Trigger Warning: The following content contains subjects like noncon and self-harm that can be disturbing to readers—reader discretion advised.

Dinner with his marriage partner, as it turned out, couldn’t have gone any more horribly than it did. 

Her name was Elizabeth Ahn, the daughter of a wealthy English woman and the Ahn overseas trade tycoon. She carried herself with a poised grace and yet an overbearing smile that radiated “fake”. She loudly and airily greeted Haneul and Chairman Kim at the front doors of the French restaurant. It was a popular eatery in Jung-gu for various upper class to frequent. Haneul supposed that he was grateful his father picked something close to the penthouse—he wouldn’t have a god-knows how long to ride back home. He could get this shitty introduction meeting over with and then go back home to Hrafn. Hell, maybe he could make a break for it if things got really unbearable. Closing his eyes, he could imagine the gentle gaze and fond greeting upon his arrival.

However when he opened his eyes, he was once again faced with Elizabeth, her shoulders covered by a designer jacket and her hands pleating the skirt of her lavish cocktail dress. Her fire-red hair glimmered in the glare of the overhead LEDs of the awning. 

“Chairman Kim, Mr. Kim—” She waved at them.

Haneul immediately found her voice abrasive and grating—like fingernails and chalk. He refused to respond back.

His father, on the other hand, didn’t particularly seem to care, he’d probably reprimand Haneul for his behavior anyways. “Ms. Ahn, thank you for coming to see us. We’d already planned on meeting you inside.”

Haneul could feel the gaze she cast on him. Yeah, sure she’d wanted to see for herself. He was used to his marriage prospects trying to get their eyeful. And each time he felt violated—as if they were clawing him apart bit by bit to look for what they wanted. Clicking echoed against his skull as his jaw pulled taut and his teeth gritted against one another. He wanted to yell that he was not a toy for neither her nor his father to play with.

Nonetheless, he followed them inside without a word. 

The chatter was trivial. The meal tasted like chalk. Everything wore down on him until it was a terrorizing migraine at the base of his skull. He smiled and chimed a few vague words for the first time that night. Elizabeth and Ahn Senior both seemed to light up at his contribution with a renewed vigor. Haneul sent a glance to his father, which was defiantly ignored. His father refused to look at him throughout the entire course of dinner. A faint pained huff escaped Haneul’s lips—he wanted to flip the table over. 

Instead he continued his best at stepping into the small talk, offering sage tidbits whenever he felt able. He wondered at one point, when colors bled too deep and sound rang too loud, what Hrafn would do in this situation. The alien was so buttoned up and stern that a conversation with business politics, talk of wedding arrangements, and even the lightest of flirtatious jabs did not seem like a particular forte. Despite how he wanted to, Haneul didn’t let the building chuckle escape him, no matter how humorous Hrafn’s looming figure sitting at the dinner table was. But it did assuage some of the pressure against his forehead. 

An eternity later, the social meeting ended. The wait-staff spirited away the last of the untouched dishes and Chairman Kim waved away the bill with a flick of his wrist. Haneul was vaguely aware of the fact that he himself did not eat a single bite of food…maybe Hrafn and Chief Seong had leftovers back at the penthouse.

“You’re as good as family now,” Ahn Senior said, patting Haneul’s hand just a bit too enthusiastically. “Please come by the warehouses and visit anytime, my boy.”

“Thanks for your kind offer.” Haneul’s brow twitched and his migraine worsened. 

Chairman Kim stood. “Ahn. Why don’t you help me bring the cars around front? We’ll let the two have a moment without two old coots in their way.”

“Excellent idea!” Ahn Senior practically shot up from his seat. “Elizabeth, meet me outside when you’re ready. Oh to be young…”

This time Haneul did not hide his glare from following the two fathers as they scurried away from the table. 

He nearly screamed when a foot trailed up his calf. 

“So you’re the heir of the H&H Conglomerate…” Elizabeth drawled, resting her chin on her hand. “Not bad.”

“I do have a name,” he warned, throwing his napkin onto the table as he went visibly rigid. “And I’m leaving.”

“Easily embarrassed, hm?” Her toes pressed and ground against the inside of his upper thigh, she nudged further up against something he wanted her nowhere near, sending a disgustingly electric shock through his torso and into his throat. “Or perhaps voyeuristic? I wonder what else I can do…” 

Bile refluxed at the back of his pallet and he shot away immediately—chair squealing and feet stumbling. How many times must he go through the same thing over and over again? His body burned. A blast of dizziness shook him to his core, and the overwhelming sensation of déjà vu nearly toppled him. Phantom touches scraped up his legs and his hips. The faint echoes of his own cries begging for it to stop rang in his ear like a recorded voicemail. He wondered how many unwanted touches like this tallied and branded him in old wounds.

“I don’t know what games you think you’re playing, but leave me out of it.” He snarled, no longer holding back. “And outside of official meetings, stay the hell away from me. If it weren’t for mine or your father…”

He paused, aware of the very posh and very crowded dining room. The underside of his skin boiled. Eyes loomed on him like the fates. The room was quiet save for metal clinking against porcelain.

Elizabeth seemed equally shaken before her fox-sly gaze swept around the restaurant where the other diners very blatantly watched the spat.

