Archive of Our Own

Rui doesn't go out much anymore.

It is Haru who has practically forced him here tonight, Haru who has spent the better part of the last three weeks constructing an elaborate campaign of infuriating nagging. Showing up unannounced at the studio when Rui was busy, invading his apartment without invitation and not leaving until Rui physically pushed him out, always reminding him, “You can't just teach and go home and teach and go home and teach and go home and-”, he'd repeated, perched on the edge of Rui's desk with his short legs swinging. And Rui had said nothing, mostly because he was grating and Rui didn't want to give him the satisfaction but also because there wasn't anything to say to that. Haru was right and they both knew it and that was the most annoying thing about Haru, that he was almost always right. So here Rui is, here in this bar, alone at a small table near the wall with a drink he ordered mostly to have something to do with his hands.

He'd put effort into tonight. That's the part that embarrasses him a little, privately. That he'd stood in front of his closet for twenty minutes and actually tried, had worn the dark fitted jeans and the silk top he almost never takes off the hanger, had clipped his small silver hoops in, had done his liner carefully in the bathroom mirror with a flick at the outer corner that he then redid twice because the first two weren't quite even. He'd even done his nails earlier in the week, a dark plum that he'd been pleased with at the time and is now catching the bar light in a way that makes him feel a dull lick of embarrassment. Still, he looks good. He knows he looks good, though it doesn't seem to be doing anything for him.

The bar is warm and dim, lit low, golden and violet, lighting that makes everyone look a little bit like a painting. The bass is loud, thumping through the speakers to his body, vibrating and constant. Around him, people are beautiful and loose, leaning into each other with an ease he can only observe. He sips his drink and crosses one leg over the other, and watches the room with his chin in his hand. The soju is cold and slightly sweet, and in combination with the lights and the noise, is really just making his head hurt. 

He thinks, not for the first time, that he used to be better at this.

There was a version of him,  not so long ago, or maybe longer than he'd like to admit, time having become strange and elastic in the years since, who would have come to a place like this and felt it, felt the music in his hips and the night opening up around him. Who would have caught someone's eye across the room and smiled. 

He sets his glass down again and watches the room.

The night is still young, which means he still has time for something to happen, which means he is still, despite everything, hoping that something will.

The key turns in the lock with a soft, giving click. Rui forces his legs over the threshold, his body, usually light on its feet even after a long day of rehearsals and lectures, feels heavy and dull. It's still inside the apartment, still and deathly quiet. He can see small particles of dust turning slowly in the thin blade of moonlight that has found its way between the curtains of the dark room. Rui frowns, it's not very late, hardly seven. Normally he comes home to music, to the smell of cooking, to a comforting presence rising to greet him. All of it replaced by this, dust.

He's having a bad day, he thinks and the thought arrives without surprise. That is what worries him most, perhaps, that it no longer surprises him.

He doesn't bother with the living room, a quick scan showing it empty, instead he pads softly down the hallway towards their shared bedroom.

He stops in the doorway, the melancholy and dread rising in him as he sees the slumped form under their blanket, buried in their bed. Wumuti's face is turned towards the pillow and, even from the distance, Rui can see the dark, ragged smear of mascara clinging to his lashes. His heart sinks again, and he sighs. He moves closer, his own exhaustion forgotten. He catches the faint glistening tracks that have dried on Wumuti’s cheeks. They run from his closed eyes, past the soft lines of his face, and disappear into the shadows of the pillow. 

It’s been two weeks since he took leave from the school. Rui had been grateful, privately, desperately, for the understanding of the faculty, for his supervisor who had apparently said of course, take what you need, as though it would be easy to find a substitute on such short notice. But the leave is ending soon. Rui has been counting the days, unable to do anything but watch. He does not know if Wumuti will be able to go back. He does not know if Wumuti knows either. They have not spoken of it.

Rui sinks to the edge of the bed, the mattress sighing under his weight. He reaches out a hand and gently, so gently, brushes a stray hair from Wumuti’s forehead. Tucks the blanket up over his shoulder, lets his hand rest there a moment. 

After a while he gets up, his movements stiff and clumsy. He walks to the bathroom and reaches in to turn on the light before he fully looks, and then he looks. The sight that greets him makes a new, worse, ache bloom in his chest.

The small room is torn completely apart. Clothes strewn across the cold tile, Wumuti’s jeans and a worn sweatshirt, discarded. The counter is a mess as well. A foundation bottle lies on its side, product pooling on the porcelain. A blush palette is open but there's powder smudged messily around it and the pan is cracked.

His eyes fall to the center of the floor, to something that makes his breath catch in his throat. It's a dress, a long, flowing white dress, its soft fabric bunched in a ruinous heap on the floor. It looks so bright, so delicate. Rui knows it’s not his and it's one he's never seen in Wumuti’s dresser. He picks it up, the material light and airy in his hands.

His fingers find the zipper. It’s been ripped clean from the seams, the metal teeth bent and mangled. A long, jagged tear runs down the back, as if someone had clawed at it. He clutches the ruined dress to his chest, brings the fabric to his face, breathing in that floral scent of one of Wumuti’s perfumes.

He cleans the counter, puts the makeup away, folds Wumuti’s discarded clothes, turns off the light. He carries the dress back to the bedroom and sets it carefully on the chair by the window, smoothing it once with his palm. Then he undresses in the dark and slides into bed beside Wumuti, who does not wake. In the morning the dress is gone like it had been a dream.

