𐔌՞ ܸ.ˬ.ܸ՞𐦯 @janiary - Tumblr Blog

‘𝑻𝒊𝒍 𝑫𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒉 𝑫𝒐 𝑼𝒔 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒕 ⟡ 𝓅.𝓈𝒽 ℰ 𝓈.𝒿𝓎

pairing ⟡ vampire!sunghoon x f!reader & husband!jake x f!reader

summary ⟡ Despite the night terrors that have haunted you for years, you’ve achieved everything a God-honouring woman should want: a husband who loves you dearly, a white picket fence, and the certainty of a perfect future together in your new quiet little town. However, a certain pale-faced neighbour reminds you a little too much of the eerie presence that plagues your restless nights.

18+ mdni ⚠︎ smut with plot, gothic horror/thriller, angst, hurt/comfort, small town au, established relationship (jake), vampire/human relationship (sunghoon), implied major character death, religious imagery & trauma, bible quotes, traditional gender roles & marriage, purity culture critique, loss of faith, slightly patronizing partner dynamic, night terrors, ambiguous ending, sexually repressed reader, infidelity, soul bonds, mildly obsessive love, dubcon: sexual coercion (via soul-contract), biting, blood drinking, physical restraint, vampire venom as aphrodisiac, animal death mentioned, predator/prey dynamic, multiple smut scenes, p in v sex, unprotected sex, handjobs, fingering, loss of virginity, slight somnophilia, dacryphilia, choking, rough sex, praise kink, mild degradation kink FEAT. niki as a vampire lore-obsessed teen

wc ⟡ 31.6k

inspo & creds ⟡ thank you so much to my lovely mutual @seongjesdoll who inspired me with their fic right here please go read it! this fic is also heavily inspired by Nosferatu.

a/n ⟡ this is very different from what I usually write but I adored experimenting with horror/thriller as a genre! this idea hit me like a truck months ago. this has been in the works for a while so I’m soso glad to finally share

please note ⟡ if you are uncomfortable with heavy subject matter such as dubcon, horror, death, themes of religion and purity culture… do not read this!

"...in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, do you promise to be faithful? To love him and to honour him all the days of your life?" "I do."

You'd waited for it since you were a young girl. To walk down the aisle, daylight seeping through stained-glass, in a dress of pure white. You'd imagined your hand in his, fingers intertwined, warmly encompassed in safety and certainty—your shared kiss in the chapel, a declaration of your promise not only to him, but to God. A husband, a family, love. The life every good girl prayed for. You prayed for it too, with your hands folded, head bowed, voice steady. But what you imagined most, in the silence after the amen, was the thing no prayer could sanctify. "...But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death."

Your Sunday school teacher had read the verse aloud with the patient severity of someone delivering a warning she hoped you'd never need. She'd looked at you, it seemed, and said that desire was a seed planted in the heart, that what began as a thought could grow into something monstrous, that a woman who let lust take root would one day reap a harvest of ruin. You'd nodded, hands neatly folded on the desk, terrified by the image of something dark and living growing inside you. You'd tried not to think about the heat already stirring in places you had no name for, the tiny seed you could already feel pressing against the soil of your heart, waiting to split open.

The truth was that while other girls spoke of their desires for true love, for the miracle of childbirth, and motherhood, you desired something too shameful to say aloud. Your mind always drifted to the impure. Instead of exchanging vows, you dreamed of how your future husband would lay you down the night after your wedding. You'd thought of how his hands would feel pressed against your bare skin, always hidden under long skirts and sleeves—his lips, worshiping you in places no good girl should dream of. How he'd relieve that ever present ache between your legs that never seemed to dissipate and claim your innocence. You'd thought of it so much, it began to rot you from the inside.

Many times, you'd held back tears during Sunday service, ashamed of the filth that plagued your mind in the holy place of worship of all places. The hymns would rise around you—Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth—and you'd mouth the words while your thoughts drifted to the heat of an imagined touch, the weight of a body you'd never felt. You'd clench your thighs beneath your Sunday dress and beg God, silently, desperately, to scrub your mind clean.

In your sleepless nights, to avoid temptation, you'd rise from the bed, hands clasped together in prayer before your bedroom window. You'd leave it wide open, in hopes that the frigid wind would cool down the heat inside you. And though you trembled in your nightgown, goosebumps on every surface of your skin, it could never quite quell the fire that never burned out.

At first, you prayed for it to stop. You prayed for purity. Then, you prayed for numbness, believing you'd rather feel nothing at all. Alas, God granted neither, and you began to question which of the two dawning terrors was more catastrophic: the possibility that He wasn't listening at all, or the possibility that He simply did not care.

You knelt until your knees were bruised, you whispered prayers until they turned into sobbing pleas for mercy. There was only so much you could take until you began to lose faith—not just in God, but in yourself.

It was only then, in a moment of desperation, of utter helplessness, that you pleaded for something else:

"I beg of you," you whispered into the night, and whether it reached God, or for something else entirely, you did not care anymore. "If you cannot make this feeling stop, then I beg for relief." Through the white curtains, you felt a presence. There was no face, no silhouette, no sound other than the howling wind. Yet, you looked up, as if to meet someone's gaze. As if something stood there, watching you. A chill ran down your spine, and not as a result of the winter air seeping into your bones. You don't remember a voice. You do, however, remember a silent promise: relief, in exchange for you, eternally. Eternity. You knew what it meant. Heaven. Hell. The soul's unending life before God or in exile from Him. You were old enough to know better. Desperate enough not to care.

Every night, then after, he came to you in dreams. You envisioned bits and pieces: a tall silhouette, cold fingertips, an ever-present stare. You saw visions of your own blood dripping down your neck, staining your night clothes. You felt his sharp teeth pierce your flesh as he ravaged you, corrupted you, made a sin of your body and had you begging for more every single time.

Your eyes rolled back in ecstasy, your fingers curled around your bedsheets, and when it finished, you awoke in a cold sweat. You, alone. Your window, closed. And your body, still untouched, still sacred despite the obscene wetness between your thighs, and the way your body trembled from the aftermath of your high.

Relieved, you were, to no longer repress your lustful urges. Horrified, you were, to realize you'd given into your darkest desires, pleasure coaxed out of you by the hands of something sinister.

"Look at you. My beautiful wife." Jake hovers atop you, the cross at his neck hovering just above your face. Everything was as god intended. Two untouched children of the lord, about to make love on their marital bed, in a home they should hope to raise a family in. For the first time in many nights, the moonlight didn't feel so unholy. "My beautiful husband," you mirror his adoration, heart beating so fast you fear it might leap out of your chest. "I love you." His fingers lace with yours, his palms clammy and shaking. He's nervous, as are you. He'd told you as much before you even reached the bed. "I love you, too," he whispers.

He leans down to kiss you, different from the kiss you shared in the chapel. No longer did you have to settle for quick, chaste pecks. You feel his tongue, his desperation, years of pent-up desire reaching its limit.

Hand still interlocked with yours, he enters you slow and restrained, a gasp leaving his lips, as it does yours.

Everything is as it should be. As God said it should be. You should be overcome with joy. The world should still around you, heaven should open, and some sacred part of you should be remade forever.

It doesn't. The reality is much quieter. A body receiving another body, and nothing more.

Instead, you feel discomfort—sharp and immediate. And it’s not just the physical kind that mothers warn their daughters about before their wedding nights. Your skin crawls, your stomach tightens, and suddenly the world is collapsing. Everything aches. Your head, your heart, the space between your thighs where your body refuses to yield, refuses to feel, refuses to let you forget even for a moment that you belong to something else.

You can't help but think that your husband, basking in his euphoric glow, deserves someone untainted.

Tears stream down your cheeks before you can choke them back, and at the immediate sight of it, he pulls out of you. Cradling you in his arms, he soothes you, gently asks if he’s hurt you. If there’s anything he can do. You shake your head, your sobs turning to whispered apologies.

He holds you close all night, and you cling to him like you're trying to crawl under his skin, hoping Jake will shield you from the inevitable terrors of the night. Because you know, deep down, even after all of this, you'll still feel its presence in your dreams. Its cold, harsh grasp, its teeth, its predatory gaze.

But tonight, the boundary between dream and waking feels thin. As you lie awake, Jake softly snoring at your side, you feel it. That presence. That feeling you've never been able to explain, something better described as an instinct or a sixth sense. Through the window, half-lidded and drifting, you search for reassurance. Instead, you find a pair of eyes in the dark. A shadow, watching you. You jerk upright, heart hammering, but in the blink of an eye, with a flicker of movement, you find nothing.

“Sweetheart?” You hear Jake's groggy voice at your side, an arm tugging at yours, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, just…” Your breath rises and falls, watching the tree branches drift with the howling wind, watching the snow pile up on the edge of the window. “Thought I saw something.”

He pulls you back down to the bed, kisses pressed to the back of your neck. You allow yourself to relax in his arms, the weight of slumber pulling you under.

You make it through the night. You always do. And this time, you wake up in a pair of warm, loving arms, rather than the shivering cold of your childhood twin bed, which you'd been accustomed to for years. You're thankful at least that in spite of your nightmares, your husband is a daydream.

A week was all you had for a honeymoon, if you could even call it that.

You'd told each other you didn't need a vacation. A honeymoon seemed frivolous when you already had everything you wanted: a house, a ring, a future together. You told each other there would be time for travel later. You have forever, after all.

So, straight into your new home you were, ready to build your life together. Your two weeks of time together were mostly spent unpacking boxes and pretending to help your husband build IKEA furniture. Really, you were mostly there to gawk at how attractive he looks when he gets mad at poorly designed instruction manuals.

Though the time slips through your fingers, and suddenly there are no more late mornings tangled in his arms, slow afternoons with nowhere to be, and evenings fumbling in the dark, learning the strange and sacred shape of intimacy.

You'd come to depend on the safety of his presence, the way his breathing beside you kept the dreams at bay. Selfishly, desperately, you did not want to lose it.

"Please don't leave," you whine like a child, rising from the bed.

He adjusts his tie in the full-length mirror at the corner of your bedroom, and your hands snake around his waist from behind, fingers clawing into the fabric of his shirt. You bury your face into his back, just breathing in his presence before you knew it'd inevitably slip away.

"And miss my first day at the office?" He chuckles, an amused smile playing at his lips.

Finished with his tie, he takes your hands, twirling you once before pulling you against him. His mouth finds your neck, then your jaw, then your lips. You melt into the shape of him, this body you're still learning, still marvelling at. But he pulls away all too soon.

"I can't support my wife and our future kids if I get myself fired."

"I know," you pout, following him out of the room, into the hall, hand still grasping his. "But what am I supposed to do here all alone?"

The question is smaller than the fear beneath it. While it is true that here, alone in a new neighbourhood without any real housework to be done yet, you're at a loss with what to do with your time, you both know the real reason why you're gripping his fingers like a child at the school gates: Your terrors, your anxieties and your skittish nature, once soothed and coddled by your parents, had now become Jake's responsibility to tend to, and you are petrified of being alone with your thoughts for the first time in your life.

"You could call your family?" He glances back at you as you both descend the stairs, his hand sliding along the banister.

"My mom has called me every day since the wedding," you deadpan.

He huffs a laugh and turns into the front hall. You reach the coat rack before he does, fetching his coat while he sits on the bench to lace his boots.

"You could go into town?"

"By myself?" You try to make it sound like a joke. It doesn't work.

He stands. You hold the coat open behind him, and he slides his arms in with a small, grateful sound. Then his gaze drifts past you, through the glass of the front door, to the house across the street. A mother is sending her children off, their school bags bright against the white, snowy morning.

"What if you go around and meet the neighbours?"

It isn't a terrible idea. In fact, trying to make new friends in the neighbourhood is what you should be trying to do, as a new couple looking to start their life there. And though ideally, you'd prefer to have your much more socially competent husband alongside you to do the task, you suppose it's about time you start facing your fears alone.

One messy kitchen and a batch of cookies later, you're wrapping up a small bag for each house on your small, quiet street, smiling behind your wool scarf as you ring the bell to the house across the street.

The first house is easy. A middle-aged couple, grateful and brief. The second is an elderly man who mistakes you for a door-to-door salesman. The third, a woman with six cats and one furious white Persian that hisses at you through the screen door until you retreat.

It all blurs together until you reach the end of the street, with only one bag and one house remaining.

You'd be lying if you said you hadn't saved this house for last. Something about it triggered that feeling inside you that you'd grown used to. A dark curiosity that you'd come to fear.

It isn't just the architecture either. Every home on this street is old. That was part of the appeal, why you and Jake had chosen to live here. You preferred something real, something with history. This one, however, feels like the kind of history you don't want to pry into. The kind of spookiness that children sense from the sidewalk and dare their friends to go up to, just to knock on the door and run before anyone answers.

It towers over the neighbouring roofs as if to assert its dominance, shouldering them aside. You don't like the way the entire premise was encompassed by a black, metal gate, and you like it even less now as the sun begins to set—one of the many unfortunate parts about winter; how the sun sets late afternoon, allowing the dark to creep up on you too soon. You hate the dark.

It's all just in your head, surely. Every house in this neighbourhood has an older look and feel, and you're certain that the people living in there are nothing but normal—perhaps even kind. All you have to do is ring the bell, give them the cookies, and leave. It's no big deal.

You nearly laugh at yourself out loud. You're a grown adult, for god's sake, there is no reason to be scared.

With a falsely confident stride, you push past the gates, walking across a jagged cobblestone path. Though you tremble with each step.

Something doesn't feel right, but you remind yourself it's as real as your nightmares—which is to say, not real at all. Your nightmares, the years of psychological torment, it's all in your head. It always has been.

With the sun just about dipping below the horizon, you ring the doorbell, standing before the heavy double doors. You then knock and, for a second, you are relieved to hear nothing back until the doors open with a loud groan. Though you don't see anyone at all, eyes carefully scanning the dimly lit entryway. Your hands curl around the bag in your hands.

"Hello?" You call out, not yet taking a step. "I'm the new neighbour from across the street.”

Silence.

“I… I made cookies.” Your voice echoes into the hall, and you swallow your nerves. “But, if you don't want to be bothered, I totally understand. I can just leave here and be on my way."

You wait a few seconds, hovering in the doorway, and the silence stretches.

You want to leave. Every part of you is screaming at you to turn on your heel and run far, far away. But they'd opened the door for you. You'd made your presence known already. You're standing right there with the cookies in your hand, for God's sake. You can’t just leave now.

Briefly, you wonder what Jake would do. He'd probably walk in with a confident stride and a smile. He'd charm them easily, have them laughing in minutes and get swept up in conversation for hours.

Stupid, you think. You're fine. Completely fine. Just go inside.

You glance around again. The shoe room is empty, save for a small table that stands just beside the door, close enough. And in a split second, you devise your plan: You’ll set them down and immediately leave with your obligations fulfilled, and avoid seeming like a rude, doorbell-ditching neighbour. It’s perfect. Foolproof. Simple.

You step forward, arm extending toward the table, already planning your retreat.

Then the door slams shut behind you.

"Welcome."

The voice comes from directly behind you. You spin, a strangled sound catching in your throat, and there he is—a silhouette pooled in the darkness beside the doorframe, so close you don't understand how you missed him. He must have opened the door. He must have been standing there the whole time, shielded by the shadow of the door, watching you step past him.

"My apologies," he says, stepping aside, the candlelight giving you a proper view of his face. "I've just woken up, and my eyes are sensitive to the sun. I did not mean to startle you,"

Though your heart is pounding through your chest, and you feel like your legs will give out at any moment, you are oddly comforted by his the sight of him. A young man, tall and pale, not much older than yourself and quite strikingly beautiful. You've never seen his face before, though you think it looks strangely familiar, as if you've known him a long time. You’re staring. And though you are aware of it, you don’t tear your gaze away.

"Are these for me?" He looks down at your hand, where you hold your cookies close to your chest.

Wordlessly, you nod, extending your hand. Though you don't expect him to lower his head, his face dipping towards your outstretched hand, the tip of his nose barely grazing the pulse at your wrist.

He inhales.

The sound is soft, barely audible, and his eyes close for a fraction of a second.

They open again, and they find yours, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. There’s a sharpness to his gaze, and it cuts straight through the cold, a dull, traitorous warmth blooming in your lower stomach.

"Smells delicious."

"Thank you," you squeak, shrinking under his gaze.

"My dear," his head tilts, brows furrowing, "You're trembling. You must've been out in the cold a while."

"Yes, well..." You glance toward the door. "Well, I—"

"I would hate to send you back out there." He takes the bag from your hands before you can finish, the motion smooth, unhurried. "Why don't you stay for tea?"

"Oh! Gosh, no, I couldn't possibly impose—"

"I insist."

As if he were commanding you, you find yourself staying, seated on an old-looking couch, the fireplace cackling, warming your chilled hands. Though it does nothing to ease your trembling. The grandfather clock in the corner ticks every second.

Soon, a small teacup is set down in front of you, as he pours both of you a cup from the pot. You look up as he sits himself across from you, face to face, and your palms dig into the couch cushion.

"I must admit, I'm quite delighted to have a visitor," he crosses one leg over the other, his posture upright, poised. It makes you straighten yourself out, embarrassed by your poor manners. "It's been a very long time. You said you moved here across the street?"

"Ah, Yes. My husband and I just moved." You raised your hand to show your ring finger. "Actually, we also just got married."

"Newlyweds. Congratulations," his voice is smooth, "What made the two of you move here?"

"Well, we're not from too far. Just across the southern river. And we looked at houses closer to home but... Something about this neighbourhood felt right. So we decided to start our life here." you smile briefly at the memory, "It's quieter here. Better for raising children—well, eventually, of course. Hopefully."

You falter, the mention of children suddenly feeling far too intimate for a conversation with a man you met three minutes ago. There's a brief, expressionless pause before his mouth curves into a smile.

"It is a nice neighbourhood." He hums in agreement, "Very safe."

"Exactly."

The conversation lulls, and you use the moment to glance around the room. It's grand, immaculate, every piece of furniture polished to a dark gleam. There's no clutter. No photographs on the mantle. No second mug drying on the drainboard. The silence of the house surrounds you, deep and undisturbed.

Your eyes drift back to him. His hands were folded neatly around his teacup. Pale, long-fingered, ever so still. No ring.

It catches you off guard. A man like this, who is wealthy, well-spoken, and irrefutably beautiful in a way that makes your stomach feel strange, and yet he lives alone in a house like this. There should be a wife. There should be children.

