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He Could Be The One || Bang Chan

Summary: What starts as a game becomes a night of stolen kisses, ending with Chan asking for your number and promising he wants more of whatever started building between you two. Carefully orchestrated dates where Chan exercises deliberate, maddening restraint, kissing you thoroughly at every doorway before pulling back and saying goodnight. Each date builds tension as he makes it clear he’s savoring the buildup, taking his time because he wants you to know this matters. As the dates go by, his composed patience and the accumulated wanting has you both unraveling at the edges.

Warnings: non-idol!au, bang chan x f.reader, smut but it’s not graphic still MDNI!, oral(m&f.rec),lots of kisses,slowish burn, week/months of buildup as foreplay, they say hi to each other a lot because I think it’s cute and it’s also just them checking in with each other through the entire thing, multiple rounds on every possible surface in his apartment(he has a thought out list),mentions of 97line friendship, it’s not explicitly mentioned but they’ve known each other for a while so it’s not some love at first sight kinda thing, Twice’s Jihyo as your bestie, lowkey glucose guardian Chris, as usual I might be missing something.

W.C: 12.8k

A/N: This was a requested piece from an anonymous ask.

It was definitely BamBam’s idea.

You’d clocked that the moment Jaehyun had stood up with that particular grin on his face, the one that meant someone had fed him the dare in advance. The room had erupted and you’d sat very still in your corner of the couch thinking about how Jihyo owed you something significant for this, dinner, at minimum. A full apology, maybe both.

Now you’re here, cross-legged on Chan’s bedroom floor while the party carries on without you through the wall and Chan is sitting across from you close enough that you can see the small details of him you don’t usually get at a distance. The way his hair falls slightly across his forehead. The particular set of his mouth when he isn’t performing for anyone. He’s watching you. Not nervously, exactly, but with a kind of attentiveness that makes the air in the room feel different.

“We don’t have to do anything if you don’t wanna,” he says.

His voice is different in here. Lower. Like he’d adjusted the register of it to match the room. You don’t say anything. There are several things happening in your chest simultaneously and you haven’t sorted them out yet. He leans in, not aggressively; just closing the distance by a few inches, enough that you’d have to deliberately look away to avoid his eyes. He smells good. Warm. Something with a little smoke and cedar in it.

“Do you want me to kiss you?”

Not can I. Not the performative version that’s really just waiting for the yes. A genuine question, delivered quietly, with his eyes on yours and absolutely nowhere else. The honest answer surfaces before you can overthink it.

“Yes,” you say.

Something in his expression settles. Like he’d been holding something carefully and could finally set it down. He doesn’t rush it. That’s the first thing you notice, he doesn’t treat the yes as a signal to close the remaining distance as fast as possible. He reaches out first, slow enough that you see it coming, watching you while he does it, watching the way you let him, then his hand curves around the back of your neck and he brings his mouth to yours.

The kiss is unhurried in a way that feels almost indulgent.

He kisses like he has nowhere to be. Like the seven minutes on BamBam’s phone is a concept that applies to other people. His mouth moves against yours with a kind of easy confidence—not hurried, not searching, just certain, like he already knew exactly how he wanted this to go and had decided he was going to take his time getting there. You feel yourself lean into it before you consciously decide to.

His other hand finds your knee. Rests there, warm and still.

When he tilts his head and deepens it you make a small sound you weren’t planning on and he catches it like he’d been waiting for it, one hand tightening slightly at your nape, and the kiss goes slower and more deliberate in a way that does something deeply unfair to your ability to think clearly. He pulls back just barely—not to stop, just to change the angle—and when he comes back his bottom lip drags against yours in a way that makes your fingers curl against his shirt. He notices. Of course he notices. His hand moves from your knee to your hip, unhurried, and he kisses you again like the movement of his hand and the movement of his mouth are one continuous thought.

Time stops doing anything useful.

BamBam’s knock is obnoxious, as promised.

“Seven minuteeeees—”

Chan pulls back slowly, breathing slightly uneven. His thumb traces a short line along your jaw before his hand drops and he looks at you with an expression you don’t have an immediate word for; not smug, not the grin he usually wears. Something quieter and more interested.

“Yeah?” he says. Soft. Like he’s checking.

“Yeah,” you say.

The door swings open and BamBam reads the room with approximately zero subtlety. “Oh, interesting,” he says to no one and everyone. Chan stands, easy, unhurried, you follow and Sora says something pointed to her friends that you decide not to hear.

The game moves on without you the way these things do. Someone gets dared to text their situationship. Jaehyun ends up with a dare involving ice that he refuses to explain after the fact. The room rearranges itself and you find a spot near the edge of the living room where the energy is slightly less loud. You’re standing there, drink in hand, half-listening to a conversation nearby, when you feel warmth at your back.

Chan doesn’t say anything at first. He just steps up behind you, close enough that you’re aware of him the way you’d be aware of a fire nearby, heat and presence, not quite touching. Then his hand finds the small of your back and he leans down so his mouth is at your ear.

“Hi,” he says.

That’s it. Just hi. But his lips brush your ear when he says it and his hand presses slightly at your back and you feel it everywhere.

“Hi,” you manage.

He turns you gently by the hip—subtle enough that no one’s watching, or maybe he doesn’t care who’s watching—and walks you backward two steps until your back meets the wall of the hallway just off the living room. He looks at you in the low light with that same considering expression and then he dips down and kisses you slow and deep against the wall, one forearm braced above your head, his other hand settled at your waist with his thumb tracing a slow path just beneath the hem of your shirt against your skin. You grab the front of his shirt and he smiles against your mouth before he pulls back.

“There you are,” he says quietly, like he’d been looking for something and found it.

An hour later you step out onto the balcony because the apartment had gotten loud, warm and you needed two minutes of cold air and the wide quiet of the city at night. You’re leaning on the railing, eyes closed, when you hear the glass door slide open. You don’t need to turn around. His arms come around you from behind, chin dropping to your shoulder and he stays there for a moment just breathing.

“Hiding?” he asks.

“Getting air.”

“Sure.”

His mouth finds the curve of your neck, and you exhale shakily. He presses a slow kiss there—open-mouthed, unhurried, and then his teeth graze the skin just beneath your jaw with enough intention that you grip the railing.

“Chan—”

“Mmmh.” He doesn’t stop. He kisses up the side of your neck, his hands sliding from your waist to your stomach, pulling you back against him, you can feel how interested he is in the situation and it makes thinking substantially harder. He mouths at the spot just below your ear until you turn in his arms because you need to kiss him properly and he meets you immediately, one hand coming up to grip your jaw with a kind of deliberate possession that pulls a sound from you that you’ll be embarrassed about later.

