Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

2:07 AM glows sharp and clinical off white tile, the kind of light that flattens everything it touches. Juhoon sits with his back against the bathtub with his legs bent, Martin slotted in between them.

Martin’s shirt is caught halfway up his torso, one sleeve twisted, the fabric darkened where it’s soaked through. The blood has already started to dry in uneven streaks, dull and sticky, pulling at the skin whenever he shifts. 

He’s laughing. It slips out of him in short bursts, like whatever’s funny didn’t make it all the way into the room.

Juhoon doesn’t ask, he never does.

The cotton pad is already red at the edges by the time he presses it to the split above Martin’s eyebrow. He has to angle it around the piercing carefully. His fingers are steady but he holds the pressure longer than needed, thumb braced against Martin’s temple, feeling the faint thud of blood beneath skin.

Martin hisses through his teeth, sharp, then bumps his knee forward into Juhoon’s thigh. 

“Fuck,” he mutters, but there’s no bite to it.

Juhoon doesn’t react, he just shifts the cotton slightly, checks the bleeding, replaces it with a clean one. His movements are economical, as if he’s done this enough times to stop thinking about it, except he hasn’t. He never stops thinking, it just doesn’t show up on his face.

There’s a cut along Martin’s ribs, off to the side. It’s not that deep, but wide enough to look worse than it is, the edges are uneven. Juhoon peels the shirt up higher without asking and Martin lets him.

The antiseptic stings and Martin sucks in a breath, shoulders tightening, but he doesn’t pull away. Juhoon’s hand is firm against his side, holding him in place, fingers spread just under the cut. Grounding or restraint, it’s hard to tell.

Juhoon’s jaw sets as he cleans it, his eyes drop half-lidded and unfocused. Martin watches him.

He watches the line of his mouth. The way his hair falls forward when he tilts his head. The faint crease between his brows that only shows up when he’s concentrating like this.

“Doctor Kim,” Martin murmurs, voice rough from the shouting he’d probably been doing all night.

Juhoon doesn’t bite.

“Hold still,” he says instead.

The gauze goes on clean, tape pressed down at the edges, smoothed once, twice. It should end there, it usually does.

But his hand stays. The palm is warm against Martin’s side, just under the bandage, fingers curved slightly like they forgot to let go.

There’s a second where nothing happens.

Martin shifts and changes that, not away, never away, just enough to lean into it. His body knows the shape of that hand better than it knows anything else.

Juhoon doesn’t pull back.

The bathroom hums, light buzzing faint overhead, pipes ticking somewhere in the walls. Outside, a group of rowdy men passes on the street, distant and irrelevant.

Inside, it’s just this. The blood. The heat. 

Juhoon reaches for another cotton pad he doesn’t need.

Martin doesn’t laugh.

They don’t really decide to go to bed. It happens in the way everything with them does, already in motion before either of them could call it a choice.

By the time Juhoon registers it, he’s lying on his side, back to the room, facing the wall. The lights are off and the dark sits thick and familiar around him, broken only by the faint glow of the streetlamp slipping through the curtains.

Martin hasn’t bothered with a shirt. The gauze along his ribs has already started to spot through, small stains spreading outward in uneven halos. There’s a faint smell in the room now, antiseptic cut with iron, clean layered over something not.

The mattress dips behind him.

Fabric rustles. A quiet exhale follows.

Then Martin shifts closer, careless with it, closing the space until there isn’t any left. His forehead presses into the space between Juhoon’s shoulder blades, warm and a little damp, he’s chasing heat or balance or something he won’t name. The contact lands lightly enough to pass as nothing, something that could be brushed off in the morning with a joke, if it ever comes up at all.

Juhoon stays still.

Only his breathing gives him away. It changes slowly, almost imperceptibly, evening out into something too measured to be natural. He draws each inhale a fraction deeper, lets it out just as controlled, like he’s trying to settle himself from the inside without disturbing anything on the surface.

Behind him, Martin’s breathing slips out of sync with his. Faster at first, uneven, then gradually slowing as sleep pulls him under. His arm ends up thrown over Juhoon’s waist at some point, loose and heavy, the full weight of it settles against him. His hand rests low on Juhoon’s stomach, fingers slack, curled just enough to catch against the fabric of his shirt.

Juhoon doesn’t move it. He doesn’t move at all, actually.

Martin’s mouth falls open slightly as he sleeps, his breath is warm against the back of Juhoon’s neck, dampening the collar of his shirt. Juhoon keeps his eyes open.

He starts counting without meaning to—tracking the space between each breath, marking time in the rise and fall behind him. Four seconds. Five. Sometimes six. He starts over whenever he loses it.

The arm at his waist feels heavier the longer he notices it. Heat seeps through the layers of fabric, steady and insistent. He can map it precisely: the press of Martin’s chest against his back, the line of his thigh hooked faintly behind his own, the weight of his hand, the shape of his fingers where they rest.

He fixes it all in place, piece by piece, it’s something that needs to be remembered exactly to him.

Later, he’ll tell himself it didn’t matter. That this is how it always is, that there’s nothing in it worth holding onto.

For now, he just lies there and keeps count, wide awake, until the numbers blur and lose their meaning.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

They met at eight, at an age where attachment happened quickly and without permission.

Martin had arrived halfway through the school year, all sharp edges and bright noise, vowels bent wrong in his mouth, uniform sitting slightly off. He moved through the classroom with a kind of careless certainty that didn’t ask to be accepted, it assumed it would be.

Juhoon had kept to himself, he always had. Quiet kid, neat desk, answers when called on and not before. He watched more than he spoke. Back then, it felt like enough.

Martin decided otherwise.

He picked Juhoon the way you picked something off a shelf, quick and instinctive, and dropped into the empty seat beside him like it had been reserved.

“You’re gonna be my first friend in this country,” he said, like it was obvious, like Juhoon had already agreed.

Juhoon didn’t answer him at first. What stayed with him wasn’t Martin’s voice, but the feeling underneath it, a small, persistent wrongness settling low in his stomach, something quiet but insistent. Not fear, more like recognition of a boundary being ignored before he’d learned where the boundary was.

He should have listened to it.

Years later, he thinks about that version of himself sometimes. A dry, distant acknowledgment that the warning was there, simple and clear, and he had chosen not to understand it.

It doesn’t change anything.

Martin stayed.

He folded himself into Juhoon’s life with an ease that erased edges rather than finding them. Lunch became shared without discussion. Walks home blurred into each other. Sleepovers happened before either of them learned to ask permission, before either of them learned there was anything to ask for at all.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

Morning doesn’t arrive so much as it leaks in, thin light presses through the curtains like it isn’t sure it wants to be here either.

The room is still warm from sleep, too warm. The air carries the faint weight of bodies that didn’t separate properly during the night and never fully corrected themselves afterward.

Martin is still there.

He lies sprawled across Juhoon’s bed, one leg half off the mattress, hair flattened in uneven directions. The bandage along his ribs has started to peel at the edge, curling up slightly with each rise and fall of his breathing.

Juhoon is already up.

The kettle clicks off. Instant coffee dissolves in hot water quickly, turning the liquid dark and bitter. He drinks it standing at his desk, leaning slightly forward, eyes half on the window and half on nothing at all.

Behind him, Martin moves before he speaks. A rustle of sheets, a soft grunt as he sits up. He scratches absently at his ribs.

“Stings,” he says, voice rough with sleep.

Juhoon doesn’t turn. The sound of tape pulling comes next, unfortunately familiar. Martin is already peeling at it, fingers slipping under the edge without hesitation, like he has every right to undo what Juhoon did.

Juhoon turns fast.

His hand closes around Martin’s wrist mid-motion, stopping him cleanly. The mug in his other hand shifts slightly, coffee sloshes against the side.

For a second, neither of them moves.

Martin looks down at the grip, then up at Juhoon, there’s something almost amused in his eyes.

“Okay,” he says lightly.

Juhoon lets go, slower this time, and takes the bandage from him instead.

He works without speaking, peels it back carefully and replaces it properly, smooths the tape down with more pressure than needed.

Martin sits still for once, watching him. There’s a bruise forming under his left eye. It’s dark and uneven, spreading into the skin like ink that didn’t stop at the surface. Juhoon notices it only after he’s done with the bandage.

His hand lifts before he decides to use it. He presses his thumb lightly into the bruise.

Testing, almost clinical. Martin doesn’t flinch. Instead he watches him back, eyes steady in a way that doesn’t quite match the rest of his face.

Juhoon drops his hand, they don’t talk about the fight.

They talk around everything else instead.

The weather, like it matters. A broken fridge at The Rust that keeps making Juhoon’s boss swear at it like it understands. A song Martin half-remembers but can’t place, humming fragments of it under his breath until he gives up halfway through a line.

Nothing holds properly. Each topic lands and slides off again without catching.

Juhoon drinks the last of his coffee too quickly. It’s gone bitter in his mouth, lingering longer than it should.

Martin keeps scratching at his ribs between sentences, like the conversation isn’t the only thing that’s uncomfortable.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

Sunday service settles over Juhoon.

He sits between his parents, perfectly positioned in the narrow logic of their presence—father on one side, mother on the other, both upright in a way that suggests even their bones are practiced at restraint. Their hands are folded and their attention is directed forward. Everything about them points toward the same fixed place.

Not Juhoon, though.

He listens for a while. Or pretends to. The sermon slides in one ear and out somewhere else, never catching. Eventually even the act of pretending becomes unnecessary, so he stops.

He looks at the ceiling first.

It’s too high, unnecessarily so. The carvings along the edges of the beams are intricate in a way that borders on obsessive, tiny details stacked on top of each other until they lose individual meaning, excess.

He wonders how long it took. How many hours went into carving something no one actually looks at.

His gaze drifts.

To the windows, the warped saints frozen mid-suffering, all long faces and elongated limbs, devotion stretched thin into something grotesque. To the rows ahead of him, heads bowed at varying angles, some too deep to be comfortable, others barely inclined.

He starts cataloguing, it happens automatically.

Third row, left side, a woman sits in a pale blue dress, hands clasped so tightly her knuckles blanch, eyes closed with an intensity that suggests she’s either very devout or trying not to cry. Juhoon decides she’s done something recently. Something small and stupid that grew teeth in her head, something she can’t quite swallow back down. He gives it shape for her. An argument, maybe. Something said too sharply. The kind of guilt that lingers because it doesn’t have a clear resolution.

Two seats over, a man sits with a face like it’s been folded in on itself too many times, lines etched deep and permanent. He’s not listening, Juhoon can tell that much. His gaze is unfocused, fixed somewhere just past the pulpit. He probably comes every week, probably has done so for years. Not because it actually means anything, but because not coming would mean admitting that it doesn’t.

Juhoon almost respects that.

Almost.

A kid further down the row picks at his sleeve, restless, dragging his teeth over his lower lip until it reddens. His mother nudges him without looking, a small, automatic correction. The kid stills for exactly three seconds before starting again.

Juhoon’s mouth twitches faintly.

He shifts his gaze again, lets it wander without purpose. That’s when he notices him.

A few rows ahead, off to the right. Roughly his age, maybe a little younger, hard to tell from the angle. He has dark hair, it’s slightly too long and falls into his face in a way that looks unintentional but probably isn’t. He sits slouched, shoulders uneven, one hand resting on his thigh.

The other moves.

He rolls his shoulder slowly, like he’s trying to work something out of it, something stiff or sore, the motion subtle but repetitive enough to stand out against the stillness of everything else. 

Then the sleeve shifts just slightly, enough to reveal the edge of a bandage wrapped around his wrist, stark white against his sun-kissed skin, too clean to be old.

Juhoon stares a second longer than socially necessary. A thought forms before he can stop it.

Either everyone his age is permanently falling apart in small, inconvenient ways… or there is, statistically speaking, an alarming amount of mutual destruction happening outside his awareness.

The second option is stupid. Which, unfortunately, does not immediately disqualify it.

His eyes flick away, then back again. The boy shifts his weight, flexing his hand once like he’s checking if it still works. 

Juhoon leans back a bit, letting his sight shift toward the altar again, but the image sticks anyway: bandage, shoulder, the casual grammar of injury.

The ridiculous fight club.

The words feel stupid even in his own head, heavy with secondhand absurdity. Something lifted from a movie, something that should collapse under the weight of its own pretension.

And yet it exists.

Not in a structured, cinematic way. There’s no grand reveal, no philosophy attached to it beyond something vague and half-formed about release, about proving something that no one can quite articulate. It’s smaller than that, and much messier. It gets passed between people in fragments, half-whispered and never fully explained.

An address scribbled down and then crossed out. A time that shifts depending on who you ask. A basement, or a warehouse, or sometimes just a parking lot behind something that closes early and stays closed.

It started- no one seems to agree when. A year ago, maybe two. Someone’s older brother. Someone who came back from somewhere else with the idea already rotting in his head. It had spread the way these things do, quietly at first, then all at once, then morphing  into something that feels almost normal if you look at it from the right angle.

Juhoon has never gone. He has no interest in it beyond the unavoidable fact that it keeps intersecting with his life whether he wants it to or not.

Mostly through Martin. He started going a bit before his eighteenth birthday, nearly three months ago.

He didn’t announce it and didn’t frame it as a decision. The bruises came first, then the cuts, then the way he’d show up later than usual, or not at all, or with that specific kind of restless energy humming under his skin like he left something unfinished.

Juhoon noticed immediately but he didn’t say anything about it, not at first, because what is there to say? 

Don’t go?

Martin would laugh.

It’s stupid, objectively, completely.

A bunch of boys hitting each other in poorly lit spaces, pretending it means something, pretending it fixes anything.

Juhoon thinks it’s embarrassing, honestly, and a little pathetic. He also thinks about it more than he wants to.

Mostly about the way Martin comes back from it. 

Juhoon thinks it is stupid.

And still,

There is a thread of something under that thought that refuses to settle cleanly. A low, persistent attention that follows Martin everywhere, even when he is not physically there.

The sermon rises and falls. People bow their heads at the right times. The stained glass continues to pretend it means something.

Juhoon watches the boy with the bandaged wrist once more, then looks away before it becomes noticeable.

His hands rest folded in his lap, still and composed. Inside, his mind does not stay still at all.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

The Rust smells like old refrigeration and cheap detergent trying its best to win a losing war.

It’s quiet in the way small convenience stores are quiet at off-hours: never truly silent, just filled with the low hum of machines and the occasional creak of shelving under its own weight. The fluorescent lights above flicker once, hesitate, then decide to stay on.

Juhoon stands behind the counter.

A man in front of him places down a six-pack of the cheapest beer and two packs of instant noodles. Juhoon scans each item, the barcode beeping in a rhythm he’s memorized more than he cares to admit.

Seonghyeon is beside him, technically off the clock but never fully absent from responsibility. He counts change with the kind of precision that feels mildly insulting to everyone involved, stacking coins into neat, temporary order before pushing them across the counter.

“Receipt?” Juhoon asks automatically.

The man grunts something that might be a yes. Paper prints out. Tear, hand it over. Juhoon gives the man a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

When the door closes behind him and the bell chimes, the silence returns in pieces.

Juhoon flexes his fingers under the counter without thinking about it. The stench of disinfectant clings to his skin no matter how many times he washes his hands, like it has decided to live there permanently. 

Seonghyeon leans against the counter and glances at him. It lasts a full minute before he speaks.

There’s a faint pause, almost lazy. “Busy night?”

Juhoon doesn’t look up from the register. “Martin tripped.”

The words land flat between them.

Seonghyeon stops moving for half a beat. His expression shifts just enough to suggest he has heard something incorrect being presented as fact. Then he exhales through his nose, a quiet sound that sits somewhere between amusement and resignation.

“Right,” he says. He doesn’t push it further because he never does.

Instead, he goes back to organizing the till like the conversation never happened at all. Juhoon takes that as permission to stop thinking about it too much, which doesn’t actually work.

The bell above the door cuts through the rhythm of the store.

A group of kids spills in, too loud for the space they’re entering. They move like they’ve never been told to be aware of where their bodies are relative to other objects. One of them knocks a display of snacks slightly off balance.

“Careful,” Seonghyeon says without looking up, no one listens to him.

Juhoon watches them as they drift toward the drinks aisle, already half-annoyed in a way that feels disproportionate to the situation. There’s something about their energy, sticky and confident, that makes the space feel smaller.

One of them is talking too loudly on purpose. Another is laughing at something that doesn’t need that level of enthusiasm.

Juhoon scans items slower than necessary.

Then he hears it.

“—you know that psycho who fights behind the docks? The foreigner?”

Foreign. Fighter. Psycho. Docks.

His hand pauses on the scanner for half a second too long, he doesn’t look up immediately.

Instead, he continues scanning a bag of chips like it requires his full attention. The beep is predictable enough, it makes him feel sort of safe. Behind him, Seonghyeon shifts slightly, he’s heard it too but is choosing not to acknowledge it unless it becomes unavoidable.

Juhoon finally glances up. Inside his chest, something coils, not sharp enough to call panic, not soft enough to ignore. It’s like a thread pulled slightly too far in one direction, held there without snapping.

He finishes scanning the items of whoever is in front of him, he hasn’t been paying attention.

“Total is-” he says, voice unchanged.

The conversation at the drinks aisle continues as if nothing has happened at all, and Juhoon lets it.

Martin shows up halfway through Juhoon’s shift like he has never once considered the idea of timing.

The bell above the door goes off and he walks in already halfway into a grin, school uniform wrinkled. His tie is loose, shirt collar slightly askew, sleeves pushed up without care for rules that technically still apply to him even if he pretends they don’t.

He is, unfortunately, still in that stage of life where “technically still in school” is more embarrassing than being out of it entirely.

Juhoon hates that detail more than he should, because of the fact that he is still there in the system at all. 

Held back at the tail end of their final year like the concept of consequences briefly remembered it had a job. It had been the last few months, just enough time for everything to wobble out of place: missed assignments, absences he didn’t bother explaining, a string of choices that looked casual until they weren’t. 

Juhoon had watched it happen with a kind of quiet disbelief that never turned into commentary. It still sits in him now, unresolved.

Martin runs a hand through his hair as he approaches the counter. It’s damp, still drying in uneven patches because he probably showered too fast and didn’t bother finishing properly. There’s a split in his lip too, fresh enough that he’s clearly been worrying it with his teeth.

He leans over the counter immediately, personal space is a rumor someone made up to Martin.

“Give me something free,” he says.

Juhoon doesn’t look up from the register. “And why would I do that?”

Martin clicks his tongue and leans closer anyway, watching the screen like he might find loopholes in it. Then, without warning, he flicks Juhoon’s ear.

Juhoon pauses, then reaches under the counter, grabs a drink he was planning to chug during his next break, and slides it across without a word.

Martin takes it like it was always going to be his. Behind them, Seonghyeon stops what he’s doing.

