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As a demon, Kihyun had no business in hospitals; they usually come under the jurisdictions of angels, who heed to calls for healing and miracles; and reapers, who come to collect the souls of those whose time is up. Today he is there for the latter, helping out an acquaintance (he will never address that bumbling fool of a reaper as a friend for the life of him) collect a large amount of souls of those who passed in a small incident that involved a tower collapsing.
“You wouldn’t have to do anything,” Minhyuk begged. “I wouldn’t have to do anything? Then I can be on my way, Minhyuk. Good day,” Kihyun bids seriously. Minhyuk pouts unhappily, taking both of Kihyun’s hands in his.
“Come on, do your old friend a favour, Kihyun. I’m the only one on shift today, It’ll take forever if I do it alone,” he pleas, ignoring Kihyun’s mutter of “I never said we were friends.” and going on, “All you have to do is walk through the hospital and find all the dead people and let me know. I’ll take care of the rest. Please?”
Kihyun groans, and then does it again when Minhyuk throws a fist in the air in celebration, thanking him over and over.
Walking out of the elevator, Kihyun sighs impatiently. Usually he prefers not to spend time in the human realm, at least any more than necessary, so surrounding himself with so much… humanness for so long is grating at his patience. Luckily it’s the last floor, and he can be off as soon as he scours the area.
Apparently he doesn’t have to, because the first room he comes across is full of little beds - he’s in the maternity ward. He turns to leave, but a small cry holds him back. It’s a baby, and it seems to be the only one in the whole room.
Kihyun stares at the child, watching it observe its surroundings. Its eyes land on Kihyun, and Kihyun stills, wondering if it can see him. He knows that he can remain invisible to adults if he chooses, but babies are a different matter altogether. As they remain young and innocent, they can see things whose existence would be otherwise dismissed by older humans as a figment of the imagination, including demons like himself.
He inhales sharply as the baby stares at him, moving its little limbs as much as it could within the confines of the blanket tightly wrapped around its body. Is it… trying to call me?, Kihyun thinks, tilting his head. Is it not afraid of me? Do I not frighten it? He tries to scare the baby by evolving into his true form a little, turning his eyes blood red, pupils appearing as thin white slits and changing his skin into a pale and thin complexion, making his black veins prominent.
But the newborn doesn’t falter, keeping its beady little eyes fixed on him despite his ghoulish true form. Kihyun supposes the instinct of self-preservation, that natural fear of the unknown most humans have just isn’t in it. What a defective human, he thinks.
When Kihyun still doesn’t move, its eyes turn watery and hiccups escape its throat. There’s a small gurgle that comes forth, and the tiny human starts wailing. Kihyun panics, putting a finger to his lips and trying to shush it, but it doesn’t work. Instinctively, he runs forward, entering the room and picking the baby up, cradling it to his chest. It immediately quiets, tiny eyes staring up at the demon’s frowning face in a quiet wonder, and when Kihyun goes to set it down it signals that it will cry again.
“How even can such a tiny thing be so annoying, tch, pesky humans,” Kihyun grumbles, but he keeps it in his arms, rocking it slowly until it falls asleep.
Kihyun doesn’t think he’ll see the youngling again, so it comes as a surprise when they meet a little more than a year later. What’s worse, he’s summoned by the little one. He doesn’t know how it learned to summon a demon, let alone specifically him, especially since he saw the child when he was only a newborn. Well, it did make sense now that he thought about it. Babies didn’t talk, which explained why he didn’t hear any chanting or specific pleas. All he felt was a strong pull, no words whatsoever.
So swallowed up by his thoughts, Kihyun doesn’t notice the baby in his crib trying to get his attention until it starts babbling, unintelligible noises escaping its mouth. He watches as it waggles tiny fingers in his direction, and when he remains motionless the small human gets up, waddling towards him in shaky steps until the edge of the crib stops it in its tracks.
