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Minho’s shop is on fire. 

One of the things they don’t tell you about taking on interns is that sometimes they’re more trouble than they’re worth. Never mind that Jeongin is technically no longer an intern and is a full-blown employee at the shop. The point is that Minho absolutely should not be smelling smoke coming from the workshop in the middle of talking to a customer. 

“Excuse me for a moment,” Minho says.

“Do I get a discount if you’re not back in half an hour?”

Minho plasters on his best customer service smile. “I won’t be away for that long.” 

The smoke itself isn’t the issue. That’s the thing about magic: it’s going to get a bit messy. Sometimes you have to break a few magical eggs to make a magical omelet. 

But the searing sting on Minho’s wrist tells another story. His wards have been broken.

No one breaks through his wards. Especially not when there’s a line of customers inside the shop. 

Minho all but chokes on smoke when he bursts into his workshop. It’s thick and sulphuric, burning down his throat with eerie intention, but with a quick wave of his hand, the smoke disappears.

Sure enough, Jeongin is at the scene of the crime. But he’s not alone.

A hulking figure stands before him in a fiery summoning circle, humanoid, but definitely not mortal. Magic pulses off them, overflowing with power. Leathery wings take up half the room, ridiculously broad shoulders cast shadows, and a pair of sharp ram horns sit on their head. That’s all Minho can see from the back but they’re turning towards Minho as the smoke fades, and he can make out pitch-black eyes, red irises, a strong nose, and full lips.

Those lips part, revealing a set of fangs. “Oh?” Their voice is deep, powerful; strong enough to shake the earth. “Who is this?”

Who is he? No, who the hell are they ? Their wings have knocked over half the shelves in the workshop, the ram horns are digging into the ceiling plaster, and even though those shoulders aren’t doing anything except existing, Minho is just really annoyed at them. 

“Someone who has better things to do right now,” he snaps, and banishes them back to where they came from. 

Jeongin stares at the summoning circle. The flames have gone extinct. “I can explain myself.”

“Do that later,” Minho says. He turns towards the door. “Clean this up first. I’ve got a customer to get back to.”

“I was trying to summon Hyunjin,” Jeongin says. 

Cleaning up the workshop took up the rest of Jeongin’s day, and then ate into the day after, leaving Minho to man the shop by himself. By the time noon rolled around, he’d decided that Jeongin was taking too long to clean, so he slapped a handwritten sign on the door and joined him in the back.

It’s a lot faster with two people, especially if one person is Minho, so Jeongin’s apparently taken it upon himself now to explain what happened. 

“Why,” Minho says, “were you summoning your boyfriend during work hours?”

“Because he wasn’t texting back.”

“This feels like something that HR would like to hear.”

“That’s not what HR is for.” Jeongin carefully slots a jar of mandrake next to the pisalikkot. “Also, we don’t have an HR. It’s literally just you.”

Minho rolls his eyes but continues supervising the trowel floating on the ceiling that’s repairing the plaster. “HR would like to know how you went to summon your demon boyfriend and got someone else instead.”

“I don’t know.” Jeongin shrugs. “I thought your wards were supposed to stop that.”

“They are.” Minho holds up his arm to show Jeongin the fading seal on the inside of his wrist. “You broke them.”

“Well, I didn’t break them,” Jeongin says, adamant. “He broke them.”

Great. That means nothing to Minho. “Who is he?”

“The demon you saw yesterday. Hyunjin’s boss.”

The trowel stops moving. “Jeongin,” Minho says.

“Minho-hyung,” Jeongin answers in the same tone of voice.

“Your boyfriend is the prince of incubi.”

“Yes.”

“That means his boss is—”

The sound of the front door swinging open interrupts MInho before he can finish his thought. Weird. He remembers locking it. 

“I’ll get that,” Jeongin says like the opportunist he is.

“No, you won’t.” Minho releases the spell on the trowel and catches it before it hits the ground. He points it threateningly at Jeongin. “This isn’t over, Yang Jeongin.”

He just raises a brow. Brat. “I’ll be here, I guess.”

Minho doesn’t bother taking off the apron he’s wearing, wiping his hands on it as he saunters back to the front of the shop. “We’re closed right now,” he calls as he checks his phone for the time. “Unless this is an emergency. Then, you should probably be calling the emergency number.”

“Oh, I’m not here for business,” whoever at the front says—a man, by the sound of it. He’s propped up against the counter, arms crossed on the wood, body leaning forward. His voice sounds familiar, but Minho can’t quite place it. 

“Okay,” Minho says, stepping up to the counter, “what are you here for then?”

The man looks up. He’s handsome—strong physique, sharp jaw, and curly hair. But that’s not what makes the alarm bells in Minho’s head ring. Nice lips, bold nose, downturned eyes—not swallowed by black the way they had been before, but the irises are still red; just as striking. 

The king of demons smiles. “I’m here for a personal call.”

His wings aren’t spread and he’s a human size, maybe a hair shorter than Minho, dressed in a dark sweatshirt and jeans, yet his power still radiates. It’s been tamped down so it no longer slaps people in the face like it did in the workshop, but Minho knows power when he feels it.

His magic rises to the surface, just waiting for the flick of his wrist, but he knows he won’t need it. 

He raises a brow. “Can I get a name?” 

The demon king eyes Minho up and down, taking his long sleeves, dusty apron, and lax body language. Minho is not going to be cowed on his own property, so he stares back. A few seconds tick by, and something about the demon king’s air changes.

“Bang Chan,” he says finally, gaze steady. He cocks his head, his eyes glittering in the afternoon sun. “And you are?” 

“Lee Minho.” He doesn’t offer up a handshake. Bang Chan the demon king doesn’t, either. “Who’re you looking for?”

“I was looking for Yang Jeongin.” Something in Chan’s voice says there’s more to that.

Minho certainly doesn’t care to ask. “He’s busy right now. There was an incident in the workshop that he’s taking care of.”

A ghost appears on Chan’s lips. His relaxed posture doesn’t move a hair. “That’s fine with me. I’ve got you here, don’t I?”

“That depends.” Minho drums his fingers on the counter. “Does this have to do with my taxes?”

Chan shakes his head. “No, it doesn’t.”

“My mortgage?”

“Something more interpersonal.”

“Is it urgent?”

“Important, yes, but urgent, no.”

Minho blinks at him, slow and coy, and gives him his cattiest customer service smile. “I’m afraid I’m at work, Chan-ssi. If it’s not urgent, then I suppose you can wait until I am done.”

There's a moment of silence, of Chan eyeing Minho like some sort of puzzle. People tend to do that a lot, but none have been the king of demons before. Minho has never been one to shy away from new experiences. 

Finally, Chan gives Minho a grin—not as catty as Minho’s own, but not any less wicked. “I can do that,” he says.

Minho doesn’t move as Chan straightens and pushes himself away from the counter. “Is there anything else you need?”

“I can figure it out on my own,” Chan says, strolling over to the front door. “I’ll see you later, Minho-ssi.”

With a wave goodbye, Chan is out of the shop. Behind him, the door swings shut, and the lock clicks back into place. 

Minho isn’t sure what he was expecting when Chan said that he’d be seeing Minho later, but he certainly wasn’t expecting to open his door that night to see Chan standing outside of his house. 

“Is this a good time?” Chan asks.

The real question to ask is if there is ever a good time to have a chat with the king of demons. Certainly, no one would say that entertaining him in your own home would be a wise decision. 

He holds up a bottle of wine. 

Minho supposes it’s not a bad time at least.

After handing Chan a pair of house slippers, he disappears into the kitchen to grab the wine glasses and corkscrew, and comes back to the living room to find Chan looking about the room in curiosity. 

Dinner time has just ended for Minho. The dishes are set to dry on a rack, the cats are relaxing on their cat tree, and the TV is playing that popular drama Jeongin has been talking about for weeks. Minho’s dressed in his favorite sweatpants, and a worn-out t-shirt from his alma mater. It’s a quiet evening—just how Minho likes it. 

He can feel Chan’s gaze flick to him when he enters the room, surveying Minho from head to foot, eyes catching on the seals and tattoos adorning Minho’s arms. They’re usually hidden by long sleeves in the store because customers are intimidated by them, but they’re mostly non-threatening. That seems to be what Chan determines once he turns his attention back to Minho’s face. 

He sets the glasses on the coffee table with an audible clink and takes the bottle from Chan. “How does this compare to your castle, Your Highness?”

“A lot smaller,” he says with an easy smile. Dressed in that oversized sweatshirt and loose jeans, Chan looks like he could fit right in. His grey slippers even match Minho’s, though Minho’s are green. “A lot quieter, too.”

“I do hear you demons are a noisy lot.”

“Depends on the demon.” Chan shrugs. “But never a dull day in the castle.”

The cork pops out of the bottle easily, and Minho hums as he fills up the glasses. “Sounds exciting.”

“It can be a lot, but I suppose that’s part of the charm.” Chan picks up the glass and swirls the wine inside it. The dark red seems pitch black in the low lights of Minho’s living room. “You know, a lot has changed since I was last in the mortal realm, but it seems that humans will always appreciate a nice bottle of alcohol.”

“Some things transcend time,” Minho agrees. He holds the glass up as well, letting the smell coat his senses. It’s rich and heady, with a hint of cherry and cedar. And underneath that, something else. Minho takes a sip. “Though it’s a shame that Merlot doesn’t pair too well with a truth spell.”

Nothing happens as the wine washes over Minho’s palate. But that’s the charm of a well-cast truth spell. Magic doesn’t have to be big and bombastic for it to be effective. 

Chan’s eyebrows furrow, and he sets down his glass. “If you knew there was a truth spell on the wine, then why did you drink it?”

“I don’t have much to hide,” Minho says. “And I’ve always wanted to try this wine.”

Brow still crinkled, Chan continues to stare at Minho. “Who are you?”

“I’m Lee Minho.” He says this with the most deadpan voice he can muster.

Chan snorts. “You know, I asked around about you.”

“Like actually asked around? You didn’t just go on Naver?”

“Naver? What’s—” Chan shakes his head. “Never mind that. They said that you run the best magic shop in the city, that you’re smart and reliable, but that you’re also hard to predict.”

“We also ship worldwide,” Minho adds.  

Chan ignores him. “I’m starting to think they’re right.” Minho hums, pleased, and takes another sip of the wine. Chan eyes him again. “Are you truly not scared of me?”

“Not really,” Minho says. “The scariest thing about you is that I don’t know what your motive here is.”

That perplexed look on Chan’s face only lasts a couple more seconds before he breaks into laughter. His laugh is high-pitched, a little bit wheezy, and shakes his entire body. It’s bright and not malicious at all. And worst of all, it’s cute. As much as Minho would like to believe otherwise, there’s no way he’s faking it.

“It really has been a long time since I was in the mortal realm,” Chan says. “I didn’t have a great impression of humans.”

“When was the last time, exactly?” Minho asks, more curious than he’d like himself to be. 

Chan tilts his face back in thought. “I was in the Holy Roman Empire. Humans were wearing tunics. Food was terrible. Creating the philosopher’s stone was all the rage then.”

“It’s been eight hundred years, at least.” It’s a miracle that Chan can even function in society as it is. 

“Ah,” Chan says, “I thought it had been longer. Did you ever figure it out the Philosopher’s Stone doesn’t exist?”

Minho rolls his eyes. “Yes. Took non-magical humans a bit longer, though.”

“That’s for the better.” He doesn’t sound like he quite means it. “You were pretty insistent.”

“You seem to remember that part very specifically.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Chan says. He’s playing at banter, but Minho can see a spark of genuine emotion in his eyes. “The prince of fire was held captive and tortured by humans trying to get knowledge on the stone. I’d say I was being merciful by only wiping out that coven instead of all of humanity.”

“Sounds like they deserved it, then,” Minho says. “But what brought you back here?”

Chan’s mouth flattens. Playtime is over, Minho supposes. “I’m here for my prince of incubi. He’s dear to me, you see. Like family.”

“Mhm.”

“So, when I heard he’d taken a human consort, I was skeptical.”

Minho swirls the wine, watching the ruby liquid catch the light. “Skeptical must be putting it lightly.”

Chan huffs. “You’re correct. I don’t trust him.”

“There we go.”

“It’s nothing personal to your Yang Jeongin,” Chan says. “I just don’t believe humanity is trustworthy.”

Minho sets the wine glass down and looks Chan directly in the eye. “So, what are you going to do? Threaten Jeongin into breaking up with Hyunjin? Seems like a relatively mild task for the demon king.”

“You don’t believe I have come here to smite him down?”

“If you wanted to, you would have tried already. But instead, you’re here, watching me drink wine.” He gestures to Chan’s full glass. “Which is lovely, by the way. You should give it a try.”

“Surely, you’re not suggesting I fall victim to my own truth spell.” Chan raises a brow. 

“No,” Minho says, “though I do believe it would be nice if you would lift the spell.”

“I’m not doing that.”

“Your loss.” Minho shrugs. “I know your opinion on human food may be low, but this wine is good. It deserves to be drunken in company.”

Chan blinks at him and sighs. “I’ll lift the spell once I’m done here. You can share it with whoever you like, then.”

“Deal.” Lifting the glass to his lips, Minho drains the rest of the wine. “Go on—if smiting and threatening is not on the table, then what is the goal?”

“Hyunjin has convinced me to give humanity another try.” Chan’s mouth twists, revealing just how good of an idea he actually thinks it is. “I want to see if Jeongin-ssi is any different from the humanity I’ve experienced.”

It’s a surprisingly lukewarm take from the demon king who just confessed to having wiped out an entire coven, but then again, he did have a good reason to. He’s being honest about it, too. Minho’s knowledge of demon culture is mostly restricted to the basics he learned in school, as well as a little bit he’s picked up from being around Hyunjin, but it’s easier to read Chan than he initially thought it would be. 

He leans back against the couch. “Not that my opinion matters to you,” he says, “but I think Jeongin is a good man. He’s a hard worker, he’s kind, and I do believe he loves Hyunjin. He would never do anything to hurt him.”

Chan doesn’t change his posture; maintains the appearance of a man at ease, but is cautious all the same. “Aren’t you a bit biased, Minho-ssi?”

“Maybe, but I think humans have the capacity for change.” He gestures about the room—from the magical wards thrumming in the walls to the electricity powering the TV. “A hundred years ago, non-magical humans didn't realize that magic truly existed. Nowadays, witches and non-magical humans live in harmony. I wouldn’t be where I am today if things hadn’t changed over time.”

“Magical and non-magical humans were co-existing hundreds of years before that, though,” Chan points out. “What makes you so certain things won’t regress?”

“I’m not certain,” Minho says. “But I have proof of myself changing for the good. Who am I to not extend the same grace to the rest of humanity?”

It’s a rhetorical question, so of course Chan doesn’t answer. He doesn’t say anything else, either.

Minho is no champion of love, but he’s seen Hyunjin and Jeongin together, watched their relationship evolve from when Jeongin first summoned Hyunjin to where they are now. Though statistically most relationships are doomed to fail, they have a good chance. He wants them to have a good chance, demon king be damned. 

A yawn takes Minho by surprise, and he glances at the clock on the wall. It’s getting late—he and Chan have been talking longer than he thought. The magic shop doesn’t usually take too much out of Minho, but he has to admit the repairs have sapped some energy. There’s also a backlog of requests that he has to get around to because the workshop is out of order.

Minho retrieves both wine glasses from the coffee table and stands up. Chan, despite being seemingly deep in thought, doesn’t startle, and his eyes travel up Minho’s body in a way that makes his insides feel a bit warm. The wine must be kicking in. 

“I have to get up early for work tomorrow,” Minho says. “So, as much as I have enjoyed your company, I must ask you to leave now.”

Something lights up in Chan’s dark eyes. “You’ve enjoyed my company?”

Ah, the truth spell finally rears its ugly head. Minho purses his lips, and, for the first time, has to actually think before he speaks. “You’re a good conversationalist, Your Highness.”

Chan stands up. King as he might be, he’s thoughtful enough to fluff the pillows he’s sat on before sauntering over to the door. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You’re welcome to do that.”

Seeing that Minho’s hands are full, Chan opens the door himself, already too comfortable in Minho’s home. Minho lets him—because what else can he do?

Chan holds the door open, body lax as he leans against the door frame. “I may not have had the chance to try the wine,” he says, “but the company was good. You’ve given me a lot to think about, Minho-ssi.” 

And then, with a wink, Chan is gone. 

The workshop gets fixed and Jeongin goes back to his regular duties. During the day, Minho catches up on the requests he was behind on, and at night, goes back to a quiet home with his cats. 

Hyunjin either finally checks his phone or Jeongin uses a summoning circle that doesn’t get hijacked because he shows up at the shop soon after Chan does.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, eyes round as he stares at the summoning circle burned into the ground of the workshop. “I had no idea hyung was planning something like that. I think he got Jisung to steal my phone.”

“Seems like a hostile work environment.”

Hyunjin waves his hand. “It’s the demon realm—it’s just like that. What did he want?”

“No clue,” Jeongin says. “Minho-hyung banished him as soon as he was summoned.”

“He hasn’t come back?”

“Not as far as I know. Hyung?”

Minho holds no loyalty to Chan, but in the end, it’s Chan’s business what he’s doing. He just shrugs. “I reset with stronger wards this time.” He looks at Hyunjin. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

Hyunjin frowns. “Haven’t seen him in a bit.”

For the sake of his own sanity, Minho doesn’t ask any more questions. 

But he finds the answer anyway, a week later.

The neighborhood Minho’s house is in is never too busy. It’s part of why he chose where he lives. Therefore, any new development sticks out like a sore thumb.

So, when Minho sees a moving truck outside of his neighboring house, he’s naturally curious.

