Dahlia woke up and felt warm – not uncomfortably warm, but it was definitely warmer than normal. And her bed…it was a tighter fit than what she was used to.

She slowly opened her eyes and was met with the sleeping face of Chanyeol.

How he got into her trailer, much less her bed, was beyond her. She poked him in the belly, causing him to jump a little and crack his eyes open.

“Is it morning yet,” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes lazily.

“What are you doing in here?” She hissed, poking him again for good measure.

“Ow, stop doing that,” he whined, swatting her hand away. “I just wanted to spend some time with you. I feel like I don’t see you anymore.”

“You saw me yesterday,” she reminded him.

He huffed, rolling his eyes as he threw an arm around her waist. “Yeah, but all the others were around and you were being hogged by Baek and Sehun. I just wanted to have some time – just you and me – before…”

“Before we find your tree?” She finished for him, understanding why he was being so cuddly.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Hey,” she began, curling her arm around his waist and tucking her head under his chin. “I’m not running away, remember? You’ve all made it very clear that the new planet will need time to be built, and I’m going to stay with you guys for as long as I can for that.”

“It’s not that,” he began playing absentmindedly with her hair. “I know you aren’t going anywhere – I mean, all twelve of us would search to the ends of the earth to find you if you ran off. I just can’t stop thinking about the Red Force. It found you – what if when we’re away rebuilding the new EXO, it does something to you to get at us? When it cornered you in your tent…I can’t even begin to describe how scared I was when I found out. I don’t want that to ever happen again.”

“Why couldn’t you destroy it when it was in that man’s body?” She wondered. “And your tree? Why couldn’t it destroy it when it was trying to kill the tree? I get the whole ‘Ultimate Evil’ thing, but surely your tree is more powerful than it, right?”

Chanyeol sighed. “It should have been. But the Red Force started off small, slowly draining away the Tree’s power inconspicuously before launching a full attack. If it finds the Tree here – if it gets the heart of the Tree – the future of our people would be lost forever.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Dahlia shook her head. “You guys are going to find your tree and you’re going to build a beautiful planet. That red mist can it – my guardians are too powerful and will kick its to next Tuesday.”

He gazed down at her, his eyes glittering as a wide smile crept across his lips. “Your guardians?” He repeated.

Dahlia blushed. It was a slip of the tongue; she hadn’t expressly stated her affection for the twelve – she was trying to go as slowly as she could given that her emotions were as alien to her as the guardians themselves – and this was as close to a confession that she could get.

“Dahlia,” Chanyeol whispered. “Can I kiss you?”

Words failed her, a surprised gasp caught in . There wasn’t any reason to say no, so she dumbly nodded in response.

The kiss with Kris was pleasant, yet full of frustration an somewhat tainted by the memories of his planet dying that were playing in the back of his mind. Tao’s kiss was a spur of the moment. Luhan’s kiss was the most like what Dahlia had imagined a kiss between lovers would be.

But this kiss…it was different.

Softly, Chanyeol cupped Dahlia’s jawline, leaning in slowly. His lips inched closer to hers hesitantly, almost insecurely. Dahlia was still, letting him move at whatever pace he wanted.

He knew, better than any other guardian, how much her own emotions frightened Dahlia after she’d been hiding from them for so long. The others wanted to push Dahlia into confronting them, and so they smothered her with physical affection; she appreciated it – she enjoyed it – but sometimes it was too much.

His soft lips reached hers, pressing softly against her lips for mere seconds before pulling back again slightly. Dahlia’s eyes fluttered closed as she felt him lean in once more. His lips met hers, the kiss longer, deeper, and full of emotion. Dahlia’s fingers curled into shirt, pulling him closer.

She let down her barrier just a little. Maybe it was wrong, a little dishonest now that she could control it, but she was curious about what was going on in his head.

He wasn’t thinking in words, or even images. There were just emotions that dominated his mind as their lips moved slowly against each other’s. Every now and then, she could hear a mental sigh echo in his head.

There was contentment, warm and relaxing. There was relief, like an invisible knot within him had finally come undone.  But the emotion that was the strongest, the most overwhelming, was love.  

She’d felt it before, in the mass cuddle huddle once she’d woken up from her emotion-induced coma. It was comforting – comfortable, even. But now, now that she had time to get in touch with her feelings (and stop being such a coward about the more intimate feelings), letting down her barriers and