Kihyun takes a good look at the person. It’s the middle of the night, he realizes belatedly when he hears a clock chime somewhere nearby, and this youngling summoned me now? As the tiny human keeps motioning at him, Kihyun feels a little astonished at why he might be here. Did this pesky human call me here to play?
He stares at it long and hard, not softening his glare even as it smiles at him, calling for the demon in incomprehensible speech and waving its short, stubby arms at him. Only when it starts giggling at Kihyun does he sigh in resignation and lose the hostile expression, picking up and entertaining the little one.
It turns out that it was in fact a boy, and his given name is Hyunwoo. Kihyun thinks that even the fact that he even knows this piece of information is annoying, but the silly thing wouldn’t leave him in peace. As soon as it was late into the night, he would call for the demon like clockwork. The first time Kihyun didn’t answer to it, the pull got so strong he was teleporting without even realizing, catching himself at the last moment and forcing himself to stay put.
When he had gone after sunrise to look at him (just out of curiosity of course), he found Hyunwoo wailing, pale face red as a tomato while his mother let him cling to her chest, distress obvious on her face as she tried to calm her son down. The moment his eyes landed on the demon, however, his sobs quieted in place of small whimpers – leaving both his mother and Kihyun astonished as he drifted off, tired from all the crying.
After that, Kihyun makes sure to go each time Hyunwoo calls for him, if at least for his parents who are kept up the whole night trying to calm his tantrums. He supposes that it’s his fault the baby was so attached to him, and he shouldn’t agonize Hyunwoo’s parents needlessly. Besides, one day he will forget all about Kihyun and then everything will be back to normal.
(He just refuses to admit that he might be growing fond of the child.)
A couple years pass, and Kihyun tends to the child as he grows, walks and talks. In the beginning he comes around at night, after Hyunwoo’s parents have gone to bed, and leaves at the sight of daybreak and the child is fast asleep. As time goes on, however, Hyunwoo becomes more and more demanding of his attention as his parents leave him at home while they went off to work. They have a nanny to look after him of course, but the young girl is content to read her books and study for tests after making sure he is fed and sated, leaving him inside his playpen in the nursery, bored for hours on end.
They assume Hyunwoo is a quiet child – Kihyun knows better. He is anything but, always chattering about this and that and trying to make a mess, just like any other toddler. He is not quiet; he just does not care for the attention of most, excluding Kihyun and his parents (sometimes).
“Kihunnie,” he shrieks with a slight lisp, running towards the demon sitting at the edge of the playpen. He’s tried to get the child to say his name correctly, but he remains fixed on that erroneous pronunciation. Just before he reaches him, Hyunwoo trips on thin air and goes flying forward, Kihyun raising his arms in alarm and catching the child with a surprised gasp as his head collides with the demon’s chest.
“Goodness, boy, how many times do I have to tell you to be careful,” Kihyun hisses, not bothering to keep his voice down. The human cannot hear him either way, not unless he lets her. He sighs when Hyunwoo peeks up at him, eyelashes wet with unshed tears, and then plants a kiss on his forehead and gives in.
“All right, all right, stop crying, now come on, what do you want to play?”
It all comes to a halt when Hyunwoo turns four. His parents decide that it’s high time for him to be sent to daycare, and as he throws his tantrums insisting he wants to stay at home, he brings up Kihyun’s existence to them. His parents, although suspicious at first, chalk it up to him having an imaginary friend, and Kihyun decides it’s also high time he stopped too.
When he materializes in Hyunwoo’s room one day, he finds the child sitting in the corner of his playpen, arms wrapped around his knees, pulling them close to his chest and head tucked in between them. There’s no sound coming from him, but Kihyun is not surprised when he calls out to the toddler but receives no answer from him. He’s even less so when he sees the tear tracks running down his full cheeks when the demon forces Hyunwoo to look at him.