That curiosity turns into something else, though, when Bang Chan steps into the house. 

Now, Minho is a grown man with normal impulse control and good manners, but in the blink of an eye, he’s right at the doorstep. He’s not sure if he teleported there or if he just blacked out temporarily, but now that he’s here, he might as well press the doorbell. 

There’s the sound of shuffling inside, and then, the door opens.

It’s been a good minute of Minho doubting his sanity—he had indeed doubled back when he thought he saw Chan. Anyone with that broad-shouldered frame could be mistaken for Chan; after all, Minho’s only met him a few times. But once the door swings open, Minho can no longer doubt himself.

“Hey,” Chan says, blinking like he’s the surprised one. “What can I do for you, Minho-ssi?”

Minho plasters on his most normal smile. “I wanted to welcome my new neighbor. I didn’t think it would be you.”

“For a moment, I didn’t think it would be me, either.” Chan puts a hand on the back of his neck. He’s wearing a dark graphic t-shirt with its arms cut off—Minho notices the arm detail because Chan has nice ones. Objectively speaking. “Buying property has gotten complicated.”

Minho fights the urge to roll his eyes. “A lot has changed in eight hundred years. How exactly have you been managing everything, Your Highness?”

“Ah, I’ve gotten a lot of help from Jisung.”

“Jisung?”

“My prince of fire.”

Ah. Minho nods. “Has he been teaching you how to dress as well?”

“Yes?” Chan looks himself up and down. “He let me choose from a couple of options he put together. Is this not how modern humans dress?”

“It is. He has good taste.”

Chan blinks for a moment, then breaks out into a blinding smile. “I’ll let him know.”

His teeth are mostly blunt at the edges, as you’d expect, but Minho swears his canines are sharper than they’re supposed to be. It doesn’t make him any more or less dangerous, though. “So,” Minho drags the word out a bit. “What exactly are you doing here? I thought the mortal realm wasn’t to your taste.”

“It’s still not,” Chan agrees. “But I thought about what you said and decided I should give humanity a fair chance. Hyunjin and Jeongin deserve it.”

Minho crosses his arms. “Did my words not convince you entirely?”

Chan leans against the door frame, peering up at Minho. “Most people would just be happy they made the king of demons hesitate.”

“I don’t settle for anything less than the best,” Minho says.

“I’m beginning to see that.” 

There’s a tilt to Chan’s head that makes his curls brush against his forehead in a distracting way. For no good reason, Minho tries to remember if his horns are just as curled as his hair.

“I looked up your shop reviews on Naver, by the way.”

Minho blinks. “What?”

“Jisung showed me how to use a phone. And then the internet, which I don’t quite understand, but I’ll get there eventually,” Chan says. “You do have good reviews.”

“Thanks?” There must be something about demon culture that Minho is missing here. 

Despite Minho’s obvious confusion, Chan smiles. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m trying. I’m serious when I say I want to see what more there is to you.” He swears Chan’s smile grows wider. “You humans, I mean.”

“Of course.” Minho’s ears are feeling too warm for his own liking. “Whatever else could you mean?”

There is a bat outside of the window of Minho’s workshop. It’s hanging off the branch of a nearby tree upside down, as bats are wont to do, but Minho can feel its beady little eyes staring through the window, its ears angled to hear every sound coming from the shop.

“—powder everywhere and she’s staring at me like it’s my fault—” Jeongin is saying.

Minho mhms as he burns Furutsubaki-no-rei hair in the flame of a Bunsen burner. The smoke disperses out the window, and the bat wrinkles its nose. 

“—to ask for a discount. I don’t say anything for a minute ‘cause—”

He coaxes the ashes of the hair onto a tray and swirls it around with the rest of the powders, mixing until they take on a shimmering silver-blue glint. With a soft, sable-hair brush, he carefully dusts the mixture onto the pendant of a necklace. If some dust floats out the window and makes the bat sneeze, no one can prove it was Minho. 

“—so her dad is here now, and I’ve got a line of people waiting at the register—”

The pendant gleams blue to green to yellow, then back to its original gold. Minho hums, satisfied. 

“—I thought for a moment it was some type of compulsion spell, but it doesn’t sound right—”

“Jeongin.”

“What?” Jeongin turns around from where he’s been rifling through a spellbook. He narrows his eyes when he sees Minho holding the necklace.

Minho places the pendant in a box and hands it to Jeongin. “Can you deliver this? That beauty spell’s a bit unpredictable, and I don’t trust the app guys around it.”

“Were you even listening?”

“Yeah, you caught a high schooler trying to steal some ground bunyip fin. She tried to get her dad to threaten you, but then he got mad at her when he found out the truth, so she tried casting a compulsion spell to make you forget about the incident. Which you deflected but her dad didn’t. Except she fucked up her French and instead of souvenez she said saoulez, so then you had to stop her father from drinking the potions we had in stock.”

Jeongin squints at him. “How did you know about the potions part?”

“I saw it as it was happening on the CCTV,” Minho says matter-of-factly. “You can take your lunch break after you’re done with the delivery.”

At this, Jeongin brightens up considerably and takes the box. “Nice. You want me to grab some buldak from that place you like while I’m in the neighborhood?”

“I’m good. You can take your time for lunch. No rush.”

Jeongin’s out the door in the blink of an eye, only taking the time to grab his bag and send a quick text—probably to Hyunjin. Minho silently cleans up his workspace until he can no longer hear the sound of Jeongin’s footsteps. 

He keeps his back to the window. “It’s dangerous for you to be out like that,” he says. “People might think you have rabies, Your Highness.”

A subtle breeze rustles against Minho’s hair, and magic tickles his skin. “I’m open to other suggestions.”

Minho finally turns around. To no one’s surprise, it’s Chan standing by the window, looking at Minho expectantly. Though he’d just been hanging upside down a few moments ago, not a hair is out of place. 

“Crows aren’t uncommon,” Minho replies. He lets himself lean back against the solid wood of the table. “Sparrows are cuter, though. But if you prefer something with a little more teeth, a cat works, as well.”

“I definitely don’t mind something a little dangerous,” Chan says, somehow managing to sound both serious and teasing at the same time. 

Minho cocks his head. “Just a little dangerous?”

“Maybe more than that.” Chan smiles, and this time, Minho gets a flash of fang. Still no horns this time. His stomach flips a little. “So, what is it that you sell at this shop?”

“I thought you looked up my shop online.”

“I did,” Chan says without an ounce of shame. “But the point of me staying here was to know humans better, so I’d rather hear it from you.”

“Charming,” Minho says flatly. Chan doesn’t retort; just looks at him expectantly. “It’s quite simple. For other witches, I sell supplies. For the rest, I offer my skills. Non-violent requests only, though.” Out of habit, he adds, “And yes, poisoning does count as violent.”

Chan laughs. It’s short and sweet, but it still rings in Minho’s ears. “That’s all?”

“That’s all,” Minho confirms. He straightens up, stretching his neck from side to side. “I’m just good at what I do, Chan-ssi. You should know—you’ve been watching for a couple of days already, after all.”

It’s unusual for a bat to be awake during the daytime, especially around Minho’s shop where he’s got a few vermin-repelling wards up. And it’s certainly not normal bat behavior to be practically following Jeongin wherever he goes. 

However, in truth, it wasn’t just that that tipped Minho off. Chan’s presence in itself is hard to ignore—Minho can sense the magic flowing off of him at all times, even when he tries to tamp it down. It’s power, and with power comes danger.

Maybe Minho’s always been a little too fond of danger, too.

Chan dares to blush at being called out. And he has the audacity to look cute while doing so. “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

“You looked comfortable on the tree.” Suddenly feeling restless, Minho sticks a bookmark in the spellbook Jeongin was rifling through and sets the book aside as he prepares the supplies for another request. “And I figured since you’ve been so busy, you probably haven’t gotten much done at your house either. I was doing you a favor.”

“Then, I suppose I should thank you,” Chan says in an indulgent tone.

“You’re welcome.” Minho crosses the room to rifle through the shelves. He’s running low on moly. 

“I should also thank you for keeping this between us,” Chan continues. “Not a lot of people know I’m spending time here.”

Minho jots down a note on his phone. “Why’s that? Your Highness has enemies?”

“It’s difficult to live so many millennia without burning a few bridges.”

“I can only imagine. My worst enemy is my neighbor’s tree. Bastard keeps getting leaves all over my yard.” Gathering the rest of his ingredients, Minho makes his way back to his table. Chan is sitting on a stool beside it, looking right at home. “Aren’t you worried something will go wrong without you around in the demon realm, then?”

“I go back and forth,” Chan says. “It hasn’t fallen apart just yet.”

Minho pauses weighing the ingredients and frowns. “Isn’t that tiring?”

Chan shrugs. There’s a bit of a resigned air to it. “It’s my duty as the king.”

“There’s got to be a better way to go about it.”

“Perhaps,” Chan trails off as Minho returns his focus to the scale. They’re both silent for a beat as the numbers tick up, the only sound in the room is the clinking of wyvern teeth as they drop onto the scale. Minho can feel Chan’s eyes on him. His stare is less intense than before, but it doesn’t make it any less obvious.

They stay like this. Chan leaning against the table, watching Minho do his job. Minho crouching over his work, letting himself be watched. Surely, this simple spellwork cannot be that fascinating to a demon who has the magic of an entire realm at his fingertips. 

Minho’s in the middle of the next request when Chan perks up suddenly. He’s about to ask what’s wrong when he hears the sound of Jeongin’s sneakers padding along the cement. It takes Minho a moment to process just how much time has passed.  

“That’s my sign to leave.” The stool scrapes along the ground as Chan stands up. He stretches, his spine giving an audible series of pops that makes Minho wince. 

“Get some fresh air, Your Highness,” Minho says dryly. “Stretch your wings out a bit and then you can get back to stalking my employee.”

Chan rolls his neck back and forth. “You know you can just call me by my name, right?”

“Oh, no,” Minho says, waggling a finger, “I’m not falling for the trap of being too informal with a king. That’s just asking for an execution. I like my head on my neck, thank you very much.”

“The demon court isn’t like that.”

“You’re right. I don’t want to get burned alive in hellfire.”

Chan huffs a laugh through his nose. “Fine. Call me hyung, then.”

Minho opens his mouth to argue just for the sake of it, but he hears the door to the shop open, followed by the sounds of Jeongin and Hyunjin chattering. Knowing he’s won this round, Chan grins and backs up towards the window. “I’ll see you around, Minho-yah.”

Minho rolls his eyes. “See you, too, hyung.”

The bat stops haunting the shop—in its place, a crow appears. 

Chan stays in his crow form whenever Jeongin is around the workshop, sometimes following him outside of that when he heads home. Minho supposes he shouldn’t be encouraging this behavior—even if he can’t fight the demon king, the least he can do is close the window—but the one time he’d shut the window because of some rain, Chan had looked at him with the best puppy eyes a crow could muster up, and Minho had lost that round.

It’s not like Chan is following Jeongin all the time. He’s gone some days, probably off dealing his business in the demon realm, before he’s back at the window. He’s always diligent, one way or another.

Chan comes into the store when Jeongin isn’t around. Sometimes he comes bustling with questions: his apartment needs furniture and he doesn’t know anything about interior decoration; he needs to set up the laptop he just bought and he has no idea how to work the mousepad; he keeps getting emails from people he doesn’t know asking him for money. 

“Can’t you ask Jisung about this,” Minho complains as he mass blocks a bunch of spam addresses. 

Chan hums. “He’s busy. I don’t want to bother him.” 

“What about me?” 

Other times, Chan likes to sit around and watch Minho work, whether it’s at the back of the shop hunched over his work table, or it’s at the front, dealing with the customers. Minho tried one time to put him to work—because, hey, free labor—and he’d gotten so confused by the POS system that he hasn’t stood by the cash register since. 

Despite his strong presence, he’s easy company, and Minho is a grown man with taxes and mortgage, so he’s not going to get distracted by a handsome demon rifling through his spellbooks.

It’s not a problem today, though, because he’s too busy dealing with someone else’s fuck up.

“Yes, I’m very aware of what actual unicorn hair looks like,” Minho says, eyeing the open box in front of him. “That’s how I know this is fake.”

Chan glances at the box with a look of doubt. Lips pursed, Minho holds a strand of unicorn hair under the light, tsking as it shines silver instead of a shimmering kaleidoscope of colors like it’s supposed to. 

“That’s a heavy accusation, Minho-ssi,” the owner of the farm says.

“It’s a heavy crime to knowingly stock fraudulent products,” Minho retorts.

“Just because the products aren’t to your liking doesn’t mean they’re fake. We have been a trusted supplier for over fifty years.”

“Your mother was a trusted supplier for over fifty years,” Minho corrects in a placid voice. “She wasn’t trying to pass off pegasus hair as unicorn hair.”

The new owner serves him another half-baked excuse wrapped in corporate talk, and Minho fights the urge to roll his eyes, only for the sake of remaining professional in front of the customer working her way up to the register.

When the owner stops speaking, Minho gives him a moment to rest, then says, “If that’s so, surely, you wouldn’t be too bothered if I filed a complaint with the Magical Products and Services Administration.”

He hits mute and urges the girl forward. Without breaking the lilt of his customer service voice, he gives her the usual warnings about the potion she’s buying, has her tap her card on the machine, and sends her off with a bag in hand, all in less than a minute. It only takes longer because she lingers for a moment to look at Chan. Minho manages a quick glance over to catch Chan giving her a small wave that makes her blush and run off.

Snorting quietly, Minho picks up the phone again. “Look,” he says. “I’m in no particular mood to play games with you. Either you send me what I ordered, or I escalate this with the Administration. I’m only a few blocks away from their building, and it wouldn’t be difficult to grab lunch with Kim Jungwoo.”

A pause. “Kim Jungwoo? In the Office of Magical Flora and Fauna?”

“The one and only. We went to school together. Same year.”

Another pause, but time, it’s followed by the sound of rapid typing. Over the speakers in the shop, a song starts up. Minho leans out of earshot of his phone speaker and gestures to Chan. “Can you play the next song? I’ve heard this one a million times.”

Amusement sparkles in Chan’s eyes. He looks comfortable where he’s perched on the counter, but he still stretches to grab the mouse on the computer they keep up front. The next song plays, and Minho hums in contentment. 

“Minho-ssi, are you still there?”

“I am. Have you found a solution?”

“We can send you out another batch soon.”

MInho clicks his tongue. “How does tomorrow sound? I’ve already had to push a few requests back, so I don’t want to wait any longer.”

“We can do that.”

“Oh, and I assume I’ll get a refund for everything?”

A delayed mouse click. “Of course. We can consider this a gift for being such a loyal customer.”

“Thank you.” Minho smiles. It’s definitely not his customer service smile—there aren’t any customers within eyeline of him, so it doesn’t matter. “It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”

“R-right,” the owner says. “This won’t warrant a complaint, will it?”

“A complaint? Over what?” Minho says, voice dripping with faux confusion. “It’s understandable if my shipment is just a few days later than expected.”

The owner breathes out a sigh of relief. “Thank you for your understanding.”

“Thank you for being a trusted supplier.”

Chan’s amusement hasn’t faded when Minho looks over at him again. “You’re going to report them, aren’t you?”

“Hyung, what kind of person do you think I am?” Minho’s eyebrows shoot up in a mockery of astonishment. His lips twitch. Chan’s eyes dip down to track the movement. “I told Jungwoo yesterday. Over lunch, of course.”

Minho might be overdoing his smugness, but Chan laughs all the same. “You’re ruthless.”

“For a human?”

Chan shakes his head. “Ruthless is ruthless. If I had someone like you in the demon realm, then I wouldn’t have to check up on it so much.”

“Oh?” Minho leans towards Chan, batting his lashes. “So, you’re telling me there’s a job opening? I’m assuming the pay is pretty good.”

Sitting on the counter, Chan has a good bit of height on Minho, and Minho has to tilt his head up to meet Chan’s eyes. It’s certainly a position to be in, to be looked down upon by someone supposedly so powerful and fearsome, but Minho doesn’t see more than a handsome yet approachable man, body relaxed and stray curls falling around his face. 

“Okay,” Chan says. He leans back, his eyes dark and unreadable. “Let me pose you a question: say there are two demons in your court who have been feuding. No one aside from them knows what the feud is over, and they continue to be curt with one another. What do you do?”

“Hm.” Minho purses his lips in thought. “Does it affect their jobs?”

Chan shakes his head. “The court functions fine.”

“Have they asked for your help regarding the feud?”

Chan shakes his head again.

“Then you leave it be.”

Chan’s brow wrinkles. “I should just… leave them alone?”

“Yep,” Minho reaffirms. “You actually have two options: force them to get along or leave them be. But there’s no use if they won’t divulge to you what is happening. At best, you just learn their thoughts. At worst, you get dragged in. You can’t force people—demons, I guess—to reveal their feelings.”

“What happened to being ruthless?”

“You have to know your abilities and your audience.” Minho stands his ground despite Chan’s doubtful tone. “This is between them. You step in when it affects others. You can’t be the one doing everything—you’ll worry yourself sick.”

Chan doesn’t have an answer to that. After waiting a few moments to let his words sink in, Minho gives Chan’s knee a quick tap. “So, what actually happened?”

He sighs. “I tried stepping in. They got mad at me.” Minho hums and waits for Chan to continue. “Things eventually boiled over for them and they talked about it.”

“Just like that?” Minho is impressed at how well-controlled his smugness is.

“Yes, like that,” Chan finally admits.

Minho grins. “Nice. So, do I get the job?”

Something in Chan’s eyes flicker, and he gives Minho a simple smile. “I’m afraid it’s not open to humans. Demon realm isn’t exactly a suitable place for a human to live unless they have a contract.”