Unless there's something wrong with him.

The thought surfaces before you can stop it. You're being judgmental. He's been nothing but polite. He invited you in from the cold. He made you tea. If he's a bachelor, that's his business. Maybe he's shy, maybe he prefers solitude, maybe he's simply never found the right person.

You don't ask. A married woman doesn't comment on another man’s status. The whole line of thought is dangerous, a door you shouldn’t open.

His eyes are on you now, steady and watchful. Too watchful.

You drop your gaze to your untouched teacup to distract yourself, and the grandfather clock ticks.

Then, he laughs. Sheepishly, you watch as he takes a sip of his tea.

"I did not poison it, I promise,” he says, setting the cup down with a clink.

"Oh!" You gape, "No, no. I did not think—I mean, I did not mean to offend you, Mr. ...?"

"Please, call me Sunghoon."

"Sunghoon, then," you let out a sigh, "I'm sorry. I'm easily startled or, as my husband would say, 'a bit of a scaredy-cat,' but I really do appreciate you inviting me in."

"No offence taken. I understand. This is a pretty scary house," he laughs lightly, his voice dropping ever slightly, "and you are a vulnerable young lady."

You laugh nervously at his last comment, certain that he intended well. But it only makes you feel uneasy. Instinctively, your hand goes to the dainty cross at your neck. A habit you'd developed over the years.

"That is to say, you have every right to have your suspicions. And if I were your husband, I wouldn't take your safety so lightly." You don't miss the way his eyes move from you, down to your neck, "He is a very lucky man."

His eyes remain on your throat. You can feel them there, cool and steady, like a fingertip resting just above your pulse. The cross seems to warm under his attention—or perhaps that's your skin, flushing with a heat you don't want to name. Your fingers stay wrapped around the little gold chain, clutching it as if it can shield you from something you can't quite see.

Stop it, you tell your body. Stop it, stop it, stop it.

You hold it so tightly the edges bite into your palm. A penance. A reminder. You are a woman of God. You are pure. You are—

"A woman of faith, I see."

The fire pops, and a log shifts, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. You flinch. He doesn't react. In fact, you aren't sure that you've seen him move at all, his body as still as a statue.

"Of course," you reply as naturally as you can sound, "...aren't you?"

"If I say I am not," he raises a brow, "What then?"

You pause, drawing a breath that feels too shallow and force your lips into something resembling a smile.

"Well," you swallow, "God did say to love your neighbour."

"Ah, Mark twelve, verse thirty-three." Sunghoon's smile doesn't waver. "To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."

The verse hangs in the air, complete and precise, and the tension in your shoulders eases, if only a little.

"So you are a believer."

"I believe in many things." His voice is soft, almost musing. "I believe in life after death. I believe in sinners and saints. I believe some of us, while we may try to convince ourselves otherwise, do not belong in the light."

He then pauses, and you swear you watch his smile curl into something wicked, before he continues.

"I believe prayers can be answered. Especially the ones laced with shame, whispered breathlessly in the night."

Your teacup rattles, the sound too loud in the quiet room. You set it down, but your fingers are shaking so badly the porcelain nearly slips. The cold that has been hovering at the edges of you since you walked through the door now settles deep in your bones.

You look at Sunghoon, your eyes meeting his lingering, far too intense stare. The horrible ache inside of you, the one you've come to know all too well, the one that has haunted your dreams for years, begins to wake from its slumber.

Something is wrong. His demeanour. The way he doesn't seem to breathe or blink or move at all. His presence. The way he looks at you like he owns you, and how that look makes your thighs clench, an inexplicable heat overtaking you.

You nearly jump out of your skin when the grandfather clock strikes the sixth hour.

"Oh!" You laugh nervously, an attempt to conceal the small yelp that escaped you. "Look at the time! I should really go."

"So soon?"

"Yes! My husband should be arriving soon, so..."

You are scrambling for the door, heart thumping in your chest as he follows close behind. Picking up the pace, you grab your coat from the rack near the door. But before you can grab the knob and swing the door open, you feel his presence behind you, cold and seemingly lifeless. You turn.

"It was lovely meeting you," he takes your trembling hand in his, "I hope to see you again, soon."

He lifts your hand as if to kiss it. Though he doesn't. Not yet.

You hear the soft sound of an inhale, barely there, but unmistakable, a slow, shuddering breath. His eyes flutter half-closed, and you blink, frozen in fear, wondering for a brief second if your mind is playing tricks on you, or if he really just sniffed you like some kind of animal.

He then kisses your hand, his lips just barely grazing your knuckles, featherlight. You should feel horror. You should feel disgust. Both are there, you suppose, but beneath it lies something far more shameful.

In the still, empty silence, you let out the tiniest, neediest whimper.

It lingers long enough for both of you to process what exactly you had just done.

He looks up at you through his lashes with a grin, like the most beautiful predator you'd ever laid your eyes on. And, though you can't quite tell in the dim candlelight, you think the canines peeking out the edge of his smile look rather sharp.

With that look permanently etched into your mind, you run. No other words exchanged, no farewell. You’re sprinting back down the street to your place, as fast as your feet can take you, not sparing a single glance behind.

A sigh of relief, though it sounds more like a sob, escapes you when you see Jake’s car in the driveway.

Your hands tremble so violently the keys skitter against the lock, and when the door gives, you throw yourself inside, slam it shut, press your spine to the wood like you're holding back a flood. You breathe in and out. In and out. Chest rising and falling with every breath. Exactly how Jake had taught you to do every time your fears crept up on you too quickly.

"Jake?"

The house is completely dark, and only the silence whispers back. You take off your boots, your coat, throwing them to the side without care as you move. The floorboards creak beneath your feet, and the panic you had only just quelled begins to rise again.

"Jake, where are you?" You try again, this time a bit louder.

You check the living room. The dining room. The kitchen. Then, on shaky legs, you carry yourself upstairs, hand sliding against the railing as you make your way to the bedroom. Still, not a soul to be found. Your hands grip the doorway, nails digging into the wooden frame as you choke down your heavy breaths, blinking away the tears that threaten your eyes.

A pair of arms wrap around you from behind, and the scream that leaves you is almost inhuman.

"It's just me!"

You thrash around in his grasp, and Jake immediately lets go.

He steps back, palms raised, face slack with shock and guilt. You're shaking violently now, heaving as a single tear falls from your eyes.

"Just me, sweetheart." His voice drops, taking your hand in his and guiding you to the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have scared you like that. That's my fault, I'm—"

You don't let him finish. You collapse into him, and he catches you without hesitation, his arms folding around your trembling form as you curl into his lap. He presses his lips to the crown of your head.

"Don't ever do that again."

"I won't." He murmurs into your hair, "Cross my heart, I never will."

You're sobbing into his chest as he whispers I'm sorries and I love yous—Over and over, until the words blur into a rhythm as steady as his heartbeat beneath your ear. You latch onto him like he's your lifeline. He is warm and solid and alive, and you cling to him with a desperation that should embarrass you but doesn't.

Only when your breathing steadies do you finally find the strength to speak.

"I missed you so much."

"I missed you, too."

"I missed you more." Your voice cracks on the last word, and you feel the tears threatening again.

"Shh. It's okay. I'm right here. It's okay." He smooths a hand down your hair, your back. "What happened, sweetheart? Did something happen? Why were you outside?"

"I..." you trail off, unsure how to even proceed as you sniffle. "I went to meet the neighbours... and... the house at the corner. The man there, he..."

It sounds ridiculous when you try to rationalize it in your head, and would probably sound even more ridiculous if you tried to say it out loud.

Sunghoon didn't technically do anything wrong. He only looked at you in ways that made you feel wrong. He said some things that could be interpreted as threatening, though he said it in a polite tone. He kissed your hand and had maybe sniffed you, if you even remember it properly, or if that's just your terrified, panicked brain making things up. He also made you whimper, but that certainly isn't something you can tell your husband.

The memory of it makes you let out another sob, feeling utterly pathetic and ashamed in his arms.

"Hey, talk to me," his voice drops, "What did he do?"

Swallowing your guilt, you pick up the pieces of the truth you can stomach to say aloud.

"The way he was looking at me, it was—he kissed my hand, and—" you stammer, "I don't know. I don't know how to explain."

You can feel Jake exhale.

"Okay," he says calmly, matter-of-factly, taking in the information, "A creepy neighbour tried to hit on you? Is that it?"

Hitting on you. The phrase doesn't quite capture the feeling of being hunted, like a lamb who wandered aimlessly within a predator's reach.

You don't correct him, though. You nod your head, breathing heavy into his grasp as he smooths down the back of your head, holding you tight.

"I'm sorry," you feel the vibration of his voice against his chest. "You want me to talk to him? Scare him off, a bit?"

You picture that predatory gaze, the eyes of something sinister—something demonic. Then you look to your husband: warm and bright and too good for this world. Your husband is the safest, strongest, and most capable man you know. Still, you are strangely terrified at the thought of letting him go there alone.

"I just want you to stay here. With me." You say, simply, "That's all I want."

"I'll always be here. Forever," he hums, circling your wedding ring, dragging your palm flat along his chest until it rests just above his heart, "That's what I promised to you. 'Til death do us part."

You close your eyes. You try to let the steady thrum of his heartbeat drown out everything else. Safe, you tell yourself. I'm safe. He's here. I'm safe.

It doesn't work. What exactly are you safe from? From a man who only looked at you? From a feeling that had started long before you ever set foot in that house?

The heat is still there, coiled low in your belly, waiting. It doesn't care that you're in your husband's arms. It doesn't care that you want it gone. It's been awakened, and it won't be going back to sleep.

You press your thighs together. You're still hot. Too hot. Jake doesn't notice right away, holding you in his arms, his hand still covering yours above his heart.

Your husband pulls back, cupping your face in his hands.

"You're burning up." He says gently, brows furrowed in pure-hearted concern. "You're really warm. Are you getting sick? You were out in the cold for a while, weren't you?"

You open your mouth to answer, but he beats you to it.

"Maybe we should just order takeout tonight. You should rest. I'll warm you a bath, and we can rent a movie. How does that sound?" His thumb traces the curve of your jaw, his eyes searching your face for clues he doesn't know how to read. "I can call in sick tomorrow, and—"

"Jake."

Your eyes drop to his lips. You're still curled in his lap, your breath shallow, your thighs pressed together beneath your skirt. It takes him a second or two for his expression to shift.

Your mouth is on his before he can speak, hot and heavy, desperate to suppress the dark, deviant desire that refuses to leave you alone. You can't help yourself. Not when you're sitting in his lap like this, your arousal and guilt unrelenting.

He goes rigid, a startled sound catching in his throat. This isn't how you kiss. You never kissed him like this before you were married, and you certainly hadn't after, either.

Every night you've shared so far has been nothing but gentle and loving, always handling you with the care one would give a porcelain doll. He had learned of your fragility and your fears long before he ever learned your body, and made love to you the only way he knew how: carefully, tenderly. As if your pleasure was a gift to be earned and not a hunger you already carry.

Tonight, though, you kiss him with the kind of hunger a sexually repressed Catholic boy can only dream of—the kind he was taught to repent for, to pray away. You moan against his lips, the sound raw and almost wounded, clawing open his shirt and grinding against his hips like it's the only thing you need right now.

"Hey—hey, slow down." His hands close gently over yours, stilling them. His eyes search your face, wide and careful. "We don't have to—are you okay? You were just crying, and I don't want you to feel like—"

You shake your head. All you want is that horrible ache inside you to be gone, fucked away by the man you love, the man you married. You pull your hands free and push him back onto the bed. He goes willingly, propped on his elbows, still watching you with that tender, uncertain concern.

"Baby, I'm serious." Jake's voice cracks. His hands hover at your waist, twitching and uncertain. "I don't need—ah—are you sure you want this right now?" The words tumble out of him, broken and breathless, even as his hips rise to meet yours. His body knows what it wants. His mind is still catching up. "You don't have to do this for me—"

"It's for me." Your voice is low, almost like a growl, and his eyes widen.

You reach for the hem of your own dress first and pull it over your head. The fabric catches for a moment on your ear, on your elbow, and the clumsiness of it makes you want to scream. Then it's gone, discarded somewhere on the floor, and you're working at the clasp of your bra while Jake stares up at you with parted lips and dawning disbelief.

He reaches up again, hand hovering a moment before moving to yours, trying to still or slow your moments, but this time you slap them away. Your hands make quick work of his pants, as you do your own, and without a second to spare, you're staring down at his half-hard length, holding the weight of him in your clumsy, still inexperienced hand. You carefully watch his expression, brows knitted, lips parted, and when you tighten your grip ever slightly as you stroke him, he's thrusting up into your hand.

"Shit." He breathes.

You shift forward, lining him up with your entrance. Your underwear is still on—you realize this too late, and the awkwardness of shoving the damp fabric aside makes your face flush. But you don't stop. You sink down onto him, and the stretch steals your breath.

You sigh at the stretch, not used to taking all of him so quickly—not used to being on top, either, and your eagerness momentarily subsides, taking a moment to adjust. Then, with the awkwardness you'd expect of two adults who only started having sex a few weeks ago, you start to move, hands pressed down against his chest. He gazes up in awe, hands twitching at his sides before moving to your hips.

"Holy shit," he manages, the words repeating in broken moans, desperately containing himself from falling apart right there as he watches you, his gorgeous wife, take him with a newfound hunger. He looks wrecked already, his jaw tight with the effort of holding back. "If you keep moving like that—"

His hands tighten, slowing you. He's trying to pace you, trying to protect you from yourself, and the unbearable, oblivious tenderness of it is the last thing you can stand.

"Jake." Your voice comes out sharp, breathless, a frown tugging at your lips. "For God's sake. I'm not going to break. Just fuck me."

There's a moment of pure shock that lingers, and he goes still. Very still. A part of you almost regrets it. Maybe you frightened him. Maybe you've shown a side of yourself that you were never supposed to show, and now he'll never look at you the same.

He exhales a long, shaky breath.

His hands slide from your hips to your waist, then down to your thighs, gripping with an ownership he's never allowed himself before. He thrusts up into you once, testing, and when you gasp, he does it again. Harder. Your head falls back. A moan spills from your lips, and the sound seems to unlock something in him. "Fuck," he breathes. His fingers dig into your skin as he moves you, setting a rhythm that is no longer careful, no longer restrained. You try to match it, but you're still clumsy, still learning, and after a few desperate, off-beat thrusts, he makes a low sound in his throat and flips you onto the mattress.

Your face falls into the pillow. His hand presses between your shoulder blades, arching your back, and then he's inside you again—deeper this time, fuller. The moan you let out is almost a sob. He pulls back and slams into you, and you feel the curve of his grin against the shell of your ear.

"You like this?" His voice is low, but still laced with that concern he always wears. There's a genuine curiosity to his question, a disbelief that lingers. "You like it rough?"

"Please," your desperate voice is muffled in the pillow, "harder, please."

He makes a sound, something between a laugh and a guttural groan, and his hand spreads warm across the small of your back.

"Look at you," he murmurs, almost to himself. "God, look at you. My wife."

He pulls back slowly, letting you feel every inch of him leaving you, and the anticipation is its own kind of torment. When he thrusts back in, it's deep and full, and the gasp you let out is his name. He does it again. And again.

His hand fists the sheets beside your head. His forehead drops to the curve of your neck.

"Fuck—" His voice is ragged, almost disbelieving. "You're really—I can't—"

His thrusts grow deeper, harder, his hand pressing into the arch of your back as he drives into you with an indulgence he's never allowed himself. You can feel the tension, the pressure building. His name falls from your lips in fragments, and he answers with his body—faster, deeper, more.

"That's it," he breathes, and the pride in his voice is new, too. He's proud of this. Proud of what he's doing to you. Proud of you. "I've got you."

You clench around him, crying out when he hits that spot inside you just right, clawing at the pillows beneath you. The orgasm seizes you and doesn't let go, and he feels it. Every pulse, every shudder. His rhythm falters and then breaks entirely.

His voice cracks, high and wrecked, and he buries himself to the hilt and stills, his whole body going rigid against your back. Then he's coming, too. Deep inside you, his hips jerking with each pulse, his groan a long, ragged thing that vibrates through you. He keeps thrusting, fucking his cum back into you, riding it out until he's shaking, until he's spent, until his forehead drops to the nape of your neck and his breath comes in great heaving gasps against your sweat-damp skin.

For a long moment, neither of you moves. He's still inside you, and you can feel his cum between your thighs, still draped over you, his chest pressed to your back so you can feel the hammer of his heart. Your body hums. The world is quiet. The only sound is your breathing, slowly finding the same rhythm.

Then he laughs.

It starts as a breathless little thing against your neck, almost disbelieving, until it blooms into something utterly delighted. His arms slide around your waist, and he pulls you with him as he rolls onto his side, still buried inside you, his face pressed to the curve of your shoulder.

"Who are you," he breathes, "and what have you done with my wife?"

He's grinning. You can feel it against your skin. His hand is flat across your stomach, holding you close, and he presses a kiss to the crook of your neck.

"Seriously. What was—what's gotten into you?"

You turn in his arms, just enough to see his face. He's flushed, pleased, his eyes half-lidded and warm.

You snuggle into his chest, pressing your cheek to the warm plane of his sternum, and his arms fold around you automatically.

"Missed you," you whisper.

"Clearly." The word is thick with satisfaction, his voice still rough and low. He presses a kiss to the crown of your head. "Must've been real lonely, huh? Waiting for me to come home."

“Never leave again. Please."

He laughs softly, pulling you tighter against his chest. The sound rumbling through his chest beneath your ear. His hand moves in slow, soothing strokes down your spine.

"Sweetheart, if this is what I come home to, you couldn't drag me out that door." He presses a kiss to your hair. "I'll quit tomorrow. Become a stay-at-home husband. Live right here in this bed forever."

His breathing deepens, slows. His hand stills on your back. Within minutes, he's asleep, his lips still curved in the ghost of that grin, his body warm and heavy and trusting against yours.

You don't sleep. You can't. The satisfaction is already fading, replaced by the old familiar ache—a low thrum beneath the surface, waiting. You know the dreams will come tonight. You know what waits for you in the dark. But for now, you let yourself be held. For now, his heartbeat under your ear is louder than the guilt. For now, that's enough.

Like clockwork, the dream arrives. Tangled in your husband's arms, you glance to the window, feeling that same presence you always do, tainting your mind with lustful images you could not escape.