“Why are you crying?,” he asks, feeling stupid right after because he knows. “I d-don’t want to l-leave Kihunnie,” Hyunwoo hiccups, fresh tears gathering at the edge of his eyelids and threatening to spill. Kihyun tilts his head a little, trying to consider the rights words that will console the youngling and make him understand. “You know,” he starts, “your mother and father aren’t the only ones who have to work. I have to work too. And so do you. Your work right now is going to school.”
“But-,” Hyunwoo interrupts. “I haven’t gone to work because I’ve been staying with you. Now that you need to go to school, I have to get back to work too.” In a way, Kihyun was telling the truth. In the course of time he’d spent with the child, Kihyun had all but forgotten his own life as a demon. “But I love Kihunnie!,” Hyunwoo screeches, throwing his arms around Kihyun and burying his head into the crook of his neck and sobbing, wetting the side of Kihyun’s collar.
It hits the demon hard that not only has the toddler become too attached to him, but so has he to him. Kihyun feels something wet slide down his face. When he touches it and retracts his hand, he notices that it’s a clear liquid, salty to taste. It’s… a tear, he realizes slowly. Then another runs past his cheek, and another. I’m crying.
Mermaids are more associated with lachrymation – their tears take shape as precious stones that blesses and watches over whoever possessed them. Even angels weep, their tears of compassion doing the unexplainable and helping those who ask. God Himself is sometimes said to cry too; in old stories told to children, His tears are said to fall on Earth as rain.
But demons? Demons did not cry. Demons are known to be cruel and unforgiving – there is a reason for that. Demons do not feel. They are not compassionate because they are heartless. They do not choose to be that way – they simply are.
But Kihyun feels something. He feels like he’s in pain, except he isn’t physically hurt anywhere. He can pinpoint this pain as a feeling in reaction to little Hyunwoo’s pain. But he doesn’t know what else to do, except hold the child as he his tears run dry and sleep takes over.
As Kihyun lays him down on his bed, he presses a kiss to the child’s forehead and whispers something into his ear. He doesn’t realize exactly what he says until after he leaves.
“I love you too.”
Kihyun doesn’t go to Hyunwoo after that, no matter how much the child calls for him. It’s a lot harder than he thought, and it’s a whole month before Hyunwoo finally calms. He doesn’t stop calling for Kihyun, especially at night, but it’s a lot less intense, like he doesn’t expect him to answer anymore. The demon goes then, keeping himself hidden away as he watches the boy sleep.
Like that, Kihyun watches over the human as he goes on with his life, growing in both physicality and personality. As he expects, his existence is all but forgotten as school and friends take over the child’s life, but Kihyun can’t find it in himself to stop looking out for him.
As he ages, Kihyun watches as Hyunwoo makes his first friend, falls over and over as he learns to ride a bicycle, starts losing baby teeth. He’s there when Hyunwoo has his first kiss and gets his first girlfriend, then a boyfriend. (He doesn’t like remembering the fact that he was more scared than Hyunwoo when the younger came out to his parents, though.)
He sees as the tiny boy he once took care of caves, giving way to a young a man of a rather intimidating height and build. (He’s taller than Kihyun – that fact doesn’t really sit well with the demon, but then again, Kihyun can always adjust his form. He controls it, after all.) Although his cheeks are as full as before, his voice becomes deeper and he quieter, unlike the loud, brash screaming the demon is accustomed to hearing when he was a child.
It makes Kihyun feel good in some sort of way - seeing Hyunwoo becoming his own person - but he can’t deny that it has him feeling a little empty when the human doesn’t recall him anymore. Still, it doesn’t stop Kihyun from helping him in his own ways, just out of habit – for example, sometimes, when Hyunwoo forgot something at home (most of the time being his homework) Kihyun brings it to him, making it pop up in his bag the next time he opened it like it was always there.
It was a little strange, almost pathetic, the fact that he was watching over a human like this, but, well, old habits die hard, the demon supposed.