He’s not openly staring, but there’s a shift in his attention, his eyes move between them with quiet, measured interest.

Martin pops the drink open immediately and pours a hefty amount into his mouth. 

“Been a while since I’ve been here,” he says, leaning his elbows on the counter like he’s settling in. “I prefer convenience stores that don’t immediately succumb to inflation.”

Juhoon finally looks at him, briefly. “Don’t start.”

Martin grins at him before he tilts his head toward Seonghyeon. “And you’re… what? Who? His supervisor?”

Seonghyeon shrugs halfheartedly, “I work here. We’ve met before, dude.”

“My bad,” Martin says. “So you’ve seen him in his natural habitat.”

Martin taps the counter lightly with the can, then adds, almost casually, “not more than I have, though.”

The words land wrong and Juhoon’s jaw tightens for half a second before smoothing back into place. 

Martin doesn’t care, he keeps talking. Seonghyeon keeps watching.

Eventually, duty calls and Martin puts on the all-too-familiar act of pretending he’s leaving for school. He leaves with a casual wave.

Closing time at The Rust always feels less like an ending and more like the building exhaling.

The lights are dimmed in stages. First the aisles, then the fridge units, then the harsh fluorescents above the counter. The air shifts as soon as the last customers leave, turning from busy artificial warmth into something almost honest.

Juhoon wipes down the counter in slow, habitual strokes, his hands need somewhere to go while the world finishes loosening its grip for the day.

“You’re doing that thing again,” Seonghyeon says.

Juhoon doesn’t look up. “What thing?”

“Acting like you’re in some tragic indie film.”

“I’m cleaning a counter.”

Seonghyeon hums. “Same thing.”

Juhoon snorts under his breath before he can stop it, the sound small and reluctant. He rinses the cloth, wrings it out harder than necessary. “Go home.”

“In a minute,” Seonghyeon assures, checking his phone like it might contain a better version of reality. “You opening alone again tomorrow?”

“Always.”

“That’s depressing.”

“It’s retail.”

That earns a quiet laugh. They fall into a rhythm after that, small comments, half-sentences, the kind of conversation that only exists when neither person is trying very hard to be understood. It stretches out in uneven pieces until Seonghyeon finally pushes himself upright, stretching his shoulders.

“I’m out,” he says.

“Don’t come back,” Juhoon replies automatically.

“You’d miss me soooo bad.”

“I really wouldn’t.”

Seonghyeon grins like that’s the correct answer and heads for the door anyway, waving once without looking back.

Juhoon finishes closing alone.

The routine is muscle memory now, lock, count, check, shut down. His body does it while his mind drifts somewhere just slightly out of reach.

By the time he finally steps outside, he sees him.

Martin is sitting on an upside-down crate like it was placed there for him specifically, as if the world arranged itself in anticipation. He’s eating something sweet, bright packaging crumpled in one hand, the other holding a pastry that looks aggressively out of place at this hour, sugar dust clings to his fingers.

He doesn’t look up when Juhoon comes out, simply keeps chewing.

Juhoon slows for half a second, then continues walking.

Martin swallows, finally glances at him, and still doesn’t say hello. Instead, he pushes himself off the crate and falls into step beside him like he always does.

Juhoon adjusts his grip on the plastic bag from work, his measly dinner rests there. The thin handles bite into his fingers.

They pass a convenience store halfway down the street. A small group of smokers stands outside under the weak glow of a sign that flickers between “OPEN” and something almost legible.

The moment Martin comes into view, the group shifts.

A pause in movement. A few eyes tracking too long. Smoke held a second too late in the lungs.

Then the silence settles in, a thin, ugly thing that doesn’t belong.

Bruises do that. So does the way Martin carries himself.

One of them mutters something as they pass.

It’s not loud enough to be clean and not clear enough to defend. “Freak,” maybe. Or “dog.” Something small and easy to say when the person it’s about is already moving away.

Martin hears it anyway, he laughs.

It’s loud, exaggerated, almost theatrical, he’s performing a version of himself that doesn’t get hurt by language. He tips his head slightly in their direction without looking directly at them, grin sharp enough to cut the moment in half.

“Love you too,” he calls back, too cheerful to be real.

The smokers lose interest immediately, turning back to their conversation like nothing happened.

But Juhoon feels it stick. Something small and pointed slides under his skin and stays there, inconveniently present.

His fingers tighten around the plastic bag, the handle strains and tears, just slightly, a thin rip at the seam.

Juhoon doesn’t fix it.

They end up by the sea because they always do when there is nowhere else left that feels properly real.

The shoreline is half-absent in the dark. Water stretches flat and indifferent, a dull sheet of movement that reflects nothing back. The horizon is less a line and more an idea that keeps refusing to fully form. Even the sound of it feels restrained tonight, waves arrive without conviction, collapsing quietly into themselves.

The air is colder than the city. Cleaner, too. It strips things down instead of layering them.

Martin kicks off his shoes without slowing down, socks next. Then he’s in the water, stepping straight into the shallow edge where the tide hesitates.

The reaction is immediate, he hisses, sharp through his teeth, shoulders jolting upward. “Fuck—” It comes out half-laugh, half-offense.

Juhoon stops a few steps behind him on the dry sand.

Martin looks back at him, grinning. Water clings to his ankles. “Come on, don’t be boring.”

Juhoon doesn’t move. Arms fold across his chest instead, a small, automatic barrier. He watches Martin shift his weight in the water, testing it again like the first impact was a lie.

“You’re being stupid, you’re gonna get hypothermia,” Juhoon says.

“That’s not a no.”

“It is.”

Martin scoffs and turns away like he’s been personally offended by reason. Then, without warning, he kicks the water in Juhoon’s direction.

It arcs poorly and lands directly on his jeans. Cold spreads instantly through the fabric, darkening the denim in uneven patches.

For a second, Juhoon just stands there.

Expression blank at first, then tightening, something sharp and genuinely annoyed flickering across his face like a reflex he forgot he still had.

“Are you serious,” he says flatly.

Martin is already laughing, pleased with himself in the way only someone completely unafraid of consequences can manage.

And then, just as quickly, something in Juhoon shifts. The irritation doesn’t disappear, but it thins, it can’t find enough surface to hold onto. Something softer tries to surface underneath it, more dangerous in its own way. It dissolves before it can settle into anything usable.

Martin turns back toward him, still dripping.

He walks out of the water, leaving wet prints in the sand that fill in almost immediately behind him.

Juhoon doesn’t move back.

Martin stops close enough that there’s no real space left between them, close enough that the cold follows him in.

“You’re going to complain the whole way home,” Martin says.

“I’m already complaining,” Juhoon replies.

“Good,” Martin says, as if that’s an achievement.

Then he lifts his hands, they’re freezing. He presses both of them straight against the sides of Juhoon’s neck.

The reaction is instant.

Juhoon flinches hard, swearing under his breath, shoulders jerking as cold bites straight through skin and bone. “What the-”

Martin laughs, loud and bright and completely unbothered. It works exactly as intended.

Juhoon grabs his wrists on instinct, not to push him away properly, just to remove the cold from his skin. His grip is firm but not enough to actually create distance.

For a moment, they just stand like that.

Water dripping off Martin, cold fading from Juhoon’s neck, their breathing slightly off rhythm with each other.

Juhoon lets out something that almost becomes a laugh in response.

It doesn’t quite match.

Nothing about it quite matches.

But it happens anyway.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

Juhoon sits at his desk under a lamp that casts everything in a narrow circle of forced clarity. 

In front of him, the page remains mostly empty.

He has been writing for a while, or pretending to. The pen keeps moving, stops, starts again, but nothing stays. What remains are fragments: lines cut short, rewritten, then scratched out with enough pressure to thin the paper beneath until it almost gives way. The surface looks wounded in places, overworked in others.

He doesn’t know what he’s trying to say anymore. Through the wall, his parents speak.

Their voices carry in low, restrained waves, the kind of argument that avoids sharp edges but still manages to bruise. There are no clear words he can hold onto, just tone, restraint, the familiar rhythm of people who have learned not to resolve anything too fully because resolution would require honesty.

It blends into the background of everything else.

Juhoon presses the pen down again, harder than necessary. He stops just before it tears through completely.

His phone buzzes.

Once, then again.

He doesn’t move immediately, he just listens to the aftersound of the house for a second longer, as if confirming nothing important has changed.

Then he reaches for it.

Martin.

A single image loads first, slightly grainy, taken too close. Martin’s face fills the screen in awkward composition. His hair is messy, eyes half-lidded with something like amusement. He’s sticking his tongue out.

At the corner of his mouth, dried blood sits in a thin, dark line. There’s a bruise already forming along his cheekbone, color deepening unevenly into the skin.

He looks like he’s trying to turn damage into a joke before anyone else can do it for him. Juhoon stares at it longer than he means to and zooms in without thinking.

The bruise sharpens into detail. The split skin becomes harder to dismiss. Even the humor in Martin’s expression starts to feel slightly unstable when isolated like that.

His thumb hovers over the keyboard.

He types: stop fighting.

The cursor blinks. He deletes it.

Types again: you look stupid.

Stops.

Deletes nothing this time, he stares at it until the sentence feels less real.

Send.

The message goes through immediately.

A second passes before Martin replies.

Thumbs up.

And a green heart.

Juhoon stares at them.

Two symbols sitting side by side. He sets the phone down carefully, face down on the desk.

Juhoon picks up his pen. The page stays empty for a moment longer.

Then he presses down hard enough to leave a mark that almost looks like meaning.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

Sleep is something Juhoon has read about in theory.

Other people seem to experience it as a natural consequence of existing, something that arrives after a day is properly used up, a receipt printed at the end of a transaction. 

For him it is less procedural and more conditional, as if his body keeps forgetting to authorize the request.

There are no collapsing scenes, no cinematic surrender to exhaustion. Nothing but hours that stretch too thin, a mind that refuses to dim, and a body that lies still out of obligation rather than agreement.

By 3 AM, the house has fully given up pretending to be alive.

Juhoon sits in the stairwell of the apartment complex instead.

Two steps down from the landing, back pressed into the wall, knees drawn loosely in front of him, trying to make himself less noticeable to time. 

The air here is cooler than his room, but not in a comforting way, indifferent concrete cold that seeps in slowly and stays.

He breathes like it is something he has any control over.

In. Out. Again.

His head is crowded in the way it always is at this hour. Thoughts stack on top of each other without order, overlapping until they lose individual shape. Martin, the sea, the bruise under his eye, the way his parents’ voices sit behind walls as if they’re still happening somewhere else in parallel. 

He presses the back of his head harder into the wall. The stairwell light flickers once overhead, then steadies.

Footsteps sound above him.

Juhoon doesn’t move immediately. He assumes it’s nothing.

Then a door opens and someone steps into the hallway.

They stop halfway through the motion of entering, like the sight of Juhoon interrupts whatever brought them here in the first place.

Juhoon looks up.

The boy—man, almost, the same age or close enough that it doesn’t matter—stands there for a second. He takes the scene in without comment, the stairs, the posture, Juhoon.

Then, instead of leaving or asking questions, he sits.

A few steps above Juhoon. Not too close but not far either.

Silence follows.

It’s not awkward which is the strangest part, it settles easily.

The stranger leans his elbows on his knees, tilts his head slightly as if listening to something that isn’t in the stairwell.

Then, casually, like this is the most normal continuation of sitting next to a stranger at 3 AM, he says, “Do you want to go fishing sometime?”

Juhoon blinks once.

The question doesn’t land correctly at first, it hangs in the air without context, without scaffolding.

For a moment, the absurdity of it almost pulls a laugh out of him. It rises halfway, gets stuck somewhere behind his ribs, and disappears before it can become real.

He exhales instead.

“I don’t like fishing, or fish,” he says.

The answer feels accurate in the way a placeholder feels accurate, technically correct yet completely missing the point.

The guy glances at him, then shrugs.

“You don’t have to,” he says.

That should be stranger than it is.

Juhoon leans his head back against the wall again, letting the cold press into the base of his skull. His breathing steadies without permission, just slightly less effortful now that there is someone else in the space who is not asking anything of him.

Neither of them speaks for a while after that.

And somehow, that feels like the easiest thing that has happened all night.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

The living room is too warm for something as aggressively sweet as what Juhoon is eating.

The popsicle is artificial in every possible way, it has a neon color to it and the type of taste that feels engineered rather than grown. It melts faster than he can properly finish it, dripping slightly at the corner of his mouth, sticking to his fingers in a way that makes everything feel faintly inconvenient.

He’s halfway through convincing himself it was a bad idea when the sound cuts through the house.

Honking.

Once. Then again. Impatient and completely out of place in a residential street that usually pretends nothing interesting ever happens.

Juhoon pauses. The snack in his hand drips.

Another honk.

His phone buzzes almost immediately after.

come outside

Juhoon stares at the text for a second, then at the window, like either one of them might explain what is happening more clearly if he gives it enough time.

Of course they don’t.

He sighs, drops the popsicle stick into the sink without finishing it, and walks out still tasting sugar too strongly on his tongue.

The front door opens into late afternoon light that feels sharper than expected.

And there he is.

Martin is leaning against a car like he’s been doing it all his life, almost as though vehicles are just temporary furniture he occasionally decides to interact with. He has sunglasses on despite the fact that nothing about the weather really requires them. A cigarette hangs loosely between his lips, unbothered and half-forgotten, more aesthetic than habit.

He looks up when Juhoon steps outside and grins like this is exactly the reaction he wanted.

Juhoon stops on the porch. There is a pause where his brain clearly refuses to accept what his eyes are reporting.

“…Where did you get a car,” he says slowly.

Martin takes the cigarette from his mouth, exhales to the side, completely unbothered. “Don’t worry about it.”

“That is not the answer I wanted.”

“It’s a great answer,” Martin says. “It covers everything important.”

Juhoon walks closer, eyes narrowing slightly as he takes in the details. The car is, objectively, too clean. Keys dangle from a large hand and Martin looks far too pleased with himself for something that should not be in his possession at all. 

“You stole it,” Juhoon concludes.

“I’m borrowing it,” Martin corrects.

“From who?”

“From a guy who won’t miss it.”

“That is not-” Juhoon stops, pinches the bridge of his nose for half a second. “You stress me out.”

Martin smiles around the cigarette. “Let’s go swimming.”

Juhoon looks at him. “…What.”

“You heard me.”

“It’s 4 PM, also it’s lowkey cold as hell.” Juhoon looks up at the sky, it doesn’t feel like mid-spring weather.

“Time is fake,” Martin says.

Juhoon stares at the car again. Then at Martin. Then back at the car.

Something in him clearly considers simply turning around and going back inside. It’s visible in the way he shifts his weight, the slow pivot of his shoulder.

Martin notices, of course he does.

“Don’t,” Martin says immediately.

Juhoon takes one more step backward anyway, just to be annoying. “I’m going back inside.”

“You’re not.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re not,” Martin repeats, already moving.

Juhoon turns fully now, committing to the performance of leaving, walking back toward the door with slow refusal.

He takes exactly three steps before arms hook around him from behind.

Before he can properly register it, his feet leave the ground.

“What the hell- Martin!”

There is no struggle and no real effort on Martin’s part either. It’s an easy lift.

Juhoon’s protest cuts off into something half-annoyed and half-laughing purely out of shock.

“Put me down.”

“No,” Martin says.

“You are insane.”

“I know.”

He carries him straight to the car and drops him into the passenger seat with careless precision.

Juhoon immediately sits up, glaring. “I did not agree to this.”

Martin leans in through the open door, grinning. “You didn’t say no fast enough.”

Juhoon opens his mouth, closes it again, visibly re-evaluating every life choice that led here.

Martin flicks ash from his cigarette, then taps the car roof twice like he’s signaling departure.

“Seatbelt,” he says.

Juhoon doesn’t move. Martin sighs dramatically, leans in again, and clicks it for him himself.

The car door shuts. And just like that, they’re going swimming.

The lake looks the same as it always does, which is part of the problem.

A sheet of water stretched too neatly between trees that don’t care what season it is. The dock creaks under Juhoon’s weight as he steps onto it, old wood complaining in familiar places, remembering them both before they even fully arrive.

Martin is already halfway undressed.

He doesn’t hesitate this time. He drops his shoes, shrugs off his shirt, and walks straight into the water like it has been waiting specifically for him. The surface breaks around his legs with a dull, obedient splash.

“Come on,” he calls back over his shoulder, already grinning. “Don’t be weird.”

“I’m not being weird,” Juhoon says automatically.

“You are absolutely being weird.”

Martin dives before Juhoon can respond properly.

The water closes over him cleanly, swallowing him without resistance. For a second there’s nothing but ripples widening outward, the lake returning to its flat expression as if nothing disturbed it at all.

Then Martin resurfaces a few meters out, hair slicked back, shaking water from his face like a dog.

He pushes himself into a lazy swim, circling the dock.

“Get in,” he says again, softer this time. 

Juhoon sits down instead. The wood is warm from the sun earlier, uneven under his palms. He lets his legs hang over the edge, shoes still on, feet hovering just above the water.

“I’m fine,” he says.

Martin slows and watches him for a second. Then shrugs like the answer is acceptable for today. “Coward.”

“I’m not a coward for avoiding brain-eating amoeba.”

“Dude, brain-eating amoeba would benefit you, it’d give you something to talk about,” Martin says easily before he turns and pushes off again, cutting through the water with practiced ease.

Juhoon watches him swim. The movement pulls something loose in his memory without permission.

Kindergarten. Bright lights, too many children and a shallow pool that smelled like chlorine and summer sweat. A boy with hands that didn’t understand limits yet, pushing Juhoon under just long enough for the world to turn muffled and wrong.

The pressure, the sound distortion, the sudden loss of control.

And then,

Martin.

Hands grabbing, pulling, breaking the moment apart like it was something that could be undone by force alone. There had been shouting, and water everywhere. 

Martin had shouted at the boy who’d pushed Juhoon under until the teacher came running.

Someone cried at the end of it.

It wasn’t Juhoon.

Martin had cried instead, face red and furious and overwhelmed, he had taken the drowning personally.

Juhoon remembers thinking, even then, that it was strange. That the wrong person looked shaken.

The memory fades back into the present with the sound of water hitting dock posts.

Martin is climbing back toward him now, pulling himself up with wet hands, dripping onto the wood. He shakes out his hair again, then grins like nothing in the world has ever weighed on him for more than a minute.

“Look,” he says. “I learned something.”

He pushes off the dock again, flips awkwardly into the water with more enthusiasm than skill. It’s not graceful in any way, shape, or form.

When he comes back up, he’s laughing.

“See? Talent.”

“You almost hit your head just then,” Juhoon says.

“Almost is the same as not at all.”

“Whatever.”

Martin ignores that completely. Instead, he swims closer, resting his elbows on the dock edge, chin just above the waterline.

