Chapter Text
oh, it’s simple // all the pain that you go through // you can turn away from fortune, fortune, fortune // ‘cause that’s all that’s left to you // hey, it’s lonely at the bottom // man, it’s dizzy at the top // but if you’re standing in the middle, oh // ain’t no way you’re gonna stop
“In the Evening” by Led Zeppelin
Chenle has never cared for the house.
To be sure, it’s a stately thing, grand in structure and furnishings. A house that was built to withstand. He would never go so far as to call it his house; taking him in was a so-called kindness meant to save his stepmother from the embarrassment of having the living proof of her husband’s past running around town. Chenle’s only real home in Korea, the one he had shared with his mother in the months before she dropped him on his estranged father’s doorstep and disappeared, was all the way on the other side of the tracks, where the hot water only worked a few times a month and the building’s tenancy count doubled if you included the mice.
Chenle wonders sometimes, on those nights where sleep won’t come, if he could have loved the house once, the way so many in town seemed to. If the house could have loved him back, under different circumstances. He most certainly loved some of the people inside it.
Ashes to ashes, the priest had said at the funeral. The first one, anyway. The one that mattered.
Chenle thinks if there were a God, the house would be ashes by now too.
But here he stands on the porch regardless, bags over his shoulder—one for survival, and one for everything else normal people are expected to take on work trips. He has to remember that’s all this is—a work trip. Money he doesn’t spend on a hotel from his per diem is money to replace the things that will be necessary to survive the next however many days here in this waking nightmare of a place.
He’s temporary here. Still temporary.
The thought doesn’t bring much comfort, even after all these years away.
A man had gone missing not long ago, a small-town missing persons case barely enough to blip the radar of the newspaper’s crime desk up in Seoul. Ahn Hyejin’s brother had gone missing, to be precise. Chenle only remembers him vaguely; they hadn’t overlapped at all in school, but despite his older age he’d always been available to the right sort of high school student on Saturday nights. For a time, that meant students like Jisung, with his sterling sweetheart reputation and the whole town’s sympathy to quash oversight into his extracurricular activities. Wherever Jisung went, Chenle had often found it difficult not to follow. It was usually alcohol, but sometimes other things, in those few months after the first funeral. On those nights when the stars flickered in Jisung’s eyes, Hyejin’s brother had shown up to supply whatever put the glories of the universe back within reach.
Chenle hadn’t seen him at all since those blurry high school weekends until a set of internet-leaked crime scene photos had rolled across his desk. Ahn Garam had been gone for over a week before he was found, seemingly vanished without a trace. That’s not uncommon in a town as small as theirs, where those who aren’t lucky to be born with money from owning or managing the slaughterhouse often have to leave to find any sort of work or happiness outside it. But that descriptor wasn’t a fit for Ahn Garam; he was married with a son, and the Ahn family owned the auto shop, as well as the used car lot next to it. Enough to make his disappearance unusual, but still not quite alarming. He wouldn’t be the first patriarch in town to stray from his original familial obligations.
But then he’d been found murdered, and in a decidedly uncommon way—strangled by something rather thick and ridged, with his body leaned up against the base of the big oak tree in the Piggy Park afterwards, as if he were simply taking a nap. A pile of withered white tulips had been found in his lap, but half his teeth were gruesomely, forcibly removed, and most of his fingertips had been crushed to pulp.
The last person to see him alive was his son’s piano tutor, the eldest living boy of the family who owned the slaughterhouse, the family who lived in the estate up on the hill.
Mark is Chenle’s editor, and one of his only real friends, so it didn’t take him long to put two and two together, what with the setting and the players involved. The next day, Chenle had a rental car, a per diem, the promise of weekly bylines on every digital asset the newspaper was associated with, and a guarantee of at least eight inches on the front page of Sunday paper if he found something out that led to solving the case. Part of him wants to hate Mark for it, but Mark just so happens to be one of those people that it’s impossible to hate, and Chenle is at an inflection point in his career—he’d be stupid to turn the exposure down, even if he has to walk through hell to get it.
He heaves a deep breath, but before he can knock, the front door of the house swings wide open.
“Are you just going to stand outside all day?” Jaemin nags, but his eyes betray an eager, hungry sort of concern as they scan Chenle’s frame. “The doorbell still works, you know.”
