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savventeen · 1 year

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2 ... With mingyuuuuuuu 🥺

break the curse, break my heart

pairing: cursebreaker!mingyu x cursebreaker!gn!reader rating: M (mostly for reader's potty mouth) wc: 5.1k prompt: ‘things you said through your teeth’ (from this list) summary: what's supposed to be a simple hex job turns into something much deadlier, and suddenly the two of you are fighting just to stay alive warnings: angst, hurt/comfort, near-death experiences, exorcisms (kinda), convulsing, blood, hospitals, but there's a happy ending friends no worries!!!, mingyu is self-sacrificing, self-harm (mingyu cuts himself so he can use blood for magic reasons), descriptions of a panic attack tags: modern magic au, curse-breaking as a career, they’re partners (in the business sense AND romantic sense), non-linear narrative, alternating pov, reader calls mingyu stupid approximately a billion times, but he absolutely deserves it so *shrugs*, seungcheol also makes a guest appearance as #1 hyung a/n: sorry this took approximately 84 years to complete (it was only supposed to be a drabble lmao) but i hope you enjoy it despite the wait!! also a quick note on the magic in this world: hexes are the equivalent of small pests and are more annoyance than anything whereas curses are Extremely Dangerous and often deadly

Hex hunting is not what you expected to be doing tonight.

Well, it was your job, of course, but usually you weren’t called in on a case so last minute, and especially not on one of your few days off.

But apparently whoever owns this house-turned-antique shop called in a favor or two at the guild, and everyone else was busy, so here you were — hauling yourself up a ladder and into a dusty attic at nearly midnight on Saturday night because there was pesky little hex on the loose that apparently couldn’t wait until morning to be taken care of.

Whatever. Jeonghan would owe you one, and you plan to save that favor for something big. Plus, it’s not like you’re doing this job alone.

Right on cue, Mingyu’s voice filters through your earbuds in a petulant whine. “Jagi-yahhhhhh.”

You roll your eyes even though you know he can't see it, a hint of fondness trickling through the exasperation in the form of a smile, and you continue your scan of the first room of the attic. The bright teal glow at the end of your wooden staff is your only source of light as you look for any signs of the wayward hex.

"Why did I have to be the one to search the basement,” Mingyu continues. “Why couldn't we have switched?"

You snort, peering around a stack of old moving boxes that tower over you and seem to be more duct tape than cardboard, miscellaneous protective runes scribbled all over them in sloppy permanent marker. "You lost rock-paper-scissors fair and square, babe, I don't know what else to tell you."

Besides the faint scorch marks you've found that match the ones throughout the rest of the house, you haven't had any luck in finding traces of the hex.

"But it's so creepy down here," he whines, pout audible through the phone call. He's right, of course — you suppress a shudder at the thought of having to face the numerous shelves lined with antique porcelain dolls stored down there, and thank the stars for letting you win that particular battle of rock-paper-scissors.

Even still, you can’t help but tease him just a little. “If you stop complaining and actually clear the basement, you can get out of there much sooner, you know.”

There’s a moment of silence over the line, and you take the opportunity to do one last sweep of the haphazard piles of boxes and broken artifacts — your staff’s glow unwavering — before heading to the door that opens into the attic’s second room.

“Wow,” Mingyu deadpans. “I think I hate you and everything that you stand for, actually.”

You bark out a startled laugh, loud and carefree in the way that only seems to happen with Mingyu, and you feel a smile bloom across your face. “Oh, wow,” you giggle. “Whatever did I do to deserve such sweet words from you?”

The teal light flickers slightly as you trace your staff in a familiar pattern in front of the door, checking for traps and finding none. Satisfied, you push it open with a creaking groan and step carefully past the threshold.

“You know exactly what you did,” Mingyu scolds indignantly as you step fully into what appears to be an empty room. “And you will get sweet words when you stop forcing me to go down into scary basements, y/n. I swear, some creepy possessed toy is going to be the death of me one day.”

“Sure,” you reply, distracted. Something about the room is…off.

There’s nothing immediately amiss — boxes and antiques just like the previous room propped up and shoved against the walls — but there’s something, a feeling, that you can’t quite seem to put your finger on, and it sets you on edge. “Should’ve picked a different career if you wanted to avoid scary basements, though.”

“Funny, we have the exact same job description and yet somehow you never have to go into the basements — only me.”