The ice in his drink has melted into this swampy diluted mess, he'd watched it melt with more attention than it deserved. The outside of the glass is wet and unpleasant to touch. Rui swirls it around once more and then he picks up his phone and his jacket and goes to the bar, getting up on half-asleep legs.

He waits, orders something different from what he was having, and when it comes he drinks it faster than he means to.

He thinks about texting Haru. Something dry and pointed, conveying his dissolution perhaps, you owe me or simply I hate you. But Haru would only respond with something unbearably cheerful and tell him to talk to someone, and Rui doesn't want to talk to anyone. He thinks perhaps he wants, obscurely, to want to talk to someone. And that's a different thing entirely.

He is working out the difference when someone settles into the space beside him. Rui keeps his eyes on the bar top for a moment before he looks over.

The man is around his age, handsome in an uncomplicated way, a superficial way, broad-shouldered and smiling with straight white teeth, an open sort of face. Rui can smell his cologne and he thinks he’d like it if it didn't smell so much of pine instead of daisies. He is also, Rui notes, very large, which makes Rui feel like a small decorative object.

"Can I get you another one of those?" He catches Rui's glance and asks, easy, not making anything of it. 

Rui looks at his glass. It's mostly ice now, liquid gone. He should say no. He looks up at the man, who is still smiling, soft and simple, and thinks that he has no real reason to say no except for the low, formless ache that has been with him all evening, and that isn't the man's fault.

"Sure," he says in the end, "Thank you."

He flags down the bartender with casual confidence, orders two. He slides into the seat across from him. "I'm Jaemin." he says and holds out his hand.

"Rui."

Their drinks arrive. Rui wraps a hand around the new glass and takes a sip. 

Jaemin smiles again and says something after a while about the friends who brought him here and then disappeared to somewhere louder down the street, and Rui makes a sound of recognition because he knows exactly how that goes, and Jaemin laughs a little and that is roughly the shape of it. They are not really having a conversation so much as occupying the same space in a companionable way, which suits Rui just fine. He answers when something surfaces that requires an answer. He smiles when something is funny.  He takes sips of the drink, which is good, half listening.

It is a lazy Sunday morning and Rui has Wumuti under him, and the world outside is muted and distant and Rui's only reality is the shared warmth of their bed.

The morning light comes through the half-closed blinds in long gold stripes that fall across the sheets, across the lean curve of Wumuti's waist, across the slow easy tangle of them. Rui is slick with a fine sheen of sweat from the rhythm he's been keeping, unhurried, indulgent, the kind of morning they used to have more of before everything got complicated and heavy and hard to name. His fingers are in Wumuti's hair. His hair has gotten longer in recent months, glossy and healthy and so easy for Rui to tangle his hands in. He lets his hand drop to trace the line of his spine, thumbs pressing into the ridges of his lower back, feeling the slight shudder that moves through him with each thrust, and he thinks with a fullness in his chest that he is so lucky, that he is so impossibly lucky.

Wumuti's hips rise to meet him. His moans are soft and tired and breathy and Rui thinks, not for the first time, that he could listen to that sound for the rest of his life. He watches Wumuti's head tip back against the pillows, hair fanning out around him, his legs wrapping higher around Rui's waist, drawing him closer, deeper, and Rui lowers his head and puts his lips to the side of his neck, tasting salt, feeling the flutter of his pulse against his mouth, small and alive.

Wumuti's hands come up to clutch at his shoulders as he breathes out his name in succession now, his fingers pressing in, desperate. His legs are beginning to shake.

And the words come without thought, gentle and warm and completely unconsidered.

"Come on," Rui murmurs into his ear, "that's it, love- there's my good girl."

The words feel so natural that they don't even register. They are just a thing he has said, soft and private and meant, and for one more second the world is still warm and gold and exactly as it should be.

But then the body beneath him goes rigid.

Wumuti's head stills on the pillow. Rui lifts his own, the rhythm breaking, confusion not yet fully formed.

Then Wumuti's hands are on his chest, pushing, not violently but with a blind insistence, and Rui lets himself be moved, rolling back, and the cold air rushes in where their bodies were joined and he feels the loss of it immediately, the sudden wrongness of the space between them.

"Muti?"

Wumuti is already pulling the sheet up around himself, gathering it to his chest with both fists, white-knuckled. He has pressed himself back against the headboard and he is not looking at Rui.

"Why did you call me that?" His voice is flat. 

"What?” he breaths before it registers, “Oh I- I didn't mean anything by it, it just-"

"Why did you call me that?" He repeats the same words in that same flat, airless tone. As though Rui's answer hadn't reached him at all.

"I don't- I'm sorry, it just came out, I didn't-" Rui stops. He looks at Wumuti's hands, at the way they are shaking where they grip the sheet, the knuckles bloodless. "Hey, hey Muti- Look at me."

Wumuti does not look at him.

"I'm not," he says, very quietly. And then again, "I'm not. I'm not- I'm just. I'm not that." His voice is fracturing at the edges, each repetition more ragged than the last, as though he is trying to convince him. "Why did you say that? I'm not- I'm not-"

He can't finish the sentence. He presses the back of his hand hard against his mouth and the sound that escapes around it is something Rui has never heard from him before, not quite crying and not quite breathing, quiet gasps, formless and trapped and terrible, and it goes through Rui like a hand reaching into his chest.