“Hey, Hyung,” Chenle sighs, readjusting his bags. He’d cleaned the store out of all its plastic bottles, but he’d still had to resort to bringing some glass with him, and it clinks lightly within his smaller duffle as Chenle shifts.
It doesn’t escape Jaemin’s notice.
“Well, do come in,” he says with a raised brow, holding his hands out for Chenle’s bags before ushering him inside. “I understand we weren’t your first stop, but I wish you’d at least called from the liquor store. I would have started lunch earlier.”
Chenle bites down on his tongue as he removes his shoes, because as haughty as Jaemin sounds, he’s right that Chenle probably should have called first. The house hasn’t been anything close to his home in a long, long time.
It’s Jaemin’s house now.
“Did you clean out the shop out on the highway?” Jaemin says, passing Chenle on his way to what must still be the back bedroom, the only one on the lower floor. The family always slept upstairs, before; Chenle wonders what his room is used for now. “Or the one here in town? Just trying to anticipate the sort of chatter I’ll hear at the town council meeting.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Chenle spits. He turns to leave, even without his bags—fuck his shitty per diem that isn’t enough because no one values local journalism anymore, he’ll max out his credit card before he’s badgered to death by his self-righteous stepbrother—but Jaemin’s hand on his arm stops him. The clatter of glass through cloth against the pristine, stained wooden floor makes both of them jump; Jaemin dropped both his bags to stop him from leaving.
Chenle tries to steady his breathing and hopes none of the bottles broke.
“I’m sorry,” Jaemin apologizes. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, I just—I haven’t heard from you in a year, Chenle. I’ve been worried sick.”
“I talk to Jisung.” Chenle tries to pull out of Jaemin’s grasp but Jaemin simply adjusts to follow. He’s never been an easy person to leave. “It’s not my fault if he doesn’t share information.”
“It’s not the same as hearing it from you,” Jaemin says. “You know that.”
“Why?” Chenle hisses. “So you can pick at my life choices in real time? I already had two and half parents. I don’t need another one.”
“It’s not picking at you Chenle, it’s concern—”
Before Jaemin can finish, there’s the quick step of hurried feet on the upstairs landing.
“Chenle?” Jisung yells, tee shirt rumpled and bed-head messy despite the hour, nearly tripping over his own feet to rush down the stairs. He has a visible pillow crease still indented into the plush of one cheek; it’s cute, and Chenle grins despite Jaemin’s presence.
“Be careful!” Jaemin yells back, finally letting go of Chenle to meet Jisung at the base of the stairs. “Slow down, you’ll break your neck—”
Jisung laughs when he collides into Jaemin at the bottom of the steps, spinning him like a revolving door until he’s around him and rushing towards Chenle with a delighted laugh.
“Morning breath, Jisung, for fuck’s sake,” Chenle says, stepping forward to lightly shove at Jisung’s chest, halting him in his tracks. Jisung’s skin is still sleep-warm beneath his tee shirt, a comforting sort of heat. “I could smell it from down here.”
“Shut up,” Jisung grins back, grabbing Chenle’s wrist to tug it off his chest. He swats at Chenle’s shoulder with his free hand, but it’s several more seconds of them grinning at each other before he lets go. “Are these your bags? Are you going to stay?”
Jisung grabs both bag straps in one-too large hand and takes the steps two at a time, apparently not on the same page as Jaemin.
“Jisung, wait,” Chenle calls, following him up the stairs. By the time he reaches the top, Jisung has already deposited the bags in Chenle’s bedroom, shockingly unchanged since he last saw it six years ago.
“Too slow,” Jisung says with a shrug, but he’s still smiling wide.
“I think Hyung wanted me to stay downstairs,” Chenle says, as Jisung’s face falls in confusion.
“Family stays upstairs, Chenle,” Jisung insists.
“I don’t,” Jaemin interrupts quietly. He’s paused near the top of the staircase, one hand clutched tight to the banister, still polished to a shine. “I don’t want you downstairs. It’s just—are you going to be okay up here?”
“You could have just asked me that?” Chenle says, not bothering to keep his annoyance out of his voice. “Instead of trying to decide it for me.”
