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the lover's fatal identity is precisely this: i am the one who waits.
jaehyun has known sanghyeok for approximately 9% of his current lifetime. if he lives to the average human male lifespan of 80 years, he will have known sanghyeok for 78% of his life. he will have loved him for 100% of it, but that unfilled bar feels unsatisfactory still.
if his lifespan were to be extended to 800 years, he will only have lived without sanghyeok for approximately 2.5% of his life, and that feels so much better.
vampires have died before and after reaching 800 years old plenty. their lifespan is technically eternal but a hunted species is not one that typically survives forever. but sanghyeok said that his grandfather is 783, so the odds are not dim.
it’s a safe middle ground. it is long enough to satisfy his greed.
jaehyun counts days now, not to mark the passage of time but to weigh it. time as a thing to be endured, like rain at the window, sometimes heavy, sometimes barely perceptible, sometimes so thick he feels it crawling beneath his skin.
some nights, he folds his hands and looks to the sky and asks the universe for the kind of miracle that would let him exist alongside sanghyeok, not behind or beneath or with an expiration date ticking in the back of his head. he imagines his own cells stretching and reshaping, unlearning decay. he imagines eternity pressed like a stamp into the soft skin at the base of his throat.
sanghyeok only laughs when he brings it up. “you don’t know what you’re asking for,” he says, always gentle, always tired, like someone who has seen the same fire burn down the same house too many times to be moved by the color of the flames.
sanghyeok’s mouth is cool against his brow, and when jaehyun touches his hand he thinks, with a bitterness that tastes too much like hope, that he could get used to being cold forever.
“i want to be with you,” jaehyun says, and what he means is, i don’t want to die without you. i don’t want you to watch me get old. i don’t want you to bury me and keep on living and meet someone else, a hundred times over, a thousand times, until you can’t even remember the color of my eyes.
sanghyeok sighs, thumb tracing along the line of jaehyun’s jaw. “you think immortality is just longer love. it’s not.” there’s grief in his voice, or maybe only memory. “it’s living with every goodbye. you’d hate it, eventually. you’d hate me.”
jaehyun thinks of himself as an optimist. he thinks of all the goodbyes he’s ever said: none of them were to sanghyeok. “i’d risk it.”
they don’t fight over it, not really, but the question returns between them in quieter forms. jaehyun asks with every lingering glance, every time he memorizes the fall of sanghyeok’s hair, the shift of expression when he thinks no one is watching. he finds himself hoping for accidents, for miracles, for a slip in sanghyeok’s control or some crisis that will force his hand. he hates himself for it, but the hunger is there—greedy and bright.
the world outside moves with a softness that feels like mockery. people die. seasons change. jaehyun learns the shape of waiting, how to contort himself into hoping, how to survive on moments that end before he can quite hold them.
he presses himself against sanghyeok in the dark, clutching at the vampire’s cool skin, trying to imagine a life that doesn’t end at eighty or seventy or even fifty, if he gets unlucky.
he wonders how many people sanghyeok has watched decay. how many names he can’t remember. whether it would hurt less to be forgotten or to be left behind.
sometimes, sanghyeok tells him stories of his youth. names and cities that don’t exist anymore. the sky a different color. people who loved him, or whom he loved, once, for a year or a decade or a century. the stories always end quietly. “they died,” sanghyeok says, and sometimes he smiles, and sometimes he doesn’t.
on these nights, the air grows heavy, full of things unsaid and unhealed. jaehyun sits beside him on the bed, legs bare and knees pressed up, searching sanghyeok’s face for remnants of those other lives—traces of the boy who loved all those ghosts. sometimes he can’t find it, and sometimes he thinks he can feel all those centuries humming under sanghyeok’s skin.
he should feel jealous. he should want to be the only one that sanghyeok has ever loved like what sanghyeok is to him. he should feel small and insignificant in the shadow of comparison.
yet, he doesn’t. jaehyun feels fortunate to still seem special enough in sanghyeok’s gaze to fill his hours with even when he has loved and lost so much.
greed only reers it’s head again in the desire to be his last lover if not his only.