“Great,” Minho says, throwing Chan a wink before turning to pick up the box. “Send it to my lawyer.”

Before he can even touch the box, Chan is there, lifting it with ease. Minho scowls. “Show-off.”

“Just trying to be useful around here.” Chan returns Minho’s wink. “Unfortunately, you’re going to be stuck at this job for a bit.”

Rolling his eyes, Minho sends a spell to hold the door open for Chan to pass through. “What a shame.”

His words are mostly sarcastic. That tiny part that means it, he consoles by admiring the prominent veins lining Chan’s toned forearms as he passes by. He’s wearing a shirt with sleeves today, so no biceps. But Minho is a man who has many interests. 

“What a shame indeed,” Chan says. He sounds like he means it completely. 

Minho and Chan don’t really interact outside of the store. Once in a while, Minho will see Chan go into his house, or vice versa, and they’ll give each other a friendly nod. It’s not that Minho’s not a good neighbor—he’s a favorite at the neighborhood potlucks—but Chan is different. There’s nothing about Minho that warrants this much attention from the demon king outside of his relation to Jeongin. And for that, he should be thankful. 

It’s just another day of his new normal as Minho curls into his couch, cozying himself under some blankets. He’s about to flip to the bookmark in the novel he’s been reading when a tingle of magic stops him in his tracks.

The wards he has around the house haven’t been broken, the seals on his arms lying dormant alongside the tattoo winding around his arm, but Minho doesn’t need to have them go off to know something is wrong. The magic is unfamiliar, but ancient and powerful in the way that Chan’s is. Unlike Chan’s magic, this is steeped in malice, dripping with ill intent. The prickle of magic sends a shiver down Minho’s back as it slithers past him like a snake, in the direction of Chan’s house. Minho doesn’t have to think very hard to know who their target is.

This isn’t Minho’s problem to deal with, especially given how capable Chan is, but he can’t help the unease coiling in his stomach. He’s not someone to mull things over for very long, and the trailing scent of the magic only sets him on edge.

“Not my job,” Minho says to Doongie, who just so happens to be sitting next to him. 

Doongie blinks in response.

Minho sighs and stands up.

Scaling Chan’s fence is the easiest part of Minho’s plan—getting to Chan inside the house is more logistically difficult. But Minho doesn’t have to worry about that when he sees the back door cracked open, the sounds of a struggle evident from inside the house. 

His pulse quickens, and he sprints towards the house. A whisper of a spell dampens the sound of his movements, and when he flings open the door, he finds the living room in disarray, the couch he’d picked out for Chan cleaved in half and the coffee table turned over. That’s far from his biggest worry, though—he sees a trail of blood leading to the kitchen, a hulking shadow obscuring the light while snarls and clatters ring out. 

Heart in his throat, he rounds the corner of the kitchen to see a blur of scales and claws, almost too fast for the human eye to differentiate. As if that weren’t enough confirmation that it’s two demons fighting, their magic crackles as they exchange blows, filling the air with power. If Minho focuses, he can make out the glowing red of Chan’s eyes, the sharp horns on his head, and the bloody claws he uses to reach for the other’s throat. His wings aren’t on display, but he doesn’t seem to need them as he slams the other demon against the cabinets so hard the wood cracks.

The other demon makes for Chan’s hand at their neck, but Chan spits out a binding spell, forcing their hands to their sides. Their tail, in the place of their legs, attempts to wrap around Chan’s leg. He stomps on them, and they snarl something unintelligible. Chan pushes them harder against the cabinets. “You’re a coward for trying to sneak up on me, Amon.”

His back is to Minho, but the deep growl of his voice is enough for Minho to know he is brimming with fury—so different from the laidback demon Minho has come to know. 

Though the other demon has the head of a wolf, the voice it speaks with is human. Amon bares their teeth, sharp as needles and gleaming with blood. “You’re not in the demon realm, anymore. No such rules here.”

“Is this all you’ve learned after all this time in the mortal realm?” Chan scoffs. “What a waste.”

“Better to be here than under your thumb. ” Chan tenses at Amon’s words, and the other lets out a rasping laugh. It’s rough, like nails against a chalkboard, but it’s not enough to distract Minho from how their fingers weave invisible shapes at their sides. Across the kitchen, something moves.

“Chan!” Minho barks. “Behind you!”

“What the—” Chan’s sentence is cut short by a glaive flying across the room, forcing him to drop Amon to dodge to the side. The binding spell breaks, and Amon reaches for the glaive hurtling towards him. 

Chan might say something else, but Minho’s too preoccupied with what’s going on in front of him to care. 

With a flare of his magic, the tattoo on his right arm unwinds. It glows as it uncoils, bright and unnatural, rising out of his skin. This sensation lasts less than a few seconds, but Minho is familiar with this rush of magic pumping through his veins, pushing to the surface, and, finally, forming a crackling whip in his hand. Its weight is heavy in his palm and lightning sparks down the length of it. It is powerful and dangerous and everything that Minho has missed.

No time to spare, he sends the whip to the glaive, wrapping the ends around it to stop it in its path. Through the whip, Minho can feel magic radiating from the glaive—if he had reached for it with his mortal hands, he has no doubt something bad would have happened to him. The whip eats through the magic of whatever spell Amon had put on it to summon it to them, and with another flick of his whip, he sends it flying in the other direction.

Anger glowing in their eyes, Amon turns towards Minho, and before Minho can think of a smart response, opens their maw to spit a column of fire at Minho. He drops to the floor just in time to avoid most of the flames, though he can’t say the same about the furniture. The kitchen crackles around him, consumed by fire a demonic shade of green. 

Through the fire, Minho makes out Amon dashing away. Minho can’t get to his feet in time to go after them, but Amon doesn’t get far enough before Minho’s whip wraps around their snake tail.

“The glaive,” Minho manages to gasp out, but Chan is already running off. Amon roars as the whip burns into their scales and they land face-first because of his momentum. Minho gets maybe one moment of satisfaction before Amon growls and swings their tail—and thereby Minho—towards the flames.

Tile slippery with blood, Minho has no traction to stop himself from sliding across the flooring. Demonic fire isn’t known for being extinguished easily, so Minho makes another split-second decision, retracts the whip from Amon’s tail, and, with a surge of magic in his left palm, sends himself soaring into the air.

Minho is admittedly not the biggest fan of heights, but during the rush of a fight, it's easy to forget himself. It doesn't matter that his feet aren't touching the ground; all that matters is the adrenaline in his veins. With another pulse of magic, Minho’s whip shoots for Amon, wrapping around their throat and anchoring Minho to land on their back, forcing them back to the ground.

Minho forces out another wave of magic, and the whip grows even longer. It coils around Amon, binding their arms to their sides as they shriek obscenities at Minho. If the whip eats through Minho’s magic like kindling, then Amon’s magic is a forest of dead trees and underbrush. Every spell they start is drained from them, and the whip grows brighter and brighter, incandescent with power that Minho has never seen before. 

“Impudent witch,” Amon hisses when they realizes what Minho’s whip is doing. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“Nope,” Minho says. “Does it matter?”

The glare Amon shoots at him is withering, and Minho wonders just how petty he can get away with being before Amon gives up this facade of pride and starts trying to buck him off like one of those mechanical bulls he’s seen online. 

“I commanded forty legions of the demon realm and have taken more mortal lives than moons you’ve been alive,” Amon says. “That demon king of yours would be nowhere without me. You should be at my feet, begging for forgiveness.”

“That’s a lot coming from someone who was dumb enough to attack the king of demons despite not having a mortal tying them to the realm.”

Amon chokes at Minho’s insult. “Y-you—!”

“You’re burning through your magic way too quickly.” Minho eyes the flames still flickering around them. “I didn’t mean literally, but I guess that works as well.”

“I don’t know where you heard that information, witch.” Amon doesn’t seem to have a sense of humor. “But your demon king isn’t bound either.”

Minho raises a brow. “You seem awful certain of that.”

Something in Amon’s eyes flickers, but then they huff. “A nonsense bluff. His Highness would never believe himself lowly enough to need a mortal’s help.”

They shift a bit, and Minho, knowing that his whip is happy to feed on Amon’s magic for now, decides that he can spare some magic to make himself twice his weight. Just to keep Amon in check, of course. 

Those demonic flames are coming a little too close for comfort. But before Minho can start his spell, the flames go out. Darkness blankets the room. Though Minho’s human eyes are useless in the dark, his whip glows like a lantern, he can make out a familiar shape and a pair of gleaming red eyes. 

He gives a small wave. “What took you so long, hyung?”

Chan sighs and gives the glaive he’s holding a reproachful look. “Tricky bastard has a mind of its own. Went through a window and into one of the neighbor’s yards. Had to stop their dog from trying to pick it up.”

The image of Chan, king of demons, frantically begging his neighbor’s yappy little Bichon Frise to not touch the glaive makes Minho’s lips twitch involuntarily. “Shame. You missed out on all the fun.”

“Evidently,” Chan says, finally eyeing the trussed-up Amon. He crouches down so he can make eye contact with the other demon. “Did you have fun, Amon?”

“Fuck you and your little mortal pet.”

Minho frowns. “Chan-hyung, they shouldn’t speak to me like that.”

“Amon, you were more respectful when you tried to stage that coup,” Chan says. “You really have lost your manners after spending all this time in the mortal realm.”

“Okay,” Minho cuts in. “Now you’re the one being rude to me.”

“Apologies, Minho-yah. I wish Amon had your decorum.”

“Thank you.” Minho sniffs. “And I probably would’ve done a better job with the coup, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think a coup would be necessary in your case.” Chan’s grin glows, the sharp edges of his fangs gleaming in the dark.

The flames have long been extinguished, but Minho’s ears are suddenly getting hot again. “Is that a job offer finally on the table?”

“I’m starting to warm to the idea.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Amon says. “Just take me back to the demon realm.”

Minho blinks. Chan blinks. He clears his throat. “I’m gonna call Jisung.”

The prince of fire is a demon in combat boots, baggy jeans, and a striped sweater. He’s got a surprisingly sweet face, all round cheeks and wide eyes, that is jarringly offset by the flaming horns protruding from his forehead. 

“Hyung, why didn’t you call me earlier?” Jisung demands the moment he appears in the summoning circle. “Were you trying to deal with this alone again? I’ve told you—”

He seems to puff up with each indignant word, but Chan stops him before he gets any further. “Jisung,” he says. He points.

Like magnets, Jisung’s eyes snap to Amon, surprise coloring his expression when he sees Minho perched on top of the other demon. His eyebrows scrunch and his mouth opens, but no words come out.

“Jisung-ah,” Chan says with more fondness this time. “Meet Minho. Minho-yah, meet Jisung.”

Minho waves. “Hey.” 

Eyes flicking back and forth between Minho and Amon, Jisung steps towards him tentatively. “Hey.” He gestures to the whip. “This your work?”

“Yep,” Minho says. “Had no other choice. Chan-hyung was off playing fetch.”

Chan grumbles. “I wouldn’t put it like that.”

Minho smiles at him indulgently. “I’m sure you wouldn’t.” Glancing back up at Jisung, he’s met with a curious stare. “So, how does this work? You got something to keep him down? Afraid the whip and I come as a package deal.”

“Nah, I’m all good, Minho-ssi.” Jisung chuckles. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out an impossibly long, yet incredibly normal-looking bundle of rope. At Minho’s raised brow, Jisung snaps his fingers, and the rope lights up with fire.

“On brand.”

Jisung grins. “Thanks.”

Amon doesn’t take to Jisung’s bindings any better than they took to Minho’s, which Minho imagines is reasonable. That doesn’t stop them from cursing up a storm and shrieking out increasingly frantic and bizarre threats, though. Minho thinks he makes out waterboard you in a lake of lava before Jisung silences him with a spell. 

“You have lava lakes in the demon realm?” Minho asks Chan as he watches Jisung lug Amon away with surprising ease. 

“A few,” Chan says. “Not that waterboarding is possible. We don’t have the right equipment for that.”

Stepping into the summoning circle, Jisung looks expectantly at Chan. “You coming with me, hyung?”

Chan shakes his head. “Go without me.”

Jisung’s mouth flattens, the rest of him seemingly puffing up again with righteous annoyance. “Chan-hyung—”

Chan holds up a hand, and Jisung shuts up immediately. “Jisung-ah, I’ve got some business I want to take care of tonight. I’ve got plenty of magic, and, besides—” He gives Minho a sidelong glance. “I’ve got Minho with me.”

Jisung’s eyes ping between Chan and Minho this time, a deep furrow in his brow. Whatever he’s trying to glean from this doesn’t seem to materialize, so he sighs and readjusts Amon. “Fine. What do you want me to tell the others?”

“Something believable. Just say they found you.”

“And if they ask Amon?” 

“They're Amon,” Chan says matter-of-factly. “No one’s asking them anything.”

Jisung snickers and mock-salutes Chan. “Got it, boss.” He looks to Minho now, eyes twinkling with curiosity. “Sorry, I can’t stay for long. Work to do, y’know?”

“The grind never stops,” Minho says.

Jisung smiles, wider this time. “You get me. Let’s get lunch sometime.”

“Dinner. I know you guys have some cash to burn. I want in on it.”

“Sounds like a deal.” Jisung throws Chan a wink. “Might be more convenient for hyung to take you out for dinner, though.”

“Jisung,” says Chan in a tight voice. “It’s getting late.”

“Right.” Jisung drags out the word. “You got business to take care of. Just need one of you guys to activate the circle.”

“I got it,” Minho answers while Chan silently shakes his head. 

With a little wave goodbye, Jisung and Amon are sent back to the demon realm. Minho’s whip returned to a tattoo encircling his arm, the absence of Jisung’s flaming horns plunges the house back into darkness. Minho’s eyes barely adjust before Chan wraps a warm hand around Minho’s wrist, and quietly guides him outside. Minho lets him. 

Outside, Chan summons flames around them. They’re not the eerie green that Amon’s were—instead, they’re a vibrant red. It would be intimidating, but it’s the perfect temperature to protect Minho from the chilly night. Chan quietly hands him a couch cushion he managed to salvage from the wreck.

Minho lowers himself onto the grass and tucks the cushion underneath himself. “I’m guessing I’m the business you have to take care of?”

“I wouldn’t put it exactly like that,” Chan says, settling down across from him.

Minho’s eyes finally adjust to the light, and he blinks. “Oh.”

“Something wrong? Do you need another pillow?”

“No, not that.” Minho neglects to mention the singed edges of the cushion he’s sitting on. “Your horns are gone. Your claws, too.”

Chan’s brow furrows, “I figured it would be easier to talk to me like this.”

“I like—” Minho starts. Then pauses. “I’m fine with either. Your choice.” The night must be catching up to him. 

“Mm.” Chan hums, and, in the blink of an eye, his horns are back. 

Minho’s face feels like it’s on fire. He stares at them a little too long—long enough to notice that some soot from the fire has been smudged on one of Chan’s horns. Some impulse within Minho takes hold, and he reaches over. “Hyung,” he says, “your horns—”

Chan’s horns are warm to the touch, an extension of him—just a brush of Minho’s finger, and he can feel the power radiating off of them. Underneath Minho, Chan stills, his breath seeming to leave him. Minho can feel his eyes on his face. But he doesn’t move away.

Just a few brushes more, and the soot is off. Minho sits back on the cushion. “All gone.”

Chan’s eyes don’t leave Minho’s face—he hasn’t moved, but it’s only now that Minho sees that his eyes have widened, and his lips are slightly parted. A few seconds pass, and Chan doesn’t say anything. 

Just as Minho is starting to wonder if he’s made some horrible demon faux pas, Chan takes in a breath. “Oh.”

“Oh?” That doesn’t solve the issue of whether or not Minho fucked up here. “Did I do something to offend you?”

Chan shakes his head. “No. I just—” He cuts himself off with a little laugh. “I should’ve learned my lesson when it comes to you and my expectations.”

“Would that be a good or a bad lesson?”

“I’m leaning towards good.” There’s something in Chan’s voice that would make a man more prone to bashfulness blush. But a more bashful man would not have gotten himself into this position to begin with. “Just who are you, Lee Minho?”

Minho tilts his head. “Haven’t you asked that before?”

“And I learned that you were a simple shop owner.”

“I am a simple owner.”

Chan chuckles, amusement sparkling in his eyes. The sclera is all black again, darker than the void, but instead of being swallowed by their vastness, emotion reflects off of them. “A simple shop owner does not run towards danger, does not move like a warrior, does not wear a weapon on his skin, and absolutely does not defeat a former marquis of the demon realm.”

“Amon’s a marquis?” Minho raises a brow. “I would’ve thought they were a duke from the way they were going about themself.”

Shaking his head, Chan laughs again. “What’s a witch like you doing peddling beauty potions to mortals?”

“I’m just doing exactly what I want to do.” Sensing a thread of sincerity in Minho’s words, Chan stays silent. “I went to Seoul University for the Magics. I did pretty well—top of the class, job offers before graduation. I wanted to do work on the ground, something exciting, so I ended up with the government—combat specialist for magical emergency services.”

Chan blinks at him. “I’m not familiar with how your government operates right now.”

“Oh,” Minho says. “We were the calvary, basically. Part-time monster hunters, part-time bounty hunters.”

Chan nods, satisfied with the explanation. “Was that job what you were expecting it to be?” 

Minho hms. “It was exciting. You get to travel to new places, meet new people. Fight monsters, track down criminals. Dangerous, yes, but that’s what I liked about it.” 

“Yet?”

“You push your body to the limits, use up the dregs of your magic. I knew that going in.” Minho leans back, resting his weight on his hands. “But you come back to a hotel. A tent the next day. Sometimes you think you’ll get a week in your own home, but then there’s something else you have to be chasing down.”

