Archive of Our Own

   Sunghoon loves the cold.

  His people know this— pale skin and glittering sunlight, everything painted in a dripping sort of white. The sky’s a faucet with a knob that never screws all the way shut, just like the tap in the old home’s kitchen. Down in the fields where Sunghoon would play with a beat up ball, half-deflated, knees rubbed red and stained with grass. He’d go inside and kiss the drip of the sink while the others would hang out a little longer in the heat, lingering around the hose that they lapped at like dogs.

 A common joke. Like a dog, one would say. You’ve got to stop acting like it.

 Sunghoon had never had to worry about that sort of comment being tossed his way— what’s a boy to do but let the little blood in his body rush to his cheeks, laughing so loud his lips pulled up and revealed his daggers for teeth? Everyone loved me that way, he thinks. Everyone loved me.

 Things change. People change. Sometimes people are yours, right up until they aren’t. Common jokes turn into hushed whispers. He’s not stupid— ears perking up, lips downturned. Knives in your mouth turn into canines, and canines turn into more rushed looks that turn away like a sunflower towards the sunlight. It’s the cold that Sunghoon likes. He has to remind himself of this. It’s the drip of the faucet and not the downpour of the hose outside. It’s the ruby red in his knees and not the tacky splotches on his cheeks. These are different things. He loves pale skin and glittering sunlight and beat up balls.

 An addendum coats him like the dark cloak tossed around his shoulders: His people are not his anymore. He is his own person. Separate. A piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit because it’s been busted and bent. When Sunoo was little he’d gnaw on the puzzle pieces in the house until one of the wooden corners would fray. Riki would whine. Jungwon would cry. Jay would reshape the puzzle piece and Heeseung would make a joke and Jake would make it fit, anyhow—

 Sunghoon’s not a puzzle piece. He’s not even a person. He’s going back in his mind, revising his own revisions: Here is Park Sunghoon, who is really nothing, which makes him no piece of anything at all. There’s nothing to miss when there’s nothing missing. There’s the passing thought of six to one, like a percentage or a portion of a portion, but it’s doused in the reality that what he is now— nothing, again, he must remind himself of this— has no place to be compared or contrasted. No inclusion of the whole.

 Sunoo gnaws on puzzle pieces. Riki and Jungwon react. Heeseung and Jay fix. Jake soothes.

 Sunghoon sits on the side. People ask ‘Do you want to play too, Hyung?’ and Sunghoon shakes his head. Indoors at the faucet or outside on the snowed-over lawn all alone.

 Come inside, Hyung.

 Come play with us, Sunghoon.

 Don’t look so sad, Sunghoon. Don’t look so alone, Hyung.

 Don’t you want to be with us, too?

 It’s a bit cruel, really. Sunghoon had almost convinced himself there was a place at the table where his cutlery and his plate would fit. He’d thought that maybe another serving could be scraped together from the bottom of the rusty old pot— that rations of water and frayed cots could be shared. In the darkness, he could feel the touch of a kiss or the press of someone’s soft hands. They grew up together. Sunghoon had almost convinced himself they could grow old together, too.

 He’s the only one moving onwards like this. The only body wearing down with time, eyes tired, limbs heavy. He’s the only one lying in bed with a high fever, his body fighting itself like a poison spreading in his veins. If he ignores it, if he ignores it—

 But there are six pairs of eyes on him. People at a table that get up when he sits down. Lovers that don’t love anymore. Not like they used to.

 Sunghoon sits outside in the cold in the middle of a forest. Long ago, he’d come here to scream, to cry, to beg. Draw me a picture that will do or say something to make me feel like I am loved. Stitch together a creature that will promise to love me back. Show me a sign, in some way, that will convince me I am really not meant to be adored just to be abandoned.

 That was long ago, though. Before his body ached with a fever and the poison spread. Before everything and anything— when it was just Sunghoon and the people who made Sunghoon feel like this could be something.

 He is nothing, now. He has to remind himself of this. It’s Sunghoon and the cold. Sunghoon and the snow. Sunghoon and the dirt inside his blood, clogging every last pathway like a deep sludge destined to lock him in place.

 Long ago, found on this very floor, in desperate need of something to pick him up and prove to him that he is real.

 He’d give anything to find his way right back into the arms that had found him then.

  Heeseung is gentle.

 He has dreams, on occasion— violent things that stab and probe at the folds of his brain. Sometimes he wakes up feeling scrambled and hurt, his lungs bursting with words he can’t exactly place. The worst of dreams will leave him shooting up in a rush, clutching at his heart to make sure there’s still something alive and ricocheting around the busted bars of his rib cage.

 The day Sunghoon goes missing, he wakes up from one of those dreams. He sees a field and the ball they loved to play with when they were kids— sees the old house lit aflame, his arms reaching out to Sunghoon’s shrinking form, begging him to step out from the hole beneath the stairs where he’d always go to hide.

 It’s not safe in there. Heeseung remembers saying this so many times. In his memories and his nightmares, it always goes the same way.

 It’s not safe in there, little one. You have to come out or you’ll get sick.

 Sunghoon would always shake his head, retreating further into the small boy-shaped chasm. As Sunghoon’s grown, his bones have had to bend in unforgiving ways just to sneak himself inside. Heeseung always hated that stupid cavity— had promised Jay one night, while the two of them lied in his cot, that they’d tear it down and build Sunghoon a proper nook. One where he could bask in the light of the outdoors, where there’d be a window and a way to breathe. One where Sunoo and Jungwon would run down the stairs in earnest and would hear Sunghoon’s light laughter. Where everything would sound of bells and chimes and people loving other people.