Except that tonight, the shadow has a face.

You've never seen a face in your dreams before. For years, the presence has been nothing but sensation—cold hands, sharp teeth, a voice without sound. A silhouette at the edge of your sleeping vision, tall and still. Never eyes you could look into.

Sunghoon's face materializes out of the dark. First the eyes, dark and depthless, then the sharp planes of his face, then the mouth that curved against your knuckles and made you whimper. He looks exactly as he did in the candlelight. Beautiful. Predatory. Waiting.

Why him? You wonder, visions of his lips at your neck invading your mind. Why now?

Though in your dreaming state, you don't have much time to ponder such questions. You're too consumed by the image of those sharp canines that you swore you saw, sinking into your flesh, his hands wandering the length of your body. You don't flinch. In the dream, you arch toward him. You offer him your neck. You come undone with his name on your lips, only a whisper in the night.

You wake with a gasp, still tangled in your husband's embrace, slick between your legs. Though Jake doesn't stir. His breathing is deep and even, his body warm and trusting against yours.

The ghost of your dream lingers, and you press your palm to your mouth to hold back the sob building in your chest.

Dawn comes pale and grey through the curtains, but you're already awake. You couldn't go back to sleep, no matter how hard you tried. So you stop trying. You slip carefully from the bed and pad barefoot to the shower.

You rinse yourself under scalding hot water as if scrubbing every inch of yourself could wash the dream away. You fold Jake's work clothes into a neat pile on the dresser—a reminder that you are a loving, faithful wife and not whatever your dreams make you out to be.

In the kitchen, the coffee machine clicks and hisses. You stand at the window with your empty mug in your hands, and before you've made the conscious decision to look, your eyes have found it. The house. His house.

Just looking at it makes your blood run cold.

You can't help but wonder why every curtain remains drawn, despite the large, beautiful windows. You wonder why he mentioned having "just woken up," though you'd visited him late afternoon—almost evening—yesterday. You think of the way he looked at you, sharp, calculated, like a predator who'd caught its prey. And those teeth, which now that you're thinking back, most certainly had to be sharp, like the ones in your dreams.

Curtains drawn. Cold hands. Sharp teeth.

"Morning, baby," Jake's groggy voice is heard from the hallway, heavy footsteps pattering into the kitchen.

You turn to greet your husband with a broken smile. He chases your lips for a kiss, hands at your waist as they slide down the length of your nightgown with a newfound ease—remnants of last night's confidence still lingering in his touch. You jump in his grasp, a sound of surprise caught in your throat, but you both turn your heads at the beep of the coffee machine.

He pours you a cup first, and you try to focus on his words, you really do. However, his complaints of a passive-aggressive boss and abundantly vague emails fall on deaf ears as your hands tighten around the warmth of your coffee mug, eyes unwillingly and unhelpfully drifting to the window every few seconds.

You hear your name on his lips, but only process it once his hand reaches out to rest atop yours.

"You're spacing out." His thumb moves in slow circles over your knuckles, "Everything alright? Or am I just talking your ear off?"

"Just... tired."

"That makes two of us," he smiles, the two of you sharing a playful look. But he's still watching you, still reading the tension in your shoulders. "Talk to me, sweetheart. I'm here."

Your thumb traces the rim of your mug, and then, before you can talk yourself out of it.

"Do you believe in supernatural things?" You start hesitantly, "Not just God, obviously, but... other things...?"

Your husband takes a slow, pensive sip of his coffee.

"This is about your dreams again, isn't it?"

He gives you that look. The same one your mother and father used to give you at the mention of your nightmares. Sympathetic, but doubtful.

You look down, and he sighs, lifting your hand to his lips. The kiss is gentle and warm, though you shudder regardless.

"Remind me. How long have you been having these dreams, again?"

"Years."

"Years," he echoes, "And how many times, in all these years, have any of your dreams ever hurt you? Really hurt you?"

You sigh, shoulders slumping, a quiet relief blooming in your chest at the sight of his easy, gentle smile. The sunrise peeks through the window just enough to cast a golden glow across his face. His brown eyes and honey skin, now illuminated, were warm and familiar like the fresh cup of coffee in front of you that you had yet to touch.

"They haven't."

"Then I think it's safe to say that whatever it is you're afraid of, that's just your extra creative brain coming up with new reasons to freak out." he taps your head, and you roll your eyes, cracking a smile of your own. "None of it is real. It can't hurt you."

You kiss him goodbye at the door, your worries soothed momentarily as you watch his car disappear around the corner. But soon after, as you're reaching into the sink to work on a day-old pile of dishes, you can't help but watch the house at the corner. You watch all morning. Not a single soul exits or enters the home.

The town library is exactly what you'd expect. The air is stiff, the scent of old books and dust, and an old woman behind the front counter glares at you over the rims of her glasses, like she’s waiting for a reason to shush you.

You hadn't meant to come here. You were going to do errands. That's what you told yourself, anyway. But your feet carried you straight past the grocery store and straight through the heavy oak doors of the town library. And now, you wandered aimlessly through the aisles, unsure of what exactly you're looking for.

Dreams. You find a nonfiction book on dreams. You pull it from the shelf and flip to a chapter on nightmares. The author theorizes that our deepest fears materialize in our sleep, that the subconscious paints faces onto the things that frighten us most. A stranger who unsettled you. A presence that made you feel unsafe. The brain takes what it can't process during the day and works through it at night.

It makes sense. It's rational. He frightened you with that unsettling look in his eyes and his words, and your dreams gave him a form. It's a natural psychological response.

Then the book goes on to list common nightmare archetypes. The falling dream. The dream of being chased. The dream of being naked in public. Nowhere does it mention the dream where a stranger touches you between your legs, their lips on yours, then at your neck, or why you might envision them sinking their teeth into your flesh and drinking your blood. Nowhere does it account for the way your body responded.

Snapping the book shut and shoving it back on the shelf, you continue drifting with a little more purpose now. Past Town Records. Past Local Histories. Past a whole shelf of sermon collections by long-dead Reverends. Your fingers trail the spines, but you don't stop.

You turn down a narrow aisle in the back corner, away from the windows, away from the light.

The titles swimming into focus are older, darker, their spines cracked and their pages yellowed. Supernatural Histories. The Undead: A Historical Overview. Vampires Among Us.

Your hand reaches for one before your mind can stop it, failing to notice the pair of legs, long and lanky, stretched across the aisle, which blocks your path.

"Oh—!" You nearly trip, steadying yourself against the shelf.

A teenager is wedged between the shelves and the wall. He doesn't even look up. His head is bowed over a thick, hardcover book that looks older than time itself, and the sound of heavy drums and electric guitar bleeds from the headphones clamped over his ears. His school uniform is rumpled, tie loose, blazer nowhere in sight. His hair is jet-black except for a single bleached strand.

You clear your throat.

Nothing.

You clear it again, louder.

He turns a page.

"Excuse me…." You say a little more sternly this time, hands at your hips. "Shouldn't you be in school...?” You pause, glancing at his open backpack, at the name on his notebooks. "…Niki?"

He takes his time glancing up, eyes dragging over you with the lazy, unimpressed scrutiny only a teenager can manage. He takes in the sensible skirt. The ironed blouse. The cross at your neck. One pierced eyebrow lifts a fraction. He pulls his headphones down to his neck, his music a low hum.

"Shouldn't you be in the erotica section, or something?" He retorts, rolling his eyes.

"What?" You gape.

"Just saying." He gestures vaguely at you. "You've got the whole... repressed housewife look."

"You—" You give up halfway through your sentence, deciding your time shouldn't be spent exchanging comebacks with a boy who hasn't even graduated yet.

He goes back to his book, a ghost of a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

You step over his legs, which he doesn't move an inch, and try to ignore him, scanning the shelf in front of you until you find the book you had your eyes on before. Locating it, you reach.

"Isn't the occult, like, the devil to you people?"

Your hand stops mid-air, and you turn. He's watching you now, the book in his lap forgotten.

"I'm just looking."

"Sure. Just looking." He closes his book finally, giving you his full attention for the first time, and you immediately wish he hadn't. "Listen, lady. Vampire smut's two aisles down. No judgment. I'm not your pastor."

"I already said—" The flush crawls up your neck. "I'm not—I would never—"

"You'd never," he repeats, flat. "Right. So what are you looking for in this section? A cookbook?"

Your hand is still frozen in the air, fingers hovering over the spine of a book with a lurid, painted cover. A woman in a torn nightgown, fainting into the arms of a dark figure with glowing eyes.

"I wanted to... research something.”

"Research.”

You nod weakly.

He pauses a moment, like he’s analyzing you. Then his whole expression shifts.

"Wait. For real? You're not just messing with me?" His eyes are wide now, a hint of a smile tugging at his lips. It makes him appear even younger than he is, his mood brightening with childlike excitement. "You're actually researching vampires? Like, the lore? The real stuff? You're not just looking for sexy billionaire novels?"

"I don't know anything about sexy billionaires—"

"Oh my god." He scrambles to his feet, all gangly limbs and sudden, startling height, and you take an instinctive step back. His face is absolutely alight. "Oh my god, that's sick. That's actually so sick. Nobody in this town cares about this stuff. Everybody here just thinks I'm some freak who—" He stops himself, clears his throat. "Okay. Okay. So. What do you want to know?"

He's already pulling books off the shelf before you can come up with an answer, scanning spines with the practiced eye of someone who has memorized every title.

"Okay, so. First of all, don't touch that one." He jabs a finger at the book you'd been reaching for. "Complete garbage. The guy just makes stuff up. Zero sources."

"You've read it?"

"I've read everything on this shelf." He says it with pride and a slight shrug. He pulls down a thick volume bound in dark blue cloth, its cover embossed with a faded silver symbol you don't recognize. "You want this one. Written by a Victorian occultist. Genuine primary sources. He gets into the super niche stuff most modern books ignore."

"Niche stuff?"

"Yeah, like. The running water barrier—they can't cross it. Like rivers and lakes. Which is wild. And the mirror thing? It's not that they don't have reflections, it's that old mirrors were backed with silver, and silver's purifying. So the reflection was there, just corrupted. Sort of." He's talking faster now, words tripping over each other. "And then there's the soul-contract stuff, which is the real deep lore. Most people don't even know about it."

"Soul-contracts?"

"Oh, you have to hear about this." He grins, clearly delighted to have an audience. "Okay, so—vampires need blood, right? And most of them have to hunt for it. Every meal. Every night. That's a lot of work. So some of them, the older ones, the smart ones, they figured out a more... efficient system."

He flips through the book, looking for a page.

"They find a human who's desperate. Like, really desperate. And they make a deal. The human offers themselves up—their blood, their life force, whatever—and in exchange, the vampire gives them something that they want."

Your stomach tightens.

"Oh! That's..." You struggle to find your words, but force your voice to stay steady. "What kind of something, exactly?"

"Anything. Revenge, protection, a cure for some disease. Whatever the human needs so badly, they'd trade their soul for it." He finds the page, runs a finger down the text. "But the key thing is, the vampire can't just take. The human has to give permission. Willingly. Otherwise, the bond doesn't form. Hence, the contract part of the soul-contract."

"The bond?"

"Yep. The bond is formed only if it is totally, one-hundred percent mutual. The vampire is tied to the human just as much as the human is tied to the vampire. It's not a master-servant thing. It's..." He pauses, searching for the word. "Permanent. The connection can never be broken, like some eternally messed-up, toxic situationship."

Your hand has found the cross at your throat. You don't remember reaching for it.

"What I don't get," he continues, frowning at the page, "is how the whole thing starts. Like, how does the vampire hear the human in the first place? The book says it answers a call. Not literally a call, though. The words are weird. It says: 'A plea uttered from the deepest well of the soul, often in a state of such desperation that it transcends the mortal sphere.'"

"What kind of plea?" Your voice comes out as a whisper.

"Doesn't say exactly. But the book keeps comparing it to..." He squints at the footnote, then pauses, turns the page. "Huh. That's weird."

"What?"

"The language it uses. It says 'a prayer inverted.'" He traces his finger down the margin. "'Not all prayers reach the kingdom of heaven. Some are intercepted by hungrier ears.' Spooky, right?"

You can't breathe.

The cross burns against your palm. You press it harder, trying to ground yourself, but the world narrows to a single point: a memory. Your bedroom window. The winter wind on your wet cheeks. Your knees bruised against the floorboards.

I beg of you. If you cannot make this feeling stop, then I beg for relief.

"Hey." Niki's voice cuts through the static in your head. "You good? You look like you're gonna, uh... hurl. Or pass out."

"I'm fine."

"Yeah, no." He sets the book aside, straightening up, eyes narrowing. "You're definitely not fine. Was it something I said? I have a habit of—I mean, my mom's always telling me I don't know when to shut up, so if I—"

"You didn't do anything." You shake your head, swallowing hard. "I just need some air."

“Wait!”

You step back, your heel catching on the leg he's stretched across the aisle again. You stumble, and he scrambles to his feet, catches your elbow—a quick, awkward gesture.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to—I just—" He pulls back immediately, shoving both hands in his pockets like he's been burned. He drops his voice to a whisper, then he stares straight at you. “You’ve met a vampire, haven’t you?”

You blink.

"No." You shake your head too fast, an unconvincing laugh escaping your lips before you ramble on, "What? No. That’s ridiculous. Vampires aren't real. Aren’t you too old to believe in these things? Please.”

“But—”

“I'm just... I'm bored. And…” You swallow, “I need to get home before my husband is back."

There’s a pause. A long one.

"Oh… I get it.” He gives you a knowing look. “You can't tell anyone. Vampire confidentiality. Right?" He shifts his weight, suddenly looking less like a brooding delinquent and more like a kid who's spent too many lunch periods eating alone. You open your mouth to protest, but he continues. "Then, if you do see one. Hypothetically. Could you... ask something for me?" You take in his wide-eyed, hopeful stare. "The garlic thing. Is it true? Everyone's always arguing about it, but I think it's just complete crap.”

You let out a sigh.

"I'll keep that in mind."

He beams, looking like he’s about to jump up and down with joy, but quickly reins himself in, dropping his voice an octave and shrugging the excitement away. "Cool... cool. Alright. I'll see you later, then, vampire research lady. I'm always here, so come and find me whenever you wanna, like. Hang out or something...You'll come back, right?"

You don't process any of it. Still shaken, you turn and walk. Past the shelves. Past the desk, where the old librarian still watches you with narrowed eyes. Past the heavy oak doors and into the cold, gray afternoon.

Not all prayers reach the kingdom of heaven.

You pull your coat tighter and start walking, not home just yet. You need to let yourself breathe before you go back to the house with the kitchen window that faces his door, before you have to look your husband in the eye and pretend the conversation you just had never happened.

Teenagers believe anything. You tell yourself with every heavy step, fresh snow crunching underfoot. None of it is real. It can't hurt you.

A thick snowfall arrives on a Friday afternoon, the following week. Schools and stores close, and a company-wide email advises everyone to stay inside. Jake stood at the bedroom window when he read it, watching the storm howl past the glass, and felt two things at once: a quiet disappointment that winter is nowhere near its end, and a much louder, much more immediate gratitude that he doesn't have to leave you today.

He's been worried about you. That's nothing new, actually. He's been worried about you since the day you met, when you laughed at one of his jokes only to screech at the sound of a twig snapping under your step two seconds later. He recognized something in you then. To call it skittishness would be an understatement. There was a weight behind your wide-eyed stare. The look of someone who has been carrying something heavy for a very long time and has never asked anyone to help her hold it. You told him about your night terrors a month into the relationship. Sat him down, explained it like a warning, as if it could ever scare him off from pursuing you. He wanted to be the one to help. He still does. It's the quiet purpose of his life.

He was foolishly optimistic back then. The reality of what it means to live with you, alongside your fears, is not an easy responsibility to carry. You smile when you're sad. You deflect when he asks questions. You say I'm fine and change the subject and slide into his lap, and he lets you, because he loves you, because he doesn't always know the right thing to say, and maybe because some part of him is afraid that if he pushes too hard, he'll be devastated to find there's far more he doesn't understand about you than he realizes. He holds you in the ways you ask him to. He soothes your fears without knowing what they are. He plays the role he's resigned himself to—husband, protector, warm body in the dark—and tries not to notice the moments when your eyes go distant, when your hands tremble for no reason, when you stare into nothing like something else is there, staring right back.

It wears on him. He doesn't resent it. He could never resent you. But there are nights when he wakes up beside you, listening to you stir in your sleep and feels a loneliness he can't explain. Sometimes it feels like there is a part of you he cannot reach, a room inside you where he is not invited.

So he does what he can. He goes to work. He comes home. He holds you when you let him. He prays for you, even on the days when his own faith wavers. And when you reach for him, pulling him into bed with that desperate, devouring hunger that has become the new rhythm of your marriage, he gives you everything you ask for. He gives you more. Because in those moments, you are fully present—your attention is on him and not lost somewhere else. In those moments, he is not your caretaker or your protector. He is simply yours.

It's a relief he didn't know he needed. To be wanted. Not needed—wanted. There's a difference.

Jake's always been good at being needed. Being helpful. At smiling, nodding and letting others feel heard. It's something he carried into adulthood. Into his faith. Into his marriage, where his wife's fragility gave him a role he recognized: the steady one. The unneedy one. The one who holds and is never held.

But desire—real, shameless, take-me-now desire—was never something he imagined being on the receiving end of. He was taught that sex was a service a wife provided to her husband. A duty. A kindness. Something to be accepted with gratitude and restraint. He was prepared to be grateful. He was not prepared for you.

These past weeks, you've become something else entirely. You pull him in by the belt before he's shrugged off his coat. You beg him to be rough, to be merciless, to stop treating you like something fragile. The first time you said it, after the initial disbelief subsided, he nearly wept from relief. From the sudden, staggering realization that you wanted him the way he had always secretly wanted you. That the hunger was mutual. That he was allowed to be hungry at all.

He's been enjoying it more than he probably should. He knows that. Some old, stubborn guilt stirs in him every time he pins your wrists above your head, every time he hears you moan his name like a prayer. He used to repent for thoughts far milder than the things you do together now. But the guilt is quieter than it used to be. Quieter than the sound of your breath hitching. Quieter than the way you say harder and please and fuck me right now.

He assumes it's a side effect of your clinginess. You spend all day alone, trapped by the cold, left to the mercy of your own thoughts. Of course, you reach for him the moment he walks through the door. Of course, you want to be touched, held, filled with something other than the silence of an empty house. He's happy to be that for you. He's happy to be whatever you need.

