Chapter Text
Vier woke slowly, as if surfacing from deep water.
For a moment, everything felt warm. The sheets lay soft against his skin, the air calm and steady. His eyes fluttered open, unfocused at first, adjusting to the pale morning light filtering through the curtains.
A dull ache throbbed behind his temples, an insistent headache, though he couldn’t remember what had caused it.
Where was he ?
The question drifted through his mind, sluggish, weighed down by the pounding in his skull.
There was a presence beside him. A quiet, steady warmth that felt… familiar. The situation tugged at something uneasy in his chest. He drew a slow breath, bracing himself before turning, unsure if it was only his mind playing tricks, or if he was exactly where he feared he might be.
As his head shifted, his gaze caught on a glimpse of dark hair spilling across the pillow.
Kelvin.
Sleeping on his side, close enough that Vier could feel the faint warmth radiating from his body.
Something inside Vier snapped.
His breath hitched, his chest tightening as confusion surged all at once, thick and suffocating. His thoughts scrambled, desperate to make sense of it, but before they could settle, something darker clawed its way up from memory.
Another morning.
Another bed.
That same body beside him.
Back then, his head had felt heavy, his thoughts slow and tangled. He remembered the panic rising in his throat, the way nothing made sense. Where am I ? What happened ?
And then he had turned...
And seen him. Smiling. A smile that felt wrong, unhinged, as if he couldn’t even grasp how disturbing and wrong the moment truly was.
Vier remembered it vividly.
The bite of cold metal against his skin.
The crushing realization that he couldn’t leave.
His eyes flew wide, panic taking over completely now. Almost without thinking, he grabbed the blanket and yanked it up, hands trembling as he looked down at his ankle...
Nothing.
No chain.
No restraint.
Just bare skin.
He froze.
His breathing slowed, uneven, as reality began to piece itself back together.
The night before…
Fragments came rushing in.
Kelvin’s voice, raw, unguarded, almost breaking.
“Teach me how to love.”
The words didn’t just echo, they lingered, low and intimate, like they had been spoken too close, like they still existed in the space between them.
The wine. He could almost taste it again, warm and bitter, spreading slowly through him. He remembered the way his fingers had curled around the glass, how aware he’d been of every small movement, every shift in Kelvin’s posture across from him.
How hard it had been not to look. Or rather, how impossible it had been to tear his gaze away from Kelvin’s face, from the quiet precision of his features, from the kind of fragile, disarming beauty that seemed to pull him in and hold him there against his will.
The way the room had felt too small, too charged, like the air itself had turned heavy, electric, thick with something neither of them was saying.
Every glance had lingered too long. Every breath had felt shared. The air had been thick with it.
With everything neither of them said.
With everything Vier had tried not to feel.
Because beneath the unease, beneath the confusion, beneath the memory of fear...
There had been something else. Something that had made his resolve falter every time Kelvin looked at him like that.
Like he was the only thing that mattered.
Vier swallowed.
He could still see it, the vulnerability in Kelvin’s eyes, raw and unguarded, the way he seemed to be holding himself together by sheer force of will. Like one wrong word, one wrong move, and he might come undone entirely.
It had done something to him. Something immediate. Instinctive.
That pull.
The same one he had felt the first time he laid eyes on Kelvin. The same one that had taken root before he knew what it meant, before he understood what it would cost him.
And no matter what came after, the lies, the betrayal, the chain... It had never truly disappeared. It was still there now, coiling low in his chest, stubborn and unrelenting, an attraction he hadn’t asked for, couldn’t justify, and yet couldn’t extinguish.
No matter how much he knew he should.
Vier’s fingers tightened slightly in the sheets.
He hadn’t planned it.
He hadn’t thought it through.
One second they were sitting there, the tension stretching endlessly between them... and the next…
He had leaned in first.
He had closed the distance.
Pressed his lips to Kelvin’s, as though the space between them had finally become unbearable, like Kelvin’s presence, his breath, the quiet promise in his mouth had been drawing him in all along, until resisting it no longer felt possible, only inevitable.
He remembered Kelvin freezing for half a second in shock before responding, like someone who had stopped waiting to be chosen again, who no longer dared to hope...
Vier let out a quiet breath, almost unsteady now, disbelief curling through him at the realization.
He had done that.
He still didn’t understand why.
Maybe it was the wine, dulling his thoughts.
