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prologue.
Bullets ricocheting against the walls, glass shattering over your head, and his tense arm pulling you into his chest. Changbin’s skin was drenched, the natural instinct to perspire when stressed showing even within the man that held a stone cold glare.
“Get under the desk!” His voice was hoarse from weariness, the side effects of hours—days of being on guard riddling him weaker. But not entirely under-qualified for his position.
“There’s too much going on—” Feeble was your proper description, the time spent fearing for your life no longer a match for your exasperated bones. He was hired to protect you, to give you the break you needed to get back to being a normal person in society and not the overwhelmed descendant of a multi-billionaire ring—one of which put a bounty on your head the moment you came into the world.
He was what you needed, wanted, and begged for. But with the same people after him, money rising for his head and closing in on the payment for your own—you couldn’t help but be restless over the man you were learning to love.
Cloaked figures moved with every blink, the sunset’s light faltering with their movement and showing Changbin just where they were by the shadow on the wooden flooring. Time was running out, and here the two of you sat, cornered.
“W-Whatever happened to getting out of this mess?” You begged the question in the direction of the man cradling you to his body like a shield, the deep rumble of his chuckle moving through your nerves enough to help you take in a deep breath for the first time in a long time.
The tags jingled against his collarbones, the highest ranking letter “S/0” glaring in the light reflecting off the opposing threat’s rifles as they fired into the run-down office without blinking. Changbin had been a knight in shining armor long before he was hired to keep you out of harm’s way. His stories, the legend of the quiet man who startled a generation of enemies into hiding until they could find the light again. There was no one like him.
“I said I’d keep you out of this mess.” One corner of his mouth rose with his words, the sinister appearance of a man with a plan plain on his form. His face was like jagged rocks, glass piercing into his skin but not abrading his focus even for a second. With strips and shards finding their way deeper into him as he pressed you forward and slid you across the wood towards the steel desk like you weighed nothing, you knew just what the smirk was for. “I didn’t say that I wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire.”
For hours Changbin wore that smile so hastily, as if it was a trademark. Any chance you saw it, doom was on its way. In the form of a man, a twilight that had been considered a repercussion of an era that shaped the same society you fought to change or escape all together. Legend says the man you’ve been paired with is one of the greatest killers. Had it been your words: he is just one of the tainted—peraled with a degree in protection.
The sight of the same bandana you had wrapped around his forearm gave you chills, your spine tingling with more than just small marks of the current situation. His hair dangling just over his eyes so that you couldn’t see where he was looking, the handle of the sharp knife being held tightly in his palm, an old but fully loaded revolver in the other, and the smirk rising on his lips for what felt like the last time.
“Remember what I told you?”
“Keep my head down and don’t come for you, even if you call my name.”
“Don’t play the hero, sweetheart.” A glimpse of his eyes, and no matter how scared he truly was down under—they were still soft when looking at you.
“I don’t have to.” Your smile was weak, blood spattering around the room as you watched him stand. Your heart beat thumped loudly in your ears like the ticking of a clock, eyes shutting as you heard him take in a hollow breath. “Because you’re already mine.”
—
one.
His knuckles had beat against the door of your studio apartment in a rhythmic of threes, the fourth round halting with your eyes peering through the chained lock. A short frame of a man with dark eyes peering back, he didn’t miss a beat to slide the red card through the open space.
“I was sent here, so don’t think of me as a threat.” His pearled teeth only glistened between his lips for a split second as your eyes left the card and found him again, a shiver going down your spine.
The aggressive click of the door back into its frame didn’t make him leap, the peep-hole showing him standing patiently. But as time went on, a few minutes passing and you doing nothing but staring at him from throughout the small, round glass—he could only chuckle.
“Waiting for me to pull something?”
“What if you do?” Your voice was just big enough to carry through the wooden door, his deep laughter only echoing through the halls.
“Wouldn’t I have had something out already?” His question made you raise a brow, witnessing both of his bare palms raise just high enough for you to see. “Knife in my right pocket and sock, pistol on my waist at the bottom muscles of my back—” His voice didn’t waver, not a single time. “But my hands can do a lot worse when I’m working.”
