Chapter 13: The Aftermath
The steel door felt like ice against his back. Yong-Jin had lost track of time, sitting there on the polished marble floor of the foyer, knees drawn up, listening to the absolute silence of the penthouse. It was a different silence than before. Before, it had been oppressive, a weight. Now it was thin, stretched taut, waiting for a sound to tear it.
His mind replayed the feel of Zykin’s coat against his face, the crushing pressure of his hands over his own. You are my only reason. The words should have been a cage. They felt, terrifyingly, like a truth he was starting to wear on his own skin.
A soft chime echoed through the apartment, electronic and clean. The elevator. His heart slammed against his ribs. He scrambled to his feet, his body stiff and cold.
He heard the heavy thunk of the elevator doors opening. Then nothing. No footsteps.
A shadow fell across the narrow gap under the door.
The locks disengaged with a series of solid clacks. The door swung inward.
Zykin filled the doorway. The cold from the corridor rolled off him in a wave, carrying the sharp, metallic scent of snow and something else, something copper and grim. He was still in his black coat, but it was open. His white turtleneck was speckled with dark, rust-colored droplets. One of his knuckles was split open, the skin raw and swollen.
He didn’t speak. His eyes, glittering and wild, found Yong-Jin instantly in the dim foyer light. He stepped inside and kicked the door shut behind him with a finality that shook the walls.
Then he moved.
In two long strides he was on him. His hands, cold and smelling of gunpowder and winter, framed Yong-Jin’s face. He didn’t kiss him. He stared, his breath coming in short, visible puffs in the chilled air, as if he were committing every detail to memory. Checking for damage. “They didn’t touch you,” he said. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact, grim and satisfied.
“No,” Yong-Jin breathed.
Something in Zykin’s face fractured. The cold control snapped. He crushed Yong-Jin back against the foyer wall, his mouth coming down on his with a bruising, desperate intensity. It was less a kiss and more a reclamation. Yong-Jin tasted winter, and whiskey, and a faint, iron tang of blood. Zykin’s tongue invaded his mouth, claiming, verifying he was whole.
His hands left Yong-Jin’s face and began a frantic, almost clinical journey down his body. They slid over his shoulders, his chest, his stomach—checking, grasping—as if expecting to find hidden wounds. He shoved his hands under Yong-Jin’s untucked shirt, his cold, rough palms skating over the warm skin of his ribs, his back, pulling him tighter. The contrast was shocking.
He broke the kiss, his forehead pressed to Yong-Jin’s, his eyes squeezed shut. He was trembling, a fine, violent tremor that vibrated through his entire massive frame into Yong-Jin’s. “Say you missed me,” he whispered, his voice ragged, raw at the edges.
Yong-Jin’s hands came up, tentatively, to rest on Zykin’s heaving chest. He could feel the furious drum of his heart. He wasn’t asking for a game. This was a need, visceral and stark.
“I missed you,” Yong-Jin whispered back, the words honest, pulled from a deep, confused part of himself.
A shudder ripped through Zykin. He groaned, low in his chest, and captured Yong-Jin’s mouth again, slower this time but no less hungry. One hand fisted in Yong-Jin’s hair, tilting his head back against the wall. The other arm locked around his waist, lifting him just off his feet, pressing their bodies together until not a sliver of light could pass between them.
When he finally pulled back, they were both breathless. Zykin looked down at him, his green eyes dark and pupils blown. The wildness was still there, but it was banked now, smoldering. He leaned in and licked a slow, deliberate stripe up the side of Yong-Jin’s throat, tasting the salt of his skin.
“I can smell it on me,” Zykin murmured, his lips against Yong-Jin’s jaw. “The night. The bad things.” He said it with a kind of detached disgust. “I need it gone.”
He took Yong-Jin’s hand and led him, not to the bedroom, but down the hall toward the master bathroom. It was a vast, cavernous space of black slate and chrome. Zykin flicked a switch, and lights embedded around a sunken tub the size of a small pool glowed to life, steam already beginning to rise as the water filled it automatically.
He turned to Yong-Jin and began to undress him. His movements were methodical now, slower. He pulled the shirt over Yong-Jin’s head, let it fall. He unbuttoned the trousers, pushed them down his hips. Yong-Jin stood there, letting it happen, his skin pebbling in the warm, humid air.
Zykin shed his own clothes next. The coat hit the floor with a heavy thud. The blood-spattered turtleneck followed. He stood naked under the recessed lights, a map of violence both given and received painted across his pale skin in ink and scars and fresh, dark bruises. The split knuckle. A new, raw scrape along his ribcage. He was terrifying. He was magnificent.
He stepped into the steaming water first, sinking deep until it lapped at his shoulders. He held out a hand. “Come.”
Yong-Jin took it and stepped in. The water was almost scalding, a shocking contrast to the cold fear that had been sitting in his bones. He sank down opposite Zykin, the vast space between them feeling both immense and insignificant.