The kiss is less slow now. Still deep but hungrier, his body pressing yours back against the balcony railing, his hand sliding to your nape and tilting your head exactly where he wants it. You get your hands under his jacket, and he makes a low sound against your mouth that you feel more than hear. When he pulls back, he looks at the mark he’s left on the side of your neck with open satisfaction.

“That’s going to be visible,” you say.

“Good,” he says simply, and kisses you again before you can respond to that.

By the time people start leaving in earnest you’ve lost count. A kiss stolen while you stood in the kitchen doorway. His mouth at your temple, brief and warm, while Jihyo was distracted on her phone. A longer, slower one in the dim hallway when the crowd had thinned enough to make it almost private, his hands on your ass, yours draped over his shoulders, both of you slightly breathless when you’d finally surfaced. He walks you to the door when Jihyo announces she’s called the car. His hand finds yours and he keeps it loosely as the group clusters at the entrance exchanging goodnights. Jihyo gives you a look of supreme, detailed significance. You ignore it completely. At the door he steps close one last time.

“I want your number,” he says. Not asking, exactly. More like stating something he’s already decided.

“That so?”you tease as you take his phone from his hand and put your number in.

“I’m going to find more reasons to do that,” he says, and the directness of it—no deflection, no performance—catches you somewhere low in your chest. His hand comes up and his thumb brushes over the mark on your neck, lightly, and his eyes find yours. “If you want.”

The car is outside. Jihyo is very pointedly already halfway out the door. You lean up and kiss him once more, slow and brief with enough intent to make the point, and you feel his hand catch your waist for just a second before you pull back.

“Text me,” you say.

The look on his face when you walk away—warm, unhurried, certain—stays with you the whole ride home.

The first date is dinner.

Not a casual, let’s-grab-food-somewhere kind of dinner. A reservation. A place with low lighting and a wine list and a host who leads you to a corner table that feels deliberately chosen. Chan is already there when you arrive, standing when he sees you and the way his eyes move over you when you approach is slow enough to make your face warm before you’ve even sat down.

“You look good,” he says. Simple, like a fact.

“You clean up well yourself,” you say, because he does; dark shirt, collar open just enough and he smells the way he had on the balcony that night, warm and faintly woody, and your memory does something unhelpful with that information immediately.

Dinner is easy in a way you hadn’t fully anticipated. Chan is good at conversation in the way that some people are naturally good at it—he listens like he means it, follows threads, asks questions that show he’d actually retained the last thing you said. You talk about your work; he talks about his and somewhere in the middle of the second glass of wine you realize you’ve been leaning toward him across the table for the better part of an hour.

He walks you to your door at the end of it.

You’re expecting the kiss. You’d been thinking about it since the balcony, if you’re being truthful; the specific way he kisses, slow and deliberate and entirely too aware of what it does to you. You’d been half-distracted by the anticipation of it through most of the entrée. He cups your face in both hands and kisses you softly. Thoroughly. Long enough to make your fingers curl around his wrist and your breath go slightly uneven. Then he pulls back with his forehead tipped against yours, you can feel him breathing, the space between you is very small and very warm.

“Goodnight,” he says.

You blink. “That’s,”

“Goodnight,” he says again, with the edge of a smile, and kisses your forehead once before he steps back.

You stand at your door and watch him go and feel the specific frustration of someone who has just been handled with great expertise.

The second date is a movie at his place.

You’d thought—reasonably—that come over and watch something was a particular kind of invitation. You’d shown up in something casual that was also not entirely accidental. You’d been prepared. What you had not been prepared for was Chan, who makes popcorn with real butter and argues earnestly about film scores and pulls you into his side on the couch so naturally that you’re tucked against him with his arm around you before you’ve registered the transition. He smells good. He’s warm. His thumb traces absent patterns on your shoulder throughout the movie and every time you shift slightly, he tightens his arm around you in a way that suggests he’s paying some attention to you in addition to the screen.

Halfway through he tips his head down and presses a kiss to your temple. Then your cheekbone. Then he turns you gently by the chin and kisses your mouth, slow and soft and unhurried, tasting faintly of salt, and you get your hand in his hair, and he makes a low, quiet sound against you and then he pulls back. Settles you back against his side. Returns his attention to the movie with an expression of perfect composure. You stare at the screen unseeing for several minutes.

At the door again, at the end of the night, the kiss is longer. His hands at your hips, yours gripping his jacket, his mouth moving against yours with intent and patience in equal measure. You press closer and he lets you, hands tightening, and just when you’ve decided something is finally going to give, he pulls back and looks at you with dark, steady eyes.

“I’ll call you,” he says. He does the next morning.

The third date he takes you to a gallery, which you hadn’t expected, and he stands close behind you in front of each piece with his chin nearly at your shoulder, speaking quietly about what he sees in it, what it reminds him of. His hand finds the small of your back and stays there the entire afternoon—not pulling, not directing, just present, warm and consistent, and you are aware of it with a focus that has very little to do with the art.

In a quieter corridor near the back, while two other visitors murmur on the far end, he turns you toward him and kisses you unhurriedly against the wall. Deep and slow. His hands bracketing your face, thumbs tracing your cheekbones, like he has all the time in the world and has decided to spend it here specifically. You make a small, frustrated sound against his mouth and his chest shakes with something low and quiet, not quite a laugh. More like satisfaction.

“Chris,” you say against him.

“Hmmm?”

“You’re doing this on purpose.”

He pulls back just enough to look at you. His eyes are darker than usual and the composure he wears is slightly less airtight than it was twenty minutes ago, which is at least something.

“Doing what?” he asks, with innocence that fools neither of you.

You give him a look. He gives you a small, unhurried smile, and kisses you once more—soft and brief and devastating in its restraint—before taking your hand and steering you back toward the main galleries like nothing happened.

The fourth date is dinner again, different restaurant, closer to your place this time. Easier commute, he’d said on the phone. Practical. It’s not practical. You both know it isn’t practical. He’s better at keeping his composure than you’ve given him credit for, that’s the thing. He watches you across the table with those steady, attentive eyes and finds every opportunity to touch you—your hand when he’s making a point, your knee briefly beneath the table, his fingers at your wrist when you’re both reaching for the wine—and every contact is casual enough to read as unconscious and deliberate enough that you know it absolutely isn’t.

You lean forward at one point, elbows on the table, and say, “You know what you’re doing.”

He tilts his head slightly. “What am I doing?”

“Drawing it out.”

He’s quiet for a moment. Takes a slow sip of his wine. His eyes don’t leave yours.

“I like the buildup,” he says simply.

“Chris...”

“I like knowing exactly how much you want it before we get there.” He sets his glass down. Calm, unhurried. “Don’t you?”