Your response was limited, the mere sound of the chain pulling from its hold and the door opening to its full gap giving you sight of the man leaning against the door frame. Dark hair over his eyes, black shirt tight around his torso, jeans swelling with the muscles of his thighs as he stood up straight—and the tightening of his fists with the clicks of his bones cracking to show he means purely business.
“Trust me enough to let me in now?” Even the tips of his shoes didn’t press forward through the doorway until he saw your head nod. Moving in at a slow pace, continuing to show you his bare hands as he passed you, his index finger pointed down at the red card he had passed through moments before.
A pass given by the authorities, and a note to you of just who they had sent. His frame moved in the corner of your eye, back leaning against a standing beam within the apartment. It had passed your mind, the light clanks of the metal labels.
“A twilight?” For once in the passing time of your life, your existence was brutally important. The passing of your parents meant all things were riding on you living, filling in their footsteps. And most importantly, meant you needed the best of the best to protect you from the bigger storm heading your way.
“Does that surprise you?” His voice was dark, charred with interest.
“My family frequents the coverage from twilights, but why do I get one personally?”
It was in your line of sight, the label on the necklace he wore. It was war outside, charging in your direction every second that passed. The indented “S/0” meant a very specific title for the man—and the level of danger in your future.
“Due to the lack of police this coming month,” His eyes wandered the apartment, but he had already scanned the space as he made his way inside. “I am the backup.”
“You mean you’re here to stay.” His eyes shot from the rug on the floor beneath the sofa to your eyes, the darkened pupils making your throat swallow only air. “It’s bad this time, isn’t it?”
“It’ll be a lot worse if one of their gangs gets your head on a pike.” He sighed softly. “But that won’t happen on my watch.”
“What’s your purpose?” The question sounded harsh, but he cleared the distorted ask faster than a blink.
“I am a killer.” He nodded, the marks under his eyes glowing in the dim apartment lighting. “Seo Changbin, at your service.”
A killer, it was obvious from the start. Twilights, the supernatural people taken from a normal life and trained to be protective services—and usually worse, serial killers for those with enough cash to make them appear as so. Justice contained in one person and used to keep the peace, that treaty had long broken before you were born when an opposing company of your father’s placed a bounty on your entire family. A fight to the end, an ever-lasting position for you to take at his death, and reality-come-knocking when you got the news not even a week prior to this.
A killer, Changbin must be. His face matched the sketches shown throughout the city, a warning not for the innocent but to the vigilantes. The one in current charge had been placed to watch over you, and yet you still worried about survival.
“Do you understand how I work?” Even with this framing of the sentence, it was like a reworded question on a test meant to throw you off, to force you to figure out what it means.
A life of being the object between a bullet and a big name, twilights had three specific rules that formed the safety of their own lives. Don’t take action against normals, obey your master, and the one Changbin grinned at most when it left his lips—always defend yourself.
“This is—” You stumbled, the red card between your fingers being lifted as the pads of your digits pressed into your temple. “This isn’t necessary. Honestly, I understand the dangers, here. But you—” The man appeared like a dark spirit, no matter what his position was. It was clear he carried baggage. “—I never expected to even meet someone like you.”
“Does this give you an idea of just how bad this is?” Finally, his body tensed with what he spoke of. “Look at yourself.” It sounded harsh, but it was hard to ignore. “When was the last time you slept? Ate without losing your food? Didn’t have to peer over your shoulder when walking down the street?”
It had been so long. Even before your father lost his life you still lived with fear of those who want you dead.
“When was the last time you felt safe?”
“I can handle myself.”
“Give me twenty-four hours. If you haven’t gotten any rest, any sense of purpose, and are still too sure you don’t need me—only then will I be on my way.” His voice was serious, the tainted mind of the twilight at your disposal making a deep breath enter and exit your lungs in a fulfilling way for the first time in a long time.
“You need me now, Master. I promise.”
—
two.
No matter the comfort of a plush cushion below your form, nothing relaxed each muscle and tendon in your body until it was almost painful like the sensation of sinking into the middle of your bed. Months of rationing out sleep, naps that never fulfilled your body to return to full energy—all settled into the past in a simple minute of time.
“Ah–Ouch—” Your voice traveled towards the couch in the far middle of the apartment, Changbin’s sitting position still tight like he wasn’t prepared for this awkward situation, either.