Juhoon reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cigarette, lights it without really thinking about it. The flame briefly reflects in Martin’s eyes before disappearing.

Martin’s gaze sharpens immediately.

“Oh,” he says.

Juhoon exhales smoke to the side.

Martin leans closer, like a shark deciding whether curiosity counts as hunger. “What is that?”

“A cigarette.”

“I know what it is,” Martin says, offended. “Why do you have it?”

“You know I smoke.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s a better one than yours usually are.”

Martin considers this, shifts in the water, then slowly rises just enough so his face is level with the dock.

“Feed me,” he says.

Juhoon stares at him.

“…What.”

Martin opens his mouth slightly as if this is completely normal behavior. He makes an exaggerated fish-like movement with his hands.

“I’m a fish,” he explains. “You have snacks.”

Juhoon looks down at the cigarette, then back at Martin.

“…You’re so gross.”

“Mm.”

There’s a pause.

Then Juhoon exhales and brings the cigarette closer. Martin immediately leans forward and takes a drag straight from it with pure confidence and stupidity.

He coughs immediately after, spluttering into the water.

“Fuck,” Martin says, laughing through it. “That’s disgusting. Why do you insist on smoking that cheap shit?”

“You did it to yourself.”

“I did,” Martin agrees, still laughing. “Do it again.”

“No.”

“Do it again, pretty please.”

Juhoon holds the cigarette away slightly. “You’re not a fish.”

“It’s all about the mindset, Juhoon-nim.”

“That doesn’t even mean anything.”

“It means I deserve nicotine.”

Juhoon huffs a short laugh before he can stop it, looking out over the water instead of at him.

They sit like that for a while, Martin half in the lake, half hanging onto the dock like he belongs to it more than land, Juhoon above him with smoke drifting sideways in the wind.

Eventually Martin stops performing and just floats there, quieter now.

“So,” he says, after a beat. “You coming in or what.”

“No.”

“Still?”

“Still.”

Martin sighs softly.

“Fine,” he says. “Stay boring.”

Juhoon takes another drag, watching him tread water.

“Don’t drown,” he says eventually.

Martin smiles, softer this time. “I’ll try.”

Martin eventually stops trying to convince the lake to be entertaining.

He drifts back to shore with slow, lazy strokes, water clinging to him in uneven sheets. When he stands, he doesn’t bother shaking it off properly. For a while he just stands there, breathing, looking vaguely dissatisfied with everything that isn’t movement.

Then he drops down onto the sand, lets himself fall backward like gravity owes him a favor.

Juhoon watches him for a second longer than necessary, then shifts off the dock and follows, settling down a short distance away. Close enough that they share the same strip of warmth from the sun, far enough that neither of them has to pretend this is coordinated.

The ground is soft here. Warm sand presses through fabric, holding heat like memory.

Above them, the sky is too open to focus on properly. Pale blue thins into nothing at the edges, washed out by light that feels almost gentle.

Martin crosses his arms behind his head.

“Sky is kind of stupid,” he says.

“You’re kind of stupid,” Juhoon replies automatically.

“Yeah,” Martin agrees, pleased. “But like. Look at it.”

Juhoon does, but there isn’t much to see. 

Time stretches in the way it only does when nothing is actively demanding attention. The lake shifts quietly beside them, small movements at the edge of sound. Somewhere behind the trees, a bird calls once and doesn’t repeat itself.

Martin turns his head slightly.

“So,” he says, “my friend’s dog died yesterday.”

Juhoon hums once to acknowledge he heard it.

“They had a funeral for it,” Martin continues, like this is a completely normal direction for conversation to take under an indifferent sky. 

“An actual funeral. There was a tiny coffin thing. Many speeches.”

Juhoon glances at him.

“Did you go,” he asks.

“Yeah,” Martin says. “I had to.”

Then, after a beat, “It was weird. Everyone was crying. To be fair, that dog was kind of a legend. His name was ‘tortoise’, it was fast as shit.”

Juhoon doesn’t respond to that directly.

He shifts slightly in the sand, letting the warmth settle into his back. His eyes start to feel heavier than they should. The sun presses down through his skin in a way that makes his thoughts slow without fully stopping them.

Martin keeps talking, but the words blur at the edges.

Something about the dog’s favorite toy. Something about how small it looked in the box. Something about how his friend kept apologizing to it like it could hear.

Juhoon stops tracking the sentences individually. They become texture instead, sound without urgency.

His breathing evens out without permission. The heat, the open sky, the steady presence beside him, it all folds into a single, soft pressure that makes staying awake feel like effort rather than default.

For a moment, he almost loses the distinction between thinking and not thinking.

Then,

cold.

Juhoon jolts, breath catching sharply as something icy and wet presses flat against his stomach under his shirt.

“What the-”

He sits up halfway in reflex, grabbing Martin’s wrist immediately. Martin is laughing already, fully satisfied, shoulders shaking, clearly pleased with himself in a way that requires zero remorse.

“Your face,” he says, breathless. “You were gone.”

“I was not gone.”

“You were absolutely gone. You alright, sleepyhead?”

Juhoon releases him, glaring. His shirt is damp where Martin’s hand was, the cold lingers unpleasantly against skin that was just settling into warmth.

Martin flops back down again like nothing happened, still smiling to himself.

“Almost fell asleep, we finally found the cure to your insomnia,” he says.

“I wasn’t asleep,” Juhoon says flatly.

“Mm.”

Martin turns his head toward him, grin softening slightly at the edges. “You looked like you were.”

Instead of responding to Martin, he lies back down again, the sky is still there. Still too big. Still doing nothing in particular.

Martin stretches an arm out, letting it fall somewhere near Juhoon’s side this time without touching him again. 

Eventually, Martin sits up first, brushing sand off his legs.

“Come on,” he says.

Juhoon exhales, then follows.

They leave together without saying anything else about the dog, or the sky, or the cold hand that woke him up.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

Juhoon dreams he’s inside Martin’s body.

Martin’s body—his body—moves before thought can catch up. Knuckles split open on someone else’s teeth. Skin tears on a jawbone. The taste of iron is already in the mouth before the first punch fully lands. 

The room in the dream is not a room so much as a pressure system.

Strobe lights buzz overhead, flickering in uneven pulses that make time stutter. There are voices, but they don’t form words, more like heat and aggression shaped into sound. 

Someone shouts something that might be his name, or might be nothing at all. It doesn’t matter, nothing is being translated properly.

His hands—Martin’s hands—are already shaking.

Fatigue, adrenaline burnout, call it what you want. The body insists it is still standing even when it should have stopped.

Another hit comes from the left.

Pain detonates cleanly through the cheekbone. The world tilts for a fraction of a second, and he catches himself on instinct alone, his palm hits wet concrete.

Blood drips into his vision, he blinks it away.

Someone laughs. The sound is too close to be safe.

He swings back without thinking. Something gives and something doesn’t. The distinction stops mattering after a while.

He tries to stop.

The body doesn’t listen.

There is no exit here.

At some point, the floor becomes harder to distinguish from the body. Pain spreads out instead of pinpointing itself. His vision narrows until everything is center-weighted and unstable.

Someone grabs him by the collar and shouts something directly into his face.

Spit hits skin. Blood mixes with it. The sound is unbearable.

He thinks that this is what it must feel like to be used up without being asked.

Then everything starts to blur.

Dissolution at the edges. The body stops responding in clean commands. Movements lag. Thought fractures. The space between intention and action stretches until it becomes useless.

He can’t take it anymore.

That thought arrives fully formed, almost polite.

And then,

black.

Knock.

It cuts through the dream like something physically interrupts it.

Juhoon wakes like he’s been pulled upward by force. The ceiling is his ceiling again. The air is quiet again. His body is his own again, except it takes a second for that fact to fully settle.

Another knock.

His window.

He sits up too fast, breath still slightly misaligned, heart carrying leftover violence it no longer has anywhere to put.

Deep, practiced silence fills the apartment. His parents are asleep behind walls that feel too close.

He moves before thinking properly about it.

Window. Lock. Open. Cold air slips in immediately.

Martin is outside, half-lit by streetlight, expression unreadable in the dark except for the fact that he is looking directly at Juhoon. There’s something wrong with his lip again, something fresh.

Juhoon leans out slightly.

“You’re going to wake my parents up,” he whispers immediately. “Are you insane?”

Martin doesn’t answer the question, he just shifts his weight and starts climbing in.

Juhoon grabs his arm mid-motion. “Quiet.”

“I am quiet,” Martin whispers back, completely unconvincing.

“You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.”

Martin pauses for half a second, then shrugs like the concept of “fine” is irrelevant anyway. He gets inside and the room feels too small to hold the both of them suddenly. 

Juhoon closes the window carefully, checks the street outside instinctively, then turns back.

Martin is already leaning into him, collapsing slightly forward like his body has decided it no longer needs to be fully upright. Juhoon catches him automatically.

“Hey,” he says quietly. “Don’t-”

Martin is heavier than expected, his forehead lands somewhere near Juhoon’s shoulder, breath uneven but slowing.

“Shut up,” Martin mumbles, not unkindly.

Then he pushes them both backward, Juhoon hits the bed first and Martin follows immediately, folding into him.

For a moment there is only adjustment: limbs settling, fabric shifting, breathing trying to find sync. Juhoon stays tense for exactly three seconds before his body gives up on resisting.

Martin’s arm ends up around his waist, Juhoon’s hand ends up somewhere it doesn’t consciously choose to be. Their breathing stops competing and starts matching without permission.

Martin exhales once, long and uneven, then quieter the next time, Juhoon’s eyes stay open a little longer.

Then they close anyway. And this time, nothing in him fights it.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

The pet store reeks of plastic plants and filtered water that has been trying, unsuccessfully, to become natural again.

Everything is too bright in a way that feels slightly apologetic. Rows of tanks line the walls, each one holding a different version of silence, some are busy with movement, some are almost still enough to feel staged. The glass reflects them back in fragments: Juhoon, Seonghyeon, both slightly distorted by water and light.

They are not moving fast. They are, in fact, barely moving at all.

The plan had been simple in a way that now feels suspicious. Seonghyeon had said his sister wanted a fish for her birthday. Because Juhoon, according to Seonghyeon, “knows a lot of things about a lot of things,” he asked him to come with. Juhoon had said yes without thinking much about it, which is stupid.

Now they are sitting on a narrow bench in front of an aquarium wall, watching fish drift through their own indifferent physics.

A neon-orange fish glides past, turns and disappears behind a plastic coral structure that looks like it was designed by someone who has never seen the ocean. Another fish hovers in place like it has forgotten what it was doing mid-thought.

Seonghyeon leans forward slightly, elbows on his knees.

“So,” he says, “I think this one is depressed.”

Juhoon doesn’t look away from the tank. “It’s a fish.”

“Exactly,” Seonghyeon replies. “No ambition, no direction, no shit it’s depressed.”

Juhoon snorts quietly before he can stop himself.

They sit like that for a while and it’s different from the silence at home, or at The Rust. 

A small group of children passes behind them, pressing faces to glass, pointing at something that looks identical to everything else.

Juhoon watches a pale fish circle slowly near the bottom of the tank.

“We could make up stories about them,” Seonghyeon says suddenly.

“We are making up stories about them,” Juhoon replies.

“No,” Seonghyeon corrects, “proper ones. Names, jobs, tragic backstories, whatever.”

Juhoon considers this.

“That one,” he says, nodding slightly toward a small striped fish hovering near a rock, “looks like it owes someone money.”

Seonghyeon nods immediately. “Debt arc, classic.”

“The orange one is avoiding responsibility,” Juhoon adds.

“That one?” Seonghyeon points. “That one looks like it peaked too early and is now living with regret.”

Juhoon glances at him briefly. “That’s just you projecting.”

“Shut up,” Seonghyeon says, but he’s smiling.

The bench creaks when he shifts his weight. After a moment, Seonghyeon speaks again, more casually this time.

“I’ve been listening to this podcast.”

Juhoon hums in acknowledgment.

“They said something kind of stupid,” Seonghyeon continues. “They claimed that you start copying the behavior of the person you spend the most time with. Allegedly it’s a psychology thing.”

Juhoon finally looks at him. “I don’t think that’s how people work.”

“It kind of is,” Seonghyeon says.

“No,” Juhoon says flatly. “That’s just confirmation bias with extra steps.”

Seonghyeon shrugs. “Maybe.”

But he doesn’t sound fully unconvinced. Juhoon turns back to the aquarium. 

“And who do you spend the most time with?” Juhoon asks after a moment, more out of habit than actual curiosity.

Seonghyeon is quiet for a second.

“Keonho.”

The name lands with no weight for Juhoon. Just unfamiliar syllables attached to someone he only knows in outline. Someone Seonghyeon mentions occasionally in passing.

They both watch the fish again. A school of smaller ones moves in synchronized hesitation, turning as if they share a single unspoken instruction.

Juhoon leans forward slightly, elbows resting on his knees now, mirroring Seonghyeon without realizing it.

“You think you copy him?” Juhoon asks.

Seonghyeon considers the concept for a long time before answering.

“Sometimes, maybe,” he says.

Instead of responding, because he doesn’t really know what to say, he watches a fish bump gently into the glass, then turn away like nothing happened.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

The restaurant is already closed when Martin drags Juhoon inside, but it still smells like it is open because oil clings to the air in a thin, tired film. 

Salt, fryer heat, the ghost of customer noise still stuck in the corners like it doesn’t know the night has moved on without it. 

Martin walks while he spins the keys around his pointer finger and Juhoon briefly wonders how he hasn’t been fired yet.

He pushes through the back door with Juhoon half-following, half-resigned.

The kitchen lights are dimmed but not off, someone else is there.

The stranger, a boy, is half-collapsed over a stack of plates at a side counter, head tilted forward at an angle that looks physically uncomfortable but emotionally committed. His hair sticks up in uneven directions.

For a second he doesn’t react, then he hears Martin.

And he brightens.

It’s immediate, like a switch being flipped somewhere behind his eyes. He straightens too fast, nearly knocking over a plate.

“Martin,” he says, voice too awake for how he was a second ago.

Then he notices Juhoon.

The shift is subtle but visible, awareness arriving late, shoulders adjusting, hands suddenly unsure of where to be.

“Oh,” he says, slightly less certain. “Hey.”

Juhoon sticks up one hand lazily, barely a greeting.

“I’m Keonho,” the stranger, or well, apparently, not-stranger says.

Juhoon’s brain suddenly goes over all the times Seonghyeon has mentioned the boy, and comes to the conclusion that this face is not what he had in mind.

He remembers that he’s probably supposed to say something, and mutters a quiet, “Juhoon.”

Keonho seems to be putting something together as well, looking up as he recounts his memory.

“Oh! You work with Seonghyeon, right?”

Juhoon nods and Martin looks pleased in a way that is almost irritatingly casual.

“Well,” he says, “look at that. My two favorite people in one room.”

“That’s not true,” Juhoon says immediately.

Martin ignores him completely.

He swings an arm around Juhoon’s shoulders, heavy, familiar weight settling there without hesitation. Juhoon stiffens for half a second before he stops resisting.

Martin leans slightly into him, grinning at Keonho. “This is Juhoon,” he says, ignoring the previous introduction. “He fixes things. And complains.”

Juhoon let’s it slide, too lazy for a rebuttal.

Keonho laughs a little too quickly. “Nice to finally meet you,” he says to Juhoon, then immediately adds, “I think Martin mentioned you before. I know Seonghyeon definitely has.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Juhoon replies without thinking.

Keonho blinks, then laughs again, unsure if that was a joke but treating it like one anyway.

“So you guys-” he starts, then tries again. “You’ve known each other a long time?”

“Since forever,” Martin says.

“That is not a valid measurement of time,” Juhoon mutters.

Keonho nods anyway, like that answer makes sense in a way he doesn’t need to interrogate.

He talks too much after that. In a filling-space way. Questions that don’t land anywhere specific. Comments about work, about school, about how late it is, about how the place always smells like fryer oil no matter what they do.

Juhoon answers selectively but most of it passes through him without sticking.

Martin doesn’t really join in, he watches instead. His attention moves between them in small recalculations. Keonho talking. Juhoon not talking. 

It’s hard to read.

At some point, Keonho bumps lightly into Martin while trying to move past him, nearly losing balance.

“Careful,” Martin says automatically, steadying him with a hand that is more reflex than concern.

“Sorry,” Keonho says quickly.

Martin just huffs. “You’re always like this.”

“Like what?”

“Clumsy,” Martin says.

“It’s not my fault the floor is aggressively crooked,” Keonho replies.

That actually gets a real laugh out of Martin, short and surprised.

Then Martin lightly shoves him, Keonho stumbles a step, laughs again, like he’s trying to prove he’s fine.

Juhoon watches all of it without changing expression, but something in him tracks the pattern anyway.

Outside, the alley is colder.

Martin lights a cigarette without asking if Juhoon wants one. He holds it out anyway and Juhoon takes it.

The first inhale is too sharp, it catches wrong immediately, scraping down his throat in a way that forces a cough out of him before he can stop it.

Juhoon takes another drag, slower this time. They stand close without needing to adjust for it. Shoulder to shoulder, smoke passing between them in small, shared intervals. 

Keonho steps into the alley a moment later, lingering near the doorway like he’s not sure if he’s part of this space or just temporarily adjacent to it.

He watches them for a second too long, then clears his throat. “Hey,” he says. “This is kind of cool. Like, hanging out after work.”

Martin glances at him over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he says.

The walk home starts like it always does, side by side at an uneven pace, but Martin is louder than usual.

Not in volume alone, but in density. Words stack faster than they need to, spilling into each other without checking if they’re being followed. 

He talks about “this place” like it’s a separate country. About “these guys” like they exist outside his own memory. About things Juhoon is not supposed to name directly, even though he knows exactly what they are.

Juhoon listens.

He doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t respond much either. 

“You should see it,” Martin says, grinning as he walks backwards for a few steps just to look at Juhoon while he talks. “It’s not even as bad as people think. It’s just-”

He starts describing the fighting, too vividly.

His hands gesture as he talks, drawing invisible lines in the air.

Juhoon stops walking. “Stop,” he says quietly.

“What?”

“That’s enough.”

The words are flat and final in a way that doesn’t invite negotiation.

For a second, Martin looks like he might argue, like he might laugh it off and continue anyway, smooth over the interruption the way he usually does.

Instead, he exhales.

“Okay,” he says, too casual. “Whatever.”

He doesn’t finish the story. The silence that follows is immediate.

They walk the rest of the way without filling it properly.

At Juhoon’s apartment door, Martin doesn’t leave.

He stands there while Juhoon finds his keys, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, the decision to go is somewhere nearby but not yet selected.

Juhoon unlocks the door and steps inside, Martin follows automatically.

Juhoon drops his keys onto the small table by the entrance. The sound is too loud in the quiet.

