my back seat is shaking,
getting hot

“Take me home,” I said as I strapped myself into the shotgun seat in the Corvette, feeling like a wave of emotions was breaking over me. “Please, take me home.”

Taeyong side-glanced at me, pursing his lips as his knuckles tightened over the steering wheel. “Are you sure—”

“Yes.” My voice was slowly dropping to a whisper as the pressure on the inside of my throat built up, choking me from the inside hard enough to cut off any attempts at speaking.

His lips disappeared into a thin line as he gunned the engine, the expression on his face echoing his thoughts, which probably involved ignoring my pleading. But in a few minutes—or maybe more, I didn't realize—we were in front of my house.

The sky was still dark, the light from the stars clinging to it like miniature diamonds. It was two, maybe three a.m., at the most. The street was silent, as it usually was around my house, where the neighbouring buildings were mostly empty and no one came out of their doors before seven or eight in the morning.

Hastily, I undid my seatbelt with shaking fingers and slid out of my seat. Without realising it, I was shivering all over, more than I normally would have in the coolness of the air. My eyesight was blurry, which I later found out was because of the gathering of tears as they slowly leaked onto my cheeks.

I wiped them away with the back of my hand, kneeling in front of the aloe vera pot at the front to retrieve the spare key. The door unlocked with a familiar click, and I walked into my house, the feeling hitting every one of my senses, making me feel like an empty cola can collapsing under pressure.

Despite all that had taken place in the past two years, I had never dreamed of leaving. Even now, when I was fully aware of how this was the only plausible escape—courtesy of Baekhyun—it still felt like a sucker punch to the gut. My father was missing, maybe kidnapped by the bikers, and I was leaving the country.

Alone.

I squeezed my eyes shut again as hot tears slid down my face. No. There was no way I could survive that, a life in another place, even if it meant I would be able to escape this life fruaght with danger. At that moment, all I wanted was to curl up in a ball and let out all my anger and frustration.

The immediate danger I had been in during the past few days had been enough to push the biting worry into the darker recesses of my mind, but I felt the full force of the separation only now. I hadn't heard from my father for over a week. The anxiety was crippling, pushing me down into the dirt, leaving me to wallow in my own guilt.

The house, my own home, felt too alien.

I stumbled backwards, exiting the place in a hurry, just managing to remember to hide the keys. I dropped to my knees in front of the plants again, and slid them under the aloe vera, before taking off towards the car again.

All I could feel was guilt, every time I inhaled feeling like a stab inside my lungs. My vision faded in and out, black and white, the reds too bright, the tears making the world look like it was gleaming in the way a dewdrop on a leaf did.

What was I thinking? No, there was no way I could leave Seoul, much less the country. Starting over, even the thought of it, filled me to the brim with dread, leaving no space for anything even mildly positive to seep into my dark thoughts. All of it was in shades of red and black.

Taeyong, who had been waiting at the car while I had gone to my house, was leaning against the side, arms folded over his chest. As I pulled open the back door and entered it, he watched me with an expression which betrayed his discomfort at seeing me drop my head into my hands as soon as I sat down.

I heard the thud of the door closing before I saw his shadow move into the car, slwoly climbing in beside me but keeping his silence. The air was less than chilly, but I felt cold all over, as if I had been doused in icy water.

“Are you mourning?” He asked, a question that wouldn’t normally have made so much sense. “For this life?”

I raised my head, dropping my hands between my knees, my stare set dead on the back of the seat in front of me as I leaned back against the leather. Everything, every emotion I felt was magnified a thousand times, leaving me overly aware of every touch, every thought. Taeyong was looking at me, something sad about him, so sincerely beautiful that I felt him even when I didn't.

“I want to leave, but I don't,” I said hoarsely, feeling a hard block of ice settle down inside my ribcage. Slowly and deliberately, I raised my hand, touching the crest of his cheekbone with my fingertips. His eyelashes lowered halfway through, leaving his eyes half open as he leaned into my touch. “I want to keep this—but at the same time, I don't.”

Shivering slightly, I traced his sharp features, moving my fingers from the bridge of his nose down to the end of his jaw, and then the outline of his lips, making them part a bit.

Even if his gaze wasn't directly settled on my face, I could feel the pressure of it on my skin, like tenterhooks sunk beneath. Carefully, he leaned forward until our faces were mere millimeters away, so I could feel him when he breathed out.

“Will you trust me?” My eyes were fixated on his lips as they shaped the words, the curve of them, the memory of them.

As if in a daze, I nodded.

His hands came up to cup my face as he tilted his face to the side and leaned in, kissing me. I closed my eyes, being used to the way his body felt against mine, feeling the pound of his heartbeat inside his warm chest under my palms.

Taeyong leaned forward until his body was pinning me to the side of the car, cupping his palm to cradle my jaw, tilting it in a way that helped him kiss me properly, pushing himself into me. His outher hand lifted my t-shirt, sliding over the bare skin of my side and coming to rest at my hip, pulling me closer to himself.

The muscles in my healing shoulder hissed as they stretched, my arms linking themselves around his shoulders and connecting me to him. His thumb caressed the apple of my cheek, the heel of his palm digging into my lower back and sliding under the waistband of my jeans.

I gasped, head tipping back at the sensation, and he used to opportunity to let his lips glide over my skin, under my jaw and neck. My fingers dug into his back, arms loosening around him only when I brought them away from him to let him tug the shirt off my torso.

“Trust me,” he whispered against my hot skin, all my emotions blending into something abstract and desirous as he planted open-mouthed kisses against my collar, over the curve of my shoulder, the hollow of my throat.

I felt delirious under his touch, every movement sending a current across my abdomen, as if I was suddenly charged to the maximum, every second of contact sending energy coursing though my veins. His face looked god-like under the faint light from the sky, illuminating the keenness of his features, half of it falling into shade. The whole thing felt like a dream. A nightmare, almost, the places where his body touched mine leaving a line of fire in its wake.

Again, he reattached his lips to mine, his tongue outlining my mouth like he was trying to taste me. Such was the intensity of it that I didn't even realize when his shirt was off, leaving the skin of his built chest bare.

“Taeyong, Taeyong, oh my god,” I moaned as we collided like dying stars, the pure heat reflecting off out bodies rippling through matter, sending shockwaves through both of us. “Please.”

I could, through the haze of it all, remember the pain that had just taken hold of me. It was still there, but it felt like he was slowly washing it away, cleaning the blood on my skin, purifying my mind of the memories once again. Even if it was temporary, like grains of sand being blown away by the wind.

His pale hands worked on my skin, taking me and remolding me so that I was left completely sensitive to his touch. Carefully, slowly, he kissed me, his hands moving over my skin, the teasing manner of their motion leaving me feeling brittle and breakable.

It was like the night in the forest again, except stronger, burning brighter. This time, I wasn't intoxicated, and I could imprint the entirety of it into my mind. It was right under my hands, how the muscles of his arms and shoulders tightened and relaxed as he drew me in, forever trying to cover the distance between us, the gaping chasm of the past that neither of us could breach. It was, truly, a feeling of ecstasy, much more exhilarating than anything a simple drug dose could ever birth.

All of it was in shades of red and black.

“Come in to me,” Taeyong said, his voice dropping unbelievably low. I felt like I was hanging off a cliff, with the edge in his voice giving way to near-desparation. There was want in his eyes, something wild that was either too good for us or too bad. “Even if it's just for now…”

I arched up against him, barely conscious of how we moved, uncaring of watching eyes. In a few hard-paced heatbeats, there was nothing but skin between us, his hand just under the bend in my spine, my mouth pressed heatedly against his throat, tasting him, feeling the irregular pulse of a blood vessel underneath my lips.

“I know it hurts,” he said, swallowing after he spoke. His fingers found my chin, raising it so that his eyes met mine. There was genuine desire in them, a lust that I was sure matched mine perfectly, as if resonating the pattern of my thoughts. “And I will take that pain away from you, because I can't bear to see you so broken.”

“Taeyong,” I breathed, before his teeth bit down on my lower lip, hard enough to draw blood.

“Even if your edges are jagged and torn, I'll be there,” he rasped, his hand travelling from my jaw to sliding down my neck. “I will hold you, let your shards make me bleed even if it kills me.”

We reached forward together, crashing into each other. Derailed. Deranged. “I will let you be numb,” he said, licking his lips, his lips just brushing mine, a sheet of sweat shining on his high cheekbones. “I will take away your pain.”

There were tears in my eyes, half from the pleasure and half from the pain, as I closed them and threw my head back, our bodies connecting and drawing in as close as physically possible. I could see the interior of the car light up, see the starburst as we burned up together.

He kissed the tear tracks on my skin, steadying me.

“Even if it is just for an hour,” he whispered, as I called his name over and over again. “Even if it is just for a moment.”