Archive of Our Own

Five in the morning sees Jihoon knuckling sleep out of his eyes while he pads down the stairs, old shoes squeaking on older wood, every step accompanied by the painful creak of an ill-crafted stair. The apartment is always dead silent at this hour, but it’s even more so today, devoid of the quiet snoring of all Jihoon’s roommates, the soft thrum of sleeping life that usually drifts through the air. After graduation, the rest of them decided to take a week or two home to visit their families, leaving Jihoon alone and bored in a living space far too large for a party of one. The sound of the keys jingling is too loud when he locks the door behind him, shakes the ground beneath his feet, rattles his spine to pieces. It’s really too quiet when he’s the only one here.

The bag behind him is heavy when he drags it down the next flight, filled nearly to bursting, a hard thunk on each step where his arms are too tired to bother carrying it. One bag should be enough, he told himself yesterday when he was packing, shoving fifteen shirts in as tightly as he could, enough pairs of shorts not to make it too recognizable that he’s wearing each pair several times. Three weeks isn’t too terribly long. He runs through his list of essentials one more time while he descends, trying to remember what he packed and what he didn’t, though he already knows he’s too lazy to head back up two flights to fetch anything he’s forgotten.

Late May heat crawls over his skin when he makes it outside, budding dewy sweat behind his ears while he drags his body across the path to the sidewalk. When he gets there, he sinks to a squat, bag plopped carelessly at his side, zipper pressing into his shin enough to be uncomfortable but not enough to bother fixing. The concrete is still cool from hours in the dark, just the right temperature for Jihoon to place a fist on the ground to steady himself, so that he does, mouth stretching in a yawn that brings small tears to the dusty pink corners of his eyes.

When he blinks again, he spots a pair of dim headlights rounding the corner onto the street, illuminating the way for a dull silver Jetta Jihoon’s seen enough times to know belongs to Junhui. With a thick sigh, he pushes himself back to his full height, pulls his bag off the ground, grunts at its weight before letting it fall to the sidewalk again. Junhui sidles up slowly, flashes his lights like there’s any way Jihoon could have missed him on a road as desolate as this, and Jihoon is only halfway through preparing for the crushing defeat of Wonwoo’s having taken the passenger seat already when Junhui comes to a stop in front of him, when he notes with mute surprise that it’s empty, as is the back. The clamor when Junhui scrambles out of the driver’s seat and slams his door shut is deafening.

“Morning, sunshine,” he croons, leaning his elbows on the car’s top and smiling at Jihoon from overtop of it. He’s always too upbeat even for a morning person, too smiley and cheerful when the sun’s barely showing signs of rearing its head for the day. Usually, it doesn’t bother him quite enough to comment on it, and today is no different. He squints in the wake of Junhui’s too-big grin.

“Where are Wonwoo and Soonyoung?”

That’s the question to address the elephant on the street. Soonyoung and Wonwoo’s apartment is on the way to Jihoon’s from where Junhui lives, and Jihoon knows there’s no way he would’ve forgotten to pick them up before coming over, not with a face so confidently displaying two neat rows of pearly teeth. His tongue flicks in a nervous line over the top row of those teeth, drags his smile down with it while he blows a sigh out through his nose.

“Here’s the thing,” he says, resting his chin on his palm. “I went by to get them right before I came to get you, and Wonwoo walked out in boxers and house shoes and told me they’re not coming anymore.” Jihoon doesn’t care what Wonwoo was wearing, but Junhui’s the kind of guy that’ll always mention it. He scrunches his nose, bends his mouth into a frustrated frown.

“They’re not coming?”

“Yeah,” Junhui huffs. “He said he forgot to ask for time off work and Soonyoung wants to go spend a week or two with his family instead and they’re not coming anymore.” A hand rakes through his hair in agitation, long fingers and knobby knuckles, catches a little of the soft yellow light coming from the streetlamp fifty feet down the way. “Two and a half years we’ve been planning this, and now they’re not coming.”

To say we’ve is generous and borderline false; it was all Junhui’s idea in the first place. He first suggested it sophomore year, after they’d finished their fall semester finals. “Hey,” he’d said one night over a burger, “after we all graduate, we should go on a road trip or something, the four of us.” It sounded fun and also like it might have been a joke, so they all agreed easily enough, and Junhui assured them that it was definitely no joke, that he’d do all in his power to make it happen, planned and saved like a madman until he finally walked across the stage to swipe his degree last Saturday. Wonwoo and Soonyoung sure know how to find ways to inconvenience people.

“So it’s just us?” Jihoon asks, wary, and Junhui’s nod in return is solemn.

A three week trip with nobody but Junhui as company certainly has never clocked in anywhere high on the list of things he’s keen on experiencing. It’s not that they don’t get along fine, but were Jihoon to order the ease he feels being around his friends, he would file Wonwoo in at first, Soonyoung at second, and Junhui in solid last. He’s sure the same goes for Junhui—Soonyoung and Wonwoo would have been a good neutralizing presence for both of them.

“If you still want to go, I mean,” Junhui says. The look in his eyes is hard to pin down. Maybe that’s one reason Jihoon can never feel quite comfortable around him, the way he seems like such an open book but Jihoon can still never tell what he’s thinking. He raises his eyebrows.

“I don’t have to go?”

“If you don’t want to, I can’t force you,” he says like Jihoon should have reached that conclusion already. “I know you probably won’t want it to be just the two of us, so I came by to see if you still even want to come.” Something is his tone prods at the soft back of Jihoon’s mind, something in his eyes, the set of his shoulders. The pre-sunrise blues of the city seem to fit him unusually well right now.

“Will you still go if I don’t go with you?” Junhui grins at the question. It’s nearly an answer on its own.

“I’ve been planning on doing this for years, Jihoon,” he drawls, head still held up by one hand. “I’m going no matter what.”

Jihoon exhales a reedy sigh. He can still say no, and he mostly wants to, but something about leaving Junhui to do almost a hundred hours of driving all on his own doesn’t sit well enough in his stomach to let him. If he wrecks or falls asleep at the wheel or gets his car stolen and can never come back, Jihoon won’t be able to shake the feeling that it’s his fault, and it’s eating at him even though it hasn’t happened yet. He’s also already gone to the trouble of packing his bag, waking up at 4:45, locking the door, coming downstairs. Sometimes you have to pick your battles, and Jihoon’s already long chosen his.

“I’ll still go,” he asserts, heaving his bag from the ground once more and trudging toward the rear of the car. Junhui is already popping the trunk, rushing to help Jihoon carry his duffle, beam spreading his cheeks.

“Really?” he asks, but he’s busy shoving Jihoon’s bag in among the mess of other luggage in the trunk when he says it, hands insistent as they pack everything down. “You’re sure?”

“Not quite.” Jihoon yawns again, dew at his eyes gathering into crystalline droplets he has to smudge away with his fingers, eyelashes heavy with the dust of sleep. “But I’d feel bad if you had to go by yourself.”

“Worried something’ll happen to me?” He’s still holding onto the door, arms extended to hold it up while he gazes down at Jihoon with a weird kind of smile, and before Jihoon’s brain can turn another thought, he slams it shut with a laugh that rings too loudly on the stale air. “I’ll make sure you don’t regret coming,” he calls as he skips back to the driver’s seat. “We’ll have so much fun, and then we can rub it in Soonyoung and Wonwoo’s faces when we get back.”

“Sure.” Jihoon yawns again, floods his lungs with faded blue air and his eyes with undreamt dreams, and climbs into the passenger seat. No sooner has he clicked his seatbelt buckle than Junhui is setting the car back in motion with a gentle grumble of the engine and turning them slowly toward the interstate.

Usually, Jihoon should be able to recognize these roads, the regular turns he used to take every morning heading to classes at the university, but he can’t tell what any of them are now, only that they all look the same and they’re all so empty and the dashed white lines start to look solid the longer he looks at them. He really wasn’t designed to be up and moving so early in the morning, not nearly as much as Junhui clearly was. From where he sits slumped, seatbelt pressing a line into his chest that keeps him a little too close to the seat, he can see Junhui smiling like a fool behind the wheel, slow rise of the sun behind them painting the clouds in pink and the back of his ears in silvered yellow. His lips move when he sees Jihoon looking at him, shape like they’re saying something, but Jihoon is too tired to listen to whatever it is. He watches out the window as they merge onto the highway, then lets his eyelids fall shut.

When he wakes again, he takes his first glance out the window and sees a whole lot of nothing rolling by, flat fields of green, immature rows of corn kept back from the road by cheap wire fences. He rubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms and throws a bleary stare out the windshield at the truck on the road in front of them. The radio is soft and a little fuzzy, some song he doesn’t know and doesn’t think he’s ever heard. Junhui clears his throat.

“Have a nice nap?” His voice sounds weird and far away, like he’s talking through a tunnel, and it strangely matches the gray spread of clouds filling the sky outside. Jihoon tries and fails to get his eyes to focus on the time on the car’s clock, yawns for the millionth time since he woke up this morning.

“Stupendous,” he mumbles, and Junhui’s small laugh seems so big, carries through the air for decades. “What time is it?”

“Almost eight,” Junhui tells him. Jihoon appreciates how he doesn’t mention that there’s a clock right in front of him.

“Where are we?”

“Indiana.” Jihoon blinks a few slow times, body sinking gradually back into reality, and pushes himself up straighter in his seat, tugs the seatbelt a little looser around his ribs.

“Where are we even going?” A question he should have asked before he got in the car to begin with, but he was far too tired to think about things like that. Junhui jerks his chin toward the glove compartment.

“You’ll find in that glove compartment an itinerary for your viewing pleasure.” Jihoon barks one laugh when he jams the button and grabs the carefully folded sheet of paper he finds inside, unfolds it to reveal a neatly typed and bizarrely thorough detail of every planned drive and destination for the next three weeks. Short on attention span, Jihoon chooses to note only the plan for the day, squinting at the cramped lines of text just small enough to give him a headache.

“Chicago?” Junhui nods, firm and certain. “Why?”

“I’ve always wanted to see the Bean,” Junhui explains, “and now that I’m a real adult with my own degree and everything, I think I should get to see it.” The truck ahead of them crosses over into the other lane and leaves the road in front of them empty and infinite. “I figure we can spend a few hours there before we start the drive over to Rushmore just so we’re not stuck in the car all day.” He falls quiet for a minute, chews thoughts into words. “Are you hungry?”

“Huh?”

“Did you eat this morning? I forgot to, and now I’m starting to get hungry.” His head turns to follow the lonely green sign passing by on the right, a depressingly barren list of gas stations and restaurants coming up at the next exit. “Do you want to stop and get breakfast?”

“Do we have time for that?”

“We have time for everything.” The way he says it makes it sound a little too grand for Jihoon’s liking, a little too wide and open and dreamy, so he wiggles deeper into his seat in lieu of saying anything back, watches Junhui guide them into the other lane and put them back behind the truck for a few more minutes before turning them off the highway completely and onto the empty morning roads of Middle of Nowhere, Indiana. A careless cruise down a road or two more guides them into the vacant parking lot of a Cracker Barrel, where they park three spots down from the only other car in sight. The lock chirps behind them after Jihoon’s dragged his weary feet onto the slowly warming asphalt.

Cracker Barrels are always a little bit strange no matter what time you go into them, but they’re especially strange when there are no customers of which to speak, only employees shifting around shelves of useless novelty goods with empty smiles and tired eyes. The hostess who seats them looks straight through them while Junhui talks to her, past their faces and to the far wall at the exit, beyond to the musty summer air outside. Maybe she can see something Jihoon can’t.

The server who greets them is just as unenthusiastic as the hostess, talks in a voice that sounds like dust collecting on a windowsill, moves like a shadow melting into the brown backdrop of the walls, sifting into the lazy rotation of the fans overhead. His words are hollow when he speaks, fall flat on the floorboards, and Junhui’s in response are jarringly full, energetic and loud and bouncing off every wall in the building before finding their way back around. The longer they sit in here, the more convinced Jihoon is that Junhui’s the only person in the building who’s alive, maybe even in the whole world. Everything he says rings more than it should, but Jihoon might still be too tired.

He ends up ordering something he can’t remember the name of that comes with biscuits and apples and three different types of meat, and the smell when it finally comes out makes him feel more like he’s back in reality and less like he’s slipped into the twilight zone, makes him realize just how hungry he’s gotten. It’s not until he’s finished nearly everything but the eggs that his enthusiasm wanes, three or four forkfuls of hash brown and the entirety of two scrambled eggs all that remains. Something about the sight makes his stomach turn, fork dancing around the edges of the plate, prodding occasionally at shreds of potato.

Eggs have always fallen somewhere moderate in terms of things he likes to eat and things he hates, something he’ll never actively seek out but also something he won’t try to avoid. These eggs are weird, though. They stare at him from the ceramic, so bright yellow they almost look green, sick and shiny and spinning. After a solid minute, he starts to get the feeling he might be sick. Junhui tapping fingertips on the table in front of him is what pulls his mind back into his body.

“Don’t like eggs?” he asks. Jihoon throws another glance at them, and when he looks back into Junhui’s eyes, they seem like they’re swirling. He wets his lips.

“It’s not really that I don’t like them,” he tests, resting his fork beside his glass of water. His own voice sounds almost as void as those of the employees in an eerie way.

“Wanna trade for the rest of my pancakes?” A brief flick of the eyes tells Jihoon Junhui’s got a bit more than a third of his pancakes left, lightly drizzled with syrup, butter melting quietly at the side of the plate.

“Do you like eggs?”

“Not especially,” Junhui says, “but I’m still hungry and you don’t look like you can stomach the thought of eating them, so if you want, we can trade.” Jihoon’s stomach grumbles, low and hushed. It makes the decision for him.

“Let’s trade, then.” Junhui grins like it’s what he wanted from the start, pinches the edge of Jihoon’s plate and drags it across the table with a drawn out rumbling noise Jihoon feels in his elbows. When the server comes by again, Junhui tells him the bill is together, and he pays it after grabbing a small package of sour candies. By the time they head back out to the parking lot, a cluster of other vehicles has arrived to make it look a little less empty.

“Sorry for falling asleep on you,” Jihoon grunts when he climbs back in the car, stretching one final time before constraining himself behind the seatbelt. Junhui chuckles gently, turns the engine back to life with a weak rumble and starts navigating back to the interstate.

“It’s fine,” he says. “You were cute.” Against his will, Jihoon hisses a breath out through his teeth, and Junhui takes a worried peek at him as he merges back into a busier lane of traffic. “Just a joke. But seriously, don’t fall asleep again. I’ll go crazy if I don’t have anyone to talk to.” Jihoon lets his head loll against the back of the seat, eyes droop closed while he blows out a sigh.

“Whatever.”

Another instance of immense frustration over Junhui being impossible to read despite how easy he makes himself. He jokes too much, way too much, and if it were up to Jihoon, he’d kick that habit immediately, as far away from him as possible. If only he wouldn’t drop so many lines that sound like they might mean things they don’t, Jihoon wouldn’t have such a terribly hard time pretending not to be bothered by it. For someone so easy to be around, Junhui certainly knows how to make sure it stays difficult.

They don’t do much talking despite Junhui’s insistence that Jihoon stay awake, only occasional mumbles back and forth that remind Jihoon he’s been out of high school four years and hasn’t gotten much better at talking to people, even those he already knows. It’s a wonder he interviewed well enough to find himself lined up for a full-time job come the end of July. Where once nothing stood still outside and watched them pass on the highway, wind turbines now stand, tall and proud and plenty, and the sight of their gradual turning makes Jihoon wonder whether Junhui has anything lined up as well.

“What are you doing this summer?” he asks, arbitrary and casual, counting the turbines as they pass, noting one at the far back of the first row they pass that isn’t quite in time with the others, one in the middle distance three rows further down that isn’t moving at all. They’re engulfed in a city of silent citizens, almost alone on the only road out of town.

“What am I doing?” Junhui asks, like the question doesn’t make sense or he hasn’t thought about it at all or both or neither.

“After we get back, I mean,” Jihoon clarifies, and Junhui breathes a long ah in return.

“Look for a steady job, I guess.” He doesn’t sound much like he wants to. “I already quit at Chipotle.” Jihoon hums.

“So you haven’t found one yet?” Junhui scoffs.

“Well, sorry we couldn’t all have a cushy internship with Honda last summer and get promised a full-time position after graduation.”

“Don’t say that like I just walked in and got hired,” Jihoon grumbles, shifting in his seat. “I spent six weeks polishing my resume, and that was just for an interview.”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that.” The radio crackles while they pass out of range of the signal they’d been hanging onto, slowly dissipates into nothing but white noise, and Jihoon thinks Junhui is overestimating what he does and doesn’t know. A hand is on his shoulder and gone again before he has time to think about how he feels about it being there and whether it’s a real hand at all. “You’re good at being thorough. I’m happy for you.”

He doesn’t sound happy when he says it. There’s a slight twist to his tone in a minor key that might be jealousy, but that doesn’t seem right, either. More than anything, he drips of melancholy, a sad little nostalgia, wistful heartbeat stuttering in the back of his voice that bleeds into everything around it, into the entire car. He sounds like he really means he’s happy for Jihoon and like he’s not happy about being happy for him, like his plans fell apart before he could craft them and he’s unsatisfyingly okay with having failed. The next row of turbines they pass has three that don’t spin.

“I think we’re getting close to the Illinois border,” Junhui says, “which means we’re almost there.” Jihoon doesn’t know if he means to change the subject because he’s tired of talking about it, or if he means to change the subject because he’s bored or excited, or if he doesn’t mean to change it at all. He sits back in his seat and listens to the static as it fills his ears.

Arriving around eleven means evading the brutal standstill of rush hour, something Junhui surely took into account while planning, and they cruise through the city without much hindrance aside from regular traffic lights and fellow motorists who won’t stop at signs no matter how much sense it makes for them to do so. Junhui takes frantic looks between the tiny map on his phone screen and the road in front of them while he weaves through every street in town, heaving out a relieved sigh only when they eventually come to a stop in a cramped parking lot.

Jihoon sees the Bean long before they reach it, silver and gleaming in the midst of a cluster of dull buildings. He also sees a small crowd of other tourists gathered around it, snapping their pictures and probably smudging it with grimy hands they still haven’t learned to keep to themselves. Junhui skips forward in giddy jolts, eager to catch up to a racer no longer moving, and Jihoon waddles along behind him, basking in the strange screens adjacent to the sculpture stretching stories into the air. Junhui’s outline gets smaller and smaller in front of him while the wind ripples his shirt against his chest, and Jihoon can’t bring himself to walk at a pace any more leisurely or any less brisk.

When at last he arrives, he finds Junhui has yet to do anything, only stands staring up at the sculpture like a child at his mother or a weary old man at his lover, like a dog at its owner or a priest at god. In the grand steel bends twenty feet above them, the city is thrown back at itself, warped and misshapen into a whole new version that bends along an alternate line of gravity. All around them, families and friends and visitors from who knows where take pictures they fall into by accident, tiny bent renditions of themselves to grace the treasured memories of people they’ve never met. Every one of these people will become the very same to them. It’s a system of fairness.

“Everything you hoped it would be?” Jihoon asks, breeze whipping at his ears. Beside him, he sees Junhui nod, sees him shift his weight and take out a small digital camera he might’ve bought just for this trip, let the camera dangle from a cord around his wrist.

“It’s cool,” he whistles, more underwhelmed than Jihoon had been expecting. “You know, the actual name of the sculpture is like ‘Cloud Gate’ or something, which I guess is because it looks like a gate made of clouds?” He scratches his chin. “Or maybe it’s because it reflects the clouds?” He turns to Jihoon with a grin both childish and crumbling with age. “Don’t you think that name is kinda romantic?”

“More romantic than ‘the Bean,’ I guess,” Jihoon ventures, hands dug into his pockets. Junhui surveys him for a few seconds with quiet eyes, gaze warm but mechanical, before chuckling under his breath and turning back to face the gargantuan mass of metal in front of them.

“I guess you don’t have to agree,” he muses, then chases it away with, “Let’s go check out underneath it.” Jihoon is forced to follow when he’s already taking steps forward.

The underside is a lot different from the top, bent in more places, twisting every reflection up into tangles of itself. Jihoon gets a headache from looking at it after finding six other Jihoons, tiny and stretched almost beyond recognition. Junhui gazes in wonder at the nightmare of mirror images above them, pointing the camera straight into the center of everything and waving to see the small waves of every other Junhui sprouted on the silver. His elbow finds Jihoon at the shoulder blade.

“Wave or something for the camera,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because we’re making memories, and they’re no fun if you’re just standing there.”

“You won’t be able to tell in the picture even if I do something.”

“Yes, you will,” Junhui groans. “C’mon, Jihoon. Humor me. How else are we gonna show Soonyoung and Wonwoo what a terrific time we had without them?”

“They probably won’t even care.”

“Stop being right.”

With a sigh and the smaller half of a grin, Jihoon caves and lets Junhui have his fun, flashing a lazy peace sign to their shining roof while Junhui takes another picture or fourteen. He leads them back outside for another barrage, makes Jihoon take one of him in front of the gleaming dome and takes one of Jihoon to match it, forces some random father away from his three snotting kids to take one of the two of them together before sealing it back in his bag for the day, or at least for the moment. Jihoon feels bad for the guy, graying and starting to hunch with a face framed in early wrinkles, because he knows how awkward the picture he had to take was, knows how they were standing just a little too far apart to look like friends and much too close together to be taken for strangers. He knows he was wearing a smile for the picture like he never met Junhui before today, but he doesn’t know how to make it look or feel more genuine.

More driving brings them to the pier, where Junhui bubbles with excitement at the thought of poking his nose around in every nook and cranny to be found. The wind is determined to keep them from walking to the end, strong gusts rolling in off the lake, but Junhui is just as determined to get his feet to the farthest point possible, so with bodies leaned far forward against the breeze, they press forth until they’ve gone as far as their legs and the ground will permit them, worming indoors once they have no other option and retracing their steps back down toward the street.

Junhui is determined to buy a souvenir here somewhere, something that says Chicago on it in any way, to mark the city’s presence on him in a way he can’t mark his own on it. Eventually he decides on a hoodie, soft and gray and large, adorned with creamy white letters that almost blend in to the fabric. It’s a boring garment, doesn’t scream anything special about travel or fun, but somehow, it still stands out more than everything he didn’t choose to waste his money on.

“A hoodie?” Jihoon asks when they walk out of the store, on to see the rest of what the pier has to offer. “It’s summer.” A plush ball of gray hurtles through the air and bumps against Jihoon’s chest without warning; on instinct, his hands rise to catch it before it can fall.

“Why don’t you wear it?” Junhui suggests. “You look cold.”

“I’m not cold.”

“Your goosebumps indicate otherwise.” Jihoon frowns and looks at his own arms, spine shivering with a sudden chill. When did his skin even get like that? His hands are already tugging the sleeves on around his wrists when he’s only just thought to stop them.

“The AC in here is really strong,” he grumbles, pulling his head through the hole, hood flopping against his back. The material inside is the kind that’s soft beyond belief only until you wash it, and Jihoon feels shreds of guilt at knowing he’s stealing some of this jacket’s best moments from Junhui’s skin.

“You don’t have to explain,” Junhui tells him with a laugh. It echoes off the walls, sounds bigger than Junhui might have meant it to, like maybe Jihoon never has to explain anything ever again. He ties his fingers together in the single large pocket hanging low over his stomach. Maybe that would be a good thing, never having to explain anything again. Maybe that’s what he’s been wishing for.

Junhui’s the kind of guy who doesn’t ask too many questions, and that’s one thing Jihoon does like about him. He never really ventures beyond things like How are you and What are you doing, a stark contrast with the probing game of twenty questions Soonyoung is always so interested in playing. Sometimes Jihoon doesn’t feel like answering anything, too tired to grope around in his head for the answers Soonyoung wants to hear. Those are the times he wishes Junhui were around instead.

Before they hit the road again, they grab sandwiches at a small deli and Junhui fills up his tank, and then, with no more than a short word of parting to the unfamiliar skyline, they are off, leaving the city behind them and embarking on a long and arduous drive to the only rock face in the country that looks like people. They avoid traffic again by leaving before four in the afternoon, dodge the evening rush to get home from work, and embark in the direction of the sun as it creeps toward setting.

This leg of their journey brings them first through the rest of Illinois and then on into Iowa, three I states in a row, not one of which has much exciting in the way of roadside sights aside from corn. Jihoon watches the sky while they drive, watches it fade from blue with hints of gray to gray with hints of blue, a milky haze of slate as the color of all the world around them slowly desaturates. Jihoon grits his teeth against the blinding descent of gold while they race toward the star that flees from them, relaxing only when Junhui pulls into a McDonald’s parking lot and they watch it finish setting through the window.

“We’re gonna need to stop soon,” Junhui hums, eyeing the muted myriad of hues swirling around the sun’s top as it slips out of sight. A fry dangles from between his teeth while he talks, slowly shortening as he chews it back into the recesses of his mouth. “I figure we can drive about another hour and then stop at the first motel we see.”

“That works for me, I guess,” Jihoon says, and Junhui smiles.

“Nice and easy,” he hums, sipping at his Sprite. “You don’t have a problem with sharing a bed, right?” That awful popping noise when you reach the end of the drink is what greets Jihoon’s ears when Junhui next wraps his lips around the end of the straw. “We kind of have to, so I hope you don’t, anyway.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Jihoon says even though it isn’t fine. Not like he has any other options.

He’s never had to share a bed before with anyone who’s not family, only a few cousins here and there or his mother on some occasions, and he certainly hasn’t shared a bed with anyone since he’s been an adult. It’s not as much that it’s a big deal and more that it’s awkward to have to be under the same blankets as someone else when you’re both full-sized and not dating. Junhui seems like someone who moves around a lot in his sleep, and Jihoon doesn’t want to wake up with anything touching him that’s not a blanket, but it would be more awkward to pointedly sleep on the floor in a motel that surely isn’t clean enough for it, especially now that Junhui’s brought it up. He’s also too tired to settle for anything less comfortable than a mattress, so he’ll just have to grin and bear it. That’s part of growing up anyway, isn’t it?

The sky is a dirty black when they stop for the night, smeared with clouds that edge toward more foreboding hues than gentle off-white. Dust seems to live in every part of the motel, from the walls to the keys to the man Junhui speaks to at the front desk, brushing off onto the air as they take creaking steps toward their assigned door, warm night air sweeping over skin in relaxed gusts. Inside the room sits one bed, not quite big enough for two and not quite small enough for one, and the end table beside it bears a single lamp with a bulb so dim and yellow Jihoon suspects it might be a fire hazard. The thought of sleeping here is distressing enough to give him a headache, but it doesn’t mean he won’t do it anyway.

A sigh rends itself from the mattress when Junhui lands on it with a heavy flop, countless bygone visitors puffing out of the linens and onto the air like dust. Not seeing many other options, Jihoon reclines beside him, stiff and visibly uncomfortable, eyes drawing closed though low light still floods the room. He tries not to feel one of Junhui’s broad shoulders pushing against his own in the not-enough-room, but it makes itself known regardless. Junhui is warm like summer in all Jihoon’s least favorite ways.

“Still cold?” His voice ghosts over the air, becomes part of the ambient noise of the room, melds into one with the underperforming air conditioner and the insects chirping beyond the door. Jihoon cracks his eyes back open to find Junhui already looking at him, lips at rest in a thin smile.

“Huh?” Fingers pinch at the fabric of his sleeve.

“You’ve had it on all day.”

“Ah.” Jihoon hates blushing because he still does it sometimes, face goes that dark cherry pink without warning. He hates being able to feel how hot his cheeks are when they have no business being so warm. “Sorry.” When he sits up to wriggle out of the gray hoodie still drowning him, Junhui sits up as well, rests a hand on his shoulder. Too warm, too hot for a night like this.

“I’m not saying you have to take it off,” Junhui tells him, grinning. Jihoon can’t place why, can’t ever come close. “If you like it, keep it on. I was just wondering if you’re still cold.”

“I need to take it off anyway,” he grumbles, shrugging it the rest of the way over his head. “I’ll get too hot if I sleep with it on.”

“Good point,” Junhui concedes, and he immediately begins undressing himself without a hint of hesitation, tossing clothes on top of the bag he brought in and falling back on the bed in nothing but underwear. Jihoon freezes with the jacket balled up in his hands, eyes anywhere and everywhere and nowhere. It’s no secret Junhui has a nice body, but Jihoon would’ve liked to pretend it was until he was at least sleeping in his own bed again. Junhui looks at him after a moment, eyes owlish, mouth a small frown. “What?” Jihoon coughs.

“Nothing.” He stuffs the hoodie into his bag, withdraws nightclothes and stalks to the tiny bathroom at the back of the room. Maybe Junhui hasn’t got any qualms with it, but Jihoon never got past his youthful phase of being shy about a lot of things other people his age are no longer shy about, so he changes where he can be all by himself and looks hard in the eyes of the mirror.

He thinks the Jihoon in the mirror doesn’t look much like him at all, but that might just be the layer of motel grime slicked over it, distorting the image into someone strange. This reflection looks like a completely different man with the same face, someone who hasn’t felt anything warm in a long time and doesn’t look likely to do so any time soon. A shiver runs up Jihoon’s spine to think he looks so absurdly cold, and he shimmies into his nightclothes quickly, tries not to think about it. Before he heads back out, he reminds himself Junhui is a good friend who happens to be very well-crafted and he is a grown adult who can keep a cool head around a well-crafted body.

When he returns from the bathroom, he finds Junhui has donned a pair of gym shorts and an embarrassing Pokemon shirt Jihoon hopes he hadn’t been planning on wearing in public. Junhui grins at him. Jihoon squints.

“You were uncomfortable, so I put on some clothes,” Junhui explains. Jihoon colors, shoves his day clothes into his bag, throws himself onto the bed with a huff and a long creak from the mattress. Junhui is too near still, shirt sleeve wrinkling into the side of Jihoon’s shoulder.

“I wasn’t uncomfortable,” Jihoon lies, teeth gritted and jaw tensed. Beside him, Junhui doesn’t move.

“You seemed pretty uncomfortable.”

“I wasn’t.” Junhui’s sigh floats gently onto the air.

“Fine, you weren’t,” he concedes, and Jihoon can tell he doesn’t really believe it. “I got cold.”

“Whatever.” For a long minute, Jihoon does little more than lie stiff, try to wiggle further from the touch of Junhui’s arm without being too obvious about it. Junhui clears his throat.

“Well, I’m really still when I sleep,” he assures Jihoon with an unneeded pat to the chest, “so don’t be worried we’re gonna wake up spooning or something.”

Where Jihoon means to say something back, his mouth twists itself instead into a gaping yawn, squeezing his eyes to a tearful shut, and once his lids have met one another, he struggles to part them again. Heavy air full of dust and forgotten memories presses down at him from the off-color ceiling, and all he wants to do is fall into a dreamless sleep and wake up feeling like his life is put together somehow. He hears Junhui say something, words he can’t understand, and he hears his own voice say something back, but meaning is long lost, crumbling to dust to join the fibers in the dingy carpet on the floor. A switch clicks; Jihoon’s eyelids slip from red to black, and the last thing he feels before his consciousness joins in is a blanket shifting around him.

He wakes up in the thick of a blue-black morning feeling very much like he dreamt but unable to recall a thing from any of his dreams, limbs slow in moving like he’s been asleep for two weeks. When he turns to his side, he’s reminded of another presence in the bed with him, reminded he’s in some motel in the middle of nowhere and not alone at home on a familiar mattress. It’s not a back in his face or an arm draped over his waist that alerts him, not an elbow in his gut or a loud snore at his ear. Instead, it’s a hand, caged carefully around his wrist, warm enough to feel but not quite touching.

Junhui’s fingertips are soft in the light places they graze against the skin taut over Jihoon’s wrist, excess heat bleeding over in a languid heartbeat where the lines of Junhui’s fingerprints trace over lethargic nerves. They are all that touch Jihoon, palm kept at bay by the awkward bend of Junhui’s wrist over his own, and he’s scared to breathe and risk bringing his hand any closer, scared to breathe and risk pushing him any further away. There is no option but to stare at the ceiling and wait for either the sun within the curtains to rise or sleep to take him back. Option two wins in the end.

Upon waking for the second time, there is no hand around Jihoon’s wrist or person beside him in the bed, only the grating hum of old machinery in the building’s dying air system. For a long while, he follows the water stain on the ceiling with his eyes and wonders whether he’s dreamed it all, even though he knows the air at his apartment is quiet and the water stain on his ceiling isn’t shaped quite the same. A loud crash hits his ears when the door swings open, lets cool morning air flood through the open entryway to hit him in the face.

“You’re up,” Junhui says as he clambers through the door. There’s something strange about the way he says it, not like he’s relieved but also not like he’s just making an observation, lips wavering in a line that almost might be a smile. Jihoon heaves himself upright, using his palms to wipe the sleep from his eyes, arms still stiff and heavy. The view is blurry when he can see again.

“Where did you go?” he gargles, sounding like he swallowed a mouthful of gravel in his sleep. The first words of the day always sound like that, but he doesn’t usually have to let anyone hear them. Junhui raises his eyebrows, and the corners of his mouth curl just enough to notice.

“I looked up the closest store and went to buy some groceries.” He hefts the bags on his arms, crinkling under the weight of goods packed too tightly inside them, and kicks the door closed to his rear, bathing the room once more in glimmering cyan dimness. “I figured there’s no sense in wasting money on food every day, so I got, like, bread and stuff.” Jihoon stares while he sets the bags down on the end table that isn’t big enough to hold them.

“You’re telling me,” he begins, voice more clear now, “you left me alone in this shady motel in the middle of nowhere with no way to leave?”

“Are you being serious?” Jihoon raises one eyebrow, mouth a firm line, and Junhui’s jaw goes slack. “Come on. I went to get food so we can live. It’s not like I forgot about you and left you here to perish.”

“You could have at least invited me.”

“You were asleep!” Junhui cries, fists on his hips. “And you were really out, too. For all I knew, you could’ve been dead.”

“Maybe I should’ve,” Jihoon mourns, getting another look at the ceiling. Junhui barks a laugh that doesn’t sound too amused.

“Little dark, don’t you think?” he says, dropping something cold on Jihoon’s thighs. A little cup of yogurt with fruit layered inside, sealed on top with a nice fat sticker that says Have a good day! “And we’re in Iowa, not the middle of nowhere.”

“Is there a difference?” Junhui laughs. “What’s this?”

“Breakfast.” He tucks his legs under him on the other side of the bed, tosses a plastic spoon to join the yogurt in Jihoon’s lap. “If you don’t want it, you can trade with me, but I got the exact same thing for myself.”

“Thank goodness I’m lactose intolerant,” Jihoon sighs, peeling the sticker back and scooping up a modest spoonful. It tastes about how it looks.

“Liar,” Junhui giggles, tucking a sizeable amount of yogurt into his own cheeks with a grin. Jihoon eyes him with caution.

“How would you know I’m lying?” he asks, dubious. He was lying, but that doesn’t mean Junhui was supposed to catch it. His eyes are mischievous when he throws them Jihoon’s direction, crinkled at the hands of a smile.

“Because I know you’re lying.” That’s not an answer. Another spoonful down the hatch. “Today’s plan is to drive until we’re right by Rushmore so we can see it in the morning and then head straight to Yellowstone before it gets too late. Does that work for you?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“If you want to have a choice, you can have one,” he says. It’s a little cryptic for Jihoon’s tastes, so he shovels more yogurt through his lips. Junhui stares through the curtains, to the sky beyond. “I think it’s supposed to rain today, so we can take it slow.” Jihoon likes the sound of Junhui’s voice when he says that, take it slow. Slow can be good sometimes when everything feels too fast.

True to predictions, it does rain, starting an hour after they get on the road and not really quitting after the initial advent, a dreary drizzle from stretched gray clouds that seem to be driving along with them on a highway in the sky. Jihoon likes the weak sound of droplets hitting the windows, likes to watch them travel down the glass in crooked trails as they’re eternally replaced by fresh drops in new sheets, a loop with no end. The rain cools the air down for the duration of the day and drives Jihoon to bury himself in Junhui’s new hoodie again, fading to gray amid the patchy sound of static coming from the car’s speakers. Everything in the world feels gray but Junhui, and Jihoon thinks it’s a little bizarre how he’s the only thing that’s ever warm or colorful or alive.

“I’m glad it didn’t rain when we were in Chicago yesterday,” Junhui says after they stop to make themselves sandwiches for lunch at a hauntingly desolate rest stop, looking more at the drops on the windshield than the road in front of him. “That would’ve sucked.” Jihoon hums in halfhearted acknowledgement, not paying much attention to anything but how much he wishes they had some music to listen to.

“I bet the Bean would’ve looked cool in the rain, though,” he muses, absent, cheek against his palm while he stares at nothing. The glum pallor of everything makes him want to go to sleep, but he’s already sworn not to, so he’s stuck in a stasis of gray staring until the rain lets up.

“I bet you’re right,” Junhui agrees, then heaves a long breath, low and weary. “You know, Cloud Gate is a cooler name, but I guess the Bean fits more.” The beat he drums on the steering wheel with his fingers sets Jihoon’s nerves on edge for reasons Jihoon can’t pinpoint. “I mean, when you go through a normal gate, you end up somewhere you weren’t before, but that one… You can walk under it to the other side as many times as you want, but everything stays exactly the same.” Now Jihoon looks at Junhui, but his eyes are unmoving on the empty traffic ahead of him, and for the first time, Jihoon gets the idea maybe this trip has a little more to it than just having some fun to celebrate graduating.

It’s still raining when they finally stop for good in the evening, meandering into yet another motel that doesn’t quite feel like a real place and dropping their bags onto floors made of dust beside a bed built from the bones of ghosts. Junhui is restless, pacing around the tiny room while Jihoon watches from where he lies on the bed. His legs are a lot longer than Jihoon remembers them being; at least, from this angle, they look like they are. He is tall. Maybe they’ve just always been that long.

“Do you want to go get something for dinner?” he asks, moments before Jihoon is sure he’s about to bust into jumping jacks. Jihoon props himself up on his elbows.

“What about all the sandwich stuff you bought so we could avoid spending money?”

“I know,” he groans, “but I really want something warm. I’ve been cold all day.”

“You have?” Jihoon didn’t notice, and now he feels bad for not noticing, especially when Junhui is the type of person who always notices things like that. He tugs at the collar of the hoodie still enveloping him. “Do you want this back? You could have told me.”

“Well, you obviously like it, so I didn’t want to take it from you.”

“It’s yours, Junhui,” Jihoon snaps. “You should be wearing it if you want to wear it. Don’t be so nice.”

“I wanted you to wear it,” Junhui insists. “Besides, what am I if not nice?” So many things, Jihoon almost tells him. A lot of other very good things. But he doesn’t want to say something weird if Junhui’s not being as earnest as he seems, so he keeps his lips sealed. “That’s not important anyway. Do you want to go eat or not?”

“Well,” Jihoon grunts, shoving himself back to his feet, “I guess I’ll go with you.”

They find themselves in a lonely little pizza place, seated among no more than ten other patrons, including three watching some sports game at the bar that seems like it was filmed on a camera from the fifties. Every sound is amplified a million decibels beyond what’s reasonable, but it still sounds like an echo of itself, running through the speakers three times before unleashing itself fully on the air. The waitress who takes their order looks tired of the uproar as well, tired of the emptiness of the restaurant and the stress of the job, of the rain that’s still falling and of living in a place like South Dakota in the first place. Her smile when she sets their waters down on the table has nothing behind it, just a mask painted on an empty shell, and Jihoon’s chest aches at how well he understands.

Service is too slow for a place with so little business, but they’re eventually presented with a large pepperoni pizza, half with pineapple and half without because Jihoon can’t decide how he feels about it having never tried it and Junhui lives and dies by the combination. Jihoon watches with cautious eyes while he takes the first bite, heavy with yellow fruit. He melts into a smile before noticing Jihoon’s perplexed stare, and for a split second, Jihoon is sure again that Junhui is the only living person for miles.

“Want to try?” he asks, holding the slice out just a little. Jihoon looks at his own nibbled piece of plain pepperoni before answering, chews on his lip in focused thought.

“Sure,” he says, still hesitant, and Junhui saws a piece laden with plenty of pineapple off the end and balances it carefully on his fork while he guides it toward Jihoon’s mouth. Jihoon wants to say he can handle feeding himself just fine, but Junhui gives him no chance, pushing the shred of pizza almost until it hits his nose. One of the guys at the bar seems like he might be about to look over, too, so Jihoon folds and slides the food into his mouth without argument.

It’s okay. That’s all he thinks about it. It wouldn’t be his first choice for a topping, but it’s not so bad he doesn’t want to chew and swallow, and he’d eat the pizza all the same regardless of its presence. Junhui’s gaze is full of expectations Jihoon thinks he unfortunately won’t quite measure up to, so all he does in return is lift his shoulders in a small shrug and drop them back down just as quickly.

“It was fine,” he says. Junhui looks torn for a brief moment before bursting into another smile and stuffing his mouth with another bite, impossibly large.

“At least you don’t hate it,” he hums, finishing off his first slice and grabbing for another.

“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” Jihoon pokes his own food around the plate for a while before picking it up. Somehow, he doesn’t feel too hungry anymore, and the greasy melt of the cheese doesn’t seem so appetizing. “Would you leave me stranded in South Dakota if I hated it?”

“I mean, no.” He takes small bites at the crust left in his hand, slowly whittling it away into nothing. “It’s just nice when people don’t hate the things you like, you know?”

“I guess.”

“I had a feeling you would say that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Instead of answering, Junhui shrugs, smiles, calls over their waitress to bring a box for their leftover pizza. She fetches it with just as little soul as she’s done her job with thus far in their visit, and Junhui quietly pays the bill and leaves as her voice chases them out with a Have a great night that seems less like a hope and more like a plea. Her eyes trail them all the way out to the parking lot, and Jihoon finds himself wondering if Junhui tips well, if he tipped well just now. He certainly seems like the kind of guy who does.

By the time they head back to the hotel, the rain has petered off into the faintest drizzle, just enough to cast the windows in a mist that blurs every light post they pass, and Junhui says he hopes it doesn’t rain tomorrow, at least not as much as today. Jihoon hopes quietly along with him, doesn’t know if he can handle another day of driving in colorless silence. He listens through the thin motel walls for the sound of falling water while he falls asleep in another bed that feels strangely more like a grave, once again with a shoulder pressed too close against his own. No hand cages his wrist when he makes up, and he wonders why he thinks he wishes it would.

Fortunately for both of them, the rain has let up by the time the sun rises, and they hit Rushmore by nine under a sky dappled with feathery white clouds. Not many other tourists are around at this hour, most vacationers still in bed until nine thirty at least, and they have a clear view of the faces on the mountainside from where they stand in the sparse crowd. They don’t quite look real from this distance, like someone just hung a huge sheet with faces painted on it over the side of the cliff and called it a day, but he figures they would probably look just as unreal up close and settles on accepting that seeing isn’t always believing.

“Stupid Wonwoo and Soonyoung,” Junhui gripes, committing another landscape shot of the mountain to his camera’s SD card. “If they had bothered to show up, we could’ve taken some great group shots impersonating the faces on the mountain.” Another picture. “I hope they’re having a grand old time sitting on their asses back home.”

“Hey, we’re having fun without them, right?” Jihoon ventures. Junhui throws an odd look at him.

When he says it, he doesn’t sound like he believes it, and the way Junhui stares at him says he can tell Jihoon doesn’t really believe it, either. Jihoon’s not quite sure why he said it at all when he knew it would come out exactly that feeble and unassured, but he feels like he needed to and like he should have. He wants it to be true even if it isn’t yet, if only just because Junhui’s every cell is dying for it to be. His chin jerks, an awkward nod toward the mountain.

“We can still try to take some pictures imitating them,” he says, remotely hopeful.

“There’s only two of us,” Junhui reminds him, but he starts studying the faces anyway, trying to figure out which old man he’d like to copy the pose of.

An enthusiastic mother spots his struggle while she passes by and, to the great dismay of her two preteen and one actual teen children, volunteers to help them in taking their pictures. The fanny pack clipped around her waist says she’s been on the vacation rodeo enough times to be certified in something, and she showcases her experience in the way she instructs them into very detailed positions, adjusting their shoulders and chins without reservation, even shuffling her own children in to fill the unassumed positions while the eldest stalks off in pronounced red-eared embarrassment. Junhui grins from ear to ear at the way they look at him, awed by how tall he is, how well-built, broad and muscular, and Jihoon feels a hard pang of sympathy for the abundant sighs of her unphotographed child.

When she feels she’s taken enough pictures on both Junhui’s camera and her own, she releases them from their impromptu photoshoot and herds her apologetic kids off to go find their father and final sibling, who Jihoon is certain will be upset at missing all the fun. Junhui leads them on to the gift shop, where he purchases a red crewneck with a bold RUSHMORE on the front and an ugly heart-shaped shot glass. Once the cashier has bagged his items and sent them out the door with a smile, they’re back on the road, headed west toward Yellowstone.

Yellowstone is in Wyoming, almost as very far west as you can get, and the thing about Wyoming is there’s not really much else in it. Out of every state, Wyoming has the fewest people, which inherently implies the least stuff in general, all spread out over the tenth-largest square of land in the union. All these states out west are so big and empty, nothing but yawning green fields and gaping blue-gray skies, and it’s driving Jihoon crazy.  He needs something to see that isn’t another flat expanse of grass, something to hear that isn’t jumbled radio static and white noise, something to be that isn’t a lifeless mass melting into the cloth of Junhui’s passenger seat. The longer he listens to the void echo of the radio, the more he thinks it’s becoming a part of him, and he’s not fond of the feeling.

They stop for gas shortly after embarking, something like Junhui isn’t sure when they’ll be able to fill up again so they better take this opportunity while they have it, and Jihoon takes the chance to roam the aisles of the gas station in desperate search of a CD or two to shove in the player and keep his thoughts from roaming too far. There are too many aisles in the store, too many employees who stare with dull eyes and dead smiles, too many fluorescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling and painting everything in sick yellow light. Jihoon’s shoes squeak on the ugly green tiles and he hates the sound, hates the way it grates at his ears and sends a shiver up his spine.

“What are you looking for?” Junhui whispers right next to his ear, barely audible over the buzz of the lights, and Jihoon jumps straight back, nailing him in the chest with his shoulder. His heart is still pounding when he turns around and finds Junhui there, hand guarding his breast and the heart behind it while he smiles an awkward smile. Though the lighting washes the life out of everything else, it strangely makes Junhui stand out more than usual, tall and shining and warm where his arm ghosts behind Jihoon’s back.

“Don’t scare me like that,” he hisses, elbowing at the arm curling a protective distance from his shoulders. “Why the hell are you whispering, anyway?”

“It feels like we should be, doesn’t it?” he remarks, still hushed, casting a few sideways looks at employees fixed in their posts. “This place just seems kinda weird.” Looking around along with him, Jihoon doesn’t exactly disagree. “Must be something about the air in Wyoming,” he continues, and Jihoon rolls his eyes, turns back around to peruse the contents of the shelf again.

“I’m looking for a CD,” he mutters, disappointed to find nothing on the shelf but gloves and beer koozies. “I can’t stand another minute of patchy static. It’s driving me nuts.” Junhui laughs close beside him, light and quiet.

“You too?” It surprises Jihoon a little to hear the maddening silence is affecting Junhui; up to now, he’d figured it was Junhui content with the silence and him teetering on the edge of reality while the scenery outside the window went by on a loop, same and more of the same forever, until Jihoon felt like puking. There’s a subtle kind of comfort in knowing he at least isn’t going through it alone.  Parts of him hope this isn’t the only burden they’re sharing. “Follow me. I think I saw some CD’s over this way.”

Junhui leads them to the other side of the shop, near the souvenir Wyoming shirts Jihoon is sure nobody has ever bought or will ever buy, and sure enough, a small collection of albums sits on the shelf, each labeled with a tacky yellow sticker. There’s no pattern to the genres or the artists or anything, no repeat records and certainly no order to the little stacks, so Jihoon has no option but to file through individually and pray for something decent while Junhui does the same at his side. Most of them are things like folk and country and gospel, with a few oddballs mixed in, like one album of cello pieces and another of piano covers. Nothing seems appealing no matter how far he digs, and he’s close to settling for the cello tracks when Junhui gasps.

“Look at this!” he says a little too loudly, nudging Jihoon in the side with a hard elbow. In his hand sits an album Jihoon’s familiar with, case black cardboard with a symmetrical white wavelength on the front. It’s still wrapped in plastic, too, ugly sticker kept from marring the case by a feeble shield of cellophane and nothing more. Junhui’s thumb rubs at the plastic, wears it out while he swipes his fingertip back and forth beside the sticker, and Jihoon thinks he feels it on his skin, too, dead in the center of his chest, maybe just a little to the left.

“AM?” Jihoon asks like he doesn’t already know. It’s hard to mistake that cover for something else.

“Man, we really lucked out,” Junhui whistles. “For a minute there, I was thinking we’d be stuck with George Strait’s greatest hits for the next two weeks.” He taps the corner of the case with his thumb wordlessly for a full minute before Jihoon notices they haven’t moved yet, feet still firmly in place on the tile by the shelf. “Are you okay with this one, then?” Junhui asks, chewing at his bottom lip until the skin flakes off, and Jihoon wonders why he seems so apprehensive about it.

“It’s fine with me,” he says. “I really like that album.”

“You do?” Junhui cheers quietly. “That’s great, then. Let’s hurry up and get out of here.”

A sad young man checks them out, looks crushed to bid adieu to the only decent CD in the store’s collection and the bottle of purple Powerade Junhui grabs on the way to the counter and tells them to have a nice day on their way out in a way that couldn’t have feasibly sounded less genuine. The engine groans when Junhui starts the car up again, static still rumbling through the air as he turns them back onto the highway, and Jihoon fumbles with the plastic cover until he’s freed the disc and slid it into Junhui’s CD player. It takes a few seconds to warm up scanning the disc, but soon enough, the music is starting.

From the very beginning, Jihoon feels a little bit like he’s drowning. The very first sound on the whole album is a heavy beat on the kick drum backed by nothing but silence, joined after a few beats by a lonely little guitar riff, and Jihoon feels like his lungs are filling up and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. It feels exactly like drowning in the gray silence of static but completely different all the same, and he doesn’t know if this is any better.

Jihoon hadn’t originally been much of an Arctic Monkeys fan in that he just never listened to them much, but he heard a lot of good things about this particular album when it came out, and the same old records he listened to all the time were starting to get tired, so he went ahead and bought it just because he was finally a university student and his parents couldn’t tell him he wasn’t being responsible with his money anymore. At first, he wasn’t particularly into it, thought it sounded a lot like forty minutes of one song that kept changing just marginally every so often, but he also didn’t quite want to stop listening, so he kept it in his ears for a little while longer. It grew on him soon enough, and then it was all he listened to for a good month and a half.

Whenever he was lonely or sad or stressed or bored or missing home, it was his go-to, mellow chords and steady drum beats that could make him forget about everything for just a little bit. He spent more hours than he could count face down on the dorm bed with his nose in a pillow and this album in his ears, washing everything away until all he was thinking about was the smooth flow of lyrics over an easy guitar rhythm. He remembers how he used to listen to every song right in a row and think about how nice it would be to go back to a time when things were still easy, when he wasn’t worried all the time and his stomach wasn’t dissolving itself with acid nerves, and when he listens to them now and eyes the passing sky through the window with a sigh, he feels like he’s still in the exact same spot.

If only he’d known how much harder it would get, he wouldn’t have had to spend so much time pining for the past, could have saved that all for now. Freshman year had been so easy, nothing but a little homesickness, mourning for the friends he used to have and the shyness he still unfortunately possessed, and even that went away second semester, when he met Wonwoo in his English class and finally had a friend he could call home about. Now he’s feeling like his life is being torn in two by god himself, and he has to pretend like it isn’t because it shouldn’t be, because he’s already got a degree and a job lined up and things are supposed to be easy when you have those, even when he thinks sometimes he’s being suffocated by his own skin. He’d kill to take a field trip to three years ago, to go back to the ease of burying his head in the sand and forgetting about everything that easily.

Another problem with this particular collection of songs is the crushing romanticism of most of the lyrics. Listening to it alone, it’s not something Jihoon used to think about, but it’s very hard to keep his mind off it when he’s not the only one in the car, when he’ll accidentally harmonize with Junhui on a line like constantly on the cusp of trying to kiss you, and Junhui will glance at him, give him a nice smile, go right back to singing along. His voice doesn’t really match well with the tone of the song, but it’s pretty enough to remind him of the nearly debilitating crush Soonyoung used to have on Junhui and make him start to think he understands it.

Once they reach the end of the final song for the first time and that kick drum from the beginning loops back around to hit Jihoon’s ears again, he’s regretting not grabbing the cello CD when he had the chance. They have seven more hours to go today and nothing but these twelve tunes to fill them up, and a little variety would have been a much better idea than an infinite loop of Junhui’s impassioned crooning from the driver’s seat. It does funny things to his chest that it probably wouldn’t if there were anything outside to keep him distracted, but there is nothing but the sky to hold him down. Junhui turns the volume down and clears his throat.

“You alright?” he asks. They’re on the third or fourth listen by now; Jihoon can’t remember. All he’s been focusing on keeping track of is a gray cloud that’s been sitting far off for a while now, low and menacing and dark. The question sinks in slowly, molasses through mud, and Jihoon wants to say no. Junhui would probably listen if he did.

“Yeah,” he says instead, stretching his palms to the ceiling of the car in a yawn. “I just used to listen to this album a lot, so it’s bringing a lot of memories back.”

“Oh, really?” Junhui always talks like he really wants to, like he’s really interested. Sometimes it’s frustrating, and sometimes it’s soothing. Right now, Jihoon has a headache. “I didn’t know you liked Arctic Monkeys.”

“I don’t, really,” Jihoon confesses. “This is the only album of theirs I know.”

“Ah.” He sounds like he wants to be disappointed but isn’t, drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “You should check out their other stuff. They’re pretty good.”

“Alright.” A few more bars of Fireside waft over the airwaves before a small click shuts it off and drags them past static and into flat silence. Jihoon waits for Junhui to say something, but he doesn’t. “What?”

“Do you wanna play a game?”

“A game?”

“Like I Spy or something,” he clarifies. “You just seem like you need a break from the music.”

“You really pay a lot of attention to people, huh?” Jihoon muses, and he doesn’t know if he really means it as a compliment, but Junhui beams regardless. A weighted sigh. “Fine, we can play I Spy. You go first.”

“I spy with my little eye something that is… gray.” Jihoon pretends to search. As if there’s anything else in sight that’s gray.

“That cloud,” he says, propping his elbow on the console.

“Good job,” Junhui chuckles. “Your turn.”

“I spy with my little eye something that is blue.”

“The sky.”

“Man, you’re sharp,” Jihoon drones. It’s not as funny as Junhui’s ringing laughter implies.

“I spy with my little eye something that’s green.”

“The grass.”

“We’re on a roll, huh?” Jihoon wishes he could understand where such a big smile is coming from, wishes he could get one for himself. “Your turn.”

“I spy something…” A slow-moving eighteen-wheeler appears on the horizon as they catch up to it, hauling its freight in a large red trailer. Jihoon sighs. “Red.”

“The truck.”

“There’s not enough out here to spy,” Jihoon mourns, twisting in his seat with a groan. No matter where he looks, it’s all the same. “Your turn.”

“I spy…” He blows out a breath through his nose. “Nothing.” Jihoon turns to see his face at that, and he’s still smiling, but it isn’t genuine enough. His lips are only slightly curled, eyes aren’t in it at all. “I spy nothing,” he repeats.

“Yeah.” Jihoon lets his head loll back against the headrest, eyes fall shut, cool air from the vents ghost over his skin. Far above them, the sky floats by, vast and blue and blank. “I spy nothing, too.”

The sun is still hanging in the sky somehow when they finally stop for the night, the result of some bizarre time loop, a year of endless daybreak or something like that. They turn the music back on after their short and unsuccessful game of I Spy, and Jihoon is sure they’ve heard every song at least fifty times today alone when they pull into the little parking lot at campground check-in. Junhui squints at the sun while he navigates through the roads to reach their own reserved campsite, volume turned low enough that Jihoon can’t make out anything but the drumbeat. He heaves a great sigh of relief once they finally park, climbing out to dig his heels into the dirt and stretch his limbs to the heavens.

“Thank god the sun’s still up!” he cheers, leaning back against the car while Jihoon clambers out on the opposite side, shielding his eyes. “I sure was a genius to plan this light driving schedule.”

“Light?” Jihoon barks, massaging his shoulders. “I know you’re not calling all day in the car a light driving schedule.”

“Jihoon, I don’t think you’re fully appreciating how generous I am as a driver,” Junhui sighs, whipping around to grin at him from over the top of the car the very same way he had only three mornings ago. Funny and terrifying how three days can feel like months. “We were barely on the road for eight hours today, and we stopped every time either of us felt like stopping.” He jabs a thumb into his chest with vigor. “When we went on road trips when I was a kid, we drove twenty hours in one day sometimes, and we never stopped for anything.” Jihoon squints.

“You’re lying.”

“I wish,” he scoffs. The trunk pops open with a hushed click, and Junhui’s footsteps quake the entire earth when he strides over to pull the lid the rest of the way open, look at Jihoon with his arms stretched high to hold it. His voice is strange when he asks, “Do you think it’s sexy when a guy can put up a tent?” For a long minute, Jihoon can’t muster the will to do anything but blink.

“Excuse me?” is all he finally manages.

“If so,” he grunts, hauling a large black bag from the recesses of the trunk, “you’re about to think I’m really sexy.”

With no further words, Junhui is slamming the retrieved bag on the ground and unzipping it to reveal the tent inside and its detailed setup instructions, which he tosses to the side in favor of getting to business on constructing the tent itself. Having never been camping before, Jihoon doesn’t see many avenues to jump in and offer his help, so he’s left to do nothing but squat beside the tires and watch as Junhui does all the heavy lifting himself, shadows all around them gradually stretching into strung out distortions of what they ought to be despite how stiffly time stands still.

As much as he doesn’t want to think about it, there is something that pulls at him in the way the sun paints Junhui in gold, in the way his brows furrow in concentration while he hammers pegs into the ground, the thin sheen of sweat on his neck, which looks strange and nice in the early evening light. He pushes his hair back out of his face, away from his forehead, and Jihoon has distinct memories of Soonyoung gabbing about that years ago, how his face was so nice and if only he’d style his hair a little more often Soonyoung would be in heaven. Maybe it’s because Jihoon met Soonyoung in the throes of his intense three-month crush on Junhui that Jihoon always felt like he could never fully be comfortable around him; he hopes the sting he feels behind his ribs right now is retroactive sympathy for Soonyoung and not something new of his own.

The top of the tent pops into place with a click, and Junhui walks out of it with a self-satisfied grin that shatters his golden illusion and makes Jihoon’s chest stop burning. “How about it?” he calls, waving Jihoon over with one hand outstretched and the other balled in a fist at his hip. Tugging his shirt from where it sticks to his chest, he hobbles over on unsteady feet to take a gander at the evening’s shelter. Small and black and domed, there’s nothing very special about it. Jihoon’s not sure what he ought to be appraising.

“Pretty sexy,” he decides to say at last, voice stone. Junhui huffs beside him.

“Don’t toy with my feelings,” he whines. “I’m very delicate.” Eyebrows raise. Delicate isn’t a word Jihoon typically finds on his list if he has to describe Junhui. “Seriously, what do you think about it?”

“What do I think about it?” He hums in thought, strokes his chin. Cicadas all around them sing their grating song. “What I think about it is there’s no way all four of us would have been able to fit in there.”

“What?” Junhui gasps. “No way. We could totally all fit in there.”

“Well, maybe we could,” Jihoon allows, “but we wouldn’t be happy about it.”

“I’d be happy about it.”

“What I’m saying is the four of us crammed in there would be massively uncomfortable.”

“No way,” Junhui repeats. “We would have fit fine.” He takes another moment to survey the small inside space and frowns. “Well, Soonyoung and Wonwoo, like, sleep on top of each other anyway, right? So we would have been fine.”

“Yeah, whatever you say.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

Dinner for the evening is leftover pizza from the night before while they sit on the floor of the tent and watch the sun sink to its nightly grave. Watching the sunset feels surreal because he never did it back home, always in class or at work or holed up in his bedroom trying to forget about all the stress, but Junhui seems perfectly at home, like he watches this every day and has for years, would die before missing a single one. His skin drinks up every hue painted in the sky while the horizon eats away at the closest star, orange and red and pink and purple until the only light remaining emanates from sparse light posts in the campground.

Crickets chirp around them tunelessly, irregular and out of sync, and Junhui pushes himself to his feet with a grunt. “Well,” he hums, “now’s about as good a time as any to hit the shower cabin.”

“Shower cabin?”

“I hope you weren’t thinking the showers just rise straight up out of the ground.”

“Shut up.” Junhui smiles. He looks like the sunset.

“Care to join me, or do you want to stick around here and hold down the tent?” Jihoon slides a finger over his arm, feels the thin spread of sticky grime settled on his cooling skin, rakes a hand through his hair and notes its oiliness against his palm.

“I guess I better go with you,” he sighs.

They rummage through their bags for a few minutes before Junhui unearths a caddy already filled with precious toiletries and a towel neatly folded into a thick square, makeshift pajamas and underwear stacked on top. Jihoon finds himself cradling two bottles of soap under his arm, one for the body and one for the hair, with a wrinkled towel slung over his shoulder and his own change of clothes hanging gracelessly from around his wrists. Junhui eyes him up for a few patient moments before realizing the sight before him is somehow supposed to be the finished picture, at which point he gawks.

“Jihoon,” he gasps, “don’t tell me you don’t have a caddy.”

“Do not say that like I’m the world’s biggest idiot for not having a shower caddy.”

“I didn’t…” He huffs. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just, you know. Your stuff.”

“I can carry it.”

“But what if you drop it?” Jihoon thinks he sounds much too concerned, like there are instant death consequences should a bottle of soap even come near hitting the ground. Junhui frowns, squints at Jihoon’s toiletries and then his own carrier. “We can share mine, and I guess I’ll be able to lather with my hands, so I can take out the loofah to make room…”

“Junhui, it’s two bottles. I can manage.”

“But what if you drop it?” he echoes himself, already flinging his poor loofah back across the tent to the corner where his bag sits. “Come on, squeeze your stuff in here. I’ll just set it on the floor outside the stall or something and hope nobody wants to steal our soap.” In the face of his firm resolve not to have Jihoon drop anything, there is nothing to do but blow out a breath and force two more bottles in spaces they don’t fit before walking on stiff knees to the showers.

Junhui untucks a roll of quarters from his pocket and slides them hastily into their slots, tells Jihoon to be fast because they’ve only got seven minutes of hot water before their money runs out, then sets his basket on the floor between their two stalls and slips in without delay. The sound of rustling while Junhui’s clothes fall to the tiled floor is what puts motion in Jihoon’s soles, propels him into the shower to strip himself and start getting cleaned up. His cheeks are pink when he steps under the spray, and the rest of his skin gradually warms up to join them.

Seven minutes doesn’t seem like long enough while Jihoon runs his hands through his hair, weak water pressure slowly soaking each follicle. With a blind reach out past the curtain, he grabs hold of his shampoo and squeezes a generous dollop into his palm, massages it into his scalp with eyes closed and head tilted back to let the water run down his neck. In an ideal world, he’d be able to spend an hour in the shower without the water growing cold, without pruning up and eventually feeling like a waste of time and space. The shower is a place to think, let the steam even out everything between his ears and make him feel calm for a little while. Seven minutes is robbery.

By Jihoon’s estimates, he has somewhere between three and four minutes of hot water left by the time he’s finished rinsing shampoo out of his hair, which is plenty of time if he doesn’t relax with it like he just did lathering his scalp. Another blind hand returns his shampoo to its previous post in the overcrowded caddy and gropes around for the plastic shell of his body wash, but before he can find it, his fingertips are running over something warm and damp and smooth like skin, ridged in spots like bony knuckles, and Jihoon jolts when he realizes it probably is the hand it feels like it might be, pokes his head out past the curtain just to make sure.

Sure as the sun rises and sets each day, there is Junhui’s hand, just beneath Jihoon’s, scrambling about for its own bottle of soap. Junhui is there as well, peeking out from behind the curtain of his stall, one shoulder alongside him, water dripping from his hair to his shoulder to his elbow to the floor outside. His eyes are on the light jumble of their hands at the caddy for a second more before he looks up at Jihoon with a wide smile and molten eyes. A drop of water crawls down Junhui’s collarbone before succumbing to gravity and falling to the tile, and it dawns on Jihoon that they’re both very naked.

“Trying to hold my hand?” Junhui asks. Jihoon is envious of the way he never has to get embarrassed about anything, the way his cheeks never get red and his broad shoulders never tense up. He always just does whatever he wants, and it’s maddening in that Jihoon has never been able to. He snatches his body wash without responding, not that he thinks Junhui even expects him to, and squeezes an angry excess of soap into his palm. “Sorry, just a joke,” Junhui calls after him, but he ignores that too.

It’s well-established that Junhui has a tough time knowing where to draw the line, but it’s usually only aggravating, never eats Jihoon’s skeleton in rage like it’s doing right now. He can’t even place why he’s so angry when he knows Junhui doesn’t mean any harm by it. It’s just a joke, he always says, and he always apologizes, too, yet it’s still making him furious. Maybe it all stems from how he hates blushing because it makes him feel like a kid, because it’s all the worst embarrassments of childhood without the carelessness that makes it balanced, and he hates feeling like a kid if it doesn’t come with falling asleep and waking up without a headache. He scrubs soap into his skin with enough vigor to shear it away, too-long fingernails leaving scrapes on his chest, face still unfairly hot every time he thinks about it again. Forget it, he tells himself. Just forget it the second the water shuts off.

Junhui is frowning when Jihoon next lays eyes on him, hands shoved in the pockets of his shorts, eyes cast down while he waits for Jihoon to finish loading the caddy back up. Water from his hair darkens the towel slung around his neck, and Jihoon hates how he looks, upset and confused. If only he didn’t joke around so much or Jihoon didn’t get mad so easily, things would be much simpler. He heaves a sigh when he lifts the basket from the floor and balls up his worn clothes under his arm, every footstep squeaking on wet flip flops.

“Sorry for making you angry,” he breathes through his nose. Jihoon doesn’t look at him while he talks.

“I’m not angry.” Junhui sighs again.

“Well, you can say that,” he grunts, stepping out in to the darkness that descended while they bathed, full and black and empty, “but I can tell that you are.”

“I’m not,” Jihoon insists. He should have been born a better liar, or Junhui should have been born less perceptive. Ideally, both.

“Fine, you’re not angry,” Junhui concedes, “but I’m still sorry.”

“I don’t care,” Jihoon lies. “I can take a joke.” Junhui laughs at the word joke like he’s heard somewhere he’s supposed to, like he used to know what it meant but has since forgotten, airy and weightless rolling off his tongue. Crickets chirp around them, and it sounds like jeering.

“I know you can.” Despite being agreement, he doesn’t sound like he agrees. Maybe Jihoon doesn’t even want him to. “I’d still feel better if you accepted my apology.”

“I accept your apology.” Junhui snorts.

“How genuine.”

“I don’t know what you want from me.” A sigh rustles the air, heavy and thick, sounds like wind ghosting through a hollow canyon, wearing away at everything it touches.

“Neither do I,” Junhui says, and Jihoon turns to see what kind of face he’s making when he does, but they’ve already reached the tent and his back is already turned and he’s already smiling again like it’s nothing when he turns back around, hands on his hips. The longer Jihoon looks, the more certain he is that easy-to-read Junhui was never much more than a believable lie all along. “Shall we fetch our sleeping bags from the car?” he asks too brightly, and Jihoon squints at him.

“I don’t have a sleeping bag,” he tests, and Junhui’s smile falters immediately.

“You really didn’t bring one?” Jihoon shakes his head. “My god, Jihoon. And you’re supposed to be the one who’s always ready for things.”

“Well, we can’t always be what we’re supposed to be, huh?” Junhui stares at him for a long time, stares like he can’t tell whether he ought to pretend he didn’t hear it or not, and Jihoon feels like every cell in his body is visible, bleached under lab lighting and ready for scrutiny; Junhui has never been cold enough to play the scientist.

“I guess you’re lucky I brought a lot of blankets, then,” Junhui says finally, walking back to the car. “We can just share mine and treat it like a pallet.”

“Are you sure?”

“What other option is there?” Junhui grunts, extracting the lone sleeping bag from where it’s wedged in the farthest back corner of the trunk. “Make you sleep on the tent floor and freeze to death? I don’t think so.” He struggles with the corner of one blanket for another ten seconds before admitting defeat and groaning. “Hey, would you come help me with this?”

Spread out in the tent, Junhui’s sleeping bag takes up most of the floor, not leaving much room for anything beyond their bags around the perimeter. A pile of blankets sits jumbled at the far left side, two limp pillows at the edge nearest the tent’s back, and from this angle, it looks just like a regular bed, flatter and less comfortable, just the same as the ones they shared at the motels so far. Jihoon is already used to it, the awkward comfort of sleeping next to someone. Strange how something unusual can become the usual so quickly.

Junhui waits to click his little corner lamp off until Jihoon has zipped the tent and reclined beside him on their makeshift bed, head less than soft when it hits the pillow. “I guess maybe all four of us wouldn’t have fit in here,” he mumbles, tugging his blanket up to his chin and dragging it over Jihoon’s side while he does.

“I told you.”

“My little brother used to use this tent for Boy Scout camping trips,” he explains. “I thought it would be big enough.”

“Isn’t your brother like 12?” Jihoon scoffs. “Maybe four little kids could fit in here, but not four of us.”

“Maybe it’s a secret blessing Soonyoung and Wonwoo decided to be dickheads,” Junhui muses. Jihoon looks at the roof of the tent, pretends he can see the sky through it, and he wonders what this trip would be like if Soonyoung and Wonwoo were with them, wonders whether he’d be happier or just the same, but stare all he might, he can’t tell.

“Maybe,” he whispers.

“Thanks for coming with me,” Junhui says then. His voice is soft and defenseless, a heart laid out in a dish on the dissection table, but Jihoon doesn’t know if he has the guts to stretch on gloves and grab he scalpel just yet. A yawn from Junhui’s pillow shrouds it once again and saves him from having to decide. “See you in the morning.” For a minute, Jihoon considers saying something back, but his tongue is too heavy in his mouth, and then he hears Junhui’s breathing slow down and knows he’s too late, so he’s left with nothing to do but lie still and wait for his mind to drown in black. It’s slow in coming.

Sunlight swims into the tent through mesh windows at its sides when the morning comes, brings with it a strange wave of cold that has Jihoon shivering and cringing back into his cocoon of blankets, squeezing his eyes shut and turning to bury his face in the pillow beneath him. The quiet sound of foreign breaths spikes him dead in the chest before he remembers it’s something he should be hearing, and he opens his eyes to find Junhui motionless beside him, still fast asleep, all limbs tucked carefully into a shield of blankets except one arm flung out in search of something it never found, dangerously close to brushing Jihoon’s thigh. A bird sings somewhere outside, high and chipper, and not a single hair on Junhui’s head stirs.

He’s cute when he sleeps, just a little bit, the way his hair sits in weird curls over his forehead and his mouth sort of hangs open and his eyes sit in pretty crescents, the way his chest swells and deflates in even measure and his lips part just a little. Something about the plainness is charming, something about the easy vulnerability of a body shut down to the world around it. There is no lie in sleep, no façade to maintain or charade to keep running, and Jihoon likes the way he looks so natural with his eyes closed, how he’s so peaceful and untouchable now when he’s been waking up first thus far. Maybe this pink feeling in his skin is just something that comes with seeing anyone sleep at all, a product of being privy to that special window of helplessness before they have time to wake and shake off the honesty of slumber, but Jihoon thinks he may not mind assuming it’s all a by-product of Junhui.

A long minute drags by before Junhui opens his eyes to the morning happening around him, dark and still clouded with the dust of a dream. He blinks several times before turning his head to take stock of the day around him, not shattering the raw illusion of his sleeping form as much as melting it away until all that’s left is the subdued reality he wears on his skin during the daytime. Jihoon watches out of his periphery, careful not to get caught staring, waits until Junhui’s lips spread into their characteristic smile only to be smeared away immediately by a yawn.

“Morning,” he drawls, voice coarse for its first use of the day, rough with sand like Jihoon’s never heard it before. Parts of him expected Junhui’s first words in the morning to sound just like every other word, fresh and polished and packaged in plastic, and he gets a sort of purple satisfaction deep in his gut to learn they don’t. “How long have you been awake?”

“I don’t know,” Jihoon grumbles in response, just as gravelly, shrinking further under his covers. “A couple minutes, maybe.”

“Do you know what time it is, even?”

“No idea.”

For another minute, they lie there, eyes blank on the ceiling of the tent, no sounds but soft breathing and the ceaseless singing of that annoying bird outside. Jihoon waits for Junhui to say something else or for his own brain to draw up something to say, and still, for a very long time, there is nothing.

“God, it’s freezing,” Junhui says at last, yanking his hand away from where it lingers by Jihoon’s thigh to sheath his arm beneath his blankets. “I feel like my arm’s gonna fall off.” The sound of him talking dies after that, just as quickly as it began, and Jihoon inhales a breath of chilled air.

“How long are we gonna lie here afraid of the cold?”

“Until we start being brave, I guess.” Brave is a good word, a strong one, holds a lot of things firm in its fists and means a lot depending on where you use it. Brave is not something Jihoon sees falling on his list of self-descriptors any time soon. He wheezes out a pathetic laugh.

“Looks like we’ll be lying here forever, then.” Junhui laughs next to him, just as weak and empty, echoing off the flimsy walls as they ripple in the morning breeze. More minutes pass that Jihoon can’t count.

“Alright,” Junhui grunts finally, heaving himself to sit upright and immediately hissing in alarm. “Half the battle. Come on, Jihoon, you have to get up, too.” Jihoon huffs but sits up anyway, regrets it immediately when his arms prickle with goosebumps. Junhui eyes him like he can sense he’s about to dig his face into the pillow again. “We can’t see Old Faithful if we don’t leave the tent.”

“Where even is Old Faithful?” Jihoon mutters with a pronounced frown, and Junhui shrugs.

“She’s around.” He rises fully to his feet and howls as the frigid air hits him below the knees. “God, alright. Let’s do this.”

It takes them ten minutes to finally worm into some day clothes amid rampant complaints about the absolutely ridiculous temperature for June of all months and Jihoon’s lamentations over waking up so hellishly early. They step out of the tent snug in the longest sleeves they each have to name, calves still exposed to morning breezes, and dine on a luxurious breakfast of sandwiches from the cooler, squatting on the seating around the fire pit. While he chews at a slice of ham, Jihoon realizes he couldn’t even find the time to be shy about changing where Junhui could still see him because they were both too busy whining about the cold, and in a way, that’s comforting. Enough to make Jihoon clear his throat.

“Hey,” he says, nibbling at the crust of his bread. “I was mad yesterday.”

“I knew it.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, dusting crumbs from his knees. “Anyway, I’m not mad anymore. Swear.” It does not seem pertinent to mention seeing Junhui’s sleeping face gutted him of any resolve he had left to stay angry, so he doesn’t mention it.

“Thank god,” Junhui hoots. “It doesn’t bode well for the next couple weeks if you’re fed up with me this early on.” He watches Jihoon from over the corner of his own sandwich, eyes careful and curious, shoulders hunched against the chill. “I really was just joking around, you know.”

“I know you were.” You always are, Jihoon thinks.

“Sorry for rubbing you the wrong way.”

“I forgive you.”

“Besides,” he huffs, pushing onto his feet, “it would be my pleasure to hold your hand.” Jihoon stuffs the rest of his sandwich in his mouth to avoid having to think of anything to respond with and rises to join Junhui, cheeks puffed out while he chews the mass of bread within them. Junhui raises his eyebrows. “Ready to go then?”

“Yeah,” Jihoon chokes out, crumbs puffing around his lips, and Junhui’s laugh echoes for miles when he leads them off on their hike toward the world’s most beloved geyser.

Old Faithful is surrounded by a sizable crowd when they reach her, tennis shoes freckled with dewy grass and necks slick with cold sweat. Despite their initial outrage at the blistering cold of the early day, it warms up considerably while they make their trek to see one of the most legendary spectacles of the forty-eight contiguous states, and they’re both waist deep in regret at wearing their warmest attire, shoulder deep stubborn in refusing to take anything off. Jihoon is grateful that this hoodie is loose at least, doesn’t stick to him nearly as much as Junhui’s pullover sticks to him, and he’s also grateful for every breeze.

The geyser erupts at intervals anywhere between an hour and ninety minutes, and when they arrive, it’s with no knowledge of the time of the previous eruption, so their options are limited to hoping it was a long while before they got there and praying not too many other people show up should it have been very recent. Slowly and slowly, the crowd begins creeping closer to the safety line drawn by the park rangers, cameras drawn and eyes glittering, which Jihoon figures must mean they’re nearing the time of the eruption. He and Junhui merge with the throng, pack themselves in tightly among the masses, and just when he’s certain he can’t see a thing, the geyser erupts.

Watching a geyser erupt is a strange thing, because there’s not much going on with the actual eruption, but for a few minutes, you can’t focus on anything else. Boiling water shoots something like a hundred fifty feet in the air, and it’s so unexciting and so routine, but it’s still cool in a way Jihoon can’t explain, head tilted back and eyes wide while his jaw hangs open in awe. It smells like sulfur because everything in this park smells like sulfur, and Jihoon recalls something a professor of his once said about Old Faithful being something like a meter measuring the life of a massive underground time bomb just waiting to tear the entire western hemisphere apart, but he watches water keep shooting higher and higher into the air, and he doesn’t care. Maybe there’s something a little romantic about the world gearing up to rip itself to shreds and getting to watch the countdown. At least he can say he got to see it before everything fell apart.

After the last of the steaming water has fallen back to the ground and the excitement has faded, the bulk of the crowd turns on their heels and meanders back toward wherever it is that they came from, abandons the fragile sense of togetherness they had as a collective while they all stood transfixed at the sight of a pillar of water shooting from the ground. Junhui and Jihoon have just as strong an attachment to the site when nothing is happening there, so they leave as well, march back to their tent to strip themselves of the layers they used to buffer against the cold and eat lunch before heading back out to hike around the grounds again. Everywhere they go, it smells like sulfur.

The sun is low in its descent when they stop back at the campsite for the evening, feet sore from a long day of hiking around and not seeing very much of anything. Junhui spent most of the day wishing aloud to see a bear or a wolf or something else cool, but they returned with a flat zero in the field of interesting animals spotted, sweaty and tired and ready to sleep after hours doing little else aside from walking aimlessly through the park. Jihoon sits on one of the benches around the fire pit while Junhui squats beside it, hands moving frantically to kindle a flame.

“Hey,” he calls over his shoulder, stuffing another piece of newspaper into the cracks between logs, “would you get the hot dogs out of the cooler? I think the sticks are in the trunk.”

When he’s done as instructed and fetched the supplies, he finds Junhui has conjured a very small flame in the pit, slowly devouring the surrounding wood and growing into a full flare of its own. Junhui gazes at it proudly when Jihoon sets the hot dog buns down on the chair, hands out to catch a little warmth, though the sun isn’t yet gone enough to warrant it. He throws a glance over his shoulder at Jihoon, the kind that wants you to say how impressed you are.

“Impressive,” Jihoon feeds him, and Junhui’s smile back is broad, honest, like he wasn’t really expecting it even after asking. He rubs his hands together and presses them to his cheeks.

“I know you’re just saying that, but it still makes me feel nice.”

“Are you good at camping stuff because you used to be a Boy Scout, too?” The way Junhui looks back at him makes Jihoon think it was a bad question to ask, though he can’t really discern why it would be. Junhui rises from where he sits crouched by the growing fire and hobbles back to sit next to Jihoon on the bench and admire his handiwork from afar.

“No,” he says finally, unmonumentously, arms crossed over his chest. “I really wanted to, but we couldn’t afford it when I was that young, so only my little brother got to do it.” Sometimes things are like that, Jihoon guesses. He never had any siblings, so he doesn’t really get what it’s like exactly, but he still wants to sympathize so he can say sorry and mean it. “I tried to learn stuff on my own just so I could feel like I sort of did it, but, you know, I could never teach myself stuff very well. My brother taught me a lot of what he learned.”

“Well, that was nice of him.”

“Yeah,” Junhui chuckles, eyes on the sky. “It was just funny, you know, because I was, like, twenty, and I’m just sitting in the backyard while this ten-year-old teaches me how to tie knots and shit.” He huffs. “I got a B+ in organic chemistry that semester, and my brother who was half my age was explaining this stuff to me like I was seven and even pretty stupid for seven.”

“Why did you take organic chemistry?” Jihoon barks. “Didn’t you major in finance?”

“Well, I thought I was gonna need it, but then it turned out that I’m just a moron and then I waited too long to drop the class.” He shrugs. “Could’ve been worse.”

“I guess that’s true,” Jihoon muses. He nudges at the dirt with the toe of his shoe, glow from the fire slowly reaching them while the sun dips ever lower. “Sorry you never got to be a Boy Scout.”

“It’s cool. I think it’s part of the reason my brother and I are so close now.” Junhui grabs the package of hot dogs and starts tearing at the corner of the plastic, one long wooden stick balanced against his knee, pointed side skyward. “My parents may not care if I come home anymore, but at least he always gets excited.” That sounds like a can of worms Jihoon never meant to open, but Junhui is sealing it right back up before he decides whether he wants to look into it, piercing through one hot dog with the sharpened end of one stick and handing it off to Jihoon with all the delicacy of a bouquet of roses. “For you,” he says, and Jihoon’s hand is already wrapped around the wood.

Hot dogs have never featured very well in Jihoon’s list of most-liked foods, but today, he’s ready for them, stomach growling while he watches with impatient eyes as the fire flicks at the link he’s cooking. The sky is dark when at last they get to eat, and Jihoon can’t recall a time he’s ever thought hot dogs were this delicious or even thought someday he might find them anywhere near this tasty. He eats two, which is a record high for him in one day, then sinks back into the bench to watch Junhui tackle a third with increasingly fading gusto, stretching a rubber band around the package to get it ready to go back in the cooler.

“How’s that hot dog treating you?” Jihoon asks, eyes careful through the line of smoke that drifts by to dance between them. Junhui takes another bite from it and huffs out an unenthusiastic sigh.

“Not quite as well as the first two,” he admits, “but I’m already committed to it.” Gray haze lingering in front of his eyes makes them look even sadder when he frowns at the embers slowly fading to a smolder. “I bought stuff to make s’mores, too, but I didn’t think about putting the chocolate in the cooler, so it all melted in the car.” The final chunk of his hot dog succumbs to the void of his stomach. “I’m a failure.”

“Well, we can get some another time, right?” Jihoon supposes, patting his stomach. “I don’t think I could go for s’mores right now, anyway.” Junhui shoots him a look, long and deep and intent, and Jihoon gets that feeling again like Junhui can see right through him, past the skin and to the softest corners shadowed deep inside. It’s the kind of look that makes Jihoon feel like he needs to run and hide, but he has nowhere to go.

“You know, Jihoon,” he begins, a little too earnest, “I really do appreciate how hard you’re trying to have a good time.” Jihoon doesn’t know whether he should laugh or cry at the genuine sentiment dripping from each word, so he does neither, only stares back with blank lips and empty eyes while the moon rises higher in the sky and the fire wanes until it’s no more than a hushed orange glow. Throwing back the dim light from the fire in the midst of so much darkness, Junhui really does look like the only living thing around.

“I am having a good time,” Jihoon tells him. He thinks it’s at least partially not a lie. Junhui smiles at him.

“I hope by the time we get back to Columbus you actually believe that.”

They watch the fire breathe its final breaths and disappear in a flurry of sparks before packing the uneaten food back in the cooler and retiring to the tent. Changing clothes in the evening is not as carefree as the morning with no biting cold to keep his mind off it, but Jihoon tries to distract himself anyway, stares dead at the wall of the tent and listens for the crickets outside while he tugs his nightshirt over his head. When he lays his head on the pillow, Junhui is already rooted in his spot on the ground, eyes trailing Jihoon all the way down.

“What?” Jihoon asks.

“I think it’s supposed to rain tomorrow,” Junhui tells him, stretching his arms over his head until his palms rest flat against the tent’s side. He scrunches his eyes up like a little kid, and Jihoon doesn’t think that response makes much sense, but for now, he lets it slide.

“But the weather was so nice today,” he says instead, rolling onto his back to stare up at the too-close ceiling of the too-small tent, elbows digging hard into the too-thin padding of the sleeping bag spread out beneath him. One click from the little lamp in the corner bathes them in darkness, but Jihoon remains acutely aware of another body beside him, ears attuned to the subtle thrum of adjacent breaths, mind able to trace the silhouette of another lying form. It almost scares him how much he can see when he can’t.

“I know,” Junhui sighs, “but I really do think it’s gonna rain tomorrow, and it sucks.” Even when he can’t see it, especially because he can’t see it, somewhere in his skin, his chest, Jihoon feels that Junhui’s stuck his arm out from under his covers again, allowed his hand to creep its way along the ground until it sits curled beside Jihoon’s leg, harmless and terrifying. “You can’t light a fire when it’s raining, and hiking in the mud sucks.”

“Why even bother hiking again? We already pranced around half the park, and it’s all the same.”

“Jihoon, this park is huge,” Junhui reminds him, and he thinks he can hear something like fingers tapping very close to him. “We’ve barely seen any of it. Maybe if we go out tomorrow, we can see a bear.”

“You really wanna see a bear, huh?”

“With my whole being.”

He’s just joking, Jihoon knows, but Junhui has a strange way of talking where things that are clearly jokes will sound so serious and things that are clearly serious will sound like jokes, and this is both and neither, an enigma of an assertion of a deep-rooted dream he doesn’t know where to place. Without wanting or meaning to, Jihoon slides his hand out from where he’s keeping it warm and finds Junhui’s half-curled fist exactly where he knew it would be, cups his hand overtop the ridge of knuckles and gives a gentle squeeze. It feels tremendously awkward and just a little bit okay.

“I hope we see a bear,” Jihoon tells him, stiff, and Junhui laughs beside him, loud enough to wake the next plot over. He turns his hand around to rest his knuckles on the floor and his palm against Jihoon’s and offers one squeeze back, soft and careful.

“Thanks.” That single syllable echoes around in Jihoon’s skull for a long time before he finally falls asleep.

Once again as predicted, the following morning does bring rain with it, heavy and hard enough to distract Jihoon from how Junhui’s fingers were between his when he woke up. After a short match of rock-paper-scissors Jihoon unfortunately does not win, they decide to have a go tromping about in the mud together under Junhui’s golf umbrella because Jihoon, as is seeming to be the pattern, did not bring one of his own. His only consolation is that it’s huge enough he doesn’t have to feel like he’s sharing the space underneath it with someone.

It rains all day, straight into the night, and they don’t see any bears or wolves or coyotes or anything worth writing home about, only cake their shoes with too much mud that they have to avoid tracking into the tent. Whenever Junhui’s arm gets tired from holding the umbrella, they switch off possession, and every time, their fingers brush against each other, light and fleeting. Jihoon hates how long he spends thinking about it after the fact each time, hates that he can’t shut his head up when it used to be perfectly quiet. He blames everything on waking up early and catching Junhui asleep because there’s nothing else to blame anything on.

After their second day, they take to the highway again for another excruciatingly exhilarating two days of driving toward their next destination, Seattle; as is their bounteous luck, the rain follows them there. Junhui says he has a friend who lives in Seattle, some extraordinarily nice guy who was a year above him in school and agreed to let them stay at his apartment for three entire days while they’re in town, and Jihoon struggles to believe anyone so generous exists, but he has no option beyond believing that he does, so he straps himself in the front seat of the car and stare out the window while they creep steadily toward him. Just like with the rain before, they take it slow.

The melancholy guitar riffs and stiff drum beats go well with the gray-blue curtain of the sky outside, the incessant patter of milky raindrops against the windshield. Some parts of the songs feel like they melt right through Jihoon’s skin, a peculiar blend of the actual track and Junhui’s quiet singing from behind the wheel. The romantics of the lyrics are still ponderous enough to crush his bones to sand and grind them to dust, but they sound a little bit different now, more manageable under a veil of falling water on a highway swimming with other cars to keep his mind occupied. Listening to the same album eleven times in a row doesn’t mess with him anymore the same way it did only three days ago, and when they stop for the night at a motel that smells like cigarettes and looks like it smells like cigarettes, he still has the guts in him to keep humming.

On the dawn of the second morning of their drive to the city, it’s still raining, weaker in pressure but still very insistent, beating at the roof with an unrelenting desire to get inside. Jihoon wakes up first again, finds with a jolt behind the ribs that Junhui’s sleeping head is facing him, turned carefully onto one ear to lie his cheek on the pillow. Against his better judgement, he takes another moment to inspect this version of Junhui, the one with even breaths and closed eyes, the one who can’t lie.

Maybe it’s a mistake. He notes things he doesn’t usually take notice of, things like his short eyelashes and the dark freckles dotting crescents around his face, with two of the smallest right by his lips like some kind of underdone mustache. He notes his lips and the heavy way they pout when his face is neutral, his nose and how it sticks out strong from the rest of his features, the soft pink dusting his cheeks and eyelids, the way his hair falls down and sticks up sideways. He thinks Junhui is cute, more than just a little bit, more than just when he’s asleep, and he is waist deep in regretting that thought when Junhui’s eyelids flutter open, mouth tears itself into a yawn.

“Morning,” he crows, and Jihoon is stock still on his back immediately, staring up at the ceiling while Junhui rolls over next to him, dragging most of the covers along while he goes. “What time is it?” Jihoon checks the clock on his phone with a clumsy arm and a heartbeat he wishes would slow down.

“Eight fourteen.” Junhui scoffs.

“We don’t need to leave until, like, noon,” he mutters, writhing on the mattress until he gets settled in somewhere comfortable. “We’ll get there before he’s home from work if we leave now. I’m going back to bed.” Not four minutes later, his light snoring fills the air again, and if Jihoon could get his train of thought to slip back onto the right rails for it, he’d happily follow suit. As it stands, that train has gone awry.

Four hours of hopeless staring at his eyelids later, they’re packing themselves into the car again and pulling into a Burger King drive-thru to begin the second, shorter leg of their journey. On the bright side, the rain is much less intense after a few hours of waiting, nothing more than a light drizzle that makes Jihoon feel gray inside and all over while Junhui continues being the only source of color in the world two feet to his left, but the trade off to the fairer weather is traffic. Abominable traffic.

They hit it almost two hours in, a line of cars backed up so far Jihoon imagines he sees the end of it nine times before he actually can, a full hour and a half in the same exact spot without an inch of movement. Junhui cuts the engine while they wait for movement to start back up again, and they play I Spy with the lucky cars passing by on the other side of the road, the trees lined up beyond the guardrails, the billboard just visible at the edge of the horizon on the opposite side of the median. Junhui’s laugh shakes the windows of the car sometimes, shakes the world on its axis, makes Jihoon feel like it’s not raining and they aren’t stranded in the middle of the road. He doesn’t want to think about it when he has nowhere to hide. Three hours of turtle crawling through time later, they’re finally back in motion, eyes wet with tears of joy.

It’s dark everywhere when they finally make it to Seattle, several hours beyond Junhui’s initial predictions without the traffic. “This is why we have a light driving schedule,” he boasts, navigating unfamiliar roads with squinting eyes and a chewed bottom lip. “So the whole trip doesn’t get ruined when we hit a little traffic.” His stomach growls as he finishes saying it, so loud and angry Jihoon has to fight to get his breath, and he sighs. “Yeah, laugh at me all you want. Josh said he would buy us dinner, so he better be up to his word.”

Stoplights seem so strange to Jihoon after a veritable eternity on the ceaseless highway, unnecessary barriers telling you where to stop and how to be. Their triple tone circles swim in his eyes like illusions, messes of colors that don’t mean anything and never will. He listens to the click of Junhui’s blinker, out of sync with the dark gray song pouring from the speakers for the millionth time, light red for the love in the lyrics. He watches the windshield wipers swish their nauseating rhythm back and forth, wiping red from left to right, side to side, always and forever, and he’s tired of being in the car, tired of having nowhere to run and no legs to take him there. One more swish, and the light is green for go. Junhui turns down another unfamiliar street.

Their final destination is less an apartment and more a very small townhouse, light flowing through the curtains over a single small window on the ground floor and casting a little square that hits Jihoon in the eyes while they come to a stop. A single parking space already occupied forces them to come to rest at the curb along with a ghostly abundance of other idle vehicles, and Junhui checks the address on his phone four times before they climb out of the car and haul their bags from the trunk to the humble front door, white and plain with a stiff little welcome mat laid down in front of it. Despite the very clear existence of a doorbell to press, Junhui raps his knuckles against the door with vigor, misty raindrops decorating his arm. Soft footsteps hit Jihoon’s ears one second before the door swings open with a creek.

“I have a doorbell,” huffs the guy inside, voice irate but not genuinely, gentle and sweet by nature. He looks like a cat or a deer or an enchanting mix of both, eyes pretty and sparkling even in the low light, lips curled at the edges. Jihoon can tell he’s thin by the way the light frames his silhouette, and he augments it in the way he holds himself, shoulders just a little drooped, neck stuck out a little forward. A wide smile spreads on his face when he looks Jihoon in the eyes. “Who’s this?”

“Jihoon,” Junhui tells him, trying and failing to nudge his way in past the body occupying the door frame. “This is Josh,” he says to Jihoon, flashing him a smile that clearly says don’t worry. Jihoon hadn’t been worried, though, so that smile does nothing but make him worry.

“I’m Josh,” Josh repeats, extending his hand. It’s warm when Jihoon takes it, but not quite as warm as Junhui’s, and Josh holds his grip a little too tight for just a little too long. “It’s good to meet you, Jihoon.” He looks over the top of Jihoon’s head like he’s only now realizing there should be something behind him. “Wait, Junnie, weren’t you bringing three friends?” Jihoon chokes at the nickname.

“Originally,” Junhui sighs, unflinching, “but our other two friends are assholes, so they bailed right before we left.” Josh looks at him for a hard second before lowering his eyes to Jihoon and resting a tender hand on his shoulder.

“So you’ve been stuck in the car with him alone?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m so sorry,” he mourns, clutching at his heart. “And Columbus is so far away…”

“Can we come in, you goon?” Junhui adjusts his bag on his shoulder and tries to nudge his way past Josh again. “It’s raining out here.”

“Oh yeah, of course,” Josh says, and he steps aside to usher them into a tiny little living room that backs straight up to a miniscule kitchen, sparsely decorated with a futon against one wall and a TV stand against the other, much too large for the TV sitting atop it. Junhui deposits his bags at the side of the couch with a heavy thud and turns around with spread arms to face Josh as he pushes the front door shut.

“Give me a hug,” he says, and Josh floats over on a warm smile until his arms are fully busied wrapped around Junhui.

There’s a subtle twinge of envy in watching two people hug, and Jihoon feels it when he watches them now, a pang of jealousy at the ease with which they can fall into one another. He’s always wished for the kind of closeness where it’s simple to just be around someone, where you can hold them up and have them hold you up at the same time, and he’s been especially greedy for it in the past year or two, that kind of physical bond where you don’t mind if someone touches you. Junhui and Josh both tighten their arms like they’re trying to squeeze the life out of each other, and Jihoon’s chest aches for the feeling of another so close.

When they detach, Josh fixes Junhui with a fond smile before catching Jihoon in his periphery. “Do you want a hug, too?” he chirps, bright and congenial, and Jihoon almost can’t bring himself to say no when Josh seems so enthusiastic in offering, but Junhui claps him softly on the chest.

“Jihoon’s not a big physical contact person,” he explains. Jihoon isn’t quite sure why hearing him say that makes his chest hurt so much. “More importantly, we have a lot of catching up to do.”

“We sure do,” Josh agrees, and he seems right on the verge of continuing with something else when Junhui’s stomach rumbles loud enough to cut him off. Junhui stares him dead in the eyes for ten long seconds, lips unmoving.

“Well,” he says at last, grin cracking, “you did say you would buy us dinner. Any chance you’ve got something we can eat?”

“You got here later than I was expecting you, and I was waiting until you got in, so I don’t have anything,” Josh tells him, clapping a hand on Junhui’s shoulder, “but we can fix that.”

They end up ordering Chinese food from some place Josh really likes, and it takes a long time to arrive, but it’s worth the wait when it does, more delicious than anything Jihoon’s ever tasted before on his starving tongue. Junhui and Josh talk with animation to fill the silence where Jihoon can’t get a word in, recounting stories to make up for the time since they last saw each other, some Jihoon’s heard already and a lot he hasn’t. Josh is considerate enough to explain that they went to high school together and then ended up meeting one another again at the same university, in no class but organic chemistry. Josh majored in chemical engineering or something, so he actually needed the credit, and they coincidentally happened to be in the same lecture section. From the looks of things, they must have been close ever since they were in high school, content to lean on each other laughing, place their hands on shoulders and backs and knees. Despite his usual misgivings about unnecessary physical contact, Jihoon wishes in some ways he could be a part of that.

Slowly, they work through the past, calling up memory after memory until Junhui is telling the tale of their rainy drive here and their escapade with traffic and they have reached the present, the here and now. Josh has eyes that spark with attentiveness, hands curled around his steaming mug of tea, looks like he’s really interested in hearing whatever’s told to him. Jihoon thinks people like that are few and far between, and he also thinks Junhui is one of them, a broad smile and a broad heart, ears always ready to listen. It’s a little funny that the two of them are so close and so similar and so different in one single breath.

“So,” Josh coughs, “how do you two know each other?” He smiles warmly at Jihoon, eyes pushed into sparkling crescents while he sips at his drink. “Junnie and I go way back, but I don’t really know anything about you.”

“Well,” Jihoon starts, clearing his throat. He’s rusty on words after too long sitting idle. “I had an English class with this guy, Wonwoo, and got to be friends with him, and then he’s the one who introduced me to Junhui.”

“Wonwoo was supposed to come with us,” Junhui adds in with just a hint of bitterness, pinching a piece of chicken between chopsticks, “but he’s a piece of shit.”

“Is that it?” He looks between them like he wants more. “You never had a class together or anything?”

“Did we ever have a class together?” Junhui asks, and Jihoon wracks his brain, but nothing comes up.

“I don’t think so.” Josh nods but still looks lost.

“Well, it’s like you barely even know each other, then,” he muses, and Jihoon is half unsurprised and half some mixed kind of hurt he’s wary to describe, “but you seem so close, so I thought there might be something else.”

“We seem close?” Jihoon is about to ask, but Junhui beats him to the punch, loud and a little more surprised than Jihoon would have been, and Josh throws a hand up to shield from the shrapnel of the explosion he didn’t mean to set off.

“Are you not?”

“I mean, it’s not that we’re not,” Junhui explains, “but usually Soonyoung says we look like we don’t get along.”

“The Soonyoung I’ve met?” Josh chirps, eyes sparkling.

“How many Soonyoungs do you think I know?” His grin fades quickly to a frown. “Anyway, it’s not like we barely know each other. We hang out plenty.” Jihoon jumps just a little when Junhui’s palm flattens against his spine, lazy heartbeat echoing through his vertebrae. “One time, he drank too much, and I rubbed his back while he puked in my bathroom.”

“I didn’t drink too much,” Jihoon huffs, though he must have if he can’t remember at all that Junhui was there in the first place, much less rubbing his back. “I had a stomach bug.”

“He had a stomach bug and he drank too much,” Junhui amends, head shaking like it’s the saddest thing he’s ever heard. His fist clenches around a handful of Jihoon’s shirt before going back to its previous business of being occupied picking at the splinters on his chopsticks. “Also, speaking of Soonyoung, which we aren’t really anymore, he was supposed to come with us, too.”

“Really?” Josh inflates and deflates just as quickly, thumbing at the handle of his mug. “Bummer he couldn’t make it.”

“It’s not that he couldn’t make it,” Junhui says, “just that he sucks.” He laughs when Josh frowns.

“So,” Josh coughs, turning his gaze back to Jihoon and ignoring Junhui’s hearty cackle, “did you just graduate, too, then?”

“Yeah.” Something about the intensity of how his eyes don’t waver a bit makes Jihoon’s cheeks pink.

“What’s your major? Or, what was it, I guess?”

“International business.”

“Oh, that’s so cool,” he gushes, though Jihoon doesn’t agree it’s nearly as cool as he’s trying to make it out to be. “Do you know what you want to do with it?” Jihoon bites his lip.

It’s not that he’s tired of the question, more that if he hears it one more time he thinks his ears might start bleeding. For the past four years, he’s had every adult over age forty in his entire family ask him that very same thing, what he wants to do with his degree, and he’s exhausted with trying to fabricate something to tell them, weary of not knowing what he wants. If only they would ask him what he is doing with it instead of what he wants to do, he could say he’s got a job with Honda and be done with it, slide it back under the rug before he gets a headache. Josh looks so innocent and genuinely curious while he waits for an answer, and Jihoon hates that he can’t even fault him for taking a misstep onto the mine.

“Well,” he starts, clearing his throat, and Junhui’s hand stiffens in front of him, just barely, “I have a job with Honda in Marysville starting in August.”

“Oh, seriously?” Josh caws. “That’s awesome! So is that, like, what you want to be doing for a long time?” Jihoon’s tongue is like sandpaper, a lead weight sitting in his mouth, and he works so hard to build an answer with it, but it’s no use. His lips stay hopelessly idle.

“What’s with this interrogation?” Junhui demands, hand returning to Jihoon’s back in an instant. Usually, he’s not so fond of being touched, but right now it’s not bothering him, somehow makes him feel more like he’s still sitting on the ground. “Why don’t you tell us what you’ve been up to?”

“I’m just curious!” Josh defends, cheeks red, and he sets his mug on the table with a huff. When he starts talking, his shoulder fall, make him look even smaller and more gangly. “I’m never really up to anything anymore besides work. Minghao had to move out a couple weeks ago, so now I’m searching for a new roommate. I’ve got to find someone by next month or I’m screwed.” He plants his chin in his hand, bogging it down with the weight of a head heavy with thoughts. “I’m meeting a prospective roomie on Tuesday night, though, so hopefully that works out.”

“Minghao’s gone already? I really wanted to meet him. He sounded so cool.”

“He was so cool,” Josh mourns, “but he had to move back home really suddenly to take care of his mom, so it’s not like there was anything I could do.” He snaps his fingers, promptly picks himself straight back up out of the glum ditch he’d begun to slip into. “That reminds me. He took all of his furniture when he left, so I don’t have anywhere for you guys to sleep but that futon. It pulls out pretty big, but is that okay?”

“Not like we’ve never shared a bed before,” Junhui snorts, and Josh raises his eyebrows then lowers them, looks like he wants to say something but doesn’t. “I’m just glad you’re letting us stay here.”

“Of course,” Josh hums, reaching over to squeeze Junhui on the shoulder. “Anything for a good friend.” He busies himself with washing out his mug, tying up Styrofoam boxes in plastic bags to put in the trash, very neat and very precise. “You guys are leaving Wednesday, right? I took off work Monday and Tuesday, so I’ll show you around all the really cool places before you have to go.”

“You’re a real angel on earth, you know?” Junhui says, and Josh laughs much harder than he needs to, head thrown back while he works at the sink, a pleasant sound with more layers than Jihoon expected to hear.

“You better believe I know it,” Josh tells him, and when he finishes tidying up, he wanders back over to the table and rests his palm on the back of Junhui’s neck for just a second, light but deep, a foreign sort of strangled physical intimacy Jihoon hasn’t had much exposure to. “I got up early today, so I’m gonna go to bed now, but you two feel free to stay up as late as you want.” He flashes a gleaming smile at Jihoon, touches his shoulder just barely before retreating. “It’s great to meet you, Jihoon.” They listen to the slow rhythm as he plods up the stairs, breath held until they can’t hear footsteps anymore.

“Guess we may as well head to bed, too, huh?” Junhui suggests, and Jihoon can’t find it in him to argue.

The futon is bigger than the beds at the motels where they stayed, at least, but not by enough to make Jihoon forget he’s sharing it with someone, though he isn’t particularly certain he minds sharing anymore. A loud creak accompanies every turn Junhui makes atop the mattress, and every one keeps Jihoon awake, eyes locked hard on the black ceiling above them, racing with thoughts he can neither bottle nor release. Parts of him want to stretch his arm out to see if he can find Junhui on the other side, but he won’t let them win until he understands why they’re here.

“Sorry if you were uncomfortable earlier,” Junhui says, stark out of nowhere, a comet in the blank void of thought. “Josh is a really nice guy, but sometimes he gets a little too eager asking questions.” Jihoon blinks at the ceiling for a long time before he says anything back.

“He is really nice,” he agrees at last, restless fingers twisting in the trim of the blanket overtop him, restless eyes staring up regardless of how they can’t see. “You guys seem pretty close.”

“Yeah,” Junhui chuckles, “I guess you could say we are.” Jihoon’s thoughts drift around dangerously in the silence that comes next, to images he doesn’t know why he would picture now, the sight of Josh’s hand on the back of Junhui’s neck, of the two of them with their arms around each other, the warm way their eyes locked. His heart is skipping weird beats, finding its footing on a bizarre tempo, and he wants his brain to relax just as much as he knows it won’t.

“Can I ask you something?” he blurts, teeth digging into his bottom lip as soon as it hits the air. He listens for Junhui’s breathing to see if it changes at all, surprise or anything, but it’s perfectly the same, stable and low. Maybe he’s already asleep.

“Go ahead.” His tone is so easy Jihoon doesn’t want to ask anymore. He never really wanted to ask to begin with, but it’s too late to say that without being suspicious. If he’s careful, though, Junhui might let him backtrack without a word, a clean escape from the lion’s den.

“Did you two ever date before?” he asks anyway, biting back a sigh before he even finishes saying it. Now Junhui’s breathing changes, if only for a second.

“You’re curious?”

“Actually, forget I asked.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” A finger materializes out of nowhere to give Jihoon a soft poke in the shoulder. It’s strange in the way it comforts him. “We did, for a little while, back when we took that class together.” Jihoon’s not surprised, but in a way, he also is.

“Didn’t we know each other then?” he asks. His mouth is moving on its own, asking questions he doesn’t need to ask, brain firing off sparks in the dark. “Why didn’t I ever meet him?”

“Like I said, it was only for a little while, just a couple weeks. He only met Soonyoung by chance because he came to beg me for help with homework while Josh was over.”

“Why didn’t you keep dating?”

“Just didn’t really work like we thought it would,” Junhui hums. “We’re both pretty physically affectionate kind of people, and that seemed like it would work well, but it just didn’t. We decided pretty quick we liked being friends better.” Jihoon blows out a breath while Junhui’s finger taps at his shoulder.

“I see.”

“Anything else you wanna know?” Jihoon stiffens at the question, and Junhui must notice, because he draws his hand back immediately, rustles the blankets when he does. “Sorry, I’m not trying to tease you. I just… I don’t know, it feels kinda nice to be asked things.”

“You think?” Jihoon scoffs. “I hate being asked things.” Junhui wheezes out a brittle laugh.

“I know you do,” he says, “but it makes me feel like somebody gives a shit, you know?”

“I guess I get that.” Something feels off, incomplete, like he should say more, only he doesn’t know what else there is to say. On the other side of the mattress, Junhui rolls over, and the entire world groans.

“We better get some sleep,” he says. For the first time, his voice sounds empty, almost as hollow as everything else feels, and Jihoon is terrified. “See you in the morning, Jihoon.”

“See you in the morning,” Jihoon echoes back, but his stomach is too tightly clenched in fear to let him sleep for a long time.

In the morning, Junhui wakes first, and Jihoon doesn’t want to be as disappointed by that as he is. Josh already bustles around in fully decent attire while Jihoon still blinks dust from his lashes, digs into his tired eyes with fists not nearly gentle enough. When at last he drags his feet to solid ground and shoves them through the pant holes of a pair of shorts, they’re heading out the door, already en route to Pike Place for an exciting morning of more looking than actual shopping.

Josh raves while they drive through town about how much he loves this time of year, how all the flowers are blooming and everything is so beautiful even though it rains a lot. He’s still on about it when they arrive at the market, but Jihoon tunes him out when he sees how many people there are, how crowded and busy and absolutely overflowing every single stall is. Without a single misgiving about the density, Josh leads them into the fray, and Jihoon is stripped of any option but following into the madness, each step heavy with trepidation.

There’s far too much going on for him to appreciate what a spectacularly unique place it is, brain only able to focus on the sense of impending doom looming over him in the likely case he loses Junhui or Josh or both of them, so rather than take in any of the action, he spends his morning making sure he can see at least one of them at all times. They weave through shops of fish and bread and produce, and Jihoon’s eyes don’t move from Junhui’s back for any of it, tracing a line over the broad slope of his shoulders to keep himself grounded, back and forth, left and right. It’s a nice line from shoulder to shoulder, strong and sturdy, and Jihoon is so wholly engrossed in following it that he doesn’t realize it’s stopped in time to avoid burying his nose between Junhui’s shoulder blades.

“You alright?” Junhui asks him, but Jihoon is too busy choking on embarrassment to answer him just yet. He can feel his ears dyeing an awful crimson, and he hates it when they do that, hates the way Junhui’s eyes are soft on him and the way his arm curls around behind Jihoon’s shoulders on instinct, close enough to feel but not enough to touch. Josh is looking at him, too, eyebrows drawn together in concern, and he could die.

“I’m fine,” Jihoon coughs. For the first time, he notices a few bags of groceries in Junhui’s hand, and he wants to know just how long they’ve been there, but that means giving away how focused he’s been on not paying attention, and he’s got too much pride to blow that cover. He clears his throat. “Why are we stopped?”

“Do you like coffee?” Josh asks. He also holds a bag or two, and Jihoon feels more lost than ever. “It might be a little crowded, but the first Starbucks is here, so I thought you guys might want to check it out.”

“More crowded than here?” Maybe he sounds a little too nervous; the corners of Junhui’s lips waver. “I mean, I like coffee.” The smile Josh gives him is almost warm enough to distract from the look in Junhui’s eyes.

It’s not particularly special, the first Starbucks, not really distinguishable from any other Starbucks Jihoon has ever set foot in aside from how it’s even more crowded, line snaking somehow further than usual. That doesn’t stop him from hopping in the line and deliberating over the menu anyway, trying to decide whether he should stick to the same old Americano he always gets or be adventurous and try something new since he’s in a new place. Junhui hovers close beside him while they waddle through the line, an awkward double wide where they stand behind Josh, and Jihoon doesn’t know why it makes his ribs feel so tight, only that it distracts him enough that he can’t think about what he wants to order. When he reaches the counter, he spits out the first thing that catches his eye on the menu without thinking. It’s a vanilla latte or something, and he just hopes it tastes good.

Junhui orders a mocha frap because he is a child, and while they wait on their beverages, he keeps standing too close, arm pressed gently against Jihoon’s shoulder. Though Jihoon waits, no amount of time makes it seem like he’ll back up any.

“Why are you standing so close?” he whispers. The tired barista calls out the order of the guy who was six people ahead of them in line, enthusiasm long gone and buried by crushing fatigue, and Junhui backs away one single inch.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to bug you,” he says softly, eyes trailing the guy as he walks away with his drink and an unhappy smile, finally coming back to Jihoon, still staring at him because that wasn’t an answer. His eyes smile without his lips playing along. “Do crowds freak you out?” Jihoon chews his bottom lip a while to test whether he feels like answering.

“Sometimes.” Junhui nods.

“I kind of got that,” he mumbles back, “so I was trying to make you less nervous.” He sighs one of those old sighs people do when they’ve tried a thousand times and still can’t seem to get anything right, the kind with enough wind to fill every sail in the world and more to spare, lungs collapsing and reinflating at once. “But I guess I did the opposite, huh? Sorry for making you uncomfortable.”

“I wasn’t uncomfortable,” Jihoon mutters, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides, palms sweaty and knuckles pale. “Just curious.” He kneads around in his head until he’s come up with something to make it sound less insincere, but he doesn’t get much. “I appreciate it, kind of.” Junhui snorts.

“Kind of,” he echoes.

“That’s what I said.”

“Better than nothing,” Junhui supposes, and then the barista calls Jihoon to the counter. She hands him his cup with clumsy fingers, and her eyes and smile are both so empty. As always, in comparison, Junhui looks incredibly alive.

After they’ve returned home to drop off all perishable purchases, they head to their next destination as selected by Josh: the infamous Space Needle. Jihoon doesn’t particularly understand the hype of paying thirty bucks to go stand really high up with a bunch of strangers, but Josh says it’s the coolest thing in town, and Junhui buzzes with excitement at just the sound of the word space, so they go anyway, file into the high speed elevators to rocket up to the glassy observation level Jihoon’s brain refuses to process as structurally sound. Junhui touches his fingertips to the small of Jihoon’s back in the thick of the crowd, and his head reels trying to figure out why he doesn’t mind it.

Admittedly, the view is nice, the whole city sprawled out below their feet, but beyond that, there’s no reason to spend much more time that high in the air. They stay a full hour and a half longer than Jihoon thinks is necessary, walk countless circles around the observation deck until he’s sure he could draw the layout of the city in his sleep. Every gust of wind creaks at his ankles, makes him just a little uneasy, and he’s finally relieved when Junhui insists they head to the gift shop to buy souvenirs. He sets his heart on a twelve inch tall model of the needle itself until Josh reminds him it costs fifty dollars and forces him to settle instead for a minimalist metal version that’s smaller and also only ten dollars, and once he’s purchased that alongside a little keychain depicting the skyline, they’re back in the car and returning to Josh’s house.

Jihoon feels like he’s been awake for three years by the time he collapses on Josh’s couch in the afternoon, eyelids heavy under the gray sunlight coming from outside. The television screen flickers to life nine feet in front of him when Josh falls to the cushion beside, flicking through channels with an impatient thumb on the remote. It drives Jihoon crazy how he won’t just open the guide and look through that, but he’s too tired to comment, eyes already gluing themselves shut as he leans back into the futon, shoulders weak and arms lead. He hears something, and he knows it’s not a blip of dialogue from the TV, but he also doesn’t know what it is at all. The last thing he processes before his mind goes black is pressure creaking into the cushion on his other side.

When he wakes up, he’s in one of those weird half out-of-body states where he thinks it’s been four weeks since he last saw daylight, limbs cement and head fevered and groggy. His first attempt to push himself upright goes awry when he plants his hand on something too warm and firm to be the cushion of the couch and realizes with horror that he leaned on someone while he was sleeping, realizes with even greater horror that it was Josh and not Junhui. For the time being, he’s too worried about whether he accidentally drooled to occupy himself thinking about why it makes a difference at all.

“Have a nice nap?” Josh asks, smile too sweet for Jihoon’s bleary eyes. Orange light from the sun sinking far outside the window curls around his face, beautiful and bizarre, amber dripping down every eyelash and falling to his cheeks. Jihoon stares for too long before he remembers his palm is fully pressed on Josh’s leg and flings himself away with melting cheeks and a queasy heart, scrambles back toward the unoccupied end of the couch.

“I am so sorry,” he stammers, and Josh laughs at that, waves a dismissive hand through the air.

“Don’t worry about it,” Josh tells him. His voice is glitter, easy and light, and his smile is always so genuine. Not quite as much, but he’s almost just as alive as Junhui is, and right after Jihoon thinks it, he starts to wonder where Junhui is and why that place isn’t here. He’s about to ask when he hears a loud noise in the kitchen, sees Josh’s head snap toward it in his periphery. “What are you doing in there?” Josh caws, sitting forward to prepare himself for a twelve-foot sprint to the kitchen.

“Everything’s fine,” Junhui calls back. “Stop yelling before you wake up Jihoon.” How ironic for him to yell it.

“I’m already awake,” Jihoon shouts to him weakly, visage an incurable rosy pink. Junhui’s head pops around the partial wall separating them from the tile of the kitchen, absolutely beaming.

“You are awake!” he cheers. “I hope you’re ready for dinner. It’s gonna be delicious.” Jihoon blinks at him.

“Are you cooking?”

“What else do you think I’m doing in here?”

Jihoon’s head is still pounding from slumber, so he doesn’t say anything else, just lets Junhui retreat to his business and turns his attention to the screen before him. It looks like the news is on, but he can’t focus on it. Whatever’s cooking smells good in a way that makes his chest ache, like a home-cooked meal he can’t quite recall the taste of, and it glazes his eyes over while he stares forward, blind to everything but the dingy cream of the far wall.

“I didn’t know Junhui cooked,” he muses absently, fiddling with the hem of his shorts.

“Ah, really?” Josh’s smile is fond while he watches the TV, leaning hard on his elbow. “He used to cook for me all the time, back when I, uh, you know, still lived in Columbus.” Jihoon gets the feeling he wants to dance around saying the word date, and he’s fine with waltzing along.

“Is he any good?”

“I would say so,” Josh hums. He studies Jihoon a little bit, attentive and curious. “Has he never cooked you anything?”

“I mean,” Jihoon coughs, “we’re not, you know, close to that point where he would.”

“You’re not?”

“Not really.” Jihoon digs into the back of the sofa with his spine, tries to sink into it until he’s drowned and left nothing behind. “To be honest, we didn’t get along that great before this trip.”

“Really?”

“I mean, it’s not that we weren’t friends,” Jihoon explains, almost in a whisper; he feels like he needs to tiptoe. “It was just kind of… you know, sometimes you have friends who you like, but it’s awkward to hang out with them.” Jihoon doesn’t why he’s talking so much about this. Maybe it’s that Josh is just easy to say things to, or maybe it’s that he needs to get some of it off his chest before he explodes. Maybe it’s both.

“I guess I get that,” he mumbles, thoughtful, massaging at his chin. “Why did you still come with him, then, when it was just the two of you?”

“I don’t know,” Jihoon confesses. The news starts to come into focus, bit by bit, one pixel at a time. A local high school is being featured for raising a few thousand dollars for an animal shelter, and in some strange way, that hits him right where it hurts. “I think I needed to come,” he adds. Josh looks like he doesn’t know what that means, and Jihoon doesn’t know either, only knows it’s the truth. “And I didn’t want him to be alone.”

“I know what you mean,” Josh sighs. “Junnie’s the kind of guy you get sad to see by himself.” Jihoon doesn’t think that was what he meant. Josh clears his throat. “So then, you two aren’t—”

“Dinner’s ready!” Junhui sings, and Josh looks like he dies a little bit, knuckles white over the corners of the pillow in his lap. He bolts to his feet when Junhui dances in and demands they come fill their own plates, and Jihoon wonders how that question was going to end.

Whatever the food is, he likes it. He doesn’t know what he’s eating, but he does know it’s delicious, does know he goes back for seconds and then thirds, stomach crying by the time he lays his fork to its final rest. Junhui looks immensely satisfied with the positive reception, lips stretched in a grin well after they’ve retired to watching a movie in the living room. Jihoon doesn’t pay much attention to the film because he’s too busy listening to Junhui insist Josh owes him a massage for cooking dinner and oh, he drove such a long time to get here, and as a friend, it’s the least he can do. Soft in both appearance and resolve, Josh gives in after only a few minutes, kneading into Junhui’s shoulders with bony hands while his eyelids droop closed. Somehow it’s funny that a movie’s on when nobody is watching it.

“Do you want a massage, too?” Josh asks after a while, when Junhui’s already fallen into a slump of comfort. “I’m sure you must be pretty stiff after sitting in a car for so long.”

“Jihoon does not want your scraggly skeleton hands all over his back,” Junhui promises with a snort.

“Not like yours are any better,” Josh spits back.

“I think am a little stiff, actually,” Jihoon butts in, rubbing at his neck, and Josh’s grin grows wide.

“Well, come on over here! I’ll work your knots out.”

“I think not,” Junhui scoffs. “I am much better at giving massages than you, so I’ll do it.” Josh sulks. “And then Jihoon can give you a massage, and we’ll all be even.”

“I have never given a massage in my life,” Jihoon argues, but Junhui waves it away and tugs him closer on the couch.

“Josh doesn’t care.” Josh smiles like he really doesn’t, and Jihoon guesses that’ll have to be good enough for him. “Hurry up and shuffle over here. We’re gonna miss the whole movie.” As if they aren’t already missing the whole thing, haven’t been missing it the entire time.

Jihoon doesn’t think about it until Junhui’s fingertips are already digging into his shoulders, how he’s never had a massage before. He’s sure most people haven’t, that it’s not really unusual, but it is weird for him to be touched in such an awkward spot, over the back and shoulders, where he doesn’t think another person’s hands have ever been before. It catches him off guard how readily he can relax when it would usually only stress him out more, but he still can’t calm enough to grasp the movie’s transpiring plot. Junhui leaves him feeling more refreshed than he has since high school, pats his spine to send him off, and takes over when Jihoon’s terrible massage elicits a pained cry from Josh for the first time. Josh still smiles, tells him not to worry about it, but his eyes look like he wants to cry.

When the movie wraps up, they put another on, and when that wraps up, they elect to go to sleep. Josh tells them the plan for tomorrow is to go check out the zoo and maybe even the beach, and Junhui thrusts his fists in the air with excitement, grins like an idiot. He’s so hard to look at in how he’s so easy to keep looking at, how he’s so bright it makes Jihoon’s lungs ache and head pound. It’s too warm to fall asleep with him only a foot away on the bedding.

“Hey,” Junhui says after twenty minutes of lying silently in the dark, voice soft and cautious. Jihoon’s heart jumps into his throat, thrumming with an erratic heartbeat that rattles his spine. It drives him nuts. “Are you still awake?” Jihoon wonders whether he should answer or just pretend he’s asleep, but the thought of option two sends a trail of guilt crawling down his back.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “What is it?”

“Are you having fun?” His voice is fragile.

“In life generally,” Jihoon mutters back, “or on this trip?” Junhui’s laughter in return is hushed, fallen autumn leaves dusting over concrete.

“Either.” The silence is heavy on Jihoon’s ribs while he thinks, thoughts swirling between his ears, sifting themselves into an answer. He breathes out a long breath.

“I’m having fun on the trip,” he decides to say at last, and even if he’s not sure, he thinks it’s mostly the truth. “I had fun today.”

“Are you lying so I won’t feel bad?”

“No. I’m having fun.” Junhui wheezes out a hard sigh.

“Thank god,” he breathes. He sounds the kind of relieved where you’ve been worried for years and finally have a break, and Jihoon is desperate to know why. “I’m really glad you came with me, you know.” Silence beads on Jihoon’s temples like dew, tangible and stifling. “In a way, I think it might be better that Soonyoung and Wonwoo didn’t come with us. Is that bad of me to say?”

“I don’t think so,” Jihoon muses. “I think I get it.” A hand is on his arm, right by his wrist, fingers curled in a gentle loop to squeeze once and retreat.

“Thanks,” Junhui tells him. It makes Jihoon’s heart sore that he doesn’t know what he’s being thanked for and that he doesn’t have the guts to say thanks back. When he falls asleep, he wishes somewhere Junhui were just a little closer.

First thing in the morning after breakfast is the zoo. Jihoon is just as fond of the zoo as anyone else, but Junhui is over the moon with enthusiasm, fluttering his camera shutter at every animal they pass, cheeks puffed in an unfading beam from the moment Jihoon lays eyes on him in the morning. It’s cute how he’s so excited, Jihoon thinks, cute in a way he hasn’t felt anything to be in a very long time. His heartstrings move at the same pace Junhui walks, sharp tugs that pull him forward, and he fears he’s developed a scary understanding of the way Soonyoung used to feel in the past, before Wonwoo scrounged up the courage to hold him against the wall and kiss the air out of him. Jihoon has little hope of any such wall or airlessness to save him here. He sighs every time Junhui catches his eye because he can feel his lips in a smile, and he sighs again when he purchases a little keychain from the gift shop on the way out.

Afterwards, they do in fact head to the beach. It’s the grayest beach Jihoon has ever seen, gray sand and gray water and gray sky, rocky and ugly. Hard gravel spikes craters into his soles near the line of the water, and his heels beg for help, but they stick around for a little while still, alone on the small stretch of sand. Junhui splashes around in the shallow water of the little breaking waves like a child, digging his feet into the sand and smiling at the steely clouds obscuring the sun above. He makes himself so very easy to love, so simple to stare at although he’s completely and hopelessly unreadable. Jihoon thinks it’s a curse and a blessing in the same way he can’t help thinking Junhui’s sleeping face has been melting into his regular face more and more.

Over a case of beer with lime, Josh reminds them that night that he’ll be meeting his new candidate for roommate at the apartment on Tuesday evening, and it’s not that he doesn’t want them to be at the apartment, just that he thinks he’ll be able to focus better asking questions if they aren’t there. He says it all with a light giggle like he isn’t really serious about it, but Jihoon figures it must just be the alcohol; Josh told them he doesn’t drink much, and he proves it in the way his cheeks are flushed after one can. He’s funny like that, very touchy and very laughy, leans forward onto his elbows with dreamy eyes every time Jihoon says something to him. He even hugs Jihoon before he hobbles up the stairs to go to sleep, and Jihoon doesn’t mind it entirely. Josh is nice. Junhui laughs and says he’s ridiculous.

The following day, it rains again, drizzly sheets that make Jihoon feel like his soul is dripping out of his body. Even the flowers in every garden seem washed out despite their dazzling hues, greens of the leaves around them hollow sludge, soil reduced to chunky mud. Nasty days like these are special events on the calendar, reserved for staying in and curling into nothing on the couch or tearing yourself into another reality at a movie theater. Given these choices, they find their way to a dingy movie theater that’s mostly empty and file into seats for some movie Jihoon knows he’s already seen but doesn’t remember at all. Junhui’s breath smells like popcorn every time he whispers something in Jihoon’s ear, and it makes him hungry, though he isn’t sure for what.

“Is there any way we could do our laundry here?” Junhui asks Josh after they get back from the movie, rain pelting the windows as background noise. “I have more clothes, but I’m kinda running low.”

“I would let you,” Josh says, “but my washing machine broke down last week, and my landlord still hasn’t sent anyone to fix it.” He gazes mournfully at the mentioned machine, eyelids weighed down with grief. “I had to go to a laundromat to get everything washed on Friday.”

“A laundromat?” Junhui whistles. “That works too, I guess. It’ll get us out of the house so you can have your meeting with, uh…”

“Mingyu.”

“Right.” He turns to Jihoon with glowing eyes and an outstretched hand, palm wide and warm and welcoming, and for a split second, he looks like home. “Well, Jihoon, wanna go do some laundry?”

“May as well,” Jihoon sighs, and they leave.

The laundromat they find is tiny and desolate and bizarre, tacky orange walls that peel at the edges and glaring once-white tile flecked with an uneasy lime. There are six washing machines arranged in a block in the center of the room, ten dryers pressed against the wall, and no people save for the single staff member who sits at a desk in the farthest corner, half asleep with a cigarette dangling from his lips, already dead for all Jihoon knows. Soft music drifts out of the speakers, old songs bizarrely mixed with a smattering of current radio hits, and Jihoon feels like he’s fallen into an alternate dimension with each step over the squeaky tile, each dusty breath he takes.

Of the six machines in the center of the floor, two are out of order, and the other three are filled with the clothes of people who evidently had better places to be on a Tuesday night than here. Junhui scoops clothes out of his bag and into the machine with a slow rhythm before holding his hand out for Jihoon’s and treating it the same way. His silhouette as he does it is unfairly charming in Jihoon’s opinion, gentle profile and straight back. Interesting how even the gaudy colors of the walls manage to look gray behind him.

While they wait for the cycle to complete, they sit in a short row of ugly plastic chairs against the wall adjacent to the door, buffered on the ends by equally ugly fake houseplants with big leaves and tiny flowers. Through the speakers, the song shifts, an abrupt transition from the chipped beats of some synth pop tune to the rolling triplets of Sweet Caroline, and Junhui leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes, tiny smile at his lips.

“I love this song,” he mumbles, and then the words begin, and he starts to sing along, and Jihoon can’t look away.

He is mesmerizing. The way his lips shape every word without losing their little smile, the way his knuckles tap at his own knee to keep time, the way his hair ruffles in the weak wind from the ceiling fan. Tiny moles dotting around his face move with the turn of the lyrics, and Jihoon lets himself watch them, lets himself think they are enchanting. He doesn’t care enough anymore to act like he doesn’t think Junhui is cute. Maybe it’s just something about all the strange air he’s been breathing lately that’s making his head and chest team up to act so funny. Maybe it scares him more than it should.

“What?” Junhui asks, and Jihoon chokes. He didn’t notice his eyes open. Then again, he might not have looked away even if he had.

“Nothing,” Jihoon says. Junhui keeps looking at him, intent and curious, still lips no longer following the trail of the song.

“Were you staring at me?” he asks next. Air spikes in Jihoon’s throat. He can either lie or tell the truth, he reasons. He can stay afraid or take a step forward. Be the child he wishes he still were or the adult he now has to be. Looking into Junhui’s eyes, he thinks he’s sweet enough to test out growing up with.

“Yeah.” Junhui’s eyebrows raise, eyes widen, grin falters. Perhaps he wasn’t expecting Jihoon to be honest, or it might be that he just hadn’t expected that to be the truth at all. He blinks a few times, very slowly.

“Why?” Jihoon shrugs.

“No reason.”

It’s now that Junhui sits up, drags his head forward from the wall and levels his gaze.  Jihoon feels naked and freezing under his eyes, warm like he’s been bundled in fifteen layers. He has never been more visible or less visible than he is right now, a glowing billboard on the roadside and a mirage in the distance, impossible to spot. Junhui props his elbow up on the back of Jihoon’s chair, leaves his arm to dangle dangerously behind Jihoon’s back, fingertips hovering too close to call.

“Say, Jihoon,” he begins, voice low, eyes shining, “I’ll go out on a limb here, and ignore me if I’m wrong”—Sweet Caroline feels like it’s been playing for days, and they’re only in the middle of the song—“but if you were thinking I’m cute and that you might want to kiss me, nobody has to know about it.” Now is Jihoon’s turn to blink at him.

“What do you mean by that?” he tests.

“I mean I won’t tell anyone.”

“You won’t?”

“Not if you don’t want me to.”

“Why?”

“You’re a private person, and I respect you.” He makes it sound very obvious, and Jihoon feels his cheeks pink. A little surprising they waited until now. “Besides, it’s not my job to let the world know every time I kiss someone.”

Jihoon hesitates before asking, “How often is that?” The way Junhui quirks his eyebrow is a blow to the gut.

“You’re really curious?”

“Actually, no.” Junhui laughs and leans a little closer.

“Not very often,” he assures, then follows with, “and you should know you’ve really gotten my hopes up by not telling me I’m way off-base.” For one second longer, two seconds, three, Jihoon gathers the courage to control just one thing, and on second four, he grabs Junhui by the shoulder and pulls himself in.

Kissing is weirder than he remembers it, or it could just be that he’s never kissed anyone this way before, so slow and uncertain. Junhui’s hand is solid on the back of his neck, but doesn’t pull or push, only holds him still and there while their lips meet, a small string of smaller kisses. Junhui still tastes like popcorn and a little bit like mint gum, a lot like plain old mouth. Jihoon doesn’t usually like the way kissing tastes much, but he’s okay with it right now. Impossibly, Sweet Caroline is still playing when Jihoon draws back, but his ears are ringing too loudly to catch just where in the song they are. Junhui’s eyes are shut, pink lips playing at a ghost of a smile.

“I feel bad,” he mutters. The ceiling is suspended above them by nothing but a thread.

“I’m sorry?” His eyes snap back open.

“No, I didn’t mean—don’t look at me like that.” The back of Jihoon’s neck is met with subtle strokes from Junhui’s thumb, smooth arcs over the short hairs fading out near the bottom of his head. “It’s just that I know Josh is interested in you, but now you kissed me.”

“What?” Jihoon balks at the idea. “No way.”

“You think I can’t tell?” Junhui snorts. “I’ve known him too long not to notice. He’s so easy to read.”

“You think so?”

“Definitely,” Junhui promises. “He’ll probably ask for your number before we leave.”

“Should I give it to him?”

“That’s up to you, not me.” A bell sounds when the door opens, forty-something woman bustling in to check on her load of laundry. She takes one glance at the two of them, widens her eyes then averts them, and it doesn’t faze Junhui at all. When she shuffles her wet clothes into an open dryer and shuffles back out, his hand still rests in its same position on Jihoon’s neck. “And now that you’ve kissed me, is it alright for me to kiss you if I ever want to?”

“Are you saying you’ll want to?”

“I’ve wanted to many times before.” That has implications to it Jihoon’s not strong enough to deal with, so he pretends he doesn’t hear anything at all, grounds himself with the sound of the rain pattering against the roof.

“I guess it’s alright.” Junhui chuckles.

“Is one more time right now okay?” Jihoon sighs a little, eyes flicking up to take a glance at the ceiling, gray like the clouds outside. He looks back down, and Junhui is the only color.

“I guess.”

Making eye contact with Josh is a little more difficult after they get back, but Jihoon forces himself to do it anyway. Thankfully, he takes up most of the space talking about how nice Mingyu was and how handsome and how funny and how handsome and how clever and how handsome. Mentioning his handsomeness three times could be part of the reason Junhui doesn’t look a smidge guilty, or it could be no factor at all. Jihoon doesn’t know if he’s grateful for how absolutely Junhui doesn’t change when they get back, when they go to bed. Parts of him feel like he must have dreamt the whole thing, but the sensation of a kiss still tingling on his lips is too vivid to be imagined, the soft chords of Sweet Caroline and the muted flavor of buttered popcorn and minty chewing gum. Dreaming is how he convinces himself it was real.

As predicted by Junhui, Josh asks Jihoon for his phone number before they leave the next morning, punching down a yawn while he does. Jihoon gives it to him because he sees no reason not to and because Josh was nothing but nice to him for three days, and then they’re on the road toward tomorrow, glare of the rising sun piercing through the passenger window and giving him a golden migraine. After three days of relaxation, being back in the car is torture, restless legs twisting beneath him, rigid seat unyielding each time he leans back. Arctic Monkeys are back to their usual business of heavy drums and heavier romantics, over and over in his ears for more hours than a normal person should withstand, and he can’t tell whether knowing the taste of Junhui’s lips is making the weight of those lyrics easier to bear or a thousand times more difficult.

Clouds decorate the sky for their entire drive, threatening to pour down on them at any moment, and around three in the afternoon, they finally do, a heavy torrent to contrast with the weak, drippy rains of the day before. Junhui sighs in time with Knee Socks as it filters through the speakers, nearly drowned out by the sound of droplets smacking into the asphalt outside, and flicks the headlights on. “We haven’t had great luck with the weather, huh?” he laments, windshield wipers beating fast before his eyes.

“I guess not,” Jihoon mumbles into his palm, “but I don’t mind the rain.” Junhui grins at him but keeps staring at the road, grip tight at ten and two.

“Easy to say from the passenger seat.” Jihoon rolls his eyes.

“Hopefully it clears up soon.” Junhui laughs and turns the volume dial up a notch or two, just in time for I Wanna Be Yours.

“I doubt it will,” he says.

“What makes you think so?” Aside from the despairing infinitude of the gray cover overhead, Jihoon means, but he neglects to say it.

“That’s just what life is like for me these days,” Junhui tells him. There it is, another little spark, the slightest hint Junhui isn’t everything he looks like, this trip isn’t all it seems to be on the surface. True to form, the rain still hasn’t broken by the time they stop in the evening.

Tonight’s stop is somewhere near the southern border of Oregon, with the following morning’s plan being to stop by San Francisco before going onward to Yosemite for another few nights of camping. Jihoon doesn’t know for sure which side of the border they’re on when they pull into another shoddy motel parking lot, mind too boggled by the toneless universe smothering them and the tracks of dust ghosting over the walls to notice or care. While Junhui chews a bland sandwich and watches the rain fall through their grimy window, Jihoon considers asking him why they’re really on this trip, but thunder claps just as he parts his lips, so he decides to bite his tongue for now and lie back on the cramped bed, stiff with starchy cleaner. The mattress creaks when Junhui flops beside him, shoulder nudging hard into Jihoon’s.

“Half of our trip has already gone by,” he says sadly, pulling at a loose string on his shirt’s hem. The dim light of the lamp on the bedside table frames him oddly, makes him seem hollow. “We’ll be back home before you know it.”

“It feels like we just left yesterday,” Jihoon mumbles to the ceiling more than to Junhui, “but I also feel like I haven’t slept in my own bed in years.”

“Are you excited to be back home?” It feels loaded, but it doesn’t sound like it’s supposed to. For all Jihoon knows, it’s just an innocent question, just untainted curiosity, but his chest won’t let him take it at face value. The hands in his head turn it over ten times before concluding they don’t know what to do with it. Jihoon keeps looking at the ceiling.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Like, I like being home,” Jihoon explains, “but sometimes I think I would rather die than breathe one more breath in Columbus. Sometimes I feel like I can’t even breathe there at all.” Die is a hard word to swallow. He should have phrased that differently, but he didn’t, and there’s no point in backpedaling.

“We have more in common than I thought,” Junhui hums.

When Jihoon turns to look at him, Junhui’s eyes are already searching his face, dark and deep and shining still despite the mediocrity of their room lamp’s lightbulb. What is he looking for? Jihoon wonders, but he doesn’t get to ask. With one hand, Junhui is cupping his cheek, and then he has closed the gap between them, kissing at Jihoon’s empty lips with a full sort of sweetness that makes him feel like crying. A hushed smack accompanies Junhui’s retreat, hand falling back away to rest over his abdomen.

“What?” Jihoon asks.

“Was that not okay?”

“It was fine.” The rain outside picks up without warning, hammering at the door, begging to be let in, and when Jihoon watches Junhui smile, he has never had more trouble reading him than he’s having right now. Mystery is a glaring understatement, enigma a pathetic mockery of the truth. Junhui right now is everything Jihoon has never understood packaged neatly into one suit of skin, everything he needs and nothing he can grasp. Jihoon is the rain pounding at the flat of the door, and Junhui is the lock.

It keeps him up long past when Junhui starts softly half-snoring, chaos of the rainfall outside a subtle backdrop to his supernova of thoughts. Sometimes people kiss each other even when they don’t necessarily like each other. He’s not a kid anymore. He knows that. What he doesn’t know is how to tell when that’s what’s going on. Junhui certainly seems very nonchalant, but it doesn’t translate well over his lips; whether it’s intentional or not, Jihoon feels very liked when Junhui is kissing him. He feels like something somebody really cares about, something important, and he doesn’t know if that’s real or just the way he wants to feel. Maybe Junhui is just filling in gaps because they’re far away from home and everything will be the same when they get back and nobody will ever know. He doesn’t know how he feels about that.

Somewhere in the drowning night, he’s able to find his way to sleep, and he claws his way back to the surface of consciousness in the morning before Junhui does. Even now, he’s incredibly interesting to watch while he sleeps, vulnerable and fragile, seems like he might break if Jihoon touches him even once. His hand makes a frame around the bend of Jihoon’s wrist just like it had on the first night of their trip, easy to bend and impossible to break. A week and a half ago feels like his entire life.

“Morning,” Junhui says. Jihoon must be getting worse and worse at paying attention to things. “Do you need something?”

“No.” Jihoon rolls onto his back, hand still stuck in its spot. “You just look a lot different when you sleep.”

“Different how?”

“I don’t know.” Finally, Junhui picks up his hand, but neither of them move. “Just different.” For a long time, there is no sound.

“Better?” Junhui asks at last. Jihoon gnaws at his bottom lip.

“I don’t know if I would say that.” Another long pause.

“Well, we won’t get anywhere by sitting here all day,” he says, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and planting his bare feet on the floor. “Let’s go ahead and get a move on.”

Miraculously, the skies are clear, bright blue and dazzling, and after so much rain, Jihoon is convinced he’s never seen a sunny sky before in his entire life, never known anything but flat and drab and gray. It takes them a few more hours in the car to spy the famous Golden Gate, a few more rounds of AM that’s started to sound more like the neutral sound of the universe than like music, and Junhui cheers when they cross into town, rolls down the window and hollers out into the wind. Every color staining the world around them cowers in his wake, and Jihoon can do nothing but grin.

They stop for an early lunch at some place called the fisherman something-or-other, some specific restaurant with a reputation for sourdough. Jihoon doesn’t recall what he orders himself, but he does know Junhui orders an egg salad sandwich, which he scrunches his nose at. Even so, Junhui smiles at him the whole time they’re stopped, broad and unwavering just like the rest of him. A place like this seems like somewhere good for him to live, Jihoon thinks, big and interesting and unusual. The more he looks at the concrete and grass, the more he feels the cool breeze roll in off the water, the more he feels Junhui is already part of them. Before they leave, Junhui buys a bright yellow shirt with the San Francisco stitched across it in orange, and he looks at it like he loves it.

When they walk back to where Junhui parked the car on arrival, Jihoon feels a sudden something warm against his palm, between his fingers. He looks down to find a hand there, a little larger than his own, pinker at the joints, knuckles wider and harder on the edges. Kissing is one thing on its own, something to do just because it feels nice, but handholding is a different type of physical intimacy, one that doesn’t sit quite as easy as filler in passing. It’s something Jihoon isn’t willing to have as butter on the side, and he wriggles his fingers to escape it.

“What are you doing?” he whispers gruffly, whipping his wrist. “Let go.”

“Sorry, that’s bad?” Junhui asks, sliding his hand away to tuck it into his pocket, worried eyebrows drawn together. “Hey, please don’t be mad.” He sounds like a kicked dog, but Jihoon feels like a kicked dog, and he can’t even make sense of why. The flowers that bloom in the lines of his palms are more delicate than the butterflies that spill from his lips, and he’s got to draw the line somewhere to say some feelings are worth protecting, worth more than just a way to pass the time. “Would you look at me? I didn’t mean to upset you.” Jihoon does look at him, and his chest is tight.

“I know you didn’t.”

“I won’t do it again,” he swears. “Forgive me this time.” Ah, don’t sound so wounded, Jihoon wants to tell him.

“I forgive you,” he says. Junhui sighs.

“You don’t mean it, but I’ll take it,” he moans. A ways off in the distance, the car’s lights flash to signal its unlock, yellow too bright. “Hopefully you can find it in your heart to mean it on the drive over to the park. It’s too nice a day to be mad.” Jihoon grumbles something unintelligible and slumps into the front seat for another riveting four hours of AM.

He shouldn’t be mad, and he is well aware that he shouldn’t, but the fact remains that he is. The way he sees it, there is a very sharp divide between casual things like kissing and more innocent things like holding hands, and innocent means more vulnerable, means deeper, means shouldn’t be broached if it doesn’t mean anything. Junhui has no concept of this divide, and Jihoon can’t reasonably expect him to just understand something he’s never spared a thought about, but he does anyway. Bad enough that Junhui’s already fuzzy on the lines between serious and not to begin with. It’s not until they have forty minutes left in their drive that he decides he can get over it, and he listens to the final cycle of the album with a quiet mind.

Yosemite is a strange park, situated in a rockier area of the state after a winding drive up roads too steep for a normal day. Jihoon gets the distinct feeling on their drive up that it might be about to snow even when it’s perfectly sunny outside, a peachy seventy-something to heat the car into a greenhouse. The trees around them are tall and pretty, thicker the higher they climb, darker the more they see, and by the time they coast into the park and putt toward the check-in office, everything is drenched in shade.

Their camping site here is very similar to the plot where they stayed at Yellowstone, only surrounded by more trees and a little further from the shower cabins. Junhui once again shoulders the burden of setting the tent up on his own, leaving Jihoon with nothing to do but watch in silence until the structure is completed and they’re hefting their belongings into it, spreading out their excuse for a bed on the floor. The way the sunlight filters around the trees casts dappled shadows on the ground around them, and Jihoon wonders what Soonyoung and Wonwoo would think of it here, if they would have helped at all setting up the tent. Probably not, he guesses. Soonyoung would complain about the bugs and the dirt and the sweat sticking his hair to his forehead, and Wonwoo would gladly thrust all the grunt work onto Junhui’s shoulders. If he closes his eyes, he finds he can picture them there, whispering in each other’s ears and giggling on the dirty fireside bench; he also finds he’s perfectly content to view the scene without them in it.

Since the sun is still far from setting and Junhui is eternally restless, they head out on a hike before eating and turning in for the evening, off in search of a waterfall Junhui is sure he spotted on the pamphlet at the visitor center. A small shuttle takes them to the locus of the trails, all twisting out in different directions from the center of command, and Junhui marches down one without stopping to think too much about where it leads, strides large and confident enough that Jihoon doesn’t feel too uneasy following him. All around them, the trees tower high, blocking out enough rays that it becomes hard to tell the time. Jihoon thinks there’s no way they can go any deeper, and deeper still they plod along.

A twig cracks under the sole of Junhui’s shoe, and he gasps, but not at the crunch by his feet. Far in front of them, something like rushing water is audible, a dull roar that echoes off the tree trunks surrounding them, and a gleeful light sparks behind Junhui’s irises when he chases it, clambering forward with ever-accelerating steps, treading clumsy on the uneven path as Jihoon drags on behind. Ahead of them, the waterfall gradually brings itself into view, white torrents falling from high above only to crash in a spray of foam far below. Junhui turns his eyes to Jihoon, wide and wondering, smile untouchable.

Jihoon has never seen a waterfall in real life before. From pictures, he hadn’t expected it to seem so special, little more than water cascading over rocks and wearing them slowly to dust, but standing in front of one, it certainly feels like a great deal more than it actually is. Junhui helps it along, too, has this special way of making things look like so much more than they are, just that way his eyes sparkle like a glittering sky in the rural night. He backs up so his shoulder is lined up next to where Jihoon’s would be if he grew a few inches, leans down until his lips almost brush against the lobe of his ear.

“Isn’t it cool?” he shouts, eager to be heard over the crash of countless gallons of water, breath hot and sticky on Jihoon’s skin. He waits for a response, patient and attentive, ear already turned to the side for Jihoon to yell back into it.

“Yeah,” Jihoon tells him. “I’ve never seen a waterfall before.”

“Me neither,” Junhui hollers. “It’s so pretty. I want to see Niagara Falls someday.”

“I bet it’s really cool.” No sound but the downward rush of water at the hands of gravity passes between them for a long while, occasionally interrupted by the soft chirp of a bird as it spies intruders in its domain. At last, Junhui taps at Jihoon’s shoulder, tears his hand back like he touched fire.

“Have you forgiven me yet?” he asks, only just over the sound of the waterfall. On his lips rests a smile small in its hope, in his eyes a glimmer so slight it’s nearly invisible. He can make himself very difficult to be unhappy with, especially when Jihoon has long since ceased being angry.

“Yes,” Jihoon calls to him, and Junhui is facing the waterfall again immediately, fists extended over his head in triumph, eyelids fallen in relief.

“Thank god,” he hollers, arms dropping back to his sides, eyes still shut in fine curves. He looks gorgeous outlined against the verdant backdrop of shady trees, skin dewy from the waterfall’s radiating moisture, and Jihoon thinks there is a lot to love here. His puffy cheeks, his starry freckles, the neutral pout of his lips when they rest in a gentle smile. With no one around, it’s so easy. He reaches up to slide his fingers behind Junhui’s ear and pull his head down closer.

Junhui opens his eyes again only for a moment before lifting a hand to curl around Jihoon’s jaw and drawing the blinds closed once more. As with the other times, he kisses very sweetly, soft and gentle, fingertips boring smoldering holes where they land. There is a subtle way he chases that makes Jihoon feel like a soft afterglow of lightning is burning somewhere in his body or maybe everywhere, eating him from the core, cracking his bones from the marrow. When they part and Junhui looks him in the eyes, he seems confused more than anything else, lost in the woods with no bread crumb trail to take him home. Jihoon tries to tell Junhui what he means without words, that casual is fine so long as it only reaches to here, but Junhui doesn’t look like he gets it. Even so, they embark on the trek to the tent that has started to seem like it might be a home.

Through the cover of trees, it’s impossible to see the stars or the sun while it sets, so they’re left with little to do beyond chew their sandwiches while the sky darkens to a dusky navy. They hold off on lighting a fire for the night, something about how Junhui thinks it’ll be better to have one tomorrow and it won’t do to waste all their rations tonight, and when they’ve finished eating and found their way both to and back from the shower cabin, they sleep for the evening. Try as he might, Jihoon can’t get Junhui’s muddled eyes to unfasten from the insides of his eyelids.

A bird’s sharp call outside is what rouses Jihoon in the morning, eyelashes fluttering with dust as he takes in the first scene of the day. It’s a calm one, blurred around the edges by lingering shreds of slumber, soft gray lines bleeding into one another where they cross, all a smooth backdrop built for a subject which has yet to arrive. The air is frigid, biting, makes Jihoon shrink back as far under his covers as possible until he gathers the courage to brave the cold. Beside him, a form shifts, arm already extended beyond the reaches of the blankets obscuring the rest of his body, and then Junhui turns on his side, eyes opening, smile weak. The first colors of life have awoken for the day.

Outside, the sky is back again to its new favorite shade of overcast, a thin slate blanket floating far above the reaches of the tallest tree, though it doesn’t quite seem like they’ll get rained on just yet, air devoid of its foreboding pre-storm pulse. Their area of interest is again the center of the trails, heels eager to snake over all the paths they didn’t get to touch yesterday, lay eyes on every rocky outcrop and waterfall they still have yet to see. Crowds today are bigger, so they hold each other at arm’s length, elbows not quite bumping into each other, backs of hands not quite touching, and march along with the flow of foot traffic. After a while, every waterfall starts to seem the same, equally mundane and forgettable no matter how much water crashes into steam at the bottom, and Jihoon wishes he didn’t want to kiss Junhui as much as he does.

The shuttle to take them back to the campsite is disgustingly overfull, enough that they’re forced to stand pressed against cool glass windows at the back of it, shoved into the corner by a throng well oversized for such a small bus. Junhui stands as a human shield between Jihoon and the rest, squeezing him tight into the window and leaving him with little option but to stare out of it, soak in the monotony of every tree outside through the fog gathering at the edges of the pane. When they come to a stop at an intersection, Jihoon notices something a little unusual standing out from the rest of the woods, peers a little more closely when he hears a small commotion from the seats in front of where he stands.

“Hey, Junhui,” he says, nudging backward with his elbow until Junhui turns around to see where his finger is pointing through the glass. “Look.”

“Oh my god,” he breathes, leaning forward until the tip of his nose dusts against the window, chest full against Jihoon’s back. “It’s a fucking bear,” he whispers reverently, motionless until the bus lurches back into motion, trundling away from the stop. A large smile graces his lips when he leans back again to blend in with the other standing passengers and give Jihoon’s lungs a little room to stretch out.

“Didn’t you want a picture of it?” he asks, and Junhui keeps smiling when he looks down at him, keeps gazing with those soft eyes.

“I wouldn’t have had time to take one,” he says. “Besides, it’s enough that I got to see it.” His hand burns its print into the small of Jihoon’s back for three seconds before drawing back. “Thanks.”

“Sure,” Jihoon grumbles, turning to look back out the window with red cheeks. There’s no reason for Junhui to say that like he’s the one who made the bear show up in the first place.

Dark skies greet them when they return, inviting a warm pillar of smoke and flyaway sparks to join the atmosphere when at last they’ve lit the fire. Junhui remembered this time to pick up supplies for s’mores and store them somewhere they wouldn’t melt, so after another invigorating fireside meal of hot dogs, they break out the marshmallows and get to roasting. Jihoon has never been able to stand how sticky it makes his hands to make them, and he’s never thought they tasted quite good enough to compensate for it, but Junhui overflows with too much childish delight when he watches flame engulf his marshmallow, and Jihoon doesn’t have enough heart to say anything against it.

Junhui tilts his chin up to the sky when he’s tired himself out of eating, eyes locked on the misty gray smoke as it curls ever higher, fading out to oblivion in the darkness. “Must be nice,” he muses, thoughts aloud more than conversation, “to be smoke.” Jihoon stares at him hard for a moment, lips pressed into a line, admiring the way the orange glow from the fire catches on his skin.

“What makes you say that?” he asks after a while, and Junhui’s smile when he looks at him is halfhearted and suffocating.

“You know,” he begins, “how there’s nothing to worry about, and then you just disappear, like you were never even there. And nobody cares, and everything is fine.”

Now again, something is settling in Jihoon’s gut, hard and prickly, heavy and poisonous. The something tells him Junhui is hiding behind a flawless exterior and waiting with bated breath for it to fall apart, waiting for the inevitable moment when it’s had the last straw and quits holding up, cracks perfectly in two to leave him left with nothing. Jihoon is more than sure that this trip across the country is not just a celebration, and he’s aching to know what else it’s supposed to be, what other purpose it’s serving. He digs his fingernails into his palm when he clenches his fist, firmly resolved to quit being the polish on dying façade and start being the dustpan ready to collect the aftermath.

“Can I ask you something?” His voice is timid more than it is confrontational, but Junhui looks like he’s scared of the question.

“What?” he whispers.

“What’s the real reason you wanted to come on this trip?” he asks, voice low under pressure, knuckles tensed and white. “Because I don’t think it’s just ‘cause you’re so thrilled to have a degree now.” For a long time, Junhui doesn’t move a single muscle in his body, and then, he drops his face to his hands, drags it up to rest his chin on the apex of his palms and show Jihoon a smile so sad he’d like to close his eyes and pretend he never saw it.

“You really see right through me, huh?” Jihoon doesn’t think so. He wants to say something like, I feel like I never even see you at all. “Though I guess I’m getting a little worse at being subtle, but somehow it’s easier when it’s just you.” What’s easier? Get on with it. “Well, originally, it was just to celebrate, but now, it’s like… I felt like I would have died if we didn’t go, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” he sighs. “Like, I toughed it out through four years of school because I was hoping I would finally know what to do by the time it was over, have my life together or something, but I don’t. It’s all done and I don’t have everything all set up for the future like you do or anyone who gives a shit if I’m around like Wonwoo and Soonyoung. And I do like Columbus”—he says it like it’s something he used to be sure of but isn’t quite so certain anymore—“but sometimes I feel like I’m drowning there, and I just needed to go do something before it sucks me in for good.”

Jihoon gets it. He does. More than he wants to admit, he understands that feeling, like you’re being crushed by every room you set foot in, squeezed to death by every wreath of air around your neck, but there’s something gnawing at him, too, at his tissue skin and wire bones. The way Junhui says like you as if Jihoon’s got something to be proud of, as if he isn’t in the exact same spot. So what if he’s got a job? What good is a job beyond money? Jihoon doesn’t have everything set up, doesn’t have anything planned at all. And what good is having a future when you don’t know what you want to do with it?

“Don’t act like I’ve got it all together,” Jihoon groans, flattening his palms to the bench and leaning back on them. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t make out even a single star through the haze. “I’m not any better off than you are.”

“My ass,” Junhui snorts. “You’ve got a job at least. What do I have? A useless piece of paper?”

“Who cares about a job?” Jihoon spits. “I still don’t know what I really want to do. I’ll go into work every day for the next forty years and then retire and die unfulfilled. Am I supposed to be proud of that?” Junhui stares at him, and Jihoon scoffs, shrugs into himself and turns his eyes away. “Anybody can get a job. You’ll get one, too, and then you’ll see how it doesn’t fix anything.”

“I don’t have half the experience you do,” Junhui says. “I’ll be lucky to get hired anywhere.”

“Yeah, right.” Splinters dig into the heels of Jihoon’s palms, small and irritating. They dig into his chest as well. “You could probably charm your way into anything you want. A good resume doesn’t pass the interview.” Charged silence crackles between them, and Jihoon breaks it just before Junhui can. “And I give a shit if you’re around.” Junhui gazes at him for a long time, impossible as ever to get a read on, hands folded up into neat little knobs of knuckles under his chin.

“Can I ask you something now?” he says at last, voice smooth and resonant, part of the trees.

“What is it?”

“Is the only reason you agreed to come with me because you would feel bad if I got into an accident driving by myself?” Jihoon winces, head hurts for the time when that felt like it was the truth. Only two weeks ago, but he feels he’s lived years since then, aged through the heat death of the universe twice over and come back around to have another go. It’s not accurate like it used to be.

“No,” he says. “I mean, yeah, I won’t say I didn’t think about that, but that’s not it.” At last, he wrenches his hands from the wood of the seat and dusts them of the tiny fragments sticking out from the uppermost layer of skin. “But I needed to come on this trip just as much as you did, I think. Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning, too.” A very long pause, far too heavy. “And I really didn’t want you to be alone.”

“You’re just saying that,” Junhui guesses. Jihoon’s eyebrows lower in a scowl.

“Believe that if you want to believe it, then,” he sighs, heaving himself to his feet. “I think I’m gonna go to sleep.” He takes one crunchy step toward the tent before Junhui stops him.

“Hey, at least wait until I put the fire out.”

“Why should I?”

“Because you enjoy my company?” Jihoon’s mouth is a flat line when he keeps looking at Junhui. “God, all I ever do is make you angry, huh?”

“I’m not angry.”

“Your glare says otherwise.”

“Whatever.” He resumes his stomping toward the tent’s waiting entrance.

“Wait, I’m sorry for making you mad.”

“You don’t have to apologize so much.”

“Wait a second.”

There is a hand on Jihoon’s elbow, and when he turns around, Junhui is there, close and looming. His eyes are desperate for something, lonely and sad, but they’re still characteristically warm when Jihoon looks into them, almost enough to burn his irritation away. Jihoon wants to ask why even though he knows what’s coming, and he still feels a butterfly kicking out from behind his ribs when Junhui slides a hand around the back of his neck and reels himself in. His lips are soft as always, just the tiniest bit sticky, and Jihoon’s face is unbearably warm this time, trapped between the fire and the flame. Sweet is the only word that ever comes to mind, gentle the only way to describe the feel of fingers pressing against the wispy hairs at the nape of his neck. Junhui kisses Jihoon once through the hair covering his forehead before he rears back, and Jihoon is caught too much off guard to tell him that’s overstepping bounds.

“You think,” he gulps, “you can just kiss me and I won’t be mad anymore?”

“So you are mad.”

“I’m not.” Junhui’s eyes twinkle. Jihoon’s roll. “Just hurry up and put out the fire.”

“On it.”

Junhui feels closer when they lie down to sleep even though Jihoon knows he probably isn’t, heat bleeding through the spread-out sleeping bag below them and melting into Jihoon’s body through his spine. It’s too hot, far too hot, and he considers kicking his covers off, but he knows the morning chill will kill him if he does, so he tucks himself in just as tightly and wonders why he can see the pink glowing on his cheeks when the tent swims with so much pitch darkness.

Clouds sit in a thick blanket over all the sky in the morning, air saturated with the ripple of oncoming rain, but it’s still clear when they wake up, so they head out before the drops have a chance to start falling. Rather than the hiking trails, they head today to a different bus, one that takes them to the towering redwood forests they still have yet to see. A guide talks to them about the trees before they wander around to get lost in the midst of them, voice dull and tired and no longer fascinated with the enormous marvels surrounding her, but Jihoon is too busy eyeing those marvels to listen to what she has to say about them, vision crawling up the trunks to find tops so high he can barely see them. It takes several rough nudges from Junhui to get him walking toward the gated path through the grove.

Being of small stature, Jihoon has not had terribly many times in life where he’s felt large and untouchable, but standing among these trees, each hundreds of feet tall and absolutely massive, this is certainly not one of those select few moments. He has never felt smaller than he does right now, than he does when he follows Junhui through a sort of gateway arch at the base of one tree’s trunk and he’s dwarfed in comparison. All around him, they rise to infinite highs, bending his neck until he’s sure it’s fit to break, and he feels tiny and insignificant, a speck of dust landing among the sand, a drop of vinegar falling into the sea.

“God,” he whistles as they curve around another bend in the path, gaze eternally fixed skyward. “They’re enormous.”

“These aren’t even the biggest ones,” Junhui tells him like it’s a secret, rocking back and forth on his heels. “All the really huge ones are in Sequoia National Park.”

“I can’t even imagine it,” he mutters. “I’ve never felt this small in my life.”

“Me neither,” Junhui tells him. He pinches weakly at the side of Jihoon’s hand, a brush of thumb and knuckle, before giving up and stuffing both hands in his pockets. “Well, let’s keep moving. There’s more to see.”

After a while, a chill sprinkle starts to fall to them from the clouds, tiny pricks of cold everywhere they touch Jihoon’s skin, but they figure it’s enough that they can deal with it, treading around the rest of the paths with soft steps and shivering calves and knocking knees. They hold up fine until the sprinkle turns into a drizzle turns into a fiercer sort of rain that soaks through their shoes and sends them sprinting back to the shuttle station like madmen, arms held up to protect against the onslaught. When they make it onto the bus, they’re already soaked, and the rain hasn’t let up at all by the time they get off, so they only reach the tent again once they’re thoroughly soaked and frozen straight through the center of each bone.

“Christ,” Junhui huffs, kicking his shoes off the second they’ve scrambled in the unzipped entrance and peeling his socks with them, rain beating at the plastic roof of the shelter in a subdued cadence that lies well under his voice. “We just have the worst luck, don’t we?”

“Seems like it.” The feeling of completely soaked clothes doesn’t sit well on Jihoon’s skin, and if he doesn’t change now, his skin is sensitive enough that it’ll start to chafe, but he doesn’t quite feel up to whipping his shirt off when Junhui’s eyes are on him so steady, mouth relaxed, and it seems now he’s got those eyes aimed at Jihoon’s lips, soft and a little bit of something else, tender and one step further. Jihoon is waiting for him to say something, but he doesn’t know what it is.

“We better get changed,” is what ends up coming out, quick as lightning, and then he’s already tugged his head through the hole of his shirt and cast it to the ground, already started working on the buttons of his shorts to shuck those as well. Jihoon is stunned and transfixed, unable to move and unable to look anywhere else.

He’d tried not to look last time, tried to keep his attention on the ceiling and take in as little as possible, but the ceiling of the tent is infinitely less captivating, a low gray dome devoid of any discoloration to keep him occupied. All he sees is Junhui, bare and vulnerable, glowing a gold the rain could never quite wash out of him. There is far too much to see: broad shoulders sloping up into a long neck, sporadic moles dotting his shoulder and chest and arms in spots Jihoon’s never noticed before, long legs shaped like all legs ought to be even with their knobby knees. He stands a picture of perfect stillness, eyes forward and knees unsteady, feet firmly dug into the floor until Junhui looks at him again.

“Oh,” he says, and now is when Jihoon’s cheeks dye and his soul dies. “Sorry. I forgot. I’ll, uh…” His eyes dart around in search of something to cover himself, land eventually on the crumpled wad of a blanket that he bends down to reach for. “I’ll cover myse—”

“It’s fine,” Jihoon coughs at him, face still flushed. “Don’t worry about it.” Junhui gazes up in curiosity from where he’s leaned to grab cover, and the line of his back is more than beautiful. Jihoon wants to kiss him. He wants to kiss every individual notch tracing up that sloping back, and that is a very bad thought to have. “I need to change, too.” He pulls his shirt over his head, and when he’s back to seeing, he finds Junhui looking at him still, frozen in place.

It’s fair, he reasons, because he just did the same, but it’s startlingly uncomfortable to have someone watch you undress, makes his heartrate spike in a way that isn’t normal or desirable. He knows his whole body is blushing, knows every single physical shortcoming is on brilliant display whether he wants it to be or not, and there’s nothing he can do to keep Junhui from seeing any of it when his throat is too dry to tell him not to look. Even if he turns around, that only means he can’t see how much he’s being seen, and that doesn’t make things any better. He’d be trading a soft stomach for an equally soft back when he’d much prefer to keep both hidden.

When his shorts slide off, he realizes another glaring issue: his underwear is soaked. That means he has to change it, and it’s one thing to change surface clothes while Junhui is looking at him, but it’s an entirely different beast to bare himself completely with eyes in the room. The only people who have ever seen him naked are his parents and his second boyfriend, and he is not feeling now as a great time to give that list a fourth item. Surely Junhui will have to change his, too, and they’ll both turn around and get dressed like normal and his chest can get back to feeling less like he’s had a star go supernova between his lungs.

“Hey,” he chokes, arms dying to reach for something to cover himself but incapable of moving, “I need to, uh…” Words die before they make it onto the air, and Junhui is suddenly standing up straight, feet falling in light steps as he crosses the tent. Jihoon is sure their neighbors camping in the next lot over can hear his heart right now, bold thrums of timpani roaring like thunder over the rain.

“Jihoon.” His voice is soft and unbearable, face too close where he hunches to stand under the tent, and Jihoon feels a hand hovering just over his shoulder, tips of two fingers the only ones brave enough to touch down. “Would you mind if I kiss you right now?”

“What?” he sputters. A third fingertip lands, and they’re all burning. Jihoon doesn’t want to breathe.

“Can I?” Junhui asks again, searching Jihoon’s face for an answer he’s scared to give.

“Since when do you ask?” Jihoon chokes, and the smile that crinkles Junhui’s face makes living a little easier, the subtle sweeps of pink highlighting his cheekbones. Up close, there is so much to focus on that Jihoon can hardly look at him. The fourth fingertip makes contact.

“I thought I should start,” he hums. “So is it okay?”

“But why?”

“I think you’re really beautiful.” Jihoon’s esophagus twists itself into a neat little knot, bow and all. There is the thumb, and Junhui’s heartbeat with it, quick and hard filtering into Jihoon’s chest through his shoulder.

“You do?”

“I always have.” Always is a very powerful word. Always is a very long time and a very many things, a very ponderous world on very weak shoulders. Jihoon doesn’t know if always really means always or if always just feels right in Junhui’s mouth right now, and he’s dying to hear but scared to ask. Carefully, slowly, he wets his lips.

“It’s okay,” he says, smaller than he’s ever heard himself say anything, and he has no time to take another breath before Junhui’s lips are warm and insistent against his.

It’s all very strange. Not one week ago, it had been months since the last time he kissed anyone, long enough that he could hardly remember who the last person he kissed was, and now he feels like kissing Junhui is the only thing he’s done recently, the only thing he’s ever done in life that’s made him feel good. With no shirt on, Junhui’s hands are eager to roam, one fixed at his neck and the other crawling up his side, lips sweet and gentle while he traces patterns over the curve of Jihoon’s waist, chest hot and pressed against his own. Somehow, the cold rain outside is making him feel like this isn’t enough, drawing his body forward until there’s no space. Jihoon’s head feels light, and everything is so strange.

One blink, and they are no longer standing, reclined against the blanketed mess of bedding on the floor as Jihoon presses down and down and down, senses dulled to everything but the feel of Junhui’s lips and hands and heartbeat everywhere on his skin. Slow though they move, Jihoon’s heart does nothing but get faster, racing until it hammers against his ribs to break itself free. Head fevered, he breaks away to level his gaze at Junhui lying beneath him, skin an impassioned peach pink. He opens his eyes very gradually to look at Jihoon, short eyelashes stirring all the breath in his chest, all the air in the tent.

“Jihoon,” he mutters, and Jihoon is suddenly aware of a hand on the inside of his thigh, thumb pressing down too close. “Do you want to—”

“Do you?” Jihoon asks first. He watches Junhui’s Adam’s apple bob when he gulps.

“Yes.” It’s too warm inside a too-small space, and Jihoon is breathing too much and too little at the same time.

“But we don’t have a—”

“I do,” Junhui tells him hastily. He wriggles backward until he can reach his bag and pulls out a short strip of condoms. Jihoon’s jaw drops.

“Are you kidding me?”

“No, wait,” Junhui croaks, smacking a hand over his eyes. “It’s not like… You know, Soonyoung and Wonwoo are always irresponsible and gross, so I just wanted to be safe.”

“You…” Jihoon breathes out a sigh. “You’re disgustingly over-prepared.”

“I know.” His chest rises and falls unsteadily, the hard beat of waves against a rocky shore, and Jihoon lowers his palms to feel it, spreads his fingers out to soak up every inch. When Junhui quits shielding his face, Jihoon kisses him again.

Sex is bizarre in the middle of the day, in the middle of nature, when there’s no way to block out the hazy gray light pouring in through the meshy windows at the tent’s roof and the incomplete opacity of the tent itself, no way to hide anything or keep any secrets. The sound of showers outside is thousands of miles in the distance every time Junhui kisses somewhere on Jihoon’s body, and he kisses everywhere and anywhere, tender and delicate. Everything in the world is gray but Junhui, everything in the entire universe, and Jihoon feels like he is touching color for the first time in his life, breathing in fresh air and exhaling stardust. Junhui hums against every bone in Jihoon’s chest, and Jihoon feels they are the single square inch of rainbow cast by the windowpane on every floor of drab carpet ever laid down. Pink is where he feels himself in his chest; the empty slate downpours beyond the confines of the tent are no more than boring background music, muted by every breath.

The afterglow has always been Jihoon’s weak point, never any type of decent at pillow talk, and he’s worse now, worse after thinking about how he’s never had casual sex before and whether he’s okay with it like he thought he would be. Sex is fine for meaning nothing, he thinks, but somehow, smack in the center of his chest, he doesn’t want it to be fine as nothing. He curls up on his side and rolls to face the tent wall with a blank stare and twisted guts, head a swirling mess he wishes would hurry up and settle. A hand appears out of thin air to sift through his hair in tender strokes, and they hurt like fire.

“Stop,” he says, and the hand stops moving, but it doesn’t retreat.

“What?” Junhui asks. He sounds too close and not nearly close enough.

“Stop touching my hair,” Jihoon clarifies, and then the hand draws back, reluctant and gradual. Junhui heaves a sigh as he flops onto his back.

“You’re impossible,” he mourns. Jihoon doesn’t think he needs to sound so sad. “I can kiss you, but I can’t hold your hand. I can have sex with you, but I can’t touch your hair. I don’t get it.” He sighs again, bridging on a full groan. “Josh was always so easy to read. I never have any idea what you’re thinking.” Jihoon could laugh at how easy it would be to say join the club, but he doesn’t.

“They’re different,” he answers instead, still staring through the wall hard enough to bore holes, dragging the blanket higher to cover his neck. He can’t tell anymore whether it’s still raining or this is just what the whole world sounds like now.

“How are they different?” Junhui asks, almost sounds like a plea.

“They just are,” Jihoon tells him. “It’s fine to kiss someone if it doesn’t really matter, but holding hands isn’t… it’s not the same. It’s one of those weird things you should only do with someone you care about, and I don’t want to treat it like it’s not.”

“Are you saying I don’t care about you?” A pinched breath rushes out of his nose with a whistle. For a long time, Jihoon has thought it’s cute, the way his nose whistles. “Or are you the one who doesn’t care about me?”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I have no idea what you mean.” He waits. “And I would feel a lot better if I could see your face.”

When Jihoon turns around, Junhui is closer than he expects, one shoulder almost pressing into the middle of Jihoon’s chest. His head lolls on its side, eyes heavy on Jihoon’s, mouth a clean frown from corner to corner. He still looks bright against the monochrome backdrop of the world around them, a warmth that’s grown a little too cool. The blankets Jihoon has cocooned himself in soak up some of the stray heat curling off Junhui’s skin and melt him further into the floor.

“I mean,” Jihoon begins, “I don’t mind doing things that mean nothing, but I think some stuff shouldn’t mean nothing.”

“And that stuff is handholding and hair touching?”

“Yeah.” Junhui heaves back onto his side to face Jihoon head on, eyes crinkling while he breathes out a breathy imitation of a very small laugh. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Junhui says. “You’re just a really weird, backwards kind of old-fashioned, I guess.” Jihoon frowns. “But I don’t understand the business about not meaning anything to begin with.” He reaches under the edge of Jihoon’s covers with a pinky, finds the curled hand there and wraps around his fingers. “You think I don’t mean it when I kiss you?”

“It’s not that,” Jihoon groans, face hot under Junhui’s gaze, fingers too weak to pull away from Junhui’s weaker grasp. “But it’s not like you really like me or anything, either.”

“Who says I don’t?”

“I mean, you…” Jihoon squints. “You did, didn’t you?”

“I never said anything like that.”

“But you said… you’re not telling anyone, right?” Jihoon’s head is fuzzy when he tries to remember. All that comes to him now is the sweet feeling of Junhui’s lips and the quiet hum of Sweet Caroline behind them, the slight popcorn flavor his tongue was left with. “You just wanted it to be some little thing while we’re on this trip.”

“I offered, if that’s all you want,” Junhui tells him, tugging a little with his pinky, “but don’t get it wrong.” The rest of his fingers join that pinky to wrap around Jihoon’s hand, a shell against the sleeping bag below them. “I like you a lot.”

“Since when?” Jihoon asks. His face is hot like he hates for it to be, but Junhui’s cheeks are pinking toward cherry, too, and it makes him feel better. It makes him more certain Junhui isn’t joking around like he so often seems to be.

“Since a long time,” Junhui says. “Maybe a little bit since I met you. I don’t know.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“You’re saying you wouldn’t have been uncomfortable?” Jihoon opens his mouth, but he can’t say it. All things considered, being comfortable at all around Junhui in general is very new for him. Junhui smiles like he expected it. “I have manners.” Rain fills the silence, or maybe it is the silence.

“So do you,” Jihoon chokes, “want to date me?”

“I don’t know,” Junhui confesses. “If you want to, I think it might be nice to try.”

“Are you just saying that because you want to hold my hand?”

“Maybe.” His eyes nearly press shut when he grins, and Jihoon counts the little moles around his face like first bloom flowers in a garden. He knows he’s missing one where Junhui’s hair falls over his forehead in a tousled curl. “If I get to hold your hand, it can’t be all bad, right?”

“I don’t know,” Jihoon says. With a hesitant hand, he uncurls his fingers, slides them between Junhui’s to test the feeling. A warm palm, dry and sandy, knuckles too wide to fit smoothly between his fingers without knocking awkwardly into them; it’s not so bad at all. Junhui holds his breath for a hard moment before sighing like he might explode if he doesn’t get every atom of air out of his chest immediately.

“You’re unbelievable,” he drawls, half wonder and half incredulity. His eyes are misty while he stares unblinking at Jihoon, fogged over by a milky white nothing, and his grip on Jihoon’s hand is so insistently tight. “Sometimes,” he begins slowly, “I feel like you’re the moon, and I’m just a dog out in the backyard barking at you.”

“What does that mean?” Jihoon asks, soft, careful not to crack the air into shards. He’s almost sure by now the rain has stopped, but it also could have become so numbingly loud it sounds like nothing. Junhui inches closer on his side, free arm extending to loop around Jihoon’s neck and pull him forward, gentle lips press another kiss through his hair.

“I don’t know,” Junhui whispers. Amid the sound of the rain and the colorless smother of the clouds, they fall into hazy midday slumber just like this.

Los Angeles is waiting for them, Junhui says, and they leave to head there the following morning, a decently manageable drive that’ll land them there with plenty of time left to check the town out in the evening. Jihoon isn’t surprised at all when rain meets them as they start their trip in the morning, and he can’t help but wonder if there is some god of luck gifting them with so much bad weather after all, knows it doesn’t make sense for California to see so many inches of rain in a single week in summer. Regardless, there’s little else he can do but strap himself in the passenger seat and watch unusual raindrops beat at the window to the tune of Arctic Monkeys’ I Want It All.

An hour or so out of the city, they stop for lunch at a gas station, subpar pizza from hot holding near the counter. The grease of the cheese makes Jihoon’s stomach turn in a very understated way, but he doesn’t pay much attention to the light queasiness, too busy focusing on the way Junhui eyes his fingers like they’re nebulae dyeing the skin of the universe, artifacts on display at a museum. Jihoon coughs to get his attention.

“What?”

“That’s my question for you.”

“They’re pretty,” Junhui states, plain and simple. “Your hands, I mean. Am I really not allowed to look at them?”

“What do you mean, pretty?” Jihoon barks. “They’re just hands.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Junhui says. He rests his own hand palm up against the table, and Jihoon fills it with one of his without thinking first at all. In a lot of ways, it’s very freeing not to think about it. Junhui’s thumb taps absently at the side of his palm, perfectly accurate to the tempo of Arabella. “These are much more than just regular hands.” Jihoon leaves his hand clutched in Junhui’s until a dead stare from the gas station’s lone cashier scares him into retreat.

Traffic is intense when they get closer, holds them up an hour at least, long enough for the rain to stop and the sun to make its frying debut in the sky, heat rippling off the long line of cars stretching forever in front of them. Their final destination is some Airbnb Junhui booked for two nights at the edge of town, the first of all their lodgings that’s truly been fit for four, an entire apartment with two bedrooms each containing a queen bed and a living room with a large couch. Junhui says he booked it months ago and the price was an absolute steal when he sets his bag on the floor and flops back on the mattress, easy grin and drooping eyes.

Jihoon stands watching from the doorframe, shifting his weight awkwardly between feet. There are two beds now. Does this mean he gets his own, or are they still sharing? After too many minutes of silently debating, he watches Junhui prop himself up on his elbows and level his gaze.

“Your choice,” he says. Jihoon waits in vain for him to elaborate.

“I’m sorry?”

“The bed,” he says, patting beside him. “If you want to finally have a bed to yourself after two weeks of forced sharing, you can go take the other one. We might as well use both, since we have two.”

“Are you just saying that because you’re tired of sharing?”

“I would never tell you not to get in bed with me,” Junhui tells him, smiling like the biggest idiot Jihoon has ever seen. “It’s your choice,” he repeats. Jihoon sighs, rolls his eyes, heaves his bag onto his shoulder.

“I’ll take the other bed, then,” he drones, and Junhui snickers behind him as he marches back out into the hall.

Once they’ve gotten all settled in, they leave again, suffer through another long while of traffic to get to Hollywood Boulevard, and they only park once they’ve seen the Hollywood sign itself, less impressive than Jihoon expects standing out against the hill it calls home. They wander down the Walk of Fame in the midst of a large crowd, eyes cast eternally downward as they shuffle along, though they don’t care much for the majority of the names on the stars, only stopping with impressed nods at Michael Jackson. After they’ve seen everything they think they want to, they find their way to Sunset Boulevard. They have dinner at In N Out, and just when the sun begins to set, they are back on the road to their temporary home.