He doesn't understand the whole of you. He'll never understand what keeps you up at night, and why it does. But he understands the curve of your hip, and the sound of your laugh, and the way your body answers his in the dark. And for now, with the snow piled high against the windows and the fire crackling in the next room and you warm and real and wanting in his arms, that is enough. It's more than enough. It's everything he didn't know he was allowed to ask for.

The neglected part of his heart that spent years believing desire was something to be managed, not felt—that accepted loneliness as the price of being steady, that tucked itself away in the front pew and never asked for more—that part is wide awake, and it reaches for you helplessly.

All of that to say is: being holed up with you inside on a cold evening, he does the only thing that makes sense. He finds you in the kitchen, wraps his arms around your waist from behind, and presses his lips to the curve of your neck.

You giggle, leaning back into him, the wooden spoon still in your hand.

"You want me to burn dinner?"

"I want you," He punctuates each word with a kiss to your shoulder, your jaw, then your neck. "Want you all the time. Everyday. Every second."

"You're insatiable." You swat at his arm, but your voice is fond. "And a distraction."

"What's wrong with being distracted?"

"Jake." You roll your eyes, your tone playful but stern, "Go find something else to do."

"Like what?" He pouts, resting his chin on your shoulder, peering down at the pot.

"Maybe, shovelling the driveway?"

He groans. "I'll do that in the—"

"Morning? You sleep like a log. Besides..." You turn in his arms, your free hand coming up to toy with the collar of his shirt, and a suggestive grin tugs at your lips, "You won't have the energy to."

"Oh?" His eyebrows lift, a slow grin spreading across his face. "Well, if that's the case..."

He presses a kiss to your cheek and pulls away.

"Don't miss me too much," He calls out as he makes his way down the hall, dreading having to bundle up for the cold.

"No promises."

He dreads it even more once he's actually outside, scrunching his nose as the icy cold hits him, like little needles against his skin. But seeing you move about the kitchen from where he shovels makes it all worth it. It's always worth it.

He's watched you sleep enough nights to know how hard you fight just to stay still. The way you squirm and pant and clutch at him, sweat beading at your brow, tortured by something he can't see and you can't name. He's learned not to wake you—it only makes it worse. So he holds you instead.

But morning always comes. You always smile at him over coffee, tired and brave, pushing through the day like the night never happened. Like you haven't spent eight hours running from something he can't fight for you.

So, really, the least he could do as a husband was shovel the driveway without complaining. Even if his back was beginning to ache as if he were a middle aged dad. He can clear a path. He can make one thing easier for you, even if it's just the driveway.

"Hello."

Jake lets out an embarrassingly high-pitched scream and nearly topples over into the snow, managing to brace himself with his shovel. He turns, letting out a sigh of relief when his eyes land on the tall, pale-looking man, who greets him with a closed-mouth smile.

"Man, you scared the crap out of me," Jake laughs, which dissolves into nervous laughter when he notices how the man does not laugh with him. He stands still, almost statuesque.

"My apologies. Jake, yes?"

"That's me." He adjusts his grip on the shovel and extends his free hand, tilting his head. "Do we know each other? I'm sorry, I'm terrible with faces."

"Sunghoon." The hand that meets his is cold, even through both their gloves. The grip is brief and precise. "A pleasure. I live at the corner. Your wife made my acquaintance last Monday."

Jake pauses a moment, his hand freezing mid-shake.

The house at the corner. The weirdo. The hand-kissing, too-long-staring, made-you-uncomfortable neighbour you'd come home crying about last week.

His brows furrow at the realization that this was the guy you were talking about. Although he was imagining someone much older and creepier. Not a polished, perfectly composed, and frankly quite handsome—if Jake is being honest—guy his own age.

"You're the neighbour, huh?" Jake deadpans, shoving his shovel into the snow and standing up straight. He looks Sunghoon up and down, taking his time, letting his gaze drag. Sizing him up. He's taller. That's annoying.

"Yes. We had a lovely conversation. I wish to extend my gratitude."

"How kind. But not necessary."

"Oh, but it is."

"But it really isn't."

"I insist."

"Okay. Look, man. I'll give it to you straight," Jake frowns, eyes narrowing, "I know my wife is beautiful and perfect and all. That's why I married her. You got that? So, I think it's best if you leave her alone."

Sunghoon stares, wordless and expressionless, for a moment. Jake holds his ground, though the silence is starting to get uncomfortable. Maybe he'd been too confrontational. Too harsh. Of course, you and your safety are his number one concerns, but from the way the man's face softens so earnestly, the fear of having possibly misjudged the entire situation starts to creep up on him.

"My apologies. It seems I gave you the wrong impression," His tone is bashful and all too disarming, and he clears his throat as he reaches for his pocket. "You see, ever since I lost my wife, I've become a bit of a hermit. But for a pair of friendly neighbours, I thought I might try getting myself out of my shell."

Jake's frown drops. He stands there in the snow, feeling like a complete and total asshole. He'd been ready to defend your honour, all puffed up and protective and righteous, and instead he'd just threatened a lonely widower who was only being kind. His mother would be appalled. His pastor would probably have words: Lord, we lift up Jake, who apparently forgot every single thing we taught him about loving thy neighbor.

Sunghoon extends an envelope, wax-sealed and dignified, held out with a leather-gloved hand.

"Oh." Jake takes it, and the wax seal feels like a personal indictment. "I'm so sorry for your loss. I didn't mean to—I wasn't trying to—really, I just—I'm so sorry."

"It was a long time ago." Sunghoon waves him off with a gentle grace that makes Jake feel even worse, somehow. "I take no offence. I was also quite protective in my first year of marriage."

Jake nods, grateful for the absolution, and sighs.

"When you really love someone, it’s like you'd do anything for them. You know. Move mountains. Fight a bear. Or—" He gestures at the shovel, at his own puffed-up posture. "Accost a stranger in your own driveway, apparently."

"It's true." Sunghoon's mouth curves. "I once threatened a man on the street because he looked at my wife too long. She was mortified. I was unrepentant."

Jake laughs. "And she scolded you for it, I'll bet."

"Absolutely." Sunghoon's expression is something fond, something distant. "But you know..."

"The wife is always right," they say in unison.

"But we love them anyway."

"We do."

Jake smiles. It's the first time since moving here that he's felt something like this. The kind of easy conversation he used to have with friends back home, before the marriage, the move, the new job.

Sunghoon. An odd neighbour. He speaks as if he could be from another generation, hands out wax-sealed letters, and lives in a mysteriously large house all on his own.

Jake could understand why it might be off-putting. But Jake also remembers when you used to scream at the sight of your own shadow. When you'd cling to him at social gatherings in college and glare at every person in the room like they were trying to hurt you.

You've always been afraid. Of the dark. Of strangers. Of everything. He's learned to calibrate for it, to filter the world through the lens of your anxiety and adjust accordingly.

It's not intentionally dismissive. He listens. He tries to. But this time, he should've known that when you crawled into his arms crying over a neighbour who only did so much as look at you, that it would be what it always is: another false alarm.

A part of him still ponders what he could possibly mean by "a long time" when the man before him doesn't look a day over thirty. And even if he were, say, in his mid to late thirties... late thirties...? That's still too young to have lost a wife and had plenty of time to get over it. He does not dare to ask, though. You know, considering he's already accused the guy of hitting on his wife. Following that up with so, exactly how long has your dead wife been dead? feels like it might not improve the situation.

Sunghoon's gaze drifts. Past Jake, over his shoulder. Jake follows it to the kitchen window, where the curtain twitches. There's a flash of movement, quickly stilled. You've been watching the entire time.

"She mentioned being a bit timid," Sunghoon smiles a little, gaze torn away from the window. "If not both of you, perhaps just yourself? I would be glad to host regardless."

"He's weird, sure. But he went out of his way to invite us. I think he's just trying to be friendly in his own, you know, awkward sort of way." Jake rambles to himself over dinner. "A lot of the other couples on this block are a lot older than us. It would be nice to make friends with a guy my own age."

The dinner invitation sits open between you on the kitchen table, its wax seal broken, its cursive script elegant and old-fashioned. You stare at the words on the page, and all you can see is the way he looked at you through the window. The slow, knowing smile. The way his eyes had found yours through the glass, like he'd known exactly where you'd be.

"I think we should accept." Jake's tone of voice is unfortunately optimistic. And a part of you cannot believe half of what you're hearing, but the other part of you knows this is who you married: Jake, a man who assumes the best in everyone, who never enters a room expecting danger, who extends undeserved kindness to every stranger he meets. "Worst case, we learn to stay away. Best case, you have nothing to worry about. Either way, it will put your mind at ease."

Put your mind at ease. You nearly snort aloud. As if an evening in that house with that man could do anything but the opposite. Jake doesn't notice. He's already picturing the dinner party, already imagining a new friendship.

"...I'm not sure. Maybe we should think on it."

His smile falters. You know that look. It's the closest Jake ever gets to exasperation.

"Come on." He sets his fork down, and you feel the weight of his stare. "He lost his wife, and he lives in that creepy mansion all alone. Don't you feel a little bit bad?"

You offer no response, picking at your food. He gives you a few seconds, letting the tension-filled silence linger, and when it becomes clear you're not going to budge, he sighs.

"Well." He picks up his fork again, his jaw set with a gentle stubbornness. "You can think on it. I'm going."

"What?" Your fork is clattering against the table. "No. You can't go alone."

He blinks at you, fork hovering halfway to his mouth, his expression caught somewhere between confusion and the beginnings of a laugh. His brow furrows.

"Didn't know I needed supervision." The words come out light, almost teasing, but his eyes are still searching your face. He's trying to find the joke. When the smile doesn't come, the teasing edge fades from his voice. "I'm just going across the street, baby. What do you think is going to happen to me?"

"I'm just being cautious."

"Cautious?” He scoffs, “What, you think he’s an axe murderer or something?”

He waits for you to laugh, to roll your eyes, to admit you're exaggerating.

"Sweetheart.” His voice drops, frustration building up. “Be realistic. Seriously."

"I am realistic. He told me I looked vulnerable. Like it was a threat. Like I was in danger, I...” Your words are tumbling out faster now, more frantic, “He sniffed me. That's not normal, Jake. He—”

“Sure he did.”

It lingers in the air a moment, and you stare, suspended in disbelief at how he’s looking at you as if you are a child describing a monster in the closet.

“You think I’m making it up.”

The dismissal is worse than the doubt. He's not even taking it seriously enough to disbelieve. Your hands are trembling. You press them flat against the table.

"I didn’t mean it like that,” He starts, “Sweetheart—”

“You don’t believe me.”

"I believe…" He stops, taking a moment to reel in his thoughts. He lowers his voice to a tone that's more gentle and patient, acutely aware of how your breathing is growing uneven. "Maybe these nightmares are warping your perception of the people around you. Which is making you act a little judgmental."

He reaches across the table. His palm hovers over your knuckles, an offering. But you swat his hand away before it lands. It's a small gesture, but the impact of it lingers.

"You don't believe me." You repeat.

His frown is no longer patient.

"Do you even believe yourself?"

Jake looks at you, searching for something neither of you can name. For an answer. For understanding. For anything at all. You can't help the shame that creeps up on you, rotting you from the inside.

You don't know what you believe. All you know is that your dreams have a face now. The face lives at the end of your street and has invited you to dinner.

It would be so easy to say you're afraid of him. It wouldn't be a lie. But the truer explanation is also the most shameful: you want your neighbour. You've wanted him since he looked at you in the candlelight and made you feel like prey that was begging to be caught. But admitting that would mean admitting that the rot inside you was never his fault—That all of this has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the woman you've been trying not to be since you were old enough to know better.

You don't let yourself finish the thought. You never do.

Through the corner of your eye, through the kitchen window, a passing car's headlights reveal the sight of something in your yard. Something red, in contrast to the stark white snow, and you freeze.

"Listen, I’m not trying to argue. I'm really not. I'm just trying to help. You can’t be afraid of every stranger you—"

"I just saw something." The words leave your mouth before you've decided to say them. "Out there."

Jake stops. His eyes follow yours to the window, where the dark has settled back over the yard like a curtain drawn shut. When he looks back at you, his frown is firm.

Holding Jake's hand, you walk with him through ankle-deep snow, his flashlight flickering ever so slightly. The beam is weak but steady enough to catch the trail he's tracking: small animal footprints, evenly spaced, leading toward the hedge at the edge of the yard.

"There," you whisper, though you don't know why you're whispering. "Behind the bush."

He angles the light. For a moment, the snow is just white and clean and untouched. Then the beam catches it. A bright splash of red, vivid against the pale. It's fresh. Still wet.

"Oh my god." Your hand flies to your mouth.

Jake crouches, his jaw tight, and pushes aside the lowest branch. The cat lies curled beneath the hedge, its fluffy white coat matted with blood. Its neck is torn, and two small punctures sit just above the collar, neat, precise, too deliberate to be random. You'd seen it in movies. You'd seen it in the book Niki flipped through at the library.

That night, after Jake calls the old woman across the street and breaks the news that her beloved house pet lies lifeless in your front yard, you find yourself curled up against Jake's chest. Your violent shaking and panicked breathing had now simmered down into quiet breaths and subtle trembling.

"There were no other footprints around."

"Hm?" His voice is thick with the sleep he's been fighting off.

"The cat."

Jake doesn't sigh, but the way his chest rises and falls tells you he was hiding his frustration for your sake.

"It was dark." His hand resumes its slow circles on your back. "We probably just missed it."

"I know what I saw."

"What do you think it was then, hm?" He teases lazily, thoughtlessly. "A scary cat-killing monster with no footsteps?"

He means it as a joke. Mostly. But you don't miss the edge in his voice, how it's sharper than it would have been an hour ago, before the argument at the kitchen table, before the cold trek through the snow to find a dead cat in your yard.

"A vampire."

The word lands in the dark between you and just sits there. Jake goes still. Then, slowly, he shifts upright, disentangling himself from you. The loss of his warmth is immediate.

He looks at you. Really looks at you.

"Okay. What is going on with you?"

"You don't think it could be?" You try, “Two marks, side-by-side, at its neck. What kind of wild animal does that?”

"Is that a serious question?" He blinks at you, "Baby. Look at me. Please tell me you aren't serious."

You don't answer.

This time, he does sigh loudly, and with a small "come here," he's pulling you in his arms again. He settles back against the pillows, tucking you against his chest.

"Let's pretend, hypothetically, that your little conspiracy theories are real. All the vampires and the cat-killing monsters and the creepy neighbours with sharp teeth..." His voice is warm and tired and almost teasing. But mostly just exhausted. "Then I promise I'll protect you from all the big, bad, scary things out there. Okay? Does that make you feel better?"

It should. But all you can think about is the cat beneath the hedge. The two neat punctures above its collar. The way Sunghoon looked at Jake, curious and patient, eyes at his neck when he wasn't looking.

You don't need Jake to protect you. You need him to stay the hell away from that house. You need him somewhere the monster can't reach.

But he won't stay. He's made that clear.

"Jake?"

"Mm?" He's already drifting, the exhaustion finally pulling him under.

"I'll come with you."

You walk the short distance to the house at the corner hand in hand with your husband, his palm warm and steady around yours. The snow has stopped falling, leaving the street hushed and still, though you feel anything but peace. Jake's thumb traces small circles over your knuckles, a nervous habit he doesn't seem to notice.

"You're squeezing," you murmur.

"Am I?" He loosens his grip, shooting you a sheepish smile. "Sorry. I just want this to go well."

You know why. It's not just about making a good impression or redeeming himself for the confrontation in the driveway. He's trying to give you peace of mind, even if he has to manufacture it. A successful evening means a normal neighbour. A normal neighbour means your fears were just fears. He needs that to be true. For you and for himself.

The gate groans when Jake pushes it open, the iron scrollwork black and wet with melted frost. The cobblestone path is uneven beneath your boots, the same path you fled down some time ago with your heart in your throat and the phantom heat of a stranger's lips still burning on your knuckles. The house looms above you, every window dark, the curtains drawn against the fading afternoon light.

"Nice place, right?" Jake says under his breath. It's such a desperately optimistic read of the looming dark house in front of you. You'd call it a generous lie if you didn't know your husband any better.

The heavy double doors open before Jake can knock.

Sunghoon stands in the shadow of the threshold, tall and pale and composed. His smile is closed-lipped, polite, his eyes moving from Jake to you with an unhurried grace.

"Welcome." He steps aside, gesturing you in. "Please, come in out of the cold."

"I'd shake your hand, but my fingers are still thawing." Jake laughs, "Seriously though. Thanks so much for having us."

"The pleasure is mine. It's been a very long time since this house has had guests." Sunghoon guides the pair of you inside, and you don't miss the way his hand brushes your back. His gaze flicks to you, and the corner of his mouth lifts just slightly. "Welcome back."

You murmur something that might be thank you. The warmth of the foyer wraps around you as the door swings shut, but it does nothing to stop the chill working its way down your spine.

"Man, this place is insane. You could fit our whole house in this entryway." Jake is still shrugging off his coat, glancing around the foyer with wide, earnest eyes. He elbows you gently, grinning. "Why didn't we buy a creepy old mansion, babe?"

You don't answer, shedding your own coat, avoiding Sunghoon's stare.

"It's too much house for one person, I'm afraid. But it does have its charms." Sunghoon turns, gesturing toward the hall ahead. "Shall I give you the tour?"

"Yes, please." Jake nods enthusiastically, following him into the hall.

You trail behind.

Each room is just as beautiful as the last. The parlour with its heavy velvet drapes and furniture draped in dusty sheets. The study, lined floor to ceiling with books, a massive oak desk sitting dark and unused in the center. The dining room, where a long table has been set for three—candles flickering, silver gleaming. The formality of it all makes you feel like you've stepped into another century.

"My wife had a fondness for entertaining," Sunghoon says, noticing your gaze. "I'm afraid I've let the tradition lapse. You'll have to forgive me if I'm out of practice."

"Are you kidding? This is incredible." Jake claps him on the shoulder, already at ease. "Our dining table is just a couple of sad IKEA chairs."

It's in the music room that Jake stops dead in his tracks.

The grand piano sits in front of the large, draped windows. It's an ancient-looking thing, the legs intricately carved and the body engraved with winding patterns, with candelabras on either side, their wax frozen mid-drip. The ivory keys are yellowed with age, but the dark wood gleams, suggesting it's been properly maintained over the years.