“Yeah,” you murmur quietly. “Funny.”

Something’s wrong.

Your bad feeling coalesces into a pressure that starts to build in your chest and the hair on your arms stands on end as goosebumps race across your skin.

“Gyu, something’s wrong.”

Belatedly, you realize you’d just interrupted him in the middle of a sentence, but you’re too busy tracing a quick series of protective sigils in the air around you to care too much.

His tone turns serious in an instant. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“Not sure yet, bad feeling.” There are only a few strokes left for you to complete when the teal light at the end of your staff flickers and then goes out.

“Shit,” you whisper.

“Y/n?”

Before you can open your mouth to answer, the end of your staff lights up again. But it’s not the calming teal blue that you’re used to. It’s red — deep, dark, and ominous — and the implication sends dread coursing through your body like liquid lead.

“Fuck, it’s not a hex, it’s a curse.”

You pivot to run out of the room, but before you can make it two steps away, something slams into you with enough force to knock you down to the floor. And then you’re screaming — the dark magic coursing through you in an agonizing wave that makes you feel like you’re on fire.

You realize you’re on your hands and knees and Mingyu is yelling in your ears and you feel like you might be dying, and for a few moments you forget that you’re trained for this. You might not have any of your usual equipment since it was supposed to be an easy in-and-out hex job, but you grit your teeth and remind yourself that you’re fucking trained for this.

"—cking answer me, y/n, please."

“Here,” you sob. You’re not sure how much time you lost, probably only a few seconds, but you think you can hear Mingyu pounding his way up the stairs.

“Fuck, thank god, okay. Hold on, I’m on my way. Just hold on.”

You can feel the curse trying to tear you apart from the inside out, an enraged wildfire with scorching claws, and it takes all of your concentration to pull the sharpie out of the pouch attached to your belt. You yank the cap off with trembling hands, and then another wave of agony courses through you and you collapse onto your side, unable to hold yourself up any longer. Doesn’t matter, you think. You don’t need to be sitting up for this, anyway.

You drag one of your sleeves up and shakily start to trace out a series of banishing runes — the ones you’ve known by heart for years now. But it only takes you a few strokes to realize you’re shaking too much to be able to draw anything legible. It doesn’t stop you from trying though, tracing wobbly shapes even as you can’t see them through your tears. And then the painful spasms get so bad that you can’t hold onto the pen anymore, and you’re left shaking on the floor feeling like every single one of your cells has become a raging inferno.

“Gyu, ‘m sorry,” you slur through your cries. “Love you, ‘m sorry.”

You don’t know if he responds, but you blink and suddenly hands are turning you over and clutching your shoulders, cupping your face, and — Mingyu is here.

He’s here and he’s saying something, his face a portrait of fear and worry, and you know deep in your gut that he’s too late. He’s too late and he’s going to have to watch you die right in front of him and that thought is almost more painful than the curse searing its way through every fiber of your being and then—

For a moment, the agonizing fire within doubles, triples, in intensity — the curse hooking its claws within you and coalescing into a pain so severe you didn’t think it was possible. The agony is so all-encompassing that you don’t even have the ability to think any last words, let alone say them, before the darkness claims you.

Mingyu has always hated going down into creepy basements.

It’s his least favorite part of the job and he makes sure that everyone knows exactly how much he hates it whenever he’s forced to go down into one. (Especially when he lets you win at rock-paper-scissors, because even though he’s fond enough of you to go down into the basements in your stead, he’s not at all above whining about it.)

He knows it’s all psychological, of course, that any other rooms of the houses they’re called out to are just as likely to be affected by malignant magic. But — there’s something that always feels so sinister about descending a flight of rickety stairs into unknown darkness.

And of course, tonight’s last minute hex job just had to have a basement full of creepy dolls that seemed like they were trying to stare directly into his soul. Because the universe hates him and he loves you too much for his own good.

The blue glow of his dual war picks isn’t helping the situation either, casting ominous shadows wherever he turns.

He comes around a corner and finds himself unexpectedly face to face with one of the dolls — the porcelain cracked excessively at the corners of the mouth, making it look like its face is stretched into a smile straight from hell. Mingyu shudders.

“God, I hate dolls so much,” he tells you. “Especially this one. I swear it’s going to come to life and try to eat m—”

“Gyu, something’s wrong.”