“Could I?” Jaemin asks simply, still as the grave, and all the ire Chenle had been stoking in his chest goes cold. Jaemin falls out of focus as a pair of solid oak double doors down the hall fill up Chenle’s vision, sturdy and shut tight, directly across from his bedroom door.
“I’ll be fine in my old room,” he says. He hopes he sounded like he believes it.
Jisung drops a heavy hand on his shoulder and squeezes, as if he thinks Chenle needs support or else he might bolt back down the stairs.
What Chenle really needs is a drink.
“I’ll let you and Jisung get unpacked, then,” Jaemin says. His eyes flick over Chenle’s shoulder, holding dark and steady for just a moment, and then he begins to descend. “Lunch should be ready when you’re done.”
“You know you don’t actually have to help me unpack, right?” Chenle jokes. He sits gingerly on his same old forest green bedspread and tries not to look out the door down the hall.
“I know,” Jisung says. He unzips Chenle’s larger duffle and attempts to refold the first shirt he pulls out of it. It ends up looking just as bad as it did when it was still crumpled in the bag, but Chenle isn’t inclined to do it himself now that Jisung has started, so he says nothing. “Shirts in the top drawer still?”
“That’s fine,” Chenle says. “By the way, it’s like 11am.” Chenle leans back against the pillows, crossing his ankles until the tips of his toes brush the bag’s unzipped opening. He wiggles them when Jisung comes back for another shirt, just to laugh at the way his nose inevitably scrunches up. “Did you just get up? Who are you and what have you done with Jisung?”
“I haven’t been sleeping all that well lately,” Jisung explains, tossing another poorly refolded shirt in the top drawer.
“What’s wrong?” Chenle asks, and maybe it’s this house and the double doors looming down the hall at him, but he has to ask his next question. “Have you been sick?”
“No,” Jisung reassures him, taking out a pair of jeans to place in the middle drawer. “I’m not sick.” Jisung slides the drawer shut with a gentle thunk and stills with his hands on the dresser top. “There was a man found murdered in the Park,” he says quietly. “Did you know?”
“Yeah, I know.”
Jisung’s hands flex against the wood of the dresser, gleaming and dust-free, and Chenle hasn’t been gone so long that he can’t tell when Jisung is upset.
“Of course you do,” Jisung says. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“I’m in town for work,” Chenle admits, and Jisung sighs quietly.
“Well at least you’re with us, and not at the motel.” Jisung pulls out the next piece of clothing, a well-worn hoodie bearing the insignia of their high school’s basketball team. It seems to lighten Jisung’s mood to see it, which lessens the pressure that had been building in Chenle’s chest. “Obviously the investigation is important, we’re helping with everything we’re asked, but.” He bends at the waist to place the folded hoodie in the bottom drawer, and it makes him look too-small, his considerable height cut in half. “It’s a lot.” He shuts the drawer and stands to perch one hip on the dresser top, but he’s not looking at Chenle, his eyes fixed to whatever shapes he begins to draw into the wood beside him. They would have gotten dressed down for that as children—heaven forbid the house wasn’t magazine-ready at all times—but given the state of his room, the cleaners must still come. Soon enough, there will be no traces of Jisung's fingerprints left in Chenle’s room, and no traces of Chenle either.
Temporary, still temporary.
“Hyung gave me one of his old sleeping pills last night,” Jisung finally admits. “I shouldn’t have taken it without a prescription, I know, but there’s so much going on right now. I guess it was too strong.”
Chenle’s chest burns, because this has always been his fear—that the pressures and demands of the family business would eat Jisung from the inside out. For years, Chenle thought it should be his job to tease him into something tougher, something a little more guarded, but in the end he never could go that far. Jisung didn’t dream of being a vet like Jaemin or sneak roast chicken out for the wild cats like Jeno, but he couldn’t stand suffering, even before they lost half of their branch of the family tree. Chenle won’t ever be the one to stamp that softness out.
“Are you going to the memorial?” Chenle asks.
“No,” Jisung says, frowning as he sorts a pair of sweatpants into the bottom drawer. “No, I have some work to do. We’ve been having some issues with the processing machinery that we have to get figured out. Hyung will, though, this evening after town council. Gaeul is a good kid.”
“You didn’t like his dad, though?” Chenle intuits. “You must not have, if you’re willing to choose pig-killing over his funeral services.”
“That’s the thing about family businesses,” Jisung says. “They have to be run by family.”