Jake drifts toward it. His hand lifts before he seems to realize it, hovering just above the closed lid.

"No way," he breathes. "You play?"

"Occasionally. Though my wife was far better. It belonged to her." Sunghoon comes to stand beside him. "And you?"

"No, no. I just..." Jake runs a reverent hand over the closed lid. "I used to play guitar. Nothing fancy. Mostly in youth group, you know? Worship nights, that kind of thing."

"Ah, yes." Sunghoon's smile deepens. "A man of faith. Your wife mentioned it."

"Born and raised." Jake glances back at you, his expression bright with the pleasure of finding common ground. "Actually, I used to sing in the choir too, back when I was a kid. Drove the conductor insane because I could never remember the Latin verses."

"A church choir. Now that brings back memories." He hums, soft and almost wistful, "I sang as a child, too. Soprano, if you can believe it. Before my voice dropped and they had no more use for me."

"No way." Jake laughs, delighted. "Small world, huh? What denomination?"

"The details blur after a while." Sunghoon waves a hand, "Though I'm afraid my faith hasn't weathered the years as well as yours."

"Hey, I get it. Life has a way of testing you." Jake's hand finds yours, squeezing, as if to say, see? He's just a guy. A normal, lonely guy. "But the door's always open, right?"

"So I've heard."

You stand a few paces behind them, your hand limp in Jake's grip, listening to the easy rhythm of their conversation. It should be a comfort—your husband, making a friend, building the life you'd both imagined for yourselves in this new town. But all you can feel is the way Sunghoon's gaze keeps drifting toward you even as he speaks to Jake. The way his smile never quite reaches his eyes.

You drift away, taking in the rest of the room while their voices fade behind you.

The bookshelf is built into the far wall, floor to ceiling, packed with old volumes in dark, cracked leather. You let your eyes trace the spines without really seeing them—something to do, somewhere to look that isn't the two of them. Most of the titles are in languages you don't recognize. Latin, maybe. Something older.

Then your gaze snags.

A book bound in dark blue cloth, its cover embossed with a faded silver symbol you recognize instantly. You've seen it before. In the narrow library aisle, in the hands of a bored teenager. Instinctively, your hand reaches.

"Have you read it?"

The voice comes from directly behind you, close enough that you feel the words stir the hair at the nape of your neck. You flinch, spinning on your heel, and find Sunghoon standing less than an arm's length away. You hadn't heard him move. You hadn't heard anything at all.

You look around frantically. Jake. Where is Jake? Where did he—?

"It's local history, mostly. Folklore. Old superstitions." He reaches past you, his sleeve brushing your shoulder, and pulls the volume from the shelf. He turns it over in his hands, long pale fingers tracing the embossed symbol. "You don't strike me as the type to believe in such."

"I don't." You say too quickly, "I just find it interesting. The stories. The history."

"So you have read it."

His eyes meet yours. The candlelight catches them strangely, deepening the dark, and for a moment, you can't look away. You don’t want to. Nor do you want to keep trying to convince yourself that the way he looks at you is anything normal.

"What about you?" You tilt your chin up. "Do you believe any of it is real?"

"I think I’ve told you before. I believe in many things." He slides the book back onto the shelf. "They say curiosity is a dangerous thing. It can be. Though I think a curious mind, who is drawn to things they cannot explain, is putting themselves in far more danger by resisting their nature."

"One might call it resistance. One might also call it none of your concern."

The words come out sharper than you intended. Sunghoon smiles, slow and knowing.

"The scaredy cat has claws." He doesn't step back. His gaze doesn't waver.

Against your will, your mind flashes back to the cat in your front yard, lying bloody and lifeless in the snow. A shudder runs through you.

Jake's footsteps echo in the hallway, and Sunghoon steps back, the space between you reasserting itself as if it had never closed.

"Anyway." Sunghoon's voice lifts, smooth and easy, perfectly timed to Jake's reappearance in the doorway. "It's quite an interesting read, even for a skeptic."

"Sorry about that." He says, expression half sheepish. "I kind of got lost on the way to the bathroom. This house is—yeah. What'd I miss?"

"Your wife was admiring my library," Sunghoon replies. "She has excellent taste."

The three of you sit at one end of the long dining room table, silverware grasped in your unsteady hands, your wine glass untouched. Sunghoon brought out the first course—something rich and dark, red wine sauce pooling on porcelain. It smells delicious, and you watch Jake dig into it thoughtlessly. You move the food around your plate instead. Your mother would scold you for bad table manners, but you don't owe this man any manners. Not when he’s charming your husband to his face, and cornering you when he’s out of sight.

"So only a few weeks," Sunghoon says, refilling Jake's glass with a bottle that had no label. "Married, moved in, new job. You've been busy."

"Busy doesn't even cover it." Jake is already reaching for his glass, his shoulders loosening with each sip. "I barely have time to do anything like this anymore. Socializing, I mean. As much as I love being cooped up with my other half..." He shoots you a wink. "This is nice. Really nice."

"It is." Sunghoon hums in agreement. "I remember what it was like. The demands on a new husband can feel endless. The pressure to build something lasting, to be enough for someone who's given you everything."

"Yeah." Jake exhales, something in his posture softening. "Exactly. It's a lot sometimes."

Sunghoon's gaze drifts to yours.

"Of course, it's hard on the wives, too. I'm sure." He says. "The adjustment can be difficult. Old habits. Old fears. They don't disappear just because there's a ring on your finger."

Jake doesn't seem to notice how you shift in discomfort. He’s already nodding, already raising his glass in a loose, tipsy agreement. He doesn't hear the implication. He doesn't see the way Sunghoon's eyes haven't left your face. He doesn’t listen to you when you tell him to stop drinking, either.

One bottle turned into two, and you don't know how many glasses you've watched your husband down, but you know with certainty that he's far gone as you sit in the living room, stiff and silent while the men chat away. You don't listen. You're too busy noticing how your heart beats faster than the ticking grandfather clock in the corner, eagerly waiting to leave.

The fire has burned down to embers, a low red pulse that makes the shadows stretch along the walls. The record crackles to life, piano drifting through the air. Something slow and minor.

"My wife adored Chopin's nocturnes, but I preferred his sonatas. Though one could argue that everything he composed was excellent." Sunghoon places the record sleeve down, the edges worn. "I used to listen to this one to clear my head."

Jake stirs against you, lifting his head with visible effort.

"Oh yeah?" His voice is thick, syrupy. He squints at the record sleeve in Sunghoon's hands, then back at you. "I know someone who could use that."

He looks straight at you. His eyes are glassy, fond, and painfully oblivious. You glare.

"I'm just teasing, baby." His hand finds your thigh, squeezing. A drunken peace offering. It doesn't help at all. "Just teasing."

"Careful." Sunghoon's voice is closer now, light and teasing as he slides into the couch across from you two. "You'll end up sleeping on the couch tonight."

Jake snorts, and you watch something loosen in his shoulders—watch him lean into the camaraderie of it, the easy, too-easy understanding that passes between them. He gestures with his glass, the dregs of wine sloshing against the crystal.

"She wouldn't let me. Who else is going to protect her from all the scary monsters and the dark?" He rolls his eyes, affectionately dismissive.

"Jake." It comes out as a whisper, a plea.

"You're scared of the dark?"

"She's scared of everything." Jake interrupts, his words slurring. "Scared of the dark. Scared of being alone. Scared of herself, even." He raises his hands in surrender, palms out, the gesture loose and exaggerated. "Don't ask me why. Nobody knows why. I've been trying to figure it out since we met, and I've got nothing."

He lets his hands drop, gazing at you with a sad, broken look in his eyes. Something only alcohol could drag out of him, and something he'll hate himself for in the morning.

"I don't know how to help." He continues, "I don't know what to do. I never know what to—"

"Jake, stop it."

He blinks at you, the awareness that he's crossed a line he definitely shouldn't have dawning on him all at once. His shoulders hunch, invisible weight pressing down on him.

"Right. I should shut my mouth. I know, I know." He sets his glass down on the side table, clumsy, the stem rattling. His hand finds your knee and pats it twice, a sloppy apology. "I don't know what I'm saying. I'm not trying to be mean, sweetheart. I just… don't understand you."

"I know."

"I try. I promise, I try."

"I know you do." You soothe him, feeling his weight press against you. You turn to Sunghoon. "I think he's had too much to drink. We should probably—"

"I try, just..." He exhales, long and slow, the last of the fight going out of him. "Just... can't..."

His head dips forward. His shoulders go slack. The weight of him against your side becomes dead weight, heavy and still.

"Jake?" Your hand moves to his chest, shaking gently. Nothing.

His breathing remains deep and even, but there's no flicker of consciousness beneath his eyelids, no reflexive squeeze of his hand where it lies slack in yours.

"Your husband." Sunghoon hasn't moved from his chair. The firelight catches the pale angle of his jaw, the dark gleam of his eyes. "He's lovely."

"He is." The words come out defensive.

His gaze then drops to your throat.

Your hand twitches up. Beneath your blouse, the cross rests against your heated skin. You wore it like this on purpose, tucked away so you wouldn't be tempted to reach for it, so he wouldn't have the satisfaction of seeing you clutch it like a shield. Still, your muscle memory betrays you.

"Though, not quite as lovely as you."

You dart your gaze away immediately, redirecting your attention to Jake. You shake him with less care and more urgency.

"Jake." You hiss his name under your breath, a prayer and a plea. "Jake, wake up."

He returns nothing. Not a twitch. Not a flicker of consciousness.

"Please." Your voice is rising now, shedding its careful composure. "Please, Jake—"

"He's not going to wake up."

Sunghoon's voice is certain.

Your hand stills on Jake's shoulder.

"What did you do to him?" Your voice is low. Gone was the politeness you'd faked for your husband's sake.

He smiles.

"Nothing. He drank my wine. Enjoyed good company. That's all." Sunghoon states plainly, "He's exhausted. You've noticed it, haven't you? The dark circles. The way he collapses the moment he's home."

Your gaze drops to Jake's face. To the shadows pooled beneath his eyes. The way his hand, even in sleep, rests on your thigh like he's still trying to anchor you. Your throat tightens. You've done this to him. Your fears. Your clinging. And—

"And the nightmares," Sunghoon continues, his head tilting. "The things you call nightmares. They must be so tiring for him to tend to."

A slow, creeping horror spreads through your chest as you stare back at him.

"But they're not really nightmares." His voice drops, low and intimate. "They never have been."

You move before you can think.

"Jake." Your hand closes around Jake's arm. You pull, trying to drag him upright, trying to haul his dead weight off the couch. "Jake, get up. We're leaving. We're leaving right now—"

His body is heavy and uncooperative, slumping against you, and you're not strong enough, but you try regardless. You try because you can see Sunghoon start to rise from where he's seated from the corner of your eye.

You reach to set down your wine glass. You need both hands. You need to grip Jake properly and drag him out of this house, even if you have to crawl. But your hands are shaking, and the glass comes down too fast.

It shatters.

The sound is obscene in the quiet—a bright, crystalline burst, shards scattering across your hand, across the coffee table and onto the carpet.

Immediately, the pain rises through your palm, and you hiss, jerking your hand back. You watch the blood well up—dark in the low light, beading along the cut and spilling over, sliding down the curve of your wrist.

A single drop falls to the carpet.

Then you hear it. A low, ragged inhale, shuddering and deep, as if the air itself has become something to be devoured. Your head lifts before you can stop it.

He's already above you, his presence caging you into the couch, and the expression on his face has changed. His eyes are dark. His lips have parted. His whole body is still, but it is not the stillness of composure. It is the stillness of a predator in the moment before the strike.

He reaches down. Takes your wrist. The motion is nothing gentle, but there is a restraint in his grip that makes your pulse hammer against his fingers. He draws your bleeding hand toward his face, eyes fixed on the red tracing its way down your palm. He lowers his mouth to it.

"Sunghoon—"

He inhales, and the groan that escapes him is low and guttural, pulled from somewhere deep in his chest. It is pure hunger, pure want, and it makes your thighs press together where you sit, a traitorous heat blooming low in your belly that you cannot control.

"What are you?" Your voice is a mere whisper, weak and trembling. "What do you want from me?"

"You know what I am. You've known me a very long time." His fangs catch the firelight, sharp and unmistakable. He turns your wrist over, watching a bead of blood trace down your palm. "As for what I want... All I've ever wanted is what you promised me all those years ago."

The memories come back to you all at once: The dreams. The cold hands on your bare skin. The sharp teeth sinking into your neck while you begged for it, night after night, year after year. The presence at your window that was never a nightmare at all.

It's always been him.

"For so long, I've waited." He shudders, and the sound is almost pained. "For even just a taste of what is mine."

You watch, frozen, as his lips close around your fingers. His tongue moves against your wounded hand, lapping at the blood with a hunger that feels obscene. His eyes flutter shut. A tremor runs through him, and you feel it echoed in your own body.

Your husband lies sleeping three feet away, a monster is drinking from your hand like a man dying of thirst, and you cannot speak. You cannot do anything but watch and feel the shameful heat pooling between your thighs, the ache you've spent a lifetime trying to pray away now so acute it nearly doubles you over.

A whimper catches in your throat. You try to swallow it back, but it escapes anyway, small and utterly pathetic. His eyes open at the sound, fixed on yours as you watch the slow movement of his throat as he swallows. Your breath is coming short, and you nearly forget how to breathe entirely when his knee comes up to the couch, just between your thighs as he leans over you. Your free hand is pressed flat against your thigh to keep it from reaching for him.

When he finally pulls his mouth from your fingers, a thin strand of saliva, stained with your blood, connects his lower lip to your skin.

"Just a taste..." he breathes, the words ragged. His grip on your wrist tightens, not enough to hurt, but enough to make clear he is holding himself back by a thread. "It's not enough."

"Please," You shake your head. "Please, I don't—"

"Don't you remember? The way you kneeled before me. How I answered your call." His voice drops. "I promised you relief—in exchange for you. For your blood. Your flesh. Your soul. Your innocence. We made a deal."

The soul-contract.

Permanent. Mutual. Even if the vampire dies, the connection doesn't break.

You had hoped it was all folklore. Even after you saw his fangs, after he tasted your blood. Some small part of you clung to the belief that the promise you made at your window was nothing more than a desperate girl's cry into the dark.

But the deal was real. Your marriage, your faith, your husband's gentle love—none of it could change what you'd already given away.

"Why now?" Your voice cracks. "Why me. Why—"

"You have no idea how torturous it was. To be bound to someone I could not reach." His voice is ragged now, stripped of its usual composure. "To feel your wanting every night. Your dreams, your shame. To be unable to touch you. To be unable to drink you. Unable to even stand at your window and watch you."

His eyes find yours, and the hurt in them is so raw, so genuine, that for a moment you forget he's a monster.

"And then you moved across the river. Across the street. I thought—finally. Finally, she's come to me." His expression hardens. "But you came with him. You let another man touch what was already mine. How could you do that to me?"

The running water barrier—they can't cross it.

You remember when you viewed the house in this neighbourhood. The unmistakable, almost unsettlingly strong pull you'd felt. You'd taken it as a sign from God that this place was right. That your future belonged here.

So you left your childhood home behind. You crossed the southern river. You brought yourself within his reach, and you brought your husband with you.

God. He hadn't been the one to answer your prayers. He hadn't guided you on the right path, either. Perhaps you'd let him down too many times. Perhaps your faith was too bleak, too fragile. Or perhaps he'd stopped listening altogether the night you knelt at your window and begged for something He couldn't give.

"I felt everything. Every touch. Every kiss. His name on your lips." His gaze cuts to Jake's sleeping form, a strange sort of understanding surfacing beneath his frown. "I even felt your love for him."

He is quiet for a long moment, and so are you. Then, his gaze returns to you.

"I cannot understand how you could love someone else. Though, I also cannot blame you for needing someone in my absence."

His mouth is at your throat now. You feel the graze of his fangs against the thin skin over your pulse, the place where your blood beats closest to the surface.

"But I am here now. Do not deny me any longer." His voice is a murmur against your neck, each word a brush of cool lips. "I've been so patient, my love."

Your pulse is racing, warm and alive under his cold touch. Your blood sings to him, practically begging to be taken. Though he doesn't bite.

You remember why before you can question it: The soul-contract requires permission.

Your body is screaming for you to give in. Your hand wants to curl into his hair and press him closer to your neck, to offer yourself and enjoy every second of it, the way you have done so in every dream you've ever had of him. You are trembling with the effort of holding yourself still as you imagine the pleasure, the relief.

Then you look to Jake, the peaceful look on his face, his soft breathing.

"Don't."

His hand stills. Then it withdraws entirely. The loss of contact is almost worse than the touch—your skin aching where his palm had rested, your pulse hammering against nothing.

His expression shifts, tenderness replaced with something wounded.

"That night." Your voice trembles, but you force the words out. "It was a mistake. I was young. And desperate. That's all it was."

"You can lie to your husband. You can even lie to yourself. But you cannot lie to me." He frowns. "I can smell your desire from down the street. It reeks."

"I don't desire this. I don't. I don't want it. I just want to be left alone." You shake your head as the words fall out, painfully unconvincing. The tears come before you can stop them, spilling over your cheeks. "Please. Please leave me alone."

He watches you weep, ever so still and silent. Then, his hand rises, near your face. For a moment, you let yourself lean into the possibility of the touch, the cold comfort of his fingertips.

"These tears." His voice is barely a whisper as a single finger traces the track of your tears. "You only cry because you continue to deny yourself."

You sniffle. Blink. Meet his gaze through the wet blur of your lashes.

"You've tormented me for years." You try to sound angry. Your voice doesn't obey. "You've ruined me. And now you're ruining my marriage."

"Tormented?" His brows furrow, and he studies your face—the parted lips, the flushed cheeks, the wet gleam of your eyes. His hand remains at your cheek. His touch is cold. It soothes, momentarily, the all-consuming heat inside you. "You have it all wrong. I've loved you for years."

"Love." You'd laugh if you weren't crying, "You're not in love. You're hungry."

"Hunger is the purest form of love. It doesn't think. It doesn't negotiate. It simply wants." He tilts his head. "You know that. You've been hungry your whole life. You hunger for something only I can give you. Something only we can share."

You think of the ache. The one that never goes away. The one you've tried to pray away, fuck away, hide away in the deepest part of yourself. It pulses now, insistently, and you know he could make it stop.