The soil is cool underneath Minho’s palms, and the sky twinkles with stars. He lost count of how many nights he spent like this when he was that witch who fought for a living—but it’s been years since he could stare blearily at the sights of the sky, could only focus on the bruises and aches of his body before exhaustion took over him. It almost feels like a lifetime ago.

“It was an unstable way of living,” Minho says. “You trade in stability for excitement. But I learned I like coming back home.”

“So you traded the excitement for stability.” 

He glances over to find Chan staring at him still, eyes wandering about Minho’s face as if searching for something. “I did.”

Chan’s eyes continue to search. “Do you miss the excitement?”

Minho wakes up every day in his bed, goes to the shop on the same bus route, and mixes the same potions and makes the same charms. Then he comes home every day to soft lamp lights, a well-stocked fridge, and the company of his three cats. Sure, he goes to the gym, does his grocery shopping after work, and meets up with friends all around the city, but every night, he comes back to the same bed. He hasn’t had to burn through his magic, hasn’t had to sweat from a fight. He hasn’t had to question where every day would lead him, hasn’t had someone to challenge him in a long time. 

In this moment, Minho can still feel the sweat cooling on his skin, can feel his magic like an ember instead of a fire. The smell of smoke has long since seeped into his clothes, and he thinks a chunk of his hair has been burnt into ash. He’s tired to the bone, and though Minho is fine with the life he has built, his bed is far from his mind right now. 

Minho hums and brushes the grass and dirt from his palms. “What makes you say that?”

“Demons and mortals share some similarities,” Chan says. “A fondness for indulgences, thirst for power, need for purpose—we all struggle to shake some things that are innate to us.” 

The laugh Minho lets out turns into mist. “Is the human-hating demon king telling me that we’re the same?”

“I said I wanted to learn more.” If Minho didn’t know better, he’d think Chan was pouting at him.

He laughs again. “Alright, then. This similarity—is it a good thing or a bad thing?”

Chan shrugs. He’s holding himself much more casually than when Minho had first met him—where he picked up that shrug, Minho doesn’t know. “Demons aren’t beholden to the same morals that humans are obsessed with.”

“Ah, there he is.”

He is still much too regal to roll his eyes, though. “So,” he continues, “if you’re satisfied as is, then I see no need to mull over it. You’ve proven yourself capable of anything you want to do, Minho-yah.”

Chan is the king of demons, has lived a life longer than Minho can imagine, and holds the power of a realm in his hands—and Minho has never been intimidated by him. He has neither been scared by nor in awe of Chan, yet it’s this bit of earnestness that sends heat rushing to Minho’s ears. 

With the flames flickering red around them, the flush is not noticeable. “I have, haven’t I?” His voice sounds raspy to his ears. He swallows.

Chan doesn’t seem to notice any of that. “I’d hate to be any enemy of yours.”

“Maybe if you were a monster or a demon,” Minho scoffs. “These days, the only enemy I have is that tree.” He gestures to the vague shape of a tree in his neighbor’s yard.

Chan laughs. “And I’m sure you will vanquish it.”

“Nah, I’m soft now. I just say passive-aggressive things during the neighborhood potlucks.” Minho’s last sentence is punctuated with a yawn that cracks his jaw. “Shit, it’s late, huh?”

“It is,” Chan says. He stands up and extends a hand to pull Minho up. “I’ll walk you back.”

Chan’s hand is warmer than his flames. Minho doesn’t know what he expected touching a demon to be like, but he feels human to Minho, solid and real. He lets go of Chan’s hand as soon as he’s on his feet, but the heat lingers on the walk home, all the way to Minho’s house. 

The night is catching up to Minho, but there’s a slight hesitation in Chan’s eyes as he leads Minho to the door that kicks Minho’s brain back into gear. “Hyung,” he says, “do you need a place to stay?”

Chan shakes his head. “Demons don’t need to sleep as much as mortals do. I’ll be fine tonight.”

It’s comforting to know that Chan will be alright, but to Minho’s surprise, it is also paired with disappointment. “That’s good.” He pauses, then presses forward. “Let me know if you need anything, though.”

His ears are red again, but this time, they’re lit by his porch light. Chan’s gaze catches on them, and a small smile appears on his lips. His dark eyes glitter. “I’ll remember that. Good night, Minho-yah.”

“Good night, hyung.”

Chan’s flames have long since disappeared, but that warmth stays with Minho, following him into his house, and into his sleep.

“Guys,” Hyunjin says, bursting into the workshop in a plume of designer perfume. “You will not believe what happened.”

Both Minho’s and Jeongin’s eyes swing towards the CCTV on instinct before Hyunjin cuts in, “In the demon realm, I mean.” He reaches over to smooth a kiss onto Jeongin’s crinkled brow in apology.

“You guys invented lava waterboarding?” Minho guesses.

Hyunjin squints at him. “What exactly do you think happens in the demon realm?”

“Heard you guys have lava lakes. Sounds like you should look into it.”

Pinching his nose, Hyunjin sighs. “I don’t know where to start with that. Also, not my job.” As if anticipating Minho will say something else, he continues, “Jisung brought in Amon.”

Jeongin raises his eyebrow. “Okay? That’s the demon who staged a coup, like nearly a millennia ago, right?”

Reaching across the desk to grab his mouse, Minho takes a glance out the window. The bat isn’t there today. “I’m sure this is exciting to you, Hyunjin-ah, but I feel like I might be missing something here.”

“The whole coup thing and being on the run for a millennia thing isn’t that important,” Hyunjin says. “I’m getting to the weird part.” Minho waves at Hyunjin to go on. “Yeah, Jisung’s the one who brought them in, but Amon’s claiming that it was Chan-hyung and some mortal witch teaming up that actually did them in.”

Minho’s palms are sweating a little bit, but he gives another nonchalant answer. “Is that all?”

“Is that all?” Hyunjin repeats in disbelief. “Chan-hyung hates humans. He hasn’t stepped foot in the mortal realm in nearly a millennia, but all of a sudden, he’s supposedly fighting alongside a witch. And when Amon said it, he didn’t even deny it. I couldn’t imagine he’d be willing to stomach a conversation with a human, never mind trust one to guard his back.” He pauses for a moment. “Nothing personal.”

“Thanks,” Jeongin says dryly. 

“I’m sure he’d love you if he gave you a chance, jagiya.”

“I think that chance disappeared as soon as Minho-hyung banished him.”

“You’re welcome,” Minho says without looking away from his computer monitor. He pauses for a moment, licks his lips, then flicks his eyes back to Hyunjin. “Did he say anything about the mortal?”

“No,” Hyunjin says, exasperated. “I asked Jisung, too, but he’s not giving me shit.” He grabs Jeongin’s hand. “You have to help me find this witch.”

Jeongin stares at him. “Why?”

“Because I need to know! You’re my boyfriend—you’re supposed to support me!”

“He’s also my employee,” Minho interrupts, “and he’s on the clock right now.”

Hyunjin gives Minho a glare too petulant for a demon of Hyunjin’s age and status, while Jeongin shrugs and turns back to the work he had temporarily abandoned. “Sorry, Jinnie. Forgive me for not wanting to meddle in the demon king’s affairs.”

“Cowards, the lot of you,” Hyunjin mutters. “See who else comes through the summoning circle next time.”

got your number from channie-hyung, a mysterious number messages Minho one day, lets get dinner

sure, Minho replies. but who are you?

It’s Jisung, and they end up choosing a nice Italian place that Minho has his eye on for a bit.

“Not as good as the places now in Italy,” Jisung says when he bites into his bucatini all’amatriciana. “But definitely better than the pasta was when it was first invented.”

“You’ve been around in the mortal realm for a bit, huh?” Minho observes. He’s quite enjoying his cacio e pepe. 

“I’ve been here and there,” Jisung says coyly. “I like the mortal realm. A lot of demons do.”

Minho hums thoughtfully and takes a bite of his pasta. “I would’ve thought other wise.”

“Why?” Jisung’s brows furrow, then unfurrow. “Right! Chan-hyung must’ve told you about the Holy Roman Empire kidnapping incident. Unpleasant lot, but they’re long gone now.” He waves his hand flippantly. 

“You seem really casual about being kidnapped and tortured.”

“I mean I didn’t like it,” Jisung admits jovially. “But demons live long lives, and these things end up melding together. I’ve gotten bitten by my dog a dozen times, but I still love him.”

“Huh.” Minho pokes at a piece of black peppercorn. “You have a positive outlook on that.”

“Really?” Jisung does the brow furrowing and unfurrowing thing again. “Ah, I forget—the only demon you’ve really known is Chan-hyung.”

“And Hyunjin.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be surprised if you were talking about Hyunjin.”

“Smart observation.”

“I’m smart.” Jisung echoes. He takes a sip of his wine and makes a face. “Except for the time I got kidnapped and tortured because I thought they were just inviting me for dinner.”

“I get that, actually,” Minho says thoughtfully. 

“I knew you would.”

“Anyways, Chan-hyung—he’s different?”

Jisung sighs. “Kind of? I mean, he can work past everything that’s happened to him, but when it comes to the people he loves, he’ll take something and never let go. Hence—” He gestures to himself. “You get kidnapped and tortured by humans once, and he’ll hate mortals for the rest of his life.”

“He cares for you a lot,” Minho says, oddly charmed.

“He does,” Jisung agrees. “But he’ll do anything for those he loves, and he won’t let you do anything nice for him. I seldom see him prioritize himself. It’s hard for him to change.” 

It makes a lot of sense to Minho. “I get where Hyunjin was coming from, now.”

“Yeah?” Jisung has a small mouthful of pasta stored away in his cheeks. “Is this about Amon?” He swallows. “Don’t worry about that. He might be nosy, but as long as you don’t do anything flashy or obvious, he won’t know. And, besides, you’ve got me covering for you.”

Jisung is puffed up, pointing a thumb at his chest. Minho laughs. “My secret is in your hands then, Jisung.”

“And I will protect it with my life,” he says in a gravely serious voice. Jisung takes another sip of his wine and makes the same face again. “Ugh.”

“Bad wine?”

“I’ve tried so many wines, and I’ve hated all of them,” Jisung says. “Do you want the rest?” 

“Depends. Did you put a spell on it?”

In truth, Minho isn’t worried about Hyunjin’s insistence on finding who the mysterious witch is. As powerful as he may be, he also lacks the prowess for deceit that both Jisung and Chan seem to excel in. It perhaps feels like a flaw that a prince of the demon realm lacks this bit of cunning, but Minho is learning that his expectations of demons are continuously being overturned. 

Anyways, Chan is in his backyard. 

Minho just came home from work, and Chan is flying in his backyard, holding a pair of pruning shears.

“What,” Minho begins. He stops, and then re-evaluates what he’s about to say.

Pausing in the air, Chan lowers his sunglasses to shoot Minho a grin. “Hey, Minho-yah.”

He’s had the foresight to conceal his wings, so it just looks like he’s cast some sort of levitating spell. But that still doesn’t take anything away from the absurdity of the situation—leaves and branches strewn across Minho’s backyard and a pair of pruning shears in Chan’s hands. 

Minho tries again. “Why.” He stops at the beginning again. The question sounds more like a statement. He doesn’t try to rectify that. 

Despite Minho’s sudden loss of Korean fluency, Chan seems to take it all in stride. “You said it was troublesome for you. So, I took care of your neighbors.”

“Hyung,” Minho says slowly, “tell me ‘took care’ is not a euphemism for something.”

Though Minho’s concerns are very real and very well founded, Chan just laughs. “It’s not. I just explained the situation to them. They were understanding for some parts. The parts they weren’t, well.” He pauses. “I just explained it to them another way.” 

Does Minho want to ask? The Kangs aren’t bad people per se—just bad neighbors who refuse to trim their trees and bushes, and let their dog bark into the late hours of the night.  And picky eaters, given some of the comments they’d made at the neighborhood potluck about Minho’s mandu being too salty. 

He supposes he can live with the mystery.

“You’re not gonna make me take care of everything in the yard right?” Minho indicates the smattering of leaves and branches fallen below the tree.

“Of course not,” Chan says. “What kind of demon do you take me for?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

“I think we can save that for later.” Mollified by Minho’s response, Chan turns to prune another part of the tree. There’s a deftness to his movements, to how his eyes carefully look over the tree to make sure everything falls in place. The king of demons treating this tree with the same seriousness he would with anything. 

Funny, yes, but Minho can’t bring himself to laugh at him. He readjusts the strap of his work bag. “You don’t owe me anything, hyung.”

“I know.” Chan continues pruning. “I want to do this for you.”

Is there something about demon etiquette that Minho is missing? This what he gets for not being friends with any demon specialists.

“Fine.” It comes out more gruffly than Minho meant. He adds, more softly, “It looks good.”

At this, Chan glances over his shoulder, and his smile widens. White teeth, sharp fangs. Minho has to look away because the sun is getting in his eyes.

Later that week, Chan presents Minho with a basket full of strange fruit.

“Diaboli cor,” he explains. The fruit is shaped like a plum, with a pitch-black skin the same texture as a banana. It’s definitely something from the demon realm, but Minho can’t help but feel as if he’s seen it before. “These are from my gardens.”

“What's it for?”

“You eat it. It’s considered a delicacy.” Chan digs a thumb in to reveal an inside that reminds Minho of a pomegranate. The seeds underneath the translucent black juice shine a burnished gold. Some of that juice spurts onto Chan as he cracks the fruit open, and he lifts his hand to catch the juice in his mouth. His tongue flicks out to lap at the beads of black liquid, the dark color staining his plush lips. Minho’s mouth has suddenly gone very, very dry. 

Chan hums happily. “Picked right in time. It’s perfectly ripe.” 

“Yes,” Minho says. He feels like someone is strangling him. “I can see that.”

“Here.” Chan holds out the other half of the diaboli cor. “Have some with me.”

Cracked open, the scent of the diaboli cor is tantalizingly sweet and dizzyingly floral, with an undertone of spice that is foreign to Minho’s human nose. He can’t quite place what it reminds him of, the fruit a bizarre cross-section of the familiar and the unknown.

It is inviting, just begging Minho to take a bite. The foodie in him aches to try it, but the witch in him feels the magic surrounding the fruit, a foreign hum that comes from all objects from the demon realm. He doesn’t come across very many of them, but he remembers learning about them in his university courses.

Oh, that’s where he’s seen diaboli cor before.  

“Ah.” Minho draws back his hand. His mouth has gone dry again but in a different way. He searches for the right words.

Meanwhile, Chan’s brow crinkles. “Is something the matter?”

“Um,” Minho says. Chan truly doesn’t seem to know. “Diaboli cor is deadly to humans.”

Chan blanches, and he snatches the fruit back. “What?”

“Yep.” Minho stares at the seeds scattered in Chan’s hand, recalling the illustrations he’d seen in his textbooks. “A demon once fed some to his human lover. She was manic for a few days. A great high, apparently. Then her veins turned black and she died a couple of hours later.”

“Oh.” Chan’s voice is very small. Carefully, he pulls the basket back towards himself. 

Guilt curdles in Minho’s stomach at Chan’s slumped shoulders. “There are other demon foods that humans can eat. Just not that.” Chan’s forlorn expression doesn’t change. Minho flails internally. “I think there’s a restaurant in Jongno-gu that serves both demons and mortals.”

Finally, Chan sighs. “It’s okay, Minho-yah—it’s my fault for not looking into this.” 

Minho chews on his lip, unable to find anything consoling to say. But he doesn’t need to. Chan is straightening up already.  “Really, don’t worry Minho-yah. I’ll get going now.” He hefts the basket into his arms. “Don’t want to risk poisoning anyone around.”

Before Minho can say anything, he’s gone. 

Chan brings a plant next time. 

“You don’t eat soyali yurak,” he says before Minho can even ask. “And it’s not deadly to humans.”

“That’s great,” is Minho’s reply. “But is it doing okay?”

Now, Minho can definitely say he’s never seen soyali yurak before, but he doesn’t think its purple leaves should be drooping, nor should the red veins running through said leaves be so constricted. Minho’s breathing seems to make it wilt even more.

“Oh.” Chan takes another look at the plant. He droops as well. “It was alive this morning.”

“I mean.” Minho resists the urge to poke it with his pen. “I think it’s still alive. Maybe not for much longer.”

Chan sighs. “Poor thing.” 

He reaches for the pot to take it away, but Minho’s eyes catch onto the plant, and he holds up a hand. “Hyung, wait.”

Chan freezes. “What’s going on?”

Minho takes a closer look at the soyali yurak. “Can you use some magic?”

Still puzzled, Chan blinks for a moment before the table starts floating. 

“A levitation spell, really?” Minho snorts. “Haven’t you already done enough damage to my workshop?”

Chan pouts at him. “It was the first thing I thought of! I can stop if you’re not happy.”

“I’m good.” He clambers up onto a nearby chair and peeks at the plant still sitting atop the floating table. It’s revitalized, leaves reaching for Chan’s hand, veins plump and flickering red. The veins are perhaps a little grotesque, but it’s pretty in its own way.

Theory confirmed, Minho hops off the chair and beelines for his shelves. It’s been a while since he’s done anything like this, but his brain is lighting up in a way it hasn’t in a while. Chan is still levitating the table when he emerges.

Minho motions for Chan to stop the spell, setting the items he’s grabbed onto the table once it’s back on the ground. Chan’s eyes spark with curiosity as he surveys the bundle of sticks and twine next to the large glass jar. “What’s that for?”

“A decoy,” Minho says. He sets the plant inside the jar and begins unspooling the ball of twine. “Soyali yurak looks like it needs energy from the demon realm to survive, so I’ll make a decoy with your energy to feed it.” He snips the twine and holds out one end to Chan. “You know the spell, right?”

Chan nods. 

His magic flows through the twine as Minho wraps it methodologically around the sticks, meeting with Minho’s magic and melding together as he chants the spell in a singsong. Chan picks up on the melody quickly, and he sings alongside Minho. His voice is velvety, almost intimate as he harmonizes with a Minho, and he swears the birds outside stop chirping just to listen. 

Too soon, the sticks and yarn turn from a strung-together mess to a doll that has Chan’s curly hair and leathery wings. “Huh,” Chan says. “That’s the best decoy I’ve ever seen. You really are good at this, Minho-yah.” 

It has been a while since Minho has used this spell, and as far as he knows, this has never been his most impressive skill. Because the decoy spell isn’t based on individual skill—rather, it hinges on the connection between the two casters. 

Chan laughs and reaches over to brush against Minho’s ears. “Your ears are turning red. You should be proud, not embarrassed.”

His finger is warm on the shell of Minho’s ear. Minho smacks it out of the way and places the decoy inside the jar. “I’m not embarrassed.” At least, not by what Chan said. 

“You’re cute.” Chan laughs again—softer this time. 

Now Minho can feel his ears burning up. He places the lid of the jar on with more force than necessary and traces a finger around where the lid meets the jar. His sealing spell comes out a little bit shakier than it usually would, but it does the job. 

He sets the jar by the window, back facing Chan. The breeze from the window feels nice against the flush of his skin. “This seal should stop the magic from dispersing too quickly. The decoy should be good for up to two weeks, give or take.”

“So, you’re accepting this?” Chan asks.

“Of course,” Minho says. “You gave it to me. Why wouldn’t I? You’re just gonna be stuck coming up to the mortal realm for a bit.” 

In the reflection of the window, Chan’s eyes crinkle. “I like the sound of that.” 

In the moonlight, the trees of Bukhansan are nearly unrecognizable. They cast long shadows across the rocky ground, and if it weren't for the small flame floating alongside him as they walk, Minho would probably trip over the gnarled roots. He has camped here more than a dozen times, but he suspects Chan has taken them to an area that has seldom had human contact. 

When Chan showed up that morning at Minho’s house, just minutes before he had to catch the bus to ask if he was free that night, Minho had not expected much, aside from possibly having to help Chan with home repairs. 

Then, Chan asked if Minho had a weapon. 

“One that’s not bound to you,” he added. 

“Why?” Minho asked.

Chan had just grinned, crooked and sly. “We’re going on a hunt.”

So, Minho retrieved a knife he kept from his cavalry days and before he knew it, he had been teleported to the bottom of Bukhansan. 

The knife is now holstered to Chan’s leg, flickering in and out of Minho’s peripheral vision as he follows Chan up the mountain. Minho hadn’t glommed onto it earlier because he’d been too confused by Chan’s bizarre requests, but instead of the loose clothes he usually favors, Chan has chosen to dress in more form-fitting clothes tonight—muscle t-shirt, tactical pants, combat boots. Despite Minho not having an eye for things like this, it’s impossible to not notice when the pants are perfectly fitted to accentuate Chan’s body. 

Minho is only a man.

“I can feel your eyes back there,” Chan says without turning around.

Minho is too old to be caught ogling another man’s—well, a demon’s—ass, and not have a way to play it off. “What do you mean?” he asks, voice saccharine. 

“I can feel you getting impatient, of course,” Chan drawls. He takes a higher step up, and the pants stretch across his thighs.

Minho manages to kick the rock away before he trips on it. “I wouldn’t be so impatient if you would just tell me where we’re going.”

“What happened to trust, Minho-yah?”

“What happened to my bedtime?”

Chan laughs—quieter than usual, but just as sweet. “We’re getting there. I can feel it.”

Ever since the incident with Amon, Chan has been in the shop more often and has been more open about his life. He tells Minho about his court—not just about Jisung and Hyunjin, but about the others Minho hasn’t met as well. Minho can see his care for them with every detail he relays, even when it’s something that he’s supposed to be frustrated about. He reveals more about the demon realm, answers Minho’s questions before he’s even asked him, and even lets Minho know of his comings and goings. 

He’s easier to talk to now, closer to a friend than a co-conspirator.

There are only a few things he doesn’t speak of—updates about what he’s learned from Jeongin and Hyunjin, the time he accidentally almost poisoned Minho, and this, apparently. 

They endure another ten minutes of walking before Chan comes to a sudden stop, his hand snapping to the hilt of the blade. The flames go out.

Minho is about to summon his whip when Chan holds his hand up, silently signaling Minho to hold still. He can’t see very well in the dark—the moon is unusually dim tonight—but he can see the gleaming red of Chan’s eyes.

Then, he is gone.

Minho has barely blinked before Chan is sprinting off in a seemingly random direction, body a blur in the dark. That’s Minho’s fucking ride off of Bukhansan, so, cursing in his head, he runs, too.

In the distance, Minho sees a starburst of light, and he picks up his pace. Chan has outsprinted him, but it makes sense that this is what he has been gravitating towards. Over the screaming of Minho’s lungs, he hears growls and barks. 

It’s no easy feat to avoid all the roots and underbrush while running blind, but Chan has somehow managed to clear the path, a trail of scorched earth following in his wake. Minho has no idea how he’s done it, but that’s something he’ll get to after he’s done chewing Chan out.

The question of the burnt trail is answered very quickly. Because that burst of light isn’t just light—it’s fire. Fire in the shape of a dog two heads taller than Minho.

It clicks in Minho’s head—the night sky, darker than it usually is. There’s a lunar eclipse tonight. 

That’s a bulgae.

In the midst of that fire, Minho spots a familiar figure. Broad shoulders. Strong thighs. Curled horns.

Chan is fighting the bulgae. 

Not fighting—at least not yet. Chan is just standing there, staring the bulgae down as it growls at him. Minho experiences a moment of deja vu as he searches to find words other than what, why, and Chan? Before he can even pull his whip out, the bulgae screams and bellows a pillar of flames right at Chan. Minho’s heart rate skyrockets. 

Despite the surrounding forest being burnt to ashes by the bulgae’s plumes of flames, Chan doesn’t even blink as he’s blasted with fire. He remains calm, his clothes untouched and his hair only blown back from the wind. In his eyes, there is nothing except determination. 

For a moment, he looks over to Minho. He doesn’t say anything, but Minho knows what he’s asking for. 

So, Minho reins in his magic and watches as Chan lunges at the bulgae.

The bulgae barely has time to react before Chan has it pinned to the ground. He has his arm around its throat, pushing its snapping teeth away from him as it struggles his hold. The bulgae puts up a good fight, but despite Chan’s arsenal of magic, he continues to only use his physical strength. 

Though Chan must be half its weight, the bulgae cannot seem to shake him. Sweat drips down Chan’s arms, his body incandescent in the glow of the fire, as he wrenches the bulgae’s head back. With his other hand, he pulls out the knife and holds it up to the bulgae’s bared throat. His eyes gleam crimson as they meet Minho’s. 

Minho’s breath leaves his body. 

Chan has the power of an entire realm at his fingertips, and it’s Minho’s knife that he’s using. Minho’s permission that he’s seeking. 

Minho nods.

The bulgae leaves nothing behind except a pile of ash and a glittering, silver pearl. Chan picks up the pearl and approaches Minho. His eyes widen. “Essence of the moon,” he breathes. 

Chan hums in affirmation, then reaches for Minho’s hand. Gently, he places the pearl on Minho’s palm. “This is for you.”

The essence of the moon is the size of a golf ball, but lighter and warmer than it looks. But Chan’s hand is even warmer, curled over Minho’s cold fingertips. Softly, like Minho is something precious. Firmly, because he knows Minho isn’t delicate. He blinks, then blinks again. One more time. 

“Hyung,” he says, flipping Chan’s hand over so the pearl falls back into his hand. “I can’t take this.”

Chan merely turns Minho’s hand over again. “I already got what I wanted out of this. I have no use for the essence.”

Minho tries to invert their palms but is met with resistance this time. He frowns. “You’re the one who did all the work.”

“It was your knife, Minho-yah.”

Minho’s mouth falls open at this demon’s audacity. “Because you asked for it.” In a desperate bid, he attempts to drop the pearl onto the ground. His hand barely moves.

Grip steadfast, Chan’s eyes sparkle with humor. “Try all you want, but the longer you argue, the longer it’s going to take for us to get off this mountain. And I was once told by a very wise human that you all do love your sleep.”

“You are not using my words against me.”

“Those were not your exact words.”

“Okay,” Minho says, narrowing his eyes, “an approximation of my words.”

Chan shrugs. “My point still stands.”

In the time that Minho has come to know Chan, he’s found that Chan is not a particularly stubborn person. Despite all of his prejudices towards humans, he’s softened in Minho’s presence, and even said good things about Jeongin. When Minho asks him to do something menial at the shop, he’ll do it. If Minho challenges him on something, whether it’s about what spell best suits a situation or what furniture he wants for his home, he will listen. 

But this—Minho sees in his eyes that he will not be persuaded otherwise. 

“Fine,” Minho sighs. He closes his fingers around the pearl. 

Minho has lost this argument, but it doesn’t feel like a loss when Chan giggles victorious. When Chan holds his hand to teleport them back. And when Chan walks him home with a spring in his step.

The pearl is placed in the jar at the shop with the soyali yurak. At night, the gleam of the pearl can be seen through the glass, illuminating its surroundings with warm light. 

Autumn has taken ahold of the city, and, thanks to Chan’s work, not a leaf is found in Minho’s backyard. The soyali yurak has outgrown the pot and jar they had originally provided it, and though it had been a harrowing few moments transferring it out of the pot, it continues to thrive in the jar. The pearl winks at Minho from beneath the leaves whenever Minho goes to water it, and he has no plans of moving it.

“It’s essence of the moon,” Jeongin had said in disbelief. “Do you know how much money you could sell it for?”

“Of course, I’m aware,” Minho answered. “What kind of businessman do you take me for? But I’m keeping it.”

Hyunjin, sitting on the worktable between Jeongin’s legs, gasped when Jeongin showed him the bidding price online for another bit of the essence. “I could live off of that for the rest of my life. How did you even get ahold of this? How did you get past the bulgae’s flames?”

“Just a few fire-proofing spells,” Minho said nonchalantly, trying to move past the topic.

Then, Jeongin, too smart for his own good, had said, “I didn’t know there were any spells that could hold against bulgae fire.”

“I think it was an old demonic spell I found.”

“Most demons would get burnt to a crisp by the fire,” Hyunjin added offhandedly, idly playing with the sleeve of Jeongin’s shirt. Because, of course, the couple joined at the hip would be sharing the same mind. Minho had no idea when they’d reached this awful phase of their relationship—he felt like he’d just blinked and then Jeongin was telling him they were moving in together. “So, whatever you did to get it, it better have been worth it.”

Thankfully, Jeongin remained a fundamentally incurious person when it came to Minho’s whims, and Hyunjin was much too distracted by Jeongin’s arms to pay attention to much else. The conversation had moved on when Minho went to the front for a customer to pick up their order, so by the time he came back, Hyunjin had been halfway there in convincing Jeongin to sneak off with him.

After Minho threatened their ability to produce children (“Demons aren’t made like that,” Hyunjin had protested), Hyunjin’s words stuck in his brain. Sure, Chan is immune to bulgae fire, but bulgae are notoriously difficult to track down, and more difficult still to match in strength. He’d done all that planning and work, and in the end, he’d given the pearl to Minho.

He might not be asking for anything back, but Minho can’t let all that effort go wasted. 

The thing about being friends with the demon king is that there is almost nothing that you can get for him that he will not have already or will not readily purchase at the drop of a hat if he really wants to. 

Chan has more money than Minho can imagine having, even as his business continues to bloom, and, despite Chan being outside of the demon realm, has more magic than most people would know what to do with. He may not know that much about the human world, but he’s relying less on Minho’s knowledge these days, thanks to the internet. He has thousands of years of knowledge, yet he still chooses to spend time with Minho, do things for him, humor him even when Minho knows he’s being difficult.

But Minho’s never been materialistic—he wouldn’t have taken the job at the magical emergency services if he had been. So, for him, the only thing left is skill and effort.

When Chan comes swooping in—literally, in the form of a crow—a few days later, they barely get through their usual greetings before Minho blurts, “I’m making you dinner.”

Chan’s mouth forms a small ‘o’. “I have plans after.”

“Not tonight,” Minho says. “Whenever you’re free. I don’t have the ingredients yet.”

With the way Chan is looking at Minho, he must know that Minho’s heart is trying to push itself out of his chest through a series of backflips. The last time Minho had felt this stressed, he had been facing down a dozen milosnitse in an alleyway in Ulsan. He had survived that just fine, so this should be no big deal. 

It’s just Chan.

He blinks, and a slow smile stretches across his lips. “I’m free Thursday. What about seven?”

“Great,” Minho says like he didn’t just feel his lungs start working again. His hands shake as he flips through the pages of his notes, and he drops them to his sides, letting his sleeves fall over them. “Can you hand me some qilin hair?”

Minho’s internet search history gets cleared not once, but twice before dinnertime on Thursday.

demon food

human foods demons like

tsp to mL

what food does the demon king like

It’s not like Chan is going to snoop through his phone or laptop, but the evidence of Minho’s mild anxiety-driven Naver searching is embarrassing enough to make him want to sink into a hole and never come out. Chan probably doesn’t even know how to go through his search history because, knowing Jisung, he probably hasn’t taught him that and is using that as an opportunity to spy on his boss. 

What’s more embarrassing, though, is how useless the searches had been because Minho already knows all of this. He’d studied Chan as he had insisted upon ordering certain dishes, been disappointed at the lack of others, and refused to touch the spicy dish Minho had thought looked interesting. Minho doesn’t often cook for anyone other than himself, but Jeongin and Hyunjin have tried his food before, and he’d gotten rave reviews. He shouldn’t be sweating over the bossam and the assortment of side dishes he’s made a million times before—even the brownies he’s baked are basically foolproof.

Before he knows it, it’s seven o’clock. Chan is usually good about being on time, but minutes tick by past seven, and he hasn’t shown. It doesn’t help Minho’s nerves. Desperate for something to do with his hands, Minho goes to set the table.

Ten minutes later, the bossam is sliced and artfully spread out, the side dishes have been placed in neat little dishes, the brownies are being kept warm in the oven, and Chan still hasn’t shown. Minho sends him a text and decides to clean up his kitchen. 

Twenty minutes pass, then thirty, and then it’s been an hour, and he still hasn’t heard back from Chan. The kitchen is immaculate, the living room is almost completely free of cat hair, and Minho’s chest feels like it’s going to open up and swallow him whole.

Lee Minho does not overthink. There are a dozen very reasonable excuses as to why Chan is running so late, but that doesn’t stop Minho’s palms from sweating. He’s never felt like this before. He does not like it.

It’s not the same as the night Amon attacked, but another dreadful feeling drips down Minho’s spine. He lets this one carry him to his window—the one neighboring Chan’s house—and he draws the curtain to peer through it.

The lights are on in Chan’s house. He’s home. 

Something spiteful rises in Minho’s chest now, and before he can come up with an excuse—for himself or for Chan, he doesn’t know—he’s knocking on Chan’s door. 

Chan is a bit of a mess when he opens the door: his shirt is disheveled and covered in weird stains, his curls fly all over the place, and his jaw is clenched. But that frazzled expression drops as soon as he sees Minho, morphing into one of dawning horror.

“Shit. Dinner,” he says.

“Yeah. I texted.”

Chan winces at Minho’s curt tone. “Minho-yah, I’m so sorry. Something came up last minute and I—”

His excuses come out as a tangle of words that Minho is only half-heartedly following along with, but they’re interrupted by a skittering on the hardwood and an honest-to-god howl. Minho looks down to see a what is supposedly fluffy little dog with an alarming number of eyes. It doesn’t even come up to Minho’s knees, but it barrels towards him like it’s twice his size. 

"Kkami, no!” Chan yelps as he moves to intercept the dog. He manages to grab ahold of Kkami, scooping the dog up into his arms. Kkami squirms against Chan’s hold, and Chan nearly gets his nose smacked by a small but powerful paw. “Minho, close the door!”

It wasn’t Minho’s plan to come inside, but it seems like there’s some bigger fish to fry at the moment. He shuts the door himself. He stares at Chan. “You got… a dog.”

Kkami snarls at Chan when he finally lets the dog down, gives Minho a cursory sniff, and huffs weirdly judgmentally. Minho isn’t sure how offended he should feel. 

“He’s a friend’s dog,” Chan says. “I’m just looking after him for a few days. It was an all of a sudden thing. He’s a handful.” Kkami growls and Chan amends his statement. “He’s not used to the mortal realm.” 

Seemingly pleased with Chan’s adjustment, Kkami wanders back off into the living room. Minho has yet to figure out if the dog understands Korean or not. Bigger fish to fry, though. “You could’ve texted me that. I would have rescheduled.”

Chan sighs. “I know, I’m sorry, Minho-yah. Kkami got dropped off today, and I just couldn’t say no. I’ve been trying to dog-proof the house, and I must’ve lost track of time.”

He genuinely looks sorry, and, judging by the scraps of pet store bags littering the front door and the loose fluff of the couch in the living room, he was truly that busy. But that spite refuses to leave Minho. “Were you the only one who could do this? It's not an emergency—doesn’t Jisung have a dog?”

“I can’t turn someone down if they ask for my help,” Chan says. Like that’s something logical to say.

The spite twists into something else. Minho looks at Chan—at his dark circles, at his frizzy hair, at his earnest eyes. It’s Minho’s turn to sigh now. “When’s the last time you ate, hyung?”

“I ate—” Chan stalls, then gives up altogether. “I don’t know.”