“And that doesn’t include Jaemin? He isn’t helping you?” He shouldn’t say anything more, not after what just happened downstairs, but the words tumble out before he can stop them. “Isn’t that his whole personality?”
Jisung only sighs and puts another tee shirt away.
“Jaemin still helps with the books, but you haven’t been gone that long, Chenle. The family business is more than just the pigs.”
“But you didn’t like him.”
Jisung is annoyed Chenle won’t drop it—lips pursed, fingertips busy in the fabric of another shirt—but he’s Jisung, and so he answers.
“He was arrogant. He wasn’t kind. Hyung loves his little boy, which is why he’s making our appearances, but as for his father . . . he just wasn’t good.”
Chenle wants to keep pushing, but he’s also been here all of twenty minutes and can already tell this topic is hard for Jisung. Jisung would probably let him get away with asking more questions, and Chenle would press if it were anyone else, consequences be damned.
But it’s not just anyone.
“Are you sure you’re my Jisung?” he teases. “Casting aspersions on the dead?
“Only in front of you.” Jisung mutters, but he’s smiling again, just slightly, and something warm sparks up beneath Chenle’s breastbone. “I figure it can’t hurt. If I’m headed for hell now, you’re probably already headed there too.”
Chenle scoffs and swings the nearest pillow in Jisung’s direction, but he can’t be bothered to actually sit up, so he misses by a good bit. Jisung rolls his eyes in response, but he’s still smiling.
“Okay, the rest of this is mostly socks and underwear, neither of which I am touching. You’re welcome.”
“That’s a privilege you haven’t earned anyway,” Chenle retorts, wiggling his toes in Jisung’s direction before he sits up. “My suit is still in the car, I’ll deal with the rest later.”
“So you’re going?” Jisung asks. He zips Chenle’s duffle shut and fiddles the zipper end for a moment. He doesn’t bother reaching for Chenle’s other bag; Chenle isn’t sure if that’s a relief or an embarrassment. “I do feel terrible for Gaeul. Even a bad parent is still a parent.”
It’s time to change the subject.
“Do you finally drive?” Chenle asks. “Or do you still bike everywhere?”
“I’ve been able to drive for like, four years, Chenle, you know that!” Jisung says, his indignation pitching his tone. Predictable and comforting.
“I’m an excellent listener,” Chenle says seriously. “You must have forgotten to mention it.”
“Don’t be an ass,” Jisung says, swatting at Chenle’s shin. “I still prefer to bike, but I can take my car if you need me to drop you off?”
“That would be great, if you could. Do you know which funeral hall the Ahns are using?” There are only two in town. Chenle could have guessed on his own easily enough, a fifty-fifty shot, but he should probably minimize his driving today, what with most people in a fifty kilometer radius likely headed into town. “You can just take me to where the road splits, up from the barber shop,” Chenle says. “I can walk from there.”
“Sure. Hyung will know which hall they’re using,” Jisung says, nudging Chenle’s thigh until there’s room for them both to sit on the bed, hip to hip, feet on the floor. They haven’t always been able to touch the ground; there was a time their feet would dangle, draped over the edge, Jisung trying to convince Chenle there were whole constellations in the specks on the ceiling to varying degrees of success. Slotted together by gravity and the dip in the mattress, Jisung next to Chenle and Chenle next to Jisung—the pressure is light through the layers of their clothes, but Chenle swears it still could bruise, the force of all they share between them.
“Is Hyung still weird about cars?” Chenle asks quietly. “Is that why you prefer to bike?”
Jisung chews on his lower lip, his mole shifting beneath his contemplation.
“Lunch is ready!” Jaemin calls up the stairs, and whatever Jisung might have said is lost, just like all the other might-have-beens that haunt this house.
“We’re coming!” he calls back, but when Jisung answers Chenle, his words are soft. “You have to pick your battles with Jaemin-hyung,” he says. “You know that.”
Chenle doesn’t, is the thing. He’s forgotten where to stop when it comes to Jaemin, if he ever knew.
Chenle should have asked Jisung to take him all the way into town, because he’s sweating in his suit by the time he nears his destination. The strap of his work satchel is digging uncomfortably into his shoulder, and the Evian bottle tucked inside it along with his other essentials is already a quarter empty.