When Jihoon walks into the living room after showering, Junhui is already there, spread out on the couch with hair still damp from his own shower. He watches Jihoon with careful eyes, curious what he’ll do next, and Jihoon feels just a little bit like he might have forgotten to put clothes on at all. Eventually, he decides to make his way to the couch and watch whatever’s babbling out of the TV, and Junhui tucks his legs away to make room. While they watch, his ankle nudges against Jihoon’s leg, and it’s impossible to pay attention to the screen.

Something about it feels comfortable, more comfortable than home. He likes the way the blue light comes in through the windows, the way the yellow glow of the lamp on the end table fights it off, the low rumble of the speakers with words he won’t hear and barely audible buzz of the air conditioner, the feel of Junhui’s body heat drifting over through the stagnant air, even the sound of a second series of breaths that used to drive him crazy. His chest hurts for how much he wishes this could just be the way things are for a while, no Columbus and no future and no stress, just now and easy. A small thud echoes in the dimness when he leans his head back against the wall.

“I like it here,” he accidentally says. Beside him, Junhui shifts to put his feet on the ground instead of the cushions, transition his back from the arm rest to the actual back of the couch. His hand lingers near Jihoon’s atop the seat, pinky knuckles bumping against one another without moving away. Against the darkness creeping in and the universe crushing the earth to dust around them, he breathes out.

“I like it here, too,” he says at last, looping his pinky around Jihoon’s with care. “I almost wish we didn’t have to go back to Columbus.”

“Me, too,” Jihoon breathes, and for a while, they just sit like that, unseeing eyes fixed on the screen, unhearing ears drowning out the sound. Jihoon wants to kiss him or be kissed, but he doesn’t know which, and he doesn’t want to move. He wants to hold his hand or be held himself, but his mind won’t make itself up. He wants to stay the same and he wants to change, and he can’t do either.

After long enough watching television without doing much talking or moving or breathing or anything at all, they shut the TV off with a click and head their separate ways for bed. The mattress feels too big, though, when Jihoon lies down on it, the blankets too cold and the pillows too many. He spreads out every limb as far as it can reach, but there’s still a sinking feeling in his gut that he’s not taking up any space at all, not breathing in any of the air on his own. He used to be accustomed to this feeling, used to appreciate it, but somewhere in the past two weeks, he’s lost that, alongside countless other untraceable entities. It’s far too cold to fall asleep.

Quiet footsteps take him down the hallway after a long hour of restless turning, palms sliding against the wall as guides in the blind darkness. He knows he’s made it to the right room when he pushes the door in softly with his foot and hears the muted sounds of Junhui’s even breathing, mellow and rich mixing in with the hushed thrum of the air. As he pads over, he wonders whether Junhui will mind and whether he’ll even wake up at all, reasons he did originally offer sharing and surely won’t be too upset to find Jihoon beside him in the morning. Try though he does to avoid rousing Junhui from slumber, he hears a stutter in breathing as soon as he places a knee on the edge of the bed.

“Huh?” Junhui croaks, rustling the covers as he turns. “What… who?”

“It’s me.”

“Jihoon?” Another moving sound, though he doesn’t feel like he’s going anywhere. “Do you need something?”

“No,” Jihoon tells him. “Is it alright if I sleep in here with you?”

“I thought you wanted a bed to yourself.”

“Is it not okay, then?” Jihoon tries not to care, but he’d be lying to say it doesn’t hurt at least a little bit. A single second passes before he feels a hand groping around in the pitch darkness where his leg is, gripping the knee it finds with vigor.

“No,” Junhui whispers a little too emphatically. “It’s fine. I just…” He huffs out a long breath. “I wasn’t expecting you, so I don’t have anything on.” Jihoon tries and fails to bite back a laugh. He’s so unfortunately cute.

“I’ve already seen it all,” Jihoon reminds him, and then he’s crawling forward, fists probing further until he’s on top of the mattress but not Junhui, lowering himself steadily to the pillow at the head of the bed. It’s already worlds better than trying to sleep on his own.

He feels an arm snake up to him only seconds after closing his eyes, draw over his waist and tug him an inch closer. Junhui joins it before too long, full and warm and living, centimeters from his back. Butterflies live in the feeling of Junhui’s heated palm resting against his rib, flowers in the air along every inch of his neck and back, pink clouds of dewy sunrise where breath stirs his hair. Junhui leans in until Jihoon can feel his lips moving.

“Is this okay?” he whispers, voice molasses, chin tucked into the curve of Jihoon’s neck.

“I’d rather be the big spoon,” Jihoon whispers back, “but it’s alright.” Junhui’s laugh is coarse coral sand under cyan waters, a vivid dream in pastel beauty.

“Next time,” he promises. A kiss plants itself through the hair curled behind Jihoon’s ear, and his heart hurts over how perfectly and incomprehensibly welcome it feels.

As promised, Junhui is minimally clad when they wake up in the morning, but Jihoon finds it’s become a lot easier not to be nervous about it, maybe something to do with admission or sex or a little of both. His smile is the sunrise over the soft horizon of the pillow, eyes crinkling as it spreads into a hearty yawn. The words good morning hang in the air unspoken, in their eyes as they look at each other, in their fingertips where they still touch, and Jihoon is struck by how easily things can sometimes change and how bizarrely comforting change can sometimes be. With a mouth full of morning breath, Junhui kisses Jihoon on the forehead and pulls himself upright for the day.

Their first destination after breakfast is Little Tokyo because Junhui says he’s always wanted to visit a place like that, and Jihoon can’t find room to argue with wanting to go. The single semester of Japanese he took freshman year proves to be unsurprisingly useless as they navigate their way around, characters long reduced to a jumbled mix of swirling lines he barely knew in the first place and hard angles he never had the patience to learn. Junhui skips around with a huge smile on his face anyway.

There are a lot of interesting things to see, a little watchtower and a sculpture of a knot Junhui poses very eagerly in front of, and there are a lot of interesting places to go, stores of books and games and so many other things with titles neither of them can read, little plazas crowded with tourists, a plethora of restaurants packed to the brim. They end up settling on karaoke to waste a little time, though most of the songs are in Japanese. Jihoon sings the few American radio singles he knows, and Junhui passionately belts the first opening of One Piece without looking once at the prompts on the screen, and when they feel they’ve sung for long enough, they leave to get lunch and move on to somewhere else.

After a brief trip through Koreatown, they arrive at Santa Monica Pier in the early afternoon, ready to spend the remainder of their day in Los Angeles under the blazing heat of the sun. Junhui leads Jihoon by the wrist to the amusement park, entire body glittering, feet lighter than air as they skip over the concrete, and Jihoon lets him even though he’s never been much somebody who likes the rush of riding rollercoasters. If they’re here, he reasons they may as well do it. Something about Junhui being the one to force him into cramped plastic seats to rocket over a twist of rails makes it seem less inhumane.

Long lines are and always have been the bane of Jihoon’s existence, and the park is chock full of them, crawling with people shuffling in trails like ants. Jihoon’s feet are sore not two hours into their amusement park fun, but Junhui refuses to let the weakness win. He laces his fingers with Jihoon’s and tugs him wherever the wind wants to take them, oblivious to every complaint that bangs against his eardrums. It’s too hot to touch, too sweaty and grimy, but the sun is getting to Jihoon’s head, and he no longer has any strength in his arm to free his ensnared hand.

Junhui does at least let them stop and take a rest after several long hours and only a few very short rides, fanning Jihoon with a brochure under the weak shade of a picnic table umbrella. Sweat dews on his neck and arms and everywhere, salty droplets that dance across his forehead and under his eyes, drip slowly down toward his chin in uncomfortable rivulets. No matter how many times he wipes at his face with thin food stall napkins, he can’t seem to get it all off.

“Are you having fun?” Junhui asks him after five crumpled napkins have been tossed into the trashcan nearest them. His smile is big and glittery and excited, damp ends of hair pushed back from his eyes, and he looks more like the sun now than he ever has before. Blinding.

“I’m having a great time,” Jihoon tells him, and Junhui does nothing but sigh and fan harder.

“You may as well not even lie about it,” Junhui says, “since I can tell anyway.” The makeshift fan claps weakly against the tabletop when he tosses it down and leans his chin into his palm to look more closely at Jihoon, eyes dreamy and apologetic and glittering with a million stars Jihoon doesn’t know the names of. “I promise we can leave soon. One more ride.” He blinks. “No. Two more rides.” Jihoon breathes out slowly, tries not to think about how weary and aggravated the beating of the sun is making him.

“Take your time,” is what finds its way off his lips. “Have as much fun as you want.” Junhui only smiles.

“Want me to fan you some more?”

“Why don’t I fan you for a bit?” Junhui’s face rests in an easy smile all the while he does, a puppy with its head stretched out the window into the breeze, eyes closed and content, and Jihoon wonders if this is what it feels like to finally live life in full color.

True to his word, Junhui reluctantly ushers them out of the park gates after two rides and not a single more, heart heavy but visage working diligently to pretend it isn’t. They wander out on sore soles to peruse the rest of the pier as the sun sinks toward its inevitable watery grave, still burning and gold above them.

The rest of the pier is weird because it’s so much like a boardwalk but isn’t one, slabs of gray concrete lining the ground where wooden slats ought to be. Everywhere they step is hot through their shoes, doesn’t breathe quite right, but Jihoon thinks it’s still a nice enough place if a little too loud and a little too crowded. A short stroll brings them to the Mexican restaurant where they eat dinner, and with full bellies, they buy an ice cream cone to share and head down to bury their toes in the sand of the beach.

Sharing a single cone of ice cream isn’t quite as romantic as it sounds like it will be. It’s too small to be held at once by both their hands, so they’re forced into a relay style pass-off every time they want to eat any of it. It also melts quickly in the simmering evening heat, dripping down the latticed sides of the cone and onto their curled fingers, and while Jihoon does hate the sticky way it traces between his knuckles, there is something quietly mesmerizing about the way Junhui always licks it back up.

With the sun’s gentle downward fall comes the subtle discoloration of the world, the bluing of the sand and blackening of the water and pinking of the sky. The colors sit so nicely around Junhui, the only light left in a dark atmosphere when they walk down the beach toward a large crowd gathered around an intensely loud man with an intensely louder set of speakers. As they near, the music only grows louder and the crowd thicker, all shifting in time to the same beat as it fades out to nothing, empty plastic cups crumpled in hands and sunglasses still on despite the encroaching darkness.

The song transitions abruptly to a tune that strikes Jihoon as familiar, and he’s only begun to put his finger on it when Junhui’s hand is firm around his wrist, yanking them into the midst of the throng. A woman’s voice croons softly from the speakers with the words you can’t see it, and it’s then that Jihoon realizes he does know the song and also that he doesn’t know the dance. Junhui starts shuffling in an enthusiastic side-to-side while the lyrics continue, smile wide and eyes pleading.

“Dance with me!” he shouts over the song, maintaining eye contact while he kicks and turns to the next direction. Jihoon only shakes his head.

“I don’t know it.”

“You don’t know the electric slide?” Junhui barks, jaw hanging. “How can you not know it?” Judging by the pervading stillness of the majority of his fellows in the mob, Jihoon is far from the only one around who doesn’t know it. Seems the man in charge of the music doesn’t know his demographic quite as well as he thought. A cool breeze off the water blows Junhui’s hair in a way that makes him not look human anymore.

“Sorry, I guess.”

“No, no,” Junhui calls, waving a hand to beckon him forward. “Watch me do it, and then you can join in. It’s easy.” The low number of actual dancing participants doesn’t make Jihoon very inclined to join in, but Junhui’s enthusiasm is a strong opposing force, so Jihoon watches him carefully, legs and feet, eyes trained downward while he shifts weight between the balls of his feet to get a better feel for the rhythm. It’s hard to pay attention to the steps, though, when Junhui is so distracting.

He’s part of the song when he dances, or maybe it’s a part of him, one in being as bouncing notes float across the air toward the ocean, stars twinkle in the distant blanket of navy overhead. The way he sings along with his eyes shut in blissful curves of short lashes, the way his cheeks maintain their relaxed grin and his body moves at the hands of the wind and at the hands of nothing in the world at all. Jihoon is too entranced to join in for a long while after he’s memorized the steps, and when he finally does, Junhui continues to guide him through it, subtle touches to the shoulders and ribs that burn everywhere. His voice when he cheers along with the words is melodic in every way Jihoon has never thought a melody could be, rips his chest to pieces and sews it back together with iron thread.

“How about it?” Junhui asks when the song has finished, blurred out into some remixed top 40 hit that bleeds life back into the masses, some less sober beachgoers swaying more violently and bumping Jihoon’s shoulders while they wade back out to the shallower edge of the crowd. “It’s fun, right?”

“Yeah,” Jihoon agrees, if only to sate him. His lips feel a little too loose this evening, too ready, too simple. “I think I just fell in love with you a little bit,” he lets them say, and he watches Junhui’s face while it changes, not quite sure where it’s coming from or where it wants to go.

“You should’ve already fallen in love with me a lot by now,” is what he finally says. Looking at him, Jihoon thinks that should be true. Maybe it is true. Maybe he has. Junhui smiles when he inches closer, leans down until his lips are a breath away from Jihoon’s ear. “Do you want to head back?”

Sex at night is far more comfortable, more Jihoon’s element, but it hardly makes sense after everything’s already been laid bare in broad daylight. The soft gray lines tracing Junhui’s features have been replaced by pools of shadow cast by the lamp on the bedside table, deep and daunting until Jihoon’s fingertips touch down to find he is exactly the same as always, exactly as solid and warm and soothing. Slow is their course, and Junhui certainly takes his time, kissing every inch of skin Jihoon has to be kissed, gentle fingertips grazing every nerve in his body. What he loses in lighting he makes up for in thoroughness, and Jihoon wonders as he twists his fingers into Junhui’s hair if this is what sex was supposed to feel like all along.

Darkness yawns on all sides, boxes them into the comfort of blankets and pillows, the soft murmur of hushed conversation. Junhui’s fingers find their way again to toy with Jihoon’s hair, arm traces a light path over his ribs. Jihoon closes his eyes and evens out his breathing, chest rising and falling beneath soft fingertips until the black from the world begins to dye the edges of his consciousness as well.

“Can we talk for a little bit?” Junhui whispers, yanking him back to technicolor. Jihoon opens his useless eyes to the empty ceiling and turns his head to find Junhui’s silhouette against the darker room behind him. After only a second’s searching, the shape is there, a glowing beacon.

“Is there something you wanna talk about?” Jihoon asks, voice quiet to match, and he watches the outline of Junhui’s shoulder move in a shrug.

“I don’t know,” he hums. “I just like hearing your voice.”

“Really?”

“Does it make sense for me to lie about that?”

“I guess not,” Jihoon breathes around quiet laughter. After a long minute heavy with silence, he sighs. “I don’t know what to say, though.”

“Actually, I do have a question.”

“What?”

“What do you, like, think of me?” Jihoon doesn’t know if he gets the question, and Junhui doesn’t do much to help him out. A hush gels on the air between them, but somehow, it’s easy to bear.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he mutters, “I told you I’ve had a thing for you for a while, but you didn’t really say anything back.” The earth rattles when he sighs. “I guess it’s weird to ask. Don’t worry about it.”

“No.” Jihoon’s face is hot. “It’s fine.” Words strain through his head like water through a colander, fall empty on his parted lips while he waits for them. “I think you’re a good person.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.” He listens, but he can’t make out the sound of Junhui breathing. “I think you really care about other people, and you’re too nice for your own good. I don’t want you to have to be by yourself.” There are stars somewhere out there, and Jihoon is inhaling them. “I feel better when you smile.” Now Junhui breathes, a strong inhale that suggests words, and it prompts Jihoon to add, “And you’re cuter than I thought you would be.” The breath holds itself in.

“I don’t know how to take that,” he confesses, laughing just a little bit, and Jihoon laughs right with him.

“I don’t know either,” he hums, “but I like to look at you.”

“I see.” Jihoon flips between waiting for him to continue and continuing himself, ends up choking on his own lack of words in the meantime. After eternities have come and gone, Junhui says, “Are you alright with me?”

“What?”

“Dating,” Junhui mutters. “I mean, you said you didn’t know before, but I kind of… you know, I want to know if I can kiss you and take you to dinner after we get back to Columbus.”

“Do you want to do that?” Jihoon whispers.

“The more I think about it, yeah,” Junhui whispers back. His silhouette is a shining blanket of milky stars traced into blackened navy, crushed diamonds sprinkled onto the ash of the night. Jihoon wishes he could see his face. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah.” His chest is filled with birds, too many beating wings to still and too little room to nest. “I think I would like it. We can try.” Junhui’s fingers twist the ends of his air while he breathes out a sigh.

“That’s a relief.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah.” The mattress groans when Junhui inches closer. His palm is warm on Jihoon’s neck. “Maybe this is weird,” he says softly, “but whenever I touch you, I feel like my life is a little more put together somehow.”

“No,” Jihoon tells him, closing his eyes to the blackness. The line of the horizon of Junhui’s form still burns beneath his lids, shimmering gold in the darkness. “I think I know exactly what you mean.” When he falls asleep, Junhui’s limbs still curl over his skin, and for a moment, he’s absolutely certain he can feel in his chest the way Junhui smiles.

Nine in the morning sees them blinking against the cerulean light of the sun’s risen wake, still hopelessly tangled in the worn covers and unwilling to move. Slanted rays of pale yellow light hit them as they stream through the window, warm and insistent on skin until at last Junhui grows too restless to stay still any longer, ankle knocking into Jihoon’s calves while he extracts himself from the bed. A deluge of cool air sweeps over him, prickles the fine hairs lining his uncomfortably bare back while he stares at the window but not through it, listens to the sound of Junhui getting dressed behind him. He doesn’t want to move from this spot, from this place, but just as much as he would kill not to, he knows he must. The mattress dips when Junhui sits on its edge to put his socks on, and Jihoon figures it’s time for him to get up as well.

Traffic is bad on their way out as it was on their way in, the edge of a wormhole trying to trap them and make them wonder why they’d ever want to leave, but they break through it soon enough, racing down the interstate toward a hazy gray cloud hanging low in the sky and the rain it’s sure to bring with it. The mellow tones of Arctic Monkeys sound so different now than they had not two weeks ago, freeing and light instead of oppressive and suffocating, pale sunbeams stretching through the clouds rather than hot shade under stalled cars. Singing along is easy with Junhui’s voice to melt into, a drop of honey rolling from his ears to his chest, and Jihoon mouths every word as they drive out of town, eyes closed as the breeze from the air vents beats against him, a subtle wave at the infinite shore.

They stop to have lunch sometime around noon or one or something—Jihoon doesn’t know which because he isn’t quite sure where the time zone changes or how well his phone is keeping up. The rest area they choose greets them with wide expanses of reddish dirt and sparse patches of scrubby brush, dust skittering in dry gusts over their feet as they sit eating sandwiches at an ugly picnic table. Junhui blows a breath out of his nose while he chews, eyes on the smear of slate dancing far beyond them against the horizon.

“I don’t want to be home in five days,” he mourns around a mouthful of bread. “It’s too soon.”

“Yeah,” Jihoon hums. “But we can’t rub how much fun we had in Soonyoung and Wonwoo’s faces if we don’t go home.” Junhui smiles at that, warm and lopsided, eyes crinkled. He looks like he finally believes the word fun is the real truth and not just an ironic obligation, looks like he’s more than relieved to hear it.

“I wonder what they’ll say,” he says next, voice low.

“About what?” The way Junhui looks at him says he should already know what. “Oh, yeah. I wonder.”

“Unless you don’t want them to know.”

“I want them to know.” His hand finds Junhui’s across the table and sloppily clasps it, palm to palm, warm and dry. “Really.” When he looks into Junhui’s eyes, they’re melting, grin goofy and slanted below, moles as stars on the painted night sky of his face. Not for the first time and certainly not for the last, Jihoon would really like to kiss him.

“Maybe we should do something really crazy,” he starts, words caramel and molasses, “like stop in Vegas and get married on our way back.” It’s another one of those instances where he’s joking and he’s serious at once, where he doesn’t sound like he means it and also doesn’t sound like he doesn’t, when Jihoon doesn’t know what to do but stare back wordlessly and wonder if he’ll ever be able to interpret that tone. Junhui sighs. “Sorry, bad joke?”

“No,” Jihoon mumbles, looking toward the stars through the blue veil of the sky. Beyond the shadow of the moon, he thinks he can almost pick a few out. “Maybe we should do that.” Junhui’s laugh shakes the table.

“I know it’s way too soon to say it, and I’m not going to,” Junhui tells him, leaning an elbow on the table with dreamy eyes aimed upward, “but you should know for a second just now, I wanted to say, ‘I love you.’” A dry wind tickles the back of Jihoon’s neck, and he wonders whether he would have said it back if Junhui had dared let those three syllables slip past his filter unconditional. Maybe there’s a very good chance he would have.

The remainder of their drive is filled with little event aside from the sparse dots of cacti they start to see on the side of the road. Their stops begin to end at the Grand Canyon, the advent of the denouement of the longest and shortest three weeks Jihoon has ever lived, and as they glide toward it, the sky bleeds itself of color, one hue for every mile. They are bounded by gray in every corner, washed pale by the relentless ripple of the sun far above, and all the while, AM drifts over the air in monochromatic waves. In some ways, it really does feel like the end, and in others, the beginning. Jihoon doesn’t know which he’d rather it be, but he does have a hunch.

After they’ve set up the tent, the still-light sky prompts them to take a hike to the edge of the canyon, peer out over the steep rock face and admire every color staining the stone while the aging sky works to match each shade. Sticks crunch under their shoes while they scramble toward the railing for a better view, shutter on Junhui’s camera snapping alongside to capture a sight that will surely look worse in pictures. By the time they return to the campsite, the air around them is cool and the sky above dark and overcast, only a few stars peeking out from behind their blanket. Junhui says it feels like a perfect night to light a fire, so they light one.

It really must be nice, Jihoon thinks as he watches the smoke climb stairs into the heavens, gray and swirling until it recedes into a wisp of shallow nothingness. Just like Junhui said. To disappear without a care in the world and fade into absence, to curl higher and higher into the sky until there is nowhere else to go but oblivion, to wither into no more than an invisible heat trace of what once was. It really must be nice to be that smoke, but he also thinks it’s nice not to be.

There are many nice things about not being smoke, things like the way Junhui’s knuckles press into the back of his thigh where his hand sits too near Jihoon’s leg on a too-old bench by the too-close pit of a too-hot fire. Things like the way he doesn’t mind the feeling of heat in his cheeks so much anymore because he really likes the way it looks on Junhui. Things like knowing how it feels to kiss someone and mean it, to spend time with someone and want to, to touch someone and know balance. Smoke is a fantastic daydream they no longer have any need to pine for even when the whole universe feels one second from crumbling around them, and that is a beautiful way to feel.

“Have you ever been to the east coast?” Junhui asks later while they lie in the tent, swallowed by the darkness. His thumb lingers at Jihoon’s wrist, closer on the sleeping bag than Jihoon would have wanted anyone to be just a month ago. The pulse at his fingertips is quick and leisurely at once, matches Jihoon’s beat for beat.

“A few times,” he answers quietly, recollection flooding back of trips with his family as a youth, grandparents and cousins and boring car rides. “Why?”

“I want to go sometime,” he confesses. “I want to go to New York and see the Statue of Liberty and stuff. I think it would be cool.” Jihoon waits for the inevitable. “I’m saying we should go sometime.”

“Does ‘we’ include Soonyoung and Wonwoo,” he asks, lips playing at a smile, “or is it just you and me?”

“Soonyoung and Wonwoo can rot in Columbus for the rest of their lives,” Junhui scoffs. “They’d just walk out in underwear and house shoes and flake on me last minute even if I did invite them.” It’s both charmingly funny and horribly disheartening the way he’ll hold a grudge.

“Well,” Jihoon whistles, “if we do go, I think we should wait a while. I’ve had enough hours in the car for a long time.” Junhui wheezes out a reedy cackle, squeezes Jihoon’s wrist a little tighter.

“Trust me when I say I get it.” For a long while, they are silent, but Jihoon doesn’t try to sleep in that space. Something in the air is buzzing around, too loud and colorful and alive to let him, and he realizes only at the sound of his voice that it’s nothing at all but traces of Junhui suspended everywhere the atmosphere touches him. “So, you will come along, right?”

Eyes closed, Jihoon can picture it all: the roads, the sky, the drizzle against the windshield, the blurry greens and browns of nature they pass on the side of the highway. Surely they’ll be more prepared next time, take more albums to pass the time with, but all he can envision right now is the heavy drum beats of Arctic Monkeys rattling out of the car’s speakers while they head east, Junhui’s voice like silk to dress up the recording with an easy harmony. He sees the glowing signs of Times Square and the iconic silhouette of the skyline at night, the bustle of streets in Philadelphia and crowds at the capital, boardwalks lined with real boards and candy shops and arcades loaded with machines designed to rob you of every quarter to your name. He feels the fade of the air to a dusky breeze, winds stirring his hair while a hand cradles the back of his neck, lips pressed against his own like warm sugar and an impossible rainbow on a sunny day. He is long past worrying about things like Junhui getting into trouble if he goes it alone, only concerned now with how much of Junhui he’ll miss if he doesn’t make it into the car. There is one way to answer.

“Of course I’ll go,” he says.

Beside him, Junhui laughs, and he is color and light and life. Rain though it always may, there is no pot of gold that could ever make Jihoon more inclined to follow him wherever he might land. That may not be knowing the future, and it may not be having life together, but Junhui looks like everything when he smiles, and for now, that’s enough. At the very least, Jihoon is sure it is a step. If not the right direction, Jihoon knows beyond all doubt that it isn’t the wrong one. That’s enough.