Park Seonghwa

There was something almost poetic about being over a century old and still getting carded at the door.

{{user}} had mastered the art of existing in plain sight — not just surviving it, but thriving in it. A hundred and some odd years on this earth, and he wore it like a secret tucked behind his teeth. Twenty-five, eternally. Sharp jaw, sharper eyes, the kind of face that made people do a double-take and then forget why they'd looked in the first place. He was decorated the way a lot of his kind weren't — ink crawling up his forearms, silver rings through his ears, a constellation of piercings that should have looked like too much and instead looked like they'd always belonged there. The beauty of it was that none of it had to be permanent. Healed in hours if he wanted it gone. He never wanted it gone.

He wasn't the strongest of his kind, nor the oldest in the room by reputation. But {{user}} had something most vampires would have traded centuries for — the ability to glam. A look. A nudge. A quiet, invisible hand on the wheel of someone's mind. It made the feeding easy, made the hiding easier, and made the whole messy business of being a predator among prey feel almost... elegant. He rarely had to try hard. He almost wished he did, sometimes. Almost.

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The party was exactly what it looked like — loud, sweaty, dim-lit, and full of people who would remember nothing useful come morning. Perfect hunting conditions, though {{user}} wasn't here to hunt. Not actively. He'd learned long ago that the best meals came to you when you stopped chasing them.

He moved through the crowd with the ease of someone who had attended a thousand gatherings just like this one. Different decades, different music, same human hunger for noise and contact and the feeling of being alive. He got introduced around by a mutual that he already forgot the name of— names he filed away and voices he catalogued the way a sommelier notes a vintage. He took drinks when offered, held them, occasionally sipped. Never got drunk. One of the few genuine frustrations of his condition. He'd been drunk exactly once, back when being drunk was still possible, and he missed it the way people miss a song they can never quite remember.

He was leaning against a wall, watching, when Seonghwa found him.

Twenty-nine, maybe. The kind of pretty that aged well and knew it. An English major — he'd gather that later, but even now there was something readable about him, like he wore his inner life closer to the surface than most. And he was drunk. Gloriously, unguardedly drunk, cheeks flushed and eyes bright and moving through the room like gravity had loosened its grip on him just slightly. He spotted {{user}} across the dim space and made a decision that he probably thought was spontaneous.

No glamour. Not even a flicker of it. Seonghwa walked up to him first.

{{user}} didn't smile, exactly. But something in his expression shifted — a quiet, internal recalibration. Interesting.

They danced. Of course they did. The music was loud enough to make talking feel optional, which suited {{user}} just fine — he was better at listening anyway. Seonghwa moved the way people moved when they'd stopped being self-conscious, all loose hips and easy confidence, and {{user}} matched him without effort. They gravitated closer the way magnets do, gradual and then inevitable, until Seonghwa's back was against his chest and the crowd had folded around them like they were the still center of something spinning. They moved in tandem, hips syncopating to the beat.

{{user}} kept his hands where they were on his hi[s. Patient. Always patient. He'd learned the value of it sometime around his fortieth year of being undead.

Then Seonghwa turned his head, said something into his ear that was half-swallowed by the bass, and tipped his chin toward the hallway. A separate room. Away from the noise.

{{user}} followed.

The room was quieter. Darker. A spare bedroom by the looks of it — someone's coat thrown over a chair, a lamp left on low. Seonghwa dropped onto the edge of the bed and looked up at him with that particular expression that drunk people got when they thought they were being subtle.

{{user}} looked back. Calm. Unhurried. A century of patience sitting quiet behind his eyes.

He wasn't thinking about what Seonghwa thought this was.

He was thinking about the pulse in Seonghwa's throat — steady, warm, just slightly elevated from the dancing. Thinking about the way the lamplight caught the line of his neck.

Thinking that he hadn't even needed the glam.

Easiest meal of the month

The door slowly closed behind them, Seonghwa already pulling them to the bed.