Downtown hasn’t changed in any discernible way, at least on this stretch of the main streets. Chenle passes a number of familiar little businesses nestled in among the aging houses, some open and some not. The grates are still down on the barber shop and the Han’s clothing boutique, but there’s a group of kids with bikes eating ice cream in front of the food mart, and the florist’s door is propped open as a teenager Chenle doesn’t recognize carries a large arrangement out to the shop’s weathered delivery van, past a bright painted window urging passersby to “say it with flowers!”
Chenle could probably ask for a ride to the funeral hall; that’s where the kid is obviously headed. But instead he keeps walking, past the hardware store towards the building that used to be the bingsu restaurant he and Jeno frequented whenever Jeno was in one of his healthier spells.
The bingsu shop was special, because it was for Chenle alone—Jeno always wanted bingsu with milk, Jaemin wouldn’t dare deny Jeno something he wanted even if Jaemin couldn’t eat it himself, and Jisung wouldn’t dare upset Jaemin by leaving him at home alone while the three of them ate without him. Jeno and Chenle would wheel their bikes out of the garage, and Chenle would pretend he didn’t know how to put air in his tires or get his kickstand up for the ride over, because Jeno would always do it for him—sometimes soft, sometimes begrudging, but always indulgent. When they could, they would sneak sweets from home for the trip too, whatever was leftover from Eomeoni’s baking for the medical staff of the facility that had treated Jeno last.
Chenle catches his reflection in the building’s front window when he passes and sees a flash of an entirely different person trapped within the pane: braces and brashness and sugared smiles. He’s disappointed to see that the bingsu shop looks like some sort of medical clinic now, but he doesn’t have to stay disappointed for very long. Half a block later, he’s pushing through the front door at the local dive bar and taking a seat at the worn wooden bartop.
“Well I’ll be damned,” a melodic, familiar voice laughs as Chenle flags down the bartender. “There’s a ghost in this bar.”
“If that’s your way of telling me I look dead, Hyuck, you sure know how to flatter a guy,” Chenle says. “Two of whatever he’s having and a bottle of soju, please,” he tells the bartender, jerking a thumb in the direction of the snickering man to his right.
“I can just hardly believe you’re real,” Donghyuck explains with a wide, sunny smile, a beacon in the dimness of the bar. “Usually it’s your brother I see here. The tall, pretty one, not the socialite shark in human form.”
“Excuse me,” Chenle scoffs, as the bartender sets two beers and a bottle of soju down in front of him. “I’m no longer the pretty one?”
“I said pretty, not the prettiest.” Donghyuck tuts and abandons his barstool to move closer. “Aren’t you supposed to be some big-time reporter now?” he teases, cracking the soju open as the bartender returns with two shot glasses. “Shouldn’t you have sniffed that one out?”
“I got you to admit I was still the prettiest after one question,” Chenle shoots back with a grin. “I’m very good at my job.”
Donghyuck huffs in amusement and throws back the shot he pours himself, before gesturing with the mouth of the soju bottle at Chenle’s empty shot glass.
“Not going to hold the glass with two hands, Chenle?” Donghyuck snarks. “Your elder is pouring, you know.”
“It’s about respect for me, not age,” Chenle says. “Not sure I can respect interviewees who fold after one question.”
“I guess I’m just out of practice at keeping up with you,” Donghyuck says with a shrug, finishing Chenle’s pour before refilling his own shot.
Chenle doesn’t answer, running one finger around the rim of his shot glass. He’s been difficult to keep up with, he knows that, even if Donghyuck could be bull-headed when he cared.
“So what are you in town for, after all this time?” Donghyuck continues. “Ahn Garam, I assume. Horrible.” Donghyuck shudders, setting the soju bottle down between them. Chenle downs his pour and fights the urge to instantly refill his glass. “You would have been barking up the right tree until a few weeks ago. I saw him in here too, all the time.”
“With Jisung?” Chenle asks incredulously. It was a bewildering revelation as is, Jisung frequenting the local dive, because there’s no way Jaemin comes with him. But if he frequents the same spot as the murder victim Chenle is reporting on, why wouldn’t he mention—
That’s an unfair train of thought. Jisung did say he thought Ahn Garam wasn’t good. Chenle can’t exactly fault him for not disclosing his basis for that opinion during their first face-to-face conversation in years, especially one that lasted maybe half an hour.