“Resting isn’t meant to hurt, you know.” His voice was slightly gritted, eyes skinny from his head tilted back. In the darkness of night, moonlight seeping in through the windows and giving off no heat like the sun, the man truly did seem uniquely scary.
“Feelings happen without being able to reject them.” You laughed softly, head falling back against the pillow as the pounding of your skull finally began to release. “If I could exempt every painful feeling from this lifestyle, all the scars and lonesome emotions—” His head lifted in tandem with your words, glare barely meeting with your own as you finished the sentence. “—I’d be like you.”
“Hollow, I guess.” His head shook, digits swaying from his pinky to his index finger as a form of communication. “Get some sleep. I’ll be here.”
“Twilights don’t sleep?”
“The way you were just speaking about me sounded like you knew more about us than you led on.”
“Only my father had them around. They were actual bodyguards. Had I not questioned their tags growing up, I wouldn’t be fully aware you exist.”
“Sounds more reality-bitten. Yes, we sleep. But right now, I’m not.”
A second turn-of-events to your daily routine—not pacing the night away until dawn approached. Up and down the same rug, around the couch, to peer into the fridge. Anything to mesh the need of sleep so the vitamin D you gained in the sunlight later would melt it away.
But the hushed span of silence was diminished, the sound of a deep, almost sickly cough diverting your resting form until your eyes matched with the man. Changbin’s body had lifted from the couch, a possible attempt to leave you before he woke you, the failed motion forcing him to crouch down closer to the wooden flooring. Abrupt inhales between coughs, an unseen splatter of blood into his hand, and his rushing form towards the kitchen to rinse it away still wasn’t enough to keep your questions from surfacing.
You followed him, feet tapping the floor much softer than his steel-toed boots. Without even a glance, the blood was removed from his palm but the running water as he sighed.
“Found a flaw in the system.”
“No, this one’s personal.”
The clock was ticking, a matter of six hours already passing—three of which you finally had obtained sleep during—and here you were being let into the tough man’s bubble.
“Is it bad?” Your question lingered in the air. His form, wet hands cupping the edge of the sink as his back hunched forward, only regained its stubborn and locked away frame.
“The world outside is much worse than this.”
“So death is just—an expense of caring about others more than yourself?”
“Who said I don’t care about myself?” His sentence was mocked by the chuckle at the end, eyes shifting to find yours in his taunting position. No matter what he could say, you already witnessed what he hid from most others. There was no pretending it doesn’t exist.
“You stay awake all night to protect a stranger, have powers to combat an entire army, and yet you’re getting destroyed by something from within.”
“Sounds like you’ve got my story down pact.”
“I’m taking notes.”
You grinned, his short smile lifting just in time for you to see it for a split second before his head dipped back down. A long stretch, and he was back to standing with his back as straight as a board and an intimidating expression on his face.
“Then I suppose you’ll have me figured out before the twenty-four hours are up.”
Despite being the beginning of winter, where frost covers the ground each morning and brings a chill to every flat surface around, the sun rises brightly. A glow to his skin, tiredness in his eyes with red lines all around his irises, Changbin stood wearing the same expression as the dark night before.
“The Chief is here.” His words brought you to rise from the bed quickly, pulling a large coat over your thin pajamas and rushing towards where the older man stood with his hands crossed.
“I-I slept through the doorbell!? I’ve never done that.” Frantic speech, it was Changbin’s taut arm halting you that stopped your words. Out straight, elbow aligned almost at your sternum, he caught you in a small state.
“I’ve got your back.” His brows were knitted almost as if he felt disregarded, like you forgot why he was there in the first place. “I only let him in just now.”
“Chief, thank you for coming.” You spoke slower, eyes leaving Changbin to show respect towards the same one who sent the twilight in the first place.
“It was on my way this morning.” His voice was much different than Changbin’s, the few times you met with the Chief of Police always being within the same tempo. Unlike his normal stance, he seemed more determined, almost in the same way he would appear before your father. “I must make this quick in case someone trails me.”
Your nod was taken note of, the man taking a deep breath before beginning.
“The opposing team, the ones after you and your family’s power, are closing in on your location more each day. And with their amount of imposement, they’re also taking parts of the town with it. People are being held hostage, others are being killed on the streets, all due to the official leader being a human and not a twilight.”