 The house burned down before they ever got the chance. He and Jay had bought the wood— had made the plans, with their frail hands. No one would have to know. The unkind woman with her shrewd gaze and her constant tugging of Sunghoon’s collar. Heeseung thinks that perhaps she’d been the one to teach him about how to fit himself inside the little gap. Sunghoon had been the one, however, to keep shoving himself back into it.

 When the house burned down, Heeseung was there. He’d been in the fire, listening to the miserable cries of the boys as they lingered outside the house.

 Jake had been the only one to get burned. He sat on the grass and held himself to Jay’s chest— a dark, tender color that Heeseung will never forget ran down the length of his palms and up the circumference of his brittle wrists. Jake hadn’t cared at all for the pain. He looked Heeseung in the eye and said Sunghoon is still in there.

 Heeseung had listened. He had heard the prayers and the screams— hadn’t lost sight of that no matter how deep into the house he got.

 It wasn’t until he reached the stairs that all of the voices got quiet. No word from any god could have penetrated the sort of veil that fell across the burning room.

 Sunghoon’s voice was so quiet. A small whimper in a sea of crackling and roaring— but to Heeseung, it had been as loud as any church bell or cataclysmic storm. He’d pushed his way through the ash just to find Sunghoon’s body all crumpled up, his head in his lap as he sobbed and attempted to smother his own breath with his hands.

 Heeseung had rescued him. Even when Sunghoon hadn’t wanted to leave the little cubicle of safety, Heeseung had coaxed him out.

 It’s not safe here anymore, little one. You have to come out or we won’t be together anymore.

 Sunghoon had looked up, then. His fingers twitched, sniffles subsiding in the violence of the fire. His eyes had been filled with fear, but looking at Heeseung, he held the promise of a dying light that could only be attributed to the smallest sliver of hope.

 Heeseung would keep that alive, even if it meant burning all by himself.

 Hyung will shield you. Don’t worry. Hyung will keep you safe.

 And Sunghoon had followed him. Every time, in every nightmare and every dream, Sunghoon had followed him. Both in reality and its counterpart, Heeseung would tug Sunghoon’s pale limbs into his arms and brush past any flame. He’d fall onto his knees in the yard and would be enveloped in warmth.

 Sunghoon would smile at him. Say, in his soft voice, a very small thank you.

 The day Sunghoon goes missing, he does not step out into Heeseung's arms. The house burns, and it keeps burning. Heeseung’s voice rings out, but Sunghoon doesn’t hear him.

 A piece of the stairwell railing falls. It keeps falling, over and over— Heeseung wakes up bereft, left only with the burnt image of Sunghoon’s glossed over eyes, his light finally dying out.

  Sunghoon’s been walking for days now.

 He can feel, in the very back of his skull, the nagging pull of the others looking for him. Jake once blamed their soul bond on the fact that they all shared the same sort of blood through palms and necks.

 “Once you digest a part of me,” Jake grins, pointing to the scar that runs along the length of his burnt palm, “I become a part of you.”

 Sunghoon hadn’t believed it then, but now he knows it’s true. When he forgoes a meal, hoping to starve— he can hear Jay’s anguished cries ringing in his ears like the whistle of an oncoming migraine. When he slips and falls knee-first into the dirt, he can feel Jungwon’s soft touch on his skin, as if trying to guide him up. In these ways, he knows his body has somehow found a way of merging with the others, like the ghost of an extension.

 He tries to cut it off. Tries to starve a little harder, or ram his thick skull into a tree as he walks. At first, the walking had only been to get away— but once he realized that no physical distance could keep him from them, he’d become desperate. He has to sever off the phantom limb. Has to find a way to stop feeling them in every little thing he does.

 When he’d first been left in the glade, a chunk of his skin between the teeth of some rotting beast, he worried that the others would be able to hear him crying. Looking back on it now, he doesn’t know why he felt ashamed— things happened to people all the time, and it was only a matter of accidental consequence. The sort of misfortunes that left people barren and empty were rarely ever their own fault. The others had tried to beat this through his skull on their own, too. 

 In his bed with a fever, Jay would say: “Don’t blame yourself.”

 Whenever he fell down on his way to the bathroom, Heeseung would lift him up. “Don’t force yourself to go through it alone.”

 Whenever he woke up from a nightmare and his throat was full of blood, Jake would lick him clean. “I’m here. If you need someone to get you out of it, I’m here.”

 When he couldn’t throw the ball because his arms were too weak, Riki would throw it for him. When he couldn’t keep a single bite of his food down, Jungwon would pat his stomach softly and sing him lullabies. When the weight of the world came crashing down and he was on the floor of the bedroom at three in the morning, Sunoo would be at his side, brushing a soft hand through his hair.

 All of them said the same thing in different ways. It’s not your fault. You’re not alone.

 Sunghoon wanted so badly to believe them. More than anything, he wanted to look into the mirror in the morning and see their words before his own face. See the love of people who could still look at him, rather than the eyes of someone that couldn’t.

 It hurt, more than anything. The sort of pain that festered beneath his skin had become its own sort of poison. This venom touched everything his fingers could find their way towards. It ruined how he saw the world, and in turn, it ruined how the world saw him.

 It wasn’t long before everything turned into avoidance and tight words. Curt love that fell silent far more than it ever rose to the occasion. One-worded comforts that felt more like an obligational acknowledgment that he was even there.

 So Sunghoon ran away. His heart will always be there, in the house they found on the hill after their first home had burnt down. His soul will be split up into six parts— one for each love that told him the things he needed to hear.

 Now, though, he has nothing left for himself. He left his heart somewhere he can never return, and he’s sold his soul to people who can no longer understand it. It hurts. Sunghoon has nothing left over for himself but the anguish and disappointment. Maybe if he hadn’t cried so loud, he could’ve wiped himself clean of any blood. He could’ve gone home and bandaged himself up in the empty bathroom, and then fallen asleep in his bed with nothing but a smear of red that would seep through his pillow. In the morning, he’d say he had a nosebleed. At night, he’d cry alone.

