Taehyung quietly put the book he had been reading back in the box, before he walked over to the still opened window. The view was admittedly nothing special; besides the building was a small park with tall trees that obstructed his view of the ground. He assumed there was a path somewhere below because he could hear a never-ending stream of voices coming from that direction. Listening to the conversations of students wasn’t exactly the perfect past time - especially since he really wasn’t interested in the academy’s gossip (unless it concerned the magician, then he was very interested) - but at least he would have something to do when he felt like he might die of boredom.

He tapped his fingers against the window sill in a rhythm of his favorite song – one that had been forgotten for at least a century – as he glanced towards the magician. He was still sleeping, and it was quite apparent that whatever dreams he was having weren’t particularly pleasant. Taehyung had heard him whimper at least 3 times since he fell asleep. If he had been a bit better with technology he might use the magician’s phone to record him – he certainly wouldn’t mind seeing his, no doubt embarrassed, reaction. Sadly, his knowledge of technology was disastrous – it changed way too quickly for him to be able to keep up, which unfortunately meant he would have to settle for informing the magician of the noises he was making in his sleep, verbally.

Looking away from the magician’s sleeping figure, he stepped closer to the window and closed his eyes, enjoying the chilly air. He could hear the birds chirping in the trees, and a few students talking about their math homework somewhere below. For a moment, he felt strangely as peace.

 The moment was, of course, interrupted by the magician – Taehyung heard him move before he mumbled something indecipherable. “Sorry, what was that?” asked Taehyung, glancing towards the bed. He didn’t expect to get an answer, since it was quite apparent that the magician was half asleep. But to his surprise – and amusement –, the magician did respond.

“Cold.” He mumbled as he clumsily tried to wrap himself in his blanket. He was curled into a fetus position, and even though the expression on his face seemed peaceful Taehyung could tell he was uncomfortable. His hair was completely disheveled, and Taehyung noticed a few strands covered his face. The whole image was… cute, he thought, in a moment of clear insanity. He suddenly felt a strong urge to wash his brain with bleach – or whatever other chemicals people used to clean stuff with these days. Apparently he was way more tired than he thought if he suddenly developed a belief that humans (especially this particular human) had an ability to be cute.

Thankfully, he prided himself in good self-control and that certainly helped him gather himself pretty quickly. He definitely didn’t plan to be bothered by this little mishap longer than necessary.

Rolling his eyes despite knowing the magician couldn’t see him, he cautiously closed the window. He learned a long time ago to be extra careful with human-made things – just as humans they had an annoying habit of breaking way too easily. “Why are you humans so fragile?” he wondered in mocked curiosity. He received no answer, the magician clearly back in his dream world – or the world of nightmares considering how restless he still seemed to be.

Taehyung rolled his eyes again, before he walked away from the window and leisurely positioned himself at the desk. He leaned against the headrest, tapping his fingers on the table as he looked around the room in hopes to find something to do. He could read another book – the magician had an impressive collection after all – but from his point of view, one book a day was plenty. Which was unfortunate because there really weren’t a lot of other things he could amuse himself with in here. The magician’s only hobby seemed to be reading. Taehyung wondered whether he did anything else besides that and studying – and summoning demons, obviously.

Of course, he could use the spare time to come up with a plan on how to learn more about the magician, which would hopefully lead to finding his identity. To be completely honest, he was less interested in the actual information and more in the path towards getting it. Sure, he did want to know the magician’s real name and the reasons he hid it, but he found that to be of less importance than the process of planning and taking steps towards figuring it all out. Especially because he knew the magician was surely going to put obstacles in his path, and considering how intelligent he seemed to be, that certainly had a potential to be entertaining.

He looked towards the bed, curling his lips into a little smile. He had inspected the entire room from top to the bottom, but there was still somewhere he hadn’t looked – the magician’s pockets. Initially, he had planned to wait for the magician to change into his sleep attire, but he realized he was a bit too curious and impatient for that. He knew it probably wasn’t a good idea to search the pockets of the clothes the magician was currently wearing, but being overly careful really wasn’t his style. Risk was what made things exiting after all.

He quietly stepped towards the bed, climbing on to it before slowly moving closer to the magician. He had to proceed carefully to make sure not to wake him up – he had a feeling if he did, the magician would probably figure out what he was trying to do and god knows when he would get another opportunity. Of course, he could – theoretically - search his pockets while he was awake. The Orders weren’t stopping him as long as he didn’t hurt the magician. But he suspected that would result in the reasonable fear the magician currently felt towards him transforming into an absolute terror, and that certainly didn’t sound particularly fun. Especially because he suspected the magician would react to it by shutting down completely.