The honest answer, which you resent slightly, is yes. You’ve been thinking about him with an intensity and frequency that would be embarrassing to quantify. Every slow kiss at every door has left you with the specific, accumulated frustration of someone who keeps getting handed the first chapter of something and being told the rest is coming. And he knows that. He’s been watching you figure it out for weeks.

“You’re insufferable,” you say.

“You keep showing up,” he points out.

Correct. Accurate. Fully damning.

At your door at the end of the fourth date, he kisses you the way he sometimes does when his composure slips slightly; deeper, both hands in your hair, your back against the doorframe and his body warm and close and there. You get your hands under his jacket, and he exhales against your mouth, and for a long moment the careful, practiced restraint he’s been maintaining feels genuinely fragile.

He pulls back. Breathing slightly uneven this time. That’s new.

He presses his mouth to your jaw. Your neck. Lingers at the spot below your ear that he’d already catalogued as effective on the balcony that first night, and you feel your fingers tighten in his shirt.

“Baby,” you say, and it comes out less steady than you intend.

He lifts his head and looks at you. Something in his expression is quieter than usual. More open. “Soon,” he says. Low. Like a promise with a specific weight to it.

Not eventually. Not someday. Soon.

He kisses your forehead and steps back and you watch him go for the fifth time at this same door and the wanting follows you all the way inside and doesn’t really go anywhere after that.

You are, you think, extraordinarily in trouble.

You’d cleaned your apartment twice.

Not because it was dirty—it wasn’t, particularly—but because Chan was coming over for the first time and there’s a difference between knowing someone and letting them into the specific, curated intimacy of your living space. The books you’d left on the coffee table. The throw blanket on the couch that had seen better days but that you couldn’t bring yourself to replace. The small, accumulated details of a life that hadn’t been arranged for anyone else’s benefit.

He shows up with two pizza boxes and a bottle of wine tucked under his arm, and when you open the door he looks at you first—just for a moment, the same way he always does, like he’s taking inventory—before his eyes move past you into the apartment.

“Nice,” he says and he means it. He steps inside and takes it in properly, setting the boxes down on your kitchen counter and looking around with genuine interest. Picks up a small ceramic thing on your shelf, examines it, sets it back exactly where it was. Reads the spines of your books. Pauses on a framed photo.

“This you?” he asks.

“Obviously.”

“You still have a baby face.” He says it like it’s a thing he’d been curious about. He looks around for another moment and then at you, and there’s something settled in his expression. Comfortable. Like he’d walked into a room and found it matched what he’d imagined. “I like it.”

You pour the wine while he opens the boxes and you eat on the couch the way you’d both independently imagined this night going; pizza balanced on the coffee table, some movie neither of you will fully follow playing on the TV, the easy quiet of two people who’ve gotten past the performing stage of things. He’s mid-bite when he says it.

“Be my girlfriend.”

Not will you or I was thinking maybe. Just that. Like he’s stating something that already exists and simply needs your confirmation. He doesn’t look at you when he says it, eyes still on the screen, jaw working through his pizza, utterly and almost infuriatingly casual. Then he reaches into the front pocket of his jacket—draped over the arm of your couch—and sets something on the coffee table between the pizza boxes.

An open jewelry box. Chrome Hearts, the hardware unmistakable, the gold matching the silver Tiny E Choke chain sitting at his collarbone that you’d clocked the first time you’d seen him in a v-neck and filed away without meaning to.

You look at it. Then at him. He finally glances over. Waiting.

“You bought this before asking me,” you say.

“I was confident,” he says.

“That’s—”

“Arrogant, probably.” The corner of his mouth moves. “You gonna say yes or are you gonna keep stating facts?”

You pick up the necklace. The weight of it is immediately apparent—cool and solid in your palm, the kind of quality you feel before you fully register it. You look at the one at his throat.

“Put it on me,” you say.

Something in his expression shifts. Still composed, but warmer underneath it. He takes it from your palm, you turn lifting your hair, and his hands are steady and unhurried at the back of your neck. When the clasp catches, he doesn’t move away immediately. His hands rest lightly on your shoulders, and his mouth brushes the back of your neck—soft, brief—before you turn back around. The necklace settles at your collarbone. His eyes drop to it for a moment.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “There.”

The movie plays. You finish the pizza. The wine gets poured a second time.

At some point the space between you closes the way it always does—gradually, without announcement, until you’re fitted against his side with his arm around you and his hand making those absent, familiar patterns on your arm. The lamp in the corner is low. The city outside your window is a quiet hum. The necklace sits cool against your skin and every time you’re aware of it something in your chest does something inconvenient.

You turn your head and look at him.

He’s watching the screen. The line of his jaw in the low light. The chain at his throat. The particular quality of stillness he has when he’s relaxed, unhurried, his guard fully down in a way you’ve only started to see recently. You’ve been on the receiving end of this for weeks. The slow kisses at doorways. The careful, deliberate buildup. His hands and his mouth and his composure, all deployed with a patience that has had you losing your mind incrementally since that first night on the balcony.

You’re done waiting for it to come to you.

You turn into him and kiss his jaw. His hand stills on your arm.

You kiss it again, slower, closer to the corner of his mouth, and then you move down—his jaw, the hinge of it, the side of his neck—and you feel his breath change. The hand on your arm doesn’t pull you back. Doesn’t redirect. His head tilts slightly, just slightly, giving you room.

So you take it.

You mouth at the curve of his neck with intention—not gentle, not passing. You find the spot below his jaw and you stay there, sucking a slow mark into his skin, and his hand grips your arm.

“Hey,” he says. Low. Not a protest.

“Hi,” you say against his neck.

You feel his chest move. Something between a breath and a laugh, quietly undone. You press another open kiss lower, at the side of his throat and the hand on your arm loosens and slides to your waist and you take that as the information it is.

You shift. Swing a leg over and settle into his lap properly, knees bracketing his thighs, and his hands move to your hips with the immediacy of someone who’s been waiting for somewhere to put them. The chrome hearts chain swings slightly forward as you look down at him. His composure is doing something interesting. Still present—still Chan, still steady—but the edges of it are softer. His eyes are dark and his hands at your hips are warm and certain and when you roll forward, just slightly, testing, his fingers dig in and a low sound leaves his throat that does something catastrophic to your ability to think in straight lines.

“You’ve been doing this to me for weeks,” you say. Close to his ear, voice low. You feel the way he responds to it—hands tightening, the subtle shift of his breathing. “Every time at the door. Every time you pulled back.”

“I know,” he says. Rough at the edges.

“Was that fun for you?”

“Yeah.” An exhale. “A little bit.”

You bite his earlobe and he grips your hips hard enough to bruise, and you smile against his skin. You move back to his neck. Find a spot lower this time, where his collar sits, and you work another mark into his skin slowly and with great attention while his hands guide your hips in a rhythm that’s barely-there and devastating. His head falls back against the couch. His throat works. You pull back to look at what you’ve left there—two marks, both visible, both unmistakable—and something deeply satisfied moves through you.