Maybe it was the way Kelvin had looked at him, like that, like he was something fragile, something worth reaching for.
Or maybe…
Maybe the truth was worse.
Maybe he had never really stopped wanting him.
The thought settled heavily in his chest, sharp with something close to shame.
How foolish could he be
To still feel that pull. To still crave that closeness... after everything.
Vier’s gaze dropped slightly. Beside him, Kelvin had woken.
His eyes lingered on Vier as if he were trying to memorize something fragile before it slipped away again. There had been softness there, brief, unguarded, before it faltered. Kelvin looked away quickly, almost ashamed.
Because he had seen it.
The way Vier’s body had tensed. The instinctive movement of his hands pulling the blanket up, searching, checking his ankle.
And something in Kelvin broke a little at that sight.
It didn’t explode. It sank. Quietly. Deeply. Like a weight finding its place in a chest that had already been hollowed out by too many regrets.
Kelvin’s expression shifted, the light in his eyes dimming as the moment replayed itself, not just the seconds that had just passed, but everything that led them here.
The chain.
The locked doors.
Vier’s confusion. His fear.
The way he had looked at him back then, not with hatred, not yet… but with something far worse.
Loss.
Kelvin swallowed, his jaw tightening as if to hold something in place that threatened to spill.
Of course.
Of course that would be the first thing Vier thought of.
After everything… how could it be anything else?
He had built that fear.
He had carved it into him with his own hands.
And it didn’t undo the way Kelvin had loved him back then, blindly, selfishly, violently in its certainty, never understanding what love was supposed to be.
A breath slipped from him, almost soundless, like something breaking without permission.
Of course it was too good to be true. Of course he didn’t deserve this.
Not to wake up beside him. Not to feel the lingering warmth still trapped in the sheets.
Not even the memory, cruel as it was, of Vier choosing him. Touching him. Kissing him first.
That was what made it worse. Because it meant there was something to lose again.
And Kelvin had already proven what he did to the things he loved.
Silence settled between them, heavy and suffocating. Then, without saying anything more, Kelvin pushed himself up. The sheets slid away as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed.
The distance that opened between them was immediate. Like something had snapped back into place and refused to bend again.
“…I should go.”
His voice was low, strained, like he was forcing the words out past something tight in his throat.
Still, he didn’t look back at Vier.
Couldn’t.
Because he knew if he did, he might hesitate.
And he had no right to.
“…Wait.” The word left Vier’s lips before he could stop it.
But it didn’t land the way he meant it to. It wasn’t firm. It wasn’t certain. It wavered, caught somewhere between instinct and doubt, between wanting and fear.
And even as he said it, something inside him faltered. Could he really do this ? Just… let it go ?
Erase everything that had come before and pretend the past didn’t still sit there between them, heavy and unresolved ?
All of it still lived somewhere inside him, didn’t it ?
That brief hesitation was enough. Kelvin stilled. Just for a heartbeat. And in that single pause, something in him seemed to collapse inward, sealing itself shut with quiet finality.
That was all the confirmation he needed. Without another word, he moved. Calmly. Precisely. As if nothing had happened at all. And just like that, it was back.
That version of Kelvin. Cold. Controlled. Untouchable.
The one who knew exactly how to extinguish everything before it could become a weakness, how to lock emotion away behind something sharp, polished, impenetrable. The man who never let anything spill over, who turned pain into silence and silence into distance until there was nothing left for anyone to grasp.
He crossed to the closet and chose his clothes without hesitation. Each movement was measured, deliberate, almost mechanical. Fabric slid over skin with quiet certainty as he dressed himself, piece by piece, rebuilding the armor as if it had never been removed.
Kelvin didn’t think. He didn’t allow himself the space to.
“I’ll leave,” he said quietly, still not looking at Vier. “You can get ready in peace.”
Vier pushed himself up slightly, the sheets slipping down around him. Confusion tightened in his chest, sharp and immediate.
“Kelvin, wait…” His voice came out more urgent this time. “We should talk.”
Kelvin shook his head before the sentence could even land.
“No.”
The word was firm, but not cruel. Just final.
“You already know how this ends.”
That same quiet resignation threaded through his voice again, deeper now, heavier, as if it had been waiting there all along.
“We should stay co-workers. Everything worked fine like this.”