Every time you had reality placed before you, it sounded worse and worse. Your father’s leading department was meant to protect what needed to be protected: people, money, equipment, anything that would lead to a worsened war if put into the wrong hands. The only factor your father had shaded out was that twilights don’t need those things to take charge. And they were learning that, quickly.
“The leader cannot be a twilight.” Changbin’s voice carried over your mumbled concern from the information, chills across your skin. “It breaks the three principles to be in power. They would have nothing they could do to hold their position.”
“But that’s just it.” The war started with a simple mission statement, long overheard from where the twilights were taken to train. Even Changbin had heard it before, his eyes almost repeating what the Chief said as he spoke it. “The twilights are breaking the principles. They’re taking blood, and until you’re dead—they won’t stop.”
What your father had done, instilled into many that were the ones taking life after life outside your safe walls, it was hard to ignore. You had heard the rumors and wanted to pretend your father wasn’t such a monster. But no matter how often you covered your ears, you could still read their lips.
“The infection.” You spoke in whole, not a single rise or lower of a symbol in the sentence. There was no pretending it didn’t exist, Changbin’s deep cough being the rising sign of just how much darker and worse bad truly was. “We killed them. Now they’re killing us.”
Changbin’s lip quivered in your peripheral, the visual of you piecing things together making him bite down and turn the skin red.
“You hired Changbin to protect me.” Your statement took the Chief by surprise, his brows furrowing and rising at the sudden fact. “Knowing fully well who he is.”
“The first twilight to undergo the injection as a way to regain control over his power and make him a servant once more.”
“And it’s killing him.” Changbin couldn’t bring himself to look at you, eyes staring down at the floor like it would swallow him whole. Fists tight, the tips of his fingers turning blood red from the tightness of his rings—it was the same blood rushing to his head in anger that held him silent.
“Precisely. It is the same that is going through the districts housing twilights.”
It was torture, the mental image of so many people turning ill just as Changbin was a few hours before. Children born as twilights, parents nursing them while just as sick—where was the humanity?
“But we have retrieved a vaccine. It’s being placed out as we speak. The death toll has been halved compared to last week.”
“They rightfully want me dead as repercussions for what my father started.”
“R-Rightfully? You had no place in that decision.”
“You gave me Changbin for a reason.” Finally, the light hit the dark corner of where Changbin’s reality lied. For what felt like hours within minutes, the man’s eyes gave you a single glance at the sudden concern for his position. “You’re not giving him the vaccine, are you?”
“You are the remaining descendant of your family. There are no children after you, and you’re in control of the company now.” Changbin spoke slowly, trying to feel out your reaction before you expressed it. “I served beside your father in secret for the last few years when i was given the injection.” Like nails on a chalkboard. “My life as a twilight ends with the uprising of my final master.”
—
three.
The spoiled act of keeping what’s been handed to you, it was only meant to be followed by the chance of losing it. Changbin had been placed in this position before, life or death just for being what he is. But to punish the ones outside fighting to live another hour, it couldn’t be like that.
“Changbin should go to the danger zones and give refuge to those in need.”
“My position is with you.” His eyes grew wide. The Chief stood before the two of you, allowing his jaw to go slack from urgency as he couldn’t form words fast enough.
“And I will be fine in the daylight. If my memory is correct, you mentioned that you must follow my orders. This is the first one I’m giving. Go help others who need to be saved today.”
It took all of his might to leave you, Changbin’s eyes wandering your form for any sense of regret. “Keep your head down. Don’t come for me, even if you hear me calling for you.”
Unlike the one he’s come to know, he still hasn’t learned just where you lie in the world. The destruction your family has caused as equal to those they’ve helped, and how you’ve seen it all occur through the shining irises that dilated with every new situation.
You had forgotten the silence of your apartment the second Changbin stepped into it that night. How much the floors creak when you walk, how loud the doors close upon shutting, and most of all—the deafening sound of nothing but yourself in the home.
For as long as you had been stuck inside, you had never felt the rapid heartbeat like you had when the man was in your presence.