 But he’d have gotten through it. Maybe, if he had been stronger, he would have just gotten through it. And the loves that rung out like pots and pans in the kitchen, like drunken songs on the back porch, like poorly concealed giggles in the night—

 That love would still be there. Sunghoon wouldn’t be alone with parts of people who don’t belong to him.

  “Sunghoon left.”

 It’s the first thing Sunoo says when he opens his eyes. There’s something wrong; he knows it. He turns to the others in the room, finding Heeseung with his hands clutched over his ears like he’d just heard something harrowing. For a second, Sunoo thinks it’s the words that left his mouth— but when Heeseung looks up at him with those deer-like eyes, he knows that it’s something he already knew.

 “What do you mean Sunghoon left?” Jake drops his plate on the floor. He’d been eating a stale bread roll covered in butter. Sunoo wants to laugh. He so desperately wants to laugh and pretend that Jake looks ridiculous and nothing is wrong, but he can feel it in the shift of his emotions. He’s always been a bit more sensitive to the other boys— has this ability to feel everything they’re feeling and influence it in return. Right now, he just wants to take the widening eyes on Jake’s face and coax them shut.

 “He’s gone,” Heeseung confirms. “I had a— a dream. He’s not here, is he?”

 Jungwon’s the first around the house. Four seconds and it’s like his body is a brush of the wind— fingers prying open doors, cabinets, hoping to god he’s somewhere in the cupboards. Maybe he’s just having a bad day, Sunoo thinks. It doesn’t quell a single worry when he reaches out for that specific feeling Sunghoon gives him and finds nothing in its place.

 Jungwon’s back in their room in a matter of minutes. His breathing is shallow, trembling hands gripping the wood of the doorway.

 Sunoo can feel the horror in his heart long before he opens his mouth.

 “He’s not here.” Jungwon’s voice is hard— tries so hard not to show it, but Sunoo can feel the wailing already building up in his ribcage. “Hyung isn’t here.”

 Emotions are like a tidal wave for Sunoo; they build quickly and they crash down hard. The entire room swarms him with fear and disappointment at Jungwon’s words. Jungwon himself has seemed to come crumbling down, like saying the words themselves make it all the more real in his mind.

 “Hyung is gone?” It’s little Riki’s deepened voice that ignites the electricity in the air. Sunoo’s mind and body are a cacophony of pained sounds. “Hyung can’t be gone! Why would he leave?”

 In Sunoo’s mind, there is a merging of the voices— each shard of his soul sews itself together, sealing the cracks with one singular tone.

 Do not abandon me.

 Do not abandon me.

 And in the harmony, there is Sunghoon’s distinct, whispered tone.

 You have abandoned me.

 “Hyung’s alive,” he blurts. “He’s— I can feel him. He’s alive. He’s not far, but he’s getting farther.”

 Jake’s plate is stepped over as he falls at Sunoo’s bedside. “What? How do you know?”

 Sunoo turns to Heeseung, whose eyes are filled with tears. He can hear it, too— the way Heeseung’s mind sings with the knowledge that Sunghoon is still buried in their souls. Somehow, they are still all interlinked, even if Sunghoon’s distance has grown.

 “I just know,” he breathes out. “Trust me.”

 And even if they don’t say it, he feels it. He asks them to trust him, and they do.

  It’s only when he arrives that Sunghoon realizes his body had been carrying him to a destination. The skeleton of the old house still stands as tall and as proud as it’d been then, when they were all too small to fit inside its walls and too big to feel comforted by the emptiness that hid between the cracks.

 It’s a mess now. The yard is full of ash and brittle bone— things blown away and dragged to the site by wind alike. He finds a fully deflated ball just beside one of Riki’s old shoes.

 A part of him realizes how much the littlest of their bunch has grown since then. He used to have this bothersome habit of kicking his shoes off when he wanted to run in the field at night, his grin wide and boxy as his lanky limbs attempted to sprawl out beneath the moonlight. Shadows bent to his will, curling around the shape of his body in the grass to form wings and a halo. A little devil disguised as an angel, Sunghoon would joke with him. Riki would always giggle back.

 Now, that same little boy tries to school his face into something with less hurt. Years of sitting in the darkness and forming shapes has forced him to cling to himself in times of discomfort, creating the same sort of cover that Sunghoon has always tried blanketing himself in.

 (“Want me to show you something amazing?” Sunghoon smiles. “I can make shadows, too!”

 Riki tries to hide his excitement, shoving his feet into the grass as he hoists himself up. With sparkling eyes, he tugs at Sunghoon’s arm. “You’re serious? No way!”

 “I’m serious! Let me show you.”

 Sunghoon wraps one of his hands around the other, casting the shadow of a mangled dog onto the ground with the help of the moonlight. He makes it howl— makes it bark, and then shifts it into a butterfly with the flick of his fingers.

 When he glances up, the young boy is staring at him flatly.

 “You said you could make shadows,” he says. “That’s nothing like mine.”

 “These are shadows. I never said I could make the sort of shapes you do, Riki-san.”

 Riki, despite himself, bursts out into a laugh. “Sunghoon-hyung…that’s so lame!”

 It’s funny. Even if Sunghoon is here, making a fool of himself, Riki’s laugh sounds brighter than any light that casts a shadow. He feels warm inside, flopping back onto the ground, knowing later on he’ll carry a sleeping Riki back into the house.

 They’ll find the shoes in the morning.)

 For a long moment, Sunghoon is struck with his impending sadness. He wants to go back, but he knows it won’t lead him anywhere positive. For all of the love silently passed around in between these walls, on this property— there’s a dozen more memories of him hiding away. Of the woman of the house running her hand along the bright pink mark on his cheek, threatening to strike him down again.

