendery had pointed at. “I’ll get going first. See you at karaoke this weekend?”

“Oh, yeah, I’ll try to be there.” Hendery hesitates. “Hey, Kun-ge?”

Kun, who had just been about to leave, turns back. “Hm?”

“Just a word of advice ‒ if you ever encounter a nightwalker?”

Kun quirks an eyebrow. He waits. Uneasiness creeps into his veins when Hendery’s expression turns unusually serious, and he looks him dead in the eye.

“Run like hell in the opposite direction.”

😈

It’s sound advice.

Ten (and by extension, Chittaphon) is indisputably dangerous. He may have not-so-subtly told Kun to fuck off, but the campus is small; they’ll run into each other again. Kun has to work with Chittaphon, for god’s sake. He should probably hand in his two weeks’ notice, transfer universities, and never see either Ten or Chittaphon ever again.

Instead, it’s a gloomy Monday night, and Kun’s following Chittaphon, making sure to keep twenty paces behind him at all times.

Kun knows how reckless he’s being. The last time he encountered Ten, he almost passed out from suffocation, and the time before that, he had actually passed out. This is a supernatural creature who seems to have no qualms about leaving him for dead. Who’s to say he’ll get a lucky escape a third time?

Except that this isn’t Ten. On his late-night jog, Kun had spied Chittaphon coming out of the 24-hour pharmacy, and promptly ducked behind a tree. From his hiding spot, Kun saw that Chittaphon looked, for lack of a better word, pretty shit. His eyebags were more pronounced than ever, blue bruises pressed under his eyes. His skin had taken on a green tinge. His face looked thinner than ever.

Chittaphon didn’t seem to notice him. He had rummaged around a plastic bag he had with him bearing the pharmacy’s logo, and taken out a blister pack of pills and popped one of them dry. It didn’t seem to sit well with him. Chittaphon had audibly groaned and shivered, burrowing further into the neck of his too-large jacket and pulling up the hood. As he headed in the direction of his home, a hand clutching his stomach, Kun decided that the only responsible thing to do was to make sure he got home alright.

Like, the guy may be a nightwalker, but being sick is no fun.

So far, Chittaphon isn't looking so good. As Kun follows from a safe distance, Chittaphon stumbles several times, his shoes getting caught in the hem of his jeans. At the crosswalk, he leans heavily against the pedestrian traffic light, shoulders rising and falling as he takes deep, controlled breaths. He’s obviously not feeling well. Kun agonises about whether he should reveal himself, but he’s afraid of what might happen ‒ Chittaphon lashing out at him, or Ten making a reappearance ‒ and ultimately caution wins out.

So Kun keeps trailing the nightwalker, and keeps his distance. After a couple of minutes, Chittaphon’s pace slows significantly. His feet start to drag on the pavement. His arms come up to clutch his stomach. He sways as he walks, unsteady.

Then, Chittaphon stops abruptly. Kun stops, too. He warily stares at the back of Chittaphon's still figure, nerves crawling up and down his skin. What’s going on?

In the distance, a church bell tolls. Kun’s head snaps towards the sound. Midnight, he realises.

When he turns back around, it’s just in time to see Chittaphon falling to his knees.

“Chittaphon!”

Kun rushes up to the figure slumped over on the pavement. Chittaphon has fallen onto his side, facing away from Kun. He’s completely still. Worried, Kun crouches down next to him and gently rolls him onto his back.

“Hey ‒ Chittaphon. Can you hear me? Are you okay ‒ ”

Kun cuts off with a gasp. He falls backwards onto his butt. Because, to his shock, it’s no longer Chittaphon lying on the ground.

It’s Ten.

The hair is what gives it away. Earlier, Chittaphon’s hair had been long and a little greasy, but the person lying at Kun’s feet has unstyled hair shorn close to his head. When he inches closer, he sees that Ten’s eyes are open just a smidge, slits of icy blue peeking through.

Other than that, though, and just as the scrolls described, they’re exactly the same. Same faces, same build, same clothes. Even the same sickly pallor, Kun realises. Except maybe it’s worse now ‒ Ten is making tiny, barely-audible noises that sound like he’s in pain, his hands fluttering weakly over his stomach. He doesn’t even acknowledge Kun’s presence. It’s such a far cry from the Ten he’d seen two nights ago, until Kun remembers how his hands had shook and his eyes had looked sort of blank. What if Ten hadn’t been feeling well then, too?

It’s the thought of Ten disguising his illness by painting his face and using clothes as a distraction that spurs him to reach out and touch his shoulder.

“Ten,” Kun says urgently. “Ten, can you hear me?”

Ten groans. His head lolls towards Kun. Recognition flashes across Ten’s eyes, and his mouth twists. Kun can’t tell if he’s glad to see him or not.

“Okay,” Kun says. He has no idea why he’s saying it, but he hopes it sounds reassuring and like he knows what he’s doing, even if he really doesn’t. “Okay, just stay with me. Everything’s going to be alright. I’m just going to call an ambulance ‒ ”

Ten lets out another groan, and manages a weak shake of his head. Kun freezes, his phone halfway out of his pocket, and drops his hand.

Okay. So no ambulance.

“You’re sick,” he tells Ten. “And I’m not a doctor. So unless you want to die ‒ ”

Kun presses the back of his hand to Ten’s forehead as he speaks, trying to check for a temperature. Which might have been a mistake.

Because upon contact, Ten’s eyes fly open and, honest to god, he writhes, body arching off of the pavement.

“What ‒ ” Kun withdraws his hand quickly. “Oh my god, what the fuck ‒ ”

And then he gets another shock when Ten, quick as lightning, reaches out and grabs his wrist.

Kun stares down in shock as Ten nuzzles into the curve of his palm. Amazingly ‒ and weirdly ‒ he looks slightly better within just a few seconds. His skin looks less grey, and his ragged breaths have evened out.

“Is this ‒ is this helping?”

Ten hums. Encouraged, but still nervous, Kun cautiously trails his hand to cup the back of Ten’s neck. When his fingernails scrape along Ten’s scalp, he’s rewarded with a soft sigh of contentment.

The cogs in Kun’s brain begin to turn, piecing bits of the puzzle together. When he thinks about it, it all makes perfect sense. But there’s only one way to test if his theory is right.

He swallows. He has a funny feeling that he’s going to regret this. “What ‒ what else do you need?”

Ten goes still. It’s not sudden, but it makes Kun’s heart skip a beat regardless. He watches as Ten opens his eyes fully, gaze locking with Kun’s. He feels like he’s being assessed; for what, he’s not sure.

Then Ten’s gaze deliberately trails downwards, settling on Kun’s lips, and Kun’s mouth goes dry.

This is probably another trap. Kun shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t.

“Aw, hell,” he curses, then leans down to kiss Ten square on the lips.

😈

When Kun first moved into his dorm, he’d purchased a small, foldable chair on the off-chance that he’d have guests (or rather, a guest). When it arrived, it failed to live up to the hype of its online reviews. It was rather rickety, and one of its legs was slightly shorter than the others. Kun, lazy to carry it down to the trash, had just chucked it under his bed.

Never in his wildest dreams did he think it’d ever be of use, much less by Ten, who’s now perched primly on its edge with Kun’s blanket wrapped around him and a mug of ginger tea cradled in his hands.

“For someone who hates me,” Ten says, steam curling around the pert set of his mouth, “you certainly can’t seem to stay away.”

After exchanging a handful of kisses, some of the colour had returned to Ten’s face. He was still kind of wobbly, though, and despite that, had refused an ambulance when Kun tried suggesting it again. Unwilling to let him go home by himself, and too far from Chittaphon’s own apartment, Kun had suggested that they go back to his dorm. It was a lot closer, and he had a drawer full of traditional herbal medicine that supposedly worked better on supernaturals.

Which leads them here.

Kun presses his lips together. “I didn’t say I hated you.”

“It was implied.”

“You left me for dead in an alley the first time we met,” Kun says. “Forgive me for being less than friendly.”

“Excuse me?” Ten lowers his mug of tea, offended. “I brought you back to your dinky little room after. Nearly threw out my back doing it, too.”

Kun remembers waking up in his bed without any memory of how he got there. He purses his lips, still dubious.

“You expect me to believe that?”

“You can believe whatever you want,” Ten scoffs. “But you think I just leave my meals lying out in the street? Do I look like a heathen to you?”

“I don’t know what a heathen’s supposed to look like,” Kun says honestly, and Ten rolls his eyes.

The next few minutes pass in near-silence, punctuated only by the slurps Ten makes while drinking the rest of his tea. Kun takes the opportunity to study him. There’s the hair and the eye colour, of course, but there are more differences between Ten and Chittaphon than he had realised ‒ subtle, but different all the same. Ten’s face is all angles and edges, his cheekbones sharp where Chittaphon’s cheeks are more rounded. Even the most minute of Ten’s movements are fluid and graceful, whereas Chittaphon had been all jerky tics and hunched shoulders. When Ten rolls up a sleeve, Kun sees a flash of ink, and realises that the tattoos must be a permanent part of his current form.

Kun’s covert study is interrupted when Ten sets his mug down sharply.

“Well,” he says, getting up. “This has been fun ‒ not. If you don’t mind, I’ll just go ‒ ”

“Not so fast.”

Ten sits down with a thump. The stool rocks backwards. “What.”

It’s now or never. Kun swallows.

“Listen, I ‒ I know what you are.”

“Oh?” Ten says flatly. “And what is that?”

“You’re Chittaphon. Chittaphon is you. You ‒ the both of you ‒ are a…” Kun swallows. His voice is barely above a whisper. “Nightwalker.”

Instantly, Ten’s expression changes. His eyes narrow into slits as he looks at Kun with no small amount of suspicion, and, to Kun’s surprise, panic. It’s fleeting, quickly stamped out before it can overtake his expression, but there all the same.

Perhaps Ten is just afraid of Kun as Kun is afraid of him.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ten says tightly, and stands to leave.

Only to find Kun blocking his way.

“Kun.” There’s an edge to Ten’s voice now, razor-sharp and dark. “Move.”

Kun doesn’t move. He has no idea what the fuck he’s doing. Ten could literally throw him into the wall ‒ and has. He’s dangerous, and powerful, and Kun should be doing what Hendery said and running in the opposite direction.

And yet all he can think about is the look in Ten’s eyes when he had said nightwalker, and how he might be the only other person in the world who knows what he is.

“You feed on people’s energy,” Kun blurts out before Ten can turn him into the human equivalent of mashed potato. “To be exact, you feed on people’s sexual energy. That’s why you go to After Midnight ‒ everyone there’s looking to hook-up. It’s practically a buffet for you.

“But you haven’t been feeding lately, have you? I interrupted you the last time, and since then, you haven’t been out. That’s why you collapsed earlier outside the pharmacy ‒ you’re not sick. You’re starving.”

Ten’s face twitches. It’s as if Kun had slapped him in the face, and he wonders if he’d gone too far. He’d tried to keep things factual, and tried not to be intimidating. But as the silence drags on, dread creeps up on Kun in tendrils, and he sucks in a breath, bracing himself for ‒

“Well, well, well,” Ten says, lips pulling back in a sneer. “Mr. Master’s Degree’s done his homework. Got me all figured out, haven’t you?”

“Maybe a little.”

“Well, congratu-fucking-tions.” Ten folds Kun’s blanket even more tightly over himself, and Kun is struck by how small he looks. “So what’re you going to do? Hand me over to the police? Imprison me?”

“Imprison you? What, I ‒ no. Why would I do that?”

“You never know,” Ten says darkly, and raises his chin defiantly. “So? What do you want?”