Even the Chief knew your idea was for the best, nodding and agreeing with your order for Changbin to go help the current district in dismay. For twilights, it isn’t strength in numbers as much as it is strength in who you have fighting for you. The amount of children he would carry to safety, the bullets he’d take to repel them from the mothers, and the many innocent people he would lead to safety—it was all enough to make you trust him more.
But without Changbin at your side, you were left practically defenseless. Just minutes apart from him could lead to the tearing of your soul from your body. As the hours ticked on you felt the reminiscence of emotions—the ones similar to before when you were convinced you were all alone in this.
But the eerie silence of your apartment halted and the swift sound of a window rising somewhere suddenly gained in your ears—you knew you were in danger.
The blunt pocket knife hidden in your clothes drawer wouldn’t be enough to cause a simplistic injury to the twilight, let alone give you an escape. As your eyes darted to the distorted light of the sunset against your wall, you carefully made out what time it was. Hour fourteen—and you already managed to make yourself bait.
The man was twice your size, his distinguishable frame moving down the hallway with a taser gun in both his hands and ready to fire. With his reflection only getting bigger in the mirror as you slipped under your bed, fear struck your nerves.
But not as heavily as the cough that admitted from him, the blacked blood spat into his hand just as Changbin had suffered making tears brim your ducts. You watched his eyes widen in surprise, his opposite hand clench at his pained chest, and knew exactly what was occuring.
As the gun slipped from his hold, your body moved faster. Inch by inch, his cough had run frantic in the way your limbs moved. Before he could call out in pain a second time, even adjust to the situation, you were the one holding the taser gun to him.
“Stop…right there.” His voice spoke between coughs, the body of a frail human being overtaken by the strength of a twilight. As he pushed back against the wall for support, your finger laid on the trigger in defense. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Why are you here?” Your voice seethed with anger, but he still had the upper hand.
“You’re getting ahead of me, here.” He was much older, clearly weakened by the infection almost to the degree of Changbin’s. But he could still kill you so easily—and that was the danger that the wrong twilights held over all that still had power.
The clicking of the lock startled you just as the cough had done the twilight, giving him enough leverage to kick at your form. With the taser gun falling onto the hardwood flooring, the sound of ringing in your ears was all you could make out. In a split second, a needle was placed at your jugular—the same infection killing twilights now seconds away from being injected into you.
But Changbin was faster, better, and equipt for this situation. A simple draw of his gun and a pull of the trigger was all it took to bring the man to the ground. As much as they wished it was opposite, even a bullet to the brain could stop a twilight in their tracks.
The needle fell from his hand, splattering the injection until the liquid seeped into the cracks between the floorboards. Your mouth was silent, not a scream or word to be made as you witnessed the scene. There normally wasn’t much to say about seeing death in its own eyes. Only chills rising on your skin, shaking limbs and chattering teeth the liable evidence of your anxiety.
It wasn’t until you felt the heat of his body, smelled the scent of his cologne in your nostrils, and felt the tears falling down your face that you realized you were safe. “Ch-Changbin?”
“I’m here.” He spoke deeply, pulling you against his chest in a tight hug as he lifted and carried you down the hall and away from what all had happened. “I’m here.”
“How did you know to come back?” It was all you could think as you watched the man return to the space of the incident and nonchalantly lift the dead twilight over his shoulder to carry into the bathroom.
“The district I was in gave word that you had been found. I got back as soon as I could.”
It was as if he could sense the worry in your heart, the speed of his following response immediately making your nerves calm back down.
“Everyone is safe there now, don’t worry.”
“But now I’m the one in danger.”
Changbin slowly dropped the body down into the bathtub, the blood running into the drain lessening the metallic scent of it from your nostrils. “Twilights can smell blood for miles.” He spoke quickly as he made his way back to your bedroom, two large bags already packed prior pulled from your closet and tossed over his shoulder. “We’ll be lucky to make it to where we’re going before they realize you’re here—without the help of some coordinates.”
With the Chief and Changbin inside and out of the apartment, it was no wonder you had been sought out. You knew it was a danger when the a Chief mentioned being trailed, for once the man had spoken nothing but the truth.
“We need to leave, now.”
“But where are we going? I mean, everyone has a trace on where my parents have already been. This is the last safehouse we had.”