Hyunwoo’s twenty-first birthday is the most important day of his life – it’s the day he turns legal – but it’s also simultaneously the worst; he loses both his parents to a car crash. It doesn’t help that he was involved too, but survived with major injuries.
Kihyun senses the moment it happens – he feels the same pull he felt when Hyunwoo first summoned him as a baby. He doesn’t know how it’s possible when Hyunwoo doesn’t remember him anymore, but he doesn’t waste a second, blinking to the source of the call. His eyes widen when he finds himself in the middle of the highway, even more so when he spots the wreckage and the few people who stop to ogle or help.
The demon acts on pure instinct as he runs to the car, sight turning blurry when the faces inside appear in his vision. Hyunwoo’s mother and father are unconscious, and Kihyun can tell that they’re dead because he can’t hear a heartbeat, so he ignores their limp figures, poking his head in the car and looking for Hyunwoo, a choked gasp escaping his lips when he finds the male.
He’s awake. Disoriented, with blood running down one of his legs from a nasty bruise on his knee and skin stretched to an abnormal red on both his arms, signaling some sort of internal injury, but awake nonetheless. The fact sends Kihyun head spinning in relief.
“Hyunwoo,” he calls, throat tight and sandy. Hyunwoo looks up, clearly in a daze. “You’ll be okay, can you come out? You’re okay,” he says reassuring, and he has to take deep breaths to stop himself from going beserk when he sees Hyunwoo slowly shake his head and open his mouth to try and say something, but nothing comes out. He looks ready to faint, too exhausted to even protest as Kihyun tries to pull him out.
The demon doesn’t hesitate before ripping the door of the car out, uncaring if people realized his strength was unnatural for a human as he hooked his palms under Hyunwoo’s armpits and hoisted him out of the wreck, alternating between murmuring reassurances to the male and screaming at the ogling people to call for help.
He stays by the human’s side, not leaving even as the ambulance picks him up and rushes him to the hospital.
Hyunwoo finally wakes after a full day. The man ends up with a broken wrist and forearm on each of his upper limbs, along with stitches to the knee. He lost a lot of blood, according to the doctor, and apparently was anemic, so the doctor had mentioned he might be sleeping for a while.
Kihyun’s mind goes blank when his eyes land on the demon. He hadn’t planned on showing himself to Hyunwoo, but here they were. “D-do you need anything? Are you feeling okay?,” he stutters softly, palms hovering over the man’s bedridden form. “Who are you?,” Hyunwoo asks, voice raspy and stiff, like it hadn’t been used in a while.
“I was just passing by when the accident happened,” Kihyun says, recounting the same excuse he gave the doctor.
“My… parents?”
“I’m sorry.”
He watches as the young human tries to process this information, before closing his eyes and letting out a shuddering breath. Kihyun wants to reach out and comfort him, but he doesn’t know what to say to make him feel better. Finally, Hyunwoo looks up.
“I’m hungry. Can I have something to eat?,” he questions quietly. Kihyun smiles.
Like that, Kihyun spends his days taking care of Hyunwoo once more. But this time, things are a little different. Hyunwoo is no longer the rowdy child he once was, completely reliant on Kihyun and thriving for his affections. No, Hyunwoo is a young man who is put in a situation that makes it hard for him to even go to the toilet alone, and is too proud to ask for help.
It’s not just him, though. Kihyun has a hard time taking care of him too. Things like nagging at him to drink enough water and get his medication on time, the demon can do. But when it comes to helping the young man bathe and changing his clothes, Kihyun finds that he’s extremely distracted by his toned, attractive body. It has him strangely craving to run his hands over the smooth, hard dips and curves.
Even feeding him is a problem. Hyunwoo’s hands are bound by thick rolls of bandages to prevent too much movement, so he can’t feed himself. Kihyun didn’t think he would mind, but he can’t possibly feed him with a straight face when the human is making all sorts of funny noises and weird expressions whenever he eats. It’s funny, but more cute and Kihyun has to resist the temptation to pinch his chubby cheeks.
