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If faith needed a form, Euijoo was almost certain he’d found it already — not in scripture or in the sky, but in the shape of a singular scar, stretched like a soft crescent across the skin of Nicholas’ arm.
It wasn’t something most people would notice at first. To anyone else, it would be a detail, something barely worth a second glance — to Euijoo it was a living, breathing psalm he knew by heart. Faint and pale, it carved into his skin just below the elbow. Euijoo’s eyes had been drawn to it from the start like a moth to a flame. Like a sinner to a confession.
They were sprawled out in the quiet of their shared dorm bedroom, soaked in that gentle afterglow of their free afternoon — warmth clinging to their skin, hearts beating in the same unhurried rhythm. The lamp on the nightstand cast gold across Nicholas’ chest, catching in the damp strands of hair at his temple. One arm was curled above his head, the other resting against his stomach. And the scar was right there in the open, waiting for Euijoo.
He traced its edge with the back of his finger. Softly. He could map it out in the dark if he had to, he was sure — knew the exact bend of it, the way the skin around it dipped and smoothed. He wondered, idly, if Nicholas even noticed how often he looked at it. How he sometimes reached for that arm during early morning car rides or during their quiet movie nights, under the pretense of stretching or getting comfortable — when really, he was just aching to feel it, needing the constant confirmation that it was still there.
It would seem purely ridiculous to anyone from the outside. To Euijoo, it was the meaning of everything that he had ever been, was, and would be.
He bent his head and pressed a kiss to it — barely a breath of contact, like lips meeting holy ground. The kind of touch that was nothing about arousal or comfort. It was an offering. A private ceremony he’d organized just for him.
Nicholas shifted slightly under the touch. His voice came low and rough with sleep. “Are you… seriously kissing my scar right now?”
Euijoo didn’t move an inch. “Mm.”
“Freak,” Nicholas muttered.
“Shut up.” His voice was gentle, fond. He let his mouth linger, then kissed it again — for a few seconds longer this time. “You’re lucky I’m not framing this thing.”
A soft laugh escaped from the back of Nicholas’ throat. “You’re such a fucking weirdo.”
Maybe. But Euijoo didn’t mind it.
He didn’t move away, didn’t stop touching. His fingers brushed over the scar like it could tell him things. Like he could read it or learn it. Believe in it. Nicholas didn’t speak up again as he dozed off — letting Euijoo keep kissing that same spot like it pulled him there by gravity, like it was worth rewriting every definition of the word beautiful he’d ever known.
Euijoo was sure this was the point of it all.
And if love was real — if it was meant to be witnessed and remembered, and cherished in every form it came — then Euijoo wanted to keep it here, exactly like this. In the quiet curve of an old wound. In the way Nicholas let him hold it. In the hush of the room and the warmth of their skin and the strange, aching tenderness of wanting someone more than language could carry.
If he could carve out a chapel inside his chest, that scar would sit at the altar. And Euijoo would worship it like it had saved him.
If society made any sense, Euijoo would be planting kisses on the very ground Nicholas walked — without a second’s hesitation.
No — scratch that. He’d have built him a shrine, crafted from nothing but pure reverence and the plushest pillows on Earth, its air heavy with incense born of his own flesh and longing, its walls lined with tiny little polaroids capturing every inch of Nicholas’ body.
He could devote the rest of his life to this alone, if he could — with his mouth parted, breath warm, lips mapping the gentle curve of Nicholas’ lower abdomen. He’d gladly subsist on that alone.
Nicholas writhed under him, back arching with every press of Euijoo’s mouth. His skin tasted like sweat from the dance practice they returned from about an hour ago and it made Euijoo dizzy. His greed knew no limits. He could never get enough of that view.
“Did you get the lock?” Nicholas asked, voice already starting to sound a little wrecked. He gasped when Euijoo licked slow and deliberate, just above the waistband of his boxers.
“I did,” Euijoo said simply, then sank his teeth gently into Nicholas’ side. Not hard enough to mark. Not yet. Nicholas shuddered, exhaling a breathy, high sound that shot straight through Euijoo’s spine. Euijoo could get high on that alone.
“Wouldn’t you like Fuma to walk in again and see you like this?” Euijoo murmured, voice lazy, teasing. “All soft. All pliant. Third time’s the charm — I bet he’d really appreciate the show this time.”
Nicholas let out a guttural noise, something between a whimper and a curse, arm thrown over his face as if that could hide the shade blooming in his cheeks and down his neck.
“Don’t— don’t say shit like that,” he half-choked out, but it didn’t stop his hips from lifting, searching for more. Euijoo was never one to refuse him anything.
