the way I love

"Why are we here?" I asked through gritted teeth as Vernon stepped through the doorway to the living room. He had brought me to the house, which was surprisingly unsurprising, though he had been silent through the journey.

He stood near the switch board, but didn't turn on the lights. I blinked a few times, trying to make out the outline of the furniture so I wouldn't bump into anything, then realized that I didn't need to.

"This is where your father died," he started, and my blood turned cold, then hot. Vernon stepped forward, and the side of his face was bathed in sudden moonlight. I pulled back my shoulders, trying to stand as steadily as possible, but he looked...stunning. The angles and planes of his face were sharper in the dim light, half obscure in the dark, half highlighted by moonlight. Unreal, beautiful, haunting. "And I know it hurts you to remember that, but you must. You need to stand here and remember it until you're over it."

My upper lip pulled back into a snarl. "Stop talking about him."

"You have to remember that he died for a reason, and that reason was to save you," he continued, taking another step, bringing his entire face into the glare of the moon. His eyes were intense, and I was suddenly aware of all his details—the intensity in his eyes, the coldness of his expression, the blood on his clothes. Someone else's blood. "You have to accept that he's gone. He's gone, and he's not coming back, nothing you do will make him come back—"

"Shut up." My hands were fists at my sides now, and I was standing as stiff as a board, willing myself not to move, because I didn't know what I would do if I let myself go.

"He's gone." Vernon was relentless, standing cold and dismissive, repeating the words over and over like a mantra he was trying to drill into my head. "He's gone. And if you keep going on this way, you'll be gone too."

"Shut up." I sniffled, the words sounding heavy and clumsy when I tried to speak around the block in my throat. "Asshole."

"I know what you're thinking," he said, taking another step, and I backed up. "That if you find the killer and put a knife in his back, it'll all be over. But it won't. You'll still have nightmares—you'll just learn to stop screaming when they wake you, and you'll still lose control every now and then. It won't stop. It will never stop."

"Who told you that?" I watched him warily as he moved, the dynamic between us like that of predator watching prey. Only between us, you couldn't tell who was which. "One of the people you killed because of me? Baekhyun? Lay?"

"Do you really think that I am who I am because of you?"

I stepped back as he stepped forward, his features blank with the same rage and coldness I hadn't seen on them since the night he had killed Lay. There was not a trace of emotion on his face other than an all-consuming anger, an anger that was as terrifying as it was fascinating, an anger that had never before been directed at me.

All this, with a single question.

His perpetually sad eyes were flat, bottomless pits that had trapped my gaze, like dungeons which kept all the monsters inside. The doors were open now, and the unemotional killer was on the prowl, my body trapped between him and the wall.

"This is who I have been for years before you, this is what I will before years after you're gone." He raised his hands, bringing them up on either side of my face. "These hands? They have killed far worse than them. I know who I am—a murderer, a cold-blooded killer, it doesn't matter what you call me. This side of me doesn't start with you, nor does it end with you. It's not a part of me. I am a part of this."

I was shaking, not knowing if it was from fear or rage. When I had first seen him this way, I had thought he couldn't get worse than this, but the sudden, whip-like anger that now touched the usually untouchable, unreachable side of him was worse than the criminal that killed in cold blood.

"This is why no one in your life will never stay," he whispered, his hot breath fanning my face, a grotesque reminder of who I was facing even as I squeezed my eyes shut. "And guess what?" His words were at my ear now, and I could hear them before he even spoke, like the smell of a storm or clouds before rain. "The redhead is next."

My eyes opened of their own accord. He was right there, in front of me, so close that I could smell the blood on him. No, you're lying, you always lie, you won't touch Taeyong, you can't. "Not if he gets away."

"Not with those injuries, he won't." Vernon sounded so assured that I almost couldn't tell he was lying. But what if he's not lying? "A bullet to the head is all it'll take. Maybe to the chest, if I want to make him last longer." There was a satisfied hum in his voice now, the fluid left behind after blood congealed.

"You won't kill him," I said, though I sounded shaken. "Jungkook wants him alive."

"Watch me," he whispered back.

I did. I looked up at him, jaw clenching so hard that it might have snapped. It didn't help that I was suddenly hyperaware of his presence, the only beating heart in the room other than mine, and I knew exactly what to say. Vernon was a dealer—he was supposed to be persuasive, every lie as compelling as the truth.

Home. That was the word I had used to describe him before, like a gust of warm air on a winter night, but he wasn't that. He was the unanticipated shiver you felt on a good day, the first snowflake, the stray bolt of lightning. Yes, he was home, but in an abnormal way—even if I didn't want to accept it, he represented all that was familiar. The outline of his features as sharp and dangerous as the blade of a knife, the way he spoke cruel yet logical. He gets me. I had heard a lot of people describe their lovers this way, but this was different. He understood me, but I hated it, because I didn't understand myself.

"Jealousy looks ugly on you," I said softly, and he pulled back a bit, as surprised as I was at the change in my tone. "Are you really going to kill him because you know you can't beat him? Because you'll never be him?"

His eyes darkened, and not in a good way. The change was welcome, as anything was better than that stone-cold expression, but I was caught off guard when a corner of his lips lifted into a smile. No, not a smile.

A smirk.

"If you cared about him so much, you wouldn't be here." He chuckled, pulling back a few centimeters, and I almost moved with him. "Even if you did choose to be with him, he wouldn't last a week with you. He's weak, a flower petal, and you're the garden shears."

"I'm not here because of you," I said, but even as I did, I noticed the dance of light over his face, the shadowy corners and the scars peeking from under the collar of his button-down. I watched the spots the moonlight painted on his skin, the way his coppery hair brushed the tops of his eyebrows. Cheetah. He was chasing, prying, and I was running as fast as I could, trying to get away.