The words hung in the air, fragile in their simplicity, and yet absolute, like something being sealed shut from the inside. Kelvin kept his back to him as he spoke, shoulders straight, posture controlled, his voice steady.
Like he believed it. Like it didn’t cost him anything.
As if those words weren’t tearing through him even as he spoke them.
But beneath that controlled tone, something inside him twisted, tight, violent, stretched to the point of breaking.
Because he knew it wasn’t true.
It had never been “fine.”
Not once. Not for a single second.
“Fine” didn’t feel like this.
It didn’t feel like standing close enough to sense Vier’s warmth without permission, close enough to catch the smallest shift in his breathing, and still acting as if there were oceans between them.
It didn’t feel like hearing Vier’s voice across a conference table and having it land somewhere too deep, somewhere it had no right to reach, while he kept his face composed, his gaze detached, pretending it did nothing to him at all.
It didn’t feel like watching him, always watching him, and resenting himself for it.
Kelvin noticed everything.
Not in the way someone simply observes, but in the way someone cannot stop themselves from seeing too much, too deeply, until every detail becomes something carved into memory.
The way Vier leaned back in his chair when he was thinking, as if the weight of decisions never truly touched him. The quiet precision in his focus when he spoke, controlled, deliberate, each word chosen like it carried consequences no one else could afford to understand. The brief, unguarded fractures in his expression when he slipped out of control for just a moment, softness showing through before it vanished again, like it had never been there at all.
And Kelvin saw it all. Always.
Without permission. Without relief.
As if his attention had long ago stopped belonging to him, as if it could only ever be drawn back to Vier, no matter how much he tried to look away.
But the worst part was remembering what it had looked like when that distance didn’t exist, when those same expressions had been turned toward him instead. When Vier’s attention hadn’t been something distant and untouchable, but warm, direct, alive. Something that had once felt like it belonged to him.
Now, every detail felt like a quiet punishment. A reminder of what had been taken, and of how impossible it was to stop wanting it back.
Every glance Vier gave to someone else felt like something being carved out of him.
And still… he couldn’t look away. Couldn’t stop wanting, even when he knew there was nothing left for him there.
So he swallowed it.
Forced it down until it burned.
Until it hollowed him out from the inside, leaving nothing but that same relentless ache... the kind that never faded, never quieted, just lingered, sharp and constant, with nowhere to go.
Every meeting had been a quiet form of torture. A constant balancing act on the edge of something he couldn’t afford to fall into again.
Because one wrong look, one second too long, one crack in his control, and everything he had barely managed to contain would come flooding back.
So he stood there instead, trapped in a space that was too close and yet impossibly far, suffocating under a distance he had created himself.
It was unbearable. So much worse than losing him completely. Just a constant reminder of what he had destroyed.
Even at home, that feeling followed him.The silence of his house wasn’t peaceful, it was suffocating. Every room felt too large, too empty, as if it had been stripped of sound and warmth at the same time. And inside that silence, everything he couldn’t fix pressed against him until it became almost unbearable.
So he tried to drown it out.
Wine. Alcohol. Anything that blurred the edges of his thoughts just enough to make it through the night.
It never really worked. The past never stayed buried.
It came back at night. Relentless. Uninvited.
Nightmares that didn’t fade when he opened his eyes, only shifted shape, fragments of memory replaying without mercy. The moment everything had broken and could never be made whole again.
Waking up had stopped feeling like relief.
Too many times to count, he would jolt awake with his chest already tight, breath uneven as if he had been running for hours inside his own mind. His heart would slam against his ribs before he even fully understood where he was, his hands trembling as they reached for the sheets, gripping them, clutching them, as if fabric alone could pull him back into something stable, something real.
But nothing ever felt real anymore. Not when sleep itself had become a doorway back to the same scenes. The same irreversible truth.
Where no matter how many times he relived it, he still couldn’t undo what he had done.
So he would end up there again.
Standing alone in front of the sink in the dead of night, the house silent around him, his reflection barely recognizable in the mirror.
Watching the water run red.
Just to quiet it.
Just to feel something else.
Just to make it stop, even for a moment.
And it never really did.
Not since Vier had walked back into his life.
Because seeing him again wasn’t healing anything, it was reopening everything. Every wound, every mistake, every version of himself he hated most.
And it was killing him slowly. Piece by piece.
Kelvin knew he was already broken beyond repair.
There was nothing left in him that wasn’t cracked, unstable, dangerous in its own quiet way.