Your voice is completely void of all the lighthearted bickering from just a moment ago, and Mingyu’s tone hardens to match. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“Not sure yet,” you continue, distracted. “Bad feeling.”

He tightens his grip on his picks and turns to make his way out of the basement, but your whispered “Shit” stops him in his tracks. Worried, he calls out your name.

You gasp, loud and crackling over the phone call, and dread drips icily down his spine. “Fuck, it’s not a hex, it’s a curse.”

Before he can process how truly fucked that makes the both of you, you start screaming, and Mingyu promptly loses his goddamn mind.

His feet move faster than he can think, sending him rocketing up the stairs. But one of his boots catches on the top of the basement steps in his haste and he goes sprawling across the wooden floor.

He shouts your name as he scrambles to get up, and the longer you keep screaming instead of answering, the more desperate he becomes — begging you to just answer him, please, god, please.

You sob out a “Here” just as he’s making it up to the second floor, hating the house for being so huge it’s practically a mansion.

He curses in relief at the sound of your voice and says, “Hold on, I’m on my way. Just hold on.”

Soon the ladder to the attic is in front of him and he quickly sheaths his picks, practically flying up the worn wooden rungs. His movements turn frantic when he hears you slur an apology over the line, something that sounds an awful lot like a final goodbye, and when he sprints across the attic to the far room and finds you convulsing on the floor, his heart stops.

His worst nightmare is playing out right in front of his eyes, and he feels like he can't breathe when he falls to his knees next to you.

Your staff is glowing a deep, hellfire red off to the side, and from the shadows in the room he can tell that his picks are glowing the same sinister color. He grabs you by the shoulders and rolls you onto your back, flinching at the heat emanating from your skin.

“Baby, look at me. Hey, look at me, baby, c’mon—” You don’t respond verbally, but your tear-filled eyes open a fraction and lock onto his. He moves his hands to cup your face — it feels like you’re on fire, fuck — and vows, “I can fix this, baby, okay? I’m—”

Too late, something traitorous whispers in the back of his mind. You’re too late, and they’re going to die, and it’s going to be your fault.

“Just— just hold on, please, hold on, baby, I’m gonna fix this.”

He sees the sloppy runework on your forearm, knows in his gut that even if he redid them himself, it would be unlikely for you to survive the banishment. Devastation chokes him for half a second, freezing and unyielding and all-encompassing, before he realizes: you probably couldn’t survive…

But maybe he could.

Again, his body starts moving before his brain can fully catch up, snagging your dropped sharpie from the floor and scrambling to trace a transference rune on the unmarked skin of your arm. He copies the matching rune onto his palm, and with one more desperate plea for you to hold on, he slaps his marked palm over your rune.

He already knows the curse is a nasty one, but the way he can feel it digging its claws into you, ripping and tearing as it’s forcefully dragged through the rune on your arm and into his, brings bile to the back of his throat.

You scream your loudest yet before going scarily, horrifyingly limp, but Mingyu doesn’t have enough time to do anything but try not to pass out as the curse sears its way into his body.

It’s agony, and Mingyu knows he has a very limited amount of time. From the way it already feels like he’s being boiled from the inside, it’s probably even less than he thought.

Maybe I won’t survive this, a quiet, scared little part of him whispers.

He bites back a scream between his teeth and starts drawing a binding rune on his arm, taking another glance at where you lie crumpled on the floor.

Maybe I won’t survive… but you will.

Consciousness, when it comes, is slow, syrupy.

For some reason, the fact that you’re conscious at all comes with a sluggish sort of surprise, a groggy, Huh. Not dead.

And then you realize just how freezing you are. It’s like your entire body has suddenly turned to ice. A voice in the back of your mind mumbles something about fire, but all you can focus on is how cold and how empty you feel, and—

Everything comes back to you with the force of a meteor — the curse, the pain, Mingyu, “I’m gonna fix this,” Mingyu, Mingyu, Mingyu — and you’re jolting into motion with a choked gasp.

It’s not the unthinkable agony of before, not even close — but it hurts.

Your body feels like its insides have been scraped out with icy, rusted spoons and your bones have been replaced with lead that’s been left to freeze in the arctic tundra. Just getting to your hands and knees feels like climbing Mount Everest, and dizziness threatens to send you sprawling back onto the attic floor.