You pull away regardless. Your body screams, but you ignore it. You will not give in to temptation. You will resist.

"Stay away from me."

His expression doesn't change, but the air between you feels as if it does. He looks at you for a long, unreadable moment. Then he inclines his head.

"Very well."

The firelight catches his face—his terribly beautiful face. It hurts to even look at him.

"You're stubborn." His hand drifts from your neck, his gaze longing. "So was I."

He brings his palm to your forehead, and your eyelids grow heavy. The weight of slumber threatens to pull you under, and you try to fight it, but your body is no longer yours to command. It hasn't been for a long time.

"But you know, my dear..." His voice is the last thing you hear, "A vampire still needs to feed."

His gaze shifts past you. Toward the couch. Toward Jake.

You aren't able to protest. The record still plays, the second sonata in its third movement, and it lulls you, allowing the darkness to swallow you whole.

You wake slowly, your body rising before your mind can follow. The first thing you register is warmth. The second is wetness, a slick, shameful heat between your thighs that tells you the dreams have come again even if you can't remember them.

The third is the press of your husband's body against your back. Hard. Insistent.

"Shit, baby." Jake's voice is rough, his arm tightening around your waist. "You're killing me."

Your husband.

You lurch forward, twisting in his grip, your hands finding his shoulders and pushing him flat against the mattress so you can climb over him. Your heart is pounding from the images that linger at the edge of your memory like a flickering candle flame. His face. His teeth. Your blood on his lips. The way your husband slumped against the couch, and how he moved towards him.

"Jake!" The name tears out of you. Your hands cup his face, thumbs pressing into his cheekbones, tilting his head left and right. "Jake, you're alive."

He blinks up at you, squinting against the pale morning light. His hair is a mess, flattened on one side, and there's a crease from the pillow pressed into his cheek.

"Ugh. Barely." He groans, scrubbing a hand over his face. "How much did I drink last night? I feel like I got hit by a truck."

Your hands are still on his face, your eyes still searching.

"Do you... do you remember anything?"

"Uh..." He hums, his brow furrowing with the effort of recollection. "The meal was amazing. And the wine. A lot of wine. And..." He shifts, adjusting himself with a wince. "I remember thinking our neighbour's a really cool guy."

Your heart drops into your stomach.

"I could see myself being friends with him."

Friends. With him. With that monster. You bite your tongue.

"Do you remember anything else?" You ask a little quieter this time.

"Should I be remembering something else?" He props himself up on his elbows, his expression shifting from groggy to concerned. "Did something happen?"

"Do you remember passing out on his couch?"

His eyes widen.

"I did? Shit. That's... so embarrassing." His hands come up to his face, a half-groan, half-laugh leaving him. "It was fun, though. You had a good time too, right?"

You don't answer. Your gaze drifts to his neck, to the skin just below his jaw. There they are. Two small punctures, red and slightly raised, the skin around them faintly bruised.

A vampire needs to feed.

You reach, your fingertips brushing the wounds. Jake flinches.

"What is that?" He twists away from your touch, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and stumbling toward the mirror above the dresser. He tilts his chin, squinting at his reflection. "Huh. Looks like mosquito bites or something. Weird time of year for bugs."

"Vampire bite."

Jake's eyes meet yours in the mirror. For a moment, his expression is unreadable—caught somewhere between confusion and a smile, like he's waiting for the punchline. Then his face settles into something flatter. Tired.

"Ha. Yeah, right. Very funny." He turns from the mirror, reaching for a T-shirt on the floor. "Don't tell me you're still serious about that."

"I am serious."

He pauses, one arm in his sleeve, the other still free. He turns to look at you over his shoulder, his expression wholeheartedly, genuinely, bewildered with disbelief.

"Baby." He pulls the shirt the rest of the way on. His voice is groggy, too tired to give your seeming absurdity any real argument. "Come on."

"You don't understand, you—" At the fuzzy recollection of the previous night—the glass shattering in your hand, and the wound he licked clean, you scramble to show Jake your hand, holding out your right palm. "Look. I cut my hand and he..."

Your voice trails off, seeing your hand. You turn your hand over, flexing your fingers. You know you didn't imagine the pain of the glass piercing your skin. You know you watched him devour the blood from your open wound. And yet, there isn't a single mark. Not even a faint scar. Not a trace of proof to show him.

"Sweetheart. Look at me." Jake says slowly, calmly. "Are you actually suggesting that our neighbour—who, by the way, invited us into his home and made us dinner—is a vampire?" He waits, watching you. Watches how you don't answer, how you ignore him and continue to inspect your hand for proof that isn't there. "You can't be serious. Vampires aren't real. They're Halloween costumes. They're shitty movies. They're— "

"Jake. Just—look at your neck." You gesture, and his hand flies up instinctively to the wound. "It's literally right there. We're both looking at it."

"These are—I don't know what they are. An allergic reaction. A spider bite. I don't know. But it's not..." He stops himself, shaking his head. "You believe this. You actually, genuinely believe that Sunghoon is a vampire?"

"He is."

Neither of you moves.

Jake stares at you. You stare back. And for a long, strange moment, you're both just standing there in your bedroom looking at each other like you've each just discovered the other is speaking a foreign language.

"I don't..." He passes a hand over his face. "I don't even know what to say to that."

"Say you believe me."

"I don't." He exhales, long and slow. "Baby, you're asking me to believe in actual, literal monsters who drink blood and sleep in a coffin and turn into bats."

"He doesn't turn into a bat, or—"

"Oh, well, that's reassuring. Thank you for clarifying." He scoffs. "I can't believe what I'm hearing. I can't—it's too early for this."

"Jake," you plead, "I know it sounds crazy. But I know what I saw."

"What did you see?"

The question hangs in the air between you. He poses it the same way he always does, when he asks about your nightmares. And you realize, with a sinking, gut-wrenching clarity, that there is no answer you can give that he will believe. You could describe the fangs—sharp and white and gleaming in the firelight. You could describe the sound he made when he smelled your blood, animalistic and starving. You could describe the way his mouth closed around your fingers, the way his tongue moved against your skin as he drank from your hand. You could spend hours, talking in circles, trying to explain it. It doesn't matter. Jake didn't see it. He would only look at you with those patient, loving eyes and say you had a nightmare or you were scared and the wine got to your head. "Hey." His voice softens. He crosses the room and sits on the edge of the bed beside you, his hand finding yours. "I'm not trying to make you feel bad."

"I know."

"Where is this coming from?" He asks, "The vampire talk. Is it your dreams?"

You nod. It's true, even if not the whole truth.

"Tell me about them." His thumb traces your hand. "I know you don't like talking about your dreams. But I can't help you if you don't tell me."

Jake waits. When nothing comes, he squeezes your hand.

"Please. I want to understand. Please give me something." His fingers lace through yours, intertwined with his hand, "I'm your husband. You can tell me anything."

The words are right there. My dreams, my sins, the things I prayed for in the dark, the monster that answered. But they don't come. Saying them out loud means admitting what you'd done, what you brought into your marriage and haunts the space between your thighs when you wake in the dark. What you still, in the deepest and most secret part of yourself, want.

He wouldn't see the woman he thought he married. He'd see filth. Sin. Your rotting, corrupted soul. A woman who begged evil to touch her.

"I don't think my dreams are just dreams anymore." The words come out barely a whisper. You can't bring yourself to tell him the rest. "I'm so scared, Jake."

The sob that follows is ugly and raw. You crawl into his lap like you did a few weeks ago, your fingers twisting into the fabric of his shirt, your face pressed to the warm hollow of his throat. And he holds you. Like he always does. Like he's come to expect.

"Okay," he murmurs into your hair. "Okay. I've got you. It's okay."

But it's not okay. Even now, with his arms around you and his heartbeat steady beneath your ear, you feel it. That hunger. A ravenous void inside you, hot and insistent and utterly indifferent to the tears still drying on your cheeks. It never leaves. It's always there.

Your hand moves before you can stop it. Sliding up his chest. Curling into the collar of his shirt. Your mouth finds his.

He lets you kiss him, his lips parting under yours, a small sound of surprise caught in his throat. His hands come up to your waist, steadying you, and for a moment it's like every other time—the familiar heat, the familiar hunger, the familiar way your body presses into his like he's the only thing keeping you tethered to the earth.

You climb deeper into his lap, your knees bracketing his hips. You roll against him, a slow, desperate grind, chasing the friction that might quiet the ache for even a few seconds.

You need him to be enough. You need him to be the answer, the cure, the thing that scares the monster out of you.

"Baby." His voice is breathless, his hands tightening on your waist. "Slow down."

You don't—you can't. Slowing down means thinking, and thinking means remembering the cold hands, the sharp teeth, his mouth on your fingers while your husband slept three feet away. So you kiss him harder. You grind down against the pressure in his underwear, a desperate little sound escaping your throat.

"Hey." His grip shifts, trying to tame you. "Hey, slow down. Just—"

Your hand drops to grasp him, but he's quicker than you. He closes around your wrists, and your back hits the mattress, his weight settling over you, his knees bracketing your hips. He keeps your hands pinned down on either side of your head, breathing heavy above your form.

You thrash. Not playfully, either. Not with a smile or a giggle or a pout. It's a full-body thrash, fuelled by a sharp and sudden frustration, verging on genuine anger. You twist beneath him, trying to free your hands, trying to arch up into the heat of his body.

"Stop." His voice is quiet. "Just stop. For a second."

You thrash again. You hiss his name, and you even try to kick him, but he shifts his weight enough to keep you fully restrained. He doesn't budge. His grip on your wrists is secure, his weight solid and unmovable.

It's only when you feel your tears sliding from your temples into your hairline that you realize you're still crying. You must look insane. You must look like exactly what you are: a woman trying to fuck her way out of her own damnation.

"Please." The word comes out broken, barely a whisper. You don't know if you're asking him to let go or to never let go.

"No." He shakes his head. "We're not doing this."

"Why not?"

"Every time you get scared, or something upsets you, you climb into my lap and kiss me. I don't know what you're trying to do or why, but..." His voice isn't quite as steady as it usually is. A hitch in his breath, a flicker of something else. He swallows. "I can't just fuck the hurt out of you. It's not right."

"It helps." Your voice cracks. "Please. Just help me."

He stares down at you. His eyes are so tired. So unbearably, impossibly tired. And beneath the exhaustion, there's something you've never seen before.

"Sweetheart." He whispers. "You're scaring me."

Your body goes slack beneath him, but his grip doesn't loosen. He still holds your wrists against the mattress, still keeps his weight braced above you, still watches you with those wide, careful eyes. Like you've gone rabid.

He shouldn't have to hold me down, you think. A good wife doesn't need to be restrained.

A good wife doesn't claw at her husband while she's still crying. A good wife doesn't grind against him like a bitch in heat, chasing a relief he can't give her, chasing a hunger that has nothing to do with love. A good wife doesn't show her burning desire. Desire belongs to the husband. It's his to wield and use, and for her to accept it.

But here you are. Pinned to your own marriage bed for all the wrong reasons, your face wet with tears you can't explain, your body still aching with a want he didn't ask for—a want to be consumed, to be devoured without shame, without guilt. Of course he doesn't know what to do with it. You crave something he cannot give you.

The fight drains out of you all at once, leaving nothing but the hollow ache and the shame and the terrible, traitorous thought that rises up before you can stop it.

Sunghoon wouldn't stop.

Sunghoon wouldn't be scared. He would see the hunger on your face and recognize it. He would give you exactly what you were asking for. He would pin you to the mattress and sink his teeth into your throat and make the ache disappear. He wouldn't try to save you. He would let you drown.

"Baby?"

Jake's voice cuts through the dark. You blink, and the fantasy recedes, with Sunghoon's face dissolving, the cold hands retreating, the sharp teeth fading back into the shadows where they belong.

Your husband is still there. Still hovering over you with that furrow between his brows, that gentle, worried look he's been wearing for weeks. He's been talking. You haven't been listening.

"I think I know what's going on."

You look up.

"We haven't been to church in weeks. Either of us. Ever since the wedding, we've just... let it slip." His voice is so certain. "You're losing touch with God, and it's scaring you."

Losing touch.

Your eyes land on the cross around his neck, catching the pale light from the window. It's the same one he was wearing when you met him all those years ago. You've never seen him without it.

Jake is a good Christian. He always has been. His faith has never wavered, never faltered, never turned its back on him the way yours turned its back on you.

Foolishly, you'd once hoped that his goodness might rub off on you, that marrying a man who loved God so easily might help you remember how to do the same. Now you wonder if you're doing the opposite. If you're the one dragging him away from the light.

"I'm not saying it's the whole answer. I'm just saying... maybe it's a start." He presses a kiss to your head. "Let's go. Together. It can't hurt, right?"

The hope in your chest is as steady as a single lit candle in the wind. Somehow, it still burns—It flickers, it wavers, but it still burns. You don't know if it's because you're too stubborn to let it go out, or if you only cling to it because it's the only thing you know.

"Yeah," You nod. You try a smile, though it feels stiff against your cheeks. "Let's go."

The church is small and quaint, an old-fashioned-looking chapel. Stained glass windows filter in colour from the grey winter light, and the air smells of incense and old wood and the faint, sweet perfume of the elderly women who fill the front pews.

You sit near the back, and Jake holds your hand throughout the opening prayers, his thumb tracing those same familiar circles. When the choir rises to sing, he glances at you with a small, encouraging smile. See? the smile says. This is where we belong.

You try to feel it. You close your eyes. You bow your head. You let the Latin verses wash over you, the same ones Jake joked about forgetting as a boy—Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis—and wait for the peace that is supposed to follow.

The prayers feel hollow in your mouth, words without meaning. The hymns rise and fall, but they bring you no peace. The stained glass saints stare down at you with flat, judgmental eyes, and you feel the weight of their disapproval.

You don't belong here. You are sitting in the house of God with the stain of your dreams still fresh on your skin, with the memory of a monster's eyes and sharp teeth and the wet heat of your own arousal clinging to you beneath your skirt. You are filthy.

Jake squeezes your hand, and you flinch.

"You okay?" he whispers.

You look at him, his smile, his earnest concern.

You don't belong. You are filthy, you are damned. But you are trying. God help you, you are trying.

Returning the squeeze of his hand, you nod.

The service drags on. The priest's homily is about faith in times of trial, about holding fast to belief when the world grows dark around you. You sit with your hands folded in your lap, your spine rigid, listening to the words but taking in none of it.

When the final blessing is given, and the congregation rises to leave, you feel like you've been holding your breath for an hour and only just now remembered how to exhale.

"See?" Jake says, his arm slipping around your waist as you walk toward the doors. "That was nice, right?"

"Hey, lady!"

The voice echoes through the vestibule, bright and unmistakable, and you freeze. Jake turns, his arm still around you, and you watch his expression shift from confusion to surprise as a lanky figure in a rumpled button-up shirt comes bounding toward you through the thinning crowd.

Niki. From the library. The collar of his shirt askew. His hair looks like it hasn't seen a comb since last Sunday. And he's grinning like you're the most exciting thing to happen to him all week.

"Hey, lady! And sir—" He glances at Jake, giving him a quick, awkward nod. "Lady's husband. Hi."

"We need to go," you say quickly, your hand tightening on Jake's arm. "Sorry, Niki, we're—"

"What's this?" Jake's free hand has already reached out, plucking a slim paperback from the boy's grip before either of you can react. He turns it over, reading the cover. "Vampire lore, huh?"

Jake turns the book toward you. The cover shows a shadowed figure with glowing eyes, looming over a sleeping woman. The Old World Vampire: A Study of Belief, Burial, and Blood.

"I keep it in the Bible during service," Niki grabs it back, oblivious to how Jake's expression flickers with all the shock, scandal, and the distant horror of a youth group alumnus at the thought of someone tucking something so unholy between the pages of Scripture. "Please don't tell my mom. She'd kill me if she knew I was reading this stuff in church."

Jake doesn't respond to Niki. He's looking at you now, and the lightness in his voice is a thin veneer over something sharper.

"Sweetheart." He waits until you meet his eyes. "How exactly do you know this kid?"

"We met at the library. A few weeks ago."

"Dude." Niki is staring at Jake now with unbearable sincerity. "Your wife is so cool."

Jake blinks, the exhaustion in his face flickering. His brow lifts almost imperceptibly as he glances at you, a question forming at the corner of his mouth. Something in his expression is almost amused.

"She's the only person in this entire town who cares about this stuff. My mom literally tried to get the pastor to purify me one time because of my 'satanic theories' but she—" He jabs a finger toward you, his face alight. "She gets it."

The amusement dies.

"What stuff?"

You can feel Jake's stare now, the weight of it pressing against the side of your face. You don't return it.

Niki opens his mouth to answer, but Jake raises a hand.

"I'm asking her."

The silence that follows has Niki's grin faltering. He looks at you, then at Jake, just catching up to the tension in the room.

"History. Folklore." You swallow, "The occult—"

"Vampires." Jake finishes for you, flatly. Then turns to Niki. "My wife talks to you about vampires, is that it?"

Niki blinks, nodding enthusiastically. "You're so lucky, man. Seriously. I've got no one to talk to about this stuff and you just, like, get to be married to her. That's insane."

"Yeah. Lucky me."

"We should go," you say quickly. "Goodbye — "

"Wait!" Niki is already digging in his pocket, his fingers closing around a crumpled scrap of paper. "I wanted to give you this. My Discord."

He points at the username scrawled across the paper: xX_vampK1_Xx "I kept waiting for you to come back to the library, but you never did, so..." He thrusts it toward you, his expression almost painfully eager. "Message me? Please?"

From the distance, a woman's voice calls out. "Niki! Car. Now."

"That's my mom." He shoves the paper into your hand, his fingers cold and quick. "Okay, bye lady! Bye, lady's husband!"

And then he's gone, swallowed by the crowd of departing church-goers, leaving you standing in the vestibule with a scrap of paper in your fist and your husband staring at the side of your face.

The drive home is quiet.

Jake doesn't speak until you're through the front door, until his keys are tossed onto the hall table and his coat is shed. You shed yourself of your own coat, the small paper Niki had handed you still folded in its pocket.

"When I said go out to town and make friends," he says, his voice carefully level, "I didn't think you'd go befriending... emo teenagers."

You don't answer. You smooth the sleeve of your coat, align it on the hanger and close the closet door with a soft click.

