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The sound of water hitting glass followed him as he padded into the space he'd come to call their own.
As if opening a curtain to a happier, better world that he had spent ages searching for, Thomas gently swept Jinwoo’s hair away from his moonlit face, his stare unreadable. Jinwoo remained perfectly still in his state of rest, as if he lay in a coffin, his paper-thin eyelids shut tight. Those distractingly long coal-black lashes fanned his porcelain cheeks, casting butterfly-wing shadows.
Thomas leaned his long body over him on their shared bed in the main bedroom of the big mansion they had chosen together. The vast mattress creaked beneath his hand as he gripped its edge tightly, and Thomas lowered his forehead to his.
“You’re angry.”
Jinwoo’s eyelids fluttered open, shimmering silver around his dark, hollow eyes. He gazed at Thomas unblinkingly through the darkness and whispered in a tone he knew was not fully accusatory, “Where were you?”
“Where do you think I was?” Thomas's voice rumbled through the dark like distant thunder.
“You smell like expensive whiskey, female perfume, and dollar bills.” Jinwoo reached up, clutched Thomas's jaw with five cold pinprick fingertips, his blunt nails digging into his beard so that he couldn’t look away, and whispered in the quietest, deadliest voice only cold-blooded killers are capable of, “Don’t you dare turn me into this, because I will show you a monster that monsters are afraid of.”
Thomas knew better than to resort to one of his main defense mechanisms, grinning cheerfully when he’d rather rage. “Oh, please, darling, we reached that threshold ages ago.”
“Tell me you weren’t.” Jinwoo’s pearl-black gaze gleamed at him, like a pitch-black lake, so beautiful and mysterious that he’d jump in and drown to see if he ever reached its bottomless depths, even if it meant never resurfacing. Thomas used to dream of dying in a coffin filled with money. Now, he’d be satisfied to die right here, empty-handed, but in Jinwoo’s warm hands.
“Don’t even fucking say that.” Thomas’ brow furrowed against his—the blood moons of his eyes, two crescent, smiling curves of a twisted, warped area between fury and elation. “You don’t have it in you to burn down a city. Sweet monsters never do.”
Lips hovering an inch closer to Thomas’s, like administering the kiss of death, Jinwoo warned one last time, the only time he’d repeat himself: “Say. You. Weren’t.”
“You died.” Thomas ground out, blood rushing through his ears like a broken faucet, “You. Fucking. Died.”
Jinwoo released him like he’d been burned, and Thomas pinned his hand by his head, sinking into the pillow. He turned his face away in a silent show of defiance, perhaps, or was it guilt? “I’m alive.”
“Are you?” Thomas glowered, “Because I sense another heart in this here chest of yours, and you haven’t told me its name.”
Jinwoo stiffened, his neck chording. “You never demanded my secrets before.”
“You never forbid questions, either. Until now.” Thomas rolled his broad shoulders in a helpless shrug. “Now, you’re demanding things of me when I have not once shown disloyalty to you.”
“Time wears on people. Like you said, you’re in mourning.”
“Don’t mock me, Jinwoo — because lately, I don’t know who the fuck is sleeping beside me.”
Jinwoo sighed, the sound pained, raspy, like his throat was scraped raw with sandpaper. “There’s a war coming. I need to know if I have to tie up a loose end—“
“A loose end, huh?” Thomas released his wrist, soothingly rubbing a tender indigo vein, like brushing dust off velvet, wishing he could leave the slightest bruise—a little mark to show Thomas was there with Jinwoo. But neither of them was bruised anymore. “I’d cut the loose end myself. Tie it around their fuckin neck like a noose if anyone touched what’s yours!”
Rain pattered against the windowsill. Lightning flashed somewhere overhead, illuminating the room in a brilliant white light for an instant. Dark patches replaced it, dancing on the walls, their two shadows merging into one distorted shape, yet he still loved them as they were, as he hoped they’d always be.
