Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

I can feel it gettin’ near

Like flashlights comin’ down the way

One day you’ll figure me out

   Jake’s been picking at the bandage on the back of his left hand for the past minute and a half.

 It’s been a slow ride home— traffic picked up tenfold once it started raining, and by then he’d barely paid his ticket and pulled out of the multi-level parking lot downtown. Navigating the blurred landscape of soaked streets had been hard enough as is, but considering he’s waiting at a stop light that doesn’t seem to want to do anything but stop him, he’s pretty sure there’s at least a seventy-percent chance the entire world is intending to slow him down.

 Which isn’t that big of an issue; not really. His plans tonight are the same as all the others: Go home, heat up leftovers, and waste away on his couch while he mindlessly roams his eyes over whatever images play on his television screen in technicolor. Then he’ll fall asleep close to two and wake up half an hour later to a crick in his neck that’ll be strong enough to persuade him to check his emails. He’ll message a couple of people back. He’ll drag himself to his bedroom upstairs by four-thirty and collapse in a heap with his laptop tucked carefully atop his bedside table.

 Riveting stuff, really.

 But for now— for now, he tugs on the adhesive bandage covering an awkwardly placed slice between his index and middle fingers. It itches, but he doesn’t scratch at it. Instead, the fingers of his right hand trace over the invisible line of the cut with careful intent, mapping out what it’d looked like before he managed to get his hands on the first-aid kit in his office. A car honks in the distance, and the light casts a sickly pale green glow on his dashboard.

 He drives for a while below the speed limit, windshield wipers rubbing back and forth against glass with a creaking sort of sound that reminds him he should get them replaced by now. He doesn’t even realize he’s squinting in response to the grating noise until his eyes burst open like a cluster of dying stars, trying to readjust to the sudden darkness as he follows the road into the dead of an unoccupied night.

 His home is located far from the city on purpose— a desired outcome that he’d been working for since he started house-hunting; he got lucky when he found the glorified cabin in a secluded section of the suburbs. Each house is fairly far apart with enough space to roam and graze like an animal, leaving Jake with only a dim light on the horizon as any indicator of his neighbor’s existence. The best thing about it, though— in his eyes, at least— is the fact that it’s located just outside of a forest rich in pools of fish that Jake is free to catch and release.

 This is the forest he drives through each night, headlights bright and eyes repeatedly focusing like a cracked camera lens to look for bright yellow outlines on the asphalt. He’s leaning into his wheel like his grandfather used to do when he would drive Jake around in his old pickup truck when he was a kid. It’d be more embarrassing if he wasn’t focusing the entirety of his conscience on not crashing and burning into the nearest tree.

 For the most part, he’d gotten lucky in having such an uninterrupted route home— aside from the excessive roundabout paths the city provides, everything beyond the outskirts is rather forgiving. From point A to point B, Jake follows the absent trail without much thought. The radio is playing a tune so low it’s almost impossible to make out anything more than a dull hum, and his palms are cool even when they tighten on the wheel to keep himself awake.

 It’s been a long, long day. Which is exactly why Jake speeds up now that he’s free to do so— he’s high-flying like a fallen angel with his foot on the gas pedal, eyelids fluttering on occasion before he snaps back to life like a spine being fixed into the proper posture. It lasts him a grand total of thirty minutes— three quarters of his journey done, the gaping hole of the forest’s exit sitting in the distance when his foot switches gears as quickly as the curse building behind his teeth.

 He abruptly pulls to a stop on the side of the road when he sees it— the little lump on the left side of the empty highway. The road’s been forming into a bend around the last curve of the cluster of trees, meaning that the thing— whatever it is— is laying the majority of itself in the road, but a bit is stuck in the surrounding greenery.

 Jake could keep going. He’s not on that side of the road, and if he were to continue on his way, it’d cause him no harm beyond his helpless curiosity. But when his car is already halfway into a ditch and he sees the thing slowly rising and falling in his rearview mirror, it almost feels like he’s too far ahead of himself to take even a single step back.

 The heap— twitching, breathing, finally moves a little more. It’s then that Jake makes out the key features of its body: An angular head, wide eyes full of stars, and horns sticking out of the bent skull.

 No, not horns. Antlers. Jake’s body releases the biggest exhale of his life once he realizes that it’s a deer he’d found lying in the road. And by the looks of it, it’s likely one that’s on the way to becoming another roadkill statistic.

 Even more so, Jake finds himself unable to turn away. He doesn’t think twice before driving his car a little bit forward into the grass, trying to situate it in a way so that no oncoming traffic could total the back-end. It’s a little counterintuitive, considering he isn’t entirely sure that it isn’t already a little totaled from the haphazard hard-brake stunt he just pulled— but he does it anyway, for peace of mind.

 Slowly, he unbuckles himself and gets out of the car. Even slower than that, he glances both ways and wobbles across the street on aching legs. He’s still wearing his work clothes, for god’s sake. It’s hard to keep thinking about it when he’s sunken to his knees in the dirt beside a bleeding deer, though.

 “Hi,” he mumbles gently. It’s awkward, and breaks through his throat with so much force that he almost sends himself into a coughing fit— but he can’t offer much else than that without swallowing. In a measly attempt to make up for his cracking voice, he tries again. “Hey there.”

 The deer makes a wounded sound, head still trying to prop itself up by twisting its neck towards him. He offers one of his palms face up, slow and gentle, hoping to signify to the poor creature that he means no harm. It’s a lot more nerve wracking than he thought it’d be.

 From a distance, he’d always assumed deer to be their own sort of mythical creature— a lithe build, a delicate expression. Their movements have always looked graceful, even through the thick cut of the trees or in blinding flashes across busy roads. He remembers when he first started driving; his father had told him to brake for deer no matter what, and Jake had, at least for a while, responded to the warning by living a little in fear every time he came across any road that looked like it was surrounded by woods. Luckily, he’s never had to actually brake for any of the deer he’s seen. Not until now, that is.

 “You look scared,” he croaks out. It feels like a stupid thing to say, considering the deer is bleeding heavily from its abdomen and still making that godforsaken noises of pain and discomfort. When it doesn’t deem him as a threat, the head falls back to the dirt like it’s lost all strength in its limbs. Jake can tell from the stuttered breathing that it’s fading fast, and tries to respond accordingly with his shaking hand still outstretched. “Don’t be. It’s okay; I’m here now. You’re not alone.”

 He lets his hand glide through the coarse hair of the body, caramel stained crimson as his fingers try to ease it down into a softer breath. He situates himself a little closer to the neck, allowing the deer’s soft inhales and exhales to warm the leg of his now-sullied slacks. From here, he can see the gentle, curious eyes that stare at him. They’re a chocolate color, irises blown wide and beautiful. The cold white of the moonlight catches in their reflection and then seeps into each eyelash— a softened stare that holds more than Jake could ever put into words. The deer blinks these lovely eyes slowly, and with too many seconds between, almost as if it were falling asleep.

 He tries to pretend that’s what’s happening.

 “It’s a good thing I found you,” he tries to speak casually, tone low and even. The thick swab of his tongue against the palate of his mouth holds back the heaviness threatening to bleed into each word, biting back the lump in his throat each time he breathes out to match the poor creature. “I bet you’re cold, right?”

 He swipes his blazer off then, making a show of its harmlessness before lightly blanketing the deer’s bloody stomach with it.

 “There you go,” he hums. “I hope you’re a little warmer now. You shouldn’t fall asleep while you’re still freezing cold.”

 For a second, he almost thinks the deer recognizes what he’s saying— it nuzzles into the dirt, shrugging the blazer further onto its skin. Jake watches the prolonged, sluggish movement with fascinated eyes.

 “I’ll be here.” He brings his shaking hand back up to the deer’s near-carcass, finding a place to set it on the gaunt cheek. The deer lets out a rough puff of air, but doesn’t deny him the touch. “So you can rest easy. I’ll be here for you; I promise. I won’t leave you, no matter what.”

 His eyes dart down to the blazer as he speaks, the black fabric darkening at an alarming rate. It’s apparent from the spread of the soaking wet pool that the wound is large — or at the very least, it’s bleeding out incredibly fast. Much faster than he probably would’ve assumed from the deer’s remaining mobility.

 How the deer has even lasted this long, he has no clue. But the way in which life starts to leave its fluttering eyes doesn’t look painful in the slightest. Instead, he hums a soft lullaby to it, petting the deer slowly, and it lets its eyes slip closed like the poor thing is falling into a peaceful sleep.

 The bloodied body rises and falls steadily even after its eyes are closed. An inhale, three seconds, an exhale. The spacing between the inhales and exhales elongate, until it lets out a puff of air that lasts too long for another to be pulled in.

 “There, there…” Soft pats to the hair, trembling like a leaf in the oncoming breeze. He doesn’t blame the wind as much as he does his own heart. “It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere. Rest.”

 He feels the exact moment the deer goes slack against him. It’s then— in that moment, with the weight fully sunken into the earth and his flesh— that Jaeyun lets the reality of the situation barrel down onto his shoulders.

 The deer— this thing he’d managed to catch in its final moments— is lying dead in his arms.

 He is careful as he moves away. With as much grace as his shaking form can muster, he lifts the sodden blazer off of the now-still corpse, holding it in one hand that slumps down towards the earth. The hem of the jacket drags along the asphalt as he wobbles back to the other side of the road just like he’d done mere moments ago.

 At the side of his front left tire, Jake promptly bends over and empties the entirety of his stomach onto green grass that glows black in the moonlight. Even when he manages to pry the car door open, he only makes it with one foot in before his head is angled far away from the seat so he can dry heave.

 The drive home is slow and silent, as endless as the night ahead of him.

  Jake falls asleep at six-thirty, not four.

 It’d be more accurate to call it forced unconsciousness than slumber— fitful, but his body refuses to rise from its incapacitated state until he’s recovered all of the energy he’d expelled along with the bile in his stomach.

 When he wakes up, the first thing he does is go to the bathroom again. He doesn’t vomit, but he does hover awkwardly over the bowl of his toilet and then the basin of his sink, in that order.

 He tries to brush out the stale taste of last night’s saliva from his mouth, but one small knock of the bristles against his tongue and his stomach starts reeling. He gives up pretty soon after.

 It’s nearly noon now. He’d been fortunate enough— or unfortunate, depending on what order he plays his cards in— to get today off, but he doesn’t spend it on much else other than sitting in front of his television and nursing a lukewarm cup of tea. The woman on the screen cracks a joke and the dull background noise of the crowd erupts into laughter, but Jake can’t seem to find anything funny.

 He doesn’t realize any time has passed like that until his abandoned cellphone starts to ring from its place on the coffee table. He’d honestly thought the thing lost all its battery sometime last night, since he forgot to charge it once he got home.

  Ring, ring, ring. He stares at it as it buzzes across the oak of the table’s surface. Ring, ring, ring. His bitten fingernails beat down on the edge of his glass mug in the same pattern, matching the rhythmic metronome count of his ringtone. It’s monotonous, but comforting. Ring, ring, ring.

 The device gets way too close to the edge for comfort, so he plucks it up in time to catch it on the final ring, sliding the call button into the direction of ‘answer’ on pure instinct. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now, but sitting alone in his living room only offers him the seared image of the deer’s last empty breaths before it completely sunk into the earth.

 He gags a little, holding the phone up to his ear.

 “Hm?”

 “Jakey!”

 Jake breathes out a deep sigh of relief— it’s only Sunghoon, his longtime friend since middle school. He hasn’t heard from him that much in the past few months, ever since his job forced him to up and move to Japan for whatever their next major project happened to be. It’s nice to hear such a familiar voice crackling through the poor service of the phone.

 “Hey, Hoon. How are you?”

 “Good. Tired.” Sunghoon yawns almost exaggeratedly, practically shouting into Jake’s ears. He grunts in response, disgusted. “You?”

 “Not much different.”

 “Really? You’re normally all happy-go-lucky from the moment you get up. It makes up for the fact that you log out of your body the last three hours you’re awake.”

 “I didn’t go to bed at a reasonable time,” he offers in lieu of a proper answer. It’s not a lie— and if anything, the answer is a proper one within the given context— but he can tell from Sunghoon’s half-sigh that it isn’t as compelling of a redirect as he’d hoped it would be.

 “Alright, what’s up with you?”

 “Nothing’s up with me—”

 “Don’t even try to deny it!” The sound of Sunghoon shuffling around gives way to the rustle of bed sheets and pillowcases. In his mind’s eye, Jake’s able to envision the same Sunghoon he’d seen last year in his own apartment— mumbling beneath his breath with a twitching brow, realigning the comforter on his bed until it was without a single crease. He fluffs the pillow over the end of the one, two, three times before Jake can hear his resounding pats: two in a row to signify his satisfaction. It’s almost funny that he has his best friend’s self-soothing habit brought down to a simple science. “I’ve known you since middle school. You don’t go to bed at an odd time unless something is throwing you off and keeping you up.”

 “And I’ve known you since middle school,” Jake retorts. He starts to pick at the new bandage on his left hand to keep himself busy. “I can tell how stressed out you are by how hard you smack your mattress.”

