2nd Night, Lyngen North
She was back at the window. Again.
Knees drawn up, face turned toward the empty night. Katsuki sat beside her, not because he wanted to—but because she looked cold. And small. And too quiet. Which was always a bad sign.
"Still mad?" she asked without turning.
He didn't answer right away. Mostly because he was still drying off emotionally from the polar plunge she'd roped him into that morning.
Mad?
No. That was too soft a word. He was professionally offended.
She had jumped. Into a frozen fjord. With the full knowledge—confirmed knowledge—that she couldn't swim. And for what? The thrill? The photo op? To give him a heart attack so she could inherit absolutely nothing?
"Yeah," he said flatly.
She didn't even look sorry. Just grinned at her own reflection like she was adorable and not an actual liability.
"I had a hot tub for you," she said. "You enjoyed it."
Enjoyed it.
If she meant enjoyed as in: sat there gripping the edge while trying not to imagine her straddling him beneath the steam, then yes. Sure. Thoroughly enjoyed. Maybe even transcended.
His restraint the past two weeks deserved an award. Or a monument. Or a shrine where people could lay offerings and whisper how? in reverence.
Because they were sleeping in the same bed. Every night. Her legs kept tangling with his. Her curls ended up in his mouth. Once, she used his chest as a pillow and muttered something about tax reform in her sleep.
This should count as martyrdom. Possibly sainthood.
And the worst part? He didn't even know why.
It wasn't like he was incapable. He could make a move. Could pin her to the mattress and make her forget her own name—he knew she'd let him. She'd practically climbed him in the rental car back in Oslo. Straddled him like a threat. That should count for something. At the very least, it should've erased his hesitation.
But it hadn't.
Because deep down in the part of his brain he liked to pretend didn't exist, he was still waiting. Not for permission. For certainty. Because if she didn't want this the same way he did—utterly, obsessively, irreversibly—he wasn't doing it.
She exhaled, breath fogging the glass. "I don't think it's gonna appear tonight."
Then she stood, stretched, and flopped onto the bed like a disgruntled cat. Limbs everywhere. Hoodie riding up. Zero survival instinct.
"I'm really sorry, Katsuki," she said. "This has been a massive waste of your money."
He stared at her.
The most expensive thing in the room, objectively, was her. With all her chaos and softness and infuriating unpredictability. The fact that she thought he gave a single yen about the lights—when she was here—made him want to shake her. Or kiss her. Or both.
"Buy me breakfast tomorrow if you're so guilty about it," he said instead.
Her smile was immediate. Bright. Unfiltered.
"Sure. Whatever you want."
God help him.
He wanted everything.
-----
It was past midnight, and he was still awake.
Hana had passed out an hour ago, curled into a loose knot of limbs beneath the duvet, her face smushed into the pillow she always stole from his side of the bed. Her hair was a riot of curls across the mattress, haloed in soft light from the glowing floorboards. She looked peaceful. Unfairly so, considering she'd almost died this morning in a frozen fjord on purpose.
Katsuki sat by the window, jaw tight, arms folded. The air inside the suite was warm, too warm, but he hadn't moved in half an hour.
He wasn't watching the sky. Not really.
He was glaring at it.
Like it had made a promise and was now dragging its feet. Like he could shame the atmosphere into submission.
"Don't fuck this up," he muttered under his breath.
A beat. Then, quieter. "I'd hate to go to fucking Greenland."
Another beat.
"But you know I will. So why not show up now?" His eyes narrowed. "She only asked for this one thing."
He didn't say please. The sky didn't deserve it.
Minutes passed. Long ones. Heavy. Nothing.
He leaned forward, hands steepled under his chin, ready to curse at the gods or file a strongly worded complaint against the entire northern hemisphere, when—
Something shifted.
Faint. Pale. A shimmer at the edge of the dark. Katsuki blinked once, then again, hard enough to question his own sanity. It looked like a smudge, like someone had dragged a finger across the stars.
Then came the color.
Streaks of pale green arced across the sky, slow and alive, pulsing like breath. Then violet. Then gold. The whole damn thing moved, like the earth had tilted and spilled light down from the clouds.
For a split second, he just stared.
Not thinking. Not breathing. Not moving.
Then he shot up.
He crossed the room in three strides, stopped at the edge of the bed, and leaned over her. One hand brushed her shoulder—gentle, firm.
"Hana," he said, voice low but urgent. "Wake up."
-----
Something was shaking her.
Not violently. Just enough to register as rude.
She swatted at the intruder, groaned into what might've been a pillow or Katsuki's very expensive ribcage, and mumbled something about a hostile merger.