“Fair’s fair,” you say.

He looks at you with dark, blown eyes and the loosened composure of someone whose careful strategy has successfully backfired on him, and underneath that, something that looks very much like admiration. Your lips brush the hinge of his jaw again. Travel deliberately back to his ear.

“Can I taste you?” you ask. Quiet. Direct.

His hands still on your hips. Not pulling back. Not redirecting. Just…still, for a held moment, like he’s making sure he’s heard you correctly. Then one hand slides up your back and into your hair and he tilts your head back enough to look at you properly. His eyes search yours. Dark and steady and certain.

“Yeah,” Chan says. Voice low and unhurried and entirely unwound. The composure that’s survived five dates and every deliberate, practiced act of restraint now thoroughly, quietly dismantled. “Yeah. Go ahead.”

You hold his gaze for a moment longer than necessary, just to watch him wait for it. His jaw tightens slightly. His hands are warm and still in your hair and at your hip and he’s looking at you the way he had across every dinner table—steady, patient—except the patience now has a frayed edge to it that you find enormously satisfying.

“You’re doing it again,” he says.

“Doing what?”

“Looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” you ask, and kiss his jaw so softly it barely counts. His grip tightens. You smile.

You take your time getting there.

That’s the first thing. You’d decided somewhere around the second date—watching him pull back with that composed, deliberate expression while you stood at your door trying to remember how breathing worked—that if you ever got here first, you were going to take your time. You start at his mouth. Kiss him slow and deep until his hands are restless in your hair, until he’s kissing back with an urgency that’s a little more honest than his usual careful control. Then you pull away from his mouth and he follows—catches himself—and you feel more than hear the low, frustrated exhale that escapes him.

“Easy,” you say softly.

“Don’t,” he says, “tell me to be easy right now.”

You kiss his cheek. His jaw. The corner of his mouth when he turns toward you instinctively, and you pull back just in time so he catches nothing.

“Hey—”

“Shh.” You press your lips to the hinge of his jaw and he goes still underneath you with great visible effort. “I’ve got you.”

You feel him exhale through his nose. Feel the deliberate way he loosens his hands in your hair. Choosing to let you lead, which from Chan is something—you understand that. You press a kiss to the soft skin just below his ear in acknowledgment and he shivers, which you file away immediately. Down the side of his neck. You take your time here because you’ve thought about this specifically, about getting his collar out of the way and having access to all of it. You push it aside and drag your mouth slow across his collarbone and his head tips back against the couch cushion and he says your name once, low, like it left without permission.

You look up at him from there.

He looks wrecked already. Hair slightly disheveled from your hands, throat marked from earlier, chest rising and falling with a breathing pattern that has abandoned its usual steadiness. He looks down at you with dark, blown eyes and the particular expression of a man who has been extremely patient for a very long time and is now experiencing the consequences of all of it arriving at once.

“Hi,” you say.

“You think this is funny,” he says. His voice has dropped to something rough and low that moves through you like a current.

“I think it’s fair,” you say, and press another open, slow kiss to his collarbone. “You left me at my door five times, Chan.”

“I know.” His hand slides through your hair. Not directing, just feeling. “I know I did.”

“On purpose.”

“Yes.”

“Did you think about this?” you ask. Mouth moving lower. You work at the buttons of his shirt, one at a time, unhurried. “When you were being so patient. Did you think about what would happen when I finally got here?”

A beat of silence.

“Yeah,” he says. Rough. “A lot.”

His shirt falls open and you take a moment to just look, which you can tell costs him something in the way his hands go still and careful like he’s trying very hard not to rush you. You spread your palms flat against his stomach and feel the muscle jump beneath your hands. Drag them slowly up his chest and watch his throat move as he swallows.

“You’re doing this intentionally,” he says.

“Mmmhm.” You lean down and press your mouth to the center of his chest. Feel his heartbeat against your lips, quicker than he’d ever let you hear in it his voice. “How does that feel?”

He makes a sound that’s not quite a word.

“I couldn’t hear you,” you say pleasantly, kissing across his chest to his ribs.

“I will—” he starts.

“You’ll what?”

He tips his head back and says nothing, jaw tight, and you smile against his skin and continue.

You move slowly off his lap, trailing your mouth down the center of his stomach, and his hands follow you—smoothing down your shoulders, the sides of your neck, tangling in your hair again—maintaining contact because apparently he needs to be touching you right now, which you understand. You feel the same pull toward him constantly, have since the first night, and there’s something quietly leveling about watching it operate on him now.

You settle between his knees and look up at him.

His eyes are very dark and very focused. The composed, careful Chan of five dinners and doorstep kisses is largely gone; what’s left is warmer, more open, the version of him you’ve been catching glimpses of and wanting the rest of. You hold his gaze and slowly, deliberately, work open his belt. He watches. Jaw set. Hands in your hair going still. You take your time. Of course you do. You get his belt open and his button undone and you press a slow kiss just below his navel and feel his stomach contract sharply under your mouth.

“You’re going to kill me,” he says.

“You’re fine,” you say.

“I’m not fine.”

“You’ve been doing this to me for weeks,” you remind him gently, and mouth along the skin just above his waistband. “Every time you pulled back at the door. Every time you kissed me exactly long enough and then stopped.” You look up at him. “Remember that?”

His eyes close briefly. “Yes.”

“Good,” you say, and finally, finally give him what you’d promised.

He’s quiet at first—contained, in the way that he is, processing it with that same deliberate control—but you’re patient now that you’ve started, you know exactly what you’re doing and within a few minutes the control starts to slip in small, telling ways. His hand tightens in your hair. His breathing goes ragged at the edges, the careful evenness of it entirely abandoned. He says your name once and then again, lower, and when you take your time with a specific swirl of your tongue, he groans, low and genuine, from somewhere deep in his chest, and you feel it everywhere.

You draw it out. Sweetly, deliberately, pulling back when he’s close enough that his hips shift forward involuntarily, looking up at him with an expression of perfect attentiveness.

“Don’t,” he says roughly.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t stop and look at me right now, I’m begging you—”

“You said you liked the buildup,” you say.

He looks at the ceiling. “I’m going to lose my mind.”

“How does that feel?” you ask, because you’d genuinely like him to sit with that for a second.

“Terrible,” he says, and you can hear the fractured quality underneath it, the genuine unraveling, and you take pity on him—mostly—and go back, this time you don’t stop.

His hand in your hair. Your name in his mouth, wrecked and low and entirely unwound. His other hand gripping the couch cushion and then letting go, dropping to your jaw, cradling it carefully even now and you feel that, the tenderness of it even here, even like this; when he finally goes over the edge it’s with your name and his head tipped back and his whole body going momentarily, completely still.