And that was exactly why he couldn’t do it again.
Not to Vier.
Never again.
Last night had been a mistake, no matter how real it had felt in the moment. No matter how briefly, unbearably happy he had been, how something in him had loosened when he saw Vier standing by the car like a second chance he had no right to.
Unchanged in all the ways that mattered. Impossibly composed. Impossibly beautiful. Unfairly so, the kind of beauty that didn’t ask for attention but took it anyway, that caught you before thought could intervene and held on without permission.
Still dressed with that same meticulous precision he always carried himself in, the perfectly tailored suit, every line sharp, every detail controlled, as if nothing in the world had ever managed to leave a mark on him.
He had simply stood there by the car, sunlight catching on him like he belonged to another world entirely, looking at Kelvin as if the past hadn’t completely destroyed them both.
And the disbelief of it. That he was there. That he had come.
That, even after everything, Vier had still chosen to show up… for him.
And then coming back to this house.
This same house.
The one that had once felt like a cage. The one Kelvin had filled, and stained, with the weight of his own obsession.
He remembered how overwhelmed he had been just having Vier there again, inside these walls, of all places. The wine had blurred the edges of his restraint, loosening something he normally kept locked so tightly it barely had a name. He could still feel it, the heaviness in his chest, the way his own voice had sounded unfamiliar when he finally said it.
“Teach me how to love.”
Now, in the cold clarity of daylight, the words felt unbearable. Almost shameful in their openness. Too exposed. Too human for someone like him.
Because he hadn’t just spoken that night.
He had broken.
Not quietly. Not neatly. But completely.
Standing there in front of Vier with nothing left to hide behind, no control to retreat into, no distance to protect him. Just a man coming apart in real time, reaching for something he didn’t know how to hold without destroying himself in the process.
He had begged.
Not with dignity. Not with certainty. But with need.
Like someone desperate.
Like someone unworthy.
Like the version of himself he had spent so long trying not to become.
Begging to be loved without even knowing how to deserve it.
And Vier had given it. Again.
But that was the part that made it unbearable. Because Kelvin didn’t know what it had been, attraction, pity... whatever it was, he couldn’t let it continue. He couldn’t trap Vier here again, not after everything. Not after what he had already done to him once.
That careful distance he had forced between them, the only thing keeping everything from collapsing, had to be rebuilt. Piece by piece, no matter what it cost him.
Kelvin’s jaw tightened slightly.
He made himself speak before he could lose his resolve, forcing the words out steady, even as they hollowed him from the inside.
It was better this way.
We should stay co-workers.
Vier didn’t answer.
It was like his body had frozen before his thoughts could even form, caught in that unbearable space between reaching out and letting go, between stopping him and not knowing if he even should want this.
The silence stretched. Too long. Too heavy.
Kelvin finally turned then. Slowly. Deliberately.
For the first time since he had gotten out of bed, he looked at Vier.
And for a brief moment, something raw flickered behind his eyes, something tired, fractured, almost painfully human. A kind of exhaustion that didn’t belong to sleep, but to everything he had been carrying for far too long. Something hollow. Something already in the process of shutting down.
As if, piece by piece, he was letting go of whatever had cracked open in him last night.
His gaze lingered. Just a second too long. Then it changed.
Not suddenly, but decisively.
The warmth drained first. Then the hesitation. Then the softness that had no place in a world that kept punishing him for feeling anything at all.
And when he spoke, his voice had already shifted.
Controlled again. Even. Detached.
“…It was just sex, right?”
A pause.
His expression settled into something composed, unreadable. No cracks showing. No emotion left exposed.
“No strings attached.”
Kelvin didn’t wait for an answer.
He didn’t give Vier the time to speak, to correct him, to breathe through whatever was tightening in his chest.
Instead, he gave the smallest, almost imperceptible rictus, something that wasn’t quite a smile, not quite anything at all, and turned away.
Before Vier could even move, Kelvin was already crossing the room.
The door clicked open. Then shut.
And just like that, he was gone.
Vier stayed there. Frozen.
Still half-sitting on the bed, the sheets slightly tangled around him, the morning light too bright against the silence that had suddenly swallowed the room whole.
Vier couldn't think... his mind lagged behind reality, refusing to accept the shape of what had just happened, as if denial alone could undo it.
His fingers curled into the fabric beneath him, an instinctive motion, neither grip nor release. Something in between.