 He can picture this, too— the way Sunghoon’s ears glow red and his pale white skin blooms in shades of petal pink. His mouth will elongate into a smile that almost looks like a grimace, and with his fangs poking out, he’ll say— “Then maybe you shouldn’t stress me out!”

 Jake laughs at that. Typical. But above all else it’s familiar; comfortable.

 “Sorry for digging you an early grave, I guess.” The words are the wrong ones to say— his stomach twists up at the sudden flash of last night, and he clears his throat out before bile can start to build up in the back. He rubs his now free hand against his pajama pants, belatedly registering how much sweat he’s accumulated on the curved lines nature had dug into his palm. “How’s work?”

 “Same old shit, no matter the day of the week. You can’t change the subject on me.”

 “You nag harder than Jay sometimes.”

 “Not even close to true,” Sunghoon huffs. Yet still, he laughs a little. “Just… If something’s bothering you, you know you can actually tell me, right? I know I’m not the best at advice—” Jake gets an unwelcome resurfacing of the things they’d gotten up to in tenth grade as proof— “But shit, you’re my best friend, and I’m yours. If you can’t tell me these sorta things, then who can you tell?”

 “I could always tell Jay.”

 “Don’t even try with that excuse. Jay might’ve helped nurse you through whole weekend benders during midterms, but who was on your kitchen floor with you when you tried your very first sip of alcohol?”

 Jake groans. He hangs his head into his free hand, now free of sweat, and hums out a displeased response.

 “Look,” Sunghoon continues. “All I’m saying is that you’re free to come to me with your problems. I can’t be there physically, but I can still be there , you know?”

 “Yeah, I know. It’s just…” He catches sight of the blood-soaked blazer sitting in a plastic supermarket bag by the front door. There’s a small puddle of diluted red lingering on the tiled floor of the entryway, just beside his old, unused pair of slippers. “It’s just complicated.”

 “How bad can it be?”

 “I don’t think you wanna go down that route,” he snorts.

 Sunghoon makes a noise of indignation, but Jake is hardly focused on it. His eyes can’t seem to leave the bag by the door, and the slowly spreading state of the puddle only reminds him of the exact way the blazer had been soaked into last night.

 He swallows sharply, jerking his head in the opposite direction with force. He stares outside, instead— at the glass sliding doors that lead to his back porch and the soft expanse of bright green grass that’s fenced off by a small cluster of trees. The sight puts him at ease, knowing that there’s a world outside of whatever’s going on in his head.

 “Should I pack things up in Tokyo?” Sunghoon asks abruptly. “The project is nearly done, you know. I can go home. I can—”

 “Sunghoon-ah, do your job.”

 “I am doing my job. But taking care of you is also my job.”

 “You’re not my mom.”

 “Jay already has that covered.”

 Jake snorts, shaking his head. “I’m not going to die if you leave me alone, and I don’t want to get a message from Jay later asking about how I’m doing. I’d rather just…relax for a bit, okay? I’ll be fine after a good day off.”

 “You promise?”

 “Yes,” Jake sighs. “I promise. Now can we talk about something else?”

 “Mm.” Sunghoon fiddles with what sounds like more fabric for a bit, before his voice is muffled like he has something in his mouth. “I was thinking— when I get back, maybe we can get together again. The three of us, like when we were in college.”

 “You make us sound so old,” Jake laughs. The row of trees— four in a row on the farthest edge— begin to sway a little. He frowns in concentration, looking for the telltale signs of a breeze catching on the blades of grass. It never does. “I don’t miss third-wheeling, by the way.”

 “You’re not a third wheel—”

 The second tree in the row begins to sway a little more, branches vibrating and the leaves rustling. He gets up from the couch, half-sitting on the armrest as he studies the odd movement a little more. The grass isn’t moving, and neither are any of the other trees. Maybe it’s a bird in the branches?

 “And anyway, I haven’t officially asked him yet—”

 Something moves. Not the tree, nor the grass— but a foreign shape that towers like it belongs there; like it’s made of the same atoms in the nature surrounding it. Something Jake can’t make out. It slithers between the bodies of the first and second tree in a mist of brown and black before disappearing.

 He almost thinks his mind conjured it up, but then the same odd dance occurs between the second and third trees.

 “Jake? Are you listening?”

 Jake considers getting his baseball bat that’s settled against the doorway, but that means turning around. Facing what else is in the doorway— like a bag full of blood-stained clothes.

 The mass of dark colors blends into the stumps of the trees. It’s four seconds of strange shifting until anything starts to come into the light. Jake counts every breath he lets out and how long it lasts in between.

  Inhale. Two, three, four. Exhale. Two, three, four. Inhale.

 “Jake! Are you still there, man? Are you okay?”

 A leg, long and lithe, steps out onto the field.

 Jake is met with familiar eyes. Eyes he knows all too well— the same pair of eyes he watched flutter shut last night, fading into the empty air like candlelight snuffed out by the oncoming breeze.

 It’s a deer. It’s the deer.

  What the fuck?

 “Sunghoon, I’ll call you back."

 He doesn’t listen for whatever it is Sunghoon’s screaming about— he doesn’t even say goodbye before hanging up abruptly, phone clattering down onto the floor from where he’d haphazardly dropped it on the couch armrest. He doesn’t try to catch it when it slips, nor does he worry about anything else but the creature in front of him.

 Unmoving, the deer stands in the open field of his backyard like it’s proudly presenting itself to him. The idea alone makes his head spin.

  I’m seeing things… He tells himself such a simple phrase over and over again like it’ll solve the sight before his very eyes. It’s only punctuated by the occasional secondary voice of disbelief. It can’t be.

 His body is moving on autopilot when he takes a step closer. Socked feet pad against the wooden floor to cross the distance from his living room to the dining table. His finger brushes the top of one of the chair’s backs, digging the oak into his fingertips like it’ll bring him back into his body.

 The deer stares, and stares, and stares.

 For what feels like a handful of minutes, Jake thinks he doesn’t even blink. The deer looks at him, beautiful and fresh in the sunlight, and he stares back with the stale taste of tea and bile on his tongue. His eyes are probably red from all of the crying he’d done in his sleep— but the deer’s eyes are crystal clear and vibrant. Beautiful.

 It’s then, he thinks. In a fit of strong fascination with those eyes, captivated— almost sickeningly so— he darts forward to the long sleek handle of his metal sliding door. The way his breath taints the glass almost fogs up his perception of the deer to begin with. The deer who has started to sway. A slight tremble so imperceptible it’d be nearly impossible to make note of— and yet Jake still does.

 His fingers toy with the lock, clicking it upwards until the small contraption gives way to the weight of his digits. The sound of the door unlocking stretches a mile wide and echoes in his ears so harshly that he feels like he’s going deaf with it.

 He’s not the only one who hears it. The deer flinches— harsh and fast, like it’s found its way into the path of warm headlights, drowning in it.

 Jake tugs on the door just enough for it to begin sliding on the track. The sound of the bugs, of the wind— all of it roars to life with that small sliver of an opening. The deer’s leg bends.

 And it doesn’t stop bending.

 Like a human on all fours— hind legs bent back at the knees, front legs popping outwards— the deer crouches down into a pouncing position. It twists on these broken legs, body circling around. For a moment, Jake thinks he’s looking at the broad back of a man rather than that of an animal. The spine beneath the stag’s skin shifts from side to side like it’s wearing a zipped suit.

 The animal doesn’t waste any time before darting into the woods it came out of. Jake watches it go with rapt curiosity, feeling almost sick in the head for his interest in the deer’s abhorrent anatomy. It’s no longer just an animal in Jake’s eyes. Rather, it’s an aberration. A lump of carved flesh in the shape of a proud stag with legs that bend themselves in the wrong directions.

 And yet he watches, stiff and silent in his place by the glass panel. Until the deer is little more than a seared image behind fluttering eyelids, his throat spasming as he swallows.

 When he goes to close the door, his hands are shaking so hard that the glass vibrates beneath his touch.

  Jake leaves his house in his slippers. The plastic bag still dripping with its soaked contents is now sitting in his trunk, no doubt staining the flat expanse of the compartment space, but he doesn’t have time to concern himself with it beyond the initial grimace he let out when he put it down. The thick, wet plop almost snapped him back into the reality of what he’s about to do.

 Almost.

 It’s not an unreasonably long drive outwards, but for some reason the clock ticks from one to two like he’s still nodding away into a nap on his couch. His fingers grip the steering wheel so tight that the pink turns white, and then a deeper shade of pink when he relents. His hands repeat the hold and release pattern for the rest of the drive, only ceasing when the sight of a familiar bend comes into view.

 His vision shrinks down to a tunnel, the vignette that bleeds into his surroundings creating a makeshift microscopic view. He’s on complete autopilot when he prepares himself to go feet-first into the thick of the unoccupied road.

  You could get hit by a car, his rational consciousness tries to flicker back to life; but in the face of the forest lining ahead of him, it’s little more than dull white noise ringing on the car radio behind him. He shuts the door on purpose, though he has enough of his sanity to pat his pockets for the familiar jingle of his keys.

 His phone dings with the same notification sound of incoming messages that’d started flooding in from the moment he abruptly hung up his phone call. He has no doubt that if he glances down now, he’ll see Park Sunghoon’s old contact photo from middle school— clipped straight from a graduation picture, his toothy smile still sharp and awkward across his handsome features.

 It’s for that exact reason that he doesn’t look down. Instead, he glances across the grass field for any sort of indicator that he’s not hallucinating. A telltale marker of something— anything— that doesn’t show itself even when he gets desperate enough to tug his phone out of his pocket to silence it.

 Jake hasn’t prayed to god since he was seventeen. Not because he no longer believes in the lord— but rather because he believes in him too much. His stomach almost twists with the bone-deep shame of calling upon such a strong force of good only when he’s willingly settled into the clutches of something undeniably evil. The image of a deer bending on his hooves like they’re palms nearly deters him from clasping his palms together after all these years, but it’s the small nagging thought that he’d just crossed an open road and not been hit by an oncoming car that convinces him otherwise.

 Silently, with his entangled fingers tugged up to the bottom of his chin, he prays for a sign.

 It doesn’t have to be anything remarkable. He isn’t in need of a miracle, or an angel bearing gold news on six silver wings. He doesn’t ask for absolvement from his cyclical, damning curiosity. In fact, he doesn’t even ask god to be with him at this moment.

 All he asks for is a simple sign. A momentary breeze, a twinge in his spine— it could be anything.

 He steps forward and crunches on a leaf. The chewed-up sound of the dirt soaks through his thin slipper like it plans on sucking his body into a pool of liquid. He glances down— expects wet soil, soggy leaves, something of the like— and finds his foot painted in a red slosh.

  This is it. This is the place he’d held the deer. A carcass that the land is now in the absence of.

 It wasn’t just a bad dream.

  Jake flicks through his notifications as he lies face down in his bed, cheek squished against his pillow.

Sunghoon: I’m worried about you

Sunghoon: Sorry

Sunghoon: Just reply pls

Sunghoon: I need to know ur not dead

Im ok

I was startled

Saw something in my backyard

Sunghoon: ? Like what

 He frowns, fingers fidgeting over the keys. If he told Sunghoon what he saw— what happened last night, in its entirety— what would the younger man think of him? Would he believe him? Would he chastise him? Would he say ‘Jake, maybe it’s time to go to the hospital’ in that same careful tone he did in eleventh grade?

 Jake swats that thought away and instead moves his fingers over different keys.

Idk

I jus thought it was an intruder or smth

It wasnt though

Everything is fine

Sunghoon: You shouldn’t have hung up if you thought there was someone in your backyard dude

Sunghoon: If that ever happens just keep me on the line

Sunghoon: Don’t hang up unless you’re going to call the police

yes mom

Sunghoon: 🖕

 Jake snorts at his phone, trying to find the humor in his situation where he can. It was true, to some degree, that he’d thought he saw an intruder in his backyard.

 Except his intruder was not a human, and it definitely was there. His fingers linger around the circumference of the black screen, wondering if he should just leave the situation alone altogether. The deer wouldn’t come back, right? And even if it did, it was just a deer. Strange, tall and with beautiful eyes— but a deer nonetheless.

 Right?

 His phone buzzes then, startling him until he drops it atop his bedsheets. He scrambles for purchase, expecting it to be a phone call from Sunghoon— but when he sees Jay’s contact instead, he frowns.

  I told him not to say anything…

 When he answers it, the first thing that leaves his mouth is: “Why?”

 “What do you mean why? You know why.”

 Jake sinks into his sheets, mouth puffed up and biting on itself. He hasn’t heard from Jay in far less time than Sunghoon, but his voice feels newer than their youngest— as if he’d shed an old layer of skin within those few weeks.

 “I told him not to tell you,” he admits, sheepish. Jay makes a noise that sounds like an exasperated grunt. Still the same old Jongseong, Jake has to tell himself. It comforts him more than he’d like to admit.

 “That’s exactly why he should have told me. I’m glad he did, considering you’re probably sitting in the dark freaking yourself out for no good reason.”