The room resettles. The movie has long since ended on its own. The lamp in the corner is still low. The city outside is its quiet, distant hum. You move back up to sit beside him, and he pulls you in immediately; arm around you, your head against his chest, his mouth pressing slow to the top of your head. His heart is still working its way back to a normal pace and you can feel it under your cheek. His hand moves through your hair.

“Hi,” he says eventually. Still rough.

“Hi,” you say.

A long, comfortable quiet. “Come here,” he says, and tips your chin up and kisses you slow and deep and with the particular quality of someone who’s just had everything rearranged and is taking a moment to be grateful about it. His hand curves around your face and he kisses you like he has nowhere to be, like the night is long and he intends to stay in it.

When he pulls back, he looks at you. The necklace sitting at your collarbone. The marks on his own neck that you’d put there. Something in his expression is open in a way you hadn’t seen before; the last of the careful distance he’d maintained across five dates, five doorways, finally and completely dissolved.

“I’ve been thinking about this since the balcony,” he says.

“I know,” you say. “So have I.”

His thumb traces your lower lip. Eyes following it.

“It’s my turn,” he says quietly.

The words sit in the air between you. Chan looks at you with dark, unhurried eyes and the particular quality of patience that you now understand is not passivity—never has been. It’s intention. It’s someone who has thought carefully about what they want and decided to take their time getting it exactly right.

“My turn,” he confirms.

“We’re keeping score now?” you ask.

“We’ve been keeping score,” he says. “You know that.”

You do know that. You’ve known it since the second date when he’d kissed you on his couch and pulled back with that composed expression while you’d sat there completely unraveled. The score has been running the whole time, quiet and patient, and you’d just spent the last hour settling a significant portion of it and you know—looking at him now, at the steadiness in his eyes and the warmth underneath it—that he’s been waiting his turn with the same specific, detailed attention he brings to everything.

“Okay,” you say.

The corner of his mouth moves. Just slightly.

“Okay,” he says.

He starts at your mouth. Of course he does. He cups your face in both hands the way he had at every door across every date and kisses you slowly, thoroughly, taking the time to relearn it now that there’s nowhere else to be and no reason to stop. His thumbs trace your cheekbones, and you feel the familiar pull of him—that particular gravity—and lean into it the way you always do.

Then his mouth moves. Your jaw. The soft skin beneath it. He finds your pulse point with unerring accuracy and presses his lips there, open and warm, and you feel your head tip back without your permission.

“Chris—”

“Shh,” he says against your neck. “I’ve got you.”

Your own words. Delivered back to you with a composure you know is at least partly performance, and you’d find it infuriating if his mouth wasn’t currently doing something to your throat that makes thinking feel like a distant, theoretical activity. He kisses down the side of your neck slowly, cataloguing. Learning which spots make your breath catch, which ones pull sounds from you that you don’t entirely choose—and he remembers all of it, you can tell. Files it away with the same attentiveness he’d brought to every conversation across every dinner table.

He finds a spot at the curve of your neck and shoulder and stays there. Works at it with his mouth until you grip his hair and he hums against your skin, satisfied.

“Fair’s fair,” he says, quietly.

He moves you, not hurried—everything he does is unhurried—but deliberate. His hands find your waist and shift you until your back meets the couch cushions and he’s leaning over you, one arm braced, and he looks at you for a moment before continuing like he wants to see your face. The lamp catches the necklace at your collarbone and his eyes drop to it for just a second. He lowers his head and presses his mouth to the necklace. The skin beneath it. Drags his lips slow across your collarbone and you feel the goosebumps chase his mouth across your skin.

“Been thinking about this,” he says, against your collarbone. “Specifically.”

“You mentioned that.”

“I have a good memory.” He kisses your shoulder. The strap of your top gets nudged aside and he follows the newly exposed skin without any hurry. “I remember the first time I kissed your neck on the balcony. What sounds you made.” He mouths at the curve of your shoulder and you exhale sharply. “I thought about it a lot after that.”

“How much is a lot,” you manage.

“Distracting amount,” he says. His mouth moves back up to your jaw. “Ended up being a pretty good motivator to see you again.”

“And here I thought it was my personality.”

“It was your personality,” he says, pulling back to look at you, and he’s completely serious when he says it which does something to you that has nothing to do with what his hands are doing. “And this.” His thumb traces your jaw. “Both at the same time.”

He kisses you again before you can respond to that.

His hands are different from his mouth; where his mouth takes its time, his hands are warm and certain, moving across you with the confidence of someone who’s been patient long enough and knows exactly where he’s going. Your waist, the curve of your hip, sliding beneath the hem of your top to find your skin and spread his palm flat against it. You pull him closer by the nape of his neck. He comes willingly, mouth back at your throat, and his hand travels with slow, deliberate intention. Up your side, your ribcage, his thumb tracing each curve with focus. His mouth finds a new spot at the base of your throat and stays there working at it with patience and specificity until you make a sound that breaks in the middle and his chest moves against yours with something low and warm.

“There,” he says quietly.

“Don’t be smug,” you say.

“I’m not smug.” He lifts his head to look at you. Eyes dark, mouth curved. “I’m thorough.” He dips back down before you can answer.

He maps you.

That’s the only word for it. Methodically, unhurriedly, like he’d planned the route in advance and intends to follow it exactly. His mouth leaves marks at your throat, your collarbone, the soft skin of your inner thighs; none of them accidental, all of them placed with intention, and when he surfaces to look at his work he does so with an expression of open, unashamed satisfaction.

“You’re doing this on purpose,” you say. An echo.

He looks up at you from where his mouth is at your hip. “When do I do anything that isn’t on purpose?”

Correct. Fully accurate. You pull him up by the jaw and kiss him deep and slightly desperate and he meets it—finally drops some of the careful patience, kisses you back with enough heat that the room feels ten degrees warmer and your hands find his open shirt and pull him closer. His hand finds the curve of your waist and grips. Slides lower. Over the line of your hip, the curve of your thigh, and you shift against him and he groans quietly into your mouth—the same low, undone sound you’d had from him earlier—and his hand tightens on your thigh and stays there.

He drags his mouth from yours to your jaw, your neck, finds one of the marks he’d made earlier and mouths over it gently, and the contrast—the careful tenderness of it following everything else—makes something in your chest pull tight.

“Chris,” you say. Quiet. Not frustrated this time. Just his name. He hears the difference. Lifts his head and looks at you. His hair is completely undone now. His shirt still open. The marks from your mouth dark at his throat, his jaw slightly flushed, and he’s looking at you with an expression that has nothing left hidden in it—no careful distance, no composure serving as buffer. Just him, warm and present and genuinely, entirely here. His thumb traces the line of your jaw.