But you push through it with a grunt, and from your right you hear Mingyu gasp out your name in question. You turn, almost falling over in the process, and find him curled up against a beat up old trunk and a pile of small cardboard boxes, one of his war picks tossed to the side and casting him in a haunting red glow.

He looks awful, sweat dripping down his face and expression scrunched up in misery. His entire body is tensed, strained with the amount of force it's taking to hold all of the pain inside, and one arm is pulled tight to his chest while the other is pressed to the floor, his fingers coated in something wet and shiny.

You scramble as quickly as you can to him with a worried croak of his name, but he shoots out the hand he’d been holding against his chest and shouts, “Wait, stop!”

You do, but only because he sounds so scared. “Gyu, what…”

Your eyes trail from his worried face to his outstretched arm, to where a large burn sits in the palm of his hand, smudged with ink. More ink further up his arm catches your eye, and it’s with a dawning horror that you realize what exactly he’s marked there.

It’s a binding rune, and you think you’re going to be sick.

“What did you do?” It comes out as a whisper, and Mingyu doesn’t respond, just clenches his jaw and starts moving the hand he has on the floor.

You follow the movement, and you realize he’s drawn something on the floor with that shiny substance, a set of runes like the ones you tried to complete, and then something clicks in the back of your mind and you realize it’s blood. It’s his blood, judging by the equally dark and shiny tear in the knee of his pants.

No… no no no no no.

“What did you do?” This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real.

You already know the answer to your question, the lines drawn in blood on the floor matching the ones you tried to draw on your arm. Since he used a binding rune on himself — stupid, stupid, stupid — the only way to complete the banishment is with a blood ritual. A stupidly dangerous, stupidly deadly blood ritual. “What the fuck did you do?”

His eyes flint with a steel-lined determination. “Took the curse,” he grunts.

All at once, all of the fear and worry coursing through you ignites into a righteous fury. You force your frozen limbs to move — careful not to smear his stupid, stupid runes — and clumsily crawl close enough to grip him by the shoulders as tightly as your shaking hands will allow.

"Kim Mingyu, why the absolute hell would you do something so fucking stupid?!"

You’re angry, furious, but it’s only a mask for the fact that you’re the most terrified you’ve ever been in your entire life. Desperate tears start dripping down your face, momentarily blurring your vision.

When you blink them away, you see him looking at you. No, not at you, into you — into your heart and into your soul.

And through gritted teeth, he vows, “Because you're the love of my fucking life, and like hell was I going to sit back and let this curse take you away from me."

A wounded sound punches out of you, and you twist your trembling hands in the fabric of his shirt. "So you're gonna let it take you away from me instead?"

Your fury melts into devastation, into grief, so quickly it leaves you lightheaded. You sway forward until your forehead makes contact with the burning skin of his neck.

“ ‘S not gonna take me.” He pants, pressing a searing kiss to the shell of your ear. “I promise.”

You can feel the way his arm moves as he traces out the final strokes of his blood rune, and you know the instant he completes it because his entire body tenses beneath yours. And then he’s screaming, raw and guttural, and then you’re screaming, and the curse fights every second with metaphorical claws and teeth until the banishment is complete—

And then, with a blinding flash of red, the house is silent, still, and dark.

It takes Mingyu much longer than what’s probably considered normal to realize that he is, in fact, awake.

He thinks he feels like he got hit by a bullet train, but mostly he feels so floaty that it’s hard to tell anything at all.

“That’d be the drugs.”

Hmm. He knows that voice. He wonders what Seungcheol is doing in his dream. Usually his dreams have more color, though, not whatever this endless black is.

“Not dreaming. And you’d know that if you opened your eyes.”

What a revolutionary concept. One that proves much more difficult than anticipated, because somehow when he wasn’t paying attention, someone switched his eyelids out for anvils. It could take him minutes or even hours, but eventually he’s able to peel his eyes open a fraction. It’s enough for him to see… beige. Just— a whole lot of beige. And then a really blurry face.

“Hey, hey, Mingyu,” the face says, suddenly eager. “Are you in there? Are you actually waking up this time?”

Mingyu blinks, and opens his eyes a bit more, and the blurry form above him morphs into the worried face of Seungcheol, his dark eyebrows pulled together in hopeful concern.

Mingyu blinks again. “No,” he pouts.