 You’re not like them. The words have stuck with him for years, molding themselves to his bones in the same way he’d tried to fit into the spot beneath the stairs. From there, he could see what the others did in the living room. He almost wishes Heeseung had pried into his mind more— tried to see what exactly Sunghoon was so determined to stay still for.

 From the nook, he could see Jake as he played cards at the table. He could hear Heeseung and Jay sharing a meal. When Sunoo, Jungwon and Riki ran around upstairs, he could hear their laughter through the rickety floorboards.

 From afar, always observing. To them, it might have looked like he never cared— but to Sunghoon, it was paradise. A safe haven. A window to the outside world where he could admire the flowers without ever touching them; without his fingertips forcing them to wilt.

 He longs for it; to return to their sides, even if only from a safe distance. There’s still so much more left to see. He has to watch Jake’s hands heal some more. He has to see Riki grow a couple centimeters taller until Heeseung complains that he’s become too tall. He has to listen to Jay hum as he cooks his meals, to Jungwon’s new relay record as he runs around the house, to Sunoo’s bedtime story that he tells when he’s unable to turn his mind off. He has to be there— to love and be loved. He has to.

 He knows why his body carried him here. Beyond the desperate grief and the desire to get away from them, he really only wants to crawl back into their arms. If he had to go, to fade into nothingness, he’d want it to be at the hands of the only people who have ever loved him.

 He climbs into the empty frame of the house, trying to fit back into the heart he’d grown too big for. He can feel them, their distant concern, and he begs for them to come closer.

 If he lives by them, he’ll die by them, too.

  The truth that everyone learns a little too late: Jake had been the one to take Sunghoon’s first kiss.

 It was never accidental. It had been purposeful— a planned sort of thing, lying beside Sunghoon every night.

 For a while, he had been broken. In the silence of the bedroom, Sunghoon’s body had begun to decay.

 “I’m no good,” Sunghoon would whimper out. He’d curl up to his side and shiver around the bandaged wound, body attempting to hide it away with every last tremor.

 Jake was always the one to be compared to a dog. Every last pant, yip of glee or clumsy stumble up the stairs— he’d always been teased in such a way, his grin too wide as he tried to hide the blush of his ears. It made sense, at least. He never had a problem with it.

 When Sunghoon’s right arm had been split into parts by the mouth of a carnivore, he wondered why it wasn’t him. The dog of the family— the one whose smile resembled that of a sleeping pup. It should have been me. Jake’s thoughts all arrive at this single stopping point for the first week.

 He loves Sunghoon beyond any sort of bodily fever. Underneath the scared eyes and the soft words that carry such a strong bite for their tone, Jake loves the boy he’s come to know as they’ve grown up by one another. Sunghoon’s a shell of a person when he becomes scared, but Jake understands. He invents things when he’s terrified, too. Hides away in a world that isn’t his— fingers reaching out to fire, tempted to get burned. Sometimes it’s the only thing a person knows to keep them alive.

 He gets up from his bed the night Sunghoon starts telling himself he’s no good. He crawls into the unoccupied corner of Sunghoon’s mattress— of his heart, his mind, and finally, his mouth.

 The inside of Sunghoon’s mouth is cold. It tastes like salt from all of the tears Jake licks up. He tries to share a bit of his heat, tries to burn him with the flame that naturally sizzles in the pit of his stomach. Jake wants to share some of his life with Sunghoon, in hopes that the shattered bits of his soul will burn like iron and mold themselves into a more recognizable shape.

 “You’re good to me,” Jake had said when he pulled away that night. The single string of saliva connecting his mouth to Sunghoon had snapped and fallen over the jut of his clenched jaw as he watched the other boy’s vacant eyes remain that way. “You’re not bad, Sunghoon-ah. You’re still good to me.”

 Watching Sunghoon retreat into himself had terrified Jake. Maybe a part of him knew, leading up to the day of Sunghoon’s disappearance, that it was always bound to happen. No matter how much he tried to push himself into the younger boy’s life, he’d find himself hanging awkwardly in the doorway like an unwanted ghost.

 I love you. He wanted to say those words so much, but finding the strength in his bones became nearly impossible when Sunghoon continued to shy away. It was no secret to the rest of them that the gap was only widening with the lack of closure. They couldn’t get too close or they’d scare Sunghoon away, but they couldn’t become too distant, either. A precarious line was drawn in the sand, and Jake had no idea on which side of it he stood. All he could offer was his mouth on Sunghoon’s; a sort of silent apology for the lack of words that would leave it.

 “We should make him more like us,” Jungwon suggests one night. He’s clutching the teddy that Sunoo had sewn for him a long time ago to his chest. Heeseung recently repaired the bow that had been scorched in the fire. “We should turn—”

 “We can’t do that without his consent,” Jay argues back. For a moment, Jake is stunned— he’d thought that Jay would be the first to agree, given the fact that his love for Sunghoon burns with the sort of fire that can no longer be called a flame. It’s a brute sort of strength that only someone like Jay can have. For him to say no feels like treason to Jake, but he can’t place why.

 He finds his own voice interjecting into the silence of the bedroom. “Then we ask for it.”

 “We can’t just ask for it.” Heeseung speaks, now. “He already feels alienated because of everything that’s happened. If we tell him that he has to become more like us, it might press upon the insecurity he already has.”

 Riki turns to his side, his eyes glowing in the dark like they’re made to shine more in the absence of light. “But if we don’t ask him, Hyung might think that we have no intention of keeping him with us for a long time.”

 Jake finds himself reaching over to his bedside table, a hand pressing to the flame of the candle. It brightens under his touch, illuminating more of the worried expressions that gaze aimlessly around the room.