the closeness between them is a living thing, restless and sharp. it crests with the gentle way sanghyeok pulls him near, fingers sliding under the collar of his t-shirt, lips brushing jaehyun’s pulse point in a way that is neither new nor entirely familiar. always there is a pause, as if waiting for permission or forgiveness. jaehyun gives both, always, without words. he tips his head back, baring his throat with a trust that’s a little desperate, and when sanghyeok’s fangs pierce his skin it burns, but only for a second—then the pain is lost to something deeper, darker, threaded through with longing and relief.
they always kiss when sanghyeok feeds. tonight jaehyun pulls him in, mouth searching and hungry, wanting to taste the thing that keeps slipping through his fingers. he threads his hands into the ginger strands of sanghyeok’s hair, holds him close, tries to press all his longing through the seam of their lips.
sanghyeok is cool and careful, but jaehyun is reckless, fevered—he would give anything to blur the line between them, to become indistinguishable, to be remade in the image of the only person he has ever wanted so much it hurts.
the room is quiet but for the sound of breath and the faint wet sound of blood drawn and swallowed, the steady, slow pulse of something ancient. jaehyun arches up, chest pressed to sanghyeok’s, dizzy with the pleasure and the ache, the promise of more just out of reach. he wants to give everything. he wants to be emptied and filled again, remade as someone who will never leave, never be left.
“you could do it now,” jaehyun whispers, lips brushing the edge of sanghyeok’s jaw. “please. you could just—” he shudders as sanghyeok’s tongue laps at the wound, closing it. “don’t stop. don’t leave me like this. i want you to.”
sanghyeok’s hand is gentle at his face, thumb smudging away the blood at his mouth, eyes shining dark in the low light. “you don’t know what you’re asking,” he says again, voice almost raw with feeling. “it’s not a gift, jaehyun. it’s just a longer ache.”
jaehyun shakes his head, desperate. “it would be different with you. you’d never have to be alone. i’d never have to lose you.” his hands tremble where they hold onto sanghyeok’s shoulders. “i’d do anything.”
for a moment, sanghyeok just looks at him—so old and so young all at once, love and grief flickering in the shadows of his expression. “don’t ask me to do this,” he says, voice breaking, and there is a longing in him so vast that jaehyun feels as though he could drown in it. “not tonight.”
the blood sings between them, half hunger and half hollowed out. jaehyun wants to argue, wants to beg, but the words catch in his throat. instead, he pulls sanghyeok close and kisses him again, tasting copper and salt and something that is only theirs. the kiss is slow, bruising, and a little helpless, and when it ends they are both trembling.
afterward, jaehyun lies with his head on sanghyeok’s chest, listening to the faint, slow drum of a heart that has beat for centuries, wishing for the millionth time that he could keep pace. wishing he could become something that endures.
the rain pounds heavy on the window that is open a crack still because it is nighttime and sanghyeok likes the fresh air whenever the sun is away. it soaks the windowsill and the figurine that jaehyun has propped on it but he allows it.
“why not me?” jaehyun asks because he is persistent and the greed claws its way up his throat.
sanghyeok closes his eyes. “because you love the idea of forever more than the thing itself. and because i love you enough not to wish it on you.”
jaehyun wants to protest. wants to say he would rather be miserable forever than happy for only a moment. but the truth sits heavy inside him, a lead weight. he doesn’t know how to want less. he doesn’t know how to do anything but wait.
“you’ll watch me grow old, sanghyeok-ah.”
“and i’ll love you even then.”
it feels almost cruel, how gently sanghyeok says it—like the promise could shield them from anything, as if love itself might soften the edges of time. jaehyun’s fingers curl tight in the fabric of sanghyeok’s shirt, knuckles gone white, holding on to something that feels as immovable as stone and as fragile as glass.
“don’t,” jaehyun says, the word barely a breath. “don’t say it like it’s easy. you don’t know what it’s like. to look at you and know—” he can’t finish, can’t say i’ll lose you, because the truth is he won’t. not in the same way. he’ll fade first, wither slowly under sanghyeok’s steady gaze, become a memory in someone else’s endless story.
sanghyeok presses his palm to jaehyun’s cheek, thumb tracing the path of a tear he hadn’t realized had slipped free. his touch is always so careful, as if jaehyun might dissolve beneath his fingers.