He laughed, breathing warm against the sensitive skin. “Oh, but I know you love it. Can’t hide anything for me, remember?”
He kissed lower, letting his lips skim over Nicholas’ bare body with the kind of care that bordered on cruelty — deliberate and dragging, a path of sin he dressed up as affection. Each press of his mouth was soft, but heavy with intent, the way someone might handle sacred scripture they were just about to ruin.
He dipped his tongue into the slight dip of Nicholas’ hipbone, then licked slowly downward, savoring the way Nicholas’ muscles jumped beneath his mouth.
Nicholas’ breath caught, sharp and shaky. His fingers twisted into the pillow beneath him, knuckles white. There was tension in every line of him, pulled taut between resistance and surrender — like his body couldn’t decide whether it wanted to run or beg to be kept right there, pinned under Euijoo’s mouth forever.
Euijoo paused for a second, lifting his head just slightly, lips still hovering close enough to feel the heat radiating off Nicholas’ body. He looked up, eyes catching the glow of the low light. And God — Nicholas was flushed down to the chest, lips parted, pupils blown wide with need. His chest rose unevenly, like each breath was costing him more.
“Tell me you want it,” he said, smiling — voice barely more than a whisper. A dare, a command. A prayer.
He waited right there, still on his knees, mouth inches away, eyes fixed upward like he was waiting for a blessing. Or maybe daring Nicholas to grant it.
Nicholas’ lips parted slightly, breath catching, eyes glassy and heavy-lidded. He hesitated — not because he didn’t want to, but because he knew that Euijoo would unravel the second he gave in.
Then, finally, he whispered, voice rough and wrecked. “Please.”
God, Euijoo thought, as he dipped his head again and gave Nicholas exactly what he asked for — how could he ever believe in anything else after getting to experience something so divine?
As long as Nicholas stayed like this — open, trembling, and entirely his — Euijoo would give him everything. Every touch, every breath, every part of himself. Again and again, until the moment his body gave out. Until there was nothing left to offer but devotion itself.
If there was any sacred being that existed above it all, Euijoo would be begging to it on his knees, pleading to end up in this exact situation in every possible universe, every possible timeline — just to be able to feel the taste of Nicholas’ skin beneath his tongue once again.
He would barter his luck. Burn his future. Tear out all of the pages from every script ever written for him and rewrite them all around this — the sharp inhale Nicholas made when Euijoo bit into his shoulder just a little too hard. The way his fingers tightened in Euijoo’s hair like he was anchoring himself. Like he’d fall apart without something to hold onto.
“Fuck—” Nicholas hissed through his teeth, eyes screwed shut. “You’re going to make me cum like a teenager.”
Euijoo smiled against his stomach. One hand was busy scratching patterns with his dull nails along his right forearm, the other one was petting him sadistically slow, through the material of his boxers. “Wouldn’t be the first time this happened, no? Just a few minutes are enough to get you over the edge, isn’t that right?”
“Not a few,” Nicholas breathed heavily, voice trembling. “You’ve been down there for— god, I don’t even know how long.”
“Hmmm…” Euijoo murmured, licking over a particularly sensitive spot over his left nipple and earning another low moan in return. “Haven’t noticed. Been kinda busy, you know?”
He pressed a kiss just above Nicholas’ happy trail. Another below the waistband. Then one lower. Almost reverent. Devoted.
His lips lingered there for longer, as if tracing a sacred map he’d come to worship in secret. The heat in Nicholas’ skin under his mouth only fueled Euijoo’s need to keep going — to explore, to claim, to cherish every accessible inch of his body.
If the universe had any mercy, Euijoo thought, it would freeze this exact moment for eternity — seal it in amber and hide it somewhere even the mightiest, the most powerful of gods couldn’t reach. Make him search and look for it across every lifetime, through every twist of time, just to be able to earn the right to feel like this again.
So if the heavens above demanded proof of devotion before letting him in, Euijoo would offer himself whole — heart, soul, and every fragile piece in between — laid bare on a silver platter. He would confess without hesitation — he believed in Nicholas’ body as if it were the only truth that had ever truly mattered. He prayed that his faith in the shape of his lover’s skin meant more than any god he’d ever known.
And if the price of that same devotion was being cast into the deepest pit instead — dragged into whatever hell lay below — he would go willingly, just to prove he had known something holy on Earth. Let them tear him apart, piece by piece, if that was what it took.
And when there was nothing left of him, he’d still offer up the memory of this — the body he had once laid hands on as if it were sacred. The one he worshipped with a reverence deeper than faith itself, as if it belonged to something far, far above him.