 “We have to tell him,” he swallows. “I can’t watch him crumble like this any longer; it’s too painful.”

 Sunoo’s the first to break, his tears spilling over. He nods wordlessly, clutching at his chest. Jake knows that it hurts for him, too.

 “We’ll tell him,” Jay nods, his voice wobbling the slightest bit. “Just…not now, okay? We have to figure it out first. When we’ve got something more than just loving him blindly, we’ll tell him.”

 Jake relents, but his heart doesn’t feel at ease.  When he touches the flame, it curls closer to his palm, threatening to spread along his skin and down to the places it’s marked in the past with its anger.

 The truth that everyone will never learn, even when it’s too late: Jake had been the one to set their old house on fire. Jake had been the one who burned so bright and so quiet for too long, until it consumed him from the inside out.

 Sunghoon had seen it, but he never once told another living soul. For this, Jake owes him his life. For this, Jake understands what it means to be understood.

 For this, he will go into the depths of the darkness, past the point of return, and he won’t ever truly relent until he knows he’s shown Sunghoon just how much he loves him. In the same way he is loved, until the end of time.

  Sunghoon falls asleep on the only expanse of broken flooring that hadn’t been destroyed in the fire. It’s cold and biting, but he doesn’t mind it. The snow begins to pour down, blanketing him like a protector, and he allows it.

 He allows himself this single moment to wonder what he could have done differently. If things would have gone down another path, if the outcome would have ever managed to look like anything but this. The concept of here and now gnaws on Sunghoon’s atrophied muscles, but his mind still finds a way to wonder about the what if’s. What if he’d taken a different path that night? What if he was strong enough to fight against the beast? What if he managed to escape before the poison soaked into his bloodstream? What if no one had heard his call? What if, what if, what if—

 It’s been like this for weeks, months, what feels like years. His mind conjures up a different reality, and his body gives into the exhaustion of living in this one. He closes his eyes and dreams of what he could have done to prevent the inevitable end. Even if it were coming all along, could there have been some other way for it to arrive? Maybe it would’ve come in his sleep, carrying him into a quiet room, the muffled sounds of laughter still ricocheting off the walls outside the bedroom door. Maybe it would’ve kissed his cheek or drove its tongue into his mouth like Jake had. Maybe it would’ve held him tight like Jay did in the kitchen the day before he ran, telling Sunghoon it didn’t want to lose him, despite having lost him anyway.

 If he hadn’t run away, would things have gotten the chance to change? He lingers on this thought longer than the others, his fingers tapping a steady rhythm against the floorboard beneath his head. It’s the same tune they’d sing on the porch when days went by slowly.

 If things had changed, how much could that have accomplished, really? They could welcome Sunghoon in, treat him the same way, but they could only get so far. The moon would rise and Sunghoon’s body would ache. The carnal need to feast would turn into the pained desire to hunt. Eventually something would have to give, wouldn’t it?

 But it’s that— that small scintilla of doubt— that keeps his fingers tapping. Maybe it would be difficult for them, but there’s something deep in his mind that tells him the others would not worry. He was the one who couldn’t look at himself in the mirror. He was the one who blamed himself for what happened. He’s always been the one trying to figure out a different way, despite the others never expressing that they actively sought out a reality without Sunghoon in it.

 There is this wisp of hope that grows— the look he’d seen in Jake’s eyes when the fire started. The arms that stretched out to him when he hid in his hole. There’s something there that hangs about awkwardly, almost as if waiting for Sunghoon. Dinners set with hands at their sides, waiting for everyone to be seated before they started to eat. In these little gestures, these small looks, Sunghoon could feel himself gaining something like security.

 Even if they had withdrawn from Sunghoon before he ran away, he was the one who stepped out that door. If he hadn’t, would they have ever even chased him out? Maybe they’d live worlds apart, but would they have stopped trying to live together entirely? He doesn’t think they would.

 His fingers stop against the wood. He doesn’t think they would. He takes a deep breath into his lungs and rises up until he’s seated. He doesn’t think they would. He tilts his head up towards the sun, feeling the snow falling atop his face. He doesn’t think they would.

 Something in his chest tugs. I wouldn’t, someone says.

 I wouldn’t, and then again, and again, and again.

 He feels his own voice reach out. You have abandoned me.

 I wouldn’t. I would never abandon you.

 Sunghoon is a child again. He’s in the woods, wrapped up in a cloak and shivering from the cold. It’ll take him years to love it— will take him even longer to realize that it’s not the cold he loves. It’s the hands he holds during it. It’s the people who sit outside with him, playing in the snow, noses turning pink, bright red mouths opening as they laugh.

 You found me, he says.

 Six pairs of hands reach out to him, tugging the cloak off only to replace it with a shield composed of their bodies. Their vulnerable skins, used as a way to keep Sunghoon safe despite the fact that they were no safer themselves.

  Of course I did. I always do.

  Jungwon’s never been a fan of games— not in the way the other boys are.

 What attracts him to games isn’t the act of winning. It’s not that he’s passive, but rather that he tends to focus himself on the balance. It’s a trait he’s learned from his Hyungs, this ability to self-soothe until he’s in a state of equilibrium. He enjoys this state more than any other, and tries to keep himself within the boundary of it as often as he can.

 But sometimes, for a moment, he finds himself enjoying the disarray. His heart opens, reminding himself that he is, to some degree, still just a little boy with many more years of growth ahead of him.

 Trying to be strong keeps him sane, but sometimes he falls prey to the innate desire that comes with naivety he can lose to nothing but age. The wish to curl up into someone’s lap, or to whine softly, or to play a game.

 They gather around in a circle, his smile unavoidable. He offers his hand out as a representative token, and everyone follows suit.