He carefully positioned his hand on top of the blanket the magician was wrapped in, pausing when he felt him stir. He mumbled something indecipherable – Taehyung was almost entirely convinced he was begging someone to stop doing something, and that, for unknown reasons, managed to fill him with unease.

 He willed the feeling away, and, once the magician finally settled, gently pulled on the blanket while doing his best not to touch him. He had a feeling that would immediately wake him up, especially since Taehyung didn’t have a particularly good control over his strength. Which, he supposed, was his own fault – he, after all, did his best not to learn when he was being too rough in hopes to at least give his masters a couple of bruises. Given the subjective nature of the Orders, they only stopped him when he himself knew he was hurting the poor fragile humans.

He almost managed to reach one of the pockets, when the magician suddenly opened his eyes. Taehyung wasn’t sure what exactly woke him up, and he had no time to wonder about it, because he was a little too busy stopping the magician’s hand from making a contact with his face. It was obvious that he didn’t really mean to hit him – it was a reflexive move. Taehyung couldn’t blame him for it – if the roles were reversed and he was the one waking up from a nightmare with a demon, centimeters away from his face, he would probably reacted the same. Usually, Taehyung wouldn’t move a single finger to stop the punch. He had been hit by humans before and their attempts had always been incredibly laughable.

Despite all that, he carefully wrapped his fingers around the magician’s wrist, stopping his hand a few centimeters away from his face. The magician clearly put a lot of force into the punch, and Taehyung suspected he would manage to hurt himself pretty badly if it landed where it was supposed to. Suspected (because he really wasn’t an expert on humans), which meant he could easily let him hit his mark without the annoying Orders interfering, but didn’t for reasons he decided he’d really prefer not to dwell on.

He looked away from their hands and at the magician, who was staring at him with wide eyes. He didn’t even try to hide his fear – not that he actually could; Taehyung heard both the furious beating of his heart and his labored breathing. This was clearly no longer a reasonable fear.

Taehyung carefully let go of his wrist and stood up.

The next few minutes passed in silence. He positioned himself at the desk, leaning back against the headrest while absent-mindedly rereading the titles of the books stored on the bookshelves. He was very careful not to look directly at the magician, who was – as he could see with the corner of his eye – still frozen on the spot.

It took a while, but eventually he did manage to calm down. Since Taehyung was doing his best not to look in his direction, he could tell that strictly by hearing his heart-beat slowed down. He waited a few seconds before he turned around and finally looked at him - he was sitting upright, leaning against the wall, the fingers of his left hand protectively curled around his right wrist.

If Taehyung was completely honest, he really didn’t want to know how much damage he had caused. Once he saw a certain amount of force could hurt his masters, he could no longer be as rough with them, and he always found that incredibly disappointing. For some reason however, he glanced at the magician’s wrist before he actually registered what he was doing.

He wasn’t at all surprised to see his skin was covered in bruises, which was a bad news for more than just one reason – a) he would have to be much gentler with his future masters, and b) the magician will now be reminded of what happened every time he either moved or glanced at his hand. That, of course, wasn’t something Taehyung would be even a tiniest bit opposed to if it didn’t pose a danger the magician would develop a deep and very much not interesting fear of him.

For a few seconds they just looked at each other. The silence was getting annoying, and Taehyung was just about to relent and make a comment, when the magician spoke up.

“What were you doing?” he asked. It was obvious that he tried to hide how badly the whole situation affected him, and Taehyung was quite impressed by how well he managed to pull it off. He could, of course, sense a slight tremor in his voice, but he was quite sure no one who wasn’t a centuries old demon would notice it.

Taehyung curled his lips upwards into a small smile. He had absolutely no intention of telling him what his actual plan was, even though he suspected he will manage to figure it out by himself sooner or later. “I was watching you sleep.” he said matter-of-factly, hoping that his deduction the magician would find that a bit creepy and not absolutely terrifying was correct.

Naturally, it was – the magician looked slightly irritated, but not at all afraid or surprised. “Why?” he asked carefully. He was clearly suspicious, which, at this point, seemed to be his natural state - when it came to Taehyung at least. The most annoying thing about it was that he couldn’t claim it was either unfounded or stupid.

“You had a nightmare.” replied Taehyung as if that actually explained anything. The magician’s confused expression confirmed it didn’t. “You seemed to be suffering.” Taehyung nonchalantly added, shrugging his shoulders before leaning further back into the chair. “Interesting sounds.” he commented, curling his lips upwards into a smirk.

The magician needed a few seconds before he registered what Taehyung was talking about, and his reaction was exactly what he expected it to be – he bit the insides of his mouth, his cheeks turning a slight shade of pink.

Taehyung was going to enjoy the upcoming month.