"Kid gave you his Discord in front of me. At church. Ballsy, I'll give him that." A laugh, but there's nothing funny about his tone. "Must've really charmed him with all that vampire talk."

"Don't tell me you're jealous of a high schooler." You turn to face him finally, your back against the closet door.

"You know that's not it." His arms cross over his chest. "You never told me you went to the library. You never told me you were—what, researching? Talking with some kid who hides monster books inside his Bible?"

You push off the door and walk past him, into the kitchen. Away from the hurt in his eyes that you can't quite bear to witness.

"You're keeping secrets from me." He raises his voice ever so slightly, not enough to startle you, but enough to be heard from down the hall. "You're not going to explain yourself?"

His footsteps trail behind you. You reach the sink and turn on the faucet, letting the water run for no reason at all. Just sound. Something to drown out the shame.

"I went to the library to read about vampires. Because I thought—Because I know our neighbour is a vampire." You say, "And I didn't tell you because I knew you would look at me like... this."

Jake exhales, a long, measured breath.

You turn off the faucet, eyes glued to the tub of hot water, but you don't reach for any dishes.

"You don't believe me. So why would I tell you?"

His hands find your shoulders, warm and steady, and he turns you gently away from the sink. Away from the dirty dishes and the pretense that any of this is normal.

"I believe that you believe it." His thumbs trace the curve of your shoulders. "I believe you're scared. I believe something is wrong. I just don't think it's what you think it is."

"That's not the same thing."

"No. It's not."

He's quiet for a moment. Then, with a sigh, he guides you. His hand finds the small of your back. He pulls out a chair at the kitchen table and waits until you sit. Then he sits across from you and takes both your hands in his.

"Don't keep things from me." His voice is low, but it sounds like a plea. "I don't care how crazy it is. Even if you became a madwoman, I would never leave you. Never." He squeezes your hands. "Please. Don't hide. Don't push me away."

"I'm sorry," you look down at your joined hands. "I'm sorry that I'm like this. I'm sorry I can't just be normal."

"Stop. Don't apologize." He lifts one hand to your chin, tilting your face up until you meet his eyes. "I love you. I'll love you 'til the day I die."

You nod, sucking in a breath. You think you would be crying if you hadn't already shed all your tears earlier that morning.

"I love you too."

He nods, but the furrow in his brow doesn't smooth. His thumb traces a slow arc across your knuckles, and you can feel him preparing himself for whatever he's about to say.

"I want you to see someone. A therapist, or a counsellor. Someone who can actually help you work through all of this.” His voice is gentle, but there's no hesitation in it. He's been thinking about this. Maybe for a while. "These fears. The nightmares. It's not healthy. You can't spend the rest of your life like this."

A therapist. Your eyes drop to Jake's neck, where you know a vampire's bite hides beneath his collar.

"It won't help."

"It might." He squeezes your hands, willing you to meet him halfway. "You don't know unless you try. Even if it doesn't, at least we tried."

He lifts your hands to his lips and presses a kiss to your knuckles. His eyes are full of love, but tired. So very tired. You can see it in his movements, in the slight hunch of his shoulders.

You could argue. You could try to explain why it's a waste of money and time. But that's not what he needs to hear.

"Okay." You say. "I'll go."

His eyes widen, like he'd braced himself for a fight and doesn't quite know what to do now. Then he pushes back his chair and stands, pulling you up with him. His arms wrap around you before you've even found your footing, one hand splayed across your spine, the other cradling the back of your head. You feel his breath against your hair, warm and unsteady, and you feel his smile.

"Thank you," he murmurs. "Thank you."

He pulls back just enough to kiss your forehead. Then your cheek. Then the bridge of your nose, clumsy and reverent, and you almost laugh despite everything. He's already talking about a counsellor his mother knows, a name he'll look up, a number he'll call in the morning, but the words blur together, lost in the rhythm of his heart against your ear.

Being held is not the same as being saved, but you close your eyes and accept his embrace anyway. His arms are warm, and his heart is steady, and for now, that's enough. It's all you have left.

The call comes Monday afternoon.

You've been at your laptop for the better part of an hour, filling out a self-assessment form for the counsellor Jake's mother recommended. On a scale of one to ten, how often do you feel overwhelmed by daily tasks? Do you experience intrusive thoughts? Have you ever felt disconnected from reality? The last question is taking you longer than it should, when your phone buzzes against the kitchen table. The number is one you don't recognize, and you almost let it ring. But then you look back at your screen, and decide you'd rather do anything else than pick out numbers on a scale that can't measure what's actually wrong with you.

"Mrs. Sim?"

Your hand tightens around the phone. Jake's boss explains something about how he looks terrible, how he nearly collapsed getting up from his desk, how someone needs to come get him immediately.

"I told him he should have stayed home," the boss's gruff voice says over the phone, "He kept saying he didn't want to let anyone down. Is he always this stubborn?"

You find him at his desk, pale and half-slumped, a coworker hovering uncertainly at his elbow. Between the two of you, you get him to the car. He doesn't argue. That's how you know it's bad. And you watch him from the corner of your eye the whole drive home, his head against the window as he fights his own exhaustion.

"It's nothing. Really." His words slur together as you guide him down the hall, his arm heavy across your shoulders. "Probably just a cold. I'll be fine in the morning."

You ease him onto the mattress. He sinks into it, his body going slack the moment his head touches the pillow. His eyes close. His breathing evens out, shallow but steady.

You bring him soup, which he doesn't eat. You bring him water, which he barely sips. You sit on the edge of the bed and watch the shallow rise and fall of his chest, and the whole time your mind is spinning through the past few weeks like a reel of film you can't stop.

Every night you've woken gasping from dreams you can't confess to. Every morning he's held you through the aftermath, whispering reassurances into your hair while the shadows under his eyes grew darker and darker. Every time he's said I'm trying, baby, I'm trying so hard—and you've let him. You've let him carry you, let him comfort you, let him pour himself out trying to understand something you can't explain.

And what have you given him in return? Tears. Secrets. A hand squeezing his at church while you both pretended everything was fine. Late nights where he held you instead of sleeping, early mornings where he made you coffee and asked gentle questions and got nothing back but silence.

You look at him now, with his work shirt still half-unbuttoned, his face slack, his fingers twitching faintly against the blanket and feel the guilt settle over you. He's spent every ounce of himself trying to save you from a monster he doesn't believe in.

"I'm sorry," you whisper to the quiet room. He doesn't stir.

The next day, he is worse.

You can't get him to lift his head for more than a few seconds. The medicine you brought sits untouched on the nightstand. His skin has taken on a translucence that makes your blood run cold, and when you press a cool cloth to his forehead, he barely seems to register the touch.

"Just need to sleep," he murmurs, the words slurring together. "Don't worry. You worry too much."

You don't leave his side.

You watch the hours crawl past, the gray morning fading into a grayer afternoon, the light at the window never quite brightening, and try to convince yourself it's a fever. A winter bug that hit him harder than most. But even as you tell yourself these things, your eyes keep drifting to the collar of his shirt, to the pale skin beneath, to the two small marks you know are there, still healing. You don't see any other marks, but the thought lingers.

By the third day, he can barely open his eyes.

You've stopped leaving the room except to refill the water glass he can't drink from. You've stopped pretending this is something you can fix with soup and cold compresses and whispered prayers. You sit in the chair beside the bed, your knees drawn up to your chest, and watch him fade.

It's around noon when you notice it. The sun is high in the sky today, not a single cloud, and the light illuminates the blood stain on his pillowcase, clear as day.

A small stain, rust-brown and drying, near the nape of his neck. Your hands are shaking as you reach for him, as you ease him onto his side and lift the hem of his shirt.

The marks are everywhere. Some are fresh—bright red, the skin around them inflamed and angry. Others have scabbed over, dark and ugly and bruised. Bite marks. Dozens of them. Clustered between his shoulder blades, and trailing down like a map of slow consumption.

You don't realize you're crying until a tear falls, mingling with the dried blood on his skin.

The sound you make must wake him, because his fingers twitch against the blanket, and his voice, thin and weak, drifts up from the pillow.

"Hey." A long pause. He doesn't have the strength to turn his head. "Don't cry."

You help him lie back against the pillows, your hands trembling so badly you can barely manage it. His eyes find yours—still that same warm brown, still impossibly gentle, even now, even after everything—and the tears come harder. He opens his mouth, as if to say something, but doesn't. Whether he can't find the strength or the words, you aren't sure. But you aren't about to let him finish, even if he could.

"I have to tell you something." You say quick and certain, though you feel anything but. "Please just listen."

He blinks, slow and heavy. Barely aware, barely awake.

"When I was younger. Before I met you. Before I even knew what I was doing. I prayed for something God couldn't give me. Something sinful. Something—" You swallow, force yourself to continue. "Lustful. Shameful. Every night. Every prayer. It was consuming me."

Jake's brow furrows. His hand moves across the blanket, searching for yours.

"My prayers were answered," you keep going. "But not by God. By something else. Something evil. These nightmares didn't appear out of nowhere. They're the consequence of what I did. It came to me in my dreams. It tempted me. It tainted me. For years. And now..."

You can't look at him. You stare at the blanket, at the pattern of the quilt, at the pale shape of his hand still reaching for yours.

"I've dragged you into the darkness with me." You grip his hand, "I'm sorry, Jake."

Silence. A long, stretching silence, broken only by the rasp of his breathing.

Then his fingers find yours.

"Baby."

You look up. His eyelids are heavy, his brow furrowed with an effort that seems to take everything he has left. The slow, laboured machinery of a mind trying to surface and failing.

"Baby, you are the light of my life." His voice is barely a whisper now, each word an effort. "I know you. I know your heart. It's pure. The purest of them all. Don't say scary stuff like that."

"You don't understand." You shake your head, the tears sliding hot and fast down your cheeks.

"I know." A ghost of a smile crosses his lips. He strokes the back of your hand, the motion so familiar, so tender, that it makes your chest ache. "But you understand me either."

The room is quiet. The light through the window has shifted—the gray afternoon giving way to the pale gold of a winter sunset, slanting through the glass and spilling across the bed.

Jake's gaze drifts to your face, and something in his expression changes. Softens. Opens.

"If only you could see yourself right now." His voice is barely audible, but there is a warmth in it that remains. "The way the light hits you. You're so beautiful." His fingers tighten around yours. It's the last of his strength, poured into a single gesture. "You look like an angel."

Your heart swells.

He doesn't see it. Even as you confess words you'd never dared to even think about out loud, he doesn't see the rot, the sin, the stain that has been spreading through you since long before you ever met him.

"You should see yourself," he murmurs again, his eyes already drifting closed. "So pretty. My pretty wife. I love you so much."

"I love you more." You whisper, watching the rise and fall of his chest.

He doesn't understand what you've told him. Or maybe he does. Maybe the truth is too big, too impossible, too far outside the world he believes in. All you know is that even now, when your sins are quite literally bleeding him dry, he looks at you and sees something worth loving.

You lay your head against his chest, closing your eyes. You listen to the fading rhythm of his heart, like a ticking clock.

You will not let time run out.

"Hello? Who is—wait." A pause. A sharp inhale. "Lady? Is that you? You actually made a Discord!"

Niki's voice crackles through your laptop speakers, tinny and incredulous. In the background, you can hear the faint, distorted blast of music, which cuts off abruptly as he slams a button. A desk chair creaks.

"This is amazing. I didn't think you'd actually call me. I mean, I hoped, but I've been checking my Discord every day since church."

You stare at the Discord interface, feeling decades older than you are. Jake lies down the hall, silent and still. You made sure he was asleep, though that wasn't hard to ensure. He hadn't done so much as open his eyes since the afternoon.

"I need your help."

"Help. Yeah. Okay. Um. Help with what, exactly?" His voice drops to a theatrical whisper. "Is it a vampire thing?"

You take in a breath.

"I need to know how to kill one." The silence on the other end stretches so long you think the call has dropped. Then you add, "Hypothetically."

"Oh. My. God." A drawer opens. Pages ruffle. "Okay. So. Classic methods. A wooden stake through the heart works, but the wood matters—hawthorn, ash, some sources say rowan. Decapitation is more reliable, but that's hard to pull off unless you have a sword, which I'm guessing you don't."

"I don't."

"Sunlight. Direct, full exposure. Not just a cloudy day—like, dawn, clear sky, no shade. Fire works on basically everything, but you'd have to trap it somehow." He's speaking faster now, the words tumbling over each other. "There's also holy water and consecrated ground, but the research on that is mixed—"

"That's enough. Thank you."

"What? No. Wait. I have so much more. I have an entire notebook. I have—" He stops. His voice changes, sharpens. "Wait a second. Why do you need to know this?"

"Goodbye, Niki—"

"No, hang on—You're literally asking how to kill a vampire." His voice cracks, and he clears his throat, the words still returning with a squeak as they come out in a rush. "Holy shit. You do know a vampire. I knew it. Is it in town? Is it drinking people's blood? Did it attack you? Are you in danger?"

You sigh, a hand to your temple. He's talking so fast, you can't find a proper opening to leave, and though you know you should probably just hang up, some part of you doesn't want to leave the poor boy in a state of panic.

"I’m not in any danger. I'm—”

"I can help, you know. I'm not just some kid. I know so much about this stuff. More than anyone. I've read every book in that library twice. I've read books that aren't even in the library. I know lore that isn't even translated yet. You need a vampire taken down? I'm your guy. I mean, I've never done it, but I could probably figure it out."

"That's sweet of you, really, but—"

"And you're just a housewife—not saying that housewives can't kick ass! I'm sure you could. Maybe. But you're not exactly, like, a vampire hunter." He sucks in a breath so sharp you hear it whistle through his teeth. "Wait. Shouldn't your husband be protecting you? Why isn't he—does he even know about this?"

You close your eyes.

"He doesn't know," Niki gasps in horror. His voice drops to a horrified whisper. "That's why you were asking about soul-contracts in the library. That's why you looked like you were going to throw up when I read that passage. You're in a soul-bond with a vampire, and your husband doesn't know."

Your head is in your hands now, his voice rambling through the laptop speaker.

"That's—that's insane. That's literally insane." He sputters, the words tangling in his mouth. "Isn't that like—I mean, a soul-contract, isn't that kind of like—isn't that like cheating? Like, spiritually? Eternally? Your husband thinks he's married to you, but you're already—"

"I have to go."

"Wait!"

You end the call.

The laptop screen glows, Niki's profile picture still visible in the corner—some anime character with a stupid hairstyle, smirking at nothing. A notification pops up. Then another. Then a string of them, rapid-fire, the little red badge counting up.

xX_vampK1_Xx: wait xX_vampK1_Xx: pls dont hang up xX_vampK1_Xx: or die

You don't read them all, closing the laptop instead. Wooden stake. Fire. Sunlight.

You wait for him. Curtains drawn back, the window open. The winter air slips through the gap, cold enough to make you shiver in your nightgown, but you remain there, facing the open night. You wait the way you used to wait—on your knees, on the floor, praying for something that God refused to give you. Down the hall, Jake lies in the guest bedroom. The room you'd once hoped would become a nursery. It seems like a distant dream now, a life that belonged to someone else. You'd moved him there before the sun had set, his body heavy, unconscious, and blissfully unaware. He doesn't know what you're about to do. You hope he never will. When the silhouette appears, it's almost a relief. He steps through the parted curtains, and the moonlight reveals him. He's too pale, too still, his dark eyes already fixed on you before you've even found your voice. He's beautiful. He's always been beautiful, and you hate that he is. It would be so much easier if he were grotesque—if his skin were rotting flesh and his eyes were hollow and vacant pits belonging to something long dead, you could recoil. You could run. Instead, you stare, almost forgetting your true intentions for a moment. "Now, this brings back memories." He looms over you, unmoving. His eyes drift to the bed, where your husband is absent. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" "You're killing my husband." He doesn't flinch. Of course he doesn't. He stands there in the center of your bedroom, hands at his sides, and regards you with an expression that teeters on amusement. "Believe me." His gaze drops to your throat, to the cross trembling against your collarbone. A faint smile tugs at his lips. "I would much prefer to have you." There's a silence before you scoff. "Taking the life of the man I love won't make me want you." "Indeed, it won't. You already want me. Yet foolishly, you continue to deny yourself." He is silent for a moment as he watches you clutch helplessly at the cross at your neck. "Look at you. You waited here. Alone, in the dark, to face something that could destroy you in seconds. And you still clutch that thing." His lips curls into a frown. "As if God could ever save you." He takes a few steps forward, leaning down until his lips are at your ear. "But you're a smart girl. You know that He can't." He says, leaning down. One hand reaches for your chin, lifting it to properly meet his gaze. "That's why you prayed to me instead." "I prayed to God." You hiss. "And as always, God did not answer." He drops your chin. Then he moves past you, toward the window. His fingers brush the curtain, and he looks out at the dark street, the bare trees, the distant glint of the river just visible beyond the rooftops. "I was once like you." He says, "I prayed. I prayed for her to heal. I prayed every waking hour at her bedside." His wife. You assume that's who he means. You think of the house he keeps tidy in her memory, the piano that stays tuned for her, but you don't ask. His tone tells you the grief is old, smoothed by the centuries past, no longer a wound but a scar. You swallow the bitter taste in your throat. Selfishly, you dislike the idea of him loving anyone else. The thought is irrational, and deeply shameful, but it surfaces before you can push it back down. "Please do not fret, my love." He says it all too quickly, as if he sensed the shift in you before you felt it yourself. "It was a very long time ago." You open your mouth to protest but the words die on your tongue. He's looking at you with that quiet, knowing expression, and you realize there is no point in lying to a creature who can read your emotions before you've even named them.

"I was merely a fragile human. Hopeful enough to offer God everything. Foolish enough to believe he would answer with anything other than silence." The breeze howls past the window, brushing his hair from his face. "So I found another way. And I have been what I am ever since."

"You were once human, too?" Your voice is soft, curious, and more sincere than you wish it was. He finally turns to face you again, this time with a hint of a smile.

"We are more alike than you know." he holds out a hand to you, and you take it. You let him help you stand, your nightgown catching the wind as you look up at him. "I can smell the shame in you. I've always been able to. It's the same shame I carried centuries ago."

