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She calls him Mr. Han first and he immediately corrects her in that curt, cold way of his. Only later does she understand that he comes here, to their own little corner of blissful internet anonymity, to be just Jumin. Because he doesn't have anyone outside of their group to call him that.
Practiced formality slowly fades away. She isn't the one offering the first words and it is he who types the titular 'hello' even as her thumb hovers over the lit-up keyboard.
She smiles as they exchange small yet private truths. In the dead of night, they are alone among prying eyes that will fly open first thing in the morning.
*
All contracts must have a clear start and end date.
One without a set period counts as an unfair contract.
I'm aware of that...but still, I want you to sign that contract and just stay with me.
What contract is that, Jumin, she wants to ask. Which clause would be binding and which inconsequential. People can't own people that way, Jumin, she wants to whisper. It's a funny, funny metaphor with an obvious hint of sadness.
She doesn't smile this time and he never goes back on his words.
*
It's all too easy to forget and just care when her voice is the only one to subdue whatever demons thrash within the confines of his skull. He's alone with too few friends and she's lonely surrounded by a flock. She understands him, she really thinks she does.
*
10:00 – Jumin Han is offline
14:00 – Jumin Han is offline
19:00 – Jumin Han is offline
23:00 – Jumin Han is offline
*
It's first passed off as a joke but determined, caring Jaehee turns farce into proposition. Perhaps you should go see him, Seven and Zen say. You should go see him, Jaehee says, cutting hesitation out of the question.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
Her hands are overtook by small tremors. It's a good thing she's a practiced driver. And what if she were to get him a sundae on the way? Such a small, cheap, common thing, as distracting as it is sweet. Would he enjoy it? There's something about meeting someone you already know for the very first time which both unsettles and delights.
Yet those same shaky hands of hers are empty when his security guards greet her, when he comes out, when his own falter and fall while tracing the air around her.
“You came,” he says. “You're here.”
“I am, yes,” she says and it's such pleasing, simple words to get out.
“It's a good thing,” he murmurs.
In the distance, lock after lock after lock are turned – no, set, there is something electronic about the way they shift. But for now it's just a background noise and Jumin's wavering smile takes precedence. Those thoughts will come later. For now everything is new; he is new.
She's never seen him smile. She's never seen him at all.
It's a lovely sight to witness him at peace, even if said peace exists on borrowed time. But no matter. Her coffers are full. She has much to offer still. She'll lend him seconds and minutes and hours if needed.
Good, he repeats even as he doesn't quite know what to do with her. He's never had something like this – or someone, rather.
“I didn't know Assistant Kang would send you,” he confesses, restless fingers drumming an uneven rhythm against his thigh, betraying an otherwise flawless composure. The chink in his armor. “God...”
A fleck of white slithers in her periphery.
“Why is your cat in a cage?” she asks.
“One can only truly own something if it has no escape,” he says, pragmatic to the last syllable. “Then it loves you alone and remains safe from harm.”
“I don't think that's how it works,” she says carefully, lowering herself to her knees and bringing a hesitant hand to Elizabeth's cage door. “It forces one party into dependency.”
“You mustn’t consider dependency a strictly negative concept.” His own hand descends to cover hers just as her fingers curl around the bolt lock. “Don't, please,” he says quietly.
And so she doesn't, nodding mutely. The cat stares at her through the bars, sad blue eyes trained on her own. It’s unsettling. She wants to break through the metal to free a creature that is by all means beloved yet barely allowed to breathe.
“Will you stay tonight?” he requests. “It's too late to go back on your own.”
Up until now, she had no plan. Meticulous Jaehee failed to think this through. What could be accomplished in a minute or two, what pains eased? Tomorrow, then. In the morning they'll talk it through.
“I have no extra set of clothes,” she says simply, a small smile hanging on her lips. “I didn’t expect to stay.”