The room felt larger now. Empty in a way it hadn’t been before. Colder, too, as if Kelvin had taken the last trace of warmth with him when he left.
Vier remained still, the silence pressing against his skin like something physical. Even the air felt heavier, denser, as if it had absorbed everything that had been said and refused to let it go.
The words lingered. Not just remembered, repeated.
Just sex.
No strings attached.
They circled back to him in Kelvin’s voice, precise and controlled, until they no longer felt like something said, but something imposed.
It should have been simple. Clean. Contained.
That was all it was supposed to be.
Just bodies. Just need. Just a moment of weakness neither of them should have allowed to exist.
And yet…
Vier’s throat tightened slightly.
He couldn’t deny it. He had wanted Kelvin.
Not just the closeness, not just the heat of the moment, but him. The way he looked at him like something rare, something almost untouchable, held back by restraint that only made it more unbearable. The way that restraint itself had felt like an invitation he was never supposed to accept.
Wanted the moment that restraint would finally break.
And last night… it had. Vier had felt it under his hands.
The slow unraveling of Kelvin’s control, slipping through his fingers, giving way piece by piece. The way his breath had faltered, uneven, caught somewhere between disbelief and surrender. The way his body had responded so easily, tension melting into something softer, something yielding.
The way his voice had broken against his ear, raw and vulnerable. The way that careful composure had dissolved until there was nothing left to hold onto but warmth, trembling, and need beneath him.
And Vier always enjoyed it. The control. The way Kelvin's body answered to him, gave in for him... and only him.
There was always that imbalance between them. That pull, quiet and insistent, threading through every look, every touch, every second spent too close.
It had never needed words. Just proximity. Just that charged silence stretching between them until it snapped.
There had always been that moment, when control stopped being something Kelvin held onto, and became something he let Vier take. And Vier had learned it.
How to linger. How to touch. How to push just enough, slow and deliberate, until resistance stopped being resistance at all.
Until it turned into something else.
Something that gave.
Something that wanted to give.
And Vier loved it.
Loved the shift, the way Kelvin’s body would begin to answer to him instinctively, like it had stopped fighting and started listening to his own need instead.
Every breath turning uneven under his touch. Every movement less controlled, less guarded, until there was nothing left but reaction, raw, unfiltered, impossible to hide.
Until even his pleasure stopped feeling like something he controlled... and became something Vier could draw out of him, shape, push further, hold right at the edge or pull him past it.
Last night felt exactly like that.
As if Kelvin's body remembered Vier before Kelvin allowed himself to.
And Vier had taken his time with it. He had savored every second of it, every flicker of surrender, every shudder that ran through his body under his tongue, every moan spilling from his lips. The way Kelvin had arched against him, desperate and wanting, the way his hands had clutched at Vier's back, nails digging into skin as pleasure overwhelmed him, the way his body had opened to Vier's, welcoming and wanting.
Vier had felt it again.
That control he thought he had lost.
The one Kelvin had ripped away the moment he had turned love into something suffocating, something inescapable.
For a few hours, it had felt like taking it back.
Like reclaiming something that had always been his.
He hadn’t stopped to question it.
Hadn’t wanted to.
He had taken everything Kelvin gave him without asking what it meant… or what it would change.
Because it didn’t mean anything.
It couldn’t.
It was only heat. Only breath tangled between them, too close, too fast, too easily mistaken for something else.
Close enough to feel the tremor in him. Close enough to hear every break in his breathing. Close enough that everything else disappeared.
Just sex.
That’s what it had to be.
Vier exhaled slowly, something tightening deep in his chest.
Kelvin was giving him an exit before anything could fracture again. A clean cut before it turned into something worse. Before it turned into what it had already been once.
And maybe he should take it. Maybe this was the moment he stepped back, finally chose distance, finally enforced the boundary he had insisted on.
It would be easier. Vier’s jaw tightened slightly. This was what he had wanted, wasn’t it ?
Distance. No past. No attachment. No risk.
So why did it feel like something had just been torn out of him anyway?
The silence pressed in harder, suffocating now. Vier moved suddenly, too abruptly for stillness to survive it.
He pushed the sheets away and stood, the cold air striking his skin like a shock.
For a moment, he didn’t move.
Then he turned, mechanically, and reached for his clothes.
As if nothing inside him was coming apart at all.