He leans back against the wall and lets his eyes fall closed for a second longer than they should, just long enough for his body to suggest something like exhaustion instead of awareness.

Martin watches him from a few steps away.

There’s something on his face for half a moment, something that could be described as concern if it had time to fully form. He interrupts it before it becomes visible.

“You look like a corpse,” he says lightly.

Juhoon doesn’t respond and doesn’t open his eyes.

Martin waits. Nothing arrives. He huffs a quiet laugh and kicks off his shoes.

They end up on the floor with their backs against the bed frame, legs stretched out in uneven directions. A bag of chips sits between them, slightly crushed and stale. 

Martin talks again, but it's less performative than before.

Juhoon listens again, the same arrangement as always, the same roles. 

Except now,

Martin’s hand lands on Juhoon’s knee.

It takes place there mid-conversation and stays, fingers loose.

Juhoon doesn’t look down, he feels like he physically can’t, but something in him shifts.

Awareness sharpens, his body has decided to start reporting information it used to ignore and his thoughts fragment slightly around it.

He stays still anyway, Martin’s voice fades in and out now, background noise rather than content. 

Juhoon becomes aware of everything at once in a way that feels almost unfair.

The room. The air. The hand.

Martin falls asleep mid-sentence. One moment he’s talking, the next his voice breaks in the middle of a word and doesn’t come back. His head tips sideways, slow and unceremonious, until it lands against Juhoon’s shoulder.

Juhoon freezes, then, carefully, he shifts. Not to push Martin away but to make the angle more comfortable. To reduce strain, to make the situation less likely to fall apart in sleep.

His hand hovers briefly, then settles back down. Martin exhales against him, soft and uneven. The sound is close enough that Juhoon feels it more than hears it.

Without thinking about it, he lets his head tip slightly, just enough that it briefly rests against Martin’s.

His eyes close and for a moment, the room stops feeling like a room, it feels almost manageable.

Then Martin shifts, a small movement, unconscious and innocent.

Juhoon pulls away immediately, too fast.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

The second Friday of the month arrives with the kind of predictability that feels almost insulting.

Martin is already awake when Juhoon steps into the kitchen, that alone is suspicious.

He’s sitting at the table with his legs stretched out, eating something that looks like it was chosen purely for its ability to violate nutritional expectations. There’s a faint looseness in his posture this morning like he hasn’t fully committed to being chaotic yet.

He looks up immediately.

“Oh,” Martin says. “It’s that day.”

Juhoon pauses with a glass in his hand. “What day?”

Martin gestures vaguely at him. “You know, government-mandated emotional maintenance.”

“It’s therapy,” Juhoon says flatly.

“Same thing,” Martin replies.

Juhoon opens the fridge and closes it again, reconsidering whether food is worth engaging with at all. “It’s just a session.”

Something shifts in Martin’s expression, a subtle recalibration. “Want me to come with you?” he asks.

Juhoon looks at him over his shoulder. “No.”

“Wait outside?”

“No.”

Martin tilts his head. “We can do something fun after?”

“That’s not how therapy works.”

“It’s exactly how therapy should work,” Martin argues.

Juhoon takes a sip of water. “I’m fine.”

Martin’s eyes narrow slightly, like he doesn’t believe him but also doesn’t feel like arguing about it yet. That in itself is rare enough to be noticeable.

“Okay,” he says eventually. “But you’re not allowed to get emotionally dismantled without reporting back to me.”

“I won’t.”

“You will,” Martin says, standing up now, stretching. “But fine. Go get psychoanalyzed. I’ll be here doing important things.”

“Like what.”

“Existing,” Martin says seriously.

Juhoon leaves before that conversation can continue further down whatever path it’s trying to take.

The clinic is so clean it feels judgmental .

Everything is soft-edged and intentionally calm. The lighting is designed to suggest safety. The chairs are arranged in a way that implies conversation is both expected and carefully contained, even the silence feels professionally managed.

Juhoon sits in the waiting room and watches a clock that ticks too loudly for a place like this.

When his name is called, he stands.

Same room, same chair, same person across from him with a pen that moves too often to be entirely necessary.

“How have you been since our last session?” the therapist asks, her voice has always been too loud for Juhoon.

Still, he considers the question like it’s an exam.

“Stable,” he says.

The pen moves.

“Any changes in sleep?”

“Yes.”

“Better or worse?”

“More.”

A pause.

“That’s not usually how we phrase it,” she says gently.

“I know, I’ve been sleeping more, don’t know if it’s better or worse,” Juhoon replies.

Another pause.

He looks at the clock again. It hasn’t changed, but he checks anyway. 

“What’s been on your mind recently?” she asks.

Juhoon thinks about answering properly. He really does, for about half a second before something in him decides to make it slightly more entertaining.

“My friend might be a criminal,” he says.

The pen stops, it’s a full stop in motion.

“I see,” she says slowly. “Can you elaborate on that?”

“He steals cars,” Juhoon continues. “Possibly, I think so. It’s unclear whether he thinks ownership is a social construct.”

There is a beat of silence.

“Is this friend someone you feel safe around?” she asks.

Juhoon considers that with genuine seriousness.

“Yeah,” he says.

Then, after a pause: “Unfortunately.”

The therapist writes something down.

“Anything else affecting your mood?” she asks.

He could mention sleep. He could mention thoughts. He could mention nothing at all, which is technically more accurate than anything else.

Instead he says, “The church is too bright.”

Another note is made. They continue like this for a while.

Questions. Answers. Slight distortions of reality that Juhoon allows himself for reasons he doesn’t fully articulate. Not exactly lies, minor adjustments to keep the conversation from becoming too heavy in one direction.

At one point, she asks, “Do you feel connected to the people in your life?”

That one earns a longer silence.

When it’s over, he leaves.

The air outside is colder than he remembers it being inside. It hits his face immediately, unfiltered and slightly too sharp.

The building door closes behind him and suddenly there is no structure for the moment anymore.

Juhoon stands still for a second.

He looks up.

The sky is normal, unhelpfully normal. Then his mind does something uninvited.

An asteroid hits Earth.

Immediate impact. Brightness and rupture, the sound of it is too large to be contained by the atmosphere. Buildings fold in on themselves like they were always temporary ideas. The sky splits open in a way that finally makes sense.

He watches it happen in his head without emotion.

It would be loud, he thinks. Then, mildly: and inconvenient.

A car passes and someone laughs nearby, the world continues without interruption.

Juhoon exhales. The asteroid does not arrive. He lowers his gaze again and stands there anyway, like he is waiting for something equally unrealistic to follow.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

Juhoon sits on the kitchen counter, barefoot, one heel tapping lightly against the cabinet door below. A packet of instant noodles sits unopened beside him like a choice he hasn’t fully committed to making.

Heavy metal leaks from his phone speaker.

It’s distorted, half-destroyed by volume and compression, sound that doesn’t really play so much as it attacks the air. 

In his head, there is a whale, fully rendered and inconveniently real.

It moves through an ocean that does not behave like water. The ocean is too dense and slow, like liquid thought. The whale drags through it with impossible weight, skin marked with scars that look like architecture: bridges, fractures, old impact lines that never healed correctly.

Juhoon is directing it from inside the body of the whale itself, the camera is embedded in bone.

The whale sings, but the sound comes out wrong. It’s too low to be heard, but felt in the ribs of everything it passes. Smaller fish scatter in patterns that look like panic but are actually choreography, Juhoon wants it that way. The ocean presses back against movement like it resents being disturbed.

Cut.

He adjusts the angle and the whale turns, he leans back slightly on his hands, watching it.

The phone rings.

Once.

He doesn’t move.

Again.

He looks down at it, annoyed more than curious. It shows an unknown number.

Decline.

The sound cuts out. The whale continues swimming. The ocean folds around it like it’s trying to remember its shape.

The phone rings again immediately.

Juhoon stares at it longer this time. The whale in his head drifts through a trench that looks too deep to be survivable, and for a second the phone feels like something happening in a different room of the same dream.

He answers and nothing follows for half a beat.

Then,

“Juhoon,” Martin’s voice says.

Too many other sounds are behind it: music, laughter, something clattering, a world that is not stable enough to stand still.

Juhoon closes his eyes briefly. The whale pauses mid-turn in his head like it’s listening too.

“What,” Juhoon says.

Martin laughs immediately, but it’s slurred around the edges, loosened by whatever has been done to him tonight. “You sound kinda… angry.”

“I am not angry, I’m at home.”

“Come here,” Martin says.

Juhoon opens his eyes again.

The whale resumes movement. “Where is ‘here’,” Juhoon asks.

Martin rattles off an address that means nothing immediately. Then he repeats it slower, being helpful in a way that is almost sincere.

Music surges louder in the background. Someone shouts something indistinct.

“You’ll like it,” Martin adds.

“I really, really doubt that.”

“You’ll like it,” Martin insists.

Juhoon watches the whale turn.

Its eye passes through darkness like a satellite passing through space, there is something ancient in it, something exhausted.

“I don’t want to come,” Juhoon says.

“You should.” Then, softer, like it slips out without permission, “I’m fine.”

Juhoon doesn’t answer that.

The whale opens its mouth in his head and nothing comes out. No sound, no water displacement, an absence where expression should be.

Martin is still talking, but the words blur again into noise.

“Just come,” he says again, less coherent now. “It’s nothing… it’s good. It’s fine. It’s-”

Something crashes in the background and laughter follows.

Martin exhales sharply, like he’s lost track of his own sentence, then the call ends.

A text comes through immediately after, it’s the address.

The whale continues swimming. Juhoon stares at the phone for a long moment. In his head, the whale drifts closer to the surface, but it never breaches.

Juhoon exhales and sets the phone down, stays sitting on the counter for exactly three seconds, giving himself time to choose a different version of events that doesn’t exist.

Then he gets down and turns off the music, grabs his jacket.

The place is worse than Juhoon expected, which is already saying something.

It isn’t a “venue” in any real sense, it’s a repurposed industrial space that forgot it used to have a purpose at all. Concrete walls, low ceilings, too many bodies packed into air that has long since given up trying to stay breathable. 

The sound hits first: cheering, shouting, the wet rhythm of something that might be sport if you stop thinking about it too hard.

Juhoon immediately regrets coming, he keeps walking anyway.

It takes a minute to adjust his eyes. The light is harsh in uneven patches, like the technicians gave up halfway through deciding where people were supposed to see. There’s a ring somewhere deeper in the room, surrounded by bodies leaning in too close and eager.

He pushes through.

Shoulders brush his. Someone laughs near his ear. Someone spills drink onto his sleeve and doesn’t notice or care. The floor sticks slightly under his shoes.

He ignores all of it.

Martin.

That’s the only thing that matters in a place like this.

It takes longer than it should to find him.

And when he does, it’s wrong in a way that doesn’t process immediately.

Martin is standing near the edge of the crowd, slightly off-center like he’s been displaced from where he was supposed to be. His shirt is lost or irrelevant, his face is bloodied in a way that doesn’t belong to a joke anymore. It’s not a clean cut or a single injury, instead it’s layers upon layers of grime and blood.

He looks up when Juhoon reaches him, and smiles.

As if nothing is wrong.

Juhoon stops so abruptly that someone behind him bumps into his shoulder. For a second, his brain refuses to connect the image to anything real.

“What happened,” he says.

Martin tilts his head slightly. “You came.”

“That is not what I asked.”

“It’s a funny story,” Martin says lightly, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. “You should’ve seen the other guy.”

Juhoon stares at him.

“Did you lose?”

Martin’s grin twitches. “Technically-”

“Did you lose.”

Martin exhales, deciding which version of himself to present. “Maybe.”

“You’re bleeding,” Juhoon says, voice rising before he can stop it. “Your face is- what is wrong with you, why are you—”

Martin laughs, it’s automatic and defensive. 

“I’m fine,” he says. “Relax.”

“Don’t tell me to relax,” Juhoon snaps. “You’re obviously not fine, dumbass.”

The words come out sharper than intended, some people nearby glance over. Juhoon doesn’t notice, and he wouldn’t care if he did.

His chest feels tight in a way that has nothing to do with air quality, something is building behind his eyes, pressure without release.

Martin watches him for a second, still smiling, but less dazed now.

“Wow,” Martin says lightly. “You’re being pretty emotional right now.”

It lands like a shove and Juhoon goes still. The noise around them keeps going, but it moves further away, the world is stepping back slightly to make space for something it doesn’t want to witness.

“I came here,” Juhoon says, quieter now, but worse somehow, “because I thought-”

He stops, his throat tightens unexpectedly.

Because I thought- what?

That you wouldn’t be like this.

That you’d be okay.

That it wouldn’t look like this.

His voice doesn’t fully cooperate on the next sentence. Instead, it breaks slightly at the edges before it can even form.

Martin’s expression shifts just enough to register a change in temperature.

“Hey,” Martin says, softer now. “Don’t-”

“You don’t get to do that,” Juhoon says, and it comes out wrong, frayed. “You don’t get to just- come here and- and come back like this and act like it’s funny, because it isn’t-”

His vision blurs slightly, he hates that immediately, hates it more than anything else in the room.

Martin blinks once, the joke drops out of his face.

“Are you-” he starts, then stops.

Juhoon swallows hard. His throat hurts like he’s been yelling longer than he has.

“You’re bleeding,” he repeats, uselessly, as if repeating it enough times will turn it into something fixable.

Martin looks at him for a long second, then tries again, quieter. “It’s fine.”

“Stop lying-”

“You’re shaking,” Martin interrupts, gentler now.

That makes Juhoon go silent because he is. His hands are trembling at his sides almost imperceptibly, but enough that Martin noticed.

Martin runs a hand through his hair, then stops halfway like he doesn’t know what to do with it. The reckless version of himself is gone now, but he’s trying to reach for it again and failing.

“Okay,” Martin says finally, exhaling. “Okay. What do you want?”

Juhoon stares at him, the noise of the room feels too far away to matter now, everything is narrowed down to this.

“I want to leave,” Juhoon says.

Martin nods immediately. “Okay,” he says again. “Yeah. You can leave.”

Juhoon doesn’t move yet, eventually it slips out before he can stop it:

“I want you to come with me.”

Martin goes still. For a second, there’s nothing on his face except something unguarded and too real to stay there for long.

“Yeah,” he says simply after a few beats.

“No problem.”

He steps closer, slow and careful now.

“Come on,” he adds.

Juhoon nods once before they turn together. The crowd doesn’t part for them, but they manage to move through it anyway.

Juhoon doesn’t look back.

The beach feels too quiet after the place they just left.

The wind carries salt in uneven bursts. The sand is colder than it should be, still holding the memory of daytime heat without actually giving any of it back.

Juhoon walks a few steps in and stops. He looks out at the water like it might explain why everything else was so damn loud.

“I’m not fixing you tonight,” he says.

Martin is still behind him, blood dried into the edges of his expression, posture looser in a way that feels like exhaustion might finally be catching up.

“That’s fine,” Martin says.

Juhoon glances back at him. “No it isn’t.”

“It is,” Martin repeats. “You already dragged me out.”

“I didn’t drag you.”

“That’s not what happened.”

“It is to me,” Martin says, and even that is quieter than usual.

Juhoon starts walking again, not really toward anything. Just away from Martin, away from the noise still ringing in his ears in ghost form.

That’s when he sees it.

Near the tall grass at the edge of the dunes: discarded props, half-buried in sand like the ocean tried to return them but gave up halfway through.

Angel wings, slightly bent. A sheer veil snagged on dry grass. Neon pink tights twisted into something unwearable. A pig mask staring upward with its mouth open. A wig, a bad, synthetic one, aggressively yellow in a way that feels almost offensive to nature.

Juhoon stops again, Martin is already moving.

“Oh,” he says, delighted in a way that doesn’t match anything that happened mere minutes ago. “This is incredible.”

Before Juhoon can stop him, Martin grabs the wig and puts it on.

It sits crooked on his head immediately, absurd and too bright against his bruised face. He adjusts it like it’s a crown before he turns to Juhoon.

“You’re the groom,” he announces.

“I’m not anything,” Juhoon says.

Martin ignores that completely and scoops up the veil next, shaking it out like he’s preparing something ceremonial instead of whatever this is. He drapes it over Juhoon’s head with far too much seriousness for how unsteady his hands are.

Juhoon freezes. “Don’t,” he says flatly.

Martin steps back, looking at him like he’s evaluating an arrangement. “Why are you so beautiful?”

“I hate you.”

“No you don’t,” Martin says automatically, then adds, “I’m the officiant and the other groom.”

“That’s not how-”

“And this,” Martin continues, picking up something imaginary from the air, already committed to the role, “is a legally binding beach marriage contract.”

Martin keeps talking, but the words start to blur slightly around the edges. The beach, the props, the ocean, all of it begins to feel too far away from something Juhoon can keep holding onto.

The veil shifts.

The sound of waves becomes louder than Martin’s voice.

He sits down, it happens without any real decision. One moment he is standing in something absurdly theatrical, and the next his knees give way and the sand takes him.

He sits there and looks at the sea.

Martin is still talking, but Juhoon is no longer following it.

The ocean keeps pulling back and returning.

Pulling back and returning.

His thoughts slip sideways, he blinks slowly. The veil sticks slightly to his cheek where the wind presses it.

Martin’s voice fades into something softer behind him. Eventually, the movement behind him changes and Martin sits down next to him. 

For a moment, neither of them speaks, the ocean does it for them.

Then Martin reaches out, his hand is careful now in a way it wasn’t earlier. He places it on Juhoon’s back and begins to rub slowly, small, uneven circles, trying to remember how comfort works without being taught.

“If you’re gonna throw up,” Martin says lightly, “just tell me.”

Juhoon shakes his head. No. Not now. Not that.

They fall quiet again.

The waves continue their endless return.

Juhoon keeps his eyes on them.

He thinks, without meaning to, of bodies sinking and not coming back up in the same shape they left in. Of how water doesn’t judge it. How it doesn’t notice the difference between accident and choice.

Juhoon’s room looks smaller at night, the light is low and yellowed from a lamp that doesn’t quite reach all the corners. There are clothes on the chair, a book left open face-down on the desk, the faint smell of detergent and something metallic that never fully leaves the air.

Martin is sitting on the floor with his back against the bed, shirt pulled up slightly where Juhoon is working.

He’s been patched up many times before. Worse. Better. Somewhere in between. So he doesn’t complain when Juhoon doesn’t use proper bandages, just butterfly strips laid out in uneven rows, a temporary solution pretending to be confidence.

Juhoon’s hands are steady, mostly.

The skin around Martin’s ribs is split in a shallow line that doesn’t look dramatic until you’re close enough to see it properly, close enough to have to do something about it.

Martin watches him the entire time.

“You’re always the one fixing things,” he says, like he’s commenting on the weather. “That ever make you feel weird?”

Juhoon doesn’t look up. “No. Not really.”

He presses the strip down harder until it sticks.

