Love was never something meant for Mahito—not in the tragic, aching way poets liked to dress it up, not in the kind of absence that leaves a hollow behind the ribs.

Just a simple, unceremonious truth: he shouldn’t love. He couldn’t.

Connection, in any form, was a transaction. A quiet exchange of usefulness. A give-and-take where nothing was given freely, only traded—benefit for benefit, gain for gain, even if the gain was fleeting, even if it rotted in the hands the moment it was held.

And you knew that.

You knew it the way you know the edge of a blade is sharp—not because you were told, but because you’ve already been cut. Still, you reached for it anyway. Not blindly. Not foolishly.

Intentionally.

You used each other.

Whatever existed between you and Mahito sat just outside the fragile boundaries of human understanding, something that couldn’t be named without breaking it. Humans needed their neat little boxes—romantic, platonic, love, hate—labels to soften the chaos. Their minds were too delicate for anything that refused to be categorized.

But this?

This was something else entirely.

It had all the bones of romance—loyalty that didn’t waver, respect that didn’t need to be spoken, intimacy that pressed too close, too often. It looked like love from a distance, if you squinted hard enough.

Only it was missing the one thing that made love so weak.

It didn’t feel.

“My pretty, do we have to go with Geto today?” Mahito’s voice curled against your skin, playful on the surface, but threaded with something sharper underneath.

His mouth found your throat, teeth dragging lightly over your pulse—not gentle, not affectionate. Testing. Claiming. Like a predator tracing the rhythm of something it could so easily break.

Something alive.

Something his.