“Did you really make this? It’s so good,” the human moans, mouth full of food.
Kihyun clicked his tongue in irritation. “Don’t talk with your mouth full, where are your manners. Yes, I made it, but it’s just a recipe I found online. I can’t really cook,” he confesses uncaringly, stuffing more of the food into Hyunwoo’s waiting mouth.
“Where did you cook? In your house?”
“No, in yours.”
They both still right after Kihyun says this. “How do you know where I live? I never told you,” Hyunwoo says slowly. Kihyun tries to cover it up, but he clearly doesn’t believe him. “I was wondering about this for a while too… you were there during the accident. You said my name when you tried to get me out. How did you know my name, Kihyun?”
Kihyun sighs. He didn’t expect it to come to this, but he supposed that he couldn’t hide it from Hyunwoo forever, especially since he never left him for good. “I can explain,” Kihyun offers. The young man gazes at him expectantly.
“How much…,” the demon starts, hesitating. “How much do you remember your childhood? Before you started going to school.”
“Barely anything,” Hyunwoo answers. Kihyun huffs. This wasn’t going how he thought it would. “I knew you, back then. You knew me too. But only back then. Are you sure you don’t remember anything?,” he tries again. “Back then… I don’t really remember anything…,” Hyunwoo says, trailing off. “But my mom did tell me some stuff about me when I was a baby. They said I had a guardian angel.” Kihyun snorts in amusement. He was far from such a pure being.
“Really?,” he asks, surprise gracing his sharp features. He didn’t realize Hyunwoo’s parents were aware of him. “Yeah. They said he or she took care of me while they slept and went to work. They were scared for me at first, but then they realized it wouldn’t harm me and I was safe, so they didn’t say anything. Sometimes they even wondered if I liked it more than I liked them, because they’d hear me playing with it at night, laughing and shouting louder than when they ever played with me.”
Kihyun smiles in nostalgia. Hyunwoo really was a handful when he was younger.
“Then when I started school, it left me. My parents said I was terrible after that. I’d cry for days on end, but then they told me guardian angels never really leave. They take care of you all through your life. You just don’t realize it. And it was true. Whenever I needed help, it would really help me.
“It’s true!,” Hyunwoo exclaimed when Kihyun looked like he didn’t believe him. “I thought they were just bluffing with me, but then I realized it was true. Sometimes I’d forget things at home, and it would be in my bag, like magic.”
“You could have just not checked properly,” Kihyun deadpans. Hyunwoo shook his head stubbornly. “I left my homework on purpose once at home. It appeared in my bookbag just before class.”
The demon was dumbfounded. This pesky human…, he sighed internally. Always so troublesome. “Well, if you say it’s real, do you know its name?,” he challenged.
“My parents did tell me I mentioned its name once, but I can’t remember. It starts with a K, though… Kyung… Kwang...K-”
“Kihunnie?”
Kihyun would have burst into laughter at the shocked expression on the human’s face; Hyunwoo looked like a deer caught in the headlights, eyes wide and mouth open almost comically. “Are you… you’re him. You’re my guardian angel.”
“I’m actually a demon,” Kihyun confesses, amusement obvious on his face as he shows Hyunwoo his true form, much like the time he first saw the human. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t look the least bit frightened of Kihyun. Defective human, Kihyun thinks, the same way he did when they first met.
It becomes an unspoken rule that Kihyun stays with Hyunwoo once more. He helps him back home after he is discharged from the hospital, and settles him in while he recovers from his injuries and gets back to normal life. Hyunwoo is in college, but he’s exempted that semester to recuperate so when he finally goes back, Kihyun takes care of the house, making sure it’s clean and has food to offer the human.
One day Hyunwoo returns late at night after leaving the house early morning for classes. This doesn’t happen often, and Hyunwoo usually lets him know when he’s planning on coming back late, so when the clock strikes at midnight and there’s no sign of the human, worry creeps up on Kihyun and he decides to go look for him.