 “I am not—”

 He is. He knows he is, and Jongseong does too.

 “Right,” Jay drawls. “Anyways, you should come up to visit. I know my so-called big city apartment is nothing in comparison to your nice little house, but still. It’d do you good to leave home behind for a while every now and then. Take some time off of work, too.”

 “I don’t need to take time off of work,” Jake sighs. “I’m okay, Jay. I’ve been okay. You guys don’t have to keep hovering around me like you did in college. I’m not going to break if you leave me alone for five minutes.”

 “That’s not why we—” Jay takes a deep breath in, letting go of a long sigh that sounds like he’s wiping his hand down his face. Knowing him, he probably is. “Listen, I get it, alright? I get it. You also want your time alone, and I know sometimes Sunghoon and I can be a bit…” He pauses here, sucking the breath between his teeth. “Overbearing, but… We just care about you. We want to know you’re doing okay. Ever since you moved away—”

  “Jay,” he sits up, tugging his knees into his chest and resting his chin there. “I’m okay. I moved away because I needed my own space. I love you guys, and I know you’re just doing what you think is best for me, but I didn’t pack up and find this house just so you could keep worrying yourself to death on the other side of the country.”

 It takes Jay far too long to breathe out on the other side of the line. “I know. I’m sorry.”

 “Don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

 “Still…” He hears the older man clear his throat, voice muffled like he’s nibbling on his fingers. It’s a habit the two of them share that they can’t seem to shake. “I don’t feel comfortable knowing you’re there alone if you thought you saw something in your backyard. You’re kind of secluded, so if anything were to happen...”

 “It was just my eyes playing a trick on me,” Jake tries to reason. It was just a deer, is what he really means, but he knows he couldn’t even say that much without his voice wobbling from its weight. “I went to the back door to check, but there wasn’t anything. I think I’m just tired these days. You know how I can get when I’m exhausted.”

 “You’re positive?”

 He breathes in, holding it there. Inhale. Two, three, four. Exhale.

 “Yeah. Absolutely certain.”

  Despite their constant check-ins, Jay and Sunghoon don't go to much greater lengths to get Jake to open up. In fact, they lay off considerably after the fourth or so phone call, which he’s somewhat happy about.

 Only somewhat, because two days later his car starts to reek of blood.

 He doesn’t think anything of it— has probably become half blind to the smell, if he’s honest— until one of his coworkers starts to moan and groan about it during lunch.

 “It’s a really foul smell,” Sunoo mumbles. “I don’t know whose car it is, but when I was pulling in, it was just this… odor. Like a dead animal.”

 He shivers when he says that, mouth curling inwards as if he’d eaten something sour. His spoon lays flat on his tray, chopsticks barely picking at the stray slice of meat he’s been staring at. Given the conversation at hand, Jake understands why he hasn’t done more than simply pick at it.

 “You think someone in the office is a murderer?” One of his other coworkers, Riki, doesn’t hesitate to ask.

 Sunoo glares at him, and there’s a jolt of the tabletop before Riki yelps like he’d been kicked. Jake would find it entertaining if they weren’t talking about his car, though neither of them know it.

 “Don’t say stuff like that!” Sunoo chastises. “Just the thought alone makes me sick. It can’t be that, right? Maybe someone just…I don’t know, hit roadkill or something.”

 Jake’s stomach lurches at the word. He digs his chopstick tip-first into a piece of his own meat, stabbing at it. “That’s the most likely thing,” he tries to say calmly. It comes out more like a croak.

 “Exactly. But to go as far as calling someone a murderer… ” The look he gives Riki is honest in its disappointment. “Anyways, I don’t get why they don’t just clean their car. Surely the smell is a lot more potent for them, right? I mean, it’s their vehicle; they drive around in it everyday.” Then, with a sad pout, he murmurs— “I can’t imagine getting in the driver’s seat and being reminded of that all of the time.”

 Jake wants to say ‘tell me about it,’ but he refrains. Saying anything more would give away the fact that it’s his, and that he’s the person who hasn’t been cleaning it out.

 In truth, he does want to. When he’s in his right state of mind, he becomes aware that there’s also still a pool of blood in his entryway that he’s been avoiding. It’s long since dried up into a vibrant stain, but he can’t find it in himself to remove it. Whenever he goes towards the closet that houses his cleaning supplies, something his body tugs him back. It almost feels… disrespectful, in a way. Like forgetting the deer is about as good as killing it himself.

 He swallows, fingers curling too hard into the length of the cutlery in his hands. Sunoo taps him on his wrist.

 “Are you okay, Hyung? You look a little pale.”

 “I’m fine,” he nods. “Just not hungry.”

 Riki nods in agreement, though his mouth is half-filled with food. He claps Jake over the back, and in a muffled voice, says: “Don’t worry Hyung. If there’s really a murderer in the office, I’ll protect you.”

 Sunoo doesn’t waste time before kicking him again. “Nishimura!”

  The drive home is silent. Jake didn’t have it in him to turn on the radio when he got in, and now that he’s on the road, he’s even less keen on taking his hands off the wheel. Everything out of the corner of his eye looks like a dying deer— at some point on the highway, he thought about swerving off past the barricade into the endless blue of a lake that looked like antlers.

 He doesn’t realize he’s shaking until he finally does give in to his instincts, pulling over to prevent himself from getting into a car accident. He’s probably only fifteen minutes from his own house, but he can’t imagine going the distance without his entire body jerking into the opposite direction of the wheel.

 The soft song of a nearby owl calms his heart. For a while, he rests his head on the steering wheel with his window lowered down— his body zeroes in on the sounds of nature, eyes closed.

 There’s a rustling in the trees that he chalks up to a breeze. It sways this way and that, like it’s dancing around the hood of his car. Nothing about it alarms him; he’s had enough nights on his back porch to know that the wind catches on anything in its path with claw marks and white teeth.

 And then he hears a voice.

 “Are you okay?”

 He blinks up, shoulder rising like a cat prepared to hiss.

 A man with the most beautiful eyes stares back at him, hovering by the car window with a finger pointed like he planned on tapping the glass.

 He’s tall— even from here, Jake can make out that much. His locks are a dark plum-like color, bangs sweeping over enough to almost cover the long lashes on his doe eyes. His nose is tall and sharp, and his mouth is plump with the question he’d just asked in his delicate voice.

 Jake stares at him for a bit, wondering if this is also something he’s conjured up in the back of his mind and splayed out before him like a projector.

 “Huh?”

 “I asked if you’re okay,” he repeats. “I was going on a run and…well, I saw you while I was passing your car. Your head seemed like it was slumping downwards, so I was worried you were in an accident or passed out behind the wheel. Are you alright?”

 “I’m fine,” Jake swallows. Who takes a walk around here? “Um, I’m just resting my eyes.”

 The man nods, but his eyes trail down to Jake’s hands. “You’re shaking.”

 He frowns. One glance down confirms that it’s true— his body is still trembling like a live wire charged with too much electricity. No matter how many times he flexes his fingers or digs his nails into the center of his palm, they uncurl into a deep-seated quiver.

 “You can’t drive like that,” the stranger points out. “How did you get this far?”

 “I— I live around here.” He doesn’t know why he’s telling the stranger this much. He doesn’t need to know that, he thinks, but he can’t stop himself. “I’m just trying to drive home.”

 The stranger nods, suddenly leaning dangerously close. Jake swears if he tried, he could feel the man’s breath on his cheek. He almost expects him to say something else about Jake’s condition, but instead, he hums. “Your car smells.”

 That tugs him away from his thoughts. “What?”

 “Your car,” he reiterates. Jake wonders if he always repeats himself or not. “It smells. Like blood. Your trunk, especially.”

 “How did you—”

 “I’ve got a sensitive nose when it comes to pungent smells,” he cuts him off. “You should get out. You can’t drive in these conditions.”

  Who the fuck is this guy? “I can’t. I need to get home.”

 “Your car smells like blood and you’re shaking furiously,” the man sighs. “If you tried to go even a foot down the road, you would definitely crash. I don’t know what your problem is, but…I’ll help you get home. Just let me drive.”

 Jake clings harder to the wheel. Suddenly he’s seventeen again, fingers clutching the door, a person on the other side saying ‘Let me do it, Jaeyun-ah. Please. You can’t do it, so just let me do it for you before you get hurt.’

 Just like then, he grits out— “I can do it on my own, but thanks for offering.”

 “Suit yourself.” He’s almost surprised that the man doesn’t press any further, instead walking around the front of the car again to dip down into the forest lining. Jake watches his form disappear between the brown stumps, becoming little more than a small blur that’s barely perceptible through the thick of the foliage.

 He slams his head down onto his steering wheel again, honking once. When he tries to set himself back onto the road, his car only makes it a foot down the road before he does, inevitably, hit the brakes. He doesn’t know why he does it— there’d been nothing to stop over, and yet he can’t force his foot back over onto the gas pedal. He stays there, car as stiff as his body, and considers his options.

 Whatever he’d been considering pops like a bubble behind his eyelids when he hears a small tap on his window, like a hummingbird lightly striking at the bark of a tree. Sure enough, the man is standing there on the other side, finger still pointing. Where did he come from? Didn’t he go into the woods on the opposite side? How did he get back here so fast?

 Instead of asking any of these questions, he wordlessly unclicks his seatbelt and opens his door. Like this, he can see that the height of the man is almost absurd— he’s tall enough to hide the entirety of Jake’s form. It is, for some reason he can’t place, almost comforting.

 “Just don’t turn on the radio,” he mumbles.

 The man nods, smiling toothily. Jake thinks his mouth looks too big to fit on his face, nearly threatening to split the skin in two. “Sure. No problem.”

  “Your house is pretty,” the man hums once they pull into the driveway. “Should I help you inside?”

 “No, that’s— that’s not necessary. Thanks, though.”

 “Hm.” The man nods, tugging the keys out of the ignition and placing them in Jake’s open palm. It still trembles, but it’s not as bad as before. “I’m Heeseung, by the way. I never introduced myself to you. Sorry.”

 “Don’t apologize,” he shakes his head. “I didn’t either. I’m Jake. Or Jaeyun. Whatever you wanna call me, I guess.”

  “Jaeyun,” Heeseung smiles at the name, tongue twisting in his mouth like he’s tasting it. The look he offers Jake is something he can’t decipher. “Why does your car smell like blood, Jaeyun?”

 Jake freezes. He’d forgotten about that.

 “It’s— In my trunk, there’s a bag. Bloody clothes.”

 “From what?”

 Jake’s keys fall through his fingertips to the floor. He scrambles for them, shaking so hard he can barely move without nearly toppling head-first into his glove compartment. He kind of wants to. If he were to bust his skull open or slam his head hard enough that his nose lodged up into his brain, then he wouldn’t have to deal with this strange man prodding about his personal life, right?

 “I don’t think you killed anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Heeseung laughs. “You can calm down. I saw the deer on the side of the road the other night when I went out for a run. It was around there, wasn’t it?”

 “I— I didn’t hit it.” Jake doesn’t know why he feels the need to clarify as much. “When I found it— I wasn’t the one who hit it.”

 “I’m sure you weren’t,” Heeseung nods. And he sounds like he means it— at least enough so that he offers Jake a comforting palm on his shoulder. “You look a little startled for someone who just saw a deer dying on the side of the road, though. Squeamish?”

 “A little,” he nods.

 “That’s okay. I can be kind of squeamish sometimes, too. Come on, I’ll help you inside.”

 “You d—”

 “I know I don’t have to,” Heeseung shrugs. “I just want to. And you look like your knees are gonna buckle if you get out of the car in this state.”

 He doesn’t say anything else when he bends over the center console, picking up the keys himself and putting them back into Jake’s palm. With his free hand, he curls the fingers up to ensure they stay in place.

 When he smiles, Jake thinks his expression resembles a deer’s.

  “Nice décor,” Heeseung whistles, completely ignoring the stain in the entryway. He helps Jake take his shoes off, and then lets him lean into his side as he takes off his own. When he leads Jake into the house, his hands are gentle and his eyes are wide and curious. He sets the smaller onto the couch, sitting beside him. “You live alone?”

 “Yeah,” Jake mumbles. “Just me.”

 “It’s kind of big to be just you. Don’t you ever get a bit lonely?”

 Jake fiddles with his fingertips, still half-pressed into Heeseung’s side. “Sometimes.”

 “Hm, sometimes.” Heeseung repeats the words like he’s making note of them. Jake doesn’t question it. “I live half an hour away from here, but I’ve never seen you before. How long have you lived in this house?”

 Jake’s mouth is thick with his own tongue and the clattering of his teeth. He has to sift through Heeseung’s jumbled question with a swelling brain, barely managing to make sense of anything aside from his fingers ahead of him, which continue to twist together in disconnected interest.

 “A few years,” he settles on. “Since I graduated.”

 “I see.” Heeseung doesn’t ask him anything else, but he does move Jake until he’s lying down across the length of the couch cushions. His hands brush down his flanks, settling on his hips when he drags him a bit further down so he can prop a pillow up beneath his aching head.

