The door shuts with a snap too loud. The patter of rain reduced to a dull hum by the thick wall - it gives way to silence and Ha Jin shivers, finally fully appreciating how drenched she is and the contrast of heat and humidity against her rain washed skin. Her eyes dart across to So catching him in her peripheral vision as he stands dripping at the door. He stares at his hands for a moment as if wondering where to put them and combs his hair back with both as an afterthought.

He shouldn't have done that - she thinks against the deafening pound of her heart as her eyes trail the path of a raindrop down his cheek - along the sharp edge of his jaw and taut codes of his throat before vanishing. She has no idea what to do with her own arms and to avoid the temptation of reaching out to him, she wraps them around herself. Words burn in her throat, silence suddenly so overpowering that Ha Jin cannot think of a word to utter.

They had run the distance hand in hand - even after so long her fingers fitting perfectly into the spaces his large hand leaves out - but now that they were safe from the storm for the time being, the wind not so loud that they could hear their own thoughts - something different has started to simmer.

"What is this place?" So saves her, his eyes looking around anywhere but at her, and the curiosity of his tone a welcome distraction.

"Miss Oh's greenhouse - well in part," she adds catching the arch of his brow.

"I thought greenhouses are made of glass?"

"It is old fashioned - like everything else. The roof is glass." She reaches out and switches the lights, the dim amber flooding the room and bringing to life the greenery around them. "This is where she keeps the herbs - flowers and orchids," she adds with a flash of a grin at him.

"Exquisite..." So says as his hand hoovers over a bonsai, her eyes snap back to him to find his eyes on her. Ha Jin feels her cheeks grow warm.

"Come through here - let me have a look at your leg, I'm sure the rain did no good...." she chats away the nerves, leading way through the aisle between plants and stops when she realizes he had not followed. "Hwang So?"

He stands there, arms hanging limp by his sides and looking at her with a lost expression. Ha Jin gives him a moment and since he refuses to move, takes his hand again.

"Come!"

**

Yo sighs and stretches his arms, his joints crack and he rolls his shoulders. He was a firm believer in all - nighters, but the exhaustion seems to be finally catching up on him. He turns to his office manager and finds Park Mun Seong drooping with an elbow tucked under her chin. There is something almost cute about her extra thick frames that had slid to the tip of her nose. On a second thought, he wants her awake. Yo balls a scrapped paper and throws it at his manager hitting square on her forehead.

Mun Seong wakes up with a start.

"Coffee!" He greets her, with a tilt of his head in the direction of the espresso machine.

"Yes with double cream - thank you, prosecutor nim," her smile is extra sweet as she pushes her glasses back in place and flutters her lashes at him.

"Hey! I wasn't offering - make me some."

"And which country are you the king of?" Her penciled eyebrows rise, "ask nicely if you woke me up." She yawns in a very un - ladylike manner and fishes out a pencil from her messy bun, before checking her mobile for time. "Soon my landlord will rent my apartment to somebody else since I never seem to live there anyway -" she complains stretching her neck and weighing the paperwork on her desk.

"You can move in with me -" Yo doesn't even look up as he offers, his focus consumed by the folder he is studying. Had he done so, he would have noted how the girl had gone completely stiff. "I don't live there anyway."

Mun Seong exhales the breath she was holding and flicks her own forehead.

"Of cause you'd love to have a free cook prosecutor nim but I'd rather not adopt an adult male child - babysitting him is enough.." she is halfway across the room to the espresso machine when Yo clicks his tongue.

"Manager Park -" he waves her over, "look at this and tell me I'm not dreaming."

She comes at his call and looks over his shoulder, then her eyes widen a little and unconsciously she lands a hand on his shoulder and leans in.

"Is that?"

"It is - it definitely is - right?" Yo exclaims.

"A CCTv? But how did they miss it in the first investigation?" Mun Seong scrunches her eyebrows. "It's so clearly in the image."

The image in question is from Tae's death investigation. It shows a black and white shot of the back door entrance to the building where the incident happened, with the staircase that creeps up and out of the image. When Yo doesn't reply, Mun Seong turns to survey his reaction.

At times she thinks that the man has a dash of gray to him, it seems to clear now. There is a gleam of steel in his eyes as a dark thought occurs to him and his jaw tightens.

"I know where it must be -" Yo stands up so abruptly that Mun Seong is thrown off balance, she glides backwards on her heels before he steadies her - a hand on her elbow. "Go home manager Park, I have somewhere to drop by." Then on a second thought he checks the time. "No - wait, I'll drop you on my way."

He grabs his coat, thrusts hers into her hands and is out of the door before Mun Seong has even opened her mouth. The girl stands there for the next full minute before slowly shaking herself out of her stupor and following after the long gone man.

**

He holds her hand a fragment of a moment before she touches him and waits unsure of his own motive. A part of him wants to keep her from touching him and another part yearns to be touched, instead he presses his palm to hers, fingers lacing through her own and looks up into her eyes.

"You don't have to do this -" he says uncertainly, eyes shifting not daring to hold her gaze for any longer. She is crouched beside him where he sits on the bedroll smelling of rain and lavenders and looking at him with her bottomless eyes, it is all he could do without feeling like a monster skinned raw. A flinch on her face would break him and So knows he is cracked enough as it is.

"Of cause I do -" She almost reaches out once more, but his fingers are insistent pulling her back, digging into her supple skin.

"It's horrible -"

"It's swollen - not horrible. You have to see the scares on my knees if you want to talk about horrible..." her voice trails off.

He dares to catch her eye once more and she stills when their eyes meet. He lets her see it, the vulnerability and tries hard not to draw a parallel to yet another instance when his heart had been beating equally loud, and swallows the question at the tip of his tongue.

" Can I trust you?" Of cause he trusts her, whatever the answer would be. He would trust her with his life - or soul as for that matter. But then again. Can I trust you not to run away? Can I trust you with my heart? Can I trust you to trust me?

He does not know.

She watches him for a moment, eyes clouded that he has no idea what she is thinking and her other hand rests atop his still holding hers.

"Tell me a secret," she sounds lighter, a rain soaked, older version of his best friend. He knows not if he is falling or caught in the web she is spinning around him and he cares little either way.

"What kind of a secret?" He asks unsure and timid in that uncertainty. There are stars in her eyes, he imagines telling her that. Of how his heart skips a beat at her every smile. Of how he imagines whispering his fears against her ears curled around her - skin to skin.

"Any kind -"

He thinks of their past, thinks of an ancient love and wonders if that would warrant as a secret. The number of times they had saved each other and each little heart break since - things they never got to tell each other and things he always wanted to ask. He thinks of their daughter - that most beautiful miracle they had created together...the girl she never got to see grow up...who had only called him father once.

"I can't remember any." He lies easily and then flinches when he feels the first press of her fingers against his skin. She looks up and smiles her trained fingers easily seeking out pressure points and working on knotted muscles.

"Ah but that's a lie," she sounds cheekily cheerful at her own childish deception. "I can see them swimming in your eyes. Hwang So, you've always been so full of secrets."

"You make it sound good..." he mutters half heartedly. There is a dull pain invoked at her touch but it always follows by a comfort rather overwhelming, he struggles to keep himself upright as his eyes rolls back with relief.

"See not so bad is it?" She sounds half amused and half annoyed. "I can't believe you didn't let Miss Oh take a look at this. She is ten times better than I am."

His eyes snap open at that and he looks at her with speculation.

"Don't you - don't you find - it ugly?"

"So -"

"I'm afraid -" he says quickly. If it is a secret she wants to hear, he decides that he will indulge her.

"Of what?" She smiles a second after, deciding to indulge him as well. He watches her hands as they ease his muscles with care, her deft fingers running along his leg and imagines of a lie for a moment, of telling her that he is scared of fire, or dark or something. Then she looks into his eyes and the thought is lost on him.

"Of waking up and finding you gone. Finding that either you never existed at all or that -" he swallows. "That I was too late that day and you were - gone. That I lost you to a misplaced revenge. I had insomnia for a year after - after that incident I always dreamed of you drowning and never reaching you fast enough. Ha Jin - ah I -"

Her palm against his cheek steals his words and when he looks up she has scooted closer enough for their noses to touch.

"I am very real Hwang So and you have saved me."

Her words are a whisper against his lips as she dips her head. He holds her back, a hand on her shoulder. Disappointment pools in her eyes before she blinks it away and he can hardly hold it. Instead he presses his lips to her forehead, holding her close, breathing her in.

"Not today Ha Jin - ah," he mumbles into her hair. "You'll be hurt if you go any further."

Her palms gliding up his arms are sure and persistent, so are her eyes when she pulls away to look at him. Unable to help himself he strokes her cheek sliding his hand down her throat to rest at the back of her neck.

"You've never hurt me."

He smiles in spite of himself at the irony, it is bitter with recollections of all the darkness lost on her. He does not trust himself not to cut her when he is broken.

""I'm afraid of this too -" he says wistfully. "Of growing too fond of you that I might never let you go. If you come any closer there will be no return." In another life my love took your life.

She reaches for his hand on her skin and drags it down to rest over her heart, pressed there underneath her own palm so that he cannot pull it away. His breath stills at the realization that he sets her heart racing and she waits for it to dawn upon him that perhaps, they are already past that point of no return.

"Want to hear a secret?" she asks him instead. He nods, too transfixed on her bright eyes.

"I love you."

"Ha Jin - ah..."

She leans over and rests her forehead against his, his hand still pressed against her heart and sandwiched between their bodies.

"Kiss me," her whisper follows a gentle brush of her lips on his. "Please..."

His exhale becomes her inhale as he takes her lips with his, mouths fused and hearts racing, his other hand comes around her back, pulling her onto him, pressed until she fits into the gaps of his frame.

It is not their first kiss, images too blurred to be significant flicker into her mind. He has kissed her before, under a well staged mistletoe on a long gone Christmas, against a cold, hard locker in a forgotten training room, in the middle of shifting silvery lights in his pool - but never like he was kissing her now. It has nothing tender or gentle, but a raw need that throbs against her pulse. His teeth sink into the fullness of her lower lip before his tongue darts across with soothing warmth.

He kisses her like it is his last kiss, he kisses her like he had waited for thousand years. It is a kiss of a lover and Ha Jin is lost before she has even begun to comprehend what he is doing. He tastes like rain - smells like rain and something earthy and spicy that is lost on her. His fingers draw circles on the exposed skin at her waist before sliding under her top to crawl up her spine.

Ha Jin shivers and her hand holding his falls, before curling around his shoulder, drawing him inexplicably closer, drawing strength from the sheer power he seems to radiate.

He breaks away leaving her gasping harshly to look down at her flushed face. When their eyes meet again she is taken aback, his eyes are dark with desire and something else - something ancient and timeless flickers within them. Almost a different person - a more powerful yet unruly person - a restrained and starved predator - the words occur to her and vanish before she could grasp them. He touches her cheek with the back of his palm.

"Do you wish to stop?" He sounds different, husky breathless but also authoritative and commanding as if daring her to step away - or perhaps giving her a last escape.

"No..." her reply is a a little more than a short puff of air, when he lowers her to the ground, a hand under her head for safety as well as to hold her in place when he seeks her mouth again.

He breaks the kiss all too soon, leaving her tingling lips to draw a path down her throat and tugs at the dump fabric, uncaring of the buttons that are torn away to nuzzles against the cold skin of her shoulder. Her fingers thread through his hair, holding his head against her as he presses reverent kisses against her collar bone and reach the base of her neck where her pulse throbs painfully. His teeth scrapes her skin and and she presses a hand to hush the gasp of pain that escapes her mouth but his tongue follows, soothing the raw spot, sucking on it gently until she is whimpering in need all but lost to reason and his fingers daftly undressing her.

He encompasses her like a tide, falling on her hard before caressing her with unfathomable tenderness and he touches her with a familiarity that gets her pulse racing - his lips seeks out the most sensitive spots that she had never known to exist, and has her splayed open for him in complete thoughtless surrender. He strokes her softness with knowing fingers and the resulting crescendo of pleasure has her shuddering and arching for him.

"So - So," all she could manage is a breathless chant of his name and he tastes it on her lips, dropping his head reverently to drink from her mouth.

"I know - I know love," he whispers against her ear, sucking on her earlobe gently as she comes down from her high.

When her hands splay across the plains of his chest a flash of insecurity flickers in his eyes. But she is too insistent and she kisses it away, with quick presses against his lips and down his throat that has him groaning. His skin is bronze and glowing in the dim light and her skin pales infinitely in comparison. She wonders about that briefly running her hands down each sculpted muscle before following the trail with kisses, sucking on his pulse points and tasting him until he is coiled and taut with tension. She revels in the knowledge that he desires her so deeply and caresses him until he is breathless. He holds her wrist and stops her before she moves further - his pupils dilated - a shiver delightfully curls itself around her spine.

"No -" he says roughly, dragging her back to fit against him and brings his mouth to her ear. "Tonight...you."

She meets his eyes and tugs at his lower lip, as his hands begin to caress her again, trailing a path up her thigh.

"Show me."

And he comes over her, a predator she has set free - tamed yet wild, mild yet all consuming - for a moment he presses so close that she is wearing his skin, her softness merging into his hard plains. Then he pushes more and swallows her gasp in response when the barrier between them breaks and he is closer to her than anyone had ever been.

"My queen..." he mutters against the dump skin of her throat and her eyes flutter close at the sensation. "My only queen."