Just as he opens the door the front gate swings open, and Hyunwoo enters the threshold, steps a little wobbly. He smiles at Kihyun and the demon has to physically hold himself back from thwacking him upside the head. “Where have you been?,” he asked seriously. Hyunwoo doesn’t answer, leaving the gate open and moving to envelope the demon in a hug.
There’s an awful smell emanating from him, a smell Kihyun is familiar with. Alcohol. “Are you drunk?,” he asks again, this time voice muffled by Hyunwoo’s chest. His body is warm and comforting, and although Kihyun’s gone as far as seeing him naked, being this intimate with the human is making him feel… bashful.
It’s all quiet, and then Kihyun feels something soak his shirt by the crook of his shoulder. He pulls back in alarm, and the red around Hyunwoo’s pupils has him cradling the younger’s face as his thumbs wipe away the falling tears.
“What’s wrong? Why are you crying?,” he asks in a panic.
“I miss my mom and dad,” the human finally wails, crashing back into his small frame. Kihyun sighs, hushing him and pulling him inside, setting him down on the sofa before locking the doors and turning off the outdoor lights. When he finally faces Hyunwoo again, the human is blubbering softly, eyes shedding tears without stopping.
“I’m all alone now,” he whimpers, and Kihyun’s chest clenches painfully at the sight. “I don’t have anyone.”
“You have me,” Kihyun says automatically. Hyunwoo looks up, surprised, as if he’d only just seen the demon.
“Kihyunnie,” he says softly, a wide grin splitting his face. “I have a crush on you.”
The demon chokes on his own spit at the admission. “W-what?,” he gasps.
Hyunwoo reaches out, grabbing Kihyun’s hand and tangling their fingers together, playing around with Kihyun’s palm as he spoke. “I always knew you were there for me. I didn’t know it was you, but I did know someone was there every time to help me. Remember when I sprained my ankle in middle school and I couldn’t leave the bed for the first few days? I was really hot but I couldn’t get up to turn on the fan, and then all of a sudden there was a really strong breeze. I looked out, but the trees weren’t moving. That was you, wasn’t it?
“And then there was the time we lost the first match of the season with me as Captain. I was so upset, I cried that day, and my mom bought me sunflowers because she knew I liked them and they’d cheer me up. And then wherever I went there would be a sunflower in the room, but my mom swore she hadn’t bought any more. I knew it couldn’t have been anyone else.”
Like that, Kihyun watches as Hyunwoo recounts each time Kihyun did something for him. It shocks the demon that Hyunwoo noticed all these things, but what surprises him even more is the words that spill out of Hyunwoo’s mouth next.
“I felt… I felt flattered that someone was there for me through everything – literally. And then when you showed up after the accident, I really started to have feelings for you,” he said shyly. The demon can only stare in astonishment as Hyunwoo leaned in and pressed his lips softly against his own.
That night Kihyun lies beside Hyunwoo as he dozed like a rock. The human had pulled him into bed, and although Kihyun could have fought against his hold, he didn’t. Demons didn’t particularly need sleep like humans, and his mind was occupied by the things Hyunwoo had told him so he lay awake, staring at the ceiling of Hyunwoo’s bedroom.
“So this is where you’ve been,” a new but familiar voice exclaims loudly. Hyunwoo grumbles, turning, but doesn’t wake. Kihyun is up in a flash, grabbing the person’s arm and teleporting them down to the living room.
“Minhyuk,” he growls irritably. “What are you doing here?”
“Be nice to your old friend,” Minhyuk pouts. “Aren’t you going to offer me some tea? How rude, I’m a guest.” Kihyun stares, unamused. “Fine,” the reaper finally groans. “I just wanted to check up on you. You just up and left the hospital that day, and I haven’t heard from you since! I was worried.” It takes a while before Kihyun recalls what he’s referring to. Since most supernatural beings are immortal, time isn’t the same for them as it is for humans, but since Kihyun’s been spending so much time in the human realm he’s bound to follow their norms.