 “How old are you?” He thinks to ask Heeseung somewhere in the middle of being manhandled like a glorified toy. The man smiles again, still too large and bright to be natural.

 “Older than you,” he offers quickly. “You can call me Hyung. I’m going to make you some tea.”

 “I have some in the cabinet,” Jake slurs, eyes fluttering with a sudden exhaustion. His blurred vision catches sight of Heeseung’s gaze last— the bright glow of caramel and wet soil. Eyes that are blown wide, gorgeous and glittering. Clear.

 “I know,” Heeseung says. Jake wants to ask him how he knows that, but it’s nearly impossible to get anything out when his mouth is decidedly too full with his own flesh. Instead, he clings onto the hand that’s still rubbing circles on his hip, Heeseung’s fingers hooked into the belt loops of his jeans. The touch is a little too close for comfort between strangers, but Jake is too tired to feel anything but relaxed. “Just rest. I’ll be back in a bit.”

 He nods, head giving in halfway to the bliss of unconsciousness that keeps calling out to him.

  When Jake dreams, it’s in watercolor scenes with vague, delayed sounds. He’s been dreaming like this since he was fifteen and took his first dose of prescribed medicine.

 It’s never really bothered him— the fact that such dreams and their odd shapes continued to exist long after he stopped taking his medication. If anything, he can no longer imagine himself dreaming any other way.

 Tonight, his dreams consist of caramel-colored smears. Down the spine of the pooling stain that resembles the shape of a stag, there’s a thin string of silver. For a second, Jake thinks that six wings will sprout from this string— but at the end, there is a thick shape that curves outwards towards his hands.

 He tugs on it, the string splitting in two like yarn that’s been peeled apart. The pool of the stag begins to separate just like the string, a resounding tug of interlocking metal coming apart in his hands.

 Beneath the cloak of the stag, there are big teeth and bigger hands. Clear, radiant eyes that stare at Jake with something like fascination. It’s no different from the look he’d given the deer in his backyard— a sick fascination that bleeds into the absurdity of his movements. He almost mistakes this look for his own reflection, if not for the plum-colored locks that drape down like the curtains on his bedroom window.

 Heeseung moves a little closer, body jittery and mouth spasming like it’s straining itself to retain the shape of his smile. Each step he takes causes the silhouette of the stag’s suit to sag more and more until it’s falling off of his body. He presses his forehead to Jake’s, and a second later there is the sound of their skin meeting.

 Jake doesn’t feel afraid; not like he thought he would. In place of his expected anxiety, there’s only the empty, distant notion that he’d held the deer in this same manner. A palm running through blood-covered locks, mouth forming words he can barely hear through the dull bell ringing.

 There’s a blinding light, and the crackle of someone’s bones— and Jake is still not afraid.

  “Had a good nap?” Heeseung asks, propping his pinky finger on the table so he can set the mug onto its coaster without making a sound. The movement is so graceful despite his long limbs. Jake admits that he stares at his hands for what he’d consider to be a little too long. “I guess you did, considering you look so out of it. Jaeyun-ah, come back to me.”

 The sound of his name causes Jake to glance upwards, finding the large smile he’s quickly becoming familiar with. Heeseung sinks back into the cushions like he belongs there, body married to the atoms of the couch. He looks so at ease that Jake could almost convince himself the house belongs to the older man rather than to him.

 “There you are,” Heeseung says. It sounds deep and full of undeserved adoration.

 “Thanks for the tea,” Jake mumbles, reaching out to the mug. It’s warm when he touches it, but not hot. Just how he likes it. “I…I’m sorry I passed out.”

 “It’s alright. I’m sure you’re just happy to be back home, right?”

 He nods, sipping on the dark liquid in the mug. “You can leave now, if you want. Um. I’m sorry for keeping you.”

 “Oh, that’s not a problem at all,” Heeseung laughs. “No, I— I’m actually happy to be here and help you out. I also live alone, so…not like anyone is expecting me to come home, you know?”

 “Yeah. But it’s probably late by now…” He glances over at the clock, frowning to himself. It’s already one in the morning? How long was I out? “Shit, I had no idea that so much time passed! I’m so sorry, Hyung, you can—”

 “I don’t mind staying the night,” the older man abruptly suggests. “I mean, if it’s okay with you, of course. I can take the couch.”

 “What?”

 “It’s raining outside pretty hard.” Heeseung points to the glass sliding door covered in raindrops. The soft pitter-patter of the downpour makes Jake’s face screw up in a confused expression. He hadn’t heard that until just now. “And in case you don’t remember, I don’t have a car to get home in. I drove yours here.”

 “Oh, yeah. You’re right.” Jake tips forward a little too far, forehead pressed against a folded knee. He nods into it sluggishly, eyes focusing on the stitch marks in his cushions. “You can stay the night, I guess. It’s my fault you’re stuck here anyway.”

 “I told you, I’m happy to be here. I just don’t want you to feel like I’m trying to force myself into your personal space.”

 “It’s fine,” Jake shakes his head. When he glances up at Heeseung, the elder is wearing a strange expression that’s hard to make sense of. “I don’t think you’re, like, imposing or anything. It’s just been…a really weird couple of days for me. And I’m not used to company.”

 Heeseung nods in understanding at that, sliding further down the couch by an inch or two until he’s practically lying across it. “I won’t cause you any trouble. I’ll just crash here on the couch until the morning comes— or the rain lets up, whatever happens first. Then I’ll go home.”

 “You can stay until tomorrow morning,” Jake hums. “I don’t mind that much. It’d be better for you to leave when it isn’t dark.”

 “Alright. Tomorrow morning it is.”

 “Then…” Jake rises from the couch, staring down at Heeseung’s crystal clear eyes. There’s something so entrancing about them— he almost doesn’t want to look away. “Goodnight, Heeseung-hyung.”

 Those eyes flutter back at him, as if pleased by the sound of his own name.

 “Goodnight, Jaeyun-ah.”

   “Hey, look at me. It’s okay. You just need to breathe. Focus on your breathing.”

 “Jakey? Do you know where you are?”

 “How many fingers am I holding up?”

 “Seriously? That’s— come on Jay-yah. He’s conscious.”

 “And? That doesn’t mean he’s aware of his surroundings. You just asked him where he is.”

  Jake blinks awake to the sight of the digital clock on his bedside table. It’s half past four in the morning, which means he hasn’t been asleep for very long.

 The curtain draped over his window flutters back and forth from the night air’s breeze, creating the only sound in the room aside from his oscillating fan in the corner. He hadn’t noticed he left it cracked open.

 Slowly, his eyes adjust to the familiar walls of his bedroom— his desk, his bookshelf, his closet door. The small whirring of the black fan gets louder just to quiet repeatedly. He tucks himself further into his sheets, eyes going to the doorway.

 It’s wide open. He doesn’t remember leaving it wide open.

 There’s the creak of old wood— floorboards pushed upon at their pressure points, like someone’s been walking about. For a second, Jake forgets entirely that there’s another person in the house. It’s just him and the open window; the open door.

 Twin surges of relief and discomfort intertwine in his stomach when he sees the silhouette leaning against his door frame. The old wood gives the slightest bit to the older man’s arm, pressing into it with the length of skin from his elbow up to his wrist. Jake blinks in the darkness, trying to get ahold of any other features aside from the eyes that are staring at him.

 He shrinks a little smaller, wondering if Heeseung had woken him up by opening his bedroom door in the first place. But if that were the case, then wouldn’t he have been standing there already, rather than appearing like a shadow around the corner? “Hyung? Is everything alright?”

 The other man doesn’t say anything, instead coming into the room slowly and silently. The only source of light is the singular moonbeam bleeding through the open window, but it’s not enough to illuminate much more of Heeseung’s silhouette besides the broad stretch of his shoulders and the arching of his neck. Jake barely catches his eyes in the dark— his pupils a mile wide, creating a thin rim out of the caramel color he’d become acquainted with on the couch.

 It almost looks… inhuman.

 “Hyung?” He tries again, fingers curling into his bedsheets. “Did you need something?”

 Heeseung blinks then, the light in his eyes flashing like an outcry in morse code— S, O, S— before they look at Jake through the dazzling silence, suddenly as normal as they’d been a few hours ago.

 “Sorry, I just heard a noise from downstairs,” the older man licks his lips when he speaks. “It sounded like you were…crying. Or whimpering. Were you having a nightmare?”

 “Oh.” Jake sits upright, making enough space for Heeseung to sit at the edge of the mattress. “Was I loud?”

 “I thought you were screaming at first, but when I came up, it sounded more like you were sobbing.”

 “I’m okay,” he nods. “It was probably a nightmare, but I don’t remember it. I’m sorry for scaring you.”

 “It’s alright,” he hums. “I’m just glad you’re okay. I was a little shocked, to be honest.”

 “Did I wake you up with my noise?”

 “Ah, no…I was having trouble falling asleep, anyway.”

 Jake frowns at that, pushing a pillow into his lap so he can knead at it like a nervous animal. “I get that. Whenever I’m somewhere new, I can’t fall asleep.”

 “No? Is it because you’re too afraid to fall asleep?”

 “...Something like that.”

 Heeseung doesn’t pry anymore than that, but he does press his fingers into the sheets like he’s trying to make an indentation. The silence that settles over them is a lot more peaceful than it is awkward, though Jake has to bite his tongue more than once to prevent himself from instinctually apologizing a second time anyway.

 After a few seconds of watching his hands press into the sheets, Jake musters up enough courage to ask the question that’s been rolling around inside his brain since Heeseung drove him home.

 “Why did you offer to drive?”

 Heeseung’s hand stops at that. “Hm?”

 “You said it yourself— I was shaking really badly, and my car reeked of blood. Those things alone are suspicious, if not terrifying, so…why did you offer to drive me home?”

 “You’re asking me why I trusted you, right? Enough to want to help you?”

 He nods once, head barely bobbing before he tucks his chin back towards his chest in shame.

 “You just…seemed genuine,” Heeseung shrugs. “You were very obviously afraid, and you looked small. You couldn’t have hurt me then even if you tried; not with how bad you were shaking.”

 “But I could’ve been a murderer.”

 “And you could’ve been a nervous, scared person trying to get home.” He outstretches his hand, palm facing upwards like he wants Jake to give him something. “Which you were.”

 He ignores the fact that his ears are burning. “Why do you go out running at night?”

 “I like the world better when it’s quiet, and there’s less of a chance I’ll get hit by a car since I go running in a mostly deserted area.”

 Jake gets a vivid flash of the deer’s carcass— bright in its colors, though dark in the night. Pleading eyes, a wounded sound, so much blood that his hands are caked in it.

 He breathes out through his nose, trying not to vomit.

 “Sorry,” Heeseung says immediately, as if sensing the sudden shift in the air between them. “I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

 “It’s okay. It’s not— You have a point in saying that. I just think it’s more dangerous to go out when it’s dark, as opposed to broad daylight. At least, if something were to happen to you, then…”

 “Someone would be more likely to find my body?”

 Again, like a repeated blow to his cranium, Jake sees another snapshot of the deer. Its head is craned upwards towards him in his rearview mirror, as if asking for help. Asking for company.

 Asking to not die alone.

 “You must have a lot of compassion for others.” Heeseung continues. “I think that’s also part of the reason I agreed to help you. You seem like a very kind hearted person.”

 “I don’t think I’m compassionate,” Jake snorts. “Just a bit paranoid.”

 “No, if you were only paranoid, then you wouldn’t have cared about the deer.”

 His head snaps up so quickly that it almost feels like his neck is going to break from the forceful movement. It’s easy to ignore the twinge of pain when he’s met with such knowing eyes.

 “I never said I cared about the deer.”

 “But you did, right? Why else would you have blood-stained clothes in your trunk? You must’ve been there when the deer was dying.”

 Jake feels like he’s admitting to a hidden secret he was supposed to take with him to the grave. “I just… I didn’t want him to die all by himself.”

 “He didn’t.” Heeseung’s touch is comforting when he places it on top of Jake’s curled fist. “You seem like a very warm soul, Jaeyun. I’m sure he didn’t die alone; not if you were the one who was there with him.”

  In the morning, Heeseung bids Jake goodbye with little more than a small nod and a soft ‘let’s keep in touch, yeah?’ He disappears the same way he’d come into Jake’s life— a blurred figure barely passing through the lining of the trees.

 Five days later, Jake is able to drive his car entirely up and down the length of his commute. He’d cleaned out the bloody clothes and the stain in his doorway. By all accounts, his life is exactly the same as it was before.

 Except—

 “You said you wouldn’t pack up and leave Tokyo for me!”

 “I’m not!” Sunghoon’s frown is apparent even over the line, his words downturned in both tone and enunciation. “I’m really not. We wrapped up the final details and my boss told me last weekend I was free to go back home and take some time off. I just…didn’t tell you anything then because I knew you would act all paranoid about the timing.”

 “I’m not paranoid.” Ah, the irony. “I just don’t understand why you’re coming back so soon.”

 “What, you didn’t miss me?”

 He huffs, tossing the last dish in his sink into the dishwasher. He closes it with his knee, twisting around until his lower back is settled against the countertop. “You know that’s not the problem here.”