A monster, comparing himself to you. You should feel offended by the way he looks at you, right through you, past the skin and bone, into the soul you've spent a lifetime trying to scrub clean. Though, you suppose he's earned the right. He's been in your dreams for years. He's seen every thought you tried to drown, every aching desire you tried to bury, and how it rots you from the inside. He's seen all of it, and he does not recoil. A man can judge you. A monster cannot. You're horrified to find relief in that thought. "The difference between you and me, however, is that I've stopped pretending to be something I'm not." Your eyes wander to the door briefly, knowing your husband lays peacefully down the hall. "Jake still looks at me as if I'm pure. As if I'm worthy of his love. Even after everything I've done." Your eyes burn, and you blink hard against the sting. "That's all I have, and you're taking it away." "Because I needed to feed. Because you have not given me permission. I cannot take what is mine unless it is offered freely. So I took what was available to me. Your scent on his skin. Your proximity." His eyes hold yours. "Do you understand what that is like? To be bound to someone, to feel their wanting every night, to taste it in the air, and to not be allowed to have them? The blood of animals does nothing. The blood of your husband is unsatisfying. I am ravenous." He steps closer. The space between you shrinks to almost nothing.

"It is not merely blood that you promised me. You offered me your soul. Your life. Your eternal presence. That is what I hunger for—not the taste of you on my tongue, but the whole of you, bound to me as you were always meant to be." His voice drops to a whisper. "Every second I have waited has been a small death. I have died a thousand times since you made your promise."

You know what that hunger feels like. You've carried it your whole life, coiled low in your belly, hot and insistent, never fully quieted. You tried to fill it with prayer. You tried to fill it with your husband's body. Nothing worked. Nothing ever works.

"He is innocent." Your voice splinters. "He doesn't deserve this."

Sunghoon is silent for a long moment. Then he sighs—a soft, tired sound.

"Innocent. Pure of heart. Kind—too kind for a human, if you ask me." He says. "You're terrified of what he'd think. You don't believe his love is unconditional." "How could anyone love this?" A tear slips down your cheek. You had no idea you were on the verge of crying, but you feel it now. The uncontrollable trembling of your body, the sob threatens to escape your throat. Sunghoon's hand rises. His fingers brush your jaw, cool and smooth, tilting your chin upward. You open your eyes. It's the first time you've seen him this close, the moonlight casting a soft glow over his features. His expression is nothing cruel. It's something almost tender, which is far more devastating. "I do." He says. "I love your scent. Your shame. The way you whisper my name in the dark." Your lower lip trembles, and his thumb traces it, feather-light. In fact, all of you trembles. You've stopped trying to decide whether it's out of fear, want, or the draft of winter air. "You offered me your soul long before you ever gave him your hand. That is a promise no ring can compare to." His eyes hold yours, unrelenting. "I love you eternally." His hand trails down your throat. His fingers curl, lightly, around the column of your neck, just holding it, just relishing your pulse beneath his fingertips. The cross dangles between you, and you feel his gaze flicker to it.

"Please understand. I have only ever wanted you. He was merely the vessel I drank from because I could not drink from you." his voice drops to a murmur. "Give me what you promised me. What you've been promising me every night for years. I'm patient. I've waited long, and I can wait longer. Your husband, however..." his eyes drift to the door, an acknowledgement of his fading life down the hall, "He doesn't have the luxury of patience."

"If I refuse, he dies."

Sunghoon doesn't blink. "Yes."

No hesitation. The truth, cold and simple. You feel your hands tighten into fists at your sides.

"That's not a choice. That's not 'asking for permission.' That's a threat." He only laughs in response. "You made a deal with a monster. Did you expect him to play fair?" Sunghoon tilts his head. "I'd argue I've been rather generous. I could have drained him on your wedding night, when he laid hands on what was already mine. Could have left him in your bed, cold and lifeless. But I didn't. I let him live. I even offered him my wine."

He wears the slightest grin, cruel and merciless, and his fangs catch the light. "Aren't I kind?"

"You are vile." You spit. "You are despicable. Awful. And—"

"And you still want me."

The space between you shrinks as he leans closer, until you can feel the chill radiating off his skin, until you can see the faint gleam of the moonlight on his pupils.

"He is not the reason you will say yes."

His voice is quieter now.

"You will say yes because you have been starving for as long as you can remember. Because you have tried to fill that hunger with prayer and penance and the body of a man who loves you but cannot understand you. Because you knelt at your window and begged for relief, and I am the only one who has ever offered it to you. I am the only one who can give it to you." His fingers brush your jaw. Feather-light. "So, go on." He nods, "Tell me what you want." "I want you to leave Jake alone." You hiss. It only makes him grin. You expect nothing less. "And what else?" "I want you to stop making me feel like this." "How do you want me to do that, exactly?" You open your eyes. He's so close now. Your body is trembling—not from the cold, not from fear, but from the unbearable, humiliating effort of holding yourself back. Your thighs press together beneath your nightgown, a needy, restless friction that does nothing to ease the ache. Your pulse hammers in your throat. Between your legs, you're soaked. You've been soaked since he stepped through the curtains. Every inch of you is screaming for relief. Every inch of you has been screaming for years. It's not really a choice. If you pull away, you're letting your husband die and spending the rest of your life mourning a man you loved but couldn't save. Regardless, your body doesn't want to pull away. It made its own choice the moment you knelt at your window all those years ago. Everything since then has been the long, torturous process of coming to accept it. The prayers. The shame. The dreams you woke from, wet and wanting. All of it leading here. To him. "I want you to touch me," you whisper. The words come out ragged, half a sob, half a plea. "I need you to relieve me from this torment. I can't—I can't take it anymore. Please." His hand tightens just barely at your throat.His hand rests at your throat, cool and steady. His touch remains ever patient, and his eyes flicker from yours to your neck like he cannot decide which is more precious to him in this moment. "Say it properly." And you do. "I give you permission. My blood. My body. My soul. Take it. It's all yours. It's always been yours." He exhales—a shuddering, both reverent and ravenous sound.

His hand tightens around your throat, fingers digging into the vulnerable flesh, feeling the pulse hammering beneath his touch, the rush of blood through your veins. He dips his head into the curve of your neck, and the breath he takes in, the groan that rumbles against your skin—they are not the sounds of a man. They belong to a predator who has caught its prey at last and is trying very hard not to devour it all at once.

Your eyes flutter shut.

"If only you could smell yourself right now." His voice comes out rough, almost like a growl, "Your terror, your desperation. Your arousal." He lifts you in a single, clean sweep, as if you weigh no more than a feather. Your feet are off the ground, your body helpless in his grasp, and you don't have the time to react as he throws you down on the marital bed with a force that knocks the breath from your lungs. You barely have time to register the impact before his body is over yours. His knee rises between your thighs, spreading you open beneath him and his hand fists your hair, tilting your head back, baring your throat to the moonlight and his teeth. His gaze drifts down the length of your body, catching on the way your nightgown has ridden up your thighs, on the rise and fall of your chest. He leans forward. "My stubborn, sinful girl. You were never meant for heaven." His fangs press against your pulse, not yet sinking in, but with enough pressure that it makes your breath catch and your body go rigid beneath him. "You were always meant for me." One hand grips your throat, fingers digging into the flesh just beneath your jaw, holding your head in place with a force that borders on bruising. The other rests over your heart, palm flat, enough to feel the frantic rhythm. "So fearful that nobody could love you in the dark, when I have loved you for years." His fangs sink into you, and a cry is torn from your throat, gasping into the dark and your body arches into him without your permission. The sounds he makes are equally as ungraceful and unrestrained— a growl that sounds like it belongs to an animal, a groan that sounds so guttural and almost pained, as if tasting you after all this time is a relief so profound it hurts. You writhe beneath him, but his body holds you steady, his grasp so harsh that it's sure to bruise. The pull of his mouth is rhythmic, hypnotic, each draw of your blood sending a fresh wave of heat spiraling through your core. You are dizzy with it. You are alive with it. You are his, and you have always been his, and the acceptance of that truth is the single most liberating thing you have ever felt. Disgust is a distant flicker, extinguished before it can catch. The pain is already gone. In its place, a pleasure so sharp and bright it borders on agony races through your veins. You shake with it, every inch of you raw and exposed, the sheets a torment against your feverish skin. Your hands find his back and hold on, clawing at his shirt. "What is—?" Your voice is a whiny, pathetic sound, piercing through heavy, laboured breaths. The ache between your legs from before is now throbbing with a sort of want you couldn't even begin to describe. Something unnatural, feverish and all-consuming. "Why do I feel like—?"

"It feels good, doesn't it?" His fangs retract, but his mouth stays, kissing the wound he left behind, lapping up every last drop of your blood. "The venom. It immobilizes prey. Turns pain into pleasure. Though you didn't need much convincing, did you?" A broken sound tears from your throat as his tongue drags down the column of your neck, chasing a stray bead of blood. His hand rips your nightgown higher, baring you to the cold air, and he finds you soaked. You can feel his grin at your neck.

"You were begging to be fucked long before I ever bit you," he whispers, "Long before your nice little husband ever put his hands on you." "Please, Sunghoon," The words tumble out before your pride can catch them. It's wrecked, shameless, and entirely honest. "Just touch me. Please."

He obliges without a word. Your panties are eased down your thighs, the cold air a brief shock against your overheated skin, and then he finds you—slick and aching and desperately ready. A single, long finger slips inside with no resistance at all, and the sound that escapes you is almost a sob. You might cry from just that alone, graciously accepting any kind of touch at this point. You might already be crying, though you don't have the sense to think about it. You're lost in the sensation, clenching around him, your hips rolling forward of their own accord, chasing more. "It feels so much better when you give in." His voice is soft, almost crooning, as his finger moves inside you with excruciating slowness, a rhythm designed to tease rather than satisfy. "When you stop denying yourself." A frustrated sound catches in your throat. Your hips lift, chasing his hand, and he hums in quiet approval. Then a second finger slides in beside the first, stretching you, and the cry that escapes you is louder than before. Your head falls back against the pillow. Your fingers twist in the sheets. And then his fangs are at your throat again—a sharp, searing sting that melts almost instantly into heat. He drinks as his fingers move inside you, a slow, devastating counterpoint: the pull of his mouth, the thrust of his hand, the weight of his body pinning you to the mattress. You are caught between pleasure and surrender, and you have stopped caring which is which. "My sweet little sinner." He pulls back just enough to speak, his lips stained, his breath cool against the wound he left behind. His fingers curl inside you, finding a place that makes your vision blur. "What would he think if he saw you like this? His fragile, innocent wife, offering herself to a monster, begging for more." He thrusts deeper, and your back arches off the bed. "Would it break him? Would it shatter that pure, simple love he carries for you?" The tears come before you can stop them, spilling down your temples and into your hair. A sob tears free, raw and ugly, and you shake your head against the pillow. "No?" His voice is soft, almost tender. His thumb traces your cheek, smearing the tears there. "Use your words, my love." "I don't care." The words rip out of you, jagged and desperate, louder than you intended. Your hips are still rolling against his hand, chasing the climax he keeps just out of reach. "I don't care what he thinks. I just want this." You feel the pressure building, the tightening in your belly, rushing toward the edge faster than you can outrun it.

"Please." The word is barely a whisper now, your voice wrecked and trembling. "Please take me. I can't—I need—please." His fingers still inside you. You cry out at the loss, at the empty ache he leaves behind, and when you open your eyes, he is looking down at you with something like awe. Something like triumph. Something like love, if a monster is capable of love, as he claims. He grabs the front of your nightgown and rips it open. The fabric splits with a sound like a scream. You gasp, arms flying up to cover yourself, but he seizes your wrists and wrenches them away. Forces your hand down between your bodies, pressing your palm against the hard, aching length of him.

He releases you to tear at his own clothes. His shirt. His pants. Then he is bare above you, and the sight is almost too much—the blood on his mouth, the pale plane of his chest, and his eyes, how they devour the sight of you whole, looking at you in all your filth and finding you holy. "I'm going to ruin you." You feel the tip of him at your entrance, and your body stiffens. His eyes hold yours, dark and depthless and full of terrible tenderness. "Just like you begged me to." He sinks into you in one slow, devastating thrust, and your mouth falls open on a sound that might be his name, but before it can escape, his lips find yours. He swallows your cry the way he swallowed your blood, consuming it, claiming it as his own. His tongue sliding against yours, and you taste your own blood on his lips. His mouth never leaves yours, as if he would drink every sound you make, as if there is no part of you he does not intend to devour. You start to cry. Not because it hurts. Not because you're being ruined, though you are, though you've wanted to be. You cry because it's better than your dreams ever were. Because every fantasy you spent years repenting for, every shameful vision that drove you to your knees at the window, was a pale shadow of this. He pulls back to look at you, and the expression on his face is rapture. His hand is wrapped around your throat, holding you steady for each forceful thrust, pinning you to the mattress, to the moment, to him. The rhythm of his hips is relentless and perfect. Every drag of him inside you eases the ache you've carried for so long it has become a part of you, and at the same time deepens it, feeds it, stokes it into something insatiable. The venom only heightens the feeling—pleasure easing your hunger, each stroke pushing you closer to an edge you no longer want to escape. He is the most beautiful creature you have ever seen. You think it without flinching. You think it while tears stream down your temples and into your hair, while your body arches to meet his, while you give yourself over to the monster who answered when God wouldn't. He is beautiful. He is yours. You are his. And you have never felt less like pretending otherwise. He fills you in a way your husband never could. It's terrible and entirely the truth. You have spent weeks trying to use Jake as a remedy—his body, his love, his gentle, faithful hands—and it worked, for a few hours at a time. But the hunger you carry was never something he could satisfy. He was never meant to. That was never the deal you made. This is what you bargained for. What you knelt at the window and begged to feel. You lose yourself in the rhythm of him. The thick, unrelenting drive of his cock. The weight of his body pinning you to the mattress. The way he takes and takes and takes, and still watches you like you are something sacred. His dark eyes hold yours with something that looks like awe. Something that looks like devotion. Something that looks, impossibly, like love. If you even believe that a creature like him can feel love. Though love is the furthest thing from your mind right now. "That's it." His voice is a low growl, rough with pleasure and hunger and the effort of holding himself back. "Cry for me. Let me see you fall apart."

Your nails rake down his back. Your thighs tremble around his hips. The tears are still falling, streaming into your hair, but you don't hold them back. You don't try to hide. You let him watch. You let him see all of it. The surrender, the pleasure, the relief at last. You finish, your high crashing through your body in pulses that leave you gasping, clenching around him, your back bowing off the bed. You cry out his name, and he groans as he feels you break around him, his rhythm faltering for just a moment before he drives deeper, harder, more. You barely have time to come down before his fangs find your throat again. The bite is sharp and sweet, and the venom floods your veins anew—reigniting the fire that had just begun to go out, pulling you back toward the edge you just tumbled over. "More," you plead. The word is raw, scraped clean of pride. "More." He gives you more. He gives you everything. And you take it all of it with your eyes open and your soul laid bare beneath him. More. More. More. The night folded in on itself, a long, delirious rhythm of hunger and satiation, of teeth and hands and the slick press of bodies moving together in the dark. He would drink until you grew faint, then pull back, laving the wound with a tenderness that made your chest ache, and wait for your eyes to flutter open, for your hips to lift in silent, desperate invitation. And then he would begin again. You lost count. It didn't matter. Time had become a thing that happened to other people. You remember, dimly, the sound of your own voice sobbing his name into the hollow of his throat. You remember the weight of him, the cold press of his skin slowly warming with each swallow of your blood. You remember his mouth tracing the length of your collarbone, his fingers mapping the dip of your waist, his voice murmuring things against your flesh. The window stood open through all of it. The curtains drifted. The winter air slipped in, cooling the sweat on your skin, but you never felt cold. You felt nothing but him. Nothing but the slow, spreading heat of the venom and the terrible peace of finally letting go.

The pale, gray light starts to rise in the distance. The hush of early morning. The distant, muffled quiet of a world still half-asleep.

He is still inside you. Still moving a slow, grinding rhythm, more reflex now than urgency, the last shivering aftershocks of a night that had no end. His face is buried in the curve of your neck, his lips parted against the wound that hasn't closed, and his hips roll against yours in a lazy, hypnotic pulse that feels less like fucking and more like breathing.

Your hand is in his hair. Your fingers are tangled in the dark silk of it, your thumb tracing the shell of his ear, and the gesture feels so natural, so intimate, that your throat tightens with something you refuse to name. Then the light shifts.

It spills through the open window, pale gold, the first true ray of a winter dawn. It creeps across the floorboards, slow and searching, and climbs the edge of the bed. It touches your bare ankle. It warms the tangled sheets. It reaches, like a blessing or a blade, for the man in your arms. You watch it happen.

It finds his shoulder first. The light glistens, a luminous sheen on the marble of his skin catching the ridge of his shoulder blade, the curve of his spine, the place where your nails have left their marks across his back. He doesn't notice. His mouth is still at your throat, his body still moving against yours, lost in the rhythm of consumption. "Sunghoon." He lifts his head.

His eyes are black, pupils blown, the irises reduced to thin rings of dark amber. Your blood is on his lips. Your blood everywhere. All over your own lips, all over your neck, your chest and the sheets beneath you. And his skin, his beautiful, terrible skin, is beginning to gleam in the morning light. Every plane of his face limned in gold, the sharp angle of his jaw, the impossible symmetry of his features. He looks like something that fell from heaven and landed wrong. He looks at you. And you see the moment he understands. The light is spreading. It touches his temple. The curve of his ear. The column of his throat. And where it touches, his skin begins to change—taking on a strange, crystalline shimmer, like the surface of fresh snow catching the first light of dawn. It starts to unmake him. He doesn't move. He doesn't flee. He just looks at you, old and tired and almost, almost human. Your hand is still in his hair. You don't pull it back. A broken growl, low but softened, escapes him, and his forehead drops to yours. His eyes close, and for a long, suspended moment, you lie there together in the path of the rising sun. It starts at the edges, before the shimmer spreads a slow, glittering dissolution, like diamonds fracturing along the surface of him. The places where the sun touches him turn luminous, iridescent, and then they begin to separate. He is coming apart in fine fragments, a mist of dust that catches the light and holds it, suspended, before drifting upward on the morning air. His eyes find yours one last time. There's no fear in them. No anger. Just that same dark, depthless devotion. That same hunger. Your body is still humming with the aftermath of pleasure, your thighs slick, your throat aching with the memory of his hands around it. You close your eyes. They're too heavy to keep open.

"More." The last thing you feel is his hand returning to your neck, and his teeth sinking into your flesh once more. The last thing you hear is the sound of his growl as he savours his last meal. Tangled with death, you lay, lips parted in pleasure.

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