Seungcheol barks out a laugh that almost sounds like a sob. “Oh, thank fuck.”

Mingyu feels a hand slip into his and squeeze — oh yeah, hands, I have those — and another gently brushes his bangs aside. “Hey, kid. It’s good to see you,” Seungcheol sniffs.

“Why’re you cryin’?” Something must have happened to Mingyu’s face if the mere sight of him brings Seungcheol to tears. Did he trip and fall down some stairs or something? He vaguely remembers a set of rickey stairs. “Wha’s wrong?”

For a moment, Seungcheol just looks at him, biting his lip like he has a million and one things to say and no idea which ones to start with. Then he sighs, deep and long, and shakes his head. “You’re gonna be the death of me, Kim Mingyu.”

You're gonna be the death of me.

Something in the back of his mind freezes, tugging at a connection, and then clicks into place.

All of a sudden, Mingyu is no longer in front of Seungcheol. He’s back in the basement, surrounded by shelves of porcelain dolls as he tells you over the phone, “I swear, some creepy possessed toy is going to be the death of me one day.”

And then memory after memory starts fighting its way to the forefront of his consciousness — red, sickly and glowing, the entire room bathed in it�� — his war pick in hand, the sharp end slicing into the flesh just above his knee — you, lying in a crumpled heap on the floor, not moving, not moving, are you even breathing — the curse, ripping and tearing and shredding its way through the both of you — you, screaming, you, you, you—

He gasps out your name, body moving even as the memories continue to slam into him.

“Woah, hey! Calm down,” Seungcheol shouts, pushing Mingyu back down onto what he now realizes is a hospital bed. But he can’t calm down, not when he doesn't know where you are and the last time he saw you, you were— you were—

“Hey, stop it!” Seungcheol is practically laying on him, each of Mingyu’s wrists pressed to the mattress in a firm grip. “Stop, you’re going to hurt yourself!”

Mingyu’s wild gaze snaps to Seungcheol’s as he continues to struggle. “Y’n, where’s y/n," he begs. "Hyung, where— they were hurt, they were d— please, I need to find them. I need to make sure they’re okay, please, hyung, please, they have to be okay, they have to, please, I need—”

Hands suddenly grip either side of his face and Seungcheol is almost nose to nose with him, eyes wide and imploring as he orders, “Breathe, Gyu-ah. C’mon, breathe with me.”

Mingyu doesn’t realize how irregular his breathing has become until he tries to take a deep breath and ends up choking on it.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Seungcheol assures. “Let’s try again, okay, Gyu-ah? Just follow me; you can do it.”

He continues to talk Mingyu through the panic attack, words as gentle as the fingers he uses to wipe Mingyu’s tears from his cheeks.

Eventually, he gets his breathing under control, and all Mingyu can do is grip Seungchol’s wrists where they still cradle his face and plead, “Hyung.”

“They’re okay, Gyu-ah,” Seungcheol confirms with a crooked half-smile, one that’s cracking at the edges with leftover fear and worry. “Stuck in another bed just like you, but they’re okay.”

Mingyu’s relieved sigh is shaky at best, and Seungcheol doesn’t complain when Mingyu pulls him closer so that he can bury his still-dripping tears in Seungcheol’s chest. He just carefully adjusts their positions so that he can fully wrap himself around Mingyu without messing up any of the wires or sensors. “It’s okay, kid, let it out. I’m here, hyung’s got you.”

And somewhere in between Seungcheol’s comforting words and the most cathartic crying session Mingyu’s ever had in his life, he falls asleep. He doesn’t even realize he’s fallen asleep until he’s waking up to some kind of commotion happening outside of the room.

Between one blink and the next, Seungcheol launches himself out of the bed and Mingyu watches as he jumps about ten feet in the air when the door slams open right as he’s about to reach it.

And then Mingyu’s breath catches in his chest because — there you are.

You’re standing in the doorway, silhoueted by the fluorescent lights of the hallway, looking like some kind of avenging angel. The bottom of your wrinkled hospital gown barely peeks out from beneath the extra large hoodie that looks like it’s trying to swallow you whole (his hoodie, he’ll realize later — one that someone must have brought for you), and you’re wearing a pair of purple fuzzy socks pulled all the way up to your knees.