“Hi,” he says softly.

“Hi,” you say back.

He kisses you again but slowly this time, differently; less fire and more warmth, his hand cradling the side of your face, his body settling against yours with a kind of ease that feels like something being decided. Something being named without words. When he pulls back his forehead drops to yours.

“Can I?” he asks. Not an assumption. Not casual. Just a quiet ask, offered the same direct way he’d placed the necklace on your coffee table between pizza boxes like it was already a fact. You look at him. The chain at his throat. The marks at his neck that mirror yours.

“Yeah,” you say. “Okay.”

His exhale is slow and warm against your mouth.

He kisses your forehead. Your cheek. The corner of your mouth.

“Good,” Chan says simply before he shifts to his knees using his shoulders to spread your legs as his hands travel up under your dress again.

Two months after that night, you’ve learned the geography of Chan’s apartment the way you learn a second language—through immersion and repetition. The way the morning light comes through his bedroom window at a specific angle that means you’ve slept past eight. The particular creak of the floorboard between the kitchen and the living room. Which drawer holds the good coffee mugs and which one is full of takeout chopsticks he’s been meaning to organize for months.

You’ve learned him, too. The things that don’t make it into dates and doorway kisses. That he’s quiet in the mornings until he’s had his morning smoothie, that he runs warm at night and kicks the covers off around three AM, that he keeps his space cleaner than you’d expected but there’s always one chair that becomes a catchall for clothes that aren’t dirty enough for the hamper but aren’t clean enough to go back in the drawer.

It’s Saturday. Late afternoon, the kind where the day has gone soft and golden at the edges and neither of you has changed out of comfortable clothes or done anything more ambitious than order food and exist in the same space. You’re on his couch, legs stretched across his lap, reading something on your phone while his hand absently traces patterns on your ankle. The TV is on but neither of you is watching it. This is what you do now, coexist. Comfortably. Like you’ve been doing it for years instead of weeks.

“I’m thinking about dinner,” he says.

“We just ate.”

“I’m thinking ahead.”

“Revolutionary,” you say, not looking up.

His hand slides up from your ankle to your calf, warm and present, and you feel the shift in his attention even before you glance over. He’s watching you with that particular expression; the one that means he’s been thinking about something for a while and has just decided to act on it.

“Come here,” he says.

“I’m already here.”

“Closer.”

You set your phone down and let him pull you across the couch until you’re settled in his lap, knees bracketing his thighs in the position that’s become familiar over the past two months. His hands find your hips immediately. The necklace—which you’ve worn every day since he put it on you—swings forward slightly and his eyes drop to it for just a moment before coming back to your face.

“Hi,” you say.

“Hi.” He leans up and kisses you, slow and easy, the kind of kiss that doesn’t have anywhere to go. Just existing for its own sake. His hands are warm through your shirt and when you settle your weight more fully against him, he makes a quiet sound of contentment and deepens it slightly. This is what you do now, too. Kiss on his couch or yours without the weight of a timer or a goodbye waiting at the end of it. It’s been two months of this—this careful, deliberate building of something. He still kisses you like he has all the time in the world, still touches you like he’s cataloguing, but there’s an ease to it now. A settled quality. Like you’ve both stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop and started just…being.

You pull back and look at him. The late afternoon light catches in his hair, turning it warm. His hands are steady at your waist and he’s looking at you with an expression that’s become familiar—interested, attentive, present.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” you say. “Just looking.”

“Yeah?” His thumb traces a slow line just under the hem of your shirt. “What do you see?”

You lean down and kiss him instead of answering, and he lets you redirect, his mouth curving slightly against yours like he knows exactly what you’re doing. His hands slide up your back under your shirt, palms flat and warm against your skin, and you feel the shift in his breathing when you roll your hips forward slightly.

“Hey,” he says quietly, pulling back just enough to look at you.

“Hi.”

“We should talk about something,” he says.

“We should?”

“We should.” But he’s still looking at you like he’s thinking about not talking at all, and his hands are still moving slow up and down your back, and you’re fairly certain this conversation is going to get derailed before it starts.

“Okay,” you say. “Talk.”

He looks at you for a long moment. Something in his expression shifts—settles, like he’s made a decision.“I want you,” he says. Simple. Direct. “I’ve wanted you. I’ve been taking my time because—” He pauses, and one hand comes up to cup your face. “Because I wanted to do this right. I wanted you to know it wasn’t just about getting here.” His thumb brushes your cheekbone. “But I think you know that now.”

Your heart does something complicated in your chest.

“I know that” you say quietly.

“Good.” He kisses you again, softer this time. “So I’m saying—if you want to—we don’t have to stop anymore.”

The thing is, you’d known this was coming. Have felt it building for weeks in the way his hands have lingered longer, the way the kisses have gotten deeper, the way he looks at you sometimes like he’s exercising active restraint. You’ve felt it in yourself too; the wanting has gone from a spark to a constant low heat, banked but present, waiting.

“I want to,” you say.

Something in his expression clears. Warms. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He kisses you again and this time it’s different—still slow, still Chan, but there’s an intent under it now. A promise. His hands slide back under your shirt, higher this time, thumbs brushing the underside of your ribs, and when you shift in his lap you feel that he’s already interested in where this is going.

“Here?” you ask against his mouth.

“Here,” he confirms. “And probably other places. I’ve thought about it a lot.”

“Have you.”

“Mmhm.” His mouth moves to your jaw. “I have a whole list.”

“A list.”

“I’m thorough,” he says, which is what he always says. You’d laugh except his teeth graze the spot below your ear that he knows about and has been systematically destroying you with for two months, and instead you make a sound that’s not quite words and feel him smile against your skin.

“Starting here though,” he says. His hands slide to the hem of your shirt and pause. Waiting for permission even now, which does something to you. You lift your arms and he pulls it off in one smooth motion and then just looks at you for a moment, sitting in his lap in the golden late-afternoon light, and something in his expression makes your breath catch.

“You’re so—” he starts and doesn’t finish. Just shakes his head slightly and leans in and kisses your collarbone, your shoulder, the skin above the necklace that matches his. His hands are warm and certain on your waist, and you thread your fingers through his hair and just feel it; the wanting, the patience finally reaching its conclusion, the months of careful building coming to whatever this is now. His mouth travels lower and his hands move with it, tracing the lines of you like he’s still cataloguing, still learning. When he reaches the center of your chest he pauses and looks up at you with dark eyes.

“Okay?” he asks.

“Yes,” you say. “Chan, yes.”

He takes his time.

Of course he does. You’d known he would—he’s taken his time with everything, every kiss and touch weighted with intention—but it’s different now. Now there’s no timer, no stopping point, just the long stretch of the evening and his apartment and his hands learning you the way he’s been wanting to.

