"So... we're boyfriends now?"

I was spaced out and happy, staring into his eyes. I felt like I'd been through a hurricane. We were sitting close in the flowery grass, holding hands. His were so beautiful — soft brown and stubby. I held them tighter.

"We are anything you want to be." Paraphrased, I give up and you're everything.

"Boyfriends." He smiled, triumphant. "I guess my wooing worked after all."

"Enough with the wooing, your wooing is excessive, concerning."

"I woo naturally, it's just how I am."

"It has to get tiring."

"It's worth it."

I smiled. "I'm happy you're still here. I was scared you would really leave. Terrified, I mean. I wanted to keep you around without... taking the leap. Without letting you fully into my world. You know my world is..."

"Complicated," he said.

"Right. We can figure it out together."

"Exactly what I wanted."

"Can you forgive me? For all... that?"

"You'll have to earn it."

I pulled his hands up and kissed them. The half-second my lips pressed to his skin was too short.

"You're forgiven," he said immediately.

"I'll try harder."

"Are you gonna call me nicknames now?"

"What would you prefer — honey bunches or angel eyes?"

"Honey bunches."

"I was joking."

"I wasn't."

"I will not call you that."

"You know you want to, boo."

"You're not calling me that, either!"

He smiled at my outburst. His expression slowly became something else — bashful, unsure.

"Do you, like, want to go on a date sometime?"

I rolled my eyes, showmanship getting the better of me. "We're on a date right now, Minho. And Port Angeles was a date, too."

"I KNEW IT," he yelled. I laughed. And then there was quiet. His smile waned and his eyes shifted down to my mouth. My stomach did a somersault.

"Can we...?" he asked.

All I could say was "Yes." His reply was a winded "Oh, my God."

I scooted closer, held his face between my hands. Good Lord, I'd thought about this before. At length. His eyes were switching back and forth between mine, lips already puckered, waiting.

I inched forward so carefully, so slowly, and my entire body froze as our lips touched. I focussed on holding my breath, paying attention to the risks, every variable. And the way his fingers shook lightly on my shoulders. Did he like it? Was I doing well enough? How could I make it better?

Minho suddenly gasped for air, and I flinched back, panicking.

"I'm — sorry," he panted, "I wasn't — breathing."

Oh, thank God it wasn't something worse! "It's okay."

"You're really not — short of breath?"

"I don't have to breathe at all."

He grimaced as if he were jealous. I smiled back, hugging him gently, and waited until he caught his breath.

Minho cleared his throat. "All right then—"

I kissed him again before he could finish. Maybe I was being overzealous — his lips shaped themselves around mine, yielded under the pressure. He didn't seem to mind. His face was warm and his hands were warm and he was warm. He couldn't imagine what his every touch felt like when I'd been a block of ice surrounded by blocks of ice for a century.

But then he parted his lips, and his honeyed taste flooded into my mouth.

And his blood... his sweet blood — burning just under his skin...

I held his face back as quickly and gently as I could manage. "Minho."

He knew to push himself away — fast. God, he tasted even better than he smelled. I wanted more, I wanted all of it. I was so close to it.

I dug my fingers into the ground. A moment of charged silence. Was I strong enough to unfreeze? The taste still clawed up my throat like fire.

I peeked one eye open, and then the other. Minho was curled up a few feet from me. Smiling, not afraid. Of course.

"Sorry," I murmured.

"It's okay. Sorry."

"It's okay. It was just a little close."

"And I smell too good?"

"Way too good."

"Other than that last part, was it" — he covered his face with his hands — "okay for you?"

I giggled — giggled, for Christ's sake. "It was perfect. You?"

"It lived up to my fantasies, no doubt."

"So you've fantasized about that before?"

He winced. "That's embarrassing, forget I said that."

"I'll move on, but I will not forget."

His nose crinkled delicately in my direction.

I crawled closer to him, arms upheld, just waiting for him to complete me.

"Can I hug you?"