For a long minute, they just sat in the silence, the steam curling around them. Zykin leaned his head back against the stone ledge, his eyes closed. The tremor was gone from his hands. He looked drained, the adrenaline leached away, leaving something older and more weary in its place.
“His name was Vanya,” Zykin said, his voice a low rumble in the tiled room. He didn’t open his eyes. “The one who talked. He will not be talking anymore.” He let that hang in the steam-filled air. “No one from Litvinov will say your name again. It is… erased.”
Yong-Jin watched the water ripple between them. He thought of the men who had come for him. He thought of the two by the van who had never seen Zykin coming. He should feel horror. He felt a cold, shameful sort of safety.
“Why?” Yong-Jin asked softly. “Why me? You could have… taken the garage. Taken whatever you wanted. You didn’t have to…” He gestured vaguely, encompassing the penthouse, the bath, Zykin himself.
Zykin opened his eyes. They were clear now, focused solely on Yong-Jin. “When you first came to fix the car,” he began, his voice quiet. “You were under the engine. You got oil on your cheek.” He reached across the water, his wet fingers tracing an imaginary line on Yong-Jin’s face. “You didn’t wipe it off. You were too focused on the problem. Your hands were sure. Your eyes were… bright. Like you saw the truth of the machine.” He dropped his hand. “Everyone else sees a problem to be solved for money. Or for power. Or to avoid pain. You saw it and you wanted to fix it simply because it was broken. I have not seen that in a very long time.”
He leaned forward suddenly, cutting the distance between them. Water sloshed over the edge of the tub. “You looked at me, after. Not at the scars. Not at the tattoos. You looked at me. And you were not afraid.”
“I was,” Yong-Jin admitted.
“Not in the right way,” Zykin countered. “Not in the way that matters.” He picked up a vial of dark liquid from a shelf and poured a generous amount into the water. The clean, sharp scent of pine and birch filled the space, cutting through the steam. “It doesn’t matter now. You are here.”
He moved closer, until their knees touched under the water. “Turn around.”
Yong-Jin turned, presenting his back. He heard the soft sound of a cloth being wrung out. Then, Zykin’s strong hands were on his shoulders, a hot, wet cloth scrubbing slowly, firmly down his spine. He wasn’t being sensual. He was being thorough. Washing away the imagined dust of the waiting room, the lingering chill of the floor.
Zykin’s touch moved over his shoulders, down his arms. He rinsed the cloth, added sandalwood soap, and began again. The care was absolute. It was the same focused intensity he used for everything, now turned to the act of cleansing.
When he was done with Yong-Jin’s back, he nudged him. “Now me.”
Yong-Jin turned. Zykin had shifted, presenting his own broad back, the dragon tattoo coiled over his shoulder blade rippling with the movement of his muscles. Yong-Jin took the cloth. He dipped it in the hot, scented water and brought it to Zykin’s skin.
He started at the nape of his neck, washing methodically over the tense cords of muscle. He worked the cloth over the intricate ink, over old, whitened scars, over the fresh scrape on his ribs. He watched as the water around them clouded with a faint, pinkish tinge from the dried blood. He rinsed and repeated, the rhythmic motion calming something in his own chest.
Zykin let his head hang forward, a soft, almost inaudible sigh escaping him. It was a sound of profound relief, of a guard lowered for the first time all night.
Yong-Jin’s hand slowed. His fingers, of their own accord, traced the raised ridge of a particularly vicious scar that cut across Zykin’s shoulder blade. He didn’t ask. He just touched it.
Zykin didn’t flinch. “A knife,” he said, his voice muffled. “From a man who thought I was sleeping.” He paused. “He was wrong.”
Yong-Jin finished washing him in silence. When he was done, Zykin turned, sinking lower into the water so it covered his chin. His eyes were heavy-lidded, the fierce energy gone, replaced by an exhausted, predatory stillness. He looked at Yong-Jin through the steam.
“In this bath,” he said, “there is no blood. There is no Bratva. There is no past.” He reached out, his hand breaking the surface of the water to cup Yong-Jin’s cheek. His thumb stroked the high bone. “There is only now. And you.”
He pulled Yong-Jin towards him, not with force, but with a steady, inescapable pressure. Yong-Jin went, letting himself be rearranged until he was settled between Zykin’s legs, his back against Zykin’s solid chest. Zykin’s arms came around him, holding him close, his chin resting on top of Yong-Jin’s wet head.
They stayed like that as the water cooled and the steam thinned. The world with its violence and its debts was locked outside the door. Here, there was only the heat of the water, the beat of Zykin’s heart against his back, and the slow, steady rhythm of their breathing, finally in sync. Zykin’s grip was firm, possessive, but his body was relaxed, the last of the night’s tension seeping away into the fragrant water.
Yong-Jin closed his eyes. The scent of pine and sandalwood and clean skin filled his lungs. He felt Zykin’s lips press softly, once, into his hair.
No one spoke. The silence now was not thin or waiting. It was thick and complete, woven from steam and spent adrenaline and something else, fragile and new, humming quietly between their two bodies in the warm, dark water.