Rui holds his hand out to him, he tries to reach for him.

"Don't-"

The word comes out raw, stripped down to nothing but the panic underneath it. Wumuti presses himself further back against the headboard, as far as the space will allow, the sheet clutched to his chest like it is the only thing keeping him together. "Don't touch me. Please don't- I can't- I'm not-"

He keeps starting the sentence and losing it, and Rui understands, with a horrible clarity. There seems to be only the panic, and the thing beneath the panic, and years and years of not looking at it directly.

Rui sits very still. He wants to reach out with a physical, desperate urgency that is almost unbearable, and he does not. He watches Wumuti fold in on himself against the headboard, this person he loves more than he has words for, and he does not touch him, because Wumuti has asked him not to. The light is still falling in long gold stripes across the bed. It feels indecent now, the warmth of it. Rui wishes it would stop.

He waits.

After a long time the shaking begins to subside. The gasps slowing though they stay jagged and uneven, catching on every inhale. Wumuti does not look up. He sits very still with his head bowed and his hair falling around his face and he looks so small, so unbearably small, and Rui thinks I did this and the thought is an anchor dropping through ocean.

He should say something but he doesn't know what and so the silence stretches. Outside, he hears a car pass by. Somewhere in the building above them walking, the footsteps crossing the ceiling in a slow, ordinary rhythm. 

Then Wumuti speaks. His voice is flat and dead and somehow colder than the panic was, emptied of everything.

"I think we should break up."

The words go into Rui like they're dull. Not cutting cleanly, just this jagged pressure, and then the beginning of a pain.

"What," he says. The word barely makes it out.

Wumuti lifts his head. His eyes are red-rimmed and scraped out, and he looks at Rui with an expression that is not cruel and not cold but somehow worse than either, exhausted and certain.

"I think I need to be alone for a while," he continues.

Rui stares at him. The gold light moves across the sheets. He becomes aware, distantly, that he is cold now.

"Muti." His voice comes out wrong, too quiet. "You don't- this isn't- I’m sorry- I’m so sorry- we can talk about it. We can just talk. You don't have to-"

"Rui." He says just his name, gently.

Wumuti looks back down at his hands, still curled in the sheet. He doesn't say anything else. He doesn't need to and Rui understands, with a grief so sudden and complete it takes his breath, that this is not something he can fix. Wumuti is not leaving him for any of the reasons people usually leave, not out of anger or want or the slow erosion of feeling, but out of some private and necessary self-preservation that Rui doesn't fully understand and cannot argue with.

He loves him. He loves him so much it's physical, a weight in his sternum, and there is nothing he can do with it.

The morning light falls across the bed. Rui sits in it and does not move and does not speak, and Wumuti does not look at him, and that is all.

Jaemin is still talking. Rui is aware of it the way he is aware of the music around them. Sounds in the background seeping like mumbled lyrics. Still, he makes the right noises as he turns his glass slowly on the table.

He thinks about the night he left.

The living room in the dark. He had sat in that silence for hours, not moving, not sleeping, not doing anything. At some point his phone had lit up with Hyun's name and he had read the message and understood from it that Wumuti was safe, Rui had stared at the words until they stopped meaning anything. Then he had put the phone face-down on the cushion beside him and watched the dark until it became morning.

After that came months he doesn't particularly want to think about again, and then more months that were easier, and then a year, and then more years. Hyun had sent word occasionally, enough for Rui to understand that Wumuti was okay, that he was working, teaching again, a new class, younger kids this time, seeming better. Each update was a relief and an ache arriving simultaneously, relief that he was okay, and underneath it, the thing Rui was less proud of, the knowledge that Wumuti was rebuilding himself and doing it without him, every step forward also a step further away. Eventually the updates stopped and Rui understood. It was probably for the best. 

Letting him go was a heartbreak Rui never thought he'd experience. He ate alone, he went to dance practice alone, and he came home to a silence that was more Wumuti’s than his own. He would lie awake at night, staring at the empty space on the mattress beside him. He knew, with a devastating, absolute certainty, that no matter how much time passed, that empty space was still waiting. 

His mornings began with the same alarm tone, the same stretch of his aching limbs, the same cup of milk tea he used to share with Wumuti, the tea he would make and while Rui has tried to replicate it it's never right. Then he’d stare at the empty space on the counter, the one where Wumuti used to leave a small, thoughtful note for him, a quick doodle, or a reminder to eat before he left for practice. 

Rui had graduated and opened the studio he'd always talked about, which had taken two years and more money than he likes to think about and an exhausting amount of bureaucratic patience. The studio is doing well now. He has students he's proud of, a space he’d built from nothing, a life that looks, from the outside, convincingly like a life.

It's fine. It's genuinely fine, most of the time.

Still, every morning he wakes and carves a piece out of the tea block that Wumuti had left, somehow still persistent after years. It’s running low now, has been running low for a long time, and Rui has developed a miserly relationship with it, shaving off less than he needs and ending up with something thin and pale. He's tried to find more, and that had been humiliating, the searching, the substitutions, the packages that arrived from vendors he'd found after an exhausting amount of research, that tasted almost right for a moment and then, on the second sip, definitively not.

