It’s funny, isn’t it?” he said, something odd in his voice. “It’s funny how some people show they love people with dramatic proclamations and huge displays and romantic gestures…but for some people, it’s in the small things. Like the small things you do for him.

Just a moment of heat and bruising pressure; a moment of gasping breaths and warring tongues as they half-fought, half-claimed each other with slick strokes and biting teeth and the mating of lips to lips. Push and pull, give and take, ever and always this tug of war between them that drew on both Seong-Jae’s body and his heart, leaving him teetering on the brink of sinking.

As long as Imre was here with him, he was home.

Sometimes it felt as though they said more with their bodies than with their words; talking was for shared secrets, for navigating the common boundaries of the space they made together… But touch was for the emotions that had no words.

All around us are complex people trying to live simple lives,” she said. “Wanting simple things with tangled hearts.