“You don’t need a safehouse when you have me.” It was quick, the turn of his tongue and the snap of his body. Face to face, his breathing heavy against your skin—you could see the estranged look in his eyes that made your heart beat rapidly once again. “I am your safehouse. This is my job. You are my Master.”
His tongue dripped with venom, limbs shaking with every word. “Have I not already given you enough reason to—.”
Hour fifteen had struck. “I do trust you.”
—
four.
The stuffy room—littered with dust and scattered files—it was like your own heaven at first sight. A place where the outcome of the man made sense, you stood right inside of it. Your bag slowly slipped from your shoulder until it hit the uneven wood flooring, the creak to the old board making the corner of your mouth lift into a short smile.
Changbin’s office, as bare and boring as it seemed, still smelled thickly of his cologne and held subtle objects of his personal items. The loosely tossed graphic t-shirt over the back of the dark green couch, the large desk both evenly organized as it is messy, and an armored wardrobe opened by the man himself that held more weapons than you had seen in a long while.
It made sense of why he brought you here—his need for control in the space and surroundings he knows best. “We might not have much time here. But we have a fighting chance.”
The armoury held much more than his singled-out pistol he carried on his person, and a far sharper knife than any of the ones he had hidden in his outfit. Taking a seat on the couch, the gentle feel of another gun hidden beneath the cushion would normally worry you had his eyes not matched your own.
“How are you feeling?”
Your mouth formed a response, but your body moved faster than the words could be released. One deep gash on his arm had gone uncared for, the cut from defending the district making your heart skip a beat. How he didn’t notice it, you didn’t understand.
His skin was warm at the touch of your fingertips, thumbs pressing into the sides of the cut to test the amount of blood that leaked from the minor injury. “This needs to be cleaned.”
Eyes dark, Changbin watched you pull a bottle of peroxide from your bag and run the liquid over his arm. Not even a wince at the sting, a whine at the dab of your red bandana against the wound, or a hiss at the bow you tightened around his arm.
As you went to look away from his limb, his index finger and thumb caught your chin. Mezmorized, you nearly caught the break of his voice as he spoke. “Why did you do that?”
His voice was just above a whisper, a small shake in his hand holding at your face. “Do what? Take care of you?”
The hair sweated down onto his forehead didn’t budge with the nod of his head, but you still noticed his subtle response.
“When was the last time you had someone take care of you for a change?”
The sound of his short groan was masked by the gasp between your lips, his mouth matching yours. With nothing but the moonlight emitting inside of the small room, Changbin’s hands hooked on your hips to pull you into his form. It was like you were floating, the deepening of the kiss with the taste of his tongue overlapping yours making your head swirl.
He tasted so different from anything else, his grip at your body so rough and wanting. When your lungs finally refilled with air and your lips parted, you could see just how vulnerable Changbin had become right in front of your eyes.
“I find it difficult—” Voice so gravely, his hold on you didn’t release as you both sucked in the same air. “to focus on myself instead of others.”
Pupils dilating with every inhale, Changbin’s face moved in closer. His chest rose and fell with a heaviness to it, body radiating enough heat to make you forget about the bitter cold of the room. His kiss was so feverish, like he had been exempt from human contact for so long. Even the little moan vibrating his mouth was enough to make him hold you tighter, pull you into him until your heartbeats synchronized.
A light patter of rain fell, drop by drop sounding against the sill of the window. Changbin’s strong thigh placed between your legs, his arms lifting you from the ground, and the huff of your bodies falling to the couch as it rocked from age.
It was so simple, the main thing that nulled every worry of the future from your minds. The bite at your lip, gentle as to not break the thin skin—enough to make you realize just how much he wanted you.
Changbin, a man so fit for where he was placed in life, could make you feel so protected in such a short amount of time. His dark eyes fluttering closed with the light kisses you placed at his neck. How relaxed he looked—at peace, allowing himself to be given just a moment of release. Now matched with Changbin whispering your name, you felt lightheaded.
“Ahh—” It was as simple as your hand rubbing at him through his jeans, the fabric tightening around him. Changbin’s neck lost its strength, his head falling against the back of the couch.
So tempting, the glimmering sparkles in his eyes as your hand undid the button and zipper of his pants. His neediness was personified by the sudden thrust of his hips as your hand wrapped around him gently, a bite of his teeth at his bottom lip his sign of trying to get a hold of himself.