But he doesn't think that's really the issue. Wumuti had a way of making it, some particular ratio, order, the temperature of the water maybe, that Rui has genuinely never worked out despite having watched him do it a hundred times. He's followed the recipes carefully, adjusting and readjusting. Adding the fatty butter and still it sits wrong, greasy and flat, the balance off somehow but he does not know how and therefore cant fix. Or the cream would be too sweet and drown the salt entirely and the whole thing would collapse. He'd drink it anyway and go to work.

And he had tried, in the years since. Of course he had tried. There had been dates with kind people, interesting people, people who laughed at the right moments and asked good questions and looked at him in ways that were clearly meant to mean something. He had sat across from all of them and been perfectly pleasant and felt, underneath the pleasantness, a faint and constant fraudulence. 

He was so sure. So sure, with an absolute, unshakeable certainty that felt as real as the blood in his veins. That is the part he cannot argue himself out of, the part that remains immovable no matter how many years pass or how unreasonable it becomes. He had been so sure that they were supposed to be together. That Wumuti was it, was the one, was the person the universe had apparently decided to build him around. He still believes it, he has never stopped believing it. Still, the world had gone on, and his love, once a vibrant, living thing, was now just a memory he held in his arms.

"-honestly the best I've ever had," Jaemin is saying, "you'd have to try it."

"Mm," Rui says. He picks up his drink. "I’ll have to check it out sometime."

He is so tired of his own answers.

He sets the glass down. Jaemin is still talking but Rui’s eyes have drifted, pulled by nothing in particular, just the restless, unfocused way his mind wanders. Across the slow churn of the dance floor, the colours moving through it, people half-lit and shifting. It's almost pleasant, watching it like this.

And then he sees her.

He doesn't know, at first, what has pulled his attention. His eyes have moved, drawn by some instinct below conscious thought, to a woman dancing in the middle of the floor, and now he cannot seem to move them back.

She is, he exhales slowly through his nose, breathtaking. Her hair is extraordinary, a deep and burning red that falls in waves down her back, catching the light of the bar like its molten. She's wearing a tiny black top, one-shouldered, and low-waisted baggy jeans with a short white skirt layered over them, and she holds herself with such an easy, unself-conscious grace, her weight shifting her hips as she dances, her head tilted slightly as she listens to the friend beside her. She is exactly the kind of person Rui would normally talk himself into approaching and then not approach.

So he just looks. He is allowed to just look.

There is something itching at his mind though. Some strange sense of familiarity, perhaps a sense of almost-recognition that sits at the back of his attention. A familiar ghost, a sense of déjà vu he can't place. He watches her and tries to locate it. Something that keeps pulling at him from just below the surface. 

Jaemin's voice has once again become the sound of the room, indistinct, underwater. He does not look away from her. The music changes to something with a slower, heavier pulse, and she begins to move again.

She dances and he watches, watches her move, watches the jeans slip lower on her hips as she does, and that is when he sees it.

He goes very still.

There, on the curve of her hip where the waistband has slipped, a small tattoo. A string of words too small to read from here, and beside them, a green crescent moon. Simple, delicate and, to Rui, unmistakable.

He knows that tattoo. He knows it with his hands, with his mouth. He knows exactly where it sits and the way the skin there is softer than the skin around it and how Wumuti used to pretend to be annoyed when Rui pressed his lips to it and wasn't, really, annoyed at all.

The cold moves through him from the inside out.

His eyes move to her arm before he has decided to let them. To the inside of her elbow, to the small braille tattoo, the one Wumuti had gotten at twenty-one and refused for weeks to explain, before finally admitting, pink-eared and reluctant, that it was his own name, hope.

"Rui." he hears and blinks, turns.

Jaemin is looking at him with an expression that is more amused than wounded, his chin resting in his hand.

"Sorry," Rui says and his mouth feels dry, "I'm- sorry. Can you repeat that?"

Jaemin doesn't respond, only holds his gaze for a moment, then glances past him, toward the dance floor, following the line of where Rui's eyes had been. He looks for a moment. Then he looks back at Rui with a small, knowing nod.

"I see," he says mildly, not unkindly. He considers Rui for a moment. Then he finishes what's left of his drink in one unhurried go, sets the glass down, and pats Rui's hand once on the bar top. He stands, picks up his jacket, and takes one last look toward the dance floor before he turns and disappears into the crowd without another word.

Rui watches him go with a vague, genuine remorse that lasts approximately four seconds before his eyes move, helplessly, back to her.

He’s lost in her face.

He doesn't know why he didn't see it immediately but now that he is looking he cannot understand how he missed it. Her face has changed, the jaw softer, her eyebrows lighter, and he doesn't know how much of it is surgery or makeup or time and it doesn't matter. Her nose is the same. The gentle outward slope of it. And her eyes, half-lidded and sleepy and beautiful, are exactly the same eyes he has been failing to forget for four years.

He feels something move through him in a slow and devastating wave. Pride, fierce and sudden and then grief. The pain of seeing someone you love look more like themselves alone than they ever did when they were with you. 

He should stay where he is. He knows he should stay where he is. Yet, he can't help that he stands up.

He is not entirely sure he has decided to. His body moves while mind is still turning over, he's sliding through the gaps between people, his eyes fixed on her like a compass finding true north. It feels like gravity.

The crowd shifts and thins between them. He is close enough now to see the rings on her fingers, the way the light catches the red of her hair and turns it pink at the ends. He is close enough that if she turned around she would see him.

And then, as though she has felt it, she does. Their eyes meet across the last few feet of space between them.

