Xinyue woke to the faintest pressure on her wrist. Just like a contact, that doesn't even feel like one. Her eyes opened very slowly, the way years of on – call nights have trained her, being alert without a panic, breath steady even as her mind sharpened. The room was still dark, the curtains drawn against the early morning. A thin line of light slipped through the edge of the window with a lot of uncertainty.
Her wrist was warm, she felt it. Someone was holding it. This actually made her pulse to spike up immediately. Even though she didn't make any kind of movement.
The normal human nature, she learned automatically like everyone else but it betrayed itself in moment like this. For her, panic made noise, panic waste time. And whatever instinct screamed at her now, fight, pull away, demand answers she forced it down and chose stillness instead.
His fingers were wrapped loosely around her wrist, not gripping or restraining from movement. Two fingers rested just beneath her thumb, with precision.
He was checking her pulse, that realization landed on her softly and kind of strangely intimate to her. Slowly, she inhaled and asked quietly, "Is this how you usually greet people in the morning?
His fingers stilled at that, and she felt that pause before he even heard his voice. "You were restless."
She turned her head towards the doorway. Taehyun stood beside her bed, half in shadow, and with a posture angled ready to step back the moment she asked him to. He hadn't crossed the room fully and hadn't claimed the space. That restraint unsettles her more than intrusion would have.
"I was sleeping," she said.
"You were dreaming," he corrected her.
She frowned at him. "You didn't know that."
"I know how breathing patterns, and heart rates works. Also, you made noise too," he said calmly.
His fingers shifted slightly and her pulse thudded harder beneath it like traitors. He must have felt it, because his gaze flicked down, sharp and unreadable. she pulled her hand back from his clutches. "You shouldn't touch me while I'm asleep."
"I shouldn't," he agreed.
The ease of his agreement threw her off. She pushed herself upright, drawing the blanket closer around her shoulders. Her room felt smaller with him in it, not in the claustrophobic but suffocating and charged. The books on her bedside table, the folded sweater on the chair, the faint scent of detergent and her own skin. It made her all of a sudden visible and exposed more than she expects.
"You stayed?" she asked him.
"Yes."
"In my apartment?"
"Yes."
"In my bedroom?" she added further.
"I didn't sit," he replied. "I didn't touch anything. I just stayed by the door."
"Except my wrist."
"Except your wrist."
She studied him, searching for something, anything that's defensiveness, arrogance, apology. Instead, she found none of it. What she found was focus. The same kind she saw in surgeons just before incision, in residents monitoring vitals through the night.
"Why are you checking my pulse?" she asked.
"To make sure you were fine."
She looked at him while narrowing her eyes and said, "That's not an answer Taehyun."
He titled his head slightly. "It is. You just don't like it."
She exhaled through her nose, with irritation flaring. "You don't get to monitor me for god's sake."
"No," he said to her with a blank face. "But I get to worry."
That word hit it harder than it should have been. Worry was human, and it was normal. Worry belonged to people who had history. Who had permission. She felt like, it didn't belong here in the quietness of her bedroom, between a man she barely knew even though have been seeing him more than she should and a night that refused to end cleanly.
"You don't know me well enough to worry," she told him.
"I know enough," he replied avoiding her jab. "You didn't sleep until after two. Your heart rate spiked every time a car passed outside, and when you finally did fall asleep, your hand curled like you were holding onto something that wasn't there."
Her throat tightened at his response and showed her discomfort on her face, which clearly express her displeasure.
"You watched me sleep," she said flatly.
"I watched the room," he said. "And you were in it."
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, putting distance between them. The floor was cool, and grounding. "That's not a very reassuring thing."
"It not meant to be."
She wrapped her arms around herself, being suddenly very aware of how thin her sleep shirt felt. "You still crossed a line, that you shouldn't."
"Yes. I am aware."
The admission from him was immediate. There was not argument or trying to justify his actions. Which somehow impressed her to the core. Ahe turned to face him. "And?"
"And I need to know if you were breathing normally."
"Why?"
"Because if you weren't," he said quietly, "I wouldn't forgive myself."
There it was again that unsettling sense of responsibility, that's heavy and uninvited.
She responds to him slowly, "It's our nature to protect what we feel responsible for."