 “There isn’t a problem, dude. You’re just being fussy.”

 “I’m not fussy. It’s not like I’m some child who needs to be placated.”

 “So then why are you freaking out about me coming home? I look forward to hanging out with you, or whatever.”

  “Or whatever,” Jake snorts. “...I do too. I just— I don’t know, I don’t like how abrupt you’re being about it. It feels like you’re hiding something from me.”

 “I told you why I waited. You were already really on edge because of whatever’s been going on with you in the past two weeks; I wasn’t about to add to that.”

 “Nothing’s going on,” he lies. “I was just tired. I relaxed a bit and now I’m fine.”

 “For sure. So that means it’s a good time to come home and hang out, right?”

 He pouts. Sunghoon does have a point— the timing, albeit odd, has its reasonings for being delayed. He’s much better now than he was a week ago, and he has missed Sunghoon a lot, within reason.

 But when he thinks about what it’ll really be like, sitting in front of him, putting a wide smile on and acting like everything’s fine— it seems a lot less simple up close than it does from a distance. Sunghoon is a phone screen away, which gives Jake time. Time he doesn’t get when they’re face to face around the edges of a booth, gnawing away on fries, telling each other things that would be better off dead on the side of the road somewhere.

 It’s the same problem he faced all those years ago: He’s terrible about keeping secrets, and even though all of the traces are gone— the blood, the dirt, the body— it still lingers like a parasite gnawing at his insides.

 “Yeah,” he breathes out. “That’s fine.”

 His phone buzzes during the call— a message popping up despite the fact that Sunghoon is one of the only people who’d ever message him, and he’s already on the other end of the line.

 “What was that?” Sunghoon asks curiously, shuffling around his room again to do god knows what. “Don’t hang up on me.”

 “It was one time,” Jake grunts. He looks down at the unknown number, clicking the notification out of pure habit.

Unknown: Hi

Unknown: This is Heeseung

Unknown: We met the other day? Not sure if you remember me

 He blinks.

  When did I give him my number?

Hey Heeseung

I do remember you dont worry

How did you get my number ??

 “Jake?”

 “Hm? Oh. It was a text message.”

 “From who?”

Unknown: What do you mean? You told me your number before you left

Unknown: I guess you don’t remember giving it to me. It was pretty early and you looked half-asleep anyway.

Unknown: Sorry if I scared you

 Jake blinks again, almost like he can softly reset his brain on the memory of Heeseung’s departure. He does remember the older man saying that should stay in touch— but he also remembers them sharing little more than a wave before he jogged off.

 Maybe his memory is a lot worse for wear than he originally thought.

 “Jake? Who is it?”

 “This guy I met recently,” he swallows. “One of my neighbors.”

 “Aren’t the houses out there like entire worlds apart? How did you even meet one of your neighbors?”

 “Don’t exaggerate.” He clicks his tongue in disapproval, even though he knows Sunghoon isn’t completely exaggerating. “He was going on a nightly run in the area. I happened to see him when I was commuting home. He’s really nice.”

 “Nightly run? Who the hell runs at night?”

Unknown: Are you upset that I texted you out of the blue?

No im not upset

Just curious if anything

Unknown: About what?

Why did you take so long to text me if i gave you my number?

  Is that rude to ask?

Unknown: Well, you don’t even remember giving me your number, for one

Unknown: But also, I was the only one to say we should stay in touch

Unknown: That doesn’t mean you’d also want to. I thought it was best to give you space for a bit before I started trying to talk to you again.

Unknown: You’ve been going through a lot lately, so I thought it’d be more considerate to keep my distance rather than try and bombard you

Unknown: I told you. I don’t want to force myself into your personal space.

 Huh. Heeseung was actually…surprisingly kind. Almost unbearably so.

 “I thought it was weird too,” he answers once he realizes Sunghoon’s still on the phone. “But he doesn’t like being out during the day since it’s a lot busier and there’s generally more noise. He prefers his quiet time, I guess.”

 “I get that,” Sunghoon hums. “So, what’s he like?”

 “He’s…nice.”

 “Nice?”

Thats actually really thoughtful of you

Now i kind of feel like an asshole for asking you that

Unknown: It’s okay

Unknown: It’s not like it’s unjustified

Unknown: I just don’t want you to think that I’m someone who does this sort of thing out of the blue purely because I want to

I dont think that

Youre really nice

Unknown: You may not believe this, but you’re much nicer than I could ever be

Unknown: It’s part of the reason I wanted to stay in touch 🙂

 “Yeah, like… He seems like a good guy, I guess? I don’t know.”

 “The last time you said that about someone, I found you in a closet with him during Biology class.”

 Jake makes an undignified sound, which prompts Sunghoon to laugh that ridiculous laugh of his— monotonous but unrelenting, poking at all of Jake’s senses.

 “That’s not what I meant! He’s just a nice guy who seems really thoughtful. I couldn’t even call him a friend.”

 “You don’t need to call him a friend to fuck him,” Sunghoon reasons. Jake is grateful he’s still in an entirely different country right now, otherwise he’d have strangled him with the nearest appliance cord in his kitchen. “But alright, whatever you say.”

 “What I’m saying is that he seems like a good person, and maybe, over time, I could become friendly with him on a platonic level. I would never get sexually involved with my neighbors. They know where I live.”

 “So does any date you let walk you home,” the younger mumbles. Jake rolls his eyes.

 “Whatever. My point still stands.”

 “As does mine. Will I get to meet Mr. Neighbor when I get back?”

 “Sunghoon-ah. At this rate, you’ll be lucky if I let you meet anyone.”

 “Ouch.”

Not really sure what i did to convince you that im a nice person

but i’m grateful? you think that of me anyway

Heeseung: I think sometimes you can just tell with people

Heeseung: Like with their eyes or their touch

Heeseung: In your case, both were kind and gentle

 Jake isn’t sure how to take the compliment. Is it even a compliment? It is, right?

Oh

Thank you

So are yours

Is that weird to say haha

Heeseung: I don’t think so

Heeseung: But you think my eyes and my touch are gentle?

Heeseung: I’m honored

 He doesn’t know where else to go with the conversation, so he chooses to exit the messaging app altogether. Worst case scenario, he’ll leave Heeseung’s text unanswered until he can think of a new topic to smooth the awkward silence over.

 “Anyways, I’ll see you tomorrow?” Sunghoon yawns directly into his phone, the sound so loud that Jake has to forcibly remove the device from his ear. He chuckles. “Sorry. Tired from packing.”

 “Yeah, yeah. Do you want me to go pick you up from the airport?”

 “No worries. Jay’s got that covered.”

 “Right,” Jake smiles knowingly. “You two gonna sit in awkward silence for a couple of hours instead of talking about your very obvious feelings?”

 “I was actually thinking we could get a meal together. It’s a lot easier to avoid telling someone you want to pin them down to the nearest flat surface when you’re stuffing your face.”

 “I really don’t need to know all of that,” he grimaces.

 “And yet you still started it! But you should come out with us. Mediate the unchecked tension for old time’s sake?”

 “We’ll see.”

 “So that’s a yes?”

 “It’s a we’ll see, Hoon-ah. Go to bed.”

 “‘Kay,” Sunghoon yawns again, but far less loud. “Love you, Jakey.”

 Jake resists the urge to grin wide. “Yeah, love you too.”

Heeseung: I know it’s almost one in the morning, but would you like to meet up?

Heeseung: If you’re still awake, that is

What?

What are we even going to be doing at 1 am

Heeseung: There’s this really pretty lake nearby

Heeseung: It kind of looks like glass at this hour. I go there when I want to relax and enjoy the end of my night.

Heeseung: You don’t have to, I just wanted to show it to you.

does it have to be at this hour?

we’re not kids

You have a job you need to be at later, right?

Heeseung: I work from home, actually

…that makes a lot more sense

Heeseung: If you don’t want to, that’s perfectly fine

Heeseung: You can obviously say no

Heeseung: I just wanted to know if maybe you would like to get away from your life, at least for a little while

Heeseung: It’s a good place to escape your body.

Heeseung: Very healing, I mean

okk well youre damn good at tempting me

Heeseung: That’s the goal

Heeseung: So?

Youd be fully responsible for any sleep deprivation i have

Heeseung: Noted.

Meet me outside my house in 20?

Heeseung: I’ll be there in fifteen.

  “Do you regularly invite people out to your little glass lake in the dead of night, or…?”

 “I don’t have anyone to invite,” Heeseung laughs. “But even if I did, I definitely wouldn’t make a habit of it. I just thought you’d appreciate the sight.”

 “What if I was asleep?”

 “Well, you weren’t, so.”

 Jake huffs, but follows Heeseung into the depths of the forest. They climb over fallen logs and push past thick shrubs, the petrichor of the night wafting through with the soft breeze. Jake shivers once or twice, but it isn’t anything to groan about, so he keeps it to himself.

 “How’d you even come across this place, anyway? I regularly go fishing and even I haven’t walked this far out.”

 “Every now and then, when I’m on my runs, I’ll take a new path to see if I can find any useful shortcuts.” Heeseung offers him a hand over a particularly uneven patch of soil, careful to not let him fall and twist his ankles. “It’s also nice to just wander around and get a little lost, sometimes.”

 “You don’t ever worry about being unable to find your way back?”

 “I’m pretty good about this kind of stuff,” he shakes his head. “Even when I’ve gotten really lost, I always find my way back home. You could call it a natural instinct, I guess.”

 “Lucky you…”

 Heeseung doesn’t say anything in response to his small mumble, though he does tug on his hand the rest of the way. Jake notes that the bigger, calloused palm is rather cold— it reminds him of holding Sunghoon’s hand on the way home from the ice rink when they were kids, swinging their fingers back and forth as he tried to share some of his body heat to the younger.

 “Your hands are really warm,” Heeseung voices aloud. Jake tries— and fails— to bite back his lopsided, amused grin.

 “Yours are cold, so I guess we’re even.”

 “I guess so.”

 “Do you always…”

 Heeseung’s bright eyes glance back at him with such care. “Hm?”

  Do you always do this kind of thing with strangers? Be so kind to them? Hold their hand and comment on the temperature of it?

 Jake thinks asking a glorified stranger these sorts of questions would only be overstepping his boundaries, so instead, he shakes his head and squeezes the palm in his slightly. “No, never mind. It’s nothing.”

 “It’s not that far from here,” Heeseung grins. It’s equally as lopsided as Jake’s. “Maybe…a five minute walk? Ten? It’s really hard to miss.”

 Jake doesn’t comment on Heeseung’s excited nature— he finds it rather endearing, so instead he nods with a soft smile and allows himself to be dragged along. He can’t say he’s ever had someone so interested in sharing something with him before; definitely not someone as beautiful as Heeseung, with wide eyes and a too-big smile. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t somewhere between honored and flattered.

 When they come across the lake, Jake finds that Heeseung’s all too right. The water looks like a mirror— as clear as the eyes Jake’s been seeing in his dreams, unmoving and at peace.

 “Beautiful,” he breathes out. It escapes his lungs in a terribly long breath that sounds more like he’s sighing to himself wistfully. “It’s beautiful.”

 “It is, isn’t it?”

 When Jake glances over at Heeseung, he’s already looking back at him. The man smiles, settling by the side of the water and prompting Jake to do the same. They both huddle into a little pile on the dirt, watching the water as it watches them in return.

 “I don’t think I’ve ever seen water like this.” He almost wants to reach out to it— to disrupt the perfect illusion of its reflection. He tucks his arm around his knees instead, fisting at the fabric of his denim jeans. “So…unreal. Like something you see in a dream.”

 “I knew you’d be able to appreciate it,” Heeseung hums. “It’s really fascinating, isn’t it?”

 Jake nods at that, though the question continues to gnaw at him. Like the fabric between his fingertips, the curiosity gets crumpled in his heart and becomes impossible to smooth out. “Why me?”

 “What do you mean?”

 “I mean— Why show me this? You don’t even know me. We’re basically strangers.”

 “Yeah, but you’re my neighbor. And you’re kind.”

 “You keep saying that.” Jake sighs to himself, arm slumping down along with the rest of his body as he collapses back-first onto the dirt. “I don’t understand.”

 “...Do you not like it?” Heeseung’s tone wobbles, as if riddled with anxiety. At that, Jake spares him a passing glance— finds those beautiful eyes blown wide again, mouth shaping itself around unspoken words that come out in stuttered breaths.

 “I do like it,” he denies. “I do. I just don’t get why you’re so— like this. Talking like you know me and showing me things at one in the morning. What are we even doing? What am I doing?”

 “You’re sitting on the dirt with me,” the elder provides flatly, almost unhelpfully so. Jake nearly barks back a whine, but it falls silent when he sees those eyes narrowing at him. “I don’t know what you think we’re doing, but I’m sharing something with you because I want to. Because I might not know you, but I want to. Don’t you want to know me too?”

 “You’re my neighbor.”

 “I could be a friend,” Heeseung mumbles. He lies beside Jake in the dirt, glowing with his lopsided grin and his iridescent skin. “I could be more than a friend.”