He watches her face, her expression moves through confusion and then recognition assembling itself feature by feature, her lips parting slightly. The noise of the bar falls away, all of it gone, and there is only her face in the light, and the way she is looking at him.

He watches her mouth form his name though no sound reaches him. Just the shape of it on her lips, quiet as a breath. “Rui?”

The door swings shut behind them and the noise of the bar becomes distant. Outside it is cold and still, the pavement slick and gleaming from rain that has only just stopped, the streetlights turning every puddle into a small mirror. Rui hadn't realised how loud it was in there until now with the quiet pressing in around them.

Wumuti has put a few feet of distance between them. She isn't looking at him. She has her arms wrapped around herself, her small frame drawn inward as they sit on the curb and Rui stays where he is and does not close the distance.

A car passes at the end of the street, its headlights sweeping briefly across the wet pavement, and then it's gone.

"I didn't think I'd ever see you again," she says finally. Her voice a little airier than he remembers, a beautiful lilt that is sweet and new to his ears.

His own voice comes out low and careful. "Me neither." The rain has left the air smelling clean, "I'm sorry if I- in there. I didn't mean to startle you."

She shakes her head. A small, quick motion. "You didn't." She is quiet for a moment, and then she looks up at him, her sleepy eyes moving across his face with an expression he can't fully read, "It's just- I don't know…”

She trails off to another silence. He is trying to think of what to say and finding that everything that occurs to him is either too much or not enough.

"You look-" he starts, which is the wrong thing to start with.

She tenses, almost imperceptibly. He feels it from three feet away.

"I just meant…" He stops and tries again. "That you seem well."

She makes a small sound that's not quite a laugh. "You were going to say something else."

"I was going to say you look happy." he confesses, which is true even if maybe it's also not what he was going to say, "Sorry, I don't know if you'd want to hear that from me."

She is quiet for a moment. Her thumb moves over her own knuckle, a small, absent gesture. "It's fine," she says. And then, after a pause, "I am. Mostly."

"Good," he says. The word comes out with more feeling than he intended. He looks down at the pavement. "That's- good. I’m happy for you."

She glances at him sideways, just briefly, and then away. "You look the same."

"Is that bad?"

"No." She pauses, "It’s just strange."

He nods minutely, he can understand that. He imagines it's very strange to her, standing here on this wet street four years later, seeing a piece of a life she has presumably spent considerable effort putting behind her. He wants to say something that accounts for that, that acknowledges the strangeness of it without making it worse.

"Muti, I-" He stops. "I don't know what to say," he admits. "I've thought about- there were things I wanted to say. For a long time. And now I can't find any of them." He lets out a self deprecating chuckle. 

She looks at him properly for the first time since they came outside. Her expression is difficult to read, guarded still, "What kind of things?" she asks.

"I don't know. Sorry, maybe." He meets her eyes. "I don't really know what I'm sorry for specifically. Just- in general."

She looks at him for a long moment. Then she looks back at the street. "You don't have anything to be sorry for." She swallows thickly, “It was just- it was me.”

Rui gives her a moment then, "I should have understood sooner," he says. "It's not like there weren't signs and I- I'm sorry I didn't know how to help you." He pauses. "I'm sorry I didn't try harder to."

The silence sits between them again, but it is a different kind of silence than before, less like a wall and more like a held breath. Then Wumuti makes a sound that is not quite a laugh, soft and a little waterlogged.

A tear traces its way down her cheek. She doesn't move to wipe it. After a moment she says, very quietly, "You're- I mean- do you think I'm-"

"You're so beautiful, Muti." The words come out simple and plain, because there is no other way to say them. "I'm so happy for you. I'm so glad you're- that you got to…" He swallows again to prevent his throat from closing, "I'm just glad."

She presses her lips together and looks up at the sky for a moment, blinking. Another tear escapes. She lets that one go too.

The door behind them opens.

"Muti?" Hyun's voice, sharp. He steps out into the street, his eyes finding Wumuti first, checking her over in a quick, practiced sweep and then his gaze moves to Rui and stops. The recognition lands visibly. He holds Rui's gaze for a beat that makes his position entirely clear without requiring a single word.

"It's getting cold, jagiya," he says, to Wumuti.

"I know."

"We should get going soon."

"I know, Hyun."

He props the door open with his shoulder and waits but Wumuti doesn't move, doesn't even look back. Rui can see the tension in her shoulders, the way she is holding herself very precisely, the effort of it visible in the set of her jaw. 

"Hyun." Her voice is quiet but it doesn't waver. "Can you give us a few more minutes? I think I want to talk to Rui a while longer"

Hyun looks at her for a long moment. Then he looks at Rui, and the look is not hostile exactly but it is extremely clear.

Whatever Hyun finds there seems to be enough, or close enough. He looks back at Wumuti.

"I'll be just inside," he says.

"I know," she says. "Thank you."

The door closes and they are alone again in the cold and the quiet, and Wumuti turns back to Rui with her arms still wrapped around herself and her eyes still bright.

"I should go back in," she says.

"Yeah," he says. "Of course."

"There's a coffee place," she says instead of getting up, "on Maeheon-ro. Near the park." She says it to the air, not quite at him. "They open early on Sundays."

He looks at her, at her profile. She is still not quite looking at him.

"Okay," he says quietly.

She nods, once, a small tight motion and swallows thickly before getting up, ankles trembling a bit in her heels, and turns and goes back inside. Hyun lets the door fall shut behind them without looking back.