She's still kneeling and he's hunched over her like some great, black figure. And if his fingertips whisper past her cheek as he rises, surely it's nothing but mere coincidence.
“I will give you one of my shirts,” he says quickly. Then softly, barely audibly, “Thank you for coming.”
“Of course,” she acquiesces.
He breathes. His chest moves. His lips part ever so slightly and she can almost feel his breath as he exhales. Is this what relief tastes like – spearmint barely masking the telltale sourness of wine? His voice is a distant, comforting lull as her concentration flees, slipping away from the penthouse to race along rooftops. The view is breathtaking; his world is a far cry from hers.
“I am so glad you’re here.” His voice is rich, enticing. “Let me prepare some tea so as not to appear a dreadful host.”
A warm, scratchy tongue licks the back of her hand – whatever it can reach, at least.
“It’s alright, girl,” she whispers, “it’s going to be alright now.”
For now, in this singular moment, everything is perfect. It doesn’t really matter that they’re both in cages. One is comforted by company, the other unaware of walls closing in.
*
The morning tastes of sugar.
His fingertips do too. Powdered sugar and cream as he brings a strawberry to her mouth. This normalcy is as sweet as the juice staining her lower lip. She doesn’t need much more than this.
“What of the pancakes?” she asks, coy, unburdened by formality while most of the city still sleeps. “Won’t they be lonely if I eat all their garnish?”
In soft light, his hair isn’t as dark–there are rare slivers of grey by his temples–nor are his eyes as severe–the skin by them crinkles in turn with his unpracticed smile.
“I’ll have to get more then,” he says simply. “Perhaps I should purchase you a farm.”
“Oh? Just like you have your own vineyard?”
A spoon with batter threatening to drip overboard is next presented to her. And, well, she really can’t have his expensive kitchen ruined in such a crude way.
“Exactly,” he hums.
“I don’t need a farm,” she sighs, eyes closed. “I don’t need anything.”
The sugar melts on her tongue and if he were to lean just a hairbreadth closer he’d be able to partake in the sweetness.
*
The cat runs away.
She offers to help without delay, quick hands already wrapping a scarf around her throat and feet slipping into boots.
“No,” he says as his long fingers curl around her wrist just as she reaches for the door handle.
“It won’t be necessary,” he says, making himself an obstacle in her way.
“Just stay with me,” he whispers.
His last words crash against her skin in warm waves as his lips brush against the knuckles of her right hand. There he stays, an immovable force, until she steps back.
Only then does he breathe.
Lock after lock after lock, the door is configured back into its previous state following the exit of his head of security.
She nods slowly. “Alright. I don’t have to leave right away.”
Lock after lock after lock. It’s an awfully complicated system but, she supposes, then again he’s an overly complicated man himself.
*
“Don’t you have to go to work?”
“The company’s stocks won’t drop if I’m not there to breathe down everyone’s necks for a day or two.”
She laughs and he says something about her voice being bell-like. Bells, he explains, produce their clearest notes when housed in crystal casings rather than out in the open.
*
He’s a complex patchwork of troubles. Every time she thinks she’s peeled back the veil just a little, it comes crashing down again. Whenever she manages to loosen a knot among the threads of his mind, something entirely new appears to plague him.
He reads to her from a book he never wants to finish and in the morning she takes him by the hand to lead him to his modest library. Rich in volumes but poor in content, it is. There’s no escape to be found between the pages of an economist’s advice work, no matter how hard he pretends it’s his favorite genre of literature.
“I’m not trying to replace the person who gave you that book,” she begins. “Please don’t think that it’s my intention. But you must either finish it or set it back on the shelf. You’re torturing yourself every time you refuse to turn a page.”
Weaved together as their fingers are, she doesn’t think they can get any closer. Yet he crushes her hand in an embrace of flesh, warmth and rushing blood.
“Is that what you think?” he says quietly, lips shy of pressing a kiss to her inner wrist where the pulse is strongest. “That I somehow see Rika in you?”