That’s a very good question. Kun is stumped. He’d been so obsessed with finding out what Chittaphon and Ten were that he hadn’t thought about what he would do with that information. As he mulls it over now, though, he feels a familiar spark of curiosity and excitement, the kind he gets when he learns about something new. He might be the first person in centuries to interact closely with a nightwalker. He wants to learn all about them. He wants to fill in the missing gaps in the scrolls. He wants ‒

“I want to cut a deal,” Kun says, and Ten’s expression becomes even more guarded.

“Oh?”

“You don’t have to skulk around clubs looking for prey,” Kun hears himself say. “I’ll let you feed on me for the rest of the semester.”

Stunned silence ensues.

“Excuse me?” Ten says, incredulous. “You? You nearly crapped your pants the last time we met.”

“That was because you were suffocating me!”

“It was an accident. And the time before that, you fainted ‒ ”

“Like that’s never happened to your other prey before?” Kun asks, irritated and embarrassed at the memory. “I didn’t know what to expect!”

“That’s besides the point.”

“So what is the point?”

Ten looks him in the eye. “I told you there’s a reason people don’t come back for more. I can’t guarantee that I won’t hurt you, or put you in danger. So I ask you: what makes you think you can handle me again?”

He sounds a little combative, a little bitter, and a whole lot weary. Ten is gorgeous, but it must be tiresome to keep hunting, to never have your next meal guaranteed. And while he can certainly protect himself, there’s always a risk of one of his hook-ups-slash-meals going awry. Kun must be really fucked up to feel sympathetic for Ten, but he does. He really does.

Which is why he shrugs as nonchalantly as he can, and doesn’t back down.

“I’ll take my chances,” Kun says. “Why do you care so much, anyway?”

“I don’t,” Ten retorts quickly, then pauses, a note of curiosity creeping into his voice. “But seriously: what do you get out of this?”

Kun thinks briefly of Chittaphon. How he’d looked so sick. How everyone in the lab shunned him, and how he, in turn, made himself as small and unnoticeable as possible. How utterly alone and isolated he is.

“I mean, it’s sex,” Kun says, and immediately feels extremely grossed out by himself and his tragic attempt at being a fuckboy. “What man would say no to that?”

Luckily for him, Ten can’t smell a fib.

“You’re weird as hell,” he says after a long, judgmental silence. “But… fine.”

He snakes a hand out from the cocoon of Kun’s blanket, and Kun takes it. Ten’s grasp is warmed from the mug, and sends sparks flying up Kun’s arm.

When Ten smiles, his teeth flash sharp and white. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

😈

“Oh,” a voice says. “You’re finally back.”

Kun winces, then, once he’s rearranged his face into a normal expression, turns around. After missing a week of work, he had arrived at the lab earlier than usual so he could catch up on his tasks. He figured that he wouldn’t bump into anyone, especially with the person he’s trying to avoid the most.

Fat chance, because Chittaphon’s striding down the corridor in his clunky Crocs towards him now.

There were, and still are, a million questions Kun wanted to ask Ten before he left last night ‒ how long he’s been around, how often he manifests, whether he can observe and interact with people via his alter ego during the day. Ten had been tired, though, so the only details they had ironed out were:

1. Kun would need to carb-load before every feeding session, for maximum energy.
2. Their first feeding session would happen tonight at his dorm.
3. Most importantly, Kun was categorically, absolutely forbidden to tell Chittaphon about Ten’s existence, and any part of their arrangement.

Kun has no idea why #3 is so important, only that Ten’s lips had pulled back over some very sharp-looking teeth as he had laid down the rule. So he smiles as placidly as he can when Chittaphon comes to a stop before him, and prays he doesn’t let anything spill.

“Yeah. I had, uh, a really bad stomach flu the past week,” he lies quickly.

“Really?”

“Yup. Puke, like, everywhere.”

Kun mimes projectile vomiting. When Chittaphon doesn’t laugh, Kun immediately stops, embarrassed. God. Pretending to vomit? What is he doing?

“Huh. I didn’t think you were coming back,” Chittaphon says, and this takes Kun by surprise.

“Wh-what made you think that?”

“I don’t know.” Chittaphon looks down at his feet. His Crocs are covered in little cat charms. “You said some really weird stuff to me the other day.”

He looks ‒ sad. Kun doesn’t remember what exactly he said, but it couldn’t have been anything good. Judging by the downward tilt of Chittaphon’s mouth, it wasn’t, and a guilty pang resonates in his chest.

“Oh, no,” Kun hurries to say. “That was the… the dehydration! Yes, and the nausea ‒ the dehydration and the nausea. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

“That doesn’t matter ‒ ”

“It does,” Kun insists, and then, like a crazy person, grabs Chittaphon’s shoulders to drive home how sincere he is. “So ‒ I’m sorry. Truly.”

Chittaphon obviously thinks Kun is crazy, too, based on his facial expression. He plucks Kun’s hands from his shoulders, using his index finger and thumb like Kun’s sticky, or something, and takes a step back.

“Alright,” Chittaphon says. “Don’t be a weirdo about it.”

He brushes past Kun into the lab and Kun, breathing a sigh of relief, follows him. They scrub down and set up their workstations in silence. For the next hour, as their colleagues trickle in, Kun watches Chittaphon out of the corner of his eye. So far, Chittaphon has given no indication that he’s aware of the stuff Kun and Ten have been up to. The scrolls had alluded to this separation between the consciousnesses housed in the nightwalker, although not definitively, and there were anomalies: Ten, for example, seemed to have a glimpse into Chittaphon’s life, such that he knew who Kun was.

Kun decides it would be best to know for sure.

On the pretext of grabbing a pipette, Kun leans in to ask, “Hey, um ‒ how was your night?”

Chittaphon doesn’t lift his eyes from the sample he’s examining under the microscope. “My night? It was fine.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing special. Actually, I think maybe I got the same flu bug as you did ‒ I went to the pharmacy for some medicine, and I don’t know what’s in that stuff, but it was so strong it knocked me out until this morning.” Eventually, Chittaphon raises his head. “Why do you ask?”

He’s got a red ring around his eye from where he’s pressed his face too hard into the microscope eyepiece. It’s not very flattering. For some reason, though, Kun feels a pang in his chest that’s half panic, half something else.

“Nothing. But what a coincidence! We can be like… bug buddies. Haha. Hahaha.”

Never has Kun ever wished for a hole to open up beneath him more than he does now. Chittaphon stares at him for a few seconds, perplexed, before returning to his microscope.

“Weirdo,” Kun hears him mutter again.

Cringing, Kun returns to his workstation, and Chittaphon is quiet for so long that Kun thinks that’s the end of it. But then, so softly that it might not have been intended for his ears, Kun hears Chittaphon murmur, “It’s nice to have you back.”

Surprised, Kun squeezes his pipette too hard. The liquid dribbles down the side of the test tube. Kun turns his head slightly, and sees that Chittaphon’s face is still stuck to the microscope. But the tips of his ears, peeking out from behind his long hair, are a vivid red.

Unsure of how to respond, Kun turns back to his work, Chittaphon’s words replaying in his head, over and over.

😈

“So,” Kun says nervously. “How do we start?”

They’re back in his bedroom and, if at all possible, it’s a hundred times weirder than before. Not knowing what was the appropriate etiquette for having someone over for ‒ ahem, sex (not that Kun hasn’t had anyone over for sex, it’s just been a while, and anyway, those weren’t necessarily planned) ‒ Kun had defaulted to doing what he did what he wanted to impress dates.

Watching Ten slowly spinning on his heel, surveying the room, Kun realises that he may have gone a little overboard.

For instance, he had spent half an hour programming his smart lights to shine a flattering purple to set the mood. He’d also cleaned, vacuuming up a week’s worth of dust and hastily shoving his junk on top of his closet. Hell, he’d even stolen one of the candles Sicheng uses for his seances and put it in the corner. Kun doesn’t know what possessed him to do all of that ‒ this is just a casual, no-strings-attached hook-up between two consenting adults. He’s not trying to woo Ten or anything, and they’ve hooked up in grosser places before. By the time Kun started to think this was a bad idea, though, Ten was already at his door dressed up in a cropped tank and red leather pants so tight they looked moulded to his legs.

“It’s not rocket science,” Ten says. When he catches sight of the stuff haphazardly thrown onto the top of Kun’s wardrobe, he wrinkles his nose and turns away. “We make out, you get super turned on, I feed off that energy, and if you’re lucky, you get a nice little orgasm out of it.”

“If I’m lucky?”

“You know.” Ten shrugs. “If you don’t pass out first.”

With that encouraging tidbit, he peels off his top. His naked torso gleams like honey under the violet lights. Kun’s eyes follow the trail of tattoos down Ten’s arm, watching as his biceps shift and flex as he folds the top up, coming to rest on his narrow waist, the outline of his abs barely visible. Heat rises in Kun’s face, and he swallows what feels like a litre of saliva.

“What,” Ten says when he catches Kun blushing like a Victorian maiden. “It’s not like it wasn’t coming off anyway.”

“Yeah ‒ yeah, of course,” Kun stammers, feeling fifteen all over again.

He feels his inexperience even more when Ten firmly pushes him down onto his bed. Ten crawls towards him on all fours, slinky and purposeful, caging Kun’s body between his limbs. He holds their positions like this: him, hovering above Kun, while Kun is pressed back against the pillows. Left with nowhere to hide, Kun looks up into Ten’s unblinking blue eyes. Bizarrely, he thinks of a predator hunting prey. The similarity between them now is not lost on him.

Ten clears his throat. “So,” he announces. “I’m gonna start now.”

Kun licks his lips. “Okay.”

It comes out as a squeak. Kun catches a glimpse of Ten’s unimpressed face before it smooths over, settling into a practised, sultry expression, and then Ten closes the gap between them.

The first touch of their lips is, once again, amazing. It’s like a kaleidoscope of fireworks has gone off, each spark shooting off into the farthest parts of Kun’s body. Kun sighs into it. His eyes flutter closed. His arms instinctively come up, looping around Ten’s bare waist and pulling him down to lie on top of him. Ten comes easily. He’s a warm, welcome weight, and Kun can’t resist tilting his hips up a little, his hands greedily mapping out paths that are miles long along his bare skin.

But kissing Ten has its downsides. As they make out, fast and furious, a familiar, pleasant fog begins to descend around Kun’s head. He tries to ignore it at first, concentrating on kissing Ten. The longer they make out, though, the heavier the fog grows, something sinister lurking at the edges, and Kun feels his guard go up. He pulls away for some respite, gulping down air untainted by Ten’s lips. It works, sort of, but it’s not exactly subtle. When Kun turns his face away one too many times, Ten draws back, his eyebrows furrowed.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Kun says. “Yep. Just keep going.”

Ten frowns, but obliges, and Kun loses himself in the hot slide of their mouths. They get back into the rhythm of things, sharply building up to a crescendo that has Kun panting heavily while Ten lavishes open-mouthed kisses along his neck.

But all of that changes when Ten’s hand dips beneath his waistband. Kun gets a flashback of what happened in the alley, and a glimpse of what’s about to come next. He panics, and does the first thing that comes to mind.

Which is to shove Ten off of him, and off the bed.

“Yah ‒ what ‒ ”

Ten falls to the floor with a thump. The sound sobers Kun up, and, realising what he’s done, tries to help him up.

“Sorry! Sorry, I thought you were about to ‒ ”

Ten smacks his arm away. He glares daggers at Kun, who falters.

“What is wrong with you? Do you want to do this, or not?”

“I do,” Kun tries, but Ten cuts him off.