Rui stands on the wet pavement in the cold and the quiet and does not move for a long moment, almost unsure if the past half hour had been real. Somewhere he can hear nearby water running along a gutter, finding its way downhill.

The café is quiet for a Sunday, most tables empty, the windows fogged at the edges from the cold outside. They have found a corner table, tucking themselves away, they have a lot to say and aren't sure yet how much of it they want overheard. Rui wraps both hands around his cup and tries not to stare at her.

"Are the kids still giving you trouble?" he asks, "or have you got them under control by now?"

He means it lightly. He is already smiling, already anticipating the fond exasperation with which she used to complain about difficult students.

Wumuti doesn't respond. She's staring out the window and then she's looking down at her cup.

"Muti?" he asks, the smile fading from his face.

"I-uh, I don't work at the institute anymore," she says, her voice small, almost a whisper.

"Oh?" Rui’s brow furrows in confusion but he adjusts. "Well, surely your new kids are just as crazy."

"Rui, I'm not a teacher anymore." Her voice is flat, final.

"What? Why?" he asks, the concern in his tone unmissable. "You love teaching."

She looks down at her hands, twisting them on the table, "The parents... they didn't," she says, her voice cracking. "Um, and well... the school board, eventually."

Rui’s heart sinks immediately into the pavement. 

"Oh, Muti,” he says finally, "-I'm so sorry. That's..." He trails off, the words feeling inadequate and hollow. "That's God, that's fucking awful."

"The kids were heartbroken," she says, and there is something resigned in it. "They just wanted to paint. They didn't care. It was just-" She stops again and takes a deep inhale, "It is what it is." She makes a small tired gesture with one hand. "It didn't matter. I could have been the best teacher they'd ever had and it still wouldn't have mattered."

Rui reaches over and takes her hand just instinctually, laying his palm over hers. Her skin is cold. "Muti, that's not... that's not fair. You were a wonderful teacher."

She finally looks at him, her eyes glistening. "I know," she says, her voice raw "I know I was.” The way she says it, not with pride but with a kind of grief, makes something ache in his chest.

"I’m so sorry," Rui tries again though it's pointless, squeezing her hand.

She offers him a weak smile, "I don't know sometimes I'm kind of glad for it I think, after a while I just got tired of fighting it. It felt like I was losing a piece of myself just by walking into that building. And I couldn't be a good teacher, I couldn't help anyone when I was constantly afraid of what someone might say or do"

The confession hangs in the air, heavy and heartbreaking and Rui doesn't know what he can say to dissolve it. Rui had always imagined her light, living life, confident and free. He had pictured her painting beautiful murals, surrounded by her adoring students who she'd loved. He had never considered this. 

He rubs his hand over her knuckles. "What are you doing now?" he asks, his voice gentle.

Something loosens around her eyes. "Commissions, mostly. And original work." she says, a hint of pride in her voice. "I've been selling my own pieces."

Rui’s heart swells with a fresh wave of admiration. "That's amazing, bunny," he says, the old pet name slipping out without a second thought. His cheeks flush immediately, and he quickly pulls his hand back, stammering, "Oh, I- sorry.”

Wumuti's eyes crinkle. The shame in his voice is clear, but her smile is gentle. "Don't be sorry," she says softly. "I... I don't mind." She lets her hand rest palm up as an invitation and Rui hesitantly takes it. He nearly chokes on a breath when she brings his hand to her lips, pressing a kiss to his knuckles, “It's nice to hear."

The moment hangs in the air, a fragile, beautiful thing. He had been so worried about crossing a line, about overstepping, but she had met him there. The love he had held onto in his heart for so long felt validated, seen.

"What about you, Rui?" she asks, her voice a little brighter now. "Did you start the studio? How's that going?"

Rui's mind is still reeling, but he finds his footing, allowing her to change the subject. "It's... good," he says. "It's going well. We have a lot of new students this fall. I'm excited about it." He feels a flash of guilt, a sense that his success is trivial in the face of what she had endured, but she's looking at him with genuine interest, her eyes twinkling.

"I'd love to see it sometime," she says, a new kind of boldness in her voice.

"You should," he says, his heart fluttering. "I'll give you a tour." He gestures with his free hand, a grand, sweeping motion that makes her laugh.

The conversation flows easier after that, a mix of old memories and new stories. They talk for hours until the streetlights turn into a warm, hazy blur around them. When Rui finally pulls up to her apartment, the air is filled with a familiar, comfortable silence, one that's no longer burdened by fear or sadness.

"Thank you, Rui," she says, her hand still in his and leans over the front seat median.

It has been six days since the café.

The kiss had happened in his car which had smelled of water damage and shitty air freshener, which was not where Rui had intended it to happen, mostly because he had not allowed himself to intend anything. He had been saying something, he genuinely cannot remember what, just something to stretch the time so she wouldn't leave when she had looked up at him with those half-lidded eyes, close enough he could see the mascara on her lashes. He had simply stopped and let her kiss him, their lip gloss sticky against each other. Tentative at first and then she had made a small sound against his mouth and her hands had come up to his chest and that had been that.

She had texted Hyun about it almost immediately, which he only knows because she told him the next day, laughing a little, that Hyun's response had been a fairly comprehensive enumeration of his concerns. She had read the whole thing, she said, and then put her phone face down and went to see Rui instead.

Since then, they've spent three evenings. Two walks that became longer than planned because neither of them suggested turning back. One afternoon in her studeo where she had stood in front of a large abstract canvas for a long time, paint on her clothes and hands, without saying anything. And he had stood beside her, watched her study it, which was better than looking at the painting himself. They had fallen back into step with each other.

It had not taken long. That is the truth of it and Rui is still slightly astonished by it, the speed, the way the distance collapsed almost immediately.

And now she is here. Against Hyun's judgment, which she had again relayed with that guilty amusement and again set aside, because Wumuti has always been quiet and considered right up until the moment she decides, and then immovable. She is in his apartment, in his bed. He had been impatient, as he has always been impatient, and she had indulged it, as she has always indulged it.

Outside the rain is coming down hard, sheeting against the windows, and the whole city has gone grey and soft and far away, and Rui has not thought about anything beyond this room in hours.

She has always been smaller than him, but now the difference feels magnified. Rui's hands span her waist easily, and when she leans into him, she seems to fit perfectly against the curve of his chest as if she had been made to belong there.

Rui has her pinned, his weight grounding against her, solid and warm in a way she has been starving for. They move with a slow cadence, his hands slid firmly under her hips to tilt her up, to bring her closer. 

But as the friction builds, as their skin slides together in the humid dark of the room, Rui becomes aware that it feels different.

As he rocks against her, his thighs brushing against the insides of hers, he realises the familiar pressure isn't there. There is no resistance against his stomach, no sharp, insistent heat pressing back against his own.

He falters for a fraction of a second, his rhythm stuttering as he looks down at her.

Wumuti’s eyes are squeezed shut, her head thrown back into the pillow. She is soft against him, unusually, soft where she used to be rigid.

"Muti?" he whispers, his voice thick, his hands stilling on her waist. He doesn't pull away, but he lingers, his chest heaving as he searches her face, "Are you not enjoying this?" he asks softly.

Wumuti’s eyes flutter open, half-lidded and clouded with a hazy, desperate kind of pleasure. She sees the flicker of realisation in his dark eyes, the way he’s looking down at the space between them. A flush that has nothing to do with the heat of the room creeps up her neck, staining her cheeks a mottled, embarrassed red.

"I- I'm sorry," she pants, her voice thin, fragile. She tries to pull her knees higher, as if to hide the difference though it's not possible with the way Rui’s legs are slotted between hers."I am- It's good, Rui,” she breathes, “I promise. It just... it doesn't do that anymore. Just estrogen- ’s been months since it…"

She trails off, her lip trembling. The silence that follows is terrifying to her, the fear that this is the moment the fantasy breaks, that the man who loved a boy will find her lacking in the ways that used to matter.

"Oh." he breathes but it doesn't seem to be in disappointment.

"Yeah," she swallows thickly. "m’ enjoying it, promise."

And then Rui is kissing her again, and the world narrows again to just this, his mouth on hers.

When he reaches for the hem of her shirt, she helps him lift it away. Underneath, she's wearing a little cotton bralette, slightly too small, one strap shifted off her shoulder. The sight of her makes him go still.

She's self-conscious again under his gaze, her chest small and soft, the cotton fabric straining slightly. She curls inward, an old instinct to hide that he recognises.

"Fuck," he breathes, the word carrying only reverence.

"It's okay if you want to just-I mean, you can ignore-" Wumuti starts to ramble, “I can turn ar-”

"You're beautiful, Muti," Rui interrupts her, his hands sliding up her sides with deliberate slowness, his eyes flicking to hers for permission. "My beautiful girl."

She lets out a soft sound as his hands settle at her waist, his thumbs nearly touching, spanning the narrow space. His hands slide higher and she shivers.

"These are new," he says quietly, his fingertips grazing just beneath the fabric.

"Yeah," Wumuti says, breathless. "They only started coming in last year." Her voice catches as his hands move with gentle intention, and she's acutely aware of every sensation, everything heightened and tender.

"Sensitive?" he asks, and she nods, biting her bottom lip.

He's careful with her, attentive. His finger traces along the band of the bralette. "I think you need a new one of these," he murmurs as he plays with it, "Doesn't really fit, does it?"

"This one is new," she protests weakly and flushes. "They're growing too fast to keep up with."

He pulls back enough to look at her properly, his dark eyes warm. "Do you want one?" he asks. "A bra, I mean. Like a real one."

"Rui, they're too expensive," she argues, though her voice wavers. "I can't just buy new ones every few months-"

"But you want it," he says, not a question.

"s’ a waste of money," she whispers, looking away. "I'll just grow out of it."

"But you want one," he repeats, patient and certain.

She makes a small, defeated sound, her head falling back against the pillow. "I- I guess it would be nice to have something that actually fits."

"Then I'll take you," Rui says, his fingers finding the center of the fabric. "To get measured and fitted properly. We'll find something perfect for you."

"I don't-" she starts to protest, but he's already lifting the bralette up and over her head in one smooth motion.

For a moment, she's bare before him, vulnerable in the lamplight, and her hands fly up instinctively to cover herself, her face flushing.

"Don't," Rui says softly, catching her wrists and guiding them up above her head, holding them there gently but firmly. "Please don't hide from me. I want to see you."

His gaze travels over her with something like wonder, taking in every detail, all the soft curves that are hers now, the body she's grown into, the person she's become. Shes so different now yet, somehow the same. There's no hesitation in his eyes, no doubt. Only desire and tenderness and a love that never really left.

"You're perfect," he tells her, and the way he says it, she almost believes him.

She feels exposed and seen and utterly cherished all at once. Her breath comes shallow as he leans down, his mouth finding the sensitive skin of her collarbone, then lower. Every touch is deliberate, worshipful, as if he's learning her all over again.

"Rui," she whispers his name.

He takes his time with her, patient and unhurried, until she's trembling beneath him.

They move together slowly, relearning each other's rhythms, the way she arches into him.

"I've got you," Rui murmurs against her skin.

And for the first time in a long time, Rui feels vindicated in his belief that some things, some people, are always worth coming back to. That love can be patient enough to wait, strong enough to adapt, and tender enough to hold all the ways a person can change and still remain themselves.

"Please," she whispers, the vulnerability is nearly too much, being this bare, this seen, in the room where they had once fallen apart.

He doesn't answer with words. He leans down, his weight shifting to hover over her, and presses a kiss to the hollow of her throat. He moves slowly, with a deliberate, aching patience, his mouth trailing down to the soft swell of her breast. He is mindful of what she said, about the sensitivity, and he treats her like she's precious and rare. When his tongue circles a nipple, she lets out a sharp, fractured gasp.

"Rui-mmh- ah!"

He lets go of her wrists, but she doesn't use them to hide anymore. Instead, her fingers tangle in his hair, pulling him closer, anchoring herself to him as the world begins to dissolve into the familiar, hazy heat of them.

Wumuti is shivering. When he finally moves to enter her, it's slow and gentle. There is no urgency to finish, only this deep, mutual need to be occupied by one another.

She wraps her legs around his waist, her heels digging into the backs of his thighs. "Fuck- so b-big," she pants into his ear, a small, shaky laugh catching in her throat.

Rui bites his lip, "So loud," he teases back, his voice thick with affection. He brushes a damp strand of red hair from her forehead, his eyes searching hers. "You okay, though? Do we need to stop?"

"No," she says, her eyes fluttering shut as he begins to move in earnest. "No- don't stop. I've missed... god, I've missed you."

The rhythm builds into a slow, climbing heat. Rui watches her face, the way her eyebrows knit together, the way her lips part to let out those soft, huffing sounds that he had memorised years ago. He feels the moment she starts to go, her internal muscles pulsing around him, her fingers digging into his shoulders. She doesn't reach a frantic, explosive peak like she used to; instead, she seems to melt, a long, shimmering release that leaves her sobbing his name into the crook of his neck.

Rui follows her shortly after, a low groan vibrating in his chest as he collapses against her, careful not to pin her down too heavily.

Afterward they lie in the wreckage of his sheets and listen to the rain. It is coming down hard now against the window, filling the room with a white, continuous sound. Wumuti is tucked against his side, her head on his chest, and Rui has one hand in her hair and is staring at the ceiling. Her lipstick is on his jaw, his collarbone, various places he is sure he will discover later. Her breathing has slowed and deepened, not quite asleep but close.

He turns his head and presses his lips to the top of her hair and she makes a small sound, barely conscious, and pulls herself fractionally closer.

He wakes to the familiar smell of it.

It reaches him before anything else, before the grey morning light coming through the curtains, before the sound of the rain still going soft and steady against the glass, before the awareness that he is warm in a way that he hasn't been in years. The smell is spiced and deep and fatty, black tea, rich underneath it, cream and salt blooming together into something that is not quite like anything else. He had forgotten, he had almost forgotten that the smell was part of it.

He finds her in the kitchen.

She is wearing his sleep shirt, the old pink one, which comes down to mid-thigh on her and pools around her hands where the sleeves are too long. Her hair is loose and still messy from sleep, pushed back from her face in a way she would probably fix if she knew he was watching. She doesn't know he is watching. He stays in the doorway.

On the stove the tea is going. She has found everything without asking him because he never moved anything, the pot, the tea, the salt, the tins of evaporated goats milk he keeps at the back of the cupboard just for this. She moves around his kitchen with an unselfconsciousness that does something to him, opening and closing cupboards, adjusting the heat, her sleeve-covered hand pushing her hair back from her face again.

He watches her pour the milk in a slow, considered stream, watches the colour of the tea change, dark and then light when she adds it and then it settles into that particular creamy-brown. She adds the salt with a pinch and a half and stirs it with his wooden spoon, and the smell intensifies, spreading warmly through the kitchen.

She pours two small but deep bowls without turning around, laying a pat of butter on top of each. As though she heard him, or simply knew.

She holds one out behind her.

He crosses the kitchen and takes it with both hands, brings it immediately to his lips because he has learned nothing, not in twenty-five years of living and certainly not in the last four, and the heat hits his tongue like a punishment.

The sound he makes is not dignified.

Wumuti turns around. She looks at him, at his face, at the bowl held slightly away from his body, because he could not wait the sixty seconds required for tea to become drinkable, and she laughs. Fully, unguarded, her eyes creasing at the corners, the laugh he had never forgotten. 

"You never change," she says.

His tongue is genuinely burned. He is looking at her in his too-big shirt in his kitchen with the rain still going outside and the tea sitting warm and perfect in his hands, tasting exactly as it always did, exactly as it was always supposed to even as its scalding, and he thinks, no.

He takes another sip, this one less punishing.

Some things don't.