It was his deserving breath, a releasing sound your ears begged to hear—it made you want to give yourself to him completely.
The feeling of him only growing harder against your palm made you smirk, his breath stuttering when your thumb rubbed at his tip to find a bead of precum leaking in arousal.
Changbin never asked for anything from anyone, a stand-alone. But this—you. The sight of you falling to your knees. Pulling him from his jeans and boxers, licking at him so softly until he groaned.
He didn’t want to ask, he wouldn’t. But he didn’t have to. For once, away from all that had been done and said—he got what he wanted without a single word needing to be said.
His fingers clawing at your hair as he rocked in and out of you, skull-fucking you until his groans turned into whimpers. Your hot mouth taking him in until his cum rushed down your throat. The swallowing of his seed only made him want to witness more.
The marks being graded into your skin by his teeth, wet juices coating his length as he dipped in and out of you. An intense glare, half-lidded eyes watching as you sunk down onto him—and nothing like he had felt before.
Sweat dripped down his neck, made his lips twinge from the gentle sting of the lovebites littered on his skin, and was the leading reason for his breath hitching as you held still. No movement, eyes swelling with tears that wouldn’t fall, and a gentle call of his name from your mouth.
“Changbin—”
“Master?”
His fingers pressing into the skin of your thighs, pads roughened and calloused from years of holding weapons to protect himself and others. They only pressed deeper as you moved, not to hold you down but to help with your pace. Chasing something so rare, his hips met your own. The sound of rain outside covered the sweet remedy of the love you made, his eyes following your own as they closed. With every harder thrust up into you, an image of what could be with Changbin filled your mind.
Having him by your side forever, it would be paradise.
As your bodies stiffened, your simultaneous release pulled you both from the fog and back into reality. Hot, wet, warm, and fulfilled, you found your voice again.
“This is the final hour.”
His face contorted, something you had been wanting to see during your entire journey together finally coming into your sight. Changbin’s bright smile, toothy and filled with life.
But as it rose, you could only witness his smile fall. Just as all had been lived through so far, the danger of life slipped back into your world. A little red dot aimed at your chest, aligned with your heart that just finished beating at the same pace as his own—and the final hour officially begins.
—
five.
The bullets were fired so efficiently that they didn’t quite ricochet, but drilled into the walls. Wooden floors squealing from the weight of your bodies dropped down to the floor, your eyes caught Changbin’s.
The stray furniture, a couch, table, desk, lamp—they weren’t enough of a barricade.
Within seconds of the opposing firing into the second-floor office, glass from the window was shattering over your head.
His skin still glistened with the sweat from your intense love-making, eyes darker than they had been so far, and one thing always remaining the same—the tough look of focus in his pupils. “Get under the desk!” You could hear the shakiness of a weakening man in his voice, but you couldn’t bring yourself to comment on it.
The cloaked figures only moved faster, a group of twilights nearing the broken window to get better aim. Although the bullets didn’t have an extreme effect and wouldn’t slow Changbin down as much as they hoped, they were still useful.
The sunrise draining through the broken glass, small specks littering the flooring like stars surrounding the fading moon in between—your day of reckoning had come.
“W-Whatever happened to getting out of this mess?” Your body was still heated by his own, clinging at the man instead of following his orders to hide under the desk.
His tags clinking together was loud in your ears at such a close proximity, his voice just as calm as it had stayed since you met him. “I said I’d get you out of this mess.” It was hard to miss the tears swelling in his eyes from the words leaving his mouth. “You trusted me for twenty-four hours, just as I had hoped.”
The span of time had poured in just as his voice found you. Even with enough ammunition shooting into the small room to deafen his soft-spoken voice, you could still read his lips. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire.”
The strength of ten in one man, the power of a machine in his muscled form, and a brain as stimulated and sharp as a genius. All it took was Changbin maneuvering towards the sofa, eyes catching sight of the bullet holes in the floorboards to gauge where to lay safely and miss the firing shots. For his hand to guide the drawer of the small side table open only to return to your sight with a grenade tightly in his grasp.
The highest grade artillery in his companionship—but himself as the most powerful.