 “Up,” he starts, and hands begin to flip. “Or down!”

 A flurry of hands down. His hand flies up. He groans.

 “You’re it,” Riki snorts. It’s in that same tone that Sunghoon liked to use— always on the sidelines, not one for games all of the time, just like Jungwon. He’d partake in his own way, picking at the grass by his thigh while his anxious smile took its time to blossom.

 Jungwon would whine a little louder in those moments, waiting for Sunghoon to look his way. He’d pretend he didn’t notice— pretend that Sunghoon’s resulting grin of relief didn’t calm his own heart.

 “You’re such a cat, Jungwon-ah,” Sunghoon would laugh. When he laughs, his eyes scrunch and his head falls back. The bob of his throat and the sight of his fangs would make Jungwon feel like everything would be okay. Even if it was hard, even if they’d go back inside to a house filled to the brim with emptiness, they’d have each other.

 “Come on, then,” he grunts to everyone else, asking them to get behind him. Heads lean against the nape of his neck with a gentle touch. Jay is the first— he nuzzles into him like always, silently squeezing Jungwon’s shoulder.

 “You’re really still a kid,” Sunghoon had said this to him in the past, when everything wore down on Jungwon so terribly. “You don’t have to be so strong that it destroys you.”

 “Jungwon,” Jay’s voice whispers into his ear. “Breathe. You’re tensing up. I can’t feel the connection when you get so stiff.”

 Jungwon nods, trying to relieve the ice cold sensation that spreads down to his fingertips. It’s difficult to navigate his own body sometimes, so stuck in his head and the sensations of the world around him.

 “Jungwon-ah,” Jay blows a puff of air into Jungwon’s ear. An old habit that Sunghoon would do to wake him up from his borderline catatonic state. It sends a jolt of electricity through him, his lungs expanding with his first clear breath in what feels like hours. “There you go. Hyung is right here. We’re going to get him back, okay? So just breathe.”

 Jungwon does. In, out, in, out. He closes his eyes and imagines the field where he used to sit beside Sunghoon, watching the other boys kick around the ball or toss around someone’s old toy for fun.

 (“It’s nice to just sit like this,” Sunghoon hums, blowing some of the blades of grass at Jungwon’s face. He whines, swatting them away.

 When the offending greenery disappears from his sight, Jungwon frowns. “You don’t want to play with them?”

 “I like to play with them, but I also like doing nothing with you just as much.”

 “You can’t possibly mean that.”

 “Why not?” Sunghoon’s smile causes his cheeks to bunch, his eyes kind and soft in a way that Jungwon wishes they’d always be. “Is it weird to think that I’d like to just sit around with you, watching the world go by?”

 Jungwon wants to say ‘No, I’d want to do the same with you, just as much.’ Jungwon isn’t one for jokes, but neither is he. He knows the words that leave Sunghoon’s mouth are true. They can sit together for a long time in this comforting nothingness, listless and relaxed as the time goes by.

 With Sunghoon, Jungwon doesn’t feel rushed. He doesn’t feel like he has to be anything but here, now. Sunghoon’s always been able to bring that out of him; that desire to drop his guard for a while, listening to laughter and sitting under the sunlight.

 You don’t have to be strong. More than anything, Jungwon wants to say this back to Sunghoon, especially now.

 Instead, he plucks some grass of his own, tossing it right back. Sunghoon hears the sincerity in his silence loud and clear.)

  Whenever Riki is absorbed into one of the other boy’s bodies, he finds himself lost.

 He’s not entirely used to it— youth forces his strong soul to the forefront, wanting control. It’s only when the force of the body pushes him back that he remembers this is not his vessel to occupy, and then he has to fall to the wayside.

 He spends a while walking around in the darkness, looking for someone or something to ground him. The other boys feel so far away, and Riki is consumed only by the pitch black void that’s been his closest companion for so long. It reminds him of the closet in their old house, where he’d stow away and draw shapes on the wall.

 It’s at this moment that he finds his voice unintentionally calling out for Sunghoon. Sunghoon, who would make lame shadows with his fragile hands across any surface just so Riki would tease. Sunghoon, who tells Riki not to grow up too fast. Sunghoon, who would tuck Riki into bed and kiss him on his temple when he thought he was asleep.

 At the heart of his self-made strength, Riki knows he has so much growing up to do. He knows that there is only so much he is able to do all on his own, that the rest of his life hasn’t been mapped out quite yet— and it weighs on him terribly, his eyes feeling misty as he stumbles around the dark.

 He creates animals to make himself feel stronger. A bear, to protect him. A bird, to travel farther than his clumsy body ever could. A fox, lithe and cunning enough to escape all of the hurt he’d been forced to experience growing up. Why can’t it be different? He falls to his knees, hands flailing around pointlessly, hoping to grab onto someone.

 If Sunghoon were here, he’d sit beside Riki. He’d pry open the closet door just enough to slide in silently, dropping to his haunches and pointing out the way Riki’s animals move along the wall.

 (“Your bear is a mama bear,” Sunghoon points out. Riki frowns at him, the bear growing in size and standing on its hind legs.

 “Hyung, what are you even talking about? That’s not—”

 “Look at her.” Sunghoon drops down completely, his fingers pointing out the way the bear shifts. “Her protective stance, and the way she grows in size whenever you feel threatened. You made her in the image of a guardian, and you’re like the cub.”

 Riki frowns at this, the bear dropping down to all fours. It paces around the walls of the room, as if waiting to see whether or not it should attack.

 Riki had never realized it before now, but Sunghoon’s right. The animals he crafts are an extension of himself— things he wishes he had, people he wishes he could be.

 This bear is his guardian. Someone to comfort and cover him whenever he gets overwhelmed. It’s his favorite shape to cast along the wall when he’s alone.

 “I— I never—”

 “I’m not going to tell anyone,” Sunghoon smiles. “But Riki-yah, I think what you do is really cool. This… All of this, and you, too. I think you’re very cool for someone your age. I know how hard you work to be strong.”

 Being seen like this makes Riki feel vulnerable, stripped down to his smallest self. He feels like a child under Sunghoon’s gaze. For some reason, it doesn’t terrify him.

 “Sorry,” he chokes out. He doesn’t even know why he feels like crying— doesn’t understand why it matters at all. Maybe Sunghoon had seen through him, but wasn’t that bound to happen anyway? Why does Riki feel so strange inside?

 “You don’t have to apologize,” Sunghoon laughs. His hands come up to wrap around Riki, pulling him into himself. “Riki, I know how you feel. I know that it can be a bit hard at times, but you can cry. You’ve done enough to be strong, but you can cry now, you know. I really won’t tell anyone.”

 Riki laughs wetly, punching at Sunghoon’s ribs. “Hyung, stop. I might really cry.”

 “That’s the goal, Riki-san.”

 Riki allows himself to cuddle into Sunghoon’s chest. The bear on the wall morphs into two— a mother with a cub on her back. She takes slow steps around the perimeter of the room, each stomp causing the room to shake. Riki moves a little closer, and Sunghoon tucks the younger boy’s head beneath his chin, shielding him.

 “I’m quite weak,” Sunghoon mumbles. “I know what it’s like to need that reassurance that you’re strong. To want to know that you’re doing everything you can— growing up well, becoming someone other people can rely on. But Riki, if you don’t let it out, it’ll consume you. You’ll get hurt by the need to hold your tears in. You won’t ever let the people who really matter know that you’re a person with feelings, too.”

 “It’s just…hard,” Riki sniffles. “I don’t want to fail you guys. I don’t want to let you down.”

 “You could never let me down, Riki-san. You can cry. After you’ve done so well, don’t you think you deserve it?”

 It’s that. That gentle nudge to his hidden fear that makes Riki burst into tears like a toddler. He never thought he deserved it— had always assumed he’d have to spend the rest of his life making up for the things he lacked, trying to be bigger or stronger than he really was. He’d have to fill the shoes with other things until he could finally fit into them all on his own.

 So many years playing with shadows, hoping to make a new one for himself. One that took the shape of someone better.

 “No matter how big and strong you get, you can’t outgrow me, Riki.” Sunghoon mumbles into his hair. “Hyung is always going to be the bigger one, okay? So rely on me when things get hard. Be small. Don’t grow up into a stranger who hides himself away.”

 Riki nods against him wordlessly. Sunghoon soothes, and soothes, and soothes.)

 Riki wants to be soothed now, in the darkness. He reaches his hands out for Sunghoon, and only when he hears his voice does he finally find his way towards the light.

  Jay is the one to take control of the body.

 They’ve walked for days, trading off from the fragments of their souls that remain connected. Jungwon had lasted a good handful of days before he eventually collapsed in fatigue from running too much, always the one to push himself past the point of no return.

 (“You can’t go on like this,” Heeseung mumbles. Jungwon continues to use Sunoo’s fragment of the soul to find Sunghoon’s voice, but his ability to map out any sort of location has become moot ever since he started dragging his steps along the cold forest floor.

 “I have to get to Sunghoon-hyung,” he offers back. It’s without any heat.

  “We are getting to Sunghoon-hyung,” Sunoo gently reminds him. “All of us, together. We can’t get to him if our host body is failing, Jungwon.”

 “I’m not failing—” He only grits it out as far as the last syllable, collapsing in a heap, his knees barely holding him up.

 Heeseung and Jay are at his side immediately, taking his body to the nearest tree so they can rest him up against it.

 “You’re hurting yourself!” Jay sighs, trying to keep the fire inside of his chest rather than out of his mouth. It’s not that he’s angry with Jungwon; if anything, he’s angry with himself for letting it get to this point. He is supposed to protect his littlest ones from any sort of harm, and he feels like he’s coming up empty-handed in his self-made promise. “You aren’t allowed to be the host body anymore. We’re switching off.”

 “Who will you switch to?” Jungwon heaves, his eyes misty. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve pushed us too far, I just—”

 “You just wanted us to make it,” Heeseung hums, running an exasperated hand through his hair. “We know. No one is blaming you, Jungwon-ah, but we’re switching, and we’re doing it now.”

 Jungwon nods, giving in to the command of the eldest. Jay reaches down to pull Jungwon into his embrace, taking his soul inside of himself until Jungwon is safely kept there, warm and free to rest so he can replenish his health.

 “Who will take over for us?”

 Riki appears at their side, his face stern and his cheeks ruddy. “I will.”)

 Riki had taken over for the next few days, growing stronger at nightfall and using the natural shade of the world to his advantage. He’d been a fine host body— aside from the occasional darkness that fell over his counterparts, he’d managed to keep himself level. Jay had only asked him to switch off out of paranoia that their youngest would go down the same way Jungwon did, when it was already too late.

 Being the host body eases him. He feels comfortable and in control of his soul’s safety. When he uses his strength to climb the rest of the way, he can feel as each fragment eases in him. Jungwon heals at the hands of Sunoo, whose emotional connection had slowed to a stop at the switching of host bodies. In its place lies Heeseung’s premonition— the feeling of Sunghoon through the fire, which draws them closer towards where they now know they need to go.

 It’d been Jake who pieced it together, his eyes falling on the sight of the North, where their old house’s location lies.

 He’s there, his voice whispered in Jay’s heart. You and I both know this.

 And Jay finally understands.

 He’d been the last one to see Sunghoon before he ran away. He’d cornered him then— in the kitchen, his rough hands trying so desperately to remain gentle as they cupped Sunghoon’s gaunt cheeks.