None of that detracts from the look of pissed the fuck off that you’re wearing like battle armor, though. And if he weren’t so absolutely, joyously relieved to see you, Mingyu would almost certainly be terrified.

It’s as if the whole world freezes for a moment as the two of you lock eyes. The grumblings of the irritated nursing staff fade into the background, and all Mingyu can feel is the beating in his chest calling out to you.

Home, home, home, it seems to say, and he breathes out your name in awe.

Your face goes from furious to relieved to leaking a constant stream of tears so fast that Mingyu almost gets dizzy watching it.

“Fuck, Mingyu,” you choke out, eyes roaming over his form like you’re afraid he’ll disappear if you look away. And oh, the sound of your voice, even as it’s clogged with tears, is the most wondrous thing he’s ever heard in his life.

“Y/n,” he repeats, holding your name in his mouth like it’s something holy, something ephemeral and reverent and a syllable away from cracking.

And somehow it breaks whatever spell the two of you were under, because then you’re stalking over to the bed and throwing yourself into his embrace as you sob, “Kim Mingyu, you absolute piece of shit, I hate you so fucking much.”

He laughs wetly as he clutches you, pulling you so close that anyone would need a crowbar to separate the two of you. “I know, baby, I know,” he says.

“I’m so fucking mad at you.”

“I know, baby.”

“If you ever do anything like that again, I’m going to fucking castrate you, I swear to fucking god.”

He feels like his chest might burst with all of the happiness trying to shine out from between his ribs. “I love you, too, y/n.”

“I’m just gonna…” Mingyu looks up at the sound of Seungcheol’s voice and sees him standing awkwardly by the door with a finger pointing out towards the hall. Mingyu nods, and Seungcheol nods back before walking out. He steps out of the door before popping his head back in and saying, “Oh, also, you probably have around fifteen minutes at the most before the rest of the boys realize you’re both awake and storm the castle.”

You snort softly against Mingyu’s shoulder, and he smiles wide enough that his cheeks ache. “Thanks, hyung.”

Seungcheol just gives him a thumbs up before finally making his leave, and Mingyu sighs, soaking up the feeling of holding you in his arms. He quickly tucks his arms up and under your sweater, wanting to hold you even closer, and involuntarily shivers when he feels how cold you are.

“God, you’re freezing,” he murmurs, using one hand to pull the thin hospital blanket over the both of you.

“Mmm,” you agree, wiggling until you’re tucked under his chin and wrapped around him like an extra-clingy koala. “And you’re my new favorite space heater.”

Mingyu grins. “I’m honored.”

“Don’t get used to it,” you grunt. He starts rubbing gentle circles on your lower back, and you melt against him with a drawn out sigh. “You’re still number one on my shit list.”

“Just as long as I’m your number one.”

He lets out a high-pitched yelp when you pinch his side. “Ow, jeesus, you’re pissed, I get it.”

“Good. Know your place.”

(If he blushes at those words, no one is around to see it.)

You lay together in silence for a few minutes — simply basking in the feeling of holding each other — and then Mingyu’s brow furrows as he realizes that you haven’t gotten any warmer. Also, he hadn’t really noticed before because he’d been too focused on you, but he’s feeling warm. Like, really warm.

“Hey, y/n.”

You grunt in acknowledgement.

“Is this Katy Perry hot-and-cold thing we’ve got going on a fun new side effect of the curse?”

“Oh my god, Mingyu,” you groan, untucking your face from his chest just so you can glare at him.

Mingyu holds back a grin as he raises an eyebrow. “Am I wrong?”

You glare even harder before huffing and tucking your face back into his chest. “No,” you murmur petulantly. Before Mingyu can hold his victory over your head, though, you power on. “And to answer your question: probably. We can have Hao and Shua check to be sure.”

Mingyu hums in agreement and presses his cheek to the top of your head. A moment later, a thought occurs to him, and he grins as he says, “We’re even more perfect for each other now.”

You lift your head again, eyeing him with a hint of suspicion. “Why?”

He tilts his head down so your foreheads are resting together, and his eyes crinkle with the force of his smile. “Thermodynamic equilibrium,” he whispers.

Your eyes soften, filling up with so much fond endearment that a few more tears decide to trail down your cheeks. “My baby is such a fucking nerd.”

And when you press your lips to his, the whole world goes quiet.

Home, home, home, his heart sings inside his chest. Home, home, home.