"Really?" he asked—purred—and my eyes narrowed, heat and anger and something I couldn't recognize coiling in the pit of my stomach. There was a challenge in the set of his features, the cocked eyebrow, the slight, haughty smile. "Admit it. No matter what you say or do, we both know you're lying. You could've chosen to be anywhere; you could've run away then—" his smile turned wicked— "but you're still here with me instead of him, breathing the same air as me instead of him, because you couldn't stay away. Because you just. Couldn't. Resist."

Dead end.

My senses sharpened, and time skipped forward with a beat of my heart. I wasn't sure which one of us leaned forward first—or maybe we did it together—but we crashed together at the same time, colliding so suddenly that I felt the jolt in my bones long after. His hands slid from the wall to my thighs, and up to my hips, slipping under my t-shirt. His chest rose and fell heavily against mine. I reached up, threading my hands through his hair, and we kissed. His mouth was hot and damp, and so was the skin through his shirt. But not his fingertips, which were icy cold when his hand rested on my lower back, digging into my skin as if trying to absorb heat from it.

I could feel every inch of him, the flutter of his eyelashes against my cheek, his jawline under my fingers, the feverish melt of his lips against mine. The kiss felt cathartic, the first gasp of air when you break the surface after almost drowning; seconds that draw into hours as you claw around underwater, looking for purchase, trying to reach out. The first contact with him was the first grateful breath of the drowning, ragged and desperate, tinged with the feeling of salt on your teeth and the distinct taste of blood.

The feeling itself was brighter than the stars in my vision, the simple thought of being able to touch him as bright and brilliant as a lit match falling into a can of gasoline, explosive but not destructive, turning the walls of my heart to wax and bloodstream to a river of starlight. It felt like he was changing me with every touch—parts of me came to life as his hands navigated the lines and shapes of my body, discovering, feeling, wondering.

I was breathless as his touch opened like flowers on my skin, the way he kissed and felt and the way we connected. The taut muscles of his chest, the fine bones of his face, I wanted to feel it all. Vernon kissed me hard, and fast, as if he couldn't wait any longer. It was tongues and teeth, and his hands stroked my skin with rough, deep caresses that made all of my nerves come alive.

For the first few seconds, my mind was so assaulted by an overload of senses from all sides that it shut down. When I came back to my senses, I was on my back on the bed, arms still looped around Vernon's neck as he bent over me, kissing me again. I clawed at his shoulder blades, trying to pull him even closer, crushing our chests together—the first few buttons of his shirt were undone, though I had no memory of my hands working on them.

"Don't stop," he gasped between touches, and I gasped with him. Every touch was freezing cold, so cold that it felt hot, turning my nerve-ends to open wires with sparks of electricity jumping between them. I slid my hand down the center of his chest, undoing the rest of the buttons, feeling every raised scar like strokes on a painting. His eyes were shining, looking at me, and I felt so free that it was like someone had reached into my chest and broke open my ribs, letting my heart beat free.

Vernon's hands were slippery on the bare skin of my hips, pulling me up, and then he was beneath me, me on my knees in front of him, above him. His hands gripped my waist, pressing kisses along the slopes on the insides of my hipbones. All of a sudden, he stopped, and looked up at me—the world held its breath—and let out a tiny breath.

I cupped his face in my hands, cradling his jaw as I looked down at him. The light was in his eyes, through the layers of water in them, and I could see the bits of lighter brown in his irises that I hadn't before, like etchings of gold, turning the dark hazel to concentric rings of honey. Insect wings in the sunlight, run through with cracks, spreading outwards like a membrane stretched over a frame. Fragile. It seemed impossible that just moonlight and tears could change his eyes so much, but they did. They looked like dying embers trying to keep their fire, honey combs, filigree, so weak with fluttering emotion that they could melt into tears at any moment.

And to think that just a few minutes ago, those very eyes had been as cold as a lake frozen over in winter. So changeable and brittle, so unpredictable.

He changed faces so easily.

"You scare me sometimes," I whispered, but there was tenderness in my voice, as soft as cushions. His hand came up to cover mine, the one that held up his face to the light, threading his fingers through mine. At that moment, I felt naked, and not just because of my body.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you," he whispered back, slipping my hand from his jaw and turning it over, pressing his lips to my knuckles. "I'm sorry. I was so scared."

I gave in to him again, leaning into him with a grace and trust that made it seem like I was falling into his arms. He caught me—of course he did, gently and carefully, as if I were made of glass, and we pressed into each other, fitting as perfectly as puzzle pieces. I cupped the back of his neck for support as I went under, under the water again, my hands traveling the length of his spine and feeling the rise and fall of it, the ridges like rings of bone under paper-thin skin. Vernon was strong, and I knew it better than most people, but at that moment, he felt breakable and frail, like pressed flowers. So many memories hidden away in those eyes.

The moment was precious, hidden away, and there was a distinctive vulnerability about it. Vernon's hands were shaking when I caved into him, rising and rising and then collapsing. He made a soft, choking sound at the back of his throat, burying his face into the crook of my neck, where I could feel the gentleness of his tears—he didn't hide them.

Destroy me, my body sang as I curled into him, his skin warm. He looked at me with hooded eyes, sweat clinging to his lashes, irises burning dark gold and star-bright. When he kissed me again, it was searing hot, and when my eyes fluttered shut, I could almost hear his heart against my chest. My ruin, my salvation, my love.

"I was so scared," he repeated, so softly that I wouldn't have heard him if it wasn't for the silence. His arms came around me, and I felt incredibly and impossibly safe. "I didn't have anyone back then," he said, kissing the side of my jaw, slowly, steadily, "but now I do."