He maps you there on the couch with his mouth and hands until you’re squirming in his lap and saying his name in a way that makes his grip tighten on your hips. Until you pull at his shirt and he leans back just long enough to let you take it off, and then you’re skin to skin and you can feel his heart racing under your palm and it settles something in you to know you’re not alone in this wanting.

“Bedroom,” he says eventually, voice rough. Not a question.

“Bedroom,” you confirm.

He stands with you wrapped around him like it’s nothing—like he’s thought about this too, the logistics of it—and carries you down the hallway to his room. The one you’ve slept in a dozen times now but never like this. Never with this intent. He sets you down at the edge of his bed and just looks at you for a moment, standing between your knees, his hands resting lightly on your shoulders. The late light is softer in here, filtered through curtains, and his hair is a mess from your hands and there are marks blooming on his neck that you put there on the couch and he looks…

“What?” he asks, echoing his question from earlier. “What do you see?”

You reach up and trace the chain at his throat down to the marks on his collarbone. The line of his stomach where it disappears into his waistband.

“You,” you say simply.

His eyes darken and he leans down and kisses you, deep and thorough, until you’re lying back on his bed and he’s following you down, settling his weight against you in a way that makes your breath catch. This…this is new. The full length of him against you, warm and solid and here. His mouth finds your neck and stays there while his hands work at the rest of your clothes with patient efficiency, and when you’re finally bare beneath him, he pulls back and just—looks. Studies you the way he’s been studying everything about you for months, committing it to memory.

“Baby,” you say, and there’s something in your voice that makes him look up.

“I’m here,” he says quietly. “I’ve got you.”

“I know,” you say, and you do. You’ve known it since the first night, really. Since seven minutes in this very bedroom when he’d asked permission before kissing you. Since every door and every goodbye and every time he’d pulled back when he could have pushed forward.

You reach for him and he comes, mouth finding yours again, and his hands are everywhere now—your waist, your ribs, the curve of your hip—mapping and cataloguing and learning, and you do the same, finally getting full access to all of him. The muscles of his back under your palms. The way he shivers when you drag your nails lightly down his spine. The particular sound he makes when you roll your hips against him just right.

“Wait,” he says, pulling back. “I need—hang on.” He reaches over to his nightstand and you watch him, your chest rising and falling, as he takes care of the practicalities with the same unhurried focus he brings to everything. When he comes back to you his eyes are dark and warm and certain.

“Pretty baby,” he says.

“Hi,” you say with a soft smile and pull him back down.

He goes slow. Achingly, deliberately slow, watching your face the entire time, one hand cupped against your cheek while the other grips your hip.

“Okay?” he asks, voice strained, holding himself so still you can feel the tension in his shoulders under your hands.

“Yes,” you manage. “move, please—” He does. Finally. And the feeling of it wipes out every coherent thought you’d had. He moves like he kisses—unhurried, thorough, paying attention to every response, every sound, adjusting and learning. His forehead drops to yours and his breath is ragged and you’ve never felt so completely present in your body, so entirely here with someone.

“You feel…” he starts, voice broken at the edges. “God, fuck, you feel—”

You pull him into a kiss instead of making him finish that sentence, he groans into your mouth and the pace shifts, just slightly, enough that you’re both chasing something now, building toward it together. His hand slides between you and finds where you need him and you arch into it, into him, his name leaving your mouth without your permission.

“There,” he says quietly, watching your face. “Yeah. There.”

He’s relentless now in that patient way of his; not rushing, not frantic, just absolutely focused on taking you apart piece by piece. His hand between you, his mouth on your neck, on your chest, the slow steady rhythm that’s pushing you closer and closer to the edge.

“Chris,” you say, and it comes out desperate. “I’m—”

“I know, baby” he says. “I can feel it. Lemme…just let me—”

And when you finally go over it’s with moans of his name, your hands fisted in his hair and your whole body pulling tight and then releasing, waves of it rolling through you while he keeps moving, keeps his hand exactly where you need it, drawing it out until you’re shaking underneath him.

“That’s it,” he says quietly, and there’s something wrecked in his voice. “Come for me, love.”

You pull him down into a kiss and roll your hips and he makes a sound that’s punched out of him, raw and genuine, his control finally fracturing. His rhythm stutters and his hand grips your hip hard enough to bruise, when he finishes it’s with his face buried in your neck, your name on his lips and his whole body trembling against you.

The room settles back into itself slowly.

You’re both breathing hard, hearts racing, skin damp with sweat. Chan’s weight is warm and heavy on top of you and you’re stroking your hands through his hair, down his back, gentling him through the aftershocks the same way he’d done for you. Eventually he stirs, presses a kiss to your shoulder.

“I need to—hang on,” he says, and carefully extracts himself, disappearing into the bathroom for a moment before coming back with a warm washcloth. He cleans you up with the same careful attention he brings to everything, his touches gentle, and when he’s satisfied, he tosses the cloth toward the bathroom and collapses back onto the bed beside you.

“Come here,” he says, already reaching for you, and you go willingly, tucking yourself against his side with your head on his chest. His arm comes around you immediately and his other hand finds yours, threading your fingers together.

The light outside has gone deep gold, nearly orange. The city sounds drift in through the window. His heart is still working its way back to normal under your ear.

“That was…” you start.

“Yeah,” he says.

A long, comfortable quiet.

“I thought about that a lot,” he says eventually. “In case that wasn’t obvious.”

“It was fairly obvious,” you grin.

His chest shakes with quiet laughter. His hand tightens on yours.

“Was it…” he pauses. “Was it what you wanted?”

You prop yourself up on your elbow to look at him. He’s watching you with an expression that’s more open than you’ve ever seen—vulnerable in a way that makes something in your chest pull tight.

“Yes,” you say simply. “It was exactly what I wanted.”

Something in his expression settles. He pulls you back down and kisses the top of your head.

“Good,” he says quietly. You lie there together as the light shifts from gold to amber to the soft gray of early evening. His hand traces absent patterns on your arm. Your fingers trace the chain at his collar. The comfortable silence stretches, easy and unhurried.

“Hey,” you say eventually.

“Hmmm?”

“You said you had a list.”

His hand stills on your arm. Then starts moving again, slower. “I did say that,” he says, and you can hear the smile in his voice.

“What else was on it?”

He’s quiet for a moment, and when he speaks, his voice has dropped to something lower, warmer.“You really want to know?”

“I really want to know.”

He shifts, moving to sit up against his headboard pulling you onto his lap. His eyes are dark again and there’s something in his expression that makes your breath catch.

“I thought about having you in the kitchen,” he says quietly. His hand traces down your neck, over your chest to your stomach and lower. “On the counter. Against it, bent over it. I thought about it a lot, actually. Every time you’ve been in there making coffee in the morning.”