Martin exhales through his nose, almost amused. “Yeah,” he says, “that tracks.”

Juhoon finishes the last strip, sits back slightly, then immediately regrets the proximity of everything.

Martin shifts, not away, down.

He slides off the bed frame entirely, landing on the floor fully. Juhoon follows out of habit rather than decision, ending up beside him without really choosing to.

The floor is colder than expected through his shirt. Martin tilts his head back against the bed frame.

“I did something kind of stupid,” he says.

Juhoon leans back against the side of the bed. “That narrows it down.”

Martin huffs a quiet laugh. “No, like… actually.”

Juhoon glances at him. “Drugs?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course.”

Martin shifts his arm, looking at him now. “It wasn’t even that bad.”

“It never is until it is,” Juhoon replies.

“I’m being serious.” Martin props himself up slightly on one elbow. “It was just- I don’t know what it was, actually. This guy from school had it. Said it was fine.”

“That’s your first mistake.”

“Probably.”

He lies back down again, staring at the ceiling, Juhoon follows suit, melting into the floor.

“I thought I was falling,” Martin says after a second. “It felt like the ground just stopped being there.”

Juhoon watches him, expression flat. “Okay.”

“No, listen.” Martin turns his head slightly, more intent now. “I was standing still. And then suddenly it felt like everything dropped out from under me. Like I was going through it, sinking, kinda.”

He gestures vaguely with one hand, like he’s trying to draw the shape of something that doesn’t have one.

“The earth wasn’t solid anymore,” he continues. “There were layers you could fall between.”

Juhoon raises an eyebrow. “That’s not how anything works.”

“I know that,” Martin says, a little sharper. “I’m just saying it felt like it did.”

“You were high.”

“Yeah, I was high,” he repeats, frustrated now, but not really at Juhoon. “That doesn’t mean it wasn’t real at that moment.”

Juhoon looks at him for a second longer, then away.

“It sounds stupid,” he says.

“It was stupid,” Martin admits. “But it felt-” he stops and frowns slightly. “It felt kind of good, for a second.”

Juhoon doesn’t respond.

Martin exhales, like he’s letting it go. “Anyway. I didn’t die.”

“Shocking.”

“Right?”

The conversation dissolves there, not finished so much as abandoned.

Martin turns onto his side, slow and unceremonious, he’s done with sitting upright for the night. His face presses into the side of Juhoon’s neck without asking.

It’s too warm and Juhoon pauses, still as a statue. Martin exhales there, slow. His nose brushes against Juhoon’s throat, the contact loose and unstructured.

Then, stranger, he drags his tongue lightly against the skin there, once, absent-minded.

Juhoon’s hand flexes slightly against the floor, but he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t say anything at all.

Martin does it again, slower this time, less accidental. A kind of quiet, unfiltered curiosity.

Juhoon lets him, he stares at the ceiling, nothing in his face suggests he is reacting at all.

But his hand moves, his fingers, still trembling, slide into the back of Martin’s shirt, gripping loosely, keeping him there without acknowledging that’s what it is.

Martin keeps doing it for a while before he slows and eventually stops.

At some point, his breathing changes, it gets deeper and heavier. His weight settles more fully against Juhoon’s side.

Time passes in a way that stops being trackable. Martin eventually shifts again and lifts his head a little. There’s a faint smear of saliva on Juhoon’s neck where he had been, already cooling.

Neither of them comments on it, Martin squints at him like he’s considering something important, then says, very casually:

“You taste like soap.”

Juhoon finally moves his head slightly, just enough to look at him out of the corner of his eye.

“You’re disgusting, your breath stinks,” he says.

Martin smiles.

Juhoon does not wipe the spit off.

The light is pale and reluctant through the curtains, dust hangs in it like it has nowhere else to be. The air still carries the faint warmth of sleep.

Martin is still there, stretched out across the bed like he has negotiated ownership overnight and no one bothered to dispute it. One leg hangs off the edge, foot loosely angled toward the floor.

Juhoon wakes with his arm pinned under him, completely dead.

His arm is fully unresponsive, like it has been reassigned to someone else’s nervous system. The pins and needles start all at once when he shifts slightly, sharp enough to make his fingers twitch involuntarily.

He doesn’t move immediately, he lies there instead, watching. Martin’s back rises and falls in a slow rhythm. He looks so unaware, it’s the kind of sleep that looks like trust.

Juhoon studies it for longer, then, carefully, he begins to extract his arm.

It takes time, small adjustments, slow withdrawal. Every movement is calculated to avoid disturbing the weight of him. When it finally comes free, the sensation rushes back in too fast, uncomfortable and loud, his body accusing him of neglect.

He flexes his fingers once, twice, then sits up, Martin doesn’t wake.

Juhoon swings his legs off the bed and stands, shaking his arm out slightly as he walks to the bathroom.

He looks at himself for a moment without expression in the mirror. His hair is slightly flattened and his eyes are dull with sleep. Something faint stains his neck.

At first it’s nothing, then he leans closer. A mark, a pressure impression of something that stayed too long and left a trace behind.

He lifts his hand and presses his thumb over it.

The skin flushes under the pressure, blooming red, he keeps it there for a second longer than he should, testing whether it changes anything beyond appearance.

It doesn’t, he lets go.

Turns away.

When he comes back to the room, Martin is awake. Fully alert, eyes tracking Juhoon with an expression that doesn’t settle into anything readable. Juhoon doesn’t react to it.

The silence stretches.

Then Martin breaks it, like always.

He rolls off the bed and immediately starts rummaging through Juhoon’s space without asking permission, moving in a way that suggests familiarity rather than intrusion. Drawer half-open. Book shifted. Something on the desk turned over and examined.

Juhoon watches him briefly, then looks away again. Martin hums to himself, pulling things out at random.

A charger. A pen. A receipt.

Each item gets a moment of inspection before being abandoned, then he finds the notebook.

It’s just there, like everything else Juhoon hasn’t fully decided to make private or not.

Martin opens it and flips through a few pages.

“Oh,” he says.

That alone is enough to make Juhoon look up. Martin reads out loud immediately, voice shifting into something performative.

“‘The body remembers things the mind refuses to name,’” he says, then glances up with a grin. “Wow. That’s intense. Are you okay?”

Juhoon crosses the room in two steps.

“Don’t,” he says.

He takes the notebook out of Martin’s hands, a little harder than necessary.

Martin lets go easily, still smiling, but something flickers behind his expression, gone too fast to fully identify.

Juhoon closes it and sets it down out of reach.

Martin leans back against the desk now, arms loosely folded, watching him like he’s trying to decide whether to push further or not.

“You ever write about me?”

Juhoon answers immediately.

“No.”

Martin tilts his head slightly. “Mm.”

“Okay,” he says, “I don’t think that’s true.”

He turns away again, already moving on to something else on the desk. The day continues like nothing important was said at all.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

Juhoon is on one of his weekly walks, something his therapist framed as “structured exposure to external stimuli,” which sounds more scientific than it feels. 

He treats it like maintenance. Headphones in, volume up to a deafening degree, heavy metal pressed straight into the skull until thought becomes something he doesn’t have to actively manage.

The city passes in fragments, corners of people, cars. The wind pushes at his sleeves, he’s not really looking for anything until he is.

Seonghyeon.

A familiar shape stands ahead, half-turned on the sidewalk, mid-conversation with someone Juhoon already knows in outline more than detail.

Keonho.

The restaurant guy. Martin’s orbit-adjacent presence. 

Juhoon doesn’t slow down, he simply adjusts his path slightly and keeps walking, assuming he’ll pass without interruption.

He’s wrong, a hand catches his shoulder, hard and sudden.

His body reacts before his thoughts do, he turns around.

Seonghyeon.

“Take those out,” he says immediately, already reaching for Juhoon’s earphones like he’s enforcing policy.

Juhoon stares at him for a beat. “You’re becoming a problem.”

“Take them out.”

A pause comes before Juhoon complies, pulling them free.

The sound rushes back in all at once: too much wind, too many cars, too many lives happening at once without his permission.

Seonghyeon exhales like he’s been holding something in his chest for too long.

“We got jumped,” he says.

Juhoon blinks. “Jumped?”

“Almost jumped,” Seonghyeon corrects, visibly annoyed at the distinction. “Which is still, realistically, pretty fucking unpleasant.”

Keonho shifts slightly behind him, rubbing the back of his neck. “It was like… four guys,” he adds, like that clarifies anything.

Juhoon looks at him briefly, then back to Seonghyeon. “You called me over for this?”

“I did not call you over,” Seonghyeon says. “You walked right past us.”

“Semantics.”

“Don’t use big words with me.”

There’s a beat where all three of them just stand there, slightly displaced from normal pedestrian flow.

Seonghyeon exhales again, sharper this time, and gestures vaguely between them.

“Right,” he says. “You two already know each other, Keonho told me he met you.”

Keonho gives a small wave. “Hey.”

Juhoon nods once. “Hello.”

It’s not new, but it still carries that faint awkward residue of the first meeting.

Keonho looks at him a bit more closely now, like he’s recalibrating expectations that never fully formed in the first place.

“I’m sorry about that night, I was out of it,” he says.

Juhoon tilts his head slightly. “It’s fine.”

Seonghyeon pinches the bridge of his nose. “Can we move this somewhere that is not the middle of a sidewalk where I was recently almost mugged?”

“No one is stopping you,” Juhoon says.

“That is the issue,” Seonghyeon replies immediately.

“You should hang out with us,” he says.

Juhoon doesn’t even hesitate. “No.”

Keonho looks mildly offended on principle. “That was fast.”

“I’m not hanging out with you guys,” Juhoon squints.

Seonghyeon sighs. “You’re so annoying.”

“You’re the one that keeps talking to me,” Juhoon says.

“I’m working on it,” Seonghyeon mutters.

Seonghyeon waves him off. “Piss off then.”

“Gladly,” Juhoon replies before he turns and keeps walking.

Behind him, he hears Keonho say something like, “He’s kind of intense,” and Seonghyeon responding, “You get used to it or you don’t.”

The rest fades as distance takes it.

A few blocks later, his phone buzzes.

A photo.

A fish in a tank, a picture he saw Seonghyeon take back at the pet store.

Over it, a small caption is scribbled like a comic panel:

“loners don’t go to heaven”

Juhoon looks at it. Then, despite himself, lets out a short breath that almost becomes a laugh.

He doesn’t reply.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

The bathroom light is too steady for the hour, it doesn’t allow shadows, doesn’t allow softness. It lays the world out in a single, uninterrupted plane of fact.

Juhoon stands in it completely naked.

There had been a party and someone, a girl he doesn’t remember the name of, had said it like it was a secret worth keeping: if you’re overwhelmed, take everything off. It helps. Resets you.

At the time, he had nodded. Not because he believed her, but because Martin had been standing next to him, smiling in that loose, easy way that makes everything feel temporarily correct.

Now the memory sits in his head like a misplaced object, and he has decided, for reasons he cannot fully justify, to test it.

So, this.

Bare skin under bad lighting, no distractions, no fabric to buffer him from himself.

The mirror takes him in without hesitation and there is no version of himself to hide behind.

His face looks like his face. His body looks like his body. All of it arranged in a way that should mean something, should cohere into a recognizable, stable whole, but instead feels faintly artificial.

The cold of the tile creeps up through the soles of his feet, slow and invasive, like it’s trying to climb him. The air touches everywhere at once and none of it feels grounding. If anything, it makes the edges of him feel even less defined.

His breath ghosts against the mirror, a soft bloom of fog that briefly distorts his face, pulls it apart, blurs it, makes it almost unrecognizable—

—and then it clears. Back to him.

His hand lifts, it moves like it doesn’t entirely belong to him. Two fingers find his wrist, press lightly at first, testing the surface like it might give way if approached correctly.

Skin, warm, his skin is always so warm. He presses harder.

There should be something immediate.

A pulse, that’s what he’s looking for.

His fingers press deeper, enough now that the skin blanches slightly under the pressure, enough that it should force something into clarity.

He stands there, naked and waiting, pressing into his own body like it might answer if he insists hard enough, but it doesn’t.

There is no shift, no click into place, no sudden, grounding awareness that locks him back into himself.

For a moment there’s the thought that if he presses hard enough, he might break through something. Not bone, but whatever invisible layer keeps everything feeling contained.

The thought passes because he lets it pass. He stops there, suspended in the middle of the attempt, caught between wanting a result and not knowing what the result would even look like.

Then his hand drops and he steps back from the mirror.

After a second, he turns and walks out of the bathroom without dressing.

No conclusion follows him, only the quiet, irritating awareness that he had expected one.

He gets dressed without thinking about it, he sits on the bed and stays there for a while, letting the quiet press in until it starts to feel almost structured.

Then he pulls the notebook toward him.

Opening it feels unnecessary, but he does it anyway. The pen follows without much instruction. The lines he writes come out fragmented.

He pauses once or twice, staring at the page like it might rearrange itself into something more legible, something less his.

When he’s done, he closes the notebook, but he doesn’t put it away.

He holds it there, thumb pressed against the worn edge of the cover, tracing the place where it’s softened from use.

That’s when he sees it again, the drawing.

A hedgehog, round and uneven, ink bled slightly into the paper so its outline looks softer than it was meant to be.

Next to it, in handwriting that leans forward like it’s already moving on:

I love you, Juhoon hwaiting!

A twelve year old Martin had drawn it for him.

It sits there without context, without embarrassment, untouched by everything that came after, and because of that it feels wrong.

Juhoon looks at it too long before he throws the notebook.

It hits the wall with a dull, unsatisfying thud and drops, he lies back on the bed with his arms loose at his sides.

The ceiling offers nothing but a blank, steady surface, holding its place the same way everything else does.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

The field sits behind the service road like it’s been forgotten on purpose.

You have to cut past the back of The Rust, past the bins that always smell faintly sweet and rotten, past the strip of gravel where cigarette butts collect in little constellations, and then the ground… opens. Grass, uneven and wind-pressed. A long, clean view of the train tracks.

Not close enough to be dangerous but perfectly close enough to watch.

Juhoon lowers himself into the grass with a quiet exhale, legs stretching out in front of him, hands braced behind him for a second before he lets them fall loose.

Seonghyeon drops down beside him with a deep sigh.

“You picked this? I finally agreed to hang out with you and you bring me somewhere that looks like the perfect place to kill a person?” Juhoon asks.

Seonghyeon hums. “Yeah.”

“…why.”

Seonghyeon glances at him, then out toward the tracks. “You’ll see.”

That’s all he offers, Juhoon doesn’t push.

The air is different out here. Not cleaner, exactly, it moves more. It slips under his shirt, across the back of his neck. 

“You hear that?” Seonghyeon says after a few minutes of silence.

Juhoon tilts his head slightly. At first, he hears nothing.

Then something low and distant reaches his ears, a rumble that seems to come from the ground up rather than the air down.

“Look,” Seonghyeon says.

Juhoon watches the tracks.

From here, they don’t move much, but the longer he looks, the more it feels like they’re holding something back.

“You do this often?” Juhoon asks.

“Sometimes.”

“…just sit here.”

“Yeah.”

Juhoon glances at him. “You like watching trains?”

Seonghyeon shrugs. “It’s better than going straight home.”

The rumble deepens and thickens until it becomes something you can feel more than hear. It runs through the ground, up through Juhoon’s legs where they touch the grass, subtle but constant.

Then the train appears. It cuts across the horizon fast, metal flashing in pieces, windows catching light and throwing it back unevenly. 

Juhoon follows it automatically, doesn’t realize he’s leaning forward until it’s already halfway gone.

“Freight,” Seonghyeon says.

Juhoon glances at him. “You can tell?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

Seonghyeon smirks faintly, not looking away from the tracks. “You’ll get it.”

Juhoon watches the last cars disappear, the space behind them closing back in like nothing passed through at all.

Seonghyeon plucks at the grass beside him, pulling a blade free and rolling it between his fingers. “Keonho thinks this place is creepy.”

“It is a little.”

“That’s because he needs constant noise.”

Juhoon huffs softly. “I could’ve guessed that about him.”

“Exactly.”

Then, almost idly, Seonghyeon says, “I’m leaving.”

Juhoon turns his head. “Leaving what?”

Seonghyeon doesn’t answer immediately. He watches the tracks like something else might come through and say it for him.

“This,” he says finally, gesturing vaguely, not just at the field, but everything behind them: The Rust, the road, the town sitting just out of sight.

Juhoon shifts slightly in the grass. “When?”

Seonghyeon’s mouth tilts, not quite a smile. “Soon.”

“That’s not very specific.”

“It’s not supposed to be.”

Juhoon watches him for a second. “You waiting for something?” he asks.

Seonghyeon lets out a quiet breath through his nose. “Waiting ‘til I turn eighteen.”

Juhoon nods once. “And then you’ll just go?”

“Yeah.”

“No plan?”

“I have a plan.” Seonghyeon glances at him briefly. “It’s just not very detailed… yet.”

Juhoon looks back at the tracks. “Where are you gonna go?”

Seonghyeon leans back onto his hands now, tilting his face up toward the sky before answering.

“Somewhere bigger,” he says. “Doesn’t really matter which city.”

“You’re being vague again.”

“It’s intentional again.”

Seonghyeon’s voice shifts slightly as he continues, “I just don’t want this,” he says. “It’s all so fucking… bleak. Boring.”

He flicks the blade of grass away.

“I want somewhere that moves. Where you can disappear for a bit if you need to. Or show up as someone else and no one questions it.”

There’s a small pause.

“More to do,” he adds, like he’s simplifying it on purpose. “More chances.”

Juhoon studies him, there’s something in his eyes now, something restless.

“You think it’ll fix it,” Juhoon says.

Seonghyeon looks at him, one eyebrow lifting. “Fix what?”

Juhoon shrugs. “Whatever makes you want to leave this bad.”

Seonghyeon lets out a quiet laugh, brief and humorless. “No.”

“I think it’ll at least make it different.”

Another train begins to hum in the distance. Juhoon leans back this time, mirroring him without thinking, eyes on the tracks.

“Are you coming back?” he asks.

Seonghyeon considers it.

“Maybe,” he says. “If there’s a good enough reason.”

It doesn’t sound like there will be. Another train cuts through the horizon, faster this time, a clean, bright red streak against the muted field.

They watch it in silence. Seonghyeon tracks it until it’s gone, Juhoon notices but doesn’t say anything, instead he sits there, feeling the faint vibration fade out beneath them.

By the time Juhoon leaves the field, the light has shifted into something thinner, stars start appearing, he doesn’t go home yet.

His feet take the longer road without asking him, past the low stretch of houses, past the convenience store glow bleeding faintly into the pavement behind him, until the air changes again, salt threaded through it now, sticking lightly to the back of his throat.

The beach is mostly empty.