“I finished scouring, and I was annoyed with you so I decided to leave without telling you,” he explains grumpily. “And you’re sure it has nothing to do with your dashing human that you were cuddling earlier?,” the reaper replies with a grin, winking scandalously at the demon. “Shut your trap, he is not my human,” Kihyun grumbles. “And we were not cuddling.”
“Oh really? Is that why I saw you crying when you saved him?”
“You-,” Kihyun roars. “How did you know?,” he says, seething. “My dear Kihyun,” Minhuk laughs airily, “You forget what I am. Who do you think collected the souls of his parents that day?”
“His parents,” Kihyun asks in alarm. “What happened to them?”
“Well, I am but a reaper, Kihyun. I only collect their souls and send them to receive judgement. I don’t know what happens after,” he replies with a frown. “Although,” he goes on when Kihyun’s expression droops a little, “I did hear them call for an angel before I could leave.”
“They made it to heaven, then. Good, Hyunwoo will be glad.”
“So tell me about this Hyunwoo you seem to be head over heels for,” Minhyuk says, unable to contain the excitement in his voice. “I am not head over heels for him, and I am being serious about this,” Kihyun snaps impatiently. Minhyuk’s brows furrow. “It doesn’t look like that to me. You care for him.”
“Yes, but not that way, Minhyuk.”
“You’re a terrible liar, you know that, right? That’s why we’re still friends even though you insult me every time you open your mouth.” The demons huffs in frustration. “Fine, I do like him that way, but I can’t.” He doesn’t need Minhyuk to open his mouth to ask him why, the unhappy expression he sports is enough. “He’s human.”
“So?”
“He’s much younger than me.”
“And?”
“I am a male.”
“Kihyun, you are a demon. Technically you’re genderless. Besides, it’s too ironic for you to think homosexuality is a sin, don’t you agree? At this point, all your reasons are petty excuses. Why can’t you just accept that you love him?”
Why, indeed?
“Do you recall anything from last night?,” Kihyun asks the human the next morning. Hyunwoo grunts unintelligibly in reply, head down on the table and a hand holding on to a glass of water. Suddenly he shoot up, eyes wide before wobbling a little and grasping his temple from the headache intensifying at the sudden movement.
“Ow,” he mutters, and Kihyun would feel bad, but idiot brought this on himself, let him suffer. He does, however, slide a plate of scrambled eggs towards him, ordering the male to sit down and eat up. “Wait,” he protests weakly, “did I really-”
“Yes, now shut up and eat. We’ll talk after you look a little less like you’re dead, or on your way there.”
“Did you mean it?,” the demon asks softly after a few moments. Hyunwoo stops mid-chew, because he knows exactly what Kihyun is talking about, but more than that there’s something in his voice – hesitation, maybe? No, it sounded more like fear, although it’s strange because Hyunwoo’s never heard him sound like that. So raw, so vulnerable.
“I-,” he starts, throat feeling parched, but he just swallows and forces himself to go on. “Yeah.”
Kihyun looks pensive, like he’s contemplating something very hard, and Hyunwoo’s heartbeat quickens in anxiousness. The demon picks up on the way it races in his chest and laughs quietly, before shaking his head, looking exasperated like an adult watching a child’s theatrics.
“You’re a very defective human, indeed,” he murmurs, and just as Hyunwoo opens his mouth to ask him what he means by that he feels lips caressing against his own, feeling every bit as soft and lovely as it did in the fuzzy memory of what transpired last night. He freezes in surprise, but finally kisses back, hands tangling through Kihyun’s hair and pulling him closer.
Despite the demon being the one who knew him all his life, it’s Hyunwoo who feels like he’s finally returned to the place he felt like he most belonged: with Kihyun.