Your breath catches.

“I thought about the shower,” he continues, his hand still moving, slow and deliberate. “How the water would feel. The sounds you’d make, would they echo...”

“Chris—”

“I thought about my couch.” His eyes follow his hand as it traces back up your ribs. “Which we started on, but I thought about finishing there too. Thought about what you’d look like in the light from that window.”

His hand slides higher.

“Basically,” he says, leaning down so his mouth is near your ear, “I’ve thought about having you in every room of this apartment. Multiple times. Multiple ways.” He pulls back to look at you. “So, if you’re asking what else is on the list—”

“Show me,” you say.

The smile that crosses his face is slow and warm and edged with something that makes heat pool low in your stomach.

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Yeah,” you say. “Show me the whole list.”

The kitchen happens before you’ve even fully decided to leave the bedroom. You’d gotten up—both of you—some vague idea about food or water or rejoining the living, you’re in one of his shirts and nothing else, he’s in his boxers and you make it as far as the kitchen before he’s turning you around and lifting you onto the counter in one smooth motion.

“This,” he says, stepping between your knees. His hands are on your thighs and his eyes are dark and focused. “This is what I thought about.”

“We should—” you start, but he’s kissing you and his hands are sliding up under the shirt you’re wearing and whatever you were going to say dissolves entirely.

He’s less patient this time. Or maybe just more urgent, the careful control he usually maintains loosened by what happened in the bedroom, by having finally gotten what he’s wanted. His mouth is demanding on yours and his hands are everywhere, when he pulls you to the edge of the counter you wrap your legs around him and pull him closer.

“Yeah,” he says roughly. “This. Exactly this.”

He doesn’t even take the shirt off you; just pushes it up and out of his way, his mouth following his hands, and when he’s ready, he pulls you onto him in one motion that has you gasping against his shoulder. The angle is different here. Deeper. More intense. Your back arches and he catches you, one arm around your waist and the other braced on the counter beside you, and the leverage lets him move in a way that has you seeing stars.

“Baby…nhng, fuck—oh god—”

“I’ve got you,” he says roughly. “I’ve got you, just—so fuckin’ tight—” He shifts the angle slightly and hits something that makes you cry out and his grip tightens and he does it again, and again, relentless and focused and watching your face the entire time with that same dark attention.

“There?” he asks, voice strained.

“There,” you confirm, barely coherent. “Don’t stop, don’t—”

“I’m not stopping.” His voice has gone rough and low and determined. “Not until you…I want to feel you,”

And when you go over this time it’s harder, sharper, your body clenching around him and your nails digging into his shoulders, dragging down his back with his name torn from your throat. He follows almost immediately, the feeling of you pushing him over, and he buries his face in your neck and holds you through it while you both shake apart together.

The shower happens an hour later. You’re both sticky and spent and when he suggests it you agree immediately, following him into his bathroom on unsteady legs. He gets the water running and you step in together and for a few minutes it’s actually just a shower—the water hot and good, washing away the evidence of the evening so far. But then his hands are on you again, soapy and slick, he’s washing you with that same careful attention, and when his hands linger between your legs you lean back against his chest and let him.

“Again?” you ask, breathless.

“I told you I had a list,” he says against your ear. His fingers are skilled and patient and you’re already sensitive from earlier, so it doesn’t take long before you’re shaking against him, his arm around your waist holding you up while his other hand takes you apart.

“I want—” you start, when you’ve caught your breath.

“What do you want?”

You turn in his arms and kiss him. “More. You.”

“You have me,” he says.

“Chris,” you say, and drop to your knees.

His eyes go wide and dark and his hand comes up to brace against the shower wall.

“You don’t have to—” he starts.

“I want to,” you say, looking up at him through the water. “Please?”

And who is he to deny you? Taking your time the way he always does, paying attention to what you learnt makes his breath catch and his hand tighten in your hair, and when he finally finishes it’s with his head tipped back and your name echoing off the bathroom tiles and his whole body trembling.

The couch happens last, deep into the night when you both should’ve been exhausted but somehow aren’t. You’d made it back there after the shower, skin still damp, wearing clean clothes that lasted approximately ten minutes before he was pulling them off again. The lamp in the corner is the only light now, warm and low, and you’re in his lap again where this whole thing started hours ago.

“Hi,” he says, smiling up at you.

“Hi,” you say back.

This time is different from the others. Slower. Not because he’s being careful but because you’re both exhausted and wrung out and this is less about chasing something and more about just being close. Being together. He moves under you with easy, rolling motions and you move with him, hands braced on his shoulders, and it’s intimate in a way that makes your chest tight. His hands are gentle on your hips and his eyes don’t leave yours and somewhere in the middle of it you feel something shift.

“Chan,” you say quietly.

“I’m here,” he says. “I’m right here, baby.”

“I think—” you start and stop but his eyes are steady on yours and you can see your own feelings reflected there and suddenly it doesn’t feel scary to say it. “I think I’m in love with you.”

His hands still on your hips. His eyes search yours.

“Yeah?” he asks, voice soft.

“Yeah,” you say.

He pulls you down into a kiss that tastes like relief and something deeper, something unnamed but present. When he pulls back his forehead rests against yours.

“I’m in love with you too,” he says quietly. “I’ve been in love with you. I think—I think since the balcony, maybe. Or the first date. Or—” He pauses. “I don’t know when exactly. But I am.”

You kiss him again and this time when you move together it’s different; not desperate or urgent or playful but something else entirely. Something that feels like a promise. His hands are gentle and his mouth is soft and when you finally finish together it’s quiet and mutual and perfect.

Later—much later—you’re back in his bed. Actually in it this time, under the covers, your legs tangled with his and your head on his chest. The city has gone quiet outside, and the apartment is dark except for the ambient light coming through the windows. His hand is tracing lazy patterns on your back. Your finger traces the chain at his throat.

“So,” you say eventually. “That was your list.”

“That was the list,” he confirms.

“Thorough.”

“I told you I was.” You can hear the smile in his voice.

“You did warn me,” you say.

A comfortable quiet settles over you. His hand continues its slow path up and down your back. You’re both exhausted now—truly, finally exhausted—but neither of you seems ready to let go of being awake yet. Of this.

“Hey,” he says quietly.

“Hmm?”

“I meant it,” he says. “Earlier. I love you.”

You tilt your head up to look at him. He’s watching you with soft eyes and an expression that’s completely unguarded.

“I know,” you say. “I meant it too. I love you.”

He kisses your forehead. Pulls you closer. “Good,” he says simply.

And finally, hours after the sun went down on this lazy Saturday, you let yourself drift off in his arms, the necklace cool against your skin, his heartbeat steady under your ear, and the certain knowledge that this—this careful thing you’ve been building for months—is exactly what you both needed it to be.

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