"Hana."
Okay, definitely Katsuki. His voice was low, controlled, and somehow already judging her.
"Hana, get up."
No. Absolutely not. She had just fallen asleep. After emotionally combusting over the concept of weather. Her body had finally stopped vibrating from secondhand guilt and Arctic regret. Why was he waking her up like this was urgent litigation?
"They're here."
Her eyes snapped open.
Disoriented. Blinking. Trying to process the words in real-time like she was rebooting from a system crash. Her head was heavy. Her mouth tasted like panic and mint tea. The room was too warm. The lights were too low. Katsuki was right there, hovering over her like a very intense sleep paralysis demon in a designer shirt.
And then—
She saw it.
Over his shoulder, past the glass walls and into the sky.
Green.
That was the first word that tumbled out of her mouth. Not even said—breathed, like a gasp.
"It's green," she whispered.
Then she launched herself off the bed.
No preamble. No decorum. Just pure, feral momentum as she flung the covers off, padded across the room like a possessed squirrel, and skidded to a halt in front of the window.
Her heart slammed into her ribs.
It was real.
It was right there.
The sky was alive. Pale green streaks, curling and shifting and glowing like someone had lit the northern hemisphere on fire just for fun. It moved in ribbons. In waves. It shimmered like it had something to say.
"Oh my god," she whispered, hands pressed to the cold glass. "Oh my god."
She pressed herself to the glass like a child in a department store window. He stayed where he was, watching from a distance.
Her awe was immediate. And loud.
She fumbled for her phone with the grace of a sleep-drunk octopus, nearly dropping it twice, because of course now was the moment her fine motor skills decided to boycott reality. The camera opened. The lens fogged from her breath. She wiped it on her hoodie sleeve and cursed under her breath—Get it together, Sukehiro, this is your moment, National Geographic is shaking.
She snapped a photo. Another. Then a burst. Then video.
Then—
"Hold on, hold on, I need signal—don't hang up on me, Ren, I swear to God—"
The conference call started.
Chaos, as expected. He recognized the voices immediately. Her mother. Her father. Ren. Possibly Yuna. There was a lot of yelling. A lot of Hana shouting over people with the volume on max, pacing across the glass like a caffeinated penguin with Wi-Fi.
She flipped the camera to show the sky.
"Look! Look look look! You can see it!"
She wasn't bragging. Wasn't flexing. She just wanted them to have it too. The people who knew her before the law firm, before Nagoya, before the daily firestorms she called a career. She wanted them to see what she was seeing. To stand in it with her.
Her mother said something soothing, told her to enjoy the lights, not to focus on the video call. Then the screen went dark.
Silence.
She sat back down by the window, hands pressed flat to the glass. Her breath fogged the pane again. The sky kept moving, painting her skin in shifting streaks of green and violet like it was trying to write something across her.
She wiped the fog away with her sleeve, even though it didn't matter anymore. She could barely see through the blur building behind her eyes.
Tears.
Stupid.
"This is stupid," she whispered.
Then, a little louder. "Crying over some lights."
But it wasn't just the lights. It was everything.
It was him, sitting beside her through her chaos, never once telling her to calm down. It was him booking this ridiculous trip—not to impress her, not to prove anything, but because she'd said once, offhandedly, that she wanted to see the aurora someday.
It was the way he never asked her to be quiet, or softer, or easier to manage. The way he knew she failed the bar, the way she derailed every conversation, the way she sometimes forgot her own name mid-sentence—and never once made her feel like she was too much.
He could've had anyone. Someone polished. Someone perfect. Someone whose résumé didn't look like a long list of almosts.
But he chose her.
And he didn't ask for anything back.
Not gratitude. Not sex. Not even affection.
He just… did things. For her.
And she already knew. She'd said it once to herself in Oslo, mumbled it into the air like a secret she didn't want anytone to know.
But maybe he deserved to know for real.
She turned to him.
Her voice was quiet. Not dramatic. Not aching. Just… honest.
"I love it," she said first, because she did. The lights. The moment. The quiet way he gave it to her.
Then, softer:
"I love you."
There it was.
The line. The moment. The signal flare he hadn't let himself want but had been waiting for all the same.
It wasn't planned. It wasn't controlled. It wasn't even smart.
But he moved anyway.
Crossed the room, stopped in front of her, and kissed her.
No warning. No permission. Just heat, intention, and everything he hadn't been saying since the moment she walked into his life like a paper tornado with a law degree and no filter.
She tasted like mint tea and the cold bite of night air.