Lungs rising and falling with a deep breath, Jinwoo pushed himself into a sitting position, bringing one knee to his chest, hugging it and hiding his face behind its curve. Thomas listened to his breathing, the air rushing in and out rapidly as he caught his breath, stifling his anger and fighting for calm. Thomas was the first to break.
“Did you seriously think I’d run to some strip club to erase the trauma? Do you think I’d ruin the best thing that ever happened to me for one night of fun?" Thomas finally grinned, unable to hold back any longer, but it was an unhappy expression, as if it felt out of place on his features. “Who the hell told you that loving you is hard work? It sure as hell wasn’t me.”
“Where were you then?”
Thomas lifted himself, and Jinwoo caught his wrist in an unbreakable grip before he could leave the room. His heel slapped against the wooden floor as he almost fell in his haste to keep him there. His knee concealed his face, and Thomas sat back down slowly.
“You’re stressed. You’ve been stressed since you returned from the afterlife or wherever you went to that you won’t mention. It’s giving you ideas about me that you never had before. What the hell is going on?”
Jinwoo shook his head, hair swishing quietly as it slid over his shin. “I feel like you’re distancing yourself.”
“Look at me. I mean it.”
Thomas’s lips tugged downward at the soft corners of his mouth, waiting for Jinwoo to lift his head. His chin was raised with that same grace and lethal confidence Thomas adored, yet his gaze remained uncertain. “Because I'm sure it’s you here — but you mutter things in your sleep that I don’t understand, in a language not of this earth, and you radiate the same energy as an entire damn planet. Even if you’re an alien or from another planet, I’d be cool with it, you know? Really. You’d be MY fucking alien. I’d pack up and move to your world because that’s the only one I want to exist in.”
“Now, who's mocking?” Jinwoo chuckled softly, his shoulders shaking with each gentle huff, yet the air remained stifling. “And how do you manage to make that sound suggestive?”
“Because it is,” Thomas assured him shamelessly, grasping Jinwoo’s jaw and pressing their foreheads together once more, speaking in the ghost of a whisper as he let the distance between their lips thin, but not daring to kiss him yet. Jinwoo met his eyes. “What is going on?”
So Jinwoo pressed his cheek against his palm and whispered the truth, leaving nothing out. By the time he was done, the sun was rising, Thomas’ eyes were burning like hell had opened portals in them, and it was about to rain again, because Jinwoo was going to vanish from living memory. All that he was, all his achievements, everything he’d done for the world — gone. Most importantly to him, though, and more importantly still, he and Jinwoo would be separated, but neither shed a tear.
“That’s why.” Jinwoo swallowed audibly, “That’s why I was fighting you.”
He stood again, this time, snatching Jinwoo’s hand and guiding him out.
“You wanted me to tell you where I went, in the rain, at midnight. Well, Laura got me a little something I asked to have made, we had a quick drink, and I couldn’t wait for it to arrive or for the next time I saw her at work.”
Jinwoo stopped dead in the living room.
Suspended from the ceiling was a small black case, hanging from a ribbon, right at the doorway’s opening. Rose petals carpeted the floor, piled high enough to wade up to their shins, while magic candles lined the walls.
Jinwoo slowly reached for the small object, holding it in his palm; it felt cool to the touch and had the consistency of crystal.
“Is this—“
Thomas embraced him from behind in a one-armed hug and grasped his jaw with the other, turning his head, “No, don’t open it yet.”
“Will you find me again?” Thomas breathed earnestly. “Can you promise me just that?”
“I will,” Jinwoo promised. Thomas believed him and traced his fingers down Jinwoo’s throat, caressing his fluttering pulse point, until he rested his palm flat, heavy, and comforting to the left of Jinwoo’s breastbone.
Jinwoo’s black heart pulsed, but did not beat precisely like a human, and that was okay with Thomas, as much as any ending to a fairy tale can be.
All it meant was that a new story had to be written, a sequel.
“Tell me you realize I love you beyond the limits of imagination, that only you can please me.”
Jinwoo peered at him over his shoulder, “Yes.”
Thomas kissed his neck; they reached for the box at once, and they slipped the ring onto Jinwoo's love line finger together.