"Yes."
"And responsibility," she continued, "is often just guilt wearing a different face."
He studied her for a long moment. "Is that what you think this is?"
"It's what I know it could become, you tell me" she said. "And I don't want that."
"You don't want someone to care if you're alive?" he asked.
"I don't want someone to decide they're accountable for me in anyway," she replied. "Those are not the same thing." The silence settled between them, thicker now. Outside, the city was waking up - distant traffic, the faint call of a vendor, life continuing without regard for the tension in her bedroom.
Taehyun took a step back, increasing the space she had demanded from him. "Then let me be clear," he said. "I'm not claiming you." Her chest tightened despite herself. "I'm responding to you," he continued. "There's a difference."
She crossed her arms. "You say that like it's better."
"It's more honest." She laughed softly, without any humor in it. "Honesty, doesn't make things safer for me."
"No," he agreed. "But it makes them real for all of us." She looked away, toward the window. The light had grown stronger now, outlining the edge of the curtain. Morning was coming whether she was ready or not.
"You shouldn't be here when the sun comes up," she said.
"I know."
"But you still are."
"Yes." She turned back to him. "Why?"
His gaze dropped, briefly, to her wrist again. When he spoke, his voice was lower. "Because your pulse didn't slow until I sat down and hold your hand." Her breath caught at what she heard from him and refused to acknowledge it.
"That's not…" She stopped. Reconsidered. "That's not fair."
"People rarely...." She closed her eyes for a moment, pressing her fingers to her temples. She was too tired for this, too tired to dissect motives, to guard every boundary. And that exhaustion, she knew, was dangerous. "Nothing happened," she said firmly, opening her eyes.
"Nothing should have happened. This morning shouldn't feel… complicated."
"It does though," he said. "Which means something almost happened."
She met his gaze, heart beating faster now for reasons she refused to name. "And that's exactly why you need to leave."
He nodded once. "I will."
"Now." She said softly but firmly to him.
"Soon."
Her jaw tightened. "That's not the same thing."
"No," he said softly. "It isn't." He moved then, crossing the room with measured steps, stopping well short of her. Close enough that she could feel the warmth of him, the quiet intensity that seemed to hum just beneath his skin.
"You should know," he said, "that if I hadn't been here tonight, you would have woken up anyway."
She stilled. "Why?"
"Because someone was outside your building at three twenty-seven." The air left her lungs. "What??? What the actual fuck??" she was too shocked to comprehend what he said to her but he still continued.
"Didn't come in, didn't try. Just stood there and left after twelve minutes later."
Her finger curled into fists in anger and disbelief. "You're lying."
"I'm not. There is no need for me to."
"You should have told me." She pressed at him again.
"You were asleep."
"You could have fucking woken me up Taehyun." She shouted at him for the unfairly of him treating her like a fragile thing.
"And let fear settle into you permanently?" he asked. "No, thanks."
Her anger flared up sharp and immediate. "You don't get to decide what I can handle or not."
"No," he said evenly agreeing with her at the same time disagreeing too. "But I get to decide what I prevent for you."
She stared at him like an alien who couldn't understand human language, while her pulse roaring in her ears. "So what? – you're just going to keep doing this? Watching like a dog and deciding for me, then staying.???"
He held her gaze for a good minute before responding. "Only until you tell me not to."
"Oh! Good. I am telling you now."
He searched her face, not challenging her or not pushing her, simply trying to read her. "You're telling me you're afraid," he said. "Not that you don't want me here."
Her mouth closed and opened repeatedly at his audacity to even tell that openly, even though it's half-truth. "That's a dangerous distinction," she whispered.
"Yes, it is," he agreed.
Another silence fell between them, which was taut and fragile. Finally, he stepped back again, all restraint and control. "I'll leave before anyone sees me, but this isn't over yet."
She swallowed at that, "That's not very reassuring."
"It's not meant to be," he repeated to her.
He turned towards the door, the paused. "For what it's worth," he added without looking back, "Your heartbeat only settled when you realized you weren't alone."
The door closed softly behind him. Xinyue stood in the middle of her bedroom long after he was gone, fingers pressed to her wrist.
Her pulse was still racing. And that frightened her more than anything else.