There are a few scattered figures further down, reduced to silhouettes against the water, but no one is close enough to feel like company. The tide sits somewhere between in and out, waves folding over themselves with a soft, repetitive drag.

Juhoon steps onto the sand and feels it give slightly under his weight, it shifts with him, reshapes itself around where he stands.

He walks without direction, that’s when he notices him.

A little ways off, angled toward the water, sits a figure in a fold-out chair. The cheap, metal legs are half-sunk into the sand. Next to it, another identical chair.

Empty, Juhoon slows slightly.

Recognition comes late and quiet. Not from memory of conversation, but from proximity, hallway crossings, the sound of a door closing one apartment over, a presence that has always been adjacent but never fully acknowledged. 

He thinks back to the staircase, to the semi-stranger sitting above him, inviting him to go fishing.

His neighbor. 

He’s facing the water like it’s doing something worth paying attention to, posture loose but not careless.

Juhoon hesitates, then keeps walking. He stops a few feet away, close enough that ignoring each other would start to feel intentional.

“…hey,” he says.

He quickly adds, “I live next door,” it comes out flatter than intended.

The other glances at him then. “Oh yeah.”

His voice is even and a little rough around the edges, like it doesn’t get used unnecessarily.

“James,” he adds, after a second.

Juhoon nods once. “Juhoon.”

The names settle between them without much ceremony.

James gestures slightly with his chin toward the empty chair beside him. “You can sit, if you want.”

Juhoon looks at it. “…you waiting for someone?”

James shrugs, the movement minimal. “Not really.”

That doesn’t clarify anything, Juhoon doesn’t ask again.

He lowers himself into the chair anyway, the metal frame creaking faintly under the shift in weight. It’s colder than expected, the fabric holding onto the evening air.

For a while, neither of them speaks.

The water fills the space instead, waves dragging in, pulling back.

James doesn’t look at him again, his attention stays fixed on the horizon.

After a minute, he says, “You should sleep.”

Juhoon glances at him. “Why.”

“You look like you haven’t.”

“I have.”

James hums, unconvinced. “Not enough, I only hear you in the hallway past midnight.”

Juhoon leans back slightly, eyes drifting toward the water. “I’m fine.”

“That’s not what I said.”

Juhoon exhales quietly through his nose. “I don’t sleep well.”

James nods. “Insomnia?” he asks.

“Mm.”

“Medication?”

Juhoon flicks his gaze toward him, brief but assessing. “Yeah.”

James doesn’t react to that, filing it away without judgment.

“You come here a lot?” Juhoon asks after a while.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“It’s consistent,” he says. “I mean the water.”

Juhoon watches it, the way it folds and unfolds, never quite repeating but never really changing either.

“Everything else isn’t,” James continues. 

There’s something in that, simple, but not shallow.

James shifts slightly in his chair, stretching his legs out more fully. “I moved around a lot,” he adds, like it’s an afterthought. “Different cities, even different countries for a bit.”

Juhoon glances at him again. “Why?”

“My parents couldn’t stay in one place.” A small pause. “Or with each other.”

Juhoon nods once.

James continues, still looking at the water. “You learn to get used to things ending before they really start. Makes it easier.”

“Does it.”

“Sometimes, anyways, I moved here about a year ago, ‘think I’ll stay here for a while.”

Juhoon sinks a little deeper into the chair, the fabric bending under him. 

“You always this talkative?” he asks.

James huffs a quiet laugh. “No.”

“Then why now?”

A small shrug. “You asked.”

That’s fair.

Juhoon lets his eyes fall half-lidded, the sound of the water pulls longer, stretches between moments, threading them together until it’s harder to tell where one ends and the next begins.

His head tips slightly to the side, his body feels heavier now. The chair dips under him, the ground steady in a way that the rest of the day wasn’t.

The water keeps moving.

In, out. In, out.

Consistent.

He doesn’t notice when his eyes close fully or when his breathing evens out.

James does.

Juhoon’s head has tipped forward slightly, shoulders slack, the tension that usually holds him together loosened into something quieter.

James looks back at the water and doesn’t wake him, he sits there, the second chair no longer empty, the sound of the tide filling in everything else.

When Juhoon wakes, it isn’t gradual.

It hits him all at once.

He notices the cold first, it’s nothing too sharp, but it is everywhere, seeped into his clothes, settled into his joints, threaded through the spaces between his fingers. 

Then the light, too bright, pressing against his eyelids even before he opens them.

He does, anyway.

The sky is pale and washed out. Morning in its thinnest form, the horizon is clearer than he remembers it being, the line between water and air less forgiving.

For a second, he doesn’t move, then it lands.

The beach. The chair. Not his bed.

His stomach drops, not enough to show on the outside, but internally, something misfires. A quick, disorienting sweep of wrong, as though he’s skipped a step somewhere and everything after it has shifted half an inch out of place.

He sits up too fast.

The world tilts slightly, just enough to make the movement feel like a mistake. His body protests in quiet ways: stiffness in his neck, sand clinging where it shouldn’t, the imprint of the chair still pressed into him like evidence.

Juhoon exhales through his nose, trying to piece it all together without letting the panic fully form into something visible. 

Beside him, something shifts.

“Finally.”

The voice is familiar now, Juhoon turns his head and realizes James is still there.

He’s still sitting there, looking at the sea. The only difference is the light catches differently on him now, outlining instead of obscuring.

“You slept like you got knocked out,” James adds, glancing at him briefly.

Juhoon blinks, recalibrating. “What time is it?”

“Morning.”

“Could you be more specific?”

James hums. “Early enough that you’re not late for anything. Late enough that you probably shouldn’t still be here.”

Juhoon drags a hand down his face, rougher than necessary. “I didn’t mean to-”

“Yeah,” James cuts in lightly. “You don’t seem like the type to plan that.”

“You stayed,” Juhoon says.

James shrugs, small. “Didn’t feel like leaving.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I know.”

Then James pushes himself up from the chair, stretching slightly like the movement has been waiting.

“I’m getting breakfast,” he says. “There’s a place a few minutes from here.”

Juhoon looks at him, not fully processing the shift yet. “Now?”

James glances down at him. “You’re awake.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to be.”

“You’ll feel worse if you don’t eat.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Just an observation.”

Juhoon exhales quietly, looking back out at the water like it might offer a better alternative, but it doesn’t. He pushes himself up from the chair, more aware of his body as it settles back into movement. 

“…fine,” he says. “I’ll come.”

“Good.”

By the time they reach the road, the morning has settled into something more solid.

Shops are half-open, lights buzzing awake. The Rust sits where it always does, familiar in a way that feels almost intrusive, like it’s been waiting for him specifically.

Juhoon slows.

“…I have work,” he says, he’s only just remembered it.

James glances at the store, then back at him. “Now?”

“Yeah.”

Then, without fully deciding to, Juhoon says, “You can come in.” It lands somewhere between an offer and an afterthought.

James shrugs. “Okay.”

That’s that.

The bell above the door rings too brightly when they step inside.

Juhoon moves through it automatically, he grabs a cup of noodles without really looking at the brand, another item or two out of habit and sets them down at the counter. James lingers a step behind, eyes moving, taking things in at their own pace.

Juhoon prepares the noodles, internally cursing the machine for its familiar lag and stutter.

“You don’t have to-” James starts.

“It’s fine,” Juhoon cuts in, already scanning the items.

The transaction is quick and mechanical. He doesn’t think about the fact that he’s technically early, or that he hasn’t clocked in, or that bringing someone into the back is probably not allowed.

Instead of worrying about any of that, he picks up the bag and jerks his head slightly toward the side door.

“Come on.”

The back room is smaller than it should be.

Half storage, half break area, boxes are stacked without much order, a dented table is pushed against the wall, a couple of mismatched chairs.

Juhoon sets the bag down and pushes it toward James. “You can eat.”

James nods, already sitting, peeling the lid back with slow, careful movements. Steam curls up faintly, carrying that same artificial warmth as the rest of the store.

Juhoon doesn’t wait.

He pulls his shirt off and reaches for his uniform without looking.

There’s a moment, brief, where awareness could settle in. He’s half-naked with another person in the room, someone he barely knows.

Awareness lets it slide just this once.

James eats slowly and quietly, he isn’t staring, but not avoiding looking either. 

“You always bring strangers to your workplace?” he asks, tone even.

Juhoon pulls the uniform shirt over his head, fabric catching briefly before settling. “You’re not a stranger.”

“You could argue against that.”

“Still.”

James hums, like that logic is flawed but not worth challenging.

Juhoon turns slightly, reaching for his apron. “You could’ve said no.”

“You could’ve not asked.”

Juhoon ties the apron tighter than necessary. “You don’t seem like you mind.”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t seem like you do either,” James adds.

Instead of justifying that with a response, Juhoon adjusts the fabric at his waist, smooths something that doesn’t need smoothing, lets the moment pass without giving it anything to hold onto.

The door opens and Seonghyeon stops just inside.

He takes in the scene in one sweep: Juhoon, half-dressed, apron hanging loose; James at the table, eating like this is a completely normal place to be.

There’s a very specific kind of silence that follows.

“…right,” Seonghyeon says slowly.

Juhoon turns too quickly. “It’s not-”

He stops because he doesn’t actually know what he was going to say.

Seonghyeon raises an eyebrow, expression flat but eyes just a little too attentive. “Not what? Come on, tell me.”

Juhoon opens his mouth but nothing coherent comes out. James swallows and sets the cup down with a soft click against the table.

“He fell asleep on the beach,” he says, calm and unbothered. “I was there. He had work. I got invited. End of story.”

Seonghyeon looks at him, then back at Juhoon.

“…you fell asleep on the beach,” he repeats.

Juhoon exhales. “Yeah.”

“With him?”

“He was already there.”

Another pause, then Seonghyeon nods once, like the pieces have arranged themselves into something acceptable. “Whatever.”

The tension dissolves as quickly as it formed and Seonghyeon steps further into the room, dropping his bag onto one of the chairs, still eyeing James with quiet interest.

“You always pick up random people?” he asks Juhoon.

Juhoon doesn’t look at him. “You know I don’t.”

Seonghyeon glances at James again. “You seem normal enough.”

“Thank you,” James says.

“I didn’t say you were.”

James smiles faintly into his noodles.

Seonghyeon pulls out a chair and sits down beside him like this is now a shared situation he’s decided to participate in. “Seonghyeon.”

“James.”

Then, naturally, conversation fills in. Seonghyeon asks questions in that indirect way of his, never too pointed, but never meaningless either. Where James is from, how long he’s lived here, what he does with his time and so on.

James answers simply. 

Juhoon finishes dressing in the background of it, more aware of being witnessed now.

“You like it here?” Seonghyeon asks at some point.

James considers. “It’s fine.”

“Wow, you sound just like a local with how vague you’re being.”

“Thank you.”

Seonghyeon huffs softly. “You planning on staying here long or what?.”

James shrugs. “For a bit.”

Juhoon glances at him then, just for a second. Seonghyeon notices but doesn’t comment.

They drift between topics like that, nothing sticking too long. Work, vaguely and other small observations that don’t require commitment.

James finishes eating, there’s no urgency attached to anything he does. Eventually, he stands.

“I should go,” he says.

Juhoon nods, immediately, like he expected it. “Yeah.”

Seonghyeon leans back slightly in his chair. “Nice meeting you.”

“You too.”

James glances at Juhoon. “Thanks for the food.”

Juhoon shrugs. “It’s nothing.”

James turns, heading for the door without waiting to be walked out and it closes behind him with a soft click.

Seonghyeon looks at Juhoon, slowly, a smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. “You’re so weird.”

Juhoon doesn’t argue, instead he reaches for something to do with his hands, the familiar weight of the shift settling back over him like it never left.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

Martin is waiting outside The Rust again, he’s sitting where the afternoon light spills unevenly across the pavement, shoulders slightly hunched, hands loose between his knees like he forgot what they’re supposed to do when they’re not hurting something or holding something or interrupting something.

Juhoon notices him the moment he steps out.

The world narrows like that sometimes, filters down to a single point of familiarity that refuses to behave like background. Martin looks up before Juhoon even fully clears the door.

There’s a second where neither of them moves. Then Martin says, “I didn’t fight today.”

He says it like he rehearsed it on the walk here and still isn’t sure it survived the trip intact.

It should mean something, it sure sounds like it wants to.

Juhoon stops and looks at him properly. Everything in him is still half-inside the rhythm of work. 

“I see,” he says.

Martin blinks, it couldn’t be any more obvious that Martin wanted a different response. He glances away.

“I thought you’d say something,” he admits.

Juhoon adjusts the strap of his bag.

“What would I even say,” he asks.

Martin hesitates, there isn’t an answer that doesn’t feel wrong once he tries to hold it in his mouth.

So he shrugs instead, too lightly. “I don’t know. Something.”

Martin shifts where he sits, his knee bounces a few times, then stops. He looks down at his hands like they might explain him better than he can.

“I didn’t go,” he says again, quieter this time. “I didn’t even go there.”

The way Martin says it isn’t pride. 

Juhoon finally speaks. “That’s good.”

Two words, Martin’s head lifts slightly, he searches Juhoon’s face and exhales through his nose.

It comes out uneven.

“Yeah,” he says, but it doesn’t really sound like agreement. “Yeah, I guess.”

He stands up slowly, they start walking together without explicitly deciding to. Side by side, simple muscle memory.

Juhoon doesn’t like drugs.

Not in any moral way, not in a “this is bad for you” way that sounds like it belongs to someone else’s parents.

More in a humiliating shit keeps happening to me kind of way.

Like the park incident.

He still thinks about it sometimes, usually when he’s trying to fall asleep and his brain decides to offer him a highlight reel of his worst decisions. It had been cold, too dark and too early in the night to be making any kind of judgment. 

Someone had passed him a joint like it was a normal object, like it wouldn’t fundamentally rewire his relationship with his own bladder.

It had.

He remembers sitting on a bench, very convinced he was still functioning normally, very wrong about that, and then later, no longer on the bench, but on the ground near it, staring at a tree that felt important.

The rest is less memory and more evidence. Wet grass, confusion and the slow, dawning realization that his body had made a decision without him.

He had gone home after that in complete silence.

There was also the time with Martin, though that one is harder to categorize.

They had started with intention, or at least the illusion of it. Something about curiosity, about “seeing what happens,” about shared experimentation that sounded almost scientific if you ignored the fact that neither of them knew anything about science.

It had escalated, slowly, then all at once, like most things do with Martin.

They had invented a new language that night. It consisted mostly of half-finished sentences, elongated vowels and the confident belief that everything they were saying made perfect sense if you tilted your head slightly.

At some point, because of course they did, they had ended up kissing.

Justified as a continuation of the same idea that had already stopped making sense hours ago.

Sticky, slow, uncoordinated in a way that felt less like romance and more like evidence of shared malfunction. Martin had laughed into his mouth at one point, which should have ended it, but didn’t. Juhoon had been too calm about it, he thinks in hindsight. He had been slightly detached from it all, like he was observing a phenomenon rather than participating in it.

Scientific purposes, he had thought, distantly.

Whatever that meant.

The next morning, they had both acted like nothing had happened, which was, in retrospect, probably the most alarming part.

So no.

Juhoon doesn’t like drugs, and he especially doesn’t like what it does to his social or bodily awareness.

There are rare exceptions, though. Carefully contained ones.

Moments where the world is quiet enough, and his body is tired enough, and the person beside him feels familiar in the correct way.

Usually Martin. Always Martin, if he’s being honest.

The soft ritual of passing a joint between them, paper, flame, inhale, exhale.

Juhoon doesn’t reach for those moments often, but when he does, it isn’t escape, it’s closer to surrender.

Martin’s room feels softer when they’re high. The edges of it blur in a way that makes the mess feel less accusatory. Clothes on the chair become just fabric. The floor becomes just surface. 

Juhoon’s sitting on the bed with his back against the wall, knees loosely drawn up. Martin is in front of him, cross-legged.

There’s a joint between them. Martin takes a drag, leans back slightly, then tilts his head up toward Juhoon without looking at him properly.

“Come here,” he says.

Juhoon doesn’t ask why, he leans down a little.

Martin sticks it between his lips again and takes a deep, long drag, pulling Juhoon closer by the side of his neck, and then,

he exhales into his mouth.

It’s warm immediately. A transfer more than an act, breath being returned to its source in a slightly altered form. Juhoon inhales automatically, eyes half-lowering without permission, the world shifting just a fraction further out of alignment.

When he finally pulls back, Martin watches him like he’s waiting for something specific.

“Looks like you’re overthinking again,” Martin says.

“I am not thinking at all, actually,” Juhoon replies slowly.

“That’s worse.”

Juhoon leans back against the wall again, the ceiling feels further away than it should.

“It’s not worse,” he says. “It’s so much better.”

Martin hums like he disagrees but can’t be bothered to argue properly.

“You missed the thing with the arm,” Martin says.

“I didn’t miss it,” Juhoon says. “You told me already.”

“Yeah but telling isn’t the same, you should’ve heard the sound of it cracking, makes me nauseous just thinking about it.”

Juhoon watches him. “What’s it like?”

Martin blinks. “What’s what like?”

“The fights.”

That makes Martin pause before he exhales, smoke curling out in a loose ribbon between them. 

“Loud,” he says. “Everything’s too close, even when it isn’t.”

Juhoon nods once. “Pain?”

“Duh doy,” Martin says. Then, after a beat, “But that’s not the part that stays.”

“What stays?”

Martin shrugs. “The moment right before you get hit and you know it’s going to hurt. That part’s… clear.”

Juhoon considers that. His eyes drift again without focus, catching on nothing in particular. 

“That doesn’t sound good,” he says.

“It’s not,” Martin agrees immediately. 

Martin leans forward again, tapping the joint against Juhoon’s hand lightly. “Your turn.”

Juhoon takes it, the inhale is slower this time. He holds it, trying to understand what changes if he doesn’t rush it.

The smoke sits heavy in his chest for a second longer than comfort allows, then releases. He exhales through his nose, eyes narrowing slightly.

Martin watches him carefully.

Juhoon shifts slightly on the bed, sinking deeper into it without meaning to. 

“It’s not… bad,” he says after a moment.

Martin tilts his head. “What?”

“This.” Juhoon gestures vaguely between them, the room, the air. “It’s not bad.”

Martin studies him like he’s checking whether that was meant to mean something more complicated. “Yeah,” he says. “No. It’s not.”

They lapse into silence again, but it doesn’t feel empty. It fills with many small things instead: the sound of Martin shifting his weight, the faint buzz of the street outside, the slow, delayed rhythm of Juhoon’s thoughts catching up to themselves.

At some point, Martin takes another hit and leans back again.

“Do you ever think about leaving?” he asks suddenly.

“Leaving where,” Juhoon darts out his tongue to wet his lips.

“This.” Martin gestures around the room, then outward. “Everything.”

Juhoon stares at the ceiling. “I don’t know what ‘leaving’ would change,” he says.

“That’s no answer.”

“It is,” Juhoon replies. “Just not a satisfying one.”

Martin laughs quietly. “Fair.”

Juhoon turns his head slightly. “Do you?”

“Yeah,” Martin says immediately.

“Where?”

Martin shrugs. “Somewhere that doesn’t feel like this.” Then, like that’s too vague even for him, he adds, “Somewhere I’m not… already known.”

Juhoon nods slowly. “You think that would help?”

“I think I want it to.”

Juhoon shifts again, sliding down the bed until he’s lying more fully on his back. The ceiling is closer now, or feels closer, or maybe he’s just noticing it more.

Martin notices him changing position and mirrors it without thinking, lying back beside him but angled slightly so they’re still facing each other.

For a while, they don’t speak.

The joint gets passed again, less about effect and more about rhythm, a shared object moving between them like punctuation.

Juhoon’s thoughts stop insisting on being linear, they loosen and spread out.

Martin’s voice comes in and out of focus when he speaks, like it’s not fully tied to his mouth anymore.

“Do you remember,” Martin starts, then pauses, laughing lightly to himself, “when we tried to make that language?”

Juhoon’s eyes flick toward him. “We didn’t ‘try’, we made it.”

“We did not make it,” Martin corrects. “We made noises, that’s for sure.”

“There was structure to it.”

“If that’s what you wanna call it, it was just chaos to me.”

“Consistent chaos counts as structure.”

Martin turns his head slightly to look at him. “You were more into it than I was.”

“That’s not true.”

“You kept correcting me.”

“You kept getting it wrong, dude, how hard is it to remember a word you just came up with?”

“I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Juhoon exhales, something almost like a laugh slipping out before he can stop it.

At some point, Martin shifts closer, their shoulders almost touch.

Then do.

Neither of them acknowledges it, Martin takes the last drag and stubs the joint out somewhere off to the side without looking.

Juhoon’s eyes are half-lidded now, he isn’t asleep but he’s not awake in any useful sense either. 

Martin turns his head slightly. “Hey,” he says.

Juhoon hums in response.

There’s a pause before Martin reaches up.

His hand comes to Juhoon’s face like it already knew where it was going, clammy palm against his cheek, fingers resting along the edge of his jaw, steadying him in a way that feels oddly precise.

Juhoon doesn’t move, doesn’t resist, but doesn’t lean in either.

Martin looks at him for a moment like he’s checking something invisible.

Then he leans forward.

The kiss lands on Juhoon’s forehead, soft and warm.

It’s too careful for the rest of him, when Martin pulls back slightly, his hand stays.

“No one gets us,” he says.

Juhoon looks at him for a long moment.

“That’s not true,” he says.

Martin huffs a faint breath. “You’re almost as dense as a flat-earther.”

Eventually, Martin lets go.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

Juhoon doesn’t leave his bed.

It isn’t a decision so much as a soft surrender of momentum.

Light leaks through the curtains in thin, uncertain bands. The air is still, but not peaceful. 

His phone has been trying.

It keeps arriving in small bursts of insistence, vibrating against the mattress like it is learning a language he refuses to translate.

Martin.

Always Martin.

Juhoon doesn’t check because he already knows the shape of it. If he opens his phone, he’ll find concern disguised as noise. Noise disguised as care. 

Juhoon turns his face slightly into the pillow, there is a kind of professionalism to this.

He has done this before, he can feel the steps of it beneath him like a familiar staircase in a dark house.

1. stop responding to anything that expects a response.
2. reduce the world to essentials: breathing, water, the occasional need to exist in a body that still insists on hunger.
3. allow time to become vague, uncountable, forgiving in its negligence.
4. wait for something external to interrupt the pattern, some responsibility that refuses to be ignored even in collapse.

He is, by now, experienced.

Juhoon stares at the ceiling until it stops being a surface and starts being something else.

Not a ceiling, a sky that forgot how to move. And then, without warning, his thoughts slip.

Not down but up.

The transition is so smooth it almost feels like nothing happened at all.

Mount Olympus arrives the way dreams always do when they are trying not to be noticed, piece by piece, pretending it was always there.

Stone first, then height, then a sky so bright it feels almost incorrect, light that hasn’t been calibrated for human use.

The ground is not ground so much as suggestion. Steps are carved into something older than intention, leading upward without the courtesy of ending.

He walks them, though he does not remember deciding to, or perhaps he does not walk at all, perhaps he is simply repositioned.

Around him, there are figures that refuse to become fully visible. Presences without edges. 

He understands none of it, which does not feel unusual. If anything, it feels consistent.

There is a place above him where something important is supposed to be happening and Juhoon is seated somewhere he did not apply for.

Somewhere far away, far enough that it might belong to another world entirely, his phone vibrates again.

The sound does not belong here, but it still reaches him, a small insistence from below. 

Juhoon does not move, Mount Olympus remains intact around him, shimmering slightly at the edges as a thought that is aware it is temporary.

He wonders, distantly, if gods feel like this often, waiting for something to justify returning to earth.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

The party announces itself before they even fully arrive, spilling outward in uneven layers of sound that don’t resolve into anything coherent, bass bleeding through the walls in a low, persistent pulse, laughter breaking and reforming somewhere deeper inside the house, glass and movement and voices overlapping.

From the outside, it still looks almost ordinary. In the yard, a half-hearted barbecue smokes gently into the night, the fire pit is too small to justify the attention it receives, its glow gets swallowed and redistributed by the crowd around it. Most of the real density of the party has already migrated inside, where the light flickers warmer and the music feels closer to skin than sound.

Juhoon stands just behind Martin without consciously deciding to. The air here is humid with bodies and smoke and something faintly sweet that clings to the back of the throat, he already dislikes it.

Martin, however, looks like he belongs in it with an ease that makes Juhoon feel slightly misaligned with his own presence.

They take a few steps forward before someone interrupts them.

The man appears too naturally at the edge of their path, as if he has been part of this environment long enough to no longer register as out of place. Middle-aged, relaxed in a way that feels practiced rather than effortless, his presence cutting through the younger noise of the party with a quiet kind of authority that does not need to be announced.

He looks at Martin first, and his expression shifts immediately into recognition.

“Well well well,” he says, smiling like this is a continuation of something already in progress, “didn’t expect to see you here.”

Martin pauses in a way that is hard to miss, then lets the pause dissolve into a grin.

“Hey,” he says.

The man’s attention lingers on him with easy familiarity. “You’ve been quiet.”

“Busy,” Martin replies.

“With what?”

“Stuff,” Martin says, and the word lands lightly enough to be accepted, though Juhoon registers the fraction of hesitation beneath it.

The man laughs as if that is an answer worth accepting. His gaze flicks briefly to Juhoon, then returns to Martin as though Juhoon is not something that requires acknowledgment beyond peripheral awareness.

“You coming in?” he asks, already assuming movement will follow.

Martin starts to respond but the man cuts in again. “Got anything on you tonight?”

The shift is subtle, but it is immediate, something beneath the ease morphs into something more transactional.

Juhoon feels it before he understands it. Martin glances at him once, quick and unreadable, then back at the man.

“Not here,” he says.

The man nods as if that settles everything. “Good. Inside’s messy anyway.”

Martin gives a small exhale that might be a laugh. “Always is.”

From there, the conversation stops behaving like conversation in any ordinary sense and begins to resemble exchange, references passing between them that Juhoon does not fully possess the language for, names without introduction, implied histories moving just beneath the surface of what is actually being said. 

The man mentions something about “new stock” as casually as someone might mention weather, and Martin responds in kind.

Juhoon watches Martin’s face shift with each sentence.

At one point, the man laughs and says, “You still running around the club like that?”

“Sometimes.”

“Still hitting?”

“Depends.”

The man claps Martin’s shoulder. “You’ve got potential.”

Martin huffs a faint laugh. “Yeah?”

“Don’t waste it,” the man says.

Before Juhoon can fully process the shape of what he is watching, music spills outward into the yard as someone inside or near the speakers shifts the sound.

The man turns toward it with visible approval.

“Oh,” he says. “Better.”

Then, as if this is simply another extension of the same environment, he reaches for Martin and Martin allows it without hesitation.

And then, without any transition that Juhoon can follow, the man is pulling Martin into movement.

Juhoon is still standing slightly apart from it when Martin turns back, grinning, and grabs him by the wrist.

“Dance,” he says.

“I don’t want to,” Juhoon replies, but it arrives too late to interrupt anything already in motion.

Martin pulls him in and Juhoon’s body is placed into movement without being consulted, rotated gently through space. Martin’s hand settles at his waist, steadying him through turns that arrive before he is ready for them, correcting imbalance.

The sensation is strangely neutral at first, the awareness of being moved rather than moving.

But it accumulates.

The hand at his waist.

The closeness of Martin’s presence in a space that is usually defined by absence or distance.

“Stop,” Juhoon says, but the word dissolves into music before it becomes effective.

“You’re fine,” Martin says, still smiling.

“I am not-”

He breaks away before the sentence completes itself with enough finality to disrupt the rhythm they had been forming. His feet find distance again, Martin pauses, still half-moving with the music.

Juhoon does not wait for resolution, he steps out of the circle of movement and stops.

When he looks back, Martin is still there.

The yard continues without him, and so does the music. 

Inside the house, everything becomes too much very quickly.

Juhoon loses Martin almost immediately. One second he is there, the next he is not, swallowed by motion and people and shifting light that refuses to keep anything in focus for long.

Juhoon stands still for a moment longer than he should before he starts looking.

It doesn’t feel like searching in the usual sense. It feels like an instinct that has no respect for his comfort. His eyes keep catching fragments: Martin’s shoulder, Martin’s hair, the familiar shape of him, but every time he thinks he has found him, the body turns into someone else, or disappears behind someone, or simply stops being visible at all.

And then he sees him.

Martin is laughing, head tilted slightly back like the sound is pulling him upward. A girl is close to him, too close in a way that is instantly legible even before anything explicit happens. The kind of closeness that doesn’t need permission because it has already been granted elsewhere, earlier, in a moment Juhoon was not present for.

Martin leans in and kisses her.

Juhoon’s body reacts before his mind does, a cold drop in his stomach that spreads too quickly. His mouth goes slightly dry. The room feels suddenly too small for how many people are in it, too loud for how little of it he can control.

He should look away, but he does not.

Martin’s hand is at her waist now. Familiar in a way that makes Juhoon’s chest constrict with something sharp and humiliatingly uncontained. The girl laughs into the kiss, and Martin pulls her closer like it is the most natural thing in the world to do.

Juhoon feels, with a clarity that is almost cruel, that he has no place in the frame of this moment at all.

And still he watches, because he cannot stop.

Martin’s hand moves down casually as if there is nothing significant about it and the girl leans into it without hesitation.

Juhoon’s vision narrows.

He thinks, absurdly, that if Martin looked up right now, he would see him. That something in Martin would recognize the fact of his presence and stop this, or at least fracture it into something less complete.

Martin does not look up, of course he doesn’t.

if I was a girl, would this be easier for him?

He hates himself for thinking it even as it forms. The room tilts again, slightly. He can feel something rising in his throat: panic, nausea, something indistinguishable from both.

Martin laughs again, it sounds too close.

Juhoon takes a step back.

Then another.

No one notices, no one is looking at him the way he feels like he is looking at everything else. Something inside Juhoon folds sharply.

He turns and leaves. The hallway is worse but he pushes through it, barely aware of shoulders brushing him, of the world continuing to behave as if nothing has changed.

Outside hits him like absence.

Cold air. Space. The garden again, messy, the barbecue still smoking weakly. He stops for half a second, breathing too fast, his body is trying to reset itself and failing.

Then he hears a voice.

“Wow.”

Juhoon turns.

Keonho is standing near the edge of the yard, half-lit by the spill of indoor light. His expression shifts when he sees Juhoon properly.

“…you look like shit,” Keonho adds.

Juhoon swallows and forgets to respond, because behind his ribs, something is still shaking and not fully out of him yet.

Keonho looks at him like he’s trying to decide whether Juhoon is real or just another symptom of the night.

“You look like shit,” he repeats, slower this time, as if the second time might change something.

Juhoon exhales through his nose. “I’ve been told.”

Keonho shifts his weight, hands tucked into his hoodie pocket, eyes flicking briefly toward the house behind them.

“You always leave parties like this?” he asks.

Juhoon glances back once, too briefly to make anything of it. “Yes.”

“That was fast.”

“I had nothing to stay for.”

Keonho huffs a quiet laugh at that, but it doesn’t fully land as amusement. Juhoon looks at him properly now.

There’s something about Keonho that feels familiar in a way he can’t immediately place. It sits in the edges of him, slightly too reactive, slightly too aware of how he’s being perceived even when he’s pretending not to care. 

It reminds him of Martin in a way that sits wrong in his chest. He doesn’t say that.

Instead, because his mouth is apparently not done making decisions without him tonight, he asks, “Why are you here?”

Keonho blinks. “At the party?”

“Yeah.”

Keonho looks away first. “Waiting for someone.”

Juhoon nods once. “Who?”

“Seonghyeon.”

Juhoon tilts his head slightly. “He’s not here.”

“I know,” Keonho says, too quickly. “He said he might come,” he adds.

Juhoon studies him for a moment. “You don't sound too sure,” he says.

Keonho shrugs, but it’s clearly not casual. “He’s been weird lately.”

Juhoon files that away without comment.

Then Keonho glances at him. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t,” Juhoon says immediately.

Keonho raises an eyebrow.

Juhoon corrects himself, slower. “I’m just asking, don’t get all defensive.”

That seems to satisfy Keonho enough, they drift again into silence.

Juhoon notices Keonho watching him out of the corner of his eye.

“What,” Juhoon asks.

“Nothing,” Keonho says too fast.

Juhoon doesn’t let it go. “You’re looking at me like I’m doing something wrong, want me to leave?”

Keonho snorts. “You kind of look like you’re dying, ‘m just worried.”

“I’m not dying.”

“That’s what people usually say right before they pass out.”

“I’m not gonna pass out.”

Keonho shrugs. “Sure.”

Then, almost reluctantly, Keonho adds, “You’re just always intense. Like that.”

Juhoon processes that but doesn’t respond to it directly.

Instead, he asks, “What did you do?”

Keonho stiffens slightly. “What?”

“With Seonghyeon… or to Seonghyeon?”

Keonho looks at him for a second too long, like he’s deciding whether this is safe territory or not, then he exhales.

“…I messed up,” he says.

Keonho shifts his foot against the grass. “It’s not like… a huge thing.”

“Seonghyeon often talks about how vague people are in this town, you’re really living up to it right now.”

“I know.”

Keonho scratches the back of his neck, gaze fixed somewhere that isn’t Juhoon. “I did something stupid,” he admits. “And he’s been avoiding me. Or busy. Or whatever.”

Juhoon nods slowly. 

Keonho glances at him again, wary. “You’re not going to ask what I did?”

“No.”

That seems to confuse him more than anything. “…why not?”

Juhoon considers that, the answer arrives without much ceremony.

“Because you already know you messed up,” he says. “No need for me to butt in.”

Keonho goes quiet, for the first time, he looks less defensive and more uncertain.

Then Juhoon says, “Come with me.”

Keonho blinks. “What.”

Juhoon is already moving before he fully finishes deciding to. He steps closer and, without overthinking it enough to stop himself, takes Keonho’s wrist.

Keonho stiffens immediately. “Uh- what are you doing?”

“Leaving,” Juhoon says.

“I can’t just-”

"Yes, you can. We both know Seonghyeon is too petty to show up”

Keonho hesitates, Juhoon doesn’t.

The pull is gentle but persistent and Keonho stumbles slightly into motion. “Where are we going?”

Juhoon glances back toward the house once, just once. 

“Somewhere quieter,” he says.

Keonho laughs under his breath, disbelieving. “That’s not a place, dude.”

“Shut up.”

That earns him a look, but Keonho follows anyway.

The field feels different at night, the grass is darker. The train tracks cut through it, steel laid over earth.

Juhoon feels, distantly, satisfied.

Because Seonghyeon had once told him Keonho didn’t like this place, that he thought it was creepy.

Keonho, however, stops walking the moment the field opens up properly in front of them. A hesitation in the body that he tries to cover immediately by continuing forward as if nothing happened.

But Juhoon sees it, everyone always thinks they’re better at hiding discomfort than they actually are.

Keonho scans the space once, jaw tightening slightly as if the openness itself is something he has to negotiate with.

“Why here,” he says, but it comes out flat.

Juhoon doesn’t answer before he sits down, the grass presses into fabric, damp and real in a way the party never was. The tracks sit a short distance away, quiet for now.

Keonho stays standing for a second longer before, slowly, he sits too. Not fully at ease, his posture stays upright in a way that looks practiced.

Juhoon watches him for a moment, there’s something so interesting in it.

Performance.

Masculinity, Juhoon thinks, is often just endurance pretending to be natural.

Keonho is doing it now, sitting in a field he clearly doesn’t like, shoulders squared like he’s refusing to acknowledge that his body has already decided otherwise. 

The discomfort leaks through anyway, in small ways: the tension in his hands, the way his gaze keeps moving instead of settling, the slight overcorrection in how still he tries to be.

It reminds Juhoon of Martin, not the loud parts but the effort underneath them.

“You’re staring,” Keonho says eventually.

“I know,” Juhoon replies.

A pause settles between them, stretched thin by the sound of distant wind moving through grass.

Then Juhoon says, “What happened?”

“Thought you didn’t want to know.”

“Well, it’s clearly still bothering you, so you might as well talk about it.”

Keonho exhales through his nose. 

“I fought,” he says.

Juhoon tilts his head slightly. “At the… club?”

“Not there,” Keonho corrects. “Outside it.”

Juhoon waits.

Keonho picks at a blade of grass without looking at it. “I told Seonghyeon I wouldn’t. Like, properly promised him. I said I was done with that stuff.”

His mouth twists slightly, like the memory itself tastes bad.

“And then I wasn’t,” he adds.

“Why did you do it?”

Keonho lets out a short laugh that has no humor in it. “Because I’m an idiot.”

“That’s not really an answer.”

“It is the answer,” Keonho says, sharper now, then immediately softens again like he regrets the edge. “It just doesn’t excuse or explain it.”

Keonho looks out toward the tracks. “Someone said something. I don’t even remember what it was exactly.”

“I hit him,” he clarifies.

Silence follows, heavier than before.

“And Seonghyeon saw,” Keonho adds quietly.

Juhoon nods slowly. “So he is ignoring you.”

“It’s not even official, maybe he’s just busy,” Keonho says quickly. Then stops himself. “I mean… it feels like it, can’t blame him.”

His shoulders shift, uncomfortable in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.

“I keep trying to fix it,” he continues. “But every time I say something it only gets worse.”

Juhoon listens, the field remains still around them, as if it has decided this conversation is worth holding.

Keonho glances at him sideways. “You ever do that?”

“Do what?”

“Say something and immediately know you ruined it.”

Juhoon considers lying before he realizes there is no point. “Yes,” he says.

Keonho huffs a small breath of relief at that, like he needed confirmation that consequences are not uniquely his.

Juhoon shifts slightly, pulling his knees closer.

“I was going to say something earlier,” he says.

Keonho looks at him and Juhoon hesitates.

The thought is there: Martin, the party, the shape of it all still lodged somewhere under his ribs. 

“I think—”

A train arrives before he can finish.

It announces itself through vibration first, then sound, then overwhelming presence as steel and speed cut through the field with brutal certainty. The world is suddenly nothing but motion and noise, the tracks no longer abstract but violently real, shaking the ground as if the earth itself is briefly unsettled.

Juhoon stops speaking because there is no point, everything is swallowed.

Keonho’s silhouette shifts slightly in the wind of it, hair lifting, posture breaking just a fraction as he instinctively braces against the passing force.

Juhoon watches the train pass instead of continuing the thought.

For a few seconds, there is nothing except it.

Then it is gone.

The field returns slowly, and Juhoon turns back to finish the sentence.

But Keonho is not looking at him anymore, his eyes are wet.

Juhoon watches the way Keonho holds himself after the train passes, it isn’t crying, not yet at least. It’s the moment before collapse, where everything is still technically contained but no longer under control. 

Juhoon speaks first because the silence is starting to feel like pressure.

“What’s wrong,” he says, not as a demand but not quite as concern either. 

Keonho blinks slowly, for a second it looks like he might refuse the question entirely.

Then his shoulders drop, just slightly, as if whatever was holding them up has decided it’s tired.

“…nothing,” he says automatically.

Juhoon waits in a way that makes it clear he will not leave first and that seems to be what breaks it.

Keonho lets out a deep, shaky breath. “I used to come here,” he says.

Juhoon tilts his head slightly. Keonho’s gaze stays fixed somewhere beyond the tracks.

“When I was a kid,” he continues, slower now, the words are heavier than he expected them to be, “with some friends from school. We used to mess around in the fields, like idiots. Pretend it was ours, I guess.”

A faint, almost embarrassed exhale slips out of him. “There was this one day,” he says, “we found a dead cat.”

Keonho swallows.

“It was just there. Near the edge of the grass.” His voice tightens slightly, then steadies again as he forces it forward. “Everyone else kind of laughed at first. Or acted like it was gross.”

A pause, Keonho’s fingers curl slightly into the grass beside him.

“I cried,” he says.

The admission comes out flat, but it lands with weight anyway.

“I don’t even know why. I couldn’t stop crying.” A small, humorless breath. “And they all made fun of me for it after. For a long time, actually. My dad heard about it and-.”

He finally looks down at his hands, and finds them trembling.

“That was the last time I-” He stops and shakes his head slightly. “Anyway.”

Silence spreads again, Juhoon shifts slightly, eyes still on Keonho.

There’s a long moment where he seems to consider saying nothing at all. 

“Crying isn’t bad,” he finally manages.

Keonho lets out a faint, disbelieving laugh. “It kind of is.”

“It’s not,” Juhoon repeats, a little firmer this time, correcting something that has been incorrectly stored for too long. “It just makes other people uncomfortable.”

Keonho glances at him. 

Juhoon continues, voice still even, still oddly certain in its flatness. “I cry all the time.”

That makes Keonho pause properly. “…you do?”

“Yeah.”

Keonho looks like he doesn’t know what to do with that information.

Juhoon shrugs slightly. “It doesn’t mean anything bad.”

A faint wind moves through the field again, the world returned to something less violent.

Keonho exhales and it sounds looser than before.

“…okay,” he says.

Then, after a second, quieter:

“Thanks.”

Juhoon nods once, neither of them moves to stand yet.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

The car smells like something that’s been sealed too long, cigarettes layered over older cigarettes, the fabric of the seats hold onto it like memory. The air is thick in a way that doesn’t move unless they make it, smoke hanging low and slow, refusing to rise properly.

They’re in the backseat because of course they are, the front feels too official. The back is easier. 

Juhoon has his back pressed against the door, one shoulder slightly angled where the handle digs into him if he shifts wrong. His legs are folded up on the seat, knees loose, the position halfway between comfortable and careless.

Martin is between them.

Not facing him directly, but not not facing him either. Juhoon is eating something he absolutely should not be eating.

It’s from the gas station, cheap and over-processed. Some kind of packaged meat situation that leaves a film on his tongue immediately, salt and artificial smoke clinging to the inside of his mouth.

He takes another bite anyway, regrets it instantly. His face cringes, a small, involuntary grimace pulling through before he can stop it.

Martin notices.

“What is that,” he asks, already leaning closer, cigarette hanging loosely between his fingers.

“Food,” Juhoon says flatly.

“It doesn’t look like food.”

“It is technically food.”

Martin squints at it like he’s trying to identify the species. “It looks like it’s been through something.”

“It has,” Juhoon says. “Endless factory processing.”

Juhoon takes another bite out of spite and his face betrays him immediately.

Martin laughs under his breath, low and easy, and leans forward to get a better look.

Juhoon doesn’t think about it when his legs shift, it’s instinctive.

They lift slightly, adjusting to the movement, and before he can register the shape of it, they’ve settled loosely around Martin’s middle, hooked without intention.

Martin doesn’t react, not to that, he only leans closer, eyes on the food, curiosity overriding everything else.

“Let me try it,” he says.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No,” Juhoon repeats, tightening his grip on the product.

Martin exhales a stream of smoke directly into his face.

Juhoon flinches, eyes narrowing. “That’s disgusting.”

“You started it,” Martin says easily.

Before Juhoon can respond, Martin leans in further and takes a bite.

His teeth catch the edge of it, close enough that Juhoon feels the movement more than sees it, the proximity is sudden and too present.

Juhoon pulls the food back immediately. “Hey.”

Martin chews slowly, evaluating, his face goes still for a second, then shifts.

“…oh,” he says.

Juhoon stares at him. “Yeah.”

“That’s bad.”

“I know.”

Martin swallows, grimacing slightly now. “Why are you eating that?”

“Because I paid for it.”

Martin huffs a laugh, shaking his head, and reaches up to brush ash out the cracked window before flicking the cigarette out entirely.

The window stays open just long enough to let in a slice of colder air before it’s shut again.

The smell doesn’t leave.

Martin leans back, but instead of creating space, he collapses forward, onto Juhoon.

Juhoon catches him, Martin settles between his legs like that’s where he was always meant to be, his weight pressing down, arms wrapping loosely around Juhoon’s sides, then tightening slightly like he’s anchoring himself there.

Juhoon’s back hits the door harder than before.

He feels it.

Also feels,

everything else.

The contact is too much and not enough at the same time. Their bodies fit together in a way that has always existed, something practiced and unconscious.

But Juhoon is aware of it now, painfully so. The press of Martin’s weight. The heat of him through layers that don’t feel thick enough. The way his arms circle him.

Juhoon’s hands hover for a second before they settle awkwardly at Martin’s shoulders.

“You’re going to stink up this whole car,” Juhoon says, voice slightly off, it has to pass through something before it reaches the surface.

Martin doesn’t move. “Mhm,” he says into the fabric of Juhoon’s shirt.

“Your friend is going to notice.”

“He likes it.”

Juhoon frowns slightly. “Likes what?”

“The smell,” Martin says. “He says it makes the car feel used.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Yeah.”

Juhoon becomes hyper-aware of everything in the pause that follows. This used to be nothing.

Juhoon stares at the ceiling of the car, at the fabric worn thin in places, at nothing, and tries to breathe normally.

He tries not to think about where their bodies meet. About how easy it would be to shift. About how little distance there actually is between them.

Martin adjusts slightly, settling more comfortably. Juhoon swallows and his hands tighten, just slightly, before he forces them to relax again.

He stays there, pinned between the door and Martin and his own inability to make this mean less than it does now.

He is so, so fucked.

They go to the train tracks after that, mainly because Juhoon mentioned going there with Keonho, and Martin wanted to see it for himself.

The gravel shifts under their shoes with a dry, brittle crunch, too loud in the quiet.

Martin doesn’t walk straight, he drifts, half a step ahead, then back again, circling Juhoon’s pace without committing to it, seeing what sticks today.

“The sound’s weird here,” he says.

Juhoon glances at him. “What do you mean?”

“The sound.” Martin gestures vaguely at nothing. “It doesn’t… stay put. Dunno, it just moves weird.”

Wind moves through the weeds tangled between the sleepers, dry stalks whispering against each other. The rails still hold heat from earlier, faint warmth rising off them.

Martin slows near the edge and Juhoon steps in before he really decides to, fingers catching lightly on Martin’s sleeve. 

“Don’t stand like that,” he says.

It comes out quieter than he means it to.

Martin looks down at his hand. Then, without breaking eye contact, shifts half an inch closer to the drop, purely petty.

Juhoon’s grip tightens before he can stop it and Martin smiles.

It’s small and sharp at the edges. “There,” he says. “You do care.”

Juhoon lets go, slow. “Of course I do.” It sounds thin even to him.

Martin doesn’t call it out, he turns, and starts walking again like nothing happened.

Martin kicks a stone off the track. It skips once and disappears into the weeds.

Then he suddenly turns and claps Juhoon on the shoulder. “Tag.”

Juhoon frowns. “What.”

“You’re it,” Martin says, already backing up.

“Martin-”

He’s gone, fast like he doesn’t care if he trips. He laughs as he goes, not looking back, sure Juhoon will follow.

Juhoon stands there for half a second.

Then he runs.

It’s uneven at first because the ground doesn’t cooperate, the air is sharper than it should be in his lungs. Martin isn’t trying to win, he keeps glancing back, misstepping on purpose, letting himself be predictable in a way that feels like bait.

Juhoon catches up quicker than he expects. That annoys him, or maybe it doesn’t.

Martin veers off into the grass without warning. Juhoon follows, shoes sinking slightly, the ground is softer here, less stable. The world narrows, breath, distance, the stupid urgency of it.

Martin stumbles, not entirely fake.

Juhoon reaches—

—and they go down.

Martin twists just enough so Juhoon lands on him instead of the ground. Grass folds under them, dry and damp all at once, sky tilting hard before settling back into place.

For a second, neither of them moves.

Then Martin starts laughing, it breaks out of him in bursts, uneven, Juhoon laughs too.

It surprises him, the sound of it, how easy it comes, how wrong it feels in his mouth and right at the same time. It sounds younger than he is, something he forgot he still had access to.

The grass smells green and sour and warm where the sun hit it earlier. Juhoon’s face shifts before he understands why.

A tear slips out.

It’s warm and quick and he doesn’t wipe it away, doesn’t even fully register it as sadness.

Because it isn’t.

Martin sees it immediately, his laughter softens, breaks apart into something quieter. He studies Juhoon’s face, like he’s trying to figure out if this is part of the moment or something that needs a different response.

Juhoon doesn’t explain because there’s nothing to explain.

Martin reaches over instead of doing something normal and plucks a leaf from the grass beside them, presses it gently to Juhoon’s cheek where the tear was.

It’s absurd and weirdly soft.

“It’s fine,” Martin says, suddenly serious. “This is an ancient method.”

Juhoon blinks at him. “Huh?”

“Before tissues,” Martin says, nodding. “This is what they used.”

“A leaf.”

“I picked a high-quality one,” Martin corrects, picking another with exaggerated focus. “Top tier, these are very rare, Juhoon-nim. They’ll be worth more than gold when robots take over in a few.”

He leans back a little, then drops his voice into something caveman-adjacent, low and ridiculous.

“GRRK,” he announces, holding the leaf up like evidence. “I SAD. I CRY. I WIPE WITH LEAF.”

Juhoon stares at him before he laughs again, the kind of laughter that edges into something else without fully becoming it. Martin grins, satisfied, like he’s accomplished something small and specific.

They stay there, half in the grass, half in each other’s space, not moving to get up yet.

Somewhere far off, a train passes again, low and distant, uninterested in them.

For a moment, they aren’t interested in anything else either.

ــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

Juhoon’s room is dim in the way that feels intentional, even when it isn’t.

The curtains are half-closed, not fully committed to shutting the world out. A strip of late afternoon light still sits on the floor like it forgot to leave. 

They lie on Juhoon’s bed fully clothed, down to the shoes. Martin is on his back, one arm tucked behind his head, the other resting somewhere at his side. Juhoon is beside him, slightly turned, the distance between them is small enough that it doesn’t even count.

If either of them shifted too much, they would collide.

For a long time, nothing is said in a way that feels complete.

Martin breaks it first, as usual, but softer than usual.

“I think I only understand things after they’re already over,” he says.

Juhoon stares at the ceiling for a moment. “That’s normal,” he says.

Martin turns his head slightly toward him. “I don’t think it is,” he replies.

Silence settles again, Juhoon shifts his hand slowly between them.

There’s a pause, so small it almost doesn’t exist, before his fingers reach Martin’s face. He brushes Martin’s hair off his forehead.

It’s an absent kind of movement at first, his thumb traces lightly along Martin’s eyebrow, as if mapping something familiar that has changed without permission.

Martin goes still, Juhoon tilts his head slightly, studying him at close range now.

“What happened to your eyebrow piercing?” he asks.

It’s said like he’s noticing a missing object in a room that should still contain it.

Martin blinks once before he lets out a small, slightly confused laugh. He lifts a hand to his face automatically, touching the spot as if expecting memory to be attached there.

“I-” he begins.

Stops.

“I don’t know.”

Juhoon’s thumb is still there for a second longer than necessary, then withdraws slowly.

Martin turns onto his side fully now, looking at Juhoon properly.

“That’s kind of bad, isn’t it,” he says, still smiling faintly.

Juhoon considers this. “Not really,” he answers.

Then, as if the conclusion arrives without effort: “We can get you another one.”

Martin’s expression shifts, something light catching in it, almost relieved again, like problems are only manageable when they can be solved together.

“Yeah?” he says.

Juhoon nods once.

“Of course.”

The shop has seen better days, that’s for sure. Martin doesn’t hesitate, he walks straight to the counter, already leaning in, already halfway decided.

Juhoon follows, a little distracted by the amount of wigs and tights that are on display.

The glass of one of the earring cabinets reflects them back in pieces, faces broken up by rows of small, precise things. 

“I want something simple,” Martin says.

The clerk doesn’t react. Martin scans for all of two seconds before pointing. “That one.”

They buy it without talking about it.

Outside, the air feels a little too bright. Martin opens the box as they walk, turning the piece between his fingers, watching it catch light before he comes to a sudden halt.

Juhoon stops too.

“I need to bleach my hair again,” Martin says.

Juhoon blinks. “Why?”

Martin shrugs, already moving. “It feels wrong.”

Juhoon studies him for a second. “It’s fine.”

“That’s the problem.”

Martin’s bathroom light is too white and too clean, it flattens everything until skin looks like it’s been printed instead of something natural. 

Juhoon stands at the sink, gloves pulled tight over his hands. The latex makes everything feel more serious than it is.

Martin is already halfway gone with it.

“This is chemistry,” he says, holding up the bleach like it might bite.

“It’s really not,” Juhoon says, not looking at him.

It starts sloppy. Martin opens things too fast and doesn’t measure properly. The smell comes sharp and synthetic, settling into the room like a second atmosphere.

Juhoon steps in without announcing it, he takes the bowl from his hands and mixes it properly. 

He sections hair with slow, practiced movements that don’t belong to Martin’s chaos but don’t fight it either.

Martin goes still under his hands, he keeps talking, but his body settles, lets itself be handled.

“Your hands are weird,” he says at some point.

“They might be the most normal hands in the world, shut up,” Juhoon replies.

Martin hums, unconvinced.

The bleach goes on evenly, Juhoon works close, fingers brushing the back of Martin’s neck, the shell of his ear, the line where hair meets skin.

In the mirror, Martin isn’t watching himself, he’s watching Juhoon.

“You should do one,” he says, pointing at his hair.

Juhoon pauses mid-motion. “No.”

“Just a strand,” Martin insists, already reaching back, fingers catching lightly in Juhoon’s hair like it’s his to sort through. “Proof.”

“Of what?”

“That you were here.”

Juhoon stills completely for a second, something wobbling under his ribs.

Martin doesn’t push, he already knows the answer will come.

Juhoon exhales. “…fine.”

Martin lights up immediately, bright and boyish. “Hold still,” he says, suddenly serious.

It’s only a thin strand. Tucked near the side, almost hidden. Martin handles it with exaggerated care, tongue caught briefly between his teeth.

The bleach is cold when it touches, Juhoon feels it more than he should. Martin leans back when he’s done, looking at it like he just finished a piece of art.

“We match,” he says.

“We don’t.”

“We do, and you can’t really argue against it this time.”

Juhoon doesn’t argue.

Later, Martin bends over the tub, head under the faucet, complaining every time water gets too close to his eyes but not moving away. Juhoon stands behind him, one hand steady at his shoulder, the other working through his hair.

Rinsing. Smoothing. Separating.

It becomes its own rhythm before he notices it, fingers moving without instruction, pressing lightly at the scalp, dragging through strands in slow, even passes.

Martin leans forward more, giving in to it. His chest is pressed flush against the edge of the tub, arms loose, head heavy under Juhoon’s hand.

Unguarded.

Juhoon notices when the resistance disappears.

“…Martin.”

No answer, no reaction, nothing but breathing. 

Juhoon rinses the last of the bleach out and turns the water off. 

Martin doesn’t move when Juhoon touches him, doesn’t really wake when he’s pulled upright, just mumbles something soft and useless, lets himself be guided.

The walk to the bedroom is uneven because Martin leans into him without thinking.

On the floor, he drops down immediately, then forward, his upper body folds into Juhoon’s lap where he sits on the edge of the bed.

Juhoon freezes for a second before he adjusts. He shifts his legs slightly, lets Martin settle instead of moving him away.

The hairdryer hums low when he turns it on. Warm air fills the space between them. Juhoon lifts sections of damp hair, drying slowly, fingers threading through, separating, smoothing.

It stops feeling like a task and quickly becomes something else.

Martin doesn’t speak. His breathing changes gradually, slipping without ceremony from awake to something softer. His head grows heavier against Juhoon’s thigh, the weight settling in a way that asks for nothing but space.

Juhoon notices and slows his hands, lets his fingers linger a little longer at the roots, scratching light absent circles that don’t lead anywhere.

The strand in Juhoon’s own hair, lighter now, catches briefly in the reflection when he leans forward. A small, quiet echo of something that didn’t need to happen.

The dryer hums.

Martin falls asleep like this: half-folded, mouth slightly open, completely unaware.

Juhoon keeps going, long after there’s nothing left to dry.