“It’s refreshing to see someone so unused to my advances. Innocent even. I can’t remember the last time someone didn’t invite me over after that,” she murmured coyly and gave a slow bat of her eyelashes. “You’ll be fun for me, Haneul. I look forward to getting to know you, darling.”

Haneul stormed away without hesitation. 

He did not go to his father who called him from the car. He refused to acknowledge the driver who waved or the car that idled for him at the valet. One step became two, two became four—and he soon enough found himself running down the sidewalk back to his home. The penthouse skyrise towered close enough to be able to make out the garden at the top and floors beneath. People on the sidewalk yelled at him for not watching out. He kept his gaze trained on the tall building, glaring bright like a lighthouse in the night. Neon buzzed along the sides of his vision like blinders. 

Cars honked at him as he bolted across the street at the last second. 

The doorman gave him a look of disbelief before letting him in. 

The elevator seemed to close tighter upon him with every floor that wasn’t his. 

His mind wobbled and he couldn’t think straight. 

His thoughts began to black out.

Haneul stumbled into the hallway and fumbled for the keycard in his pocket. Chief Seong’s greeting sounded hollow and mocking. He didn’t respond and slammed the door behind him. 

He staggered to the kitchen, breath ragged. “Why is it always a game? Why am I always playing this damn game?”

The counter smashed straight into his gut when he lost his balance and he choked out. As he reoriented himself, his hand knocked over a knife block. The blades clattered across the granite.

“They want to control me? My father? The Ahns?” His mind felt muddled, everything melting and hot as sweat soaked his collar and his cuffs. One of the knives weighed clunky and haphazard as he picked it up and gripped the handle tightly. This was such a practiced motion. How many times had he held a blade like this in secondary school? University? How many times had he done the exact same thing for himself over and over again just to prove that he had control of something, anything?

“I can make decisions for myself.”

Not even a second thought 

(but what were thoughts? Only further and further fragments that blasted against the side of his head and expanded into his throat and chest like acid…) 

passed when he brought the blade through the air to slice through his hand.

Except—

The world stilled.

The knife paused and a firm hold halted his wrist.

Haneul looked up into furious crimson and grey eyes. 

Clattering to the floor, the blade fell as Hrafn’s grip tightened and twisted its grasp. The metal rang as it hit the tile, singing like a bell’s toll.

In that instant, clarity hit him like a punch to the stomach, and so did panic and pain. Haneul sucked in a breath only to find that he couldn’t breathe. He tried again only to find that he took air in and in and in but couldn’t force it back out. His nerves seared as if burned. Yet every joint and muscle froze. Instantly the panic worsened and this time he really thought he would scream. Every breath he sucked in refused to release, and he reeled when nothing grounded him in the function. Once more, Hrafn moved swiftly, almost too quick for his eyes to catch. His arms caged Haneul against the counter top, his clawed feet kicked aside the knife. A canopy of midnight wings suddenly umbrellaed them and hid them away from everything else surrounding them.

“Look at me,” Hrafn commanded, leaning in close—voice leaving little room for argument. “You are safe. Breathe.”

It took his mind a moment to process the direction. His hands trembled. The narrowest bit of air escaped his lungs. “I—”

“Don’t speak.” Hrafn bent down, and rested his forehead against Haneul’s. “You don’t need to speak right now. Just follow me.”

Haneul nodded.

“Good.” A large hand rested on Haneul’s chest, the claws gentle and careful not to nick any clothes or skin. “All you must do right now is follow my lead. Breathe in, breathe out.”

With a rattle, Haneul’s breath fluttered around in his lungs like marbles thrown against a wall. He shakily wrapped his hands around Hrafn’s wrist, more for support than anything else. Through such a simple touch, he could feel the rise and fall of Hrafn’s body. Trying again, Haneul copied him—shakily, half-capable. But with each inhale and exhale, each gasp for air became a little less desperate and turned into something more regulated. 

“You’re doing well,” Hrafn crooned softly. He brushed a strand of sweat-dampened hair from Haneul’s forehead. 

Only his wings surrounded them now, and yet the oppression of the restaurant or the elevator did not follow this enclosing. It was warm and tethering. The breathing eased. Bit by bit the world rocked less and sanity began to really dawn back to Haneul.

“Hrafn,” he managed to croak out. 

“I’m here.” Firm and unmoving.

“S…sorry,” Haneul managed out.

“Don’t apologize,” the warlord murmured, his ears flickered for a moment and his head peeked out from the feather canopy. 

Chief Seong’s voice spoke distantly from the doorway. Hrafn shook his head and ducked back into the winged haven. The front door shut and locked. 

“I…” Haneul felt his world teeter again as exhaustion and dizziness slowly creeped their way up his neck. “I need water.”

“I can get that for you. Do you think you can walk to the living room?”

“...yes.”

The hesitancy stilled Hrafn for a moment, but reluctantly he pulled away, his wings furling against his sides and back. He stepped aside so Haneul could shuffle to the couches that he gratefully plopped down onto. His heart pounded furiously in his chest and his eyelids drooped almost within seconds of sitting down. This had been the first time for anyone to witness him like that. 

He wondered if Hrafn thought less of him.