A Night With the Coven

Male POV

The bar was loud in the comfortable way — glasses clinking, a jukebox fighting to be heard over conversation, neon bleeding red through the window behind you. You'd come in for one drink, maybe two, nothing more ambitious than that. You hadn't planned on being looked at.

But you were. From the corner booth, past the crowd, a pink-haired stranger had gone very still — mid-drink, whatever he'd been about to say to Jin-hee dying somewhere behind his teeth.

"...Casey?" Jin-hee followed his eyeline, grin already tugging at her mouth. "Oh my god. You're doing the face."

"I'm not doing a face."

"You're doing the face," Miriam confirmed, not even looking up from her beer.

Casey Warren did not, as a rule, believe in love at first sight. He believed in interest at first sight, and decisions shortly after. And the decision, watching you order your drink with your jacket half off one shoulder and absolutely no awareness that you were being watched, was made in about four seconds flat.

"Oh," he said, quiet, to himself. "Oh, no."

He didn't get up right away. That would be gauche. Instead he watched you a moment longer, chin propped on his knuckles, something warm and wanting pooling behind his eyes — and he wanted, quietly, deliberately, the way he'd learned to want things and mean it. Not a spell with words. Not smoke or candles. Just intention, pushed loose from somewhere under his ribs and sent drifting across the room like smoke finding an open window: look at me. Want to.

You wouldn't feel it happen.

Jin-hee caught it anyway — the faint shift in the air, the way her drink went a degree colder in her hand — and raised an eyebrow at him over the rim of her glass. "Casey."

"What."

"You know what."

"I don't know what you're talking about." He was already sliding out of the booth, unhurried, drink in hand, smoothing his shirt with the serene confidence of a man who had never once been held accountable for anything.

Miriam exhaled through her nose. "Unbelievable."

"Some of us have charm, Miriam." Casey didn't look back. He crossed the room, his wide hips swinging side to side hypnotically, thighs visibly jiggling with each step, and by the time your eyes found the corner booth — a moment later, pulled there by something small and unplaced and warm — he was already at your side, like he'd been invited.

"Hi," he said. Up close he was even more — glossy pink hair, a smile with too many teeth in it to be entirely innocent, eyes doing a slow, unbothered, hungry sweep of you that made no effort to hide itself. The fingers of his free hand not holding his glass moved up and down your shoulder. "I'm going to be honest with you, because I think you can handle it." He leaned one elbow on the bar, tilting his head. "You're the best-looking thing I've seen all week, and I've seen a lot this week. So. Tell me your name, handsome."

Behind him, half-drowned in the noise of the bar, Jin-hee was laughing into Miriam's shoulder.

You'd just taken your first sip of the drink when it happened.

Something moved. Small, wet, unmistakable — a single eyeball, veined and rolling, drifting lazily up through the amber liquid like it had every right to be there.

You nearly threw the glass across the bar.

From the corner booth, Jin-hee Sang watched over the rim of her own drink with the serene, unbothered patience of someone who had done this exact thing more than once and never once gotten caught. Beside her, Casey was already covering his mouth, shoulders shaking. Miriam didn't look up from her beer, but the corner of her mouth had gone suspiciously tight.

"Careful," Jin-hee called over, not even bothering to hide that she was watching. "Some bars really don't wash their glasses."

You set the drink down like it had personally betrayed you, staring into it. The eyeball blinked. Slowly. Almost polite about it. You looked up — half-expecting the bartender to be losing his mind too — but he just kept wiping down the counter, oblivious. Nobody else at the bar had so much as glanced over.

Jin-hee tilted her head, watching you watch the glass, grin tugging wider under the brim of her fedora.

Casey lost it first, laughing into his sleeve. "Oh my god, their face—"

"You're both children," Miriam said, flat, though she still hadn't looked away from you either. Watching. Waiting to see how long it would take you to figure it out.

The eyeball surfaced fully now, drifting to bump gently against the rim of your glass, and — for just a second — it seemed to look at you.

Then it was gone. Just a drink again. Amber, unbothered, entirely eyeball-free.

Jin-hee was already sliding out of the booth, unhurried, hands tucked behind her back like she hadn't just ruined a perfectly good beer.

"Sorry about that," she said, not sounding sorry at all, dropping onto the stool beside you like she belonged there. Her eyes glittered, sharp under all that playfulness — the kind of sharp that made you wonder, a beat too late, whether "sorry" was going to cost you something. "Little trick of the eye. Or — I guess, trick for the eye." She tapped the side of her glasses, grinning. "You handled that better than most. Most people scream."

The first guy had been leaning too close for two full minutes before Miriam had even bothered to look at him properly. The second one had shown up somewhere around minute three, apparently under the impression that a friend meant better odds.

"C'mon, just one drink," the first one said, for what had to be the fourth time. "You're sitting here all by yourself, that's just sad."

"I'm not by myself. I'm ignoring you specifically." Miriam didn't raise her voice. Her eyes stayed on the bottles behind the bar, bored, like the two of them were background noise she hadn't gotten around to muting yet.

Across the room, Jin-hee had gone still mid-sentence, fedora tipping as she tracked the scene over Casey's shoulder. "Should we—"

"Give it a second," Casey murmured back, though his jaw was tight, his drink forgotten in his hand. Both of them had one foot already turned toward the bar, weight shifted, ready.

*The second guy reached out — not touching, just close, a hand hovering near her shoulder like he was building up the nerve. "Relax, we're just being friendly—"

Miriam turned her head, finally, slow and deliberate, and looked at his hand like it had made a serious miscalculation. "Move that," she said, "or lose it. Your call."

Something in her voice did the work her expression didn't bother with. The hand retreated. The first guy laughed, too loud, covering for his friend, already backing off a step, muttering something about it being a joke, they were just leaving anyway, no hard feelings —

They left.

Jin-hee let her breath out, relaxing back into the booth. Casey shook his head, already reaching for his drink again like the last thirty seconds hadn't happened.

Miriam turned back to the bar, unbothered, already reaching for her beer — right as you slid onto the stool beside her, the one just vacated.

Her eyes cut to you immediately, flat, already halfway through the same warning she'd given the last two before you'd even said a word.

"Don't."