His arms rose, eyes still caught on mine. I hugged him and he hugged back, head on my shoulder, leaning into me like I was all that could hold him up.

~ * ~

"Tell me more about your family," Minho said. The moon was out, crickets singing, but his eyes were on me, body cuddled up against mine in the front seat of his truck.

"What do you want to know?"

"How did you all find each other?"

"We've been building our family since... a while. Mostly it was by chance." We found each other more or less by happenstance. Felix and Changbin were the only ones who had intent to infiltrate our coven.

"And when it wasn't?"

"It's a long story."

He made a whiney sound.

"Okay, okay. I'm not the only one in my family with... gifts. Felix is a precognitive. He has visions of the future. It's how I knew you were in trouble in Port Angeles. Someone makes a decision, and it's like the butterfly effect. He stares off into space and sees the change as if he were watching a movie." I could have mentioned that he was a tricky, hyperactive nymph with a taste for drama — and his gift of foresight only intensified that — but I kept my biases out of it.

"Like Raven from That's So Raven?" Minho said.

"Yup, that's him."

Minho laughed. I was thankful for the useless TV Guide in my brain if it meant I'd get to hear him laugh.

I continued. "Felix says he made the smallest decision, to turn left instead of right, and he saw himself becoming a part of our family. He had no idea we existed. He had no idea Changbin existed when he saw him in the same vision and instantly fell in love with him. The two of them found us in nineteen twenty-two, they've been with us since."

"Does Changbin have a power?"

"Changbin's gift is... unique. He can manipulate a person's emotional climate, excite or sooth a crowd at will. He acts like he's gonna take over the world, but we know he's too fluffy." If he ever tried, Seungmin would punt him straight into the afterlife. Besides, Felix preferred the world to be free, and Changbin would never upset Felix.

"Do the others have powers?"

"Theirs are more subtle. Everyone carries with them a few traits or talents from their human lives, and becoming a vampire strengthens them."

"So you could already read minds when you were alive?"

"I could get a read on people easily. I think. Human memories fade." They faded the way dreams fade, leaving an obscure feeling in the pit of my stomach, the longing for a maternal touch from a woman I don't remember, the release of a needle in the soft of my arm.

"Oh. Do you wanna talk about it?"

"Um, no, thanks. That's sweet."

He smiled. "What about Seungmin? What can he do?"

"Seungmin has charisma. It's impossible not to love him." Despite his constant one-liners. He bonded with people easily, made relationships that weren't always... mellow, but were trusting and loyal. With Seungmin, words weren't necessary.

"Hyunjin?"

"Hyunjin can look at any given situation and find the good in it, hold on to the positive. He sees the world through rose-coloured glasses." In sharp contrast to me. That was why we fit well together. Somehow his light could brighten my shadow.

"Jeongin?"

"Jeongin can cheer anyone up simply by being himself." I wasn't entirely sure if that was a vampiric superability — maybe he was just like that. He cared in the quietest ways, a solid hand to hold, a coolheaded voice. Half the kind things he'd done only occurred to me years afterward.

"Dr. Bang?"

"Chan is compassionate. He's worked hard his whole life, only thinking of others." He knew what it was like to be alone — he had been for 150 years before he'd found Haseong. Sometimes he'd sit back, watching us bicker and bumble around, and love would light up in his eyes. Our companionship meant everything to him.

"Mr. Bak?"

"Haseong is caring, loyal, protective — he's fierce in his love." Some of the first words he ever said to me were 'You are not alone. We're here for you now. You will never be alone again, okay?'

"And Chan and Haseong are together?"

"Yes."

"And Felix and Changbin?"

"Yes."

"And Hyunjin and Jeongin?"

"And Seungmin."

"Like... the three of them?"

"Yes."

"Whoa," Minho said. "Cool. So, basically, you came together to form a family of vampires who don't eat people."

"Gay vampires who don't eat people."

He laughed. "What were you all before that?"