“Hell no,” Donghyuck says emphatically. “Jisung comes to dance sometimes, but Ahn Garam was a more frequent flier. I saw him hit on Jisung exactly one time, and that was the only time.”
“Jisung shut him down?” Chenle barks out a laugh as he reaches for the soju—he managed to wait a good twenty seconds; surely that’s long enough when discussing a dead man with an old . . . whatever Donghyuck is. “Wish I could have seen that.”
“You know your brother,” Donghyuck says. “Not a lot of bark or bite where it could make a scene, but—” He cuts off with a long, trailing whistle. “Even he has limits.”
“Jisungie values loyalty,” Chenle agrees, throwing back his second shot and chasing it with a sip of his beer. Ahn Garam was married with a child. That probably tells Chenle all he needs to know about Jisung’s opinion. “Besides, what’s a married father doing in here?”
“And with a new person every week, it seemed like,” Donghyuck says, his nose wrinkled as he takes a sip of his own beer. “Men, women, he didn’t discriminate. Watching the whole thing has shrunk my own dating pool considerably,” he adds. “Good judgment matters.”
Donghyuck’s moles still map a summer’s constellation against his cheek as he drinks, and Chenle is struck by the sense memory of what it was like to connect them together with the press of lips—itchy grass and sticky summer heat, laid out on a blanket somewhere they could be away from Chenle’s family name and Donghyuck’s lack thereof.
He leans into the edge of the bar until it digs into his forearm—Chenle is here and now, not there and then.
“His wife didn’t know?” Chenle asks.
Donghyuck huffs, a short, humored sound. “You know how this place is. So long as her social status didn’t take a hit, she didn’t really care. Until he ended up, well.” Donghyuck takes another long pull of his beer, his throat bobbing. Chenle does the same when the sight makes his own throat annoyingly dry.
“I guess the strangers started to matter, after?” Chenle asks through the sting of alcohol.
“Yeah,” Donghyuck says. He picks at his beer label with his thumbnail, his earlier playfulness gone. “I feel just awful for their kid.”
“It’s horrible,” Chenle agrees as gently as he can. “But do you remember any of his father’s dates, by any chance?”
“Why, so you can go track them down?” Donghyuck, thankfully, seems mostly amused by the question. “First time I see you in years, and we can’t even get through a drink before you have one foot out the door on me.”
Chenle’s ears burn. Maybe he should slow down on the soju.
“Okay then,” Chenle concedes. “Let’s talk about you. Why are you here often enough to know all this?”
“What else is there to do in this town, aside from incredibly efficient animal slaughter?” Donghyuck deadpans. He meets Chenle’s eyes with a blank sort of look, one that Chenle instinctively returns, but they can both only hold it for a beat or two before they break character for more comfortable emotions, the humored sort of ease that always came too easily for them. “Kidding,” Donghyuck says. “I just stopped in. I work four days a week in the clinic down the block, Dr. Jeong’s practice? And I pick up shifts in the bar when I can use extra cash, which is basically all the time, so I like to come by and make sure I’m not needed.”
“Trust me,” Chenle says, looking around the bar. Besides the two of them, there’s an older man asleep in the corner booth, and two girls barely old enough to be drinking nursing beers in the opposite corner. “This place needs you desperately. Old Dr. Jeong is still around?”
When Chenle looks back at Donghyuck, his chin is tucked down towards his chest with just the edge of a smile showing on his face.
Two can play this game, then. Maybe they’re not quite so out of practice after all.
“He is,” Donghyuck says, watering down his satisfaction with Chenle’s admission with another small sip of beer. “He still lives in that same house on the corner, but his son’s taking the practice over.” Donghyuck turns back to him and wags the lip of his beer bottle in Chenle’s direction. “And there’s no more house calls up the hill if you stub your toe, either. Jaehyun’s not as impressed by slaughterhouse money.”
“Guess that happens when you grow up with it,” Chenle says.
“I mean, you’d know.”
Chenle finishes his beer in three long, bitter gulps.
“That’s not me,” he insists, choking down the burn of carbonation as he sets his beer down to refill his soju glass. “You know that.”