“I don’t know,” she admits.
“Rika was never mine nor did she see as much as you do.”
But she’s not certain if she indeed does see, although she desperately wants to.
*
There’s peace in his eyes when he uncorks an old red and instructs her to let the wine breathe before savoring it.
There’s amusement in his laugh when she swears after burning her hand because she is just that awful at the classic way of brewing tea. There’s an art to it and she’ll just never master it.
There’s pure, undiluted affection in his voice when he speaks of her multiple flaws, all of which he perceives as qualities.
It’s so raw, this sincerity of emotion, that she feels herself being dragged beneath the surface. At times, she’s certain he wouldn’t mind if she loses herself completely.
*
“I’m sorry, you can’t leave,” he says, voice as steadfast as whenever he’s negotiating one of his deals.
“Pardon me?” Her tongue moves before her head has time to catch on and so her voice is an ugly little thing, hoarse and low, just as her brows knit in a severe V.
Gingerly, he removes her hand from the front door’s handle, prying her fingers away one by one.
She doesn’t know when the request to stay by his side morphed into something so akin to captivity.
He speaks of the hacker in velvety tones, a practiced speech of carefully chosen words. Not something easily refuted. But she doesn’t listen. Because her skin and hair already smell of his soap; because she’s wearing clothes he purchased less than a day after her arrival; because she’s tasted grains of sugar from his fingertips and listened to his voice coax her to sleep. He is everywhere and she will drown in this world where he alone exists.
She’s wanted him for what feels like so long, but never like this.
“I finally found you,” he whispers in her ear, drawing her into his arms. “You can’t go back to being a disembodied voice. I don’t want you to disappear from my eyes.”
“It won’t be like that,” she promises. Half of her words are lost, muffled by his jacket. “You know it won’t. I have to go, Jumin.”
His fist meets the wall first, soon followed by his elbow. He crowds her, forces her against the wall, and there’s nothing but him in that moment. No door handle to toy with and no hallway to disappear down to.
“I don’t understand why you only want to leave when I’m being so considerate.” And that–that tone, the way his eyes are set and the clenching of his jaw–is something she’s never seen. She didn’t think he could be this person with her.
“I’ll take care of everything,” he says, caressing her cheek with the back of his hand. It sounds like a promise and is even phrased like one, but there’s nothing for her to gain from it. “A million things could happen to you should you walk out right now.”
She pushes against his chest, reclaiming her space. “Please back off.”
He allows her just enough room to breathe. At some point he will control the flow of air itself and that day she will suffocate.
*
The first kiss was something of a farce. An act put together for Sarah’s displeasure. There should have never been an audience.
But none will witness this one. It’s for them alone to enjoy.
She takes her time to trace the sharp lines of his face. His jaw is so defined and his nose impossibly straight. She loves how one of his eyebrows inevitably rides up whenever he’s smiling. And there, just there, are the crinkles by his eyes.
She has no strawberries to sweeten her lips and no pancake batter to offer him on her fingertips.
She prays he hears her.
He isn’t spearmint or wine or anything rich. He is warm skin and a fluttering heart, hurried mouth and fidgety fingers that get tangled in her hair. She could remain like this forever, but doesn’t want to forget herself.
Still, an instant more. Just an instant. An instant during which his lips shape assurances and vows and pledges against her own. They become hers, all those wild promises of love, as if she’s always been the one to breathe life into them.
She pulls away first, eyes falling close.
“I can’t be your everything, Jumin,” she whispers against his collarbone, planting an errant kiss where the collar is askew.
“You’ve never been anything less.” His arms lock at her back, a prison in their own right.
She refuses to look at the world just yet. He didn’t hear her.
In a moment, she will break the embrace and walk away. In a moment she will think of the lock after lock after lock which keep the front door shut and the thirty odd guards posted outside.
Not right now, but soon enough, this will all come crashing down.
But the moment isn’t quite over yet.