“Ch-Changbin?”
Knife in one hand, grenade in his other, and you could feel every bit of oxygen remaining in your lungs leaving with a loud sob.
You felt his pull, the knife barely pricking at your skin before you felt yourself being pushed from him. The heat of his body left completely, the coldness of the room finally returning to your form. An even colder temperature against you, the steel desk he had sat at for years was now your protection from those closing in on you.
Changbin stayed so many steps ahead, your mind hardly keeping track of his ideas or plans. A grenade, something not easily handed out in your city, was a main weapon used against twilights due to the mass destruction it can cause in such a short blow.
“Remember what I told you?”
“Keep my head down and don’t come for you, even if you call my name.”
He had said it in one breath as he was leaving with the Chief to help the damaged. If you had known what you know now, you would have been less easily convinced that the call of your name from him wouldn’t make you do anything necessary.
“Don’t play the hero, sweetheart.” A glimpse of his eyes, and no matter how scared he truly was down under—they were still soft when looking at you.
“I don’t have to.” Your smile was weak, blood spattering around the room as you watched him stand. Your heart beat thumped loudly in your ears like the ticking of a clock, eyes shutting as you heard him take in a hollow breath. “Because you’re already mine.”
It was there. It was always there. Changbin was given to you, not just by reason—but purpose, fate. There was a reason he never took a vaccine for himself. Why he never feared death outside your door. How he managed to stay so calm and put together even covered in blood, with every bit of strength he has having to be used, when your life is most at stake. He was practically already dead.
The infection has done too much damage, and he’ll die here protecting you. Fate in his earlier words, he told the truth.
You could see the faint darkening of blood forever stained on his lips, remembering the deep cough he had to release every little while that made even you flinch. As his index finger left the knife, plucked between the case and the loop of the pin, tears of true fear left your ducts.
His body had grown weaker right before you, and as he stood on his shaking legs and took two bullets to the chest like he felt nothing—all you wanted to do was hug him one last time.
The coldness of your world, the horrors Changbin had endured—it created one of the warmest people in history. If only he wasn’t created to die for you.
A small sound reached you, the pulled pin falling to the floor as Changbin stood as close to the window as he could. The twilights on the other side, unaware of the dangerous hold he had on them, could only yelp at the sudden explosion.
A massive breach between you and the dead, only Changbin was left breathing shallowly on the floor.
Your knees were pained by the wood as you collapsed, crawling to him as he huffed. The blackened blood that ran through his veins poured from his chest, minutes remaining for the man that existed only to protect.
“Things are different. You were once the one in charge of our lives, but an enemy. Now you’re the one with the power to save more than your family ever did.” He speaks as he points towards his armory, a strap from a black bag sticking out of the bottom of the doors.
Vaccines. It was all there.
Almost like a dog to a whistle human ears can’t pick up, the slowing of his beating heart brought you closer to him. His eyes staring up at you as you cupped at his cheek—for once, they were as warm as you now knew him to be.
Cradling his head against your thighs, he released a sigh from the feeling of your fingers combing through his hair. A break in his steady breathing, and it was apparent he was succumbing to his wounds.
“I don’t n-need a vaccine to save my life, to m-make me strong enough a-again.” he spoke in broken syllables. “You made m-me realize what work I’ve truly d-done, how many p-people I’ve saved.”
It was so short—the smile on his lips. Toothless, his bright eyes dimming, and the warmth beginning to leave him with his final breath.
How could anyone be prepared to watch someone fade away?
“I love you.” Your voice was a call into the dark, Changbin’s frame growing stiff and colder by the minute.
Purpose, the word kept replaying in your mind. If a twilight, born with peace but raised to be a weapon, could have such humanity—where did you lie?
The black bag was heavy, glass vials clinking together as you unzipped it to find the medicine intact.
There were so many others that needed what Changbin could give. Love, support, protection, a friend.
Pulling the bloodstained, red bandana from his arm and tying it around your own, you felt even a glimpse of what he did. What you held in your hands, enough power to save everyone at once. It wasn’t out of selfishness, control, or empathy.
It was what was meant to happen—the distribution of the vaccine. All in the hopes it could save someone from the remaining district before they become as far gone as your protector.
“For Changbin.”