 (His eyes are bloodshot, his mouth a thin line with chapped lips. This isn’t the person Jay once knew. Sunghoon’s always had his reservations— has kept to himself for the most part, much to his groupmate’s dismay. They could handle it when it was nothing more than Sunghoon’s shyness, nothing more than a lasting insecurity that they attempted to chip away at, piece by piece. It was easier when Jay was able to try and try and try. When Sunghoon was there standing before him, present in this moment, able to be reached out to just enough to be felt.

 “You’re getting so far away from me,” Jay tries, hoping Sunghoon can understand how he feels beneath such unsteady words.

 “I’m not.” Sunghoon’s eyes trail over the tiling of the kitchen, and the wood of the cupboards. He looks at anything aside from Jay, and that only makes the hands on his face tighten. “Let me go.”

 “We need to talk about this, Sunghoon. You can’t keep running away from it.”

 “I’m not running away from anything.”

 Jay tries to tamp down the fire burning in his stomach. It threatens to spread up to his lungs, his head hanging like a dull weight on his shoulders. If he were any better— any stronger, anymore patient— maybe Sunghoon would’ve opened up to him easier. But he can’t blame things he’ll never know, and he can’t give up on Sunghoon when he’s right here in front of him like this, so far inside of his own head that he’s practically disappeared from the real world.

 Jay has to bring him back down to earth, even if it means he has to drag him. He’ll ground him enough that Sunghoon won’t be able to take flight again— doesn’t mind being the shackles around his limbs if it means that Sunghoon will always be here for him to feel beneath his palms, just like this.

 “I feel like I’m losing you,” Jay admits. It’s a last ditch effort, bearing his heart like this. He knows no other way but to barrel through it like a wave crashing down, hoping Sunghoon can understand more than he can see. “Please. I don’t want to lose you.”

 Sunghoon’s eyes water at that. Behind the emptiness, through the hurt that’s begun to harden there like ice— there’s the boy Jay met in the forest who’d been begging for even a drop of love. There’s the boy he vowed to himself he’d protect for good.

 It’s the Sunghoon he knows. The one crying before him, not moving a muscle when Jay draws him into a strong hug. 

 “Please, fuck,” he cries into Sunghoon’s shoulder, desperate for a sign. “Please. Don’t make me feel like I’m losing you to something I can’t control.”

 Control. It’s always been Jay’s greatest vice. Watching the people he loves fall prey to some sort of deeper evil that Jay himself could not destroy with his own two hands— it’s what makes him this desperate, feeling small and uneasy. He hates it more than anything.

 He feels like he’s falling apart, watching Sunghoon collapse under his touch to the point of being unresponsive. The boy he knows is stuck beneath so many layers of pain and anguish that Jay can’t just pry open with his bare hands. The boy Jay loves is in a house fire somewhere, stuck inside an ill-sized nook in the wall. Jay is standing outside, watching the flames lick at everything he loves, burning down around the one person he can’t save.

 It kills him. More than if Sunghoon had simply dragged a knife through his stomach, it kills him.)

 A part of Jay knew he’d always find Sunghoon here. When he makes it up the final slope of snow and Sunghoon is propped up on the only surviving slab of wood left behind, he feels like it’s some sort of deja vu.

 Sunghoon’s pale and porcelain, twisting his head towards the grayed out sky. He’s sitting with a knee drawn up, his hands bent back and supporting his weight as he leans back. The snow hits him on every last eyelash, his lips pulled into the most delicate of smiles. It’s so small that most would fail to notice it— but Jay is so in tune to his every detail that he can’t help but study the crook of his mouth. The way his fingers twitch in a sloppy rendition of a rhythm he knows so well.

 The way he turns his head towards Jay, opening his eyes and looking at him with a sort of curiosity that Jay’s seen before.

 “You found me,” Sunghoon whispers, voice as light and soft as the snow fluttering through the sky.

 “Of course I did,” Jay draws closer, reaching a hand out to Sunghoon. When their palms slide together, the melding of their heat and cold draws them to a comforting middle— the equilibrium of all things.

 It stops snowing.

 “I always do.”

  Sunghoon’s not cold anymore.

 When they take turns sinking their mouths into his neck, he feels unbearably cool— a shiver that wracks through his skeletal structure from back to front, at one with the snow. He feels the chill start from the ring of marks around his neck, rolling down his arms like droplets of frozen rain. His fingers are numb from the sudden drop in temperature, but the sensation is lost to the sluggish way the cold consumes his abdomen and twists his stomach up.

 For a while, it’s nothing but cold— and then it gives way to pleasant warmth. He is alive in the most extravagant of ways. He feels like he’s never truly known anything before now. His eyes snap shut as a kaleidoscope bursts across his vision— every last falling star is making its way around his dilated pupils in a planned route. It almost feels like his body was made for this exact moment.

 Distantly, as he shakes along the snow-covered floor, he thinks: Maybe it was.

 “Open your eyes,” Jay smiles, offering a hand out. When Sunghoon manages to pry himself off of the pale white canvas, he sees a world covered in new shades he never could have dreamed of. Every color deepened, every sound heightened.

 Sunghoon is right where he feels he should be. Six pairs of hands stretch outwards, blanketing him in a cloak of warmth and light. He is nothing, nowhere— and then he is everything, all at once. Every last atom, every last tear, every last droplet of love that he’d been starving for. It’s all inside of him, split into pieces like the fragment of his soul that glows with completion. When his lovers are near, he finds himself understanding.

 It’s this. This feeling of their bodies intertwined in the midst of the earth. This is what Sunghoon had been missing.

 He’d trust these arms with anything. He’d die by these hands a million times.

 And now he’ll live by these hands— live for them— too.