Mid-semester break was coming up soon, and the entire campus had started vibrating with restless energy.

Everywhere Lucien went, people were talking about plans. Someone in his typography class was driving to Arizona with friends, two girls outside the library were fighting over Airbnb prices in Miami, and even the exhausted graduate students haunting the art building looked mentally halfway out the door already.

Originally, Lucien had no intention of going anywhere.

Holiday shifts paid double, and double pay mattered more than vacations.

Still, this was an actual American ranch, not the fake influencer kind online where people posed beside suspiciously clean horses for Instagram pictures. Leon's ranch sounded enormous and isolated and absurdly expensive in a way Lucien still couldn't fully process.

Honestly, Leon's entire life felt unreal.

Professional fighter. Luxury cars. Private chefs. Multiple ranches.

The man sounded less like a real person and more like somebody's aggressively self-indulgent romance protagonist.

Lucien sat across from him in the restaurant booth pretending not to look interested while stirring the last of his congee.

Unfortunately, Leon noticed everything.

"We could stay in the cabin near the lake," Leon said casually as he refilled Lucien's tea. "It's quieter than the main house."

Lucien narrowed his eyes immediately.

"You're trying to tempt me."

"Yes."

The blunt honesty caught him off guard hard enough that he almost choked.

Leon looked completely calm about it.

"There's a fire pit outside," he continued, voice steady and low. "We usually grill at night. During the day you can ride horses if you want, pick fruit, walk the trails. The lambs should still be there this time of year."

Lucien's imagination betrayed him instantly.

A wooden cabin beside a lake, open fields under huge skies, fresh blueberries, and tiny sheep that probably looked like soft white clouds with legs.

America was cheating.

"I still have work during break," he muttered weakly, making one final attempt at responsibility.

"You've barely gone anywhere since moving here."

Leon leaned back slightly, watching him with the same focus he brought into the boxing ring.

"Every time I see you, you're either working or studying."

Lucien opened his mouth to argue.

Leon cut him off before he could.

"It's only a few days. The world won't end if you rest for one weekend."

Then, after a pause, his voice softened.

"You helped me. Let me thank you properly."

That was the final hit.

Lucien lost immediately and with absolutely no dignity whatsoever.

"…Okay."

The answer came out smaller than intended.

Something in Leon's expression eased.

Not smug exactly.

Just quietly satisfied.

Lucien sat up straighter, trying to recover at least a little self-respect.

"So what do I need to bring?"

"Nothing."

"That sounds fake."

Leon laughed softly under his breath.

"I'll handle everything."

—

By the end of dinner, Lucien had already committed emotionally hard enough to start imagining himself starring in some coming-of-age road trip movie.

The dangerous thing about Leon was how naturally he made impossible things feel ordinary.

Like inviting somebody into his private life wasn't intimate.

Like Lucien already belonged there.

Outside the restaurant, Lucien tried refusing the ride home mostly on principle.

"You seriously don't need to drive me back," he insisted. "You literally got punched for ten rounds tonight. Go rest."

The sentence barely finished before Leon dropped his jacket over Lucien's head again.

Dark fabric swallowed him immediately.

Lucien made a muffled offended noise somewhere underneath it.

"Leon."

No response.

Just Leon catching his wrist lightly and steering him toward the car.

Honestly, Lucien's ability to surrender under minimal pressure was becoming humiliating.

The restaurant wasn't far from campus. Somewhere around the ten-minute mark, Lucien accidentally fell asleep in the passenger seat.

The adrenaline crash hit all at once. The noise from the arena, the tension during the fight, the emotional whiplash afterward — all of it finally caught up to him.

By the time the car stopped outside his apartment building, he was barely awake.

"We're here already?"

The words slipped out in Chinese, blurred soft by exhaustion.

Leon didn't understand the sentence itself, but the sound still landed somewhere deep under his ribs.

A strange irritation twisted through him suddenly.

He wanted to understand Lucien completely.

Not just the careful English Lucien used around other people. Leon wanted the sleepy muttering too, the fast little complaints under his breath, the instinctive switch into Chinese whenever he got emotional or distracted.

The need arrived hard enough to unsettle him.

Inside the dark car, Leon finally did the thing he'd wanted to do all night.

He reached over and smoothed down the stubborn pieces of hair sticking up from the top of Lucien's head.

Lucien jolted awake instantly.

His eyes widened.

For one catastrophic second, his brain genuinely thought Leon might lean over and kiss him.

Which was insane.

Absolutely insane.

"Go upstairs and get some sleep," Leon said quietly. "You look exhausted."

Lucien's pulse still hadn't recovered.

"That advice should apply to you more than me," he muttered. "You're the one who got punched for a living tonight."

Leon smiled slightly.

"Then we should both sleep early."

Lucien stared at him.

Why did that sound weird?

Nobody had technically flirted, but somehow the entire atmosphere inside the car had become suspicious.

His toes curled violently inside his sneakers.

"I'm leaving now," he announced awkwardly.

He escaped before Leon could say anything else.

At first he walked normally toward the apartment entrance, but halfway there he became overwhelmingly aware of the possibility that Leon was still watching him.

The sensation crawled over the back of his neck almost physically.

Without turning around, Lucien panicked and sprinted into the building.

—

His roommate looked up from the couch immediately.

There was fried chicken spread across the coffee table, and some sports channel was replaying highlights from the fight.

The roommate blinked once.

"…Whose jacket is that?"

Lucien froze.

Slowly, he looked down at himself.

Oh no.

He was still wearing Leon's jacket.

How had he not noticed?

Heat exploded across his face instantly.

Was that why Leon had been staring at him earlier? Had he wanted to remind him?

Lucien rushed to the window and looked downstairs desperately, but the street outside was already empty.

The car was gone.

Too late.

He collapsed onto his bed dramatically before grabbing his phone.

[I accidentally took your jacket home.]

The reply came almost immediately.

[Keep it.]

Lucien stared at the screen.

[It's huge :(]

Several seconds later:

[You look cute in it.]