"We came from very different backgrounds — from every corner of the world, all different pockets of time. Chan is three hundred years old while Felix is barely ninety. Each of us were on the brink of death; Chan wouldn't have turned us otherwise."

"You were dying? How?"

"I was seventeen and my parents were... gone. It was 1895. I've learned from Chan's mind that I was an addict — heroin. I was living on the street and got an infection. Sepsis set in. Chan found me, alone and half-dead in a back alley, and turned me." I wasn't emotional about it. It was a life I didn't know, something that only came to me when I had too much time to think.

Minho patted my hair. "I wanna comfort you but I don't know how."

"Pats are good."

He kept stroking my head the way one would pet a cat. "What does it feel like? Turning into a vampire?"

"More painful than you can possibly imagine." Turning, unlike my short first life, I remembered in detail. A shot of pain fled down my neck, ticked in my empty chest for a second.

"I've stepped on a lot of Lego in my lifetime," Minho challenged, "try me."

"Like drowning and burning at the same time." Yes, it had felt like my organs were on fire, lungs full of water, but 'drowning and burning' wasn't a good enough description. Honestly, it was indescribable. It was so excruciating that even the word 'painful' didn't fit.

My love blinked at me. "That sounds awful."

"It was."

"But you're okay now."

I caught his hand and held it. "I'm okay."

He smiled at me, considering my face.

"Are these acne scars?"

"Yeah." They were the remains of acne scars. Becoming a vampire healed them a little, but they had always been noticeable, like the scarred-over bullet wounds on Seungmin's stomach or the burns on Hyunjin's back.

"They're beautiful," Minho murmured.

"Is that possible?"

"Of course it is."

I looked at him, at his eyes, and then the top of his forehead. Little raised bumps — some the same caramel of his skin, some reddish — peppered his hairline, all the way down to his jaw.

"Yours are beautiful, too."

"You're just saying that," he smiled, obviously fishing for more compliments.

"I've actually never noticed them before. But they are. You are." Had I never told him he was beautiful before? I hate myself.

He smiled wider, cuddled closer to me as he shivered. The shaking didn't stop — he was cold again. I tried not to freak out too much as I pulled to the side of the road. We were almost back in town — the trees around us were casting an ominous shadow.

"If you're cold, you shouldn't touch me," I said.

He was taken aback. "But I want to."

"Is it really worth your comfort to—?"

He crossed his arms stubbornly. "Yes." Then his expression softened. Maybe he saw the genuine, pathetic concern in my eyes.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. Why couldn't I stop hurting him and freezing him and making him angry? Why couldn't I avoid one without the other two creeping up from an angle I hadn't accounted for?

"I don't blame you for being cold. You can't help it." He fussed my flannel shirt off his head — I had put it there when he'd gotten cold in the meadow. He poked his arms through the sleeves. "Does this make you feel better?"

"As long as you're all right."

He nodded, leaned into me, and I rubbed his shoulder. I hated that I was the cause of the goosebumps on his arms. Half a day together and I'd nearly murdered him, frozen him to trembling — twice — and likely traumatized him with all my stupid vampire stories.

I'd get better. I had to become better. For him.

---------------------------------------------

idk if anyone noticed but i changed some information regarding the family. i just had to because i know them better now than when i wrote this chapter for the first time. the information i gave before was making me cringe >.< i think the new stuff suits them better.

at this point i've totally lost a grip on how felix's powers work. we going ✈️ plot contrivances

i'm so excited to edit the next chapter, i miss having the brothers in the story. but publishing is going by too fast, i'm dreading the end. at least the last chapters are super special.. plus chapter 19 is chaotic as hell and i'm looking forward to that mess haha

also I'm late but happy birthday love, eat well and come back to us 💖💗💖💗💖💗💖💗💖💗💖💗💖💗 💖💗💖💗💖💗💖💗💖💗💖💗💖💗 💖💗💖💗💖💗💖💗💖💗💖💗💖💗💖💗💖💗💖

hope you liked this chapter, see you next time <3