  “Hyung.”

 “You could say no,” he shrugs. “You could. We could pretend I never said that. Or you could see where it goes. I won’t push you in any certain direction.”

 With a short laugh, Jake settles a little closer. “So your glass lake was just a way to seduce me?”

 “Not really. I did want to show you the lake and maybe…talk about things. Our lives, or whatever you wanted to talk about. In my head I would— I would get closer to you little by little. Until I was wedged between your bones and you would find yourself in me.”

 “Oh.” Jake isn’t sure if it’s a unique form of foreplay, or if Heeseung really means what he’s saying. Either way, it doesn’t deter him from nodding. “That’s a good plan. I like that plan.”

 “Yeah?” One of Heeseung’s cold hands thumbs the waistband of his jeans. “We could still do that, if you’re interested.”

 His voice is so quiet it’s little more than the air in his lungs. “Would it be cliché of me to ask you to tell me about yourself?”

 “Very,” Heeseung laughs. “But I don’t mind. There isn’t a lot to tell, honestly. I just enjoy being in nature, and on days where I’m not outside, I like taking naps on my couch and playing games.”

 “You’re a very active person, aren’t you?”

 “Not really.” His hand moves a little further along the waistband, splaying itself out from thumb to pinky across his hip. “Most of my runs are really just light walks through the woods. I only run if I really feel like I need to.”

 “Like when you need the exercise?”

 “Mm.”

 “Do you have any other hobbies?”

 Heeseung thinks for a while, toying with the hem of Jake’s jacket before nodding slowly to himself. For a second, Jake isn’t entirely sure the nod is meant for him, because Heeseung looks so lost in thought that it almost feels like a mindless movement. He doesn’t pay attention to much of anything until his wide eyes abruptly flick up, smiling as bright as a torch with all of his moonlit teeth on display.

 “I’m not good at it, but I like to make friends.”

 “Yeah? Like ones who are having breakdowns in their car?”

 He laughs at that— full-bodied and joyous, his nose scrunching up. Jake thinks the sight is nothing short of beautiful.

 “I can’t say that happens a lot. You’re special.”

 “I’m honored,” he snorts. “But— seriously, thank you for that. I needed your help a lot more than I probably thought I did.”

 “I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. I was happy to help you.”

 “Despite me being a total stranger, with a—”

 “A car smelling of blood, shaking furiously. Yeah. I understood what you were going through, so I wasn’t going to question it.”

 “How’d you know?” Jake twists onto his side, tucking an arm beneath his head. The movement muffles a bit of the sound surrounding him, but all he’s focused on is Heeseung’s delicate voice anyway. “I mean, aside from you taking a chance on me for being genuine— you didn’t seem concerned in the slightest that I was on drugs, or even running off of an adrenaline crash. You also pieced the… the deer thing together rather quickly.”

 Heeseung moves to mirror his position, a reflection before the light sheen of the still water. He purses his lips in careful thought before raising his arm further up beneath his head.

 “You want to know the truth?”

 “Yeah,” Jake breathes.

 “I saw you. That night, with the deer. I was on my run and I— I saw you. I saw you comforting the deer while it was dying. I watched it happen.”

 Jake feels like he stripped himself of his own skin and ran soul-first into the water at his feet. He flops onto his back, palms shaking where they come to lie atop his spasming chest.

 “What?”

 “I didn’t want to disturb you,” he swallows. “I couldn’t help you. I knew I couldn’t. I felt very…helpless. Just watching you be kind to the deer, trying to ease him into death—”

 “I didn’t do anything,” Jake blurts out. “I couldn’t even save him. I just— I was useless, too, I couldn’t do anything so I sat there like a coward and—”

 “No. No, Jaeyun-ah. Don’t say that. You were the best person who could’ve been there at that moment. You were kind and you were good. You took care of him. I saw that with my own eyes and I felt it. I saw when you put your jacket on top of him. If you were useless, you wouldn’t have made him feel so warm.”

 Jake doesn’t realize he’s crying until it gets too hard to breathe on his back. “You’re just saying that.”

 “I’m not.” Heeseung moves closer, nuzzling into the side of his jaw. His nose is wet. “If I were that deer, do you know how I would’ve felt? I would’ve felt loved and cared for. I would’ve been grateful to you, even in death.”

 In a soft whisper, Jake admits what lies on his heart with the most weight. “But I still couldn’t save him.”

 Heeseung’s voice is softer. The night’s breeze, the soft sigh of the earth, the slosh of still water. All of it within that gentle voice; within those bright, opalescent eyes. “It wasn’t your job to.”

 In a patch of soil that’ll stain his clothing for weeks, Jake lets Heeseung invade all of his senses. Lips that turn into tongue. A tongue that turns into teasing hands. Beside a lake he’s never seen before and will never see again, Jake lets Heeseung dip his fingers beneath his waistband and shove his tongue down his throat.

 It should scare him, how a simple touch to the quivering skin of his hip silences all of the fear and guilt inside of him. Instead, it excites him more than words. He pushes himself further into Heeseung’s inviting body. Says with each twitch and whimper: Take more, more.

 And Heeseung, like the night, listens.

  “I have a friend who’s coming back into town today,” Jake slurs out into the silence.

 They’re curled up in his bed together, freshly bathed and smelling of the same old citrus body wash he’s been buying repeatedly for the past few years. His thighs tremble a bit whenever he moves around in between the sheets, but his lower back has been spared. Heeseung had said he didn’t want to go the full way on a forest floor in the dead of night, and Jake, though somewhat disappointed, agreed easily. After the longest, most agonizing (if only because of the relentless teasing) handjob of his life, Jake rode his post-orgasm high up to his front door and even in the shower. He doesn’t remember much aside from Heeseung’s gentle hands, his voice, his smile. He could guide Jake like a doll as much as he likes if it means he’ll shake his bones down with that devouring pleasure again soon.

 “That’s exciting,” Heeseung murmurs. He presses a chaste kiss to the side of Jake’s wet mouth. He isn’t sure if he’s been slobbering or not. “Are you looking forward to seeing them?”

 “Mm.” He nods, albeit incredibly delayed in response, before letting his open mouth press against the soft fabric of his pillow. He doesn’t remember his bed ever being this comfortable before. “He’s my best friend.”

 “Oh, really? Then I bet you’ll be extremely excited to do things together again.”

 Maybe it’s because he’s half-asleep. Maybe it’s because Heeseung just gave him the best orgasm of his life. Whatever the reason, he doesn’t stop his definitely slobbering mouth from spouting the next few words out.

 “He wants to meet you.”

 “...He does?”

 Jake nods again, his eyes closed. “He wants to meet you. I didn’t say yes, but if you want to. Then okay.”

 “Okay,” Heeseung repeats, sounding amused. He leans down again, licking up some of the spit pouring out of Jake’s mouth like he’s getting water from a trough. “Sounds good to me.”

 “We’re going out for lunch…” He shuffles a little closer, suddenly cold. Gentle fingers thumb the remaining saliva away from the corner of his mouth, and his head is buried into the soft dark of what he thinks might be Heeseung’s chest. “Today…”

 “Lunch. Today,” He feels Heeseung nod against him. “I’ll be there.”

 Jake doesn’t have the energy to say much else, so he merely stuffs his nose into the too-tight shirt he lent Heeseung when he came in. In response, he feels the elder resting his head on top of his, chin digging into his scalp like he intends to hold him there for eternity. Like he’s been doing as much thus far.

 It’s a welcomed feeling.

  “Where are you? You said to meet at one-thirty.”

 “Are you sure you have the right address?” Jay’s voice echoes through the poor quality of his phone’s speaker. Jake double-checks the message Sunghoon had sent to the group chat a few hours before. “There’s a West and there’s an East. You need to make sure you’re on the right one.”

 “Bull,” Sunghoon mumbles, though the sound of him tapping his long fingernails against the table in the background comforts Jake a little bit. At least I’m not the only one feeling antsy. “I’ll just share my location with you.”

 “No, it’s— I think I found it?”

 Heeseung tugs on his sleeve, pointing into the direction of a small hole-in-the-wall establishment practically being crushed by the buildings next to it. He frowns.

 “It’s Decelis, right?”

 “Right, you got it. Do you see the entrance?”

 “Yeah, I do. We’re in the right spot. It was just hard to spot because it’s so small.”

 “It’s very well hidden,” Jay hums. “But they make the best meat. Hurry up!”

 Jake doesn’t waste any time getting inside, holding the door open for Heeseung, who mutters out a very shy ‘thank you’ before shuffling inside behind him. He looks out of place here, fingers fidgeting in front of him, and Jake has to remind himself that before this man had shoved his body into his every pore, he’d mentioned his hobbies were mostly secluded affairs in the comforts of his own home or the silent forest.

 “Nervous?” He mouths at him, watching Heeseung nod back once. It’s a jerky movement, punctuated by the half scrunch of his brow. Jake offers him a hand to cling to, which he does tightly. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

 With just a simple thumb to the back of Heeseung’s hand, all of the tension leaves his body. He smiles so wide that Jake almost winces at it— but instead, he squeezes the hand between his, riding the sudden wave of comfort all the way to the table where Jay and Sunghoon are stuck together like they’d been glued that way.

 “Jakey!” Sunghoon darts up first, his cheeks bunching and his eyes turning into crescent mirrors as he goes hands-first into a tight hug. Jake doesn’t waste a second reciprocating, happy to smell the familiar oriental scent clinging to his clothing. “I missed you so much.”

 “I missed you too,” Jake’s muffled voice barely sings out into his shoulder. It sounds more like a soft sob atop the leather of Sunghoon’s jacket, but the younger man doesn't seem to mind. He clings to him tighter anyway, rubbing a soothing hand up and down his back like he’s been doing since middle school. “It’s good to have you back.”

 “It’s good to be back,” Sunghoon hums. In a quieter voice, he nuzzles his nose right next to Jake’s ear. “Is that Mr. Neighbor? He’s staring holes into my head.”

 “What?”

 “He looks like he’s gonna stab me with the knife in my napkin,” he continues. The younger pulls back then, tapping his shoulders with a bright smile. In an almost comically loud voice, he says: “I’m really so happy to see you! Who’s your friend?”

 “Oh, this is—” He glances at Heeseung helplessly, wondering what he’s supposed to say now. Last night, Heeseung had jerked him off for upwards an hour on the cold dirt floor. He licked the saliva from the side of Jake’s mouth. He held him tight and nuzzled his chin into the crown of his head like he belonged there; as if he’d been doing that for years.

 So what does he call him now?

 “I’m Heeseung,” he smiles then, offering his hand out to Sunghoon. “A neighbor of Jaeyunie’s.”

  “Jaeyunie?” Jay asks, more so into his cup than outright. Heeseung’s mouth still twitches in response.

 “Nice to meet you,” Sunghoon grips the hand offered to him. “I’m Park Sunghoon. Jakey’s friend since we were kids. It’s good to know he’s branching out and meeting new people.”

 “It’s good to be one of the new people he’s met,” Heeseung laughs. Jay sips harder at whatever drink is darkening the color of his fogged glass. Jake doesn’t waste time sitting down on the opposite side of him, fingers tugged up into a knot on the table’s surface. “He’s told me a lot about you.”

  No I haven’t. You didn’t even know he existed until last night.

 Sunghoon’s mouth is the one to twitch, then. Jake wonders if they’re speaking a language he isn’t meant to understand. Something he could never be fluent in if it meant staring someone else in the eye and saying whatever was building up behind their teeth. “All good things?”

  “Great things,” Heeseung nods. There’s a smug murmur of ‘checkmate’ somewhere in the fine print of their words, but Jake’s so busy trying to decipher the surface code that he can’t even begin to dig into the implied dialogue between the lines. In the end, he and Jay share twin looks of confusion, well aware that they’re both as much a part of the conversation as they are mere spectators to it.

 “Should we sit? Order our food?” Sunghoon’s the first to pull his hand away, and Heeseung’s smile is plastered on so wide that Jake momentarily forgets that’s just how he naturally looks. In place of that passive knowledge is the sudden primal fear of the unknown— a dog with its tail held high, barking into the dark of the corridor at every little creak. The feeling doesn’t go away until he licks his lips, mouth shrinking a tad and hiding a few more of those unsettlingly perfect teeth.

 “Do you like steak?” Jay decides to ask first, letting Sunghoon sink back into his side like he can hide him that way. Jake’s almost grateful for it. “The steak here is great, as is any other meat on the menu.”

 “I’m a vegetarian,” Heeseung says flatly. It’s without all of the warmth Jake has grown accustomed to, shocking him back into his senses. The Heeseung sitting beside him now is almost… off. Like a caricature of the man he met a few days ago. He supposes it shouldn’t surprise him that he doesn’t actively know much about the elder, but a bit of his heart still clenches in discomfort at being faced with it.