The pause between them isn’t so long as to be uncomfortable, but perhaps that’s because it stretches long enough for Chenle to throw back one more shot.
“If you say so,” Donghyuck eventually answers.
“I do,” Chenle says firmly. Donghyuck picks at his beer label once more, eyes casting about for anything to focus on but Chenle, and Chenle embarrassingly, instantly softens. “You know, I always thought you’d get out of here long before I’d ever come back.”
Donghyuck has always shined. It was what drew Chenle to him in the first place. Even at shitty house parties or high school basketball celebrations, with the taste of cheap liquor nearly caustic in badly mixed Kool-aid and too-loud hip hop blaring through busted speakers, Donghyuck had blazed more brightly by his very nature than any drug or drink could have caused. Laughing with Donghyuck, and making him laugh—sometimes being together felt a little bit like squinting into the sun. Glorious, and warm, and something to be regarded with necessary caution and appropriate protective measures.
“Even country folk need healthcare, Chenle,” Donghyuck chastens him. “Besides, home is home. If she ever comes back, someone should be here.”
It’s a slap in the face, being reminded of the days when Donghyuck’s brightness was temporarily snuffed out—a cold chill on a gray Thursday morning, Donghyuck’s hands clenched into empty fists during the press conference. The way those same hands had clung so tightly to Chenle’s coat in the broom closet of the town hall after, holding onto him for dear life as he cried out of the view of his parents.
Chenle empties the last of the soju bottle into his glass, one final half of a shot, and hardly feels it this time as it goes down.
Donghyuck sighs and finishes his own second and final shot. “Hey, it was good to see you, but I have to get going,” he says. “Maybe I’ll see you around if it’s meant to be. You got a pen?”
“Yeah,” Chenle says, digging in his bag for one. “Why?”
Donghyuck drags an unused napkin over at the same time he reaches for the pen with his right hand. He uncaps it with his thumb and scrawls a series of digits across the napkin, before placing the pen down on top of it. “Just in case you lost it,” he says with a wink and pushes off the bar.
Something is still burning in Chenle’s belly; it must be the soju, because it can’t be anything else right now. “What was that about ‘meant to be?’” he asks.
“You have to make your own fate sometimes, Chenle,” Donghyuck calls back over his shoulder, headed for the door. “You taught me that.”
Chenle had hoped to never set foot in this funeral hall again after the first time.
Eomeoni’s funeral had been here as well, but Chenle barely remembers it. He’d been wholly focused on trying to hold Jisung together while Jaemin carried the responsibilities of the eldest. Baba’s likely would have been here too, but his family back home wouldn’t hear of it, so he’d been shipped back to China for his memorial service. No one reached out afterwards with details of the proceedings, and the three of them had gotten the message—bastards and foreign stepchildren need not inquire. But the first week he spent in this funeral hall had been the worst week of Chenle’s life.
Chenle had absolutely hated the picture Eomeoni had chosen for Jeno’s portrait. Jeno wasn’t smiling in it; it was fucking unfair, for someone who fought so bravely through so much pain, that he was made to look sad at his own funeral. The real Jeno, Chenle’s Jeno, had a smile so pure and wide that it felt like all the bad in the world disappeared at the sight of it.
But Chenle had still stared at that cruel, awful portrait for days, because it was a better alternative than watching Jisung cry as quietly as he could beside him, his fingers clenched so tightly around Chenle’s hand that it hurt. It was better than watching Baba stand there stone-faced in between checking his phone, or watching Eomeoni receive mourners. Some she met with wailing and spells of weakness, Jaemin almost entirely holding her up under the pressure of her grief. Others she met with a put-upon sort of dignity that Chenle found just as difficult to witness.
So many people seemed to think it made her noble, that Jeno had finally gotten sick enough to die despite all her efforts to the contrary. To Chenle, it felt more hateful than the portrait that people would offer such sentiments, and even more so that she would receive them. There were no moral victories to be had by the living after the death of someone so good.
Ahn Garam, though, is smiling wide in his funeral portrait.
Perhaps Chenle’s been biased by Jisung, but something about him does look a little sinister.