“Are you sure? You’re all ‒ tense and shit ‒ ”

“Sorry, it’s just ‒ ” Kun realises he’s wringing his bedsheets, and abandons them in favour of wringing his hands. “I keep thinking about the last time this happened, and I don’t know if it’s such a good idea anymore ‒ ”

Ten’s tone turns icy. “This was your suggestion.”

“I know. I just ‒ ”

Ten’s face shutters, and he looks away. “Whatever. It’s fine if you changed your mind.”

Kun watches helplessly as Ten picks himself off the floor, not meeting his eyes. He goes to grab his top and starts pulling it on in stiff, jerky movements. As Ten reaches up to fit his hands through the arm holes, Kun sees how his skin stretches over his ribs, the shallow depressions between them, and he immediately feels terrible about what he did.

“Ten, wait.”

“What now?” Ten says, more exasperated than angry, and Kun’s heart goes out to him.

“I’m sorry that I’m being so fickle ‒ it’s not that I don’t want to help you. I do, I just…”

He trails off, embarrassed. Ten’s face twitches, torn between irritation and curiosity. “What is it? Just spit it out.”

“I don’t know what to expect. Like, am I going to pass out again? Because that was really…” Kun bites the inside of his cheek, and takes a deep breath. “Really scary for me.”

There. He said it. The defenceless little human is scared. Kun expects Ten to laugh in his face; expects him to ask him what he expected, when he offered himself up on a silver platter to a nightwalker.

What Kun doesn’t expect is for Ten’s face to soften, just a fraction, and for him to look contrite.

“I’m not sure,” Ten mumbles. “I’ve never really been good at control. And I was hungry that day.”

“Are you hungry now?”

Ten nods. Kun bites his lip, then motions him over. He waits until Ten has settled down on the bed, then scoots closer until their knees are touching.

“We’ll go slow, okay? It’s not fast food.” Ten nods again, and tries to lean over until Kun puts up a hand. “And when I say stop, I really mean stop.”

“Okay,” Ten says. His eyes dip down to Kun’s mouth, then back up. “Can I start now, or.”

He says it like a statement, but Kun detects an undercurrent of nervousness. Still, he appreciates Ten asking, so he gives a slight nod and watches Ten lean in just as his eyes fall shut.

This round, Ten takes his time. Gone is that frenetic, frenzied energy. He savours Kun like a glass of wine at midnight, leaving deep, lingering kisses upon his lips before he turns his attention somewhere else: his ear, his throat, the flesh separating his teeth from Kun’s beating heart. Going slow has its benefits. The spiciness of Ten’s perfume, his soft lips brushing against the shell of his ear, every small noise that Ten makes as they come together and break apart ‒ Kun experiences it all in near-perfect clarity, every sensation fuel for the metaphorical fire that is slowly igniting within him.

Ten draws back slightly, checking in. “Is this good for you?”

“Yeah,” Kun breathes, “yeah ‒ ” and takes Ten’s face back in his hands to kiss him silent.

They kiss like that, luxurious and leisurely. When Kun reaches up timidly to run a hand under Ten’s top, he feels Ten’s devilish smile against his mouth before it’s gone as Ten pulls away to shimmy out of his top. He crowds back into Kun’s space, kissing and sucking his lips swollen, his clever fingers rucking Kun’s top up. At the first flush of skin-on-skin contact, Kun makes an embarrassing sound at the back of his throat. He feels the imprint of Ten’s grin against his skin again. As if testing the waters, Ten’s thumbnail accidentally-on-purpose grazes his nipple, and molten heat pools in Kun’s belly. What follows is a familiar lightness, and Kun tenses up, his body fighting to keep him grounded. Ten’s lips leave his neck, and suddenly Kun is looking into his eyes, now looking less like ice and more like the heart of an open fire.

Ten’s breath puffs against his cheek. “Shh, I won’t hurt you. Just… try to relax.”

Relax. Kun can do that.

He lets Ten lower him down onto the bed until they’re in their earlier position, Kun lying supine below, Ten on top. It seems that Ten enjoys this, even if he has to support himself and also do most of the work. He laves open-mouthed kisses along Kun’s throat, teeth tugging on the plump ripeness of his earlobe, holding himself up on one hand as the other plays with Kun’s nipples, flicking them pert and pretty. All Kun can do is grab onto Ten’s shoulders, feeling the quiet power in them, and hang on for the ride.

Then Ten brings their fronts together and begins to shift his hips, deliberate and teasing, and Kun’s mouth goes slack with want. His breaths taper off into moans. Desire builds, slow but steady, within him, a pressure valve waiting for release.

Ten can sense it. He hooks a finger around Kun’s waistband, and when Kun doesn’t protest, slides his shorts off together with his briefs in one smooth move. Dazed from Ten’s onslaught, Kun can do little more than watch him trail heated kisses down his neck, chest, belly, his eyes dark and alluring and on him the whole way. Soon, he’s confronted by the sight of Ten staring down at his cock, bobbing thick and hard between his legs.

Kun briefly panics. “Is there ‒ is there something wrong?”

“No,” Ten says. “But you might want to hold onto something. This can be intense.”

Before Kun can ask what he means, Ten takes him into his mouth, and ‒ oh.

Oh ‒ Kun’s head falls back onto the pillow ‒ fuck.

It’s not just intense. It’s divine. The inside of Ten’s mouth is slick and addictive, and he’s nothing if not skilled. He bobs his head like a pro, cheeks hollowing as he sucks Kun down, hand covering and stroking what his mouth can’t fit. Kun strains his neck, watching, and he’s going to have a crick in his neck tomorrow, but he can’t look away. Ten peers up at him from beneath his eyelashes, their gazes locking, caging, trapping Kun in.

Then, on a particularly ambitious downstroke, the tip of Kun’s cock nudges against the back of Ten’s throat. The muscle there flutters with exertion, and the sensation punches an embarrassing, high-pitched whine from Kun’s mouth.

“Ten ‒ shit, Ten ‒ ”

He can feel the vibrations from Ten’s hum, the scrape of his teeth as he smiles around a mouthful of his cock. Ten’s gaze flicks upwards, and his eyes shine cerulean with smugness.

“Ten,” Kun rasps again, a scold, a plea, and his voice chokes off into a moan when Ten drags the flat of his tongue up Kun’s shaft in one long, hard motion.

It’s infuriating. It’s maddening. Kun’s not going to last much longer with the pace Ten is setting, with the way he’s looking at him, with the way he’s taking him deeper and deeper with each stroke. The floaty, woozy feeling intensifies. The molten heat solidifies. Kun’s insides are boiling over, reaching a fever pitch, anything more and he swears he’ll combust ‒

Ten’s tongue does that same fiendish move, and that’s all it takes. Kun comes with a bitten-off groan, his eyes fluttering shut as his orgasm cuts through him, white-hot and sudden, Ten swallowing around him, quietly moaning around him. Feeding from him.

And then, just like that, it’s over. The snug warmth disappears as Ten sits back on his haunches, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth. Kun hasn’t passed out, but he’s on the verge of it. Standing on an edge somewhere, teetering, tottering. Like he’s suspended mid-air, drunk on a cocktail of Ten’s pheromones and the aftermath of a fantastic orgasm that’s ushering him towards oblivion.

“Well.” Ten smacks his lips. They’re bee-stung cherry, slick with his own spit and Kun’s cum. “That wasn’t too bad.”

He stands, grabbing his shirt and pulling it on. It’s then that Kun, through the haze fast settling around his head, realises Ten hadn’t even taken off his pants.

“Wait,” he slurs, “let me ‒ ”

Ten easily dodges his hand. “No thanks, I’m fine.” This is contradicted by the obvious tent in his pants, and the way Ten discreetly adjusts himself. When Kun makes a weak noise of protest, though, Ten gives him an arch look. “I’m serious. You should get some rest.”

“It’s fine. I’m not ‒ ” Kun yawns. “ ‒ tired.”

“Of course not,” Ten says, amused. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll let myself out.”

He putters around, collecting his clothes. Kun watches him through half-mast eyelids. The haze is more like a dense fog now, thick enough to cut with a knife. The last thing he sees before fatigue tugs his eyes closed is Ten heading towards the door, jacket slung over his shoulder.

Kun waits for the creak of his door opening. It doesn’t come. Instead, there are footsteps, and then the distant feeling of his blanket drawing up around his shoulders as someone tucks him in.

The door shuts quietly, and that’s all that Kun hears before he succumbs to the darkness.

😈

They sort of settle into a routine after that.

In the day, Kun goes to the lab, where he’s greeted by a mountain of work softened by Chittaphon’s barely-there smile. Sometimes, they’ll take lunch together, sitting under the shade of the tree growing outside of their building. Chittaphon isn’t a great talker; he tends to give stilted, monosyllabic answers, and their conversations peter off after a while. Kun comes to realise that beneath Chittaphon’s aloofness lies a shyness so crippling that it paralyses him sometimes, makes him come across as standoffish and snappy. It must be exhausting, and so Kun takes pity on him, content to eat their lunches together in near-silence. He suspects this is probably why Chittaphon tolerates his company at all.

And then, at night, Ten comes over, shucks (most of) his clothes off, and proceeds to ravish Kun in frighteningly efficient and earth-shattering ways. As Kun gets off, Ten feeds. Despite actually being involved in the process, Kun still doesn’t really know how it works. Sometimes, Kun has an orgasm dragged out of him and across Ten’s tongue, or fist, and, once, fingers, buried three and knuckle-deep. Other times, Ten is satiated after a prolonged make out session, Kun’s lips chapped and tingling with oversensitivity.

The thing that blows Kun’s mind is just how effective Ten is ‒ one heated look, and Kun’s heart skips a beat. A few touches, and Kun’s cock goes rock-hard. It’s probably a pavlovian response at this rate, but Kun neither worries nor cares. This is the most sex he’s ever had in his life, and the best, hands-down.

It’s a routine. Maybe not the most exciting except what’s happening in his bedroom, but, still, a routine.

Which is promptly disrupted when a pipe bursts in Kun’s ensuite and floods his entire room.

Kun looks down at his wall-to-wall carpeting, soaked through with water. It’s not sewage ‒ thank god ‒ but it smells stale, and each step he takes makes an unpleasant squish noise, his toes curling in his wet socks. His phone dangles from his hand, still open to his call log with his building manager. The earliest they can get someone to come in to clean this up is tomorrow.

But Ten is supposed to come over tonight.

Shit. Kun scrubs a hand down his face. He can’t believe that, instead of worrying where he’s going to sleep tonight, is his first thought. He could call Sicheng, but he’s out of town, gone on some camping trip that Kun had turned down due to his commitment to being Ten’s sole food source. Hendery had gone on the same camping trip, Yangyang has a date with a hulijing for the past week that he’s been bragging will end with them back at his place, and Kun doesn’t even have Dejun’s number.

Which leaves ‒

“Hello?” comes Chittaphon’s voice, just as Kun suddenly remembers that he has Dejun’s number saved after all.

Kun thinks about pretending he’s dialled the wrong number, but there’s an expectant silence on the line, and, okay, now he’s waited too long ‒ “Hey.” Kun clears his throat. “Uh, it’s me. Listen, sorry for calling so out of the blue, but, um ‒ I have a favour to ask. Which you can totally say no to, I understand ‒ ”

“Is everything alright?”

“Yeah ‒ well, not really.” Kun wriggles his toes, anxious, and grimaces at the wetness. “My dorm flooded, and my other friends are all out of town. So I was wondering if I could crash at your place tonight ‒ just for the night! ‒ and maybe we could, um… hang out.”

It’s a lame finish, but that’s okay. Kun feels very lame anyway, where Chittaphon is concerned.

There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “You… want to hang out?”

“Well, yeah,” Kun says. “If you don’t mind.”

He also wants to have someplace to sleep tonight that isn’t racing to become the new Atlantis, but he tactfully doesn’t mention that.

There’s silence again, as if Chittaphon can’t quite fathom the concept of Kun wanting to hang out with him outside of work. “Well,” he mumbles eventually, “I guess you can come by. I’ll send you my address.”

Kun catches himself before he says he already knows where he lives. After he hangs up, his phone buzzes with an incoming text, and an hour later he’s at Chittaphon’s apartment, standing awkwardly in the doorway as a tabby slinks around his leg, tail lifted and curled into a judgmental S.

“Er, thanks for having me over,” Kun says, looking down. “Hi, there?”

“That’s Leon,” Chittaphon says. “This is Louis, and I think ‒ oh, he’s hiding ‒ that’s Levi.”

Kun nods, glancing at the Siamese scaling the tower and the pair of bright, wide eyes shining out from beneath the sofa, but makes no move to approach them. Chittaphon stands awkwardly in the middle of his living room. He looks ready for bed, dressed in a matching set of striped pyjamas that are a size too large for him. Chittaphon’s hair is fluffy, and a pair of thin wire-frame glasses perches on his nose. He looks comfortable; soft.

Something flutters in the pit of his tummy, and Kun coughs. “Well. Thanks for letting me crash.”

“No problem.” The sleeves of Chittaphon’s pyjama top hang over his hands, and he twists the excess fabric. “Sorry to hear about your dorm.”

“It’s alright. It’ll be fixed by tomorrow, I should be out of your hair by then.”

Chittaphon lifts a shoulder, then drops it. “There’s no rush. Sometimes these things take a while.”

“Ah, thanks, but ‒ ” Kun says, when he’s interrupted by a loud meow.

Leon is blinking up at him, tail swishing from side to side. Kun crouches down, and Leon’s gaze follows him. All he knows about cats is that you’re not supposed to pet them first (or is that dogs?), so he offers a hand for Leon to sniff.

Leon must like what he smells, because then he blinks, slow, and shuffles closer. “Hello there.” Kun laughs a little when Leon raises a paw, batting at his hand in a high-five. “Oh, he’s clever.”

“He is,” Chittaphon says. The pride in his voice is unmistakable. “He knows how to open the cupboards and doors, too. I’ve had to put child-locks on everything. He was doing it for months before I discovered that’s how he was getting into the food, that’s why he’s so ‒ not fat, just ‒ but, yeah. I’m trying to get him to lose weight. Be a little healthier. I bought him an exercise wheel, but I take him on walks, too.”

Kun’s eyes widen, slightly stunned. This is the most he's heard Chittaphon speak in one go. Chittaphon must realise it, too, because he shrinks into the neck of his pyjamas, suddenly self-conscious.

“Sorry.”

And here’s the thing ‒ there’s no reason for Chittaphon to be sorry at all. He’s only apologising, it dawns on Kun, because people have probably made fun of him for talking about his cats too much. Maybe that’s why he’s so reticent, why he keeps their conversations short. Chittaphon knows people think he’s weird.

But Kun doesn’t think so. What’s so weird about seeing Chittaphon light up like that and speak with something close to animation? Even if Kun doesn’t know a thing about cats? Chittaphon likes it. Therefore, so does Kun.

So he smiles and says, “I’ve never walked a cat before; I’ll have to see that sometime. Did you adopt Leon? How long have you had him and the others?”

It’s the right thing to say. Chittaphon visibly brightens, and launches into a spirited retelling of each of his pets’ origin stories. In truth, though, Kun doesn’t listen very carefully. He’s distracted by the fidgety movements of Chittaphon’s hands as he speaks, the way he has to keep pushing up his glasses as they slide down the perfect slope of his nose, how he licks his lips at the end of every other sentence. Chittaphon is a multitude of movements, a ball of potential energy that Kun can’t help but watch, cataloguing every action, every quirk and filing it away for later. Like this, all of Chittaphon is eager and childlike, so different from his persona at the lab, all of the spikiness smoothed out. Distantly, Kun thinks he’s pretty endearing.

When Chittaphon finishes his last story about Levi, it’s pretty late. Kun glances at the clock, and is startled to note that it’s almost midnight.

Chittaphon turns, following Kun’s gaze, and Kun scratches the back of his head sheepishly. “Sorry. it’s just ‒ it’s getting late, and I ‒ ”

“What, no, I talked for way too long ‒ let me just grab you a few sheets ‒ ”

Chittaphon rises and flashes Kun a smile. It’s small and shy, but it bowls Kun over with its warmth.

Ten never smiles at him like that.

Immediately, Kun wants to hit himself. How is that relevant, exactly? They may have the same face, but they’re different. Get yourself together, Kun tells himself sternly. And just in time, too, because the bedroom door is opening.

But it’s not Chittaphon coming through the door, a stack of fresh sheets in his arms. It’s Ten.

“Hey,” Ten purrs, and, throwing the sheets in the vague direction of the sofa, pounces on Kun.

😈

Chittaphon is right ‒ Kun’s dorm doesn’t manage to get fixed in a day, so he winds up crashing at his place indefinitely.

“You’ve really helped me out,” Kun had said when the superintendent had called back with the news that they needed a couple extra days, “but I think I should probably get going.”

“Why?”

“My other friends are back, I can just crash with them instead ‒ ”

Chittaphon had quickly shut that down with a scoff. “Don’t be an idiot. Your place is still flooded, and you’re already here.”

“But ‒ ”

“If you feel that bad, you can make yourself useful around here.”

Kun works out that it’s a joke ‒ he’s come to learn that Chittaphon’s sense of humour can be biting ‒ but he takes it upon himself to do just that, even if there isn’t much to do. Chittaphon is fastidiously clean, religiously vacuuming and wiping down the surfaces every night. He also tends to the cats, even though they’ve warmed up to Kun enough to sit in his lap.

But as rigidly as Chittaphon runs his household, there are things he still needs help with. When the wifi goes out, Chittaphon hovers anxiously as Kun patiently fiddles with the router until it comes back to life. Kun’s also a handy pair of extra hands when Chittaphon has to wrestle Louis into his carrier for a routine visit to the vet’s.

Most of all, Chittaphon can’t cook to save his life. When Kun finds out he’s been subsisting on a diet of take-out, he immediately heads out to the supermarket for groceries. This, too, becomes its own little routine ‒ Chittaphon sitting on the countertop, swinging his socked feet and keeping Kun company as he whips up dish after dish.

He peers into the bubbling pot that Kun’s stirring. “You know how to make tom yum?”

Kun flushes. He thought it might be nice to make Chittaphon his culture’s food as a way of saying thanks for letting me crash on your sofa, but he didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. “Not really. But I found some recipes online. Do you wanna try?”

Chittaphon nods. Instead of sliding off the counter and helping himself to the soup, though, he opens his mouth. His head tilts back slightly, exposing the hollow of his throat. Kun can see the tip of his tongue just resting behind his teeth, glistening pink and wet.

The realisation of what Chittaphon wants jolts through Kun. “Um ‒ okay ‒ ”

He busies himself with a spoon, filling it with broth. Steam rises off its surface, and Kun blows on it until he’s sure it’s cool. When he turns back to Chittaphon, he’s still sitting there, expectant; waiting. Careful not to spill a drop, Kun holds his breath, and slides the spoon past Chittaphon’s parted lips.

Mmm, Chittaphon hums, eyes alighting on Kun’s, and something else jolts through Kun.

And then it’s all over when he draws back, the spoon slipping from his mouth with a soft pop, and Kun has to turn away quickly to hide his flaming cheeks.

“You know,” Chittaphon says conversationally after a beat, “my mom used to make this for me.”

“Yeah?” Kun decides to brave it and turns back around. “How does this measure up?”

“It’s better,” Chittaphon says, blunt and honest like he always is. “But don’t tell her that.”

He winks, and his whole body twitches with it. It teases a startled laugh out of Kun. Chittaphon can be surprisingly lively like this. Lovely, too ‒ they take their bowls of soup to the sofa sitting perpendicular to each other as they watch something on TV. The cats saunter over, curling themselves around their ankles and laps. As the credits roll, Chittaphon stretches, his toes kneading absentmindedly into the soft meat of Kun’s thigh.

It’s so… domestic.

And at other times, it’s also decidedly not.

Kun pants, the last waves of his orgasm rolling through him, as Ten pulls off of Kun’s cock with a pop. He tucks Kun back into his underwear, then crawls up his body. For a split, wild second, Kun thinks he’s about to kiss him.

Ten reaches for the pack of tissues Chittaphon keeps by his bed instead. Kun is weirdly disappointed by that.

He shrugs off the feeling and clears his throat. “Full?”

“Yup.” Ten pauses in wiping his hands and mouth, and peeks at Kun with a look that he can’t quite decipher. “Good?”

“Yeah,” Kun says. “Yeah, it was good.”

He’s well aware that they sound like they’re exchanging reviews on a buy-and-sell site. Kun can imagine it already: decent head, does not bite unless asked, would deal again.

Ten must feel the weirdness, too. He shoots Kun a smile, stiff and awkward. When he goes to throw away his tissues, he palms the front of his shorts ‒ discreetly, but Kun catches it anyway.

The thing is, it’s always like this. Ten gets Kun off, and then leaves. Or, now that Kun’s staying with him, politely waits for Kun to piece himself together and retreat to the sofa before locking himself in the bedroom, and doesn’t emerge until the morning as Chittaphon. Kun had initially thought that maybe Ten didn’t desire him that way, which stung in a way he didn’t want to look too closely at, but he’s noticing Ten’s restraint more and more now that they’re living together.

So, his brain still in that post-coitus haze, Kun says, “Hey, why don’t you let me, you know ‒ ”

He gestures to Ten’s nether regions, which. Real classy, but it gets his point across.

Ten looks down at himself. He doesn’t look embarrassed, just slightly annoyed. Like it’s a minor inconvenience, or something.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Normally, I just eat and… leave.”

“Your partner doesn’t,” Kun says. “Um.”

“Well, not a lot of them are conscious enough to volunteer,” Ten says dryly, and Kun winces slightly.

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

Ten purses his lips. “It’s tolerable.”

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t bother you,” Kun says.

“I’m already taking something from you.”

“You make it sound like a transaction.”

“Well,” Ten says, lips thinning but tone matter-of-fact, “isn’t it?”

It is. Well, sort of. It certainly started that way, but somewhere over the past few weeks, Kun has found himself starting to care about Ten. About whether he’s gotten sufficient rest, eaten enough, likes where Kun’s hands are on his body. And Kun is well-aware that it might just be the hormones talking, but he’s always been a generous lover. Half the fun in having sex is knowing the other person has a good time, being the reason they’re having a good time, and while Ten might be satiated, Kun knows he can do so much more than that.

So, eyes steady, he says, “I’m just saying. If you want. You can, you know.”

Something flickers over Ten’s face. Hunger, like an open flame.

“I can?”

Kun nods. The hunger turns keener, darker, then gives way to uncertainty.

“Do you want me to?”

“Yeah. Yes.”

“Okay,” Ten says. “Um. Now?”

He’s still standing over by the trash bin. His hands move restlessly as they hang by his side. He’s nervous, Kun realises. He reaches out and grabs one of Ten’s twitching hands, and it stills in his grip.

“Yes,” Kun says again. “Come here ‒ ”

He gently tugs Ten forwards until he lands on the bed next to him. They rearrange themselves until they’re facing each other, Ten sitting criss-cross applesauce with Kun’s feet planted on either side of him, knees bent. So much of their sex is Ten surrounding Kun that it feels strange, having it the other way around. But it’s a good sort of strange. Kun looks at Ten, and Ten looks at Kun. Not like he’s thinking deeply about what Kun’s trying to do, or contemplating, or being suspicious. It’s more that he’s just. Looking back.

Then Ten blinks, and his head turns away. The strawberry tips of his ears shine bright against the short buzz of his hair. The sight makes Kun smile.

“Hi,” he says.

Ten peeks at him out of the corner of his eye. “Hi.”

Kun shuffles closer. His knees bend, coming up to his chest, forming walls around the small cavern between his and Ten’s bodies. Ten’s eyes dart around before meeting Kun’s gaze. Blue burrows into brown. A safe space, maybe. Just for them.

“Slowly, okay?” Kun says softly, and presses their lips together.

Watching Ten unravel is simultaneously the best and the worst thing ever. The best, because Ten is a symphony of ragged breaths and bitten-down whines every time Kun does something just right. The worst, because Kun knows now that he will never close his eyes and not think of Ten, his face flushed and mouth open, thrusting sloppy and uncoordinated into the tight circle of his hand. Ten’s orgasm spills out from his mouth in two quick breaths and drips between Kun’s fingers, honeyed and harsh against Kun’s teeth and tongue. When Ten kisses him, furtive and breathless, Kun tastes himself, and then both of them together.

After, they’re both lying on their sides, facing the wall, catching their breaths. Kun’s fingers flutter over the shallow dip of Ten’s waist.

“Okay?”

Ten doesn’t look over his shoulder. But he grabs Kun’s hand, trapping it against him, and under his splayed palm, Kun feels his belly tighten, then relax entirely.

“Yeah,” Ten exhales. “Okay.”

😈

The lines begin to get a little blurry after that.

It’s the hormones. It must be. It’s basic human ‒ and supernatural ‒ biology: sex releases endorphins and oxytocin, feel-good chemical shit that will make someone mistake attraction for love. Kun’s doing his postgraduate, for crying out loud. He learned this. He knows this.

And yet hormones don’t explain why, after they fuck, they lie in each others’ arms, holding each other close. How Ten will rub slow, gentle circles around the jut of Kun’s hip, and how Kun will press his lips to the crown of Ten’s head. How they’ll talk about everything and nothing, Kun answering all of Ten’s questions on what it’s like to be human and Ten telling Kun what it’s like to be a nightwalker.

“Lonely,” Ten whispers. In the dark, it sounds like he’s somehow even more stripped bare than he actually is. “For the most part, it’s ‒ yeah. Lonely.”

“And when is it, um. Not?”

“I don’t know,” Ten says. His fingers curl around Kun’s, and Kun thinks maybe it’s now.

And hormones certainly don’t explain how Kun, who’s been so disciplined at sticking to the boundaries they’ve set, jolts awake, and the first thing he sees is a pair of familiar brown eyes.

“Kun,” Chittaphon says. “What’re you doing in my bed?”

Somewhere over the course of last night, and lulled by the warmth of Ten surrounding him, Kun had accidentally fallen asleep in Chittaphon’s bed. Instead of his lumpy sofa. Where he’s meant to be staying, because friends ‒ shit, co-workers ‒ don’t just fall asleep in each other’s beds for no reason.

Except. There is a reason. It’s just that Ten had expressly told Kun not to tell Chittaphon.

Chittaphon’s forehead begins to crease, a sure sign of suspicion, and Kun says the first thing that comes to mind.

“I sleepwalk,” he blurts. “Sorry. I probably should’ve told you this before we ‒ before I stayed over, but. Yeah. I tend to, um. Cling. As in, I sleepwalk my way into other people’s beds ‒ not beds, it’s not often, god, just. Um. I sleepwalk, so. Please don’t get mad.”

Chittaphon blinks. In a fit of embarrassment, and possessed by some spirit that must be even more cringe than him, Kun pulls the covers up until they’re past his eyes. He stays like that for some time, holding his breath.

Chittaphon doesn’t so much as move an inch. Curiosity wins out, and when Kun peeks out from under the covers, he finds Chittaphon staring at him impassively.

“I’m not mad,” he tells Kun.

“You’re not?”

“No,” Chittaphon says.

Then he reaches up to brush Kun’s hair away from his face, and Kun’s brain short-circuits.

Oblivious, Chittaphon continues to run his fingers through the tangle. “Your hair,” he says with a quiet huff of what might be derision, or endearment. “God. It looks like a bird’s nest.”

“I may have,” Kun says ‒ wheezes, really, with his heart lodged somewhere in his throat, “moved around a lot last night.”

“Hm.” Chittaphon dips his eyes, avoiding Kun’s gaze. “Well, if you need someone to mind you when you sleepwalk, you can just. You know.”

“What?”

A beat passes, then, as if the answer is being unceremoniously dragged out of him: “Ask. You can just ask.”

Chittaphon still isn’t looking at him, but a light dusting of pink on his cheeks begins to show. The cogs in Kun’s brain crank, rusted from sleep, then whir to life.

“Are you…” Kun says slowly, “... inviting me to sleep in your bed?”

“You invited yourself.”

“Yes, but ‒ ”

“Do you want my help, or not?”

“Sure,” Kun says, then amps up the enthusiasm when Chittaphon raises an eyebrow. “I mean, yes. Definitely.”

The answer seems to satisfy Chittaphon. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Kun echoes.

Chittaphon rolls his eyes, but it’s. Fond. If annoyance could be fond, but that’s what it looks like, the expression on Chittphon’s face as he sits up. As he rolls out of bed, accidentally-on-purpose squishing Kun and knocking the breath out of him. When Kun whines in protest, he rolls his eyes again, but sends Kun a smile, small and mischievous. Kun’s heart kicks at the sight.

Wait, why ‒ oh.

Oh.

Well. This complicates things.

😈

At their next friend gathering, Kun sucks up his courage to ask, “Do you think it’s possible to like two people at the same time?”

The effect of the question is instantaneous. Dejun and Yangyang stop bickering over whether Dejun’s carpet, purchased from a dodgy seller in a random back alley, is magic at all or if he’s been scammed. Hendery lowers his phone, eyes so wide Kun can see the whites of his eyes. Sicheng carefully sets down his beer.

“It depends,” Sicheng cages. His voice is even, but his eyes are alight with interest. “And I didn’t know you were dating anyone, you dog.”

“I’m not dating anyone,” Kun mumbles. “At least, I wouldn’t call it dating ‒ ”

“Casual sex?” Hendery whistles. Or he tries to, anyway, because what he actually does is purse his lips and make a high-pitched wheeze with his voice. “Damn, Kun-ge.”

“It’s ‒ ” Kun can feel himself going red. “I’m only sleeping with one of them. The other is… well, he’s a friend. Sort of.”

“Since when do you have friends other than us,” Yangyang snarks, then dissolves into pathetic cries for help when Kun swiftly punches his arm.

Once Kun’s finished putting Yangyang in his place, he slumps back in his seat. “Forget it,” he grumbles. “I should’ve known better than to ask you guys.”

“Aw, Kun-ge, don’t be like that! I think it’s sweet you’re finding love at ‒ ”

“If you end that sentence with your old age, I’m thumping you again,” Kun informs Yangyang scathingly, and Yangyang wisely clams up.

Dejun, luckily, seems to be taking this seriously. “Ooh, tell us more about these two people. What do you like about each of them?”

“Oh,” Kun demurs. “I don’t really know…”

But he does know. To an embarrassing level of detail. While half-heartedly processing his samples at work, Kun had made mental lists of why he liked Chittaphon and Ten respectively.

Under his cold exterior, Chittaphon was actually kind of cute. Endearing, especially when it was something he was excited about, lighting up like a firework. He was also sarcastic and kind of mean, yes, and Kun would never openly admit that he enjoyed the teasing, but it meant that someone paid him close enough attention to pick up on every little thing he did. It was flattering, to say the least. Chittaphon also brought out Kun’s nurturing side, with the dinners and the electronic help and everything. It was nice to feel wanted; needed, even.

And as for Ten ‒

“He’s hot?” Sicheng grins knowingly, and Kun blushes deeper.

“He’s hot. Very hot.”

Hendery whistles again. “Nice.”

“But, also,” Kun says, before anyone can call him a horndog. “Sweet. Surprisingly introspective. It’s easy to talk to him.”

There’s also Ten’s vulnerability, and the way he holds himself less rigidly through Kun’s tireless efforts to peel back his layers. His growing need for affection, pressing himself against Kun’s side and taking longer and longer to leave his touch. The push-and-pull they have in bed that, somehow, just works. Sexual chemistry may boil down to pheromones and hormones, but there’s something else that Kun has with Ten that he hasn’t found with other partners: mutual understanding. Trust.

There’s a long, thoughtful silence.

Then Yangyang ruins it when he pipes up, “I think you should just fuck them both, and pick the one better in bed.”

Dejun blinks, eyelashes fluttering in offence. “Um, polyamory exists? Kun-ge, there’s this very informative article I was reading the other day ‒ ”

“That’s okay,” Kun says hurriedly, unwilling to be subject to any one of Dejun’s five million news website subscriptions that he got conned into paying for. “And I don’t know if they would be okay with sharing.”

“But they know about each other? Like, that they exist?” Dejun asks, and. Well. That’s a very good question.

“One of them does,” Kun says meekly, and Dejun nods in satisfaction.

“So you should probably tell them both, then ‒ boom! Whoever isn’t cool with it can, like, go. Process of elimination!”

“That’s screwed up,” Sicheng says, wrinkling his nose. “You could hurt someone’s feelings that way.”

“Okay, genius, do you have any better ideas then?”

“No, but maybe Hendery does?”

They all swivel to look at Hendery, who looks like a deer caught in the headlights. He slowly sets down his iced tea, extricating a badly bitten straw from his mouth.

“Erm… Maybe… Just don’t tell either of them at all?”

Of all the answers his friends could offer, this isn’t one that Kun expected. “What?”

“You know,” Hendery says. “Just maintain the status quo.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Think about it,” Hendery says. “You tell your fuck buddy you have feelings for him. He freaks out, and then you’re left with no fuck buddy. Then, you tell your sort-of-friend you have feelings for him, then he freaks out, and you’re left with no friends. Except us. Then, you’re freaking out.”

“Why does your scenario involve everyone freaking out?” Kun wants to know. “What about a world where one, or both of them, like me back?”

“Hey,” Hendery says, raising his hands in defence, “I’m working with imperfect information here. You haven’t told us anything about how they act around you,” which. Is true. Because, between Ten's flippancy and Chittaphon's reticence, Kun doesn’t have the foggiest idea of how each of them feels.

“See?” Hendery says when Kun is silent. “It’s what we call a cost-benefit analysis. I learned it in class the other day.”

“I thought you were doing a degree in witchcraft,” Yangyang says.

“With a minor in business,” Hendery corrects. “My dad’s company isn’t going to run itself, you know.”

“I still don’t think it’s right to bury your feelings like that,” Dejun says, throwing a concerned look at Kun, who is slowly but surely spiralling into a vortex of self-doubt.

Hendery, oblivious, snorts around his straw. “Well,” he says. “I’m just saying. A bird in the hand is worth more than two in the bush.”

😈

Hendery probably didn’t intend for his idiom to translate to Kun’s hand around Ten’s cock, but, well. Here they are.

“Ah ‒ ” Ten hisses as Kun’s hand twists on the upstroke. “Fuck, do that again ‒ ”

Ten’s voice peters off into a frustrated groan when Kun does the opposite, and pulls his hand away. Kun sits back on his haunches, smirking at the withering glare Ten throws at him. The effect, though, is dampened by how Ten looks. Kun’s gaze lingers on the twin spots of colour that sit high on Ten’s cheeks, the blush trailing down to Ten’s neck, his chest. The colour is vibrant, pretty, and rivalled only by the dusky pink of his cock standing hard and wanting where Kun had left it.

Ten squirms under his gaze, hips twitching uselessly. “Kun,” he says, a whine and a warning, and something pulses low in Kun’s gut.

“Patience,” Kun says. It’s hoarser than he’d thought it’d be. He moves closer, Ten’s eyes narrowing in suspicion, then spits into his palm.

Ten gasps, back arching up off the bed as Kun wraps his hand around him again. “You think ‒ ” Kun repeats the same trick with his wrist, and smugly notes how Ten’s breath hitches “ ‒ you’re so clever, don’t you?”

“Clever how?” Kun asks innocently, but is then promptly distracted when Ten pulls him down to crash their mouths together.

That’s the last either of them say in a while. Kun’s mouth is too busy for something as trivial as talking ‒ it’s occupied by Ten’s lips, then Ten’s cock, and then, when Ten flips him over to eat him out, all he can say is endless nonsense, embarrassing and incoherent, the sound of it muffled into Chittaphon’s pillow. Kun presses his ass back with each flick of Ten’s tongue, trying to get more, to get deeper, moaning shamelessly, the obscene wet sounds and slick spreading across his cheeks making him feel hot all over. And each filthy sound Kun makes only seems to spur Ten on. Kun can feel his breath grow hotter, can feel his moans ripple across his skin like skipping stones. Ten adds fingers, relentlessly stretching out Kun’s hole and grazing his prostate in gentle teases that have Kun lurching forwards, trying to seek relief against Chittaphon’s cotton sheets.

It’s messy. It’s smutty. It’s one endless feedback loop of the two of them tugging each other closer and closer to the edge, and then Kun lifts his head, voice tight, hips moving in rapid, desperate movements, “Ten ‒ ah, Ten, I need ‒ I need your ‒ ”

And that, apparently, is all he needs to say for Ten to scramble up, grab him by his waist and haul him backwards into his lap.

“Oh ‒ ” Kun reels slightly from the vertigo but quickly rights himself. Ten’s hot, ragged breath ghosts across his shoulders, and Kun turns his head for an open-mouthed kiss that makes his head go dizzy and knees go weak. He wrenches his mouth away, then kneels up on the bed and prepares to sink down.

Only to find that he’s stuck.

A bubble of frustrated laughter fights its way from Kun’s chest when he realises what Ten’s doing. “Ten. C’mon.”

Ten nuzzles Kun’s neck, breathing in his scent, taking his time. Taking, Kun thinks wryly, full advantage of the fact that his powers have rendered Kun immobile. “Mm, not yet.”

Without warning, he swirls his tongue over the most sensitive part of Kun’s neck and bites down. Kun gasps, the contrasting sensations of pleasure and pain coursing through his veins. He tries to grab Ten’s head, keep him there, but of course he can’t move. As if sensing his frustration, Ten leans back, smirking up at the look on Kun’s face.

Kun is so wound up he almost snarls. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Patience,” Ten scolds, but there’s a teasing, smug lilt to his voice. His hands fall back to Kun’s hips, kneading the soft flesh there. “It’s a virtue, didn’t anyone tell you that?”

Before Kun can snap back, Ten grabs his chin roughly, pulling him into a sloppy, uncoordinated kiss. Each slide of their lips makes Kun’s toes curl with pleasure, his nerve endings lighting up as bright as the sun. Kun moans, unable to help himself, and Ten pulls him higher into his lap. The tip of Ten’s cock circles his hole, teasing; torturous.

Kun wrenches his mouth from Ten’s, but just enough to speak. “You ‒ you’re doing this on purpose.”

“Of course I am.” Ten looks incredibly smug. His pupils are blown wide, ringed by thin circles of blue. “How’re you feeling? You smell deliciously desperate right now.”

“I am not.”

“Really?” Ten’s smile grows wider. “Guess a few more minutes won’t hurt, then.”

They don’t hurt, but by god, are they torturous. Ten seems determined to make Kun beg for it. He mouths at every inch of Kun’s skin within reach, his lips glancing off the side of Kun’s mouth and pulling away with a sultry, knowing smile. After a while, he lies back, and Kun watches him slowly trail a hand down his neck, his chest, his stomach until he wraps a hand around himself. Ten fucks his hips up into his hand leisurely, like he’s got all the time in the world, smearing saliva and precome against Kun’s stretched, waiting hole.

Unwilling to crack so easily, Kun presses his lips together tightly the entire time. The rest of his body betrays him, though, his stomach muscles jumping every time Ten looks up at him through the fan of his eyelashes, his cock twitching with each breathy moan Ten makes. But he’s not going to give Ten the satisfaction, so: unstoppable force, meet immovable object.

But then Ten moves his hand, his slender fingers circling Kun’s neglected cock, and Kun’s resolve instantly crumbles.

His mouth falls open of its own accord as Ten begins to move his hand. “Oh my god ‒ oh my god ‒ ”

“Oh?” Ten says, amused. “He speaks!”

“Shut up ‒ ” Kun begins to say, only for it to cut off into a whine when Ten begins to speed up.

“You like that?” Ten’s hand squeezes, it’s so tight, and Kun could die. “Does it feel good, honey?”

“Yeah,” Kun gasps. “Please. Oh, fuck, Ten, please ‒ ”

“Oh? What happened to holding out?”

Kun could yell, he really could. Ten is stroking his cock, looking unruffled and holding up his side of the conversation perfectly well, while Kun is this close to losing his mind.

“Fuck holding out,” he says, sanity sapping away by all the blood rushing like a river south. “You win, okay? You win, just ‒ hurry up, and get inside me ‒ ”

Ten’s hand immediately stills. His eyes are sharp with hunger.

“Be a good boy and ask me nicely,” he says, and Kun’s whole body floods with heat.

This is outrageous. This is humiliating.

This is turning Kun on so, so much.

Tears spring to his eyes ‒ from frustration, from the burn of exhaustion in his thighs and knees as Ten keeps him still, from the overwhelming want. “Please, Ten. Please, please, please ‒ ”

“Fuck, I love it when you beg,” Ten says breathlessly, pushing himself up, and then the unseen force holding Kun’s body disappears as he comes slamming down onto Ten’s waiting cock.

Pain and pleasure lance through him like twin blades. Kun chokes out a sob, tears spilling down his face as Ten snaps his hips, driving up into him again and again. There’s no more talking, just the harsh sounds of skin on skin, Ten’s breath growing ragged in his ear. It’s so intense that all Kun can do is cling to Ten, throat spasming with soundless cries as Ten hits that perfect sweet spot buried deep inside him over and over, pressure building between his hip bones.

And then ‒ “Touch yourself,” Ten rasps.

Kun scrambles to obey. Ten’s rhythm speeds up. It takes them all of thirty seconds before they’re coming, Ten with a grunt and pressing his hips flush to Kun’s ass, Kun muffling his cry into the nook of Ten’s shoulder as he spills into the tight circle of his hand.

Once they’ve caught their breath and cleaned up and collapsed next to each other, Kun senses a pair of eyes on him and rolls over. Ten is lying on his side, hands pillowed under his cheek, staring at Kun.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Ten says quickly. “Was that, um. Okay?”

“A little intense, but great. You full?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I had enough.”

Ten pats his tummy, which looks a little rounded now. A smile tugs on Kun’s lips.

“Okay. Good.”

Then, unthinkingly, he leans over and presses a chaste kiss to Ten’s lips.

They both freeze at the exact same moment.

“Um,” Ten says.

“I,” Kun stutters.

Ten pulls back. He’s looking at Kun strangely, and Kun knows that they’re thinking the same thing: that they’d had an unspoken rule where kissing is strictly a prelude to sex, and Kun’s just gone and broken it.

“Did you ‒ was that not enough for you?” Ten asks uncertainly, and of course he would think that Kun wanted more.

And the thing is, Kun does, but not in that way.

Oh god. He’s going to have to explain. Kun can feel something rise up in his throat, like butterflies. Or vomit.

Probably vomit.

“Ten,” Kun hears himself say. “I have something to tell you.”

“What is it?”

“I,” Kun says. “Well. It’s not that I want more ‒ not now. I mean. No, that’s not what I mean, uh. Well. There’s no easy way to say this, but. Ten. I think I have feelings for ‒ ”

Ten’s eyes are so wide that Kun sees everything. The confusion. The expectation.

The flash of sheer terror.

Oh god. Oh god, what the fuck is he doing?

So Kun does the only thing he can, and his mouth switches words as swiftly as a train changing tracks.

“ ‒ Chittaphon.”

😈

“Why the fuck did you say that?” Sicheng says.

Judging by the disbelief in his voice, Kun knows that it’s bad, bad. He groans. “I don’t know, okay? I panicked!”

His forehead connects with the surface of the table they’ve commandeered in the library with a hollow thunk. Sicheng winces. After a couple of seconds, a hand pats Kun tentatively on the head.

“There, there,” Sicheng says, entirely unconvincingly.

“Maybe Hendery was right,” Kun moans into the tabletop. “I should’ve just ‒ kept my feelings to myself, or something.”

“Well, what did your ‒ what did he say?”

“Nothing much. He just sort of went, oh, and then…”

Ten’s face, when Kun had accidentally blurted out that he had feelings for Chittaphon instead of doing the adult thing and telling Ten that he liked him, flashes through his mind. After spending so much time together, and watching his face as he tried to figure out what gave Ten the most pleasure, Kun thinks he can tell how Ten feels just by the way he looks. And how Ten had looked was confused. Stunned. Then, for the tiniest of moments, crestfallen, before his eyes had gone all cold and shuttered, and he’d asked Kun to please sleep on the sofa that night because he snored loudly like an old man.

Kun groans again. He thunks his head against the table repeatedly, trying to banish the memory of that night from his mind.

“Hey, stop it before you give yourself brain damage,” Sicheng scolds, and yanks Kun up by the collar. “It doesn’t mean he still doesn’t want to sleep with you, right?”

“That’s the thing,” Kun says miserably. “We haven’t, since…”

Sicheng grimaces. “Shit. I’m sorry, man.”

“Well, on the bright side,” Kun says, still wallowing, and therefore distracted, “I guess he’ll come back to feed eventually.”

There’s a pregnant pause. “Er,” Sicheng says. “What?”

And that’s when Kun realises, in his depressive, listen-to-me-whine state, he’s gone and slipped the fuck up.

Sicheng’s eyes are kind of starting to bug out now. “Kun, what do you mean ‒ ”

“Listen,” Kun says. “Don’t freak out.”

“Don’t freak out about what?” comes Yangyang’s voice, and Kun belatedly remembers that the whole friend group had arranged to study in the library together.

After several nosy questions (Dejun), pouting (Yangyang), and a disturbingly intense stare (Hendery), Kun caves. Months of keeping Chittaphon’s secret have taken its toll, and Kun finds himself telling his friends everything ‒ how he’d bumped into Ten at the club, how Chittaphon had grown progressively weaker, the deal he’d struck up with Ten to keep him and Chittaphon healthy. And then, with deep mortification, how he’d accidentally told Ten post-fuck that he liked Chittaphon, but not him.

“What the fuck?” Sicheng says, appalled.

“Oh my god, not cool, dude,” Yangyang says, sinking down in his seat in secondhand embarrassment.

“Excuse me,” Hendery says loudly, wilfully ignoring the looks from other students around them trying to study. “Are you all conveniently skipping over the fact that our friend here has found a nightwalker in this modern era? And is fucking it?”

“Shhh,” Kun hisses. “For the record, Ten is a he, and I don’t know if we’re still… you know.”

“Actually,” Dejun pipes up, “I’m more surprised that there are two of them at all.”

They all look at him quizzically. Dejun glances around at them, surprised. “You know that nightwalkers can be cured, right?”

“Um, no? And how do you know this anyway?”

“I had a second cousin’s grand-aunt who was one. Or, no, maybe it was a second cousin’s grandmother’s aunt ‒ ”

“Dejun,” Sicheng says, gentle but firm, and Dejun flushes.

“Right ‒ well ‒ nightwalkers feed off of energy, right?” Everyone nods. “My second cousin’s grand-aunt ‒ or grandmother’s aunt, whatever ‒ she didn’t have a good childhood growing up. Was starved of affection. She compartmentalised her feelings and desires so much until it became a totally separate part of her, I guess ‒ which is where the nightwalker part comes in. Like, that’s why they feed off of people’s affection. You get it?”

“Why don’t I know this?” Hendery asks, outraged. “It’s not in any of the scrolls.”

“Hendery, you know most supernatural history is oral, right?” Dejun smacks a hand over Yangyang’s mouth before he can make an inappropriate joke. “Anyway. The story is that she wreaked havoc amongst the villagers until one day, a handsome stranger passing through fell in love with her. Specifically, he loved both her nightwalker and humane sides equally, until the two parts became whole again and they all lived happily ever after.”

Dejun ends the tale with a dreamy sigh, and to a chorus of awws from the others. Kun, however, is not so reassured.

“What are you saying?”

“He’s saying,” Yangyang grins, fangs poking into his bottom lip, “that in order for the curse to be broken, maybe your nightwalker’s human host needs to, like, get some.”

Dejun tsks in disagreement and rolls his eyes. “I’m saying that maybe Ten and Chittaphon need to know that they’re loved.”

He gives Kun a meaningful look. The others turn to him as well, and eye him expectantly. Kun glances down at the disorganised mess of his notes, and the Word document open on his laptop. He’d meant to finish his assignment, but one look at his screen shows him that it’s well past midnight, and it’s a Saturday. Three full days since Ten last fed.

He’s out there, somewhere. Probably looking for his next meal.

A meal, Kun realises with bubbling dread and jealousy, that won’t be him.

There’s the sound of a chair scraping noisily on the floor. It’s only when his friends’ heads whip towards him that Kun realises he had, abruptly, stood up.

“Hey, Dejun,” he says, mouth dry, butterflies erupting in his tummy. “Do you still have that magic carpet?”

😈

One jerky, white-knuckled ride on a threadbare Persian carpet later, during which Kun had to reach over several times to steer, Dejun drops him off at the end of the snaking queue that leads to After Midnight.

“Do you need a lift back?” Dejun asks.

Kun starts to shake his head, then stops. He still feels slightly dizzy from the ride. “It’s okay. I’m gonna grab Ten and take him back to Chittaphon’s.”

Dejun looks relieved, probably grateful for the fact that Kun won’t be around to lecture him about his driving skills. “Okay. Good luck!”

He grabs the tassels on the opposing corners of his carpet and tugs. Kun waves goodbye as the carpet ascends back into the night sky, wincing slightly when the carpet makes a weird zig-zag movement. Dejun’s shriek is audible from down below.

Shaking his head, Kun turns his attention to the supernaturals outside the club. He scans the crowd, spying a few familiar faces ‒ the pack of werewolves on his first visit, a group of witches that he vaguely remembers from Hendery’s Instagram stories, even Baekhyun from work ‒ but not the one he’s looking for.

Kun’s hope begins to ebb as he spends the next few minutes wandering up and down the line. Why on earth did he think that this was a good idea? There must be a dozen other bars and clubs in this city that Ten could frequent for a meal. He could be inside, or he could have already come and gone, some young, handsome supernatural on his arm and in his bed. The bouncer has started to look at Kun out of the corner of his eye suspiciously, too. Kun sends him a weak, don’t-mind-me-I’m-just-a-frail-human smile and turns away, fishing his phone out of his pocket, because maybe he should just man the fuck up and call Ten ‒

Whom he promptly collides with.

“Ah, shit, sorry ‒ oh. It’s you.”

When Ten sees that it’s Kun who he’s bumped into, his face visibly flattens. Kun’s stomach drops at the sight ‒ and what a sight. Ten’s gone all out today. A furry pink jacket is slung across his shoulders, gaping at the front to reveal his bare torso and tattoos galore. Fitted around his neck is a leather choker and dangling from it is a ring, shiny and silver, nestled in the hollow of his throat.

Ten’s club outfit screams for attention. Already, people in the line are turning to look at him, interest glinting in their eyes. Kun’s chest clenches, his blood running loud and hot, and he’s suddenly overcome with the urge to hook his finger around Ten’s collar and tug.

“Why are you dressed like that?” he blurts, and if at all possible, Ten’s face sours even more.

“What’re you doing here, Kun?”

“What are you doing here? We had a deal!”

“What deal?”

“Um, the deal where you feed from me, so you don’t have to put yourself in situations like this?”

“‘This’? Wow, I guess chivalry isn’t dead after all,” Ten says sarcastically. “Thanks, but no thanks. And don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

With that, he pulls his jacket tight around himself and stalks off. Kun gapes at the space where Ten had been standing, and after a beat, runs after him.

“Ten, don’t be difficult. I just want to talk ‒ ”

“I’m not being difficult.” Ten saunters past the line to the club, not even deigning to look at him. “In fact, I’m making your life a whole lot easier. I’m getting my own meals, so you don’t have to pity-fuck me anymore.”

“Pity ‒ ” Kun grabs Ten’s arm. “Is that what you think I was doing?”

It has the intended effect. Ten stops in his tracks. He looks down at where Kun’s hand circles his arm, then up to Kun’s face, eyes narrowing dangerously.

“Am I wrong?” Ten asks coolly, and Kun flusters.

“Yes! I mean ‒ well, no, Chittaphon literally fainted in front of me, and then when he turned into you, you couldn’t even stand, so ‒ ”

“So this is a good thing, right? Chittaphon will continue to be well-fed, you can go, like, date him or whatever, and I’ll finally be out of your hair.”

Ten twists, trying to break free of Kun’s grip and slip into the safety of the club. But Kun holds fast, heart hammering.

“That’s not ‒ no, Ten, listen. It’s about the other night.”

Ten plays dumb. “What other night?”

“You know what I’m talking about,” Kun says, exasperated.

“Do I?”

“I have something to tell you. What I meant to say the other night is that I ‒ ”

Ten drops the act right away. “You don’t have to say anything, okay? I know you like him. I’m just the tag-along, right?”

The bitterness in his voice is so pronounced that Kun is taken aback. “What? No.”

“A shitty buy one, get one free deal.”

“Don’t ‒ ” Ten twists again, trying to get away, and Kun tightens his grip “ ‒ don’t talk about yourself like that.”

“I’ll talk about myself however I like!” Ten snaps, and with that, Kun reaches the limit of his patience.

“Tian ah, you’re so fucking frustrating! Why do I even like you in the first place?”

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Kun’s heart, quite literally, stops. Ten goes still. In fact, the whole world does. The chatter around them dies down. The clubbers lining up all turn to look at them at where they’re standing over near the front of the line, eyes wide and curious. Kun even thinks he hears the bouncer swear damn under his breath.

Damn, indeed.

“I,” Kun stutters, and yes, thank you, after confessing to his crush in the worst way possible, his mouth is now refusing to work, “I didn’t mean ‒ ”

“You,” Ten says in the tiniest voice imaginable. “You like me?”

Kun shuts up. Looks. And Ten ‒ Ten’s glossy lips are parted. His face slack in surprise. And Kun’s surprised, because it hits him there and then that Ten did not know. Which is a crazy conclusion. How could he not have known? How could he have thought that Kun didn’t like him like that?

Maybe, a voice that sounds uncannily like Dejun’s says flatly, because you never fucking told him?

“I… ” Kun scrubs his free hand across his face. He’s keenly aware of the bouncer looming, of the supernaturals staring, of the hope on Ten’s face, flickering, wavering, and say something already my god ‒ “Shit. This isn’t the way I wanted to say this. I had, I had a whole thing planned, but ‒ fuck this. Yes. I like you, okay? I was going to tell you the other night, but I ‒ I panicked. I wasn’t sure…”

“You like me,” Ten says slowly. His eyes search Kun’s face, as if looking for affirmation. As if he still can hardly believe it.

Kun runs his hand down Ten’s arm. Takes his hand in his.

“I do,” he says, and Ten’s face opens up like a flower receiving sunlight.

It’s as if Kun’s confession is as powerful as the star itself. A sunburn blush blooms along Ten’s cheeks and over his nose, spreading down to patch blotchy over his naked chest. His hand grows hot in Kun’s grasp. There is, suddenly, a glow that seems to emanate from within that Kun has only ever seen post-meal.

They stand there, shy and stupid. Kun’s heart is racing. Ten hasn’t given him an answer, not yet, but it’s impossible not to know how he feels. He’s unsuccessfully fighting down a smile. Ten keeps glancing up, then flicking his gaze away when he sees that Kun’s staring back, his blush deepening each time until it’s the colour of a summer sunset.

This is so silly. Kun is so happy.

“Wait.” Ten’s tongue pokes out between his lips, the first sign of anything but happiness since Kun told him how he felt. “But what about ‒ ”

“I like him, too. Don’t ‒ ” Kun wheezes out a breath of laughter, shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know how to explain it. The both of you ‒ you’re wonderful in different ways. Chittaphon, he’s ‒ he’s so sweet, and caring, and being around him makes me feel so warm ‒ ”

“It sounds like you like him better than me,” Ten sulks, and the corners of Kun’s mouth twitch.

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous of him.” Met with stony silence, Kun’s laugh this time is louder. “Ten, you’re the same person!”

“We are, but we also aren’t.” Ten ducks his head and scuffs the toe of his boot against the ground. “It’s like ‒ it’s like looking through a one-way mirror. I can see everything he’s doing, or thinking, but he can’t see me.”

Kun reaches over. He fits his palm around Ten’s jaw, and gently pushes until Ten can’t hide his face from him anymore.

“I see you,” Kun says softly.

“Of course you do.” Ten rolls his eyes, still not meeting Kun’s gaze. “I’m standing right here.”

“Ten. Look at me.”

Ten looks at him. God. His eyes are truly the loveliest shade of blue.

“You’re singular,” Kun says. Each word is deliberate, made for Ten and his ears only. “Radiant. And sexy. So fucking sexy, but not just because of how you look. You take care of me, open up to me even when it’s scary for you. And Chittaphon makes me feel warm, but you… you make me feel alive.”

Kun can feel Ten’s cheek grow hot in his hand. “Kun,” Ten whispers, mortified, but he doesn’t look away.

“It’s true.”

“I… Thanks.”

Kun raises an eyebrow. “‘Thanks’?”

Ten grumbles, but eventually concedes, “And… I feel the same way about you. I guess.”

On some level, Kun already knew this. It doesn’t stop his heart from swelling up in his happiness, though, pressing against the inside of his ribcage so that it feels two sizes too small for his chest. He bites back a smile, and instead pretends to be offended.

“Wow. You guess? You know what, forget I said anything ‒ ”

Kun feigns pulling away, and Ten makes a noise of protest. “No take backs! You made a deal with the devil, and now you gotta lie with it.”

With that, Ten grabs his wrist and nuzzles into his palm. The action is so shockingly endearing that Kun is surprised he doesn’t just melt on the spot.

“I don’t think that’s the saying,” he laughs, then sobers. He swipes a thumb across Ten’s cheek, tender and sweet. “Hey, listen. Don’t be jealous. Or mad. You know I really do like you, too, right?”

“You said that already,” Ten says, eyes cutting away in shyness, and ‒ fuck. Kun could eat him right up.

Speaking of which ‒

“Well,” Kun says, and Ten’s eyes snap back to him, as if he hears it in his voice, as if he knows. “How about I show you how much I mean it, then?”

😈

Their mouths are on each other before they're through the door.

Kun sighs in feverish relief when his back hits a wall, Ten’s knee finding its way between his legs.

“Fuck,” Ten mumbles into the warming pocket air between them. “I missed this ‒ I missed you ‒ ”

“Can I get that in writing?” Kun asks, breathless and cheeky, and is appropriately punished by Ten biting a bruising line down his throat.

They make out like that, up against Chittaphon’s front door, rough and desperate and using far too much tongue to be good, except it is still good. Ten applies more pressure, thigh firm against Kun’s cock. It stirs, straining against his underwear, and that’s the second Kun gets an idea. Something special to mark the occasion.

“Hey.” His breath hitches. “Can I fuck you?”

Ten pulls back, blinking. Surprised. Embarrassment and self-consciousness pinch Kun like pincers, and he’s about to berate himself for being stupid and sentimental and presumptuous, but then Ten is saying, “Yeah, yeah, you can,” and throws his jacket aside.

Judging by the outraged yowl, it’s landed on one of the cats, but Kun pays it no mind. How can he, when Ten is shedding the rest of his clothes and looking over his shoulder at Kun, bedroom eyes inviting him inside?

“Come on,” he beckons, and Kun trips over his own two feet following him.

There’s a lot of fumbling, and tumbling, and grumbling (“How are you so ‒ ” Kun grunts, tries to wiggle his fingers against the unrelenting snugness of Ten’s hole “ ‒ tight?”), but eventually, Ten’s spread out beneath him, naked save for the audacious collar, lips parted around a lengthy, shaky exhale as Kun gently slides three fingers out of him and sits back on his haunches.

Ten’s panting hard, face half-hidden in the sweep of his hair. It's insane, all of it ‒ the flutter of his lashes, his hard, flushed cock, the pleasure rolling off of him in waves that's giving Kun a fucking contact high. His fingers are gripping the sheets so tightly his knuckles have gone white. A couple of seconds more of Kun’s fingers inside of Ten, and he’d probably have come. He should probably make fun of Ten while he can.

Instead, what Kun says is: “God. You’re ‒ you’re kind of beautiful, you know?”

Ten’s face twitches, expressions too rapid for Kun to grasp, and then he’s lifting himself up onto an elbow and grabbing for Kun. He kisses him slow and deep for ages until Kun starts squirming, then shoves him away and lies back down, panting just as hard as he did earlier.

“Shut up and get inside me already,” Ten demands, and ‒ yeah. Yeah, Kun should probably do that.

He scrambles up onto his knees, lining himself up. Ten is dripping. Kun can feel the lube smear across the tip of his cock. It punches a noise out of him, harsh and low in his throat. He lightly traces Ten’s collar for something to do with his hands, his body vibrating at what feels like the speed of light. It’s their first time like this, and, nervous, he thinks he should ask again to make sure.

“Is this ‒ is this okay?”

Ten makes an offended noise. “You want to be a gentleman now? Of course it’s fucking okay, just hurry up and ‒ ” He devolves into a full cry when Kun’s hips snap forward, burying himself completely.

It’s satisfying, getting Ten to shut up and rendering him speechless when it’s usually the other way around, but Kun can’t quite relish in it. All of his nerves focus on a single point, on the nearly suffocating heat of Ten all around him. It almost makes it impossible to breathe, chest tight and muscles tense – painfully tense. Kun tries to pull his attention to his hand, slips a finger between Ten’s collar and the hot, damp skin of his neck, but the result ‒ Ten letting out a soft mewl, the flush that spreads across his neck ‒ just makes it worse.

Kun fucks into Ten with slow, hard strokes – snapping his hips against his ass, the sound making his ears burn, his skin prickle. Ten’s head is tilted towards the ceiling, perfect mouth helplessly agape. Kun can hear his throat spasming, fighting cries that eventually tear their way through him, breathy and choked when Kun hits just the right spot again, again, again. Ten’s hand, limply gripping his cock, has long since stilled – unable to move under Kun’s hips, his hands.

“Touch yourself,” Kun says, voice tight. He's close in a way he's never felt, eyes so intensely focused on the angles of Ten’s neck, the swirls of ink on his chest, the harsh shapes he'll bend into for Kun, the way he's like putty in his hands. It builds between his hip bones, tension unlike anything he knows, growing stronger when Ten smoothes a hand down his chest, his abs, deliberately slow; somehow still having the presence of mind to put on a show.

Kun’s rhythm falters when Ten strokes himself, the pleasure making his hole quiver around him like a vice. “Fuck ‒ ”

“Keep going. God ‒ ” Ten breaks off with a gasp as Kun fucks into him a little harder, emboldened by the encouragement. “God ‒ like that ‒ ”

Kun groans, slipping his finger out from Ten’s collar to grab him firmly by the hips with both hands. “Okay, I ‒ okay…” He digs his fingers in – brain wobbly, pulse pounding loudly in his ears – and drives in harder, faster, with palpable desperation.

Slowly but surely, Ten begins to unravel. Usually so in control, so collected even during sex, he’s barely coherent now. Ten’s face is tilted so far back it’s almost facing the wall, his eyes shut and mouth slack with pleasure. He’s quiet, but not silent, tight, hot breaths punched out of him with each thrust. And his hand hasn't stopped, stroking himself harshly in time with Kun’s hips. It’s a side of him Kun has never seen before ‒ the fact that it’s entirely Kun’s doing is enough for the pressure in his belly to sweeten, to sharpen.

“So close,” Kun groans, abs flexing to try and keep it at bay.

“Inside,” Ten gasps. “Come inside. I – fuck, Kun, I’m so close, come on, come on, come on ‒ “

He cranes his neck up, searching, and Kun meets him halfway. The moment their lips touch, Kun’s spilling, vision whiting out, arms shaking, Ten’s lips parting to hungrily feed off of Kun’s pleasure ‒ of Kun’s love. A few strokes later, and Ten is following, coming hard all over his hand and both their stomachs, rolling them over, smearing his mess, taking Kun’s face between sticky fingers and kissing him even though he’s full.

“God,” Ten says, with feeling, the words muffled against his mouth. “Kun, I ‒ ”

His lips keep finding Kun’s, over and over again. A little bit hungry, a lot because he can. Perhaps, Kun thinks, Ten’s full, just ‒ in a different way.

“I know,” Kun murmurs. He strokes a hand through Ten’s hair, tilts his chin up, and kisses him hard. “I know.”

And everything about it? A couple of months ago, Kun would have run screaming for the hills.

Now, it’s messy, and unreal, and simply ‒ perfect.

😈

Kun wakes the next morning slow and relaxed, eyes fluttering open to the muted beams of sunlight filtering through the curtains. They’d washed up before collapsing into bed once again, but the aftermath of last night still lingers. Kun’s body aches from the exertion, but in a good way, and he feels light, buoyant, happiness and contentment hollowing his bones.

The sleeping figure of Chittaphon lies next to him. Kun snuggles closer, and a few moments later, Chittaphon stirs.

“Hm?”

Chittaphon’s hair is tousled adorably, his voice scratchy with sleep. He rolls around to face Kun, but he’s barely got his eyes open. Kun is seized with the sudden urge to lean over and kiss him.

But not yet ‒ he has to tell Chittaphon how he feels first.

“Hey, you,” he says instead.

“Hey.” Chittaphon rubs his cheek against the pillow. His eyes have fluttered shut again. “I had the weirdest dream.”

“Yeah?”

“I dreamt…” Chittaphon’s forehead creases. “I dreamt that I was something called a nightwalker. Something that came out only at night, that fed on people’s energy. I dreamt of you, letting me, well…” He’s only half-awake, but a pinkness has started to spread across his cheeks, and Kun, also beginning to blush, thinks he can guess what he’s thinking of. ”... nevermind. But then, I dreamt that…”

He trails off. Kun is intrigued. “What?”

Chittaphon is quiet for a long time. For a moment, Kun thinks he’s fallen back asleep, but then:

“I dreamt that you told me ‒ nightwalker me ‒ that you had feelings for me.”

It can’t be that easy. And yet.

And yet Chittaphon’s blush has darkened. And yet he’s still stubbornly keeping his eyes closed. Kun is keenly reminded of children who shut their eyes to pretend that things aren’t there, of this being a way to deny fears, or the truth, and feels his heart grow twice its size.

“And what if,” he says, hushed, “I told you that it was all true? That all that really happened?”

Silence.

At long last, Chittaphon cracks open an eye. “Are you telling me that you like me?”

Kun blinks. “Wait ‒ that’s what you’re surprised about?”

“I’m not surprised. I could tell.”

“You ‒ yah, what do you mean?”

“You were very obvious,” Chittaphon says, growing more smug by the second, and this was not how Kun envisioned him, one, finding about him being a nightwalker, and two, Kun having feelings for him, going.

“You knew? And didn’t say anything?”

“They’re your feelings. I’m not going to tell you what to do with them.”

“I ‒ ” Kun sucks in a breath, then folds his arms. A difficult feat, given that he’s lying down sideways. “Okay, well, I do. Like you. So what about it?”

“You’re doing a very poor job of showing it,” Chittaphon observes, and Kun finds himself both aggravated and deeply, overwhelmingly fond.

“Well,” he says, uncrossing his arms and shuffling forwards. “I can…”

As far as first kisses go, this one is innocent. The lightest of pressures. Just a gentle brush of their lips, chaste and dry. It still sparks something inside of Kun, reaches all the way down to his fingers and toes. Chittaphon, too. He holds his breath the whole time, eyes shut tight, and Kun’s heart kicks violently in his chest at the sweetness of it all. He cups Chittaphon’s face in his hands and leans back in, building up to a steady rhythm. Eventually, Kun feels brave enough to swipe his tongue across Chittaphon’s lower lip, and feels his lips part with an inhale.

Kun draws back. “How was that for showing how I feel?”

“Not bad,” Chittaphon says, and Kun can’t help but puff out his chest slightly at the way his voice sounds slightly unsteady. “It could be better, though. Want to show me again?”

It’s bait. Kun falls for it anyway ‒ hook, line and sinker, the way he’s fallen for Chittaphon, for Ten. He grabs Chittaphon round the waist and rolls them over, ignoring Chittaphon’s squeak of surprise to seal their lips together again. Chittaphon’s issued a challenge, and Kun’s never been known to back down from one, so he proceeds to kiss the living daylights out of him. And judging by the needy, desperate noises that Chittaphon is making, Kun thinks he’s doing a pretty good job of showing exactly how he feels.

The only thing is, Chittaphon pulls away periodically to drag the back of his hand across his eyes. After the fourth or fifth time this happens, Kun props himself up on an elbow, frowning in concern.

“Are you okay? Is something bothering you?”

“Sorry, my eyes are ‒ they’re kind of itchy ‒ ”

After one last drag across his eyes, Chittaphon drops his hand. He blinks up at Kun blearily, eyelashes fanning dark across his skin, and what Kun sees makes his chest clench in surprise and wonder.

One of Chittaphon’s eyes is a muddy brown.

And the other, a startling shade of blue.