 “Their salads are good too!” Jay scrambles. He points helplessly around the menu at shades of green. It’s a blur Jake honestly doesn’t pay much mind to aside from the fact that Jay’s beginning to ramble. “If you don’t like salad, there’s a few vegan alternatives— not sure if you appreciate that or not, I mean, I know vegans and vegetarians aren’t the same thing—”

  “Jay-ssi.” Heeseung’s palm closes the menu abruptly, his smile still painted on. “I can figure it out on my own, but I appreciate the help.”

 Jay looks a little dazed, but he nods wordlessly in agreement, handing the menu off the elder.

 Jake doesn’t remember telling him Jay’s name.

  Lunch goes off without a hitch. Despite his awkward introduction, Heeseung fits in seamlessly with his friends. Jake is almost surprised— the way he smooths out at the edges, lips curved up charmingly, laughing at the little jokes Sunghoon cracks and delving into deep conversation with Jay about a plethora of things. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think they were the trio who’s been attached at the hip for years now, and he was the fourth-wheel.

 Of course, his fly-on-the-wall role at the table doesn’t last very long. Heeseung makes sure to drag him close, a hand settling around his waist, grinning from ear to ear as he spews on and on about random things. He invites Jake into the most ridiculous and irrelevant anecdotes, pleased when the younger chimes in with whatever he finds will fit in place of a proper response. By the hour mark, Jake’s spilled more of his laughable thoughts than he’s allowed himself to say since high school.

 It’s…a bit refreshing, if he’s honest. He hasn’t had someone weigh in on such useless feelings since he was practically a child, and that person is the one sitting across from him with a fang-like smile gnawing on a fry.

 “You two look good together,” Sunghoon comments lightly, eyes darting across from either face. “Actually, you two look alike.”

 “I wasn’t going to say anything about that on my own, but since you’ve said it…” Jay hums, finger flicking from Heeseung to Jake and back again. “He’s right. Did you two notice that?”

 “You think we look alike?” Jake barks out a laugh, unable to stop himself from considering the absurdity of it. Honestly, when he first saw Heeseung, all he could think about were his eyes. His familiar, familiar eyes. The idea that they resembled one another never struck him; not even once. “He and I? Seriously?”

 “Yeah, dude. Look in a mirror.” Jay offers the camera screen on his phone, smirking in that self-satisfied way when he slides it across the table. “You can’t tell me you don’t at least see a resemblance.”

 When Jake turns his head, Heeseung’s starry eyes are already waiting to be met. They’re big and bright— looking at Jake like they’re expecting something he doesn’t know how to give.

 “I kind of see it,” the older mumbles. “How the two of us look similar. But I’ll take that as a compliment, considering I think you’re beautiful.”

 Sunghoon chokes on his cold fry, and Jay’s shocked face darts down to take sudden interest in his plate. Jake flounders for words, the entire party falling silent.

 “Oh.” He says, unintelligent and unrefined. “Um. Thank you. I think you’re beautiful too. And handsome. And— A lot of other things.”

 Heeseung smiles brilliantly, a hand trailing across their cushioned booth seat to discreetly settle over Jake’s thigh. “Thank you. That means a lot coming from you.”

 Sunghoon clears his throat so loudly that he almost sends himself into a coughing fit. He pushes his plate away from him, tapping his fingers against the cool surface of their table anxiously.

 “Should we get out of here?” He asks. “I’ve been sitting for hours because of my trip, so my legs are kind of restless. It’d be nice to go for a walk or something; maybe get some ice cream? You guys interested in that?”

 “Sounds good to me,” Heeseung says, squeezing Jake’s thigh so hard that he can practically feel his fingerprints through the material. “I’d love to.”

 “Cool,” the youngest nods, glancing at Jay. “Get the bill, Jjongsaeng.”

 “Why me?”

 Jake breathes out, trying to settle his heart back into normalcy at the sight of his friends bickering.

 He pointedly ignores the hand rubbing steady circles into the heat of his thighs. Surely that can wait.

  “He’s kind of weird,” Sunghoon says immediately, saddling up beside Jake on the bench as they wait for the older two to get their ice creams. Jake finds it almost comical how Jay had successfully coaxed Heeseung into getting a complicated order— something that very quickly annoyed him once he saw Jake walking off with his popsicle. “Like, the way he sticks to your side and acts territorial over you. Did the two of you go out on a proper date yet, at least?”

 “We’re not dating,” he frowns in careful thought. “I don’t think so, at least.”

 “How do you not know whether or not you’re dating? Hasn’t it only been a week or two since you guys met?”

 “Yeah, but—” He clamps his mouth shut purely out of self-preservation. How does one explain to their friend they got jerked off in the middle of the woods where someone could’ve easily found them? Or worse, they could’ve been discovered by an animal, or something. Jake would not have liked to die with his dick out, and yet in that moment, he was at least a little disappointed that Heeseung didn’t completely defile him on the floor. Seriously, what’s gotten into me?

 “Oh, I know that look.” Sunghoon puts his cup of vanilla ice cream down beside him, taking a deep breath in. “You’re hiding something from me.”

 “I’m not.”

 “But you are.” Heeseung glances over at them then— brows furrowed, almost as if the sight of Jake so far away is putting him on edge. On the surface, Jake can’t help but find it cute. Underneath, though— “I’ve known you for too long. The longer you try to hide it from me, the more you know I’ll pry.”

 “I deserve my own privacy, you know. I don’t have to tell you everything.”

 He doesn’t say it with any bite, truthfully, because there’s nothing to snap his teeth at. The idea that Jay and Sunghoon hover doesn’t make him as angry as it does sad. He knows they feel the same way, too.

 “You don’t. But you can’t continue to avoid it, either. I’m your best friend; I’ll figure it out anyway.”

 “This is why I didn’t want to talk to you one-on-one,” he mumbles. It’s a slip of the tongue; he didn’t mean to say it aloud, even if it was pressing on his esophagus and making it hard to breathe. He tries to suck it in on a rough inhale, but the words are too far out of his mouth for his teeth to snag them back in. He feels Sunghoon’s shift in mood before he sees it in his eyes.

 “What, you really didn’t want to see me?”

 “That’s not what I said.”

 “You said you didn’t want to talk to me, alone.” Sunghoon looks hurt, and Jake feels like a criminal for being the person to hurt him. After everything? A voice in his head clicks its tongue. It almost resembles his mother. You still damage everything you touch.

 “Sunghoon, that’s not—”

 “I know.” Sunghoon takes a deep breath in, hand coming up to rest over his temples. “I know. Just give me a second. Sometimes when you say things in the heat of the moment, they really do cut down to the bone. I know you don’t mean it, but you gotta give me a second to remember that.”

 “I’m sorry.”

 “I don’t want you to apologize, Jake. I just want you to stop pushing me— us— ” He points to Jay, who’s showing Heeseung the character-shaped popsicles on the side of the truck. Jake pretends he doesn’t notice how Heeseung’s barely paying any attention, eyes still flickering towards him like a flame prone to falling in the direction of the wind. “Away. It’s not like we don’t understand that we’re lacking a lot, and sometimes we can do more harm than good. Believe me when I say Jay is anal about it towards me alone. The two of us don’t want to smother you, but you know we care too much to just completely let it go without doing our best. It’s just…hard when you push us away. In the back of our minds— of my mind— I can’t help but think—”

 He swallows, shaking his head. “I just don’t want you to go where I can’t follow.”

 Jake’s known him so long that reading between the lines is about as easy as the next breath he takes to speak.

 “You think I’ll kill myself.”

 Sunghoon swallows roughly, throat making this horrible noise. Jake can’t help but let out a hearty laugh that feels sordid. It’s more so towards the situation than anything Sunghoon’s said, or could ever say.

 In the distance, Heeseung’s shoulders square like he’s going to march over and wring someone by their neck. Jake almost hopes it’s him.

 “I get it,” he nods. “Ultimately, everything you guys think about comes back to that, right? I fucked up our friendship years ago by ending up in the E.R. You can just tell me that.”

 “You didn’t fuck up anything, Jake. That’s not—”

 “Not what? Not the truth? Not what you meant? If you’re going to keep thinking about it, at least tell me.” His popsicle is melting over his fingers, half-eaten and as red as the blood humming underneath his skin. “I guess I knew that, too. Every time you called, or when you got nervous about me— when we went long periods without talking, when I told you I was sick, when I hung up on you— I sort of always knew. You don’t want to be the last person who sees me; who didn’t know. Mr. Choi told me the same thing years ago when I was in counseling; don’t you remember?”

 (“Isn’t it strange that we perceive ourselves as inherent burdens?” Mr. Choi smiles, plump lips spreading wide as he pours Jake a cup of warm tea. It’s the first time he’s ever had any, but the comfort that spreads through his abdomen when he takes a sip makes him think, even if only briefly, that he’ll have some more often. It’s certainly easier to keep down than food. “And yet, we never question why that is, do we? You are brought into this world, owing nothing to no one, and still find enough time in these years to invent a metaphorical weight and its own provisional scale. You create something in your heart; just big enough to house the whole of what you deem to be your sins, but never sturdy enough to give you any respite from them. You never stop to consider that you are always measuring, yet you’re never creating any useful data worth keeping.”

 Jake looks at Mr. Choi, then. Wonders if the older man could ever look him in the eye and see every last bit of the filth that he’s had to carry for so many years. It’s always been the same loop of things from his childhood— Look at me, look at me. Do you see anything worth keeping anyway?

 “You can tell me that the way I view myself is warped,” he replies. It’s calm. The tea he’s made, and the smile he gives— Mr. Choi is warm. Jake doesn’t dislike him. He’s just not saying anything he hasn’t heard before. From the nurses, from the school staff who’d bring him into the faculty office during lunch. From Sunghoon, who’d answered his text message at three in the morning and drove him to the emergency room in a silent panic. Beautiful people, he’s thought of all of them. Terrible circumstances. “I think, to some degree, I also understand that. But I also understand that my view of everything is a little warped. Isn’t that what’s wrong with me? I see things, hear things— live a life that sometimes isn’t there. I know that already. It’s all old, boring news to me now when it’s coming from the mouths of people who don’t know what it’s like.”

 “You do know.” Mr. Choi places his own mug on the table, running a hand over the clipboard in his lap. “I know you do. And I’m not claiming to be another boring old mouth projecting a false understanding of your psyche and the way it’s woven together by your experiences. But it is true in everyone— both those who understand you, and those like me, who can only hope to— that there is a stark difference between knowing your truth and acknowledging it.”

 “I know my truth and I acknowledge it.” He taps on the paper design of his cup. “I am a burden to my friends. If I weren’t, they wouldn’t be so annoyed whenever they answer the phone.”

 He thinks about the first time he dialed Sunghoon’s number after being discharged— thought of the lonesome bedroom walls he stared at when it went to voicemail.

  ‘I thought you died,’ Sunghoon had said only once after Jake woke up from his day-long dream. ‘When I picked you up, you weren’t breathing. So I thought you died. The first thing I thought after that was— How am I going to live without you now?’

 And yet still, he didn’t answer Jake’s phone calls. At school, he would sit across from him and barely look him in the eye whenever he spoke.

 “Have you ever considered that it’s not annoyance that drives them?” Mr. Choi taps his foot against the carpeted floor like he’s timing something. “There is— There are no beautiful ways to say certain things. The reality of another human’s heart can sometimes be upending and cruel. But I think it is okay to allow yourself to believe that even such harshness can be born from love.”

  “Love?” Jake doesn’t laugh in his face. Mr. Choi doesn’t deserve to be laughed at, he thinks. Even if what he’s saying sounds ridiculous. “What’s loving about it?”

 “You’re pertaining to Sunghoon-ssi when you talk about your friends as some nameless, faceless amalgamation. Isn’t that right?”

 Jake says nothing, still tracing the pattern printed onto his cup.

 “You told me once before that the last message he got from you before everything— was you admitting you were going to end your life.” Mr. Choi sucks in a breath like he’s recounting his own story, and not the boy in front of him. “If he loves you with all of his heart— has told you that he cannot imagine going on without you— don’t you suppose that such a memory would stick inside of his soul as strongly as it does in yours?”

 Jake scrapes the cup so harshly that it pills beneath his bitten nails.

 “It is not a burden to love someone, Jaeyun-ssi.” The clock ticks towards the next hour, signaling the end of their time slot. “The scale that you have invented for yourself has no room for anyone else on it but you. There is nothing to be measured, nor weighed and cut down by the fat. There is only what you’ve done, and what the people you love remember of it.”

 When Jake goes home, he opens Sunghoon’s chat.

 The last message he’d sent him stares back at him. He deletes it— wonders if Sunghoon has too, on his end. And then he begins to type something new.)

 “It’s true,” Sunghoon swallows. “It’s true. I don’t want to be the last person who sees you. I don’t want to—” He shakes his head, knees bouncing like they do when he gets particularly nervous. It’s his habit in place of biting his nails. “I don’t want to say goodbye to you like that. To wonder again what it’d be like to live without you. That car ride was the longest of my life, and I thought, for a second, when we were stuck in traffic, and I couldn’t call your mom…” He leans down, the heels of his palms pressing into his eyes. “I was going to veer off the highway and crash the car, so at least we could go together.”

