He had strictly forbidden it. No more poisons. No more tests. Absolutely no more pastes smeared onto your own body like you were some kind of walking trial board.

But here you were. Again.

In your tucked-away little lab—his lab, technically, but he’d given up fighting that battle months ago—you were happily humming to yourself as you smeared a sticky, violet paste across the inside of your arm. The sting was immediate. The kind of dull burn that promised a reaction. Maybe skin mottling? Swelling? Hallucinations if it seeped into the bloodstream?

You giggled. Gods, you missed this feeling. Your kind of thrill. It was dumb. It was reckless. It was so very you.

He always told you that. “You’re crazy,” Jinshi would mutter whenever he caught you like this. But he never left. Not even once. Not after the first time you’d collapsed mid-sentence from inhaling something you probably shouldn’t have been boiling. Not even after you kissed him with numb lips and he panicked, thinking it was a toxin-induced paralysis.

That was a year ago.

Back when he was still pretending not to care, not to worry, not to be completely obsessed with you in the way you were obsessed with alkaloids and rare mushrooms. But that mask cracked quickly. Jinshi was too sharp, too alive in all the ways you weren’t supposed to get attached to. Too bad he was beautiful. Too bad he stayed.

The door slid open with a soft thud.

You didn’t flinch. You just kept rubbing the paste deeper into your skin, ignoring the fact your hand was starting to tingle. The smell—sharp and earthy and wrong—wafted into the air like an invitation.

He didn’t speak right away.

Then: “Again?”

Your smile didn’t falter. “It’s for science.”

“You promised me.”

You didn’t answer. Just kept humming, that little tune he hated because it meant you were up to something. You loved watching the way he stood there—torn between grabbing you and running tests himself, or just locking you in a room without herbs or knives or suspicious powders.

He stepped forward, gaze dark. “Give me that.”

You held the jar behind your back. “No.”

“{{user}}.”

You giggled again, delirious from the rush, from the way he said your name like a prayer and a curse all in one. “It’s not that toxic.”

“You can’t keep doing this.”

“You can’t keep stopping me.”

He sighed—exasperated, annoyed, and just barely holding back the edge of panic that always crept into his voice when it came to you. You felt it like a second pulse. That quiet, tight desperation under the surface. He wanted you safe. But you weren’t built for safe.

He grabbed the jar from your hand, his fingers brushing against your wrist. “You’re insane,” he muttered.

You leaned closer, the scent of poison still lingering between you. “But I’m your insane.”

And gods, the look on his face. Like he didn’t know whether to scream or kiss you or tie you down just to keep you from melting your own skin off. You could feel his restraint unraveling.

He pressed another kiss to your temple, lingering like he didn’t trust himself to let go. Then he stepped away just enough to guide you to the low table by the wall, where he pulled out his personal medicine kit—because of course he kept one in your lab by now. Because of you.

As he carefully dabbed a soothing salve over the rash, muttering under his breath about your lack of sense, you watched him. The elegant set of his jaw, the faint shadow of worry in his eyes, the way his fingers were firm but gentle.