“i do know,” sanghyeok says quietly. “i’ve lost more than you can imagine. and if loving you means losing you, i’ll do it a thousand times.”
jaehyun closes his eyes. he tries to imagine himself old, wrinkled, hair turning silver, while sanghyeok stays just as he is—unblemished, unchanging.
it hurts, a raw, wild ache that digs under his ribs and won’t let go. but beneath the ache there is a kind of wonder, too. the idea of being loved that fiercely, that long. the idea of leaving something behind in a heart that endures.
time bends differently and jaehyun stops asking so much.
days drift by, half-lit and too short, shadows growing longer at the edges of everything they do.
jaehyun is softer with sanghyeok, somehow, or maybe just more tired. he laughs a little less, falls asleep a little earlier, the silver under his eyes deepening as the winter creeps in. he blames it on winter, on work, on the ordinary business of living—but soon his body betrays him with a fever that crawls under his skin, relentless, leaving him shivering even as sweat collects at his brow.
sanghyeok is terrified in a way he hasn’t been in centuries. jaehyun knows this because sanghyeok has seen enough that fear does not come easily, but he’s been wearing it like it’s glued to him since things got bad.
he sits by the bedside with hands that do not shake, but eyes that do. cool cloth held against a burning forehead. whispered stories in the dark to distract from the pain of the present.
jaehyun’s skin is too hot, his pulse too fast—sanghyeok can hear every frantic beat, every ragged breath. he aches with the knowledge of how breakable humans are, how even the smallest thing can unravel a whole lifetime.
the fever passes, mostly, but not all at once. jaehyun wakes in the night, confused, murmuring sanghyeok’s name, clutching at his hand with fragile fingers. “don’t go,” he says, and sanghyeok promises, every time, that he will stay.
it’s on the fourth night—the air outside bright with moonlight, the world silent but for the hush of their room—that sanghyeok’s resolve fractures. jaehyun is sleeping restlessly, sweat-damp hair curling at his temples, lips parted as he tries to breathe through another wave of shivering.
sanghyeok presses his forehead to jaehyun’s hand, murmurs words that belong to no language spoken anymore. a prayer for courage, maybe, or forgiveness.
when jaehyun wakes again, his eyes are bright with fever and stubborn hope. “sanghyeok-ah,” he breathes, smiling faintly, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
sanghyeok’s mouth trembles. “you’re too warm,” he says, and it sounds foolish, but jaehyun only laughs, soft and hoarse.
“are you scared?”
“terrified,” sanghyeok admits, voice breaking.
the moonlight stretches thin across the bed, painting both of them in silver and shadow. sanghyeok cups jaehyun’s face, thumbs gentle at his cheeks. “i thought i could do it. watch you live. watch you go. i thought—” he can’t finish; he presses a kiss to jaehyun’s brow instead, lingering as if he could anchor both their souls in that single point of contact.
“but i can’t,” he whispers. “i can’t lose you. i don’t want to.”
jaehyun’s lips part, surprise and yearning tangled in his expression. “you mean—”
sanghyeok nods, tears bright in his eyes. “if you still want this. if you still want—me. forever.”
there’s a hush, a wild, breathless space where the world holds still.
“yes,” jaehyun says, the word blooming between them, bright and sure, no tremor in it at all. “always. yes.”
sanghyeok bends to kiss him, reverent and desperate, hands cradling his face as if to memorize every angle, every soft curve and edge. he bites softly at jaehyun’s throat, careful even now, as if reverence might soften what he’s about to do. pain slides quick and silver through jaehyun’s veins. he clings to sanghyeok, trusts him past the edge of sense, all fear burned up in the fire of wanting.
sanghyeok drinks, just enough, just as much as needed, and then opens his own wrist, pressing it to jaehyun’s mouth. “drink,” he urges, voice thick and rough, and jaehyun does—slow at first, then greedy, the taste of eternity bright and wild on his tongue.
their bodies are pressed close, hearts thundering, time splintering and reknitting itself around them. jaehyun’s body shudders, arches, heat chased away by a bright, cold fire—pain and bliss, fear and hope braided together, the promise of forever blooming in his veins.
when it’s done, sanghyeok gathers him in trembling arms, whispering his name over and over, like a wish of sorts.
in the hush that follows, jaehyun feels the world tilt into something new. the fever is gone, but a stranger heat simmers beneath his skin—clarity and ache and impossible comfort blooming all at once.
sanghyeok’s hand in his is steady now, no longer cold. in the darkness, with the city muted and the rain tracing patterns at the window, jaehyun finally feels the shape of forever settle into place.
he knows that he is in love because he has done his waiting.