Minho’s not particularly pleased about being right. “Clean off your table. I’ll be right back.”

In the time it takes for Minho to pack everything into containers and carry them over to Chan’s house, Chan manages to not only clean the table but also change shirts and put some product in his hair. As much as Minho appreciates the effort, the way Chan lights up as soon as he tries the bossam does something much, much more. 

“Minho-yah,” he exclaims, wide-eyed, “this is amazing!”

“Told you you had to give human food another chance.”

Chan shakes his head. “I don’t think it’s just any human food when you’re the one making it.”

He digs in with wolfish hunger, only stopping once in a while to feed Kkami a piece and lavish more praise upon Minho. He’s no stranger to having his cooking complimented, but Minho’s ears are no doubt turning redder and redder at every compliment Chan throws his way. His earlier agitation feels like nothing compared to the fizzy feeling of watching Chan enjoying himself. 

Chan manages to finish his portion and then some, and his eyes sparkle when Minho tells him he can keep the rest. They get into a short argument when trying to decide who should wash the dishes, but they end up settling for Chan washing and Minho drying. Kkami putters about in the background as they stand in the kitchen, content now that he’s gotten the taste of pork belly, his occasional snorts adding to the background noise of the faucet. 

Kkami isn’t the only one who looks better now that he’s gotten to eat—Chan’s eyes have lost that sheen of stress, his shoulders have relaxed, and his laughter comes out much easier. 

“Hyung,” Minho says quietly as Chan hands him another dish, “you know you’re allowed to take care of yourself, right?”

Chan’s hand stops mid-air. The dish drips into the sink. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you don’t have to drop everything just because someone needs something from you.” Minho takes the dish from him. “You can put yourself first sometimes.”

“Minho-yah,” Chan says tiredly as if he’s had this conversation before, “it’s different when you’re the king of a realm. I have responsibilities that I can’t just let go.”

“I know.” That was the last dish. Minho reaches across Chan to turn off the faucet. He can feel Chan’s displeased frown, so he doesn’t stop Chan from taking the dish towel from him. “But you can’t take care of your realm if you don’t take care of yourself.”

Chan bends down to pet Kkami, who seems to barely tolerate it. His eyes do a disconcerting thing where they all blink at different times. “What happened to staying out of business that isn’t yours unless you’ve been asked about it?”

Minho sits himself up on the counter, content to watch Chan from above. “I said you can step in when it affects others. It’s stressing you.”

Kkami manages to bear another head pat from Chan before nipping at his fingers and stalking off. Minho does not doubt that his intentions will be nefarious. Chan stands up, turning to face Minho. “And if I ask for advice from you? What would you say?” Though Chan walks and leans into Minho, his words don’t have the bite of a challenge. 

“Trust that others know what they’re doing, or will find their way.” Chan’s t-shirt brushes against Minho’s jeans. He can feel the heat of Chan’s skin underneath.

“You make it sound easy.” 

“You learn over time.”

Chan huffs fondly at Minho’s lackadaisical response. He takes a step closer, settling his hands beside Minho's knees, one of them curling over Minho's hand. If he came closer, then he would be snugly in between Minho’s legs, crowding him on the counter with no place to go. Minho’s heart stutters.

“Minho-yah, you know you’re too kind to me, right?” Chan murmurs. “From the very beginning, you have given me too many chances. Why do you do that?”

It’s a good question, isn’t it? Minho doesn’t subscribe to some specific morality, doesn’t believe in the inherent good or mad of humans or demons. He had been so irrationally upset before when Chan hadn’t shown, but that had dissipated as soon as he’d seen the slump in Chan’s shoulders. It’s been mere hours, yet he’s already forgotten what about it had made him so insistent on coming over.

The most he can think about right now is the soft glimmer of Chan’s eyes, the red of his irises like the glow of a lighthouse rather than an open bonfire. 

“Because you deserve it,” Minho says it like a fact. Because it is. “I see what you do for others. You deserve that kindness, too.”

Pink floods Chan’s cheeks, and something akin to wonder shines in his eyes. Is this a demon thing, to be so open with that? Minho has never been looked at like that before in his life; he’s never expected it, and now he doesn’t know what to do. It’s too much—he breaks eye contact to stare at Chan’s shirt. He doesn’t move his hand from Chan’s though. 

“If excitement taught me to work hard, then stability taught me to be kind,” Minho says. “You need both in your life.”

Chan traces a thumb along Minho’s hand. It is furiously distracting. “Do you think I can learn that, too?”

“It’s not easy, but I think you can.” He is being too audacious. Minho has let him be. Like an afterthought, he adds, “You're the king of demons, after all, Your Highness. I’m a mere mortal.”

Whatever Minho was hoping to get out of it, it doesn’t happen. Instead, Chan squeezes his hand.

“Say, Minho-yah,” he begins, “if I were to offer you a place in my court in the demon realm, would you take it?”

Minho is so taken aback he finally looks back up again. Chan’s eyes are as deadly serious as his words. “What? I thought you said I couldn’t survive down there.”

“There are ways,” Chan says, “as long as you want it.”

“I—” Minho’s mouth dries. Does he want it? He’s made jokes about it here and there, but he has a life in the mortal realm. A stable life that he really does like. And from what he’s heard from Chan, life in the demon realm is very different.

Sure, the life that Minho likes so much has been in upheaval since he met Chan, but the truth is: he hasn’t minded at all. He likes spending his days in the shop, with a defined set of tasks to do. But he also likes the surprise of seeing Chan, of what he will bring with him. Before Chan, he had almost convinced himself that he didn’t miss the thrill of a fight at all.

He’s not ready to throw this stability away to chase excitement, though—that would mean he had learned nothing. 

But if Chan wants the same things that Minho does...

Minho has no idea what his face is doing, but whatever it is, it makes Chan laugh. It would be more offensive if he didn’t like the sound of it so much. 

“You don’t have to make up your mind now,” he says. “I’ll take you there—let you see for yourself.”

He’s so earnest about it—eager, even. Minho’s not good with that. Never has been. But he wants this. He knows that from deep within. 

Minho swallows, and finds his voice again. “Can you give me a warning before you do? I’ll have to ask Jeongin to look over the shop.”

Chan laughs again. “Anything you want, Minho-yah.”

“Please tell me why you can’t just get someone to use a summoning circle.” It takes Minho more than a few tries to finish the sentence without a gust of wind blowing sand in his mouth. They’re in fucking Egypt. Why are they in Egypt? 

“Because it’s tradition that you must enter through the proper entrance,” Chan explains. He’s wearing all black like he always does, and he doesn’t have a speck of sand on him. 

“Why did you guys have to set up the entrance in Egypt?” Minho complains. “Why not someplace nice, like New Zealand?” He’s never been to New Zealand. It looks great in photos, though. 

“You witches set up the entrance here. Besides,” Chan adds like it’ll mean anything to Minho, “I’ve been told Gabal Elba was lovely a few millennia ago.”

Minho’s sure Gabal Elba looked great at some point. Hell, it probably looks a lot better in the springtime. But it’s fall now, and the grass has turned yellow, the trees are barren, and the mountains are covered with nothing but rock. Whatever animals and monsters that may live in these regions have fled elsewhere, leaving Chan and Minho to be the only ones trekking their way through the sand.

As they continue their walk, a strange mist settles over the area. It’s heavy—near tangible—and with it carries the smell of incense and ash. But it’s the middle of the day: bright, almost unbearing sun; not a single cloud in the clear sky. 

The entrance to the demon realm isn’t something that’s well known, even amongst trained witches, but even Minho can sense the boundary between worlds wavering here. 

Chan stops at a tree; large and overbearing, with gnarled roots tangled in the ground. The leaves shine a strange coppery hue, and the bark is a bleached white. Some words and symbols in a demonic language have been carved into the trunk, none of which Minho recognizes—he knows his way around certain demonic languages, but these are ancient, older than humanity. Despite the eerie appearance of the tree, it still hums with life. 

“Is this it?” Minho asks. “Are we in the demon realm?” 

Gently, almost reverently, Chan touches the tree, traces the markings. He shakes his head. “This is just the first step.” He squares his shoulder and throws Minho a mysterious smile. “All you have left to do now is to catch me.”

In one blink, Chan turns from demon to wolf. And then in another blink, he is gone. 

Here it is again, that deja vu. He’s in his backyard, wondering why Chan is flying. He’s in the forest, watching Chan fight a bulgae. He is between the realms, looking at the disappearing back of a wolf. He is in disbelief over this demon yet again, a gift that has never stopped surprising him. Absurdity personified, Minho comes to realize. And this time, Chan wants Minho to do something about it. 

He wouldn't want it any other way. So, Minho chases. 

The earth in this between-worlds is still sand, still rocky and rough beneath Minho’s feet. Chan was wise enough to tell Minho to wear his hiking boots, but hiking boots are made for trekking, not running across realms. 

Chan’s wolf form is much larger than an actual wolf, with fur the same color as his hair, hard to lose track of. But he’s fast—one leap would be enough to go from one end of Minho’s shop to the other. 

Magic courses through Minho’s veins as he activates an old go-to speed spell. It allows him to close the gap between himself and Chan much more easily, but Minho is still pushing himself to the limits—lungs screaming, thighs burning, air pushing through him like he can’t get enough. Upon hearing Minho’s footsteps, Chan turns to look over at him. Though his face is all wolf, those eyes of his are ones he knows well, and he can see giddiness flash in them when he spots Minho. 

The air is changing, the magic is different, and the light of the sun turns warmer. His magic struggles, its connection to the mortal realm waning, every little whisper of it draining out of him. The grass turns darker and longer, curling in patterns Minho has never seen before, but his attention is only on Chan. He’s within reach now—if Minho pushes himself more, if he leaps after Chan he can grab his tail—

Just as Minho’s fingers grasp onto fur, Chan shapeshifts again. He grows and grows, each step heavier than the last. Wings sprout on his back, his horns spring out of his head, and fur becomes scales. In Minho’s hands lays the tail of a dragon.

He’s barely managed to hold on with both hands before the ground gives way beneath him.

That’s not right—Minho hasn’t seen a cliff.

No, he’s right, because Chan is flying.

Adrenaline courses through Minho’s veins as the landscape grows smaller and smaller beneath his feet, the flaps of Chan’s wings buffeting him with gusts of wind. Minho lets out a gasp of magic, and his whip springs to life. It wraps around Chan’s horns, anchoring Minho to it, but when it probes for Chan’s magic, Minho clamps down on that instinct, forcing the whip to draw from his own dwindling strength instead. 

Minho yells a string of curses that even he can’t decipher through the wind, but Chan seems to hear him, his ears twitching, his eyes dancing with humor. He flies higher, weaves through the sky, shows Minho the mountains and the rivers, shows him the city lights and roads—presenting Minho to his realm. 

Somewhere along the way, Minho forgets his confusion and his annoyance, and, instead, he starts to smile.

Then, Chan dives.

No warning, just falling at a breakneck speed. He tucks his wings against himself, streamlining his body as he plunges head-first into the city below. They approach the earth at a breakneck speed, the ground expanding and expanding in Minho’s eyes, and Chan only seems to fall faster. Minho is almost out of magic, and the only person he can depend on now is Chan. Though Minho’s heart hammers in his chest like a drumroll, it is not from fear.

It’s exhilaration. It’s excitement. 

They’re one hundred meters from the ground. Ninety. Eighty. Seventy.

Minho wraps his arms around Chan’s neck, presses his body against the scales.

Sixty. Fifty. Forty. 

He can feel Chan’s pulse alongside his own. Their heartbeats are in sync.

Thirty. Twenty.

Ten.

Minho closes his eyes. 

For a moment, it feels as if time has stopped. Minho is floating, nothing above or below him. No scales cutting into his palms, no whip fastening him to anything. 

But still, he is not afraid. 

So, when he lands, safe and sound, into a tender embrace, he is not surprised to see it is Chan who is smiling up at him. He is caged between Minho’s hands, legs settled around Minho’s body. His hair is a disaster, and Minho’s whip is tangled around his horns, but his eyes shine like stars and his smile is like the sun. 

He is the most radiant thing Minho has ever seen. 

“Hey,” Chan breathes.

Suddenly, Minho is shy. “Hey,” he replies softly.

“You caught me.”

“Did I?” He blinks. Slow. Gentle.  

“Yeah.” Chan reaches up and loops his arms around Minho’s neck. Minho’s pulse thunders in his ears, pounding a different beat than it had before. “I knew you would.”

It’s there again, that look that makes Minho feel more than he is—right now, he is not Lee Minho, former combat specialist and current shop witch. He is just Lee Minho, and somehow that is more. 

He doesn’t look away this time. 

Chan doesn’t either. 

They are magnets, drawn to each other in some way that feels tangible only to them; push and pull and push and pull. 

Footsteps sound from Minho’s right, and the moment breaks. Minho’s immediately on his feet, whip drawn out and charged up, ready to attack at the drop of a hat.

The demon staring him down is almost human-looking in appearance. He is small in stature, but he makes up for that in his strength, his arms bulging as he crosses them over his chest. His mouth is a straight line, no fangs in sight, and his eyes are sharp in a way that mortals are. The only feature marking him as a demon is his skin—red like the blood moon.

He eyes Minho up and down, then at Chan—who is still sitting on the ground—then back to Minho. A smile twitches on his lips. “Hey, hyung. Hey, Minho.”

Minho has a split-second decision to make regarding what his next move is, but he doesn’t need to worry, because Chan is back by his side. He pats the dirt off himself and takes Minho’s hand in his. “Minho, meet Changbin, one the members of my court.”

Changbin looks at their joined hands and grins wider. “Welcome to the demon realm, Minho-ssi. It’s good to finally meet you.”

Changbin turns out to be the lord of alliances, and Chan’s eldest advisor. Despite his initial stoic appearance, he’s a friendly demon who seems to hold endless knowledge about the realm and the demon king himself. His fondness for Chan shows through the clasp of the shoulder he gives when he greets Chan, the way he speaks casually with Chan despite the difference in their standings. 

This casual friendliness is common amongst all of Chan’s court. Minho had heard it offhand from Hyunjin, and he’d seen it with Jisung, but it feels different coming from Changbin. Their relationship is closer, like equals. 

Minho has no idea what Chan might have said about him, but it’s hard to be worried about that when his hand is still held in Chan’s, clinging as if he’ll lose Minho somewhere in these sparkling halls. He really tries to keep track of the tour of the castle—they’d landed in the throne room, Chan had explained after they’d gotten up—yet he would be hard-pressed to remember most of it. Despite its size and grandeur, it pales in comparison to how Chan seems to glow within his own realm. 

Jisung drops by at some point during the tour, bringing with him Seungmin, another member of Chan’s court. His mild appearance is offset by his serpent tongue and the twin set of wings on his back.

“Hyung,” he says to Chan. “Just come through a summoning circle next time. The castle staff are going to be pissed at all the sand you brought back.” 

Minho decides he likes Seungmin already. 

Actually, Minho likes all of them. As much as he teases Hyunjin, he considers him a friend. He and Jisung have become fast friends, and while he hasn’t known Changbin and Seungmin for long at all, he knows that if Chan trusts them, then he can trust them. 

He tells Chan as much later on when it’s just the two of them. He omits the last part, of course, but that still doesn’t stop Chan from flushing in delight. 

“What do you think about the realm, then?” He squeezes Minho’s hand, still intertwined in his.

Minho glances around the garden, at the strange flowers and plants sprouting out of the dark soil. There are shades and colors impossible in the mortal realm, and their scents combined together in an odd but tantalizing perfume. When Minho looks up at the sky, he can see twin suns and the echo of many moons. 

All around him swirls the magic of the demon realm, dampening his own, pressing down on his connection to the mortal realm. It’s an unsettling feeling, one that Minho has never had before. But Minho knows the magic of the demon realm well—it belongs to Chan, after all. 

“I like it,” Minho says. “I don’t know much about it yet, but I want to.”

Chan doesn’t answer, but Minho can feel his glee. There's a rustling noise like he’s trying to do something one-handed because he’s refused to drop Minho’s hand—Minho really should say something, this is getting ridiculous—and then Chan is turning Minho’s hand over. He still doesn’t say anything as he places something into his palm. 

Minho sees long strands of dark silver, chained together in an intricate yet sturdy lace-like pattern. In between, drops of a dark red jewel, deeper than pomegranate seeds, almost black to his eye, if not for the glinting crimson as the light of the sun winks at him. 

A bracelet, he realizes.

It’s no ordinary bracelet—Chan’s magic flows through it, thrumming with power. Minho can’t sense a specific spell within it, but he can feel the care crafted into every facet of the bracelet. There’s a deliberateness to every curve of silver, every cut of the jewels. 

Minho stares at the bracelet, then back at Chan. “Hyung,” he says, “it’s beautiful.”

“It’s for you.” He rubs a hand on the back of his neck, seemingly embarrassed by Minho’s compliment. “I mean, it’s yours if you want to be here with me.”

Minho has learned how demonic deals are done, even seen some made right in front of him, but nothing could have prepared him for this. Is this how deals with the demon king are struck? Prove yourself in whatever trials he puts you through, and when he delivers a carefully crafted gift with boyish shyness, is all that is left to do is say yes? 

It feels like something more than just an invitation to the demon realm—is that just Minho being greedy? He has to be greedy, to want so much out of life. To have excitement and stability, to fight until your body aches and to come home to a warm bed. To feel satisfied at the end of the day, and to wake up wanting more.

Minho can accept being greedy.

“Yes.” He closes his fingers around the bracelet, feels it pulse with magic. “I’ll be here with you.”

Chan’s hands are gentle as he clasps the bracelet around Minho’s wrist, his fingertips brushing lightly against the sensitive skin. Minho’s winding tattoo tingles where the bracelet meets it, and the gems glow a familiar red. He doesn’t have to look up to know they’re the same color as Chan’s eyes, but he does so anyway. 

Chan smiles at him, and he can’t imagine a better reward. 

It’s like coming out of a dream when Minho wakes up the next morning and still has to commute to his shop, but it’s a reality that he accepts readily. After all, he’s worked hard for his shop’s success, and he’s not going to give that up.

Jeongin comes in a bit late, some sort of bakery bread still in his mouth. He bustles through the shop as Minho restocks his shelves. 

“Sorry ‘bout this, hyung,” he mumbles as he finishes the bread in one terrifying bite. “Moving’s been a bitch.”

“It’s been two weeks,” Minho points out. “There’s two of you to do the work.”

“Exactly,” Jeongin mutters darkly. “That means there’s also twice the amount of stuff. Three times, if you count Hyunjin’s closet.”

It’s because Minho is a good friend that he does not point out Jeongin’s own shopaholic tendencies. 

The rest of the work day goes normally. Jeongin has managed to complete the more complex requests Minho thought he had to deal with, has already taken stock of what supplies they needed to order, and spends the rest of his time chatting up some customers. Minho finishes up some easy requests, sweeps about the store, and saves a child from tumbling face-first into a bin of kappa teeth. 

“Did something happen yesterday?” Jeongin asks around lunchtime. 

“Nothing bad,” Minho answers. “Why do you ask?”

Jeongin shrugs. “You just seem restless.” 

He’s not wrong—Jeongin is observant when he wants to be. He also doesn’t push if someone isn’t comfortable with it, so when Minho just grunts and goes back to chewing his bibambap, Jeongin lets him. 

Hyunjin drops by after the shop is closed. From the workshop, Minho recognizes his steps as the front door closes, but there’s also a skittering of a small animal. He looks at Jeongin quizzically. 

“Oh, yeah,” he says brightly. “Hyunjin-hyung brought the dog.” 

“You guys got a dog and you didn’t tell me?” 

“You didn’t ask.” 

“I literally asked how your day was yesterday.” 

“My bad.” Jeongin shrugs. 

Bursting in through the door, Hyunjin drops his leash and throws himself dramatically onto Jeongin. “Innie, baby, I’ve missed you.” 

“Hyung, the leash.”  

It’s too late. The dog is a small blur of white and black fur as it charges at Minho, stopping just in front of him so he doesn’t run face-first into Minho’s legs. Minho looks down. He blinks. 

The dog blinks, too. Multiple times, with his numerous eyes. 

“Kkami!” Stalling over, Hyunjin scoops the dog up. “You can’t be running all over the place!” To Minho, he says, “Sorry ‘bout that. Sometimes I forget everything you keep back here.”

“You what?” 

He goes on as if Minho hadn’t spoken. “He’s being very well-behaved, though. He’s not usually this good around strangers.” 

Minho has a few questions, none of which are about Kkami’s supposedly strange behavior. Such as: does Chan know Jeongin and Hyunjin were living together now? Why was Chan taking care of Hyunjin’s dog? How did Hyunjin know Chan could take care of his dog? He files all of those under something to deal with later. 

Hyunjin has just finished going on about Kkami when Minho manages to resurface from his mind. He reaches into his bag and pulls out a card. “Yeah, so I wanted to give this to you while I was in the neighborhood.” 

The paper is thick and creamy, with flowing calligraphy across it. Minho’s having issues deciphering it. “What’s that for?” He asks. 

“It’s the invitation to our housewarming party.” Hyunjin is much too polite to roll his eyes, but his urge to is very obvious in his voice. “I made the card myself.” 

Minho wouldn’t expect any less. “I’ll see if I can make it.” 

“Of course you can,” Jeongin says. “I checked your calendar that day. You’re free.” 

“That’s an HR violation for invading my privacy.” 

“That’s a cybersecurity violation for not logging out of your email.” 

Minho rolls his eyes, biting down a smile, and reaches to take the invitation from Hyunjin. “Fine, but don’t expect—“

Fast as lightning, Hyunjin’s hand darts out and latches onto Minho’s right wrist. The invitation falls to the ground. 

“Hyung?”

Minho opens his mouth. “Hwang Hyunjin—“

“What the fuck,” Hyunjin interrupts Minho for the second time, which, frankly, is two too many times. “You’re being courted by a demon?”

“Huh?”

“What?” Minho follows Hyunjin’s line of sight and realizes that he’s staring at the bracelet. Suddenly, he feels way too exposed. “Courted?” 

Hyunjin sighs. “Fine, dating.” 

“I’m not dating a demon.” 

Hyunjin shakes Minho’s wrist, rattling the bracelet so it makes a faint tinkling noise. “Then what’s that bracelet?”

“It was a gift.” Scowling, Minho yanks his hand out of Hyunjin’s. He debates rubbing his wrist in faux-pain to make Hyunjin feel bad, then decides against it when his fingers run over the silver of the bracelet. 

“That’s a courting gift,” Hyunjin corrects him. He sets Kkami down, straightening up to look Minho in the eye for added emphasis on what he’s about to say next. “Like, the courting gift. It’s basically an engagement ring.”

Jeongin startles from whatever silent stupor he’s been in. “You’re engaged?”

“I am not engaged,” Minho says before things spiral further. Jeongin and Hyunjin continue to stare at him as if he’s lying straight to their faces. Minho knows how things work—he’d know if he got engaged. “That doesn’t make any sense. Chan didn’t say—”

“Chan?”

The couple squawk in tandem as soon as the name leaves Minho’s lips, and he knows he’s fucked up. Like fucked up fucked up. 

Jeongin’s mouth drops open, much wider than he had when he ordered that towering burger from a specialty burger joint. “As in Bang Chan? The king of the demon realm?”

“Oh, sweet Baal.” Hyunjin has managed to ruin his usually perfect hair by running a hand through it. He looks so stressed he might actually start pulling his hair out. “You’re being courted by my boss?” 

The cat’s out of the bag now—well, the cat has been let out of the bag, only to fall face-first into a poorly concealed hole in the ground. “We’re not dating. I’m not being courted. I am not engaged.” He feels like a broken record. “We’re just friends—he didn’t say anything about—whatever you’re talking about. He just owed me for taking down Amon.” 

This time, his words are met with silence. Jeongin’s silence is because he’s probably still trying to wrap his head around Chan being involved in it. Meanwhile, Hyunjin’s silence is accompanied by a look of realization dawning on his face.

“Oh, Channie-hyung,” he says in a soft, pitying voice, “you poor, sweet idiot.” 

The tonal change gives Minho whiplash. “What?”

Hyunjin sits down and gestures for Minho to sit as well. Minho just stares at him, and Hyunjin sighs again. “Defeating each other’s enemies is like a precursor to the courting process," he explains. "You defeating Amon showed him you could be a viable consort."

“Yeah,” Minho says slowly, “but he was also in danger. I did what any good person would do. If that was the pre-requisite for courting, then do you fall in love with everyone who does you a favor?”

Hyunjin takes in a breath like it’s supposed to fortify him. “Okay, fine. But he had to get the idea somewhere to get you guys where you are now. Think, is there anything you did?” 

Minho is not a fan of being told what to do. “I don’t know,” he says. “How would I know? He flirts with everyone.” 

“So do you,” Jeongin mutters. 

Minho cuts him a glare. “Not helping.” 

Hyunjin ignores the aside and goes on. “Did you touch him anywhere? His wings? They look cool to humans and all but they’re an intimate part of some demons.” A spot of blush appears high on his cheek.

“Noted,” Minho says, equal parts fascinated and disturbed, “but no.” 

“Chest?” 

“Why would I touch him on the chest?”

Hyunjin throws his hands up in the air. “Horns?” 

Minho is about to say no again just to be contrary, but a memory is conjured of him brushing soot off of Chan’s horn, and the way Chan had stared at him after. “Fuck.” He does not like the knowing look on Hyunjin’s face. “I had no idea.”

“Humans, I swear,” Hyunjin says that to Jeongin while gesturing to Minho as if he’s not the only demon in the room. “What happened next?” 

“He trimmed the tree that was bothering me," he offers, no clue if that means anything. "I thought he was just paying me back.” 

Hyunjin blinks. “Is that a euphemism I’m not getting?”

“No, hyung hates that tree,” Jeongin confirms. Nodding sagely, he adds, “Chan-hyung was defeating his enemy.”

“Oh, that makes sense. Great thinking, Jeongin-ah.” Hyunjin gives Jeongin a wink from across the table. Minho does not look to see what face Jeongin makes, but whatever it is, it makes Hyunjin giggle. It’s disgusting. Minho debates sneaking off while he still can. Hyunjin leans forward. “Okay, what else?”

Too late. Minho sighs. “The soyali yurak—” He gestures over to the jar. “That was from him.” 

Hyunjin frowns. “Soyali yurak?”

“He felt bad because I couldn’t eat the diaboli cor.”

Hyunjin’s eyes widen with understanding and he gasps dramatically. “Soyali yurak: ‘shaded hearts’ to replace the devil’s heart! That’s so romantic.”

“Romantic?”

“Sharing diaboli cor is part of the courting process,” Jeongin explains. “It’s supposed to represent sharing one’s heart.”

Gesturing to the jar, Hyunjin asks, “And that essence of the moon, you watched him fight a bulgae for it, didn’t you? No magic?” Minho nods. “That’s Channie-hyung proving he can provide for and protect you. A bulgae's impressive, even if hyung's fireproof.”

Minho’s starting to put two and two together. “So you’re telling me yesterday when he told me to catch him, that was also part of the courting ritual?”

“Yep,” Hyunjin says. “And you caught him.”

“So now I’m engaged.”

“Demons don’t get married in the same way humans do,” Hyunjin reminds him. “It's more serious than that to us.” He points at the bracelet. “The red stones—that’s made from his blood, you know? So you’ll always carry him with you. You’ll never be apart.” 

More serious than being engaged—than being married. That can’t be right. Minho’s head spins. 

Hyunjin takes Minho’s silence as an opportunity to lament to himself. “Poor hyung. He has no clue you didn’t know. It’s been so long since he’s been in the mortal realm, and even when he was here last, he didn’t care about much about humans in that way. He hates most humans. The only reason he came up in the first place was because he didn’t trust Jeongin’s intentions.”

“Wait.” Minho’s brain is functioning enough to snag onto something relevant. “How did you know that?”

Sensing the surprise in Minho’s voice, Jeongin speaks. “How do you know that?”

“Why wouldn’t I? After all the time we spent together.” Minho swivels to meet Jeongin’s stare. “He showed up at my place the day after I banished him and told me.” 

“You didn’t just banish him again?” 

“I wanted to give you a chance.” 

Jeongin pauses. He touches his chest, palm brushing against his heart. “Hyung, you like me.”

“You’re my best employee,” Minho says as he rolls his eyes. “Because you’re my only employee.”

“Okay.” Jeongin smirks, his eyes curving into crescents. “Sure.” 

Nothing left to say to Jeongin, Minho turns his attention back to Hyunjin, who has been watching them with a fond smile. “So what,” Minho says, still confused, “you guys knew the whole time?” 

Hyunjin shakes his head. “Honestly, we had no idea until he told us. I thought I was hallucinating when he showed up out of nowhere to give us his blessing. I might have yelled at him a bit. But,” he adds, "it's what convinced me to ask Jeongin to move in with me."

“Oh. He didn’t tell me.”

“Of course, he didn’t. He gets single-minded.” Hyunjin says that like it’s a good thing. Maybe it is. 

“I thought he just wanted me to be part of his court,” Minho admits. 

“He does,” Hyunjin says. “He wouldn’t be courting you if he didn’t think you were more than capable. It's also, that, well… the only way a mortal can access the magic in the demon realm is to soul bond with a demon. Which is marriage to us. You proved yourself and accepted everything he gave you, so in his mind, you’re basically set to be married.”

A soul bond. Minho’s ears are on fire. “Oh.”

Hyunjin apparently does not notice Minho’s brain melting through his skull. “Look, it’s on Chan-hyung for not telling you exactly what was going on,” he says gently. “You should tell him you didn’t know. He won’t get mad.”

Chan? Getting mad?

Chan is kind and sweet and way too tolerant of Minho—he wouldn’t get mad. He’s never gotten mad at Minho before. 

So why does Minho still feel upset at the idea of telling Chan that he didn’t know he was being courted? It’d be like a rejection. He imagines telling the truth: telling Chan that Minho had no idea what he was doing, that all his work has gone to do nothing, and Minho does not feel the same way.

Oh, but that’s not the truth, is it?

A minute passes and Minho still hasn’t spoken. “Oh no,” Hyunjin mutters to Jeongin. “Did we break Minho?”

Jeongin looks over to get a closer look at Minho. “Nah. That’s his breakthrough face.”

He’s thinking, not deaf. Snapping out of his thoughts, Minho shoves Jeongin’s face out of the way. “You guys need to get out of here already.”

“Fine, fine.” Jeongin moves away easily, tugging his bag onto his shoulder and sweeping Kkami into his arms. Kkami growls, but in the least threatening way Minho has ever heard from the maybe-dog. “Should we be expecting a wedding invite soon?”

“You’re fired. ”

“No, I’m not.”

Chan has been over to Minho’s house a few times since that interrupted dinner, but Minho has never felt so nervous about someone coming over. He’d invited Chan after he’d stopped in Minho’s shop the day after Hyunjin and Kkami did, then spent the next couple of days basically holed in his shop. He’s tried on nearly a dozen shirts trying to find the right one, has vacuumed his house so much that the sight of a speck of dust would probably send him into a fit, and had resisted setting the table with a ruler.

His hands are shaking by the time the doorbell rings. Right on time.

Chan greets him with a smile and holds up a bottle of wine. “Not a second too late.”

Minho’s heart does a funny little thing in his chest.

Yet, it’s easy to fall into their familiar rhythm once they dig in. Even though it’s just a simple jjajangmyeon, Chan eats like it’s the most luxurious food he’s ever had, closing his eyes and humming with satisfaction. He listens as Minho talks about the latest incidents in the shop, and in turn, he tells Minho about the developments in the demon realm.

“Let’s go back next week,” Chan says. “Jisung’s begging to see you in action.”

“Why not tomorrow?” Minho asks. “I know you hate to keep Jisung waiting.”

Chan shrugs and takes a bite of his noodles. “I like spending time like this with you. And you told me to be a bit selfish sometimes.”

Minho nearly chokes on his jjajangmyeon when his heart jumps into his throat. 

They open the wine after the table has been cleared. It had been another fight to decide who would wash the dishes, but Minho had lost because he kept getting distracted by the flashes of Chan’s fanged smile, so he’d sat about in silence at the table, petting Soonie in an attempt to calm himself.

He tries to ignore the weight in his pocket, growing heavier and heavier with every growing second.

Soonie jumps off of Minho’s lap when Chan approaches, twining between Chan’s legs in a bid for attention as if Minho hadn’t just been petting him for the past ten minutes. Forever a sucker, Chan gives Soonie a few pats before he comes over to the table with the wine glasses in hand.

“Ah, Minho-yah, what’re you pouting for?” Chan sets the glasses on the table and takes the seat next to Minho. “The wine’s not going anywhere. I’m not, either.”

How could Minho have not known this before when it’s been so obvious?

“Hyung,” Minho says quietly.

“Hm?” Chan pours the wine into the glasses, eyeing them so they’re even. 

Minho’s throat has gone so, so dry. He doubts drinking the wine will be much help. 

In lieu of words, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the box, setting it down in front of Chan.

Chan raises a brow. “For me?”

Minho nods.

He hums as he picks up the box, but the seemingly endless song stops once he opens the box. His eyes widen, and a soft gasp escapes his lips when he sees what lies inside.

A ring. 

Minho knows every detail of it by heart. The band, made of platinum smelted and mixed with essence of the moon, glows a gleaming silver-white. There’s an inscription on the inside written in an old demonic language that Minho had spent hours hunched over library books to try and translate. He’s etched it with steady hands while reciting a spell that would prevent the marking from being worn away. Days of work for that band, and most of Minho’s magic.

But the most important part of the ring shines at the top: a jewel, red as blood. Minho's blood.

There’s only one gem, nothing in comparison to the chain Chan had given Minho, but Minho is not the king of a realm. His magic is that of a human—powerful, yes—but only human. Yet, the dedication and intention crafted is the same. 

“I didn’t know you were courting me, hyung,” Minho manages. Chan’s face falls, and Minho can only stare at his own hands now. They’re laced together in his lap, sweaty and trembling. He forces himself to go on because he has much more to say. “You were doing all of these kind things, and I thought maybe I just didn’t understand demon culture. I had no idea what they meant to you, and I didn’t ask any questions. But I also didn’t want to ask because I liked what you were doing.”

Chan’s breath catches—it’s minute, but Minho’s senses are so tuned into Chan right now that it might as well have been a shout. Minho swallows and continues, “I like spending time with you. I like seeing you happy. And when Hyunjin told me what this all meant, I was surprised, yes, but also I was…happy. I’m really happy, hyung.” 

Minho inhales. Once, then twice. He reaches over and slips his hand into Chan’s. Chan doesn’t move away. Instead, he gives Minho’s hand a squeeze. Minho has trained for years to fight humans, monsters, and demons, but when it comes to Chan, just this is enough to give him strength. 

“Human courting practices are different, but some of it is similar,” he says. “So this ring—I’m saying I feel the same. I’m in love with you, too.”

Chan doesn’t say anything, and his hand stays still. Heart rocketing, Minho dares a glance up, taking in Chan’s wide-eyed expression. “Shit, is that how I’m supposed to say it? I didn’t—”

Chan kisses him. 

It’s a messy first kiss: Chan is half out of his seat, his knees bump against Minho’s, and their foreheads nearly smash together. But then Chan’s hand winds around the back of Minho’s neck, coaxing Minho to tilt his neck up, and nothing has felt more right.

Hands gentle and lips soft, he kisses Minho with so much care it makes Minho’s heart want to burst into dust. Minho has thought about his mouth, his lips, his fangs so many times, but he couldn’t have imagined anything like this. He makes a soft noise and reaches up to clutch at Chan’s shirt.

They have to break to catch their breaths and Minho stands up, pulling Chan with him, intent on going someplace more comfortable. Looking about, Minho spots the ring sitting on the table, and he remembers there’s supposed to be more. Chan leans in to press a kiss to the corner of Minho’s mouth, and Minho has to pull back before he gets too distracted.

Chan makes a wounded noise. Feeling bad, Minho runs a soothing hand down his side. “I have another thing to tell you before we get too carried away.” 

“Tell me, then.” Chan’s hand settles on Minho’s cheek.

It takes all of Minho to not melt into his hand. He blinks away the fuzziness, and admits, “Less than a year might be a bit soon for me to get married. Or soul bonded.”

He expects disappointment from Chan, but instead, he breaks into laughter. Left out of an apparently very funny joke, Minho pokes Chan’s rib. “What did I say?”

Chan shakes his head, leaning to nuzzle Minho. Minho pouts and pulls back, making Chan giggle again. “You didn’t say anything wrong, Minho-yah,” he says. “It’s good, actually. Demon courtships are supposed to take years—decades sometimes.”

Minho imagines this going on for years and years. His flush is spreading to the rest of his face. “Oh.”

“I just didn’t know how to take the mortal lifespan into account,” Chan explains. “I guess I did go a little fast.” He laughs again; this one is bashful.

Overflowing with fondness, Minho lets himself lean into Chan’s hand that cups his cheek. He brushes his lips on Chan’s palm. “We have a bit of time. Everything doesn’t have to be right away. My magic will be weak in the demon realm, but as long as I’m with you, I know I’ll be safe.”

Taken back by Minho’s sudden earnestness, Chan blushes a deep red. He lifts his hand to tuck some loose hair out of Minho’s face. 

“You can keep the bracelet,” he says, “and I’ll keep the ring. As a promise to each other. What’s one or two or even five more years when we can have forever?”

Minho’s brow furrows. “Forever?”

Chan smiles at him. “Soul bonds tie our souls together. As long as I’m alive, so are you.”

Minho’s breath catches in his throat, and he has to force his words out. “You were okay with being bonded with me forever this soon?” 

Chan runs his thumb across Minho’s cheek and nods. “I knew you were something else when we first met—what kind of human just banishes the demon king, then willingly falls under his spell? I was interested.”

“Calling me 'something else' doesn’t sound like a flattering statement.”

“It is to me,” Chan says easily. “I liked the life that you lived. I liked how peaceful it was when I was with you. I liked that you treated me like an equal. A good human, I thought. And when you fought Amon, I knew that you weren’t just a good human. You are unlike anyone else in any of the realms I’ve traveled to. I think I could spend the rest of eternity being surprised by you.”

Minho’s cheeks are on fire. “Flatterer.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Minho-yah,” Chan coos. He strokes a finger over Minho’s red, red ear. Minho shivers, then blushes even harder. “How can I stop if you respond like this?”

He says it in such a teasing tone. Minho wants to smack him. He also wants to grab him by the collar and pull him close. So, he gives in to his urges.

Chan makes a noise of surprise when Minho kisses him, but he responds eagerly. They’re more hurried this time, nearly boiling over with the need that Minho has been suppressing. Bodies pressed together, hands wandering. Minho slips his fingers under Chan’s shirt, tracing along warm skin, feeling Chan’s stomach contract as Minho’s nails dig in.

“You’ve got the rest of forever to flatter me, Bang Chan,” Minho murmurs against his mouth. “You can shut up for a little bit.”

Chan huffs out a laugh that turns into a groan when Minho’s fingers slip below his waistband. “Yeah, that sounds good to me.” He sets his hands under Minho’s thighs, lifting him like he’s nothing, and it’s Minho’s turn to gasp.

They end up in Minho’s bedroom, Minho laid out on his bed, Chan crawling over him to meet his lips again. His thigh slides between Minho’s, and Minho gasps into the kiss. Chan’s tongue traces his own, and the kiss turns messy—wet, hot, full of urgency.

Minho’s hands follow the corded muscle of Chan’s arms, up, up, and over to fist in the back of his shirt. He scrabbles for purchase, tugging his shirt up until he can feel the heat of Chan’s back against his fingers. It spreads a fire underneath Minho’s skin, burning hot and bright.

When Minho scrapes his nails over his spine, Chan rocks forward, pressing his half-hard cock into Minho’s. He groans into Minho’s mouth and Minho has to pull back because he’s already seeing stars.

“Demon sex—” he gasps out. “Anything I need to know about it?”

“Do you want my wings and horns out?”

“Fuck,” Minho curses, remembering what Hyunjin had said. “Yeah. Yeah, I want them.”

Chan pulls Minho’s hands away from him and straightens up, tugging off his shirt in the meantime. As much as MInho is pleased by the definition of Chan’s chest, the soft grooves of his abs, and the hard peaks of his nipples, he is suddenly very cold without him, and he reaches for Chan, who catches his hand and brings it to his mouth. “Just give me a moment, darling.”

Magic shimmers in the air, and then there Chan is, in his horned and winged glory. His wings are partially spread, careful not to knock into anything in Minho’s room, but they still cast shadows over Minho. Fascinated, Minho sits up, and brushes a finger over a wing. Despite their intimidating appearance, they’re soft to the touch. Warm and full of life.

They quiver when Minho runs his hand over them again. 

“Minho-yah,” Chan whispers. He sounds out of breath.

Minho tears his eyes away from Chan’s wings to see his sclera dark, pupils eclipsing his iris so completely his eyes are nearly entirely black. Mouth slack with desire and chest rising and falling rapidly. Breath caught in his throat, Minho strokes his wings again, this time with a hint of nail.

Chan all but tackles him into the mattress. His mouth is on Minho’s, licking into his mouth like a man possessed. Minho can feel the tips of his fangs against his tongue, the points of his claws digging into his shirt, the threat of it burning through his body. Chan nearly tears Minho’s clothes off in his haste, then sets his teeth to Minho’s skin, sucking and nipping his way down Minho’s body, marking him in a fit of possessiveness that Minho never would have expected. Want pulses in Minho’s veins. 

It’s a scramble for him to throw Chan his lube, a growl fighting its way out of Chan’s chest when Minho has to separate to rifle through his nightstand, but he seems mollified once he eases one finger into Minho, eyes slitted with lust as he watches Minho suck him in.

Despite Chan’s desperation to get Minho bare, he’s agonizingly slow in opening Minho up. He has three fingers in Minho now, has used so much lube that Minho’s thighs are wet with it, and Minho’s cock has drooled a pool of precum onto his stomach. 

“I’m good,” Minho grits out, hands fisted in the sheets. “You’re doing too much.” 

Chan shakes his head. “There’s a lot. I don’t want to hurt you.” 

“I’ll be the judge of that.” 

Sighing, Chan withdraws his fingers, sitting up to unbutton his pants. Minho can already see the imprint through his pants, but his eyes widen when Chan’s cock springs free of the confinement of his underwear. It hangs heavy over Minho’s stomach, nearly reaching his belly button. 

Minho’s throat has become very, very dry. He gulps. “You’re a show-off.” 

Chan slips his fingers back in, aiming exactly for the spot that makes Minho moan. He leans over to peck the corner of Minho’s mouth; Minho can feel a faint smirk on his lips. “Only because you asked.” 

The fourth finger is truly more of a stretch. Chan has fingers thicker than Minho’s, and the combined girth is palpable.

He expects Chan to get on with it like he did before, to keep pumping and scissoring his fingers until Minho starts complaining again. But Chan continues to surprise him. 

Just as Minho opens his mouth to complain again, Chan swoops down to take Minho in his mouth. Minho nearly chokes on his own tongue as Chan swallows him down completely, gag reflex apparently nonexistent. He clenches around Chan’s fingers and his cock pulses precum in his slick, hot mouth. 

He lets out a garbled string of curses, hips kicking up into the wet heat. He reaches for Chan and buries his fingers into his curls. It’s not enough to just tug on his hair, and without thinking, he closes his hands around Chan’s horns.

The effect is instantaneous: his eyes flutter obscenely; his hips twitch into the mattress. And he moans, long and shameless, his throat spasming around Minho’s cock. 

Minho barely has enough self-control to keep himself from coming, tears pricking his eyes with the effort. With all of his strength, he wrenches Chan off his cock. 

“ Stop ,” Minho hisses. Chan’s lips are shiny with saliva and precum, swollen and red underneath the pornographic gloss, but his eyes are wide. Minho softens just a tad. “Come here. I want to come with you inside me.”

Chan places a hand on Minho’s hip, gentler than he expected. “I can do that.” 

He’s still gentle when he pushes in. Just the tip takes the breath out of Minho’s chest. He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to remember how to breathe. 

Chan pauses. “Minho?”

Hearing the worry in Chan’s voice, Minho opens his eyes. He reaches up to cup Chan’s cheek. “I’m good,” he says. “Keep going.” 

Minho has been prepared thoroughly, to the point where lube squelches out of him as Chan continues to move. An insane part of him wonders if rather than an excess of lube, it’s actually the girth of Chan’s cock forcing the lube out of him to make space. The stretch is insane, but it’s not uncomfortable, and by the time Chan has pushed in to the hilt, Minho has never felt more full in his life. 

Chan presses his mouth to Minho’s jaw. “Good?”

“Really good,” Minho forces out. “Just. Hyung—if I swear if you don’t start moving, I will scream.” 

Chan laughs, breath fanning across Minho’s skin, and he does what he’s told. 

The pace Chan sets is steady, not so slow that Minho loses his patience, but not so fast that Minho can’t even think. He sees how Chan’s eyes flick over his face, mapping every expression to how he moves, eyes sparking with heat when he fucks a noise out of Minho. He can feel how Chan’s hands tighten against his hip when Minho clenches around him, how his breath quickens when Minho moans his name. Though Minho is alight with desire, it is a different pleasure seeing all he does to Chan. 

Chan ducks down, settling onto his forearms as he continues to fuck into Minho. He nips at Minho’s neck, the sharp tips of his fangs digging into Minho’s skin, just on the right side of painful. Minho spasms and Chan does it again and again.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice how you were looking at me before,” Chan murmurs.

There’s that smug smile again, pressed up against his neck. Minho reaches up and drags his nails down Chan’s wings. 

Chan’s hips give a jerk, his cock slamming right into a spot that makes Minho see white. His groan vibrates through Minho’s body, and Minho pulses around him, his nails clawing at Chan’s wings.

Somehow, Chan manages to push Minho’s thighs up, folding him up. His hips slam into Minho’s, and his cock drives deep, deep into Minho. Minho’s brain all but shuts down, pleasure flaring up his spine like flames on gasoline. 

There are no more words exchanged between them. Minho is reduced to a bright, burning thing of want, touching Chan wherever he can get him. He claws at his chest, scrabbles at his wings, grabs at his horns, relishing every ounce of restraint Chan loses. 

Meanwhile, Chan carves a place for himself inside of MInho. He marks Minho’s throat, kisses his tattoos and seals, wraps his lips around Minho’s nipples. He slides a hand down Minho’s chest, rests it against his belly, and presses down.

“Shit, Minho—” He groans. “Your stomach—I can feel me inside of you.” He takes Minho’s hand and drags it down.

There it is; a slight bulge moving as Chan fucks into him. His belly stretching, his body pushing itself to the limits. Minho, making room for Chan in his body just like Chan would for his soul. 

Minho’s eyes roll back when he comes, vision filled with bursts of light. His cock, completely untouched, spits cum between their stomachs, and his body tightens around Chan as waves and waves of pleasure pulse through him. He thinks he makes a noise he’s never made before, somewhere between a whimper and a growl and a keen. 

Chan follows soon after him, hips stuttering as he slams himself deep, spilling his cum inside of Minho. Like the lube, Minho feels the cum leaking out where they’re connected, filthy and hot and wet. His cock, still hard, twitches weakly, and he comes for a second time.

They lie together for a few moments after. Chan’s head resting on Minho’s chest, Minho’s hand resting in his hair, Bodies tangled everywhere, sticky and sweaty, but satisfied.

Chan moves first. He nuzzles into the crook of Minho’s neck, noses at the soft skin there. Hoisting himself up, he takes Minho’s hand, the one where the bracelet is wrapped around, and he thumbs at the inside of his wrist. His eyebrows furrow as he stares at the protection seal there.

Minho watches him with interest. “What’s the matter?”

“I—” Chan ducks his head, suddenly bashful despite still being inside of Minho. “It’s nothing.”

Minho snort. “I think we’ve both learned that you have to tell me about these demon things. So, what is it?”

Chan presses his thumb into Minho’s wrist. “This place,” he says quietly, “this where the seal for soul bond is supposed to go.”

He sounds so disappointed. Minho looks at the seal that he’s pointing to, and he breaks into giggles.

Chan lifts his head out, the corners of his lips turned down. “Minho—”

“I’m not laughing at you,” Minho says before Chan can start pouting. “It’s just that—that one of all my seals.”

Chan’s brows knit together. “What’s special about that one?”

“You’ve broken that one before.”

“What?”

“That’s the ward for the shop. You broke it when we first met.” Minho laughs at the embarrassment creeping into Chan’s expression. He pets Chan’s head, smoothes a hand down his back. “I don’t mind letting let you break it again, once the time is right.”

Chan’s eyes widen, embarrassment being replaced by understanding being replaced by fondness. His hand moves up Minho’s wrist, fingers tangling with Minho’s like they belong there. “I look forward to that day,” he says.

When he kisses Minho this time, there is no hurry. They have time, after all. 

⋆༺⸸⛧⸸༻⋆

The smell of the smoke wafting through the shop is too familiar.

The thing about having a co-owner for the shop is that Minho is supposed to be able to leave Jeongin in the back without having something go wrong. They’ve made it two years without an incident, yet here they are again. Minho should say he’s disappointed. It’s not written explicitly in the contract, but it should be implied. 

“Just a minute,” he tells his customer.

The customer opens her mouth to respond, and Minho taps the board on the counter. “Please read the shop policies here, ma’am.”

Sure enough, smoke covers every inch of the workshop when Minho opens the door. It blossoms past the confines of the room, but Minho glares at it, and the smoke disappears. He steps inside and crosses his arms, staring down the culprits in front of him.

“Was this necessary? You’ve got a portal in the house.” Jeongin at least has the decency to look ashamed. Meanwhile, Chan, still standing in the summoning circle, grins at Minho. “I needed to get here fast.”

“You can drive.” 

Chan shrugs. “Not fast enough.” He smiles when Minho sighs and holds out a hand. “Got word that one of Amon’s followers is hiding out in the land of tear.”

Minho shoots an offended glare at Chan’s outstretched hand. “Was there any way you could’ve sent for me without the fucking smoke?” 

“Forgive me for wanting to escort my husband.”

“You have no shame, do you?” Minho says. He shrugs off the apron he had been wearing and takes Chan’s hand, allowing himself be led into the summoning circle. 

Chan presses a kiss to his hand, lips just shy of the seal hidden by Minho’s sleeves. Its mate sits proudly on the inside of Chan’s wrist. “For you, there is no need.”

Though Minho rolls his eyes, he laces his fingers with Chan’s. To Jeongin, he says: “Sounds like I’ve got an emergency on my hands.”

“I wouldn’t expect any less, hyung.”

“There’s a customer waiting at the front. She seems like she’ll be a handful.”

Jeongin waves a flippant hand. “Nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”

“We’ve got two minutes before Jisung takes the situation into his own hands,” Chan whispers in Minho’s ear.

“Let’s wait three more minutes, then,” Minho replies.

The magic of the demon realm calls to Minho, his connection to it only strengthening in Chan’s presence. It feels natural now, settling into his soul so naturally he can barely tell it’s there, no different than his connection to the mortal realm. But if he closes his eyes and really searches, he thinks he can feel Chan in every whisper of magic, in every thread of his soul. 

Chan laughs, and even after all this time, Minho finds himself smiling along. “One minute. I’d prefer the land of tears not to be burnt to ash.”

“It’s as if you don’t even care about me.”

“Oh, Minho-yah, you know I love you.”

Though Minho continues to grumble, Chan’s grin only widens. He must feel it through the bond, too—that fondness that makes Minho’s soul and body warm. Always there, steady and constant like the sun. 

“Just send us back,” he says to Jeongin.

“I’ve been ready to do that the whole time. You guys were the ones who were wasting time flirting,” Jeongin says. He meets Minho's scowl with a raised eyebrow as if asking him to challenge that assumption. “Anyways, are you gonna make it to dinner tonight?”

“Don’t worry about us.” Chan squeezes Minho’s hand. “We’ve got it handled.”

In the demon realm, they will journey to the land of tears. They will fight, side by side; spend blood, sweat, and tears until they taste victory. Afterwards, they will wash themselves clean of it. Minho will prepare the banchan. Chan will feed the cats. Then, they will go over to Jeongin and Hyunjin’s apartment for dinner.

Perhaps they won’t find the defector in the land of tears. Maybe they will, and they’ll run late, have to ask one of the neighbors to feed the cats. Minho might have to buy premade banchan from the grocery store instead of making his own. There are a dozen surprises along the way that they cannot prepare for. 

But regardless of what happens, Minho knows for certain, at the end of the day, that they will always return to the same home, to the same bed. 

And when they wake up, they will do it all again. Minho can't wait.