Running to You | Park Han + JL + Steven | Haneulz + Stejay AU

Chapter 86: For the First Time

For Steven, there was only a little bit of the old ache in watching this. The jealousy and grief that had consumed him for months had been replaced by acceptance and genuine warmth. This was how it was supposed to be. This was right.

* * *

Four weeks later, Han parked outside their apartment building and moved to help JL from the passenger seat, but JL held up a hand.

"Wait," JL said, his voice carrying something Han hadn't heard in months -- mischief. "I want to try something."

Han stepped back, confusion flickering across his features as JL maneuvered himself out of the car with careful deliberation. He didn't move to take his crutches.  He stood for a moment, balancing on legs that still trembled slightly under his weight, then took a step forward. And another.

Han's breath caught as JL walked -- actually walked -- toward the building entrance without assistance, without the crutches. Each step was careful but confident, his body remembering movements it had nearly forgotten. The distance couldn't have been more than twenty feet, but it might as well have been twenty miles for the magnitude of what it represented.

When JL reached the door and turned back toward Han, his face was radiant with triumph and disbelief.

"Did you see that?" JL called out, his voice cracking with laughter and tears. "Did you see me?"

Han's response was immediate and overwhelming. He crossed the distance between them in seconds, his own laughter bubbling up from somewhere deep in his chest. They collided in an embrace that was all joy and relief and giddy, breathless celebration.

"I saw you," Han gasped between kisses pressed to JL's temple, his cheek, anywhere he could reach. "I saw you walking. I saw you."

They stumbled together through the apartment door, both laughing and crying simultaneously, drunk on the simple miracle of JL's independence. In the privacy of their own space, Han caught JL's face between his hands, his thumb brushing away tears that were entirely different from the ones they had shed in the dark months before.

"Can I kiss you?" Han asked, voice rough, trembling under the weight of everything he had been holding back. "Please... can I -- "

JL's eyes darkened, his breath quickening, lips parting as he leaned in. His voice dropped into something silkier, teasing, electric.

"Please," JL whispered, thick with desire. "Kiss me. Again. And again. Don't stop."

That single plea ignited Han's restraint into flame.

His mouth found JL's with a hunger no longer masked by caution. JL's hands slid into Han's hair, pulling him closer, pulling him under. Their mouths met in a kiss that trembled with pent-up want, tasting of almost a year lost and reclaimed.

When Han's fingers traced the line of JL's jaw, his touch was gentle but charged. JL shivered beneath it, his body responding not with fragility, but with a raw, unfamiliar ache -- as if rediscovering how it felt to be wanted like this. Like a man. Like a lover.

For so long, Han had been the steady arms that held him up, the hands that carried him through recovery. But now... now it was different. The heat in Han's eyes burned through the last of that role. 

JL felt his breath catch. This was Han: masculine, devastatingly handsome -- and tonight, all of that focus, that want, that fire -- was for him.

They smelled different now -- clean, whole. No trace of antiseptic, no sterile air. Only skin, breath, warmth. Han inhaled at the hollow of JL's throat, where that familiar sweetness lived, and something inside him bloomed into hunger.