There’s plenty of potential here to use as color in his first piece; multiple women are crying, but only two of them have on wedding rings, and only one was married to the victim. Ahn Hyejin stands near the front of the room with her quietly weeping sister-in-law to receive visitors, but of the two of them, even dry-eyed, she looks more aggrieved. There are flower arrangements provided by the local church, as well as most of the businesses in town, and a few families. Jaemin, of course, has sent an arrangement of carnations. It’s been centered amongst the display, meaning it was either sent early on or the Ahns want it to be seen.
Chenle dips behind a column to jot down a quick list of who sent flowers, since they might be helpful to talk to, and takes a less-quick swig out of his Evian while his bag is open. It’s then that he spots the little boy seated on the outer end of a row down near the front, kicking his feet and staring down at his hands as his mother and aunt receive mourners.
Chenle pops a mint in his mouth and crunches it between his teeth as he walks around the edge of the hall towards the child.
“Hey buddy,” Chenle says gently, crouching off to the little boy’s side once he reaches him. “Are you Gaeul?”
Gaeul nods, although he doesn’t look up.
“I’m sorry about your father,” Chenle murmurs. “I know this must be really hard.”
Gaeul still says nothing, and it pricks Chenle’s heart that this child is sitting here all alone, an outsider at his own father’s funeral.
“I hear you play the piano,” Chenle says encouragingly. “That’s a great instrument to learn.”
“It’s okay,” Gaeul mumbles, his hands flexing in his lap.
“Just okay?” Chenle asks, pitching his voice in the same way that always seems to be a hit with Kwon Boa’s daughter. “My brother must not be doing a very good job of teaching you then.”
Gaeul shakes his head emphatically and finally looks up at Chenle.
“Seonsaengnim is the best,” Gaeul insists. “He’s nice.”
“Oh really?” Chenle asks. “What makes him so nice?”
“He doesn’t get mad,” Gaeul explains, some of the consonants whistling through the gap formed by his recently-lost front left tooth. “Even if he’s mad at Appa, he doesn’t get mad at me.”
“That does sound nice,” Chenle agrees kindly, but his mind is already racing ahead of him.
What on earth could Jaemin and Ahn Garam have to fight about?
“Chenle?”
Speak of the devil.
When Chenle turns over his shoulder, Jaemin is holding a plate of food and a small cup with a lid.
“It’s already past dinnertime,” Jaemin says. Chenle isn’t sure whose benefit he’s saying it for. “I’m going to give Gaeullie his plate, and then we’ll head out, yeah?”
“I just got here, actually,” Chenle says. He tries to hide his annoyance for Gaeul’s sake, his pulse kicking up in his chest, but he isn’t sure if he manages.
“You’re not walking home,” Jaemin responds, stepping around Chenle to sit next to Gaeul. “I’ll meet you at the entrance in fifteen minutes. Go wait there.”
Jaemin became an ultimatum in and of himself a long time ago. Chenle has never been particularly good with ultimatums.
“Go, please, Chenle,” Jaemin orders quietly when Chenle doesn’t move, balancing Gaeul’s plate on his knees. He opens the boy’s utensils with a flat stare, and Chenle’s jaw aches from the force of keeping his choice words to himself as ruffles Gaeul’s hair with a short farewell and stands, because this isn’t the place for what he’d rather do. This child doesn’t deserve for a stranger like Chenle to yell at someone he trusts in the middle of his father’s funeral, even if that someone is a pig-headed ass.
He jots down a few more observations once he reaches the door, and then he pushes out into the night. Jaemin catches up with him on the road about twenty minutes later, driving slowly beside him with the window down until Chenle finally relents and gets into the car.
His toes are pinching in his shoes, is the thing. Chenle’s feet are too pretty to get blisters just to spite Jaemin, and if he can’t find a way to work his story around Jaemin’s little stunt, he might have to sell photos of them on the internet one day to pay the bills.
The rest of the drive home is silent except for the soft chatter of the local radio station, the calm before the storm. Jaemin doesn’t fight in public, and Chenle should be using the time to gameplan his arguments, but his hurt pride festers like a wound left untended.
Jaemin’s reputation, Jaemin’s house, Jaemin’s town—they’re all too stifling to bear, and Chenle wants nothing more than to run screaming back to Seoul. He has work to do though, so he’ll have to settle for screaming a little closer to home.
“Hey!” Jisung calls from the kitchen as they walk in the door. Jaemin hangs his keys on the designated hook and then steps out of his dress shoes before brushing past Chