Little King (Seoksoo)

Joshua

Joshua was in pain.

Seokmin's absence was an ever-present ache in his chest, which was ridiculous—his vampire had barely been gone a day. But nonetheless, there it was. Pain.

Joshua couldn't help but fear that their goodbyes over the phone were the last they'd say to each other.

From across the kitchen counter, Jeonghan rolled his pale eyes at him.

"What?" Joshua snapped. "I didn't even say anything."

"No," Jeonghan drawled. "You've just sighed approximately five hundred times in the past ten minutes."

A blatant exaggeration.

Jeonghan rolled his eyes again. Joshua hoped they got stuck that way if the blond vampire kept it up. "He'll be fine, human."

Joshua fiddled with his now empty coffee cup. He'd for some reason decided caffeine was the solution to missing Seokmin, but so far it had just added an elevated heart rate to his sad-sack symptoms. "You don't think Mingyu will hurt him?"

Jeonghan made a noncommittal noise. "Hurt him, maybe. Kill him though? Probably not."

"Probably not?" Would Seokmin forgive him if Joshua stabbed his annoying friend with a spoon?

Jeonghan grinned that maniacal grin, but his eyes weren't unkind. "I wouldn't have let him go if I thought he'd get himself killed, human. There are very few people I actually like in this world. He's one of them."

"But what if...even then..." Joshua forced himself to voice his fears out loud. "What if he decides to just keep moving? That's it not safe enough...or worth it...to come back."

Jeonghan shook his head at Joshua, exasperation in his voice. "He's not going to stay away from you forever. He can't."

"How do you know that though?"

"Because I believe you're mates. Real fated mates." Jeonghan's grin dropped, and he looked at Joshua seriously. "I've been around a long time, little human. And I wasn't always as isolated from the vampire world as I am now. I've seen mated pairs. I've talked to a few. And they all described a...pull to that other person. One that's stronger than anything they've felt, one that might not even make sense. I see that pull between you and Seokmin."

Joshua didn't think he was imagining the wistful look in Jeonghan's eyes. "And you've never felt that pull yourself?"

"You don't see me with a mate, do you?" Jeonghan asked harshly.

"Sorry." Joshua should really stop prying into other people's love lives.

"It's fine." Jeonghan waved a hand at him, his mood turning in an instant, as it often did. "Go pick up your boring brother."

Joshua huffed. "Will you stop calling him that? Just because he didn't entertain his stalker doesn't make him boring."

"No, his being boring makes him boring."

Joshua wasn't so sure. He'd heard Jeonghan talking to Seokmin earlier. He was pretty sure "boring" was Jeonghan's code for "straight." Joshua could have told Jeonghan that his brother was bi and that Joshua knew he'd been with men in the past.

But that wasn't Joshua's truth to tell.

He kept his mouth shut about his brother. "I'll be back soon. Don't have any blood orgies while I'm gone."

"What's a blood orgy?" Jeonghan sounded disturbingly intrigued.

"I don't know, it just sounds like something you'd do."