 Jake sucks in a breath. He’s long since dropped the popsicle on the floor, burning under the midday sun like it’s a punishment. “You mean that?”

 Sunghoon nods, once. He breathes out slow and shaky into his hands, trying to keep in the telltale beginnings of a sob.

 “You would really do that, if I died?”

 Another nod.

 “Sunghoon…” He leans over, arm extended outward to tug him in. When he glances up, Heeseung and Jay are completely gone. It doesn’t even cross his mind to look for them. “Sunghoon-ah, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

 “But you could.”

 “But I’m not.”

 “Then why are you hiding things from me?” Sunghoon glances up at him with red-rimmed eyes. The pang in his heart makes him wonder if this is even a sliver of what the younger felt all those years ago. What he felt again in college when Jay was the one lugging him through the doorway of their shitty old dormitory room. “Something’s wrong, and I want to help you, but…you’re not telling me what.”

 Jake breathes in.

 He wants to tell him. He does. But he’s scared that—

 (“Are you still taking your antipsychotics?”

 He nods, picking at the bare skin of his thigh beneath the dinner table. He was hoping she wouldn’t bring it up. “Yeah, mum.”

 “Not seeing anything these days? Blobs? Figures in the corner of your room?”

 He grimaces. “No, mum. That’s not—”

 “Good.” She rests her head in her hands, breathing in like she’s been cured of all her ails. “Bless us, Lord. All I’ve ever wanted is a baby whose hands weren’t held by the Devil.”

 “It isn’t some sort of a curse, mum.” He can’t believe he has to keep telling her this. “It’s not— there’s no Devil here. Never was. It’s just me.”

 “Infected by the Devil, it is.” She leans her palms down on the table, smiling at him. “I know it in my heart. But the Lord has saved you. Maybe this means you’ll be able to find a wife, give me grandchildren—”

 “Mum!” He doesn’t mean to bang the table that hard. He doesn’t mean to shove his plate so hard it falls to the floor and splinters apart like the intricate threads of a spiderweb. He doesn’t mean it. He tells himself he doesn’t.

 But she’s shivering, hands over her heart like she’s scared of her youngest son, and he feels like some sort of monster in front of her.

 He’s always hated her ability to make him feel like that.

 She starts murmuring something beneath her breath— quick and practiced, eyes closed. Jake doesn’t have to listen for longer than a second to realize she’s chanting a prayer. Asking God to deliver her from the hands of her own child. The child who’s been begging and crying for her for years. Asking her to deliver him from the hands of the world, instead.

 Maybe they were both cyclical creatures. Little, worthless specks asking higher beings to love them in all of their filth and crap. He doesn’t want to be like her anymore.

 He doesn’t wait before running to his bedroom. He doesn’t waste any time on her shouting from downstairs— types out a message to Sunghoon, a simple ‘let me stay over?’ that’s met with a thumbs-up emoticon.

 His pills are in the bathroom cabinet, in a little transparent bottle painted candy orange with an ivory top.

 He doesn’t reach for them when he packs his bag. He hasn’t reached for them before, and he’s not going to start now.)

 “If I tell you…” He moves closer, settling his head on Sunghoon’s shoulder so he doesn’t have to look him in the eye. “If I tell you, you have to promise me you won’t tell me I need to go back on my medication; or that I need to go to a doctor. Can you promise me that?”

 Sunghoon stills against him, and for a second, Jake thinks this is it.

 But then he loosens up, nodding with his cheek against the crown of Jake’s head.

 “You can tell me,” he hums. “I promise I’ll only listen.”

  Jake tells him everything. All of it. From the beginning— the car ride, the picking at his poorly placed nick, the deer— and he tells him about Heeseung. About the forest. About the guilt that turned into forgiveness; into getting off.

 That last bit he’s especially not proud of.

 “...I had no idea,” Sunghoon frowns. “But you saying you saw the deer outside of your window that day— couldn’t that have just been any old deer? It’s very possible it was.”

 “His eyes look a certain way,” he shakes his head. “Like Hyung’s.”

 “You’re comparing the guy you’re attracted to…to a deer you accidentally saw die on the side of the road? That doesn’t freak you out, or anything?”

 “Not really.” He thumbs the crease of his jeans, trying not to crack a smile. “But when you put it like that, I really do sound crazy, don’t I?”

 Sunghoon doesn’t comment on those words. Jake clears his throat.

 “Anyways, I didn’t tell you because I knew it sounded insane. And because of the other stuff, too.”

 “I don’t think it sounds insane,” Sunghoon shrugs. “Just worried about you. And…Heeseung.”

 “What about him?”

 “He just seems…I don’t know, weird, like I said. Like, who gives someone else a handjob in the middle of a forest anyway? And him seeing you with the deer, but just hiding and watching— don’t you think that’s kinda fucked up?”

 “Would you have run out to help me if you were some stranger who saw me on the side of the road?”

 “Yeah, I would’ve.” Sunghoon nods. Jake can’t even fight him on that, because he’s known Sunghoon for so long that he’s fully aware he’s the type of person to run into a burning house if it means saving someone; even a stranger. He’s just always been kind hearted in that way— a bit carefree on the surface, teasing and repeating his jokes, but someone you could call in your time of need.

 Jake certainly did.

 “I mean, I get why he was too scared to help,” he shrugs, more to himself than to Sunghoon. “And I get why he’s done everything he’s done. He’s a kind person. Sorry if he seems… off-putting, to you and Jay. This is the first time he’s been like this, I swear.”

 “I believe you, but you also haven’t known him for long, either.” Sunghoon moves away just enough to look Jake in the eye. “You don’t really know what’s up with this guy. Just because he seems nice, that doesn’t mean he isn’t creepy or doesn’t have a bad temper. I don’t want you getting involved with the wrong guy and him making your life shit.”

 “Heeseungie-hyung isn’t making my life shit,” Jake snorts. “He hasn’t since I met him. I know it’s too early to tell, but I just…get this feeling when I’m with him. Like it’s all gonna be okay. I feel at peace when we’re together.”

 Sunghoon makes a strange expression, but doesn’t refute him like Jake thought he would. “You mean that?”

 “Yeah,” he breathes. “I do.”

 For a second, the younger man says nothing. Jake knows, though; from the look on his face to the twitching of his legs, Sunghoon’s thinking to himself. Turning the cogs in his head until he can come up with something proper to say.

 In the end, he settles with little more than a nod and a small mumble of: “Well, okay then.”

 And that’s that.

  When they find Heeseung and Jay, they’re occupying the edge of the stone fountain in the middle of the park, talking to one another in hushed whispers as they scoop their spoons into their complicated swirls of multi-flavored, multi-textured concoctions. Jake grins wide at the sight, hopping over with a bounce to his step.

 “This is where the two of you went off to?”

 “You and Hoon seemed pretty deep in thought,” Jay waves him away. “Hyung suggested we leave the two of you alone for a bit to sort things out, so I just followed his lead. You’re welcome, by the way.”

 Jake snorts. “Thanks.”

 “You two became chummy,” Sunghoon comments, lazily walking up to throw his arm around Jake. He feels the dig of his sharp chin in his shoulders, trying not to grunt at the added slouching weight. “Fast friends, huh? Is Jjongsaeng-ie replacing me?”

 “You were out of the running the moment you started calling me Jjongsaeng,” he says passively. That makes Sunghoon grin even wider.

 “We just talked about different things,” Heeseung hums in his soft voice. He looks at Jake when he talks— as if he’s the one he needs to prove these things to. “Work and such.”

 “Work?” Jake pouts, allowing Sunghoon to nuzzle mindlessly into him. Heeseung’s face contorts in a strange way, but Jake’s already preoccupied with the idea that Jongseong found out what Heeseung does for a living before he did. “What about work?”

 “Hyung writes for a living,” Jay hums. “And since I work at a publishing company—”

 “You’re a writer?”

 “Ah.” Heeseung’s ears burn red, tugging on the lobe with his free hand as he nods. “That’s right. I didn’t say anything before because I was embarrassed to mention it, but, you know…” He glances at Jay with a soft smile. “Jongseong was kind enough to talk to me a bit about publishing my writings. It’s within their wheelhouse, at least.”

 “Horror?” Sunghoon asks passively, far more acquainted with the specifics of Jay’s company than Jake’s ever been.

 Heeseung’s strange expression returns, looking him over once before nodding.

 “Yeah, something like that.”

 “You should let me read some of your writing sometime,” Jake tries, a bit unsettled by the weird look in his eyes. “I mean— only if you want to. Or at least sign my copy if you ever publish. You know, so I can have something cool to show off in case you get big.”

 “Oh, of course, Jaeyunie.” Heeseung’s resulting smile is brilliant. “You’d be the first to know.”

 Jay clears his throat then, putting his finished cup on the side as he rubs his palms together. “It’s getting late. I think we should all go home before the night crowd starts to get busy.”

 “You sound so old.” Sunghoon whines. In the process, he digs his chin further up into the crook of Jake’s neck. He makes a small squeaking sound in response, which makes Jay snort.

 “I am not old, I’m just being practical.”

 “Old.” He wraps both arms around Jake, to which the older man responds by grabbing hold of his wrists. “Tell him he’s old, Jakey.”

 “You do sound a bit old, Jay-yah.”

 “You two—”

 “Jongseong’s right,” Heeseung cuts in, nearly biting with his tone. “We should go. I’ll drive you home, Jaeyun-ah. Let’s go.”

 He doesn’t really leave room for any argument— immediately stands up with his cup in hand. He uses such force to pry Jake out of Sunghoon’s arms that it nearly pushes the both of them down onto the concrete.

 “Ow,” Sunghoon mumbles, mostly so he can have something to say. Jake is practically molded into a proper position, right under Heeseung’s lanky arm as it blankets his shoulders. “You could be a little more gentle, man.”

 “Sorry.” He doesn’t sound sorry at all. “I get a bit uptight when I’m tired. Since I’m the oldest, you’re free to make fun of how early I get exhausted.”

 He leans onto Jake heavily— nearly crushing him with his stature. It isn’t until Jake lets out a strangled puff of air that he relents, and even that is only long enough to twist him so he can place his large hand over the corner of his hip. It’s the same patch of skin he splayed his hand across yesterday.

 “It was nice meeting you,” Heeseung says, voice reverberating from over his shoulder. Jake doesn’t know why he isn’t moving, or saying goodbye. He knows he wants to, but the motive becomes secondary to the feeling of settling himself pliantly under Heeseung’s hold. It’s strange. “I hope we can do this again sometime. If you need anything, you can always contact me.”

 “I don’t have your number,” Sunghoon says. “You should give it to me. I still need to say goodbye to Jake.”

 Heeseung makes a strange noise in Jake’s ear— almost like a wheeze— before Jake blinks back into his body. It’s a stark feeling; like someone threw water over him. In his ear, Heeseung whispers: “Go on, Jaeyunie. Say bye.”

 “Bye, Hoon. Bye Jay. I’m actually really tired, too. I’ll call you guys later?”

 “Jongseong has my number,” Heeseung smiles, nodding once. His head dips down just to pop back up, now twisting Jake by the hip he’s holding. “Let’s keep in touch, yeah?”

 Those words— Jake’s heard them before. Before Heeseung left. He wonders if he always says that, or if it’s a habit he doesn’t even know he has.

 He isn’t sure why that’s taking up space in his mind. It should be the fact that Heeseung is controlling where he walks with his calloused palm. It should be the fact that he’s placed into the passenger seat in his own car, the fact that he hasn’t had the urge to talk in the past twenty minutes; the fact that he arrives at his own doorstep and is still malleable under the hands that take off his shoes and pull off his shirt.

 He’s bathed. In a daze, pressed against Heeseung’s bare skin, the two of them are sunken into water that smells like lilac and citrus. Jake can’t feel his fingers.

 “Calm,” Heeseung mumbles into his ear. He moves his wrist— feels the blood pulsing through his veins there, flexing his forearm. His wrist becomes his palm, and then his fingers, leading up to his jagged fingernails.

 He feels something soaking wet in his bedsheets. Tastes sawdust in his mouth.

 “Hyung?”

 “Calm, Jaeyunie,” the older man mumbles. He’s holding Jake from behind, the two of them facing his bedroom window. It’s still open. “It’s alright. Be calm. It’s just us together now. I won’t leave. I’m not going anywhere.”

 Jake wants to say I know that but he can’t get his dried mouth to form any words. He doesn’t think he really wants to say those words, anyway. Not when Heeseung is holding him so close and reassuring him, however quiet in the night, that he is the body warming this terribly big bed beside him.

 He’s not alone. He backs up further until he can feel the warmth of Heeseung’s skin. His naked chest presses against his back, radiating an overwhelming amount of heat even through the fabric of his sleep shirt.

  “Rest,” Heeseung whispers. The voice sounds like Jake’s own. Like someone’s replaying one of his old home movies on the VCR in his mother’s living room; the ones where he’s a young child with big eyes and wet lips, mumbling to himself about cowboys and big dreams. “It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere. Rest.”

 Jake listens— to himself, to Heeseung, to the breeze still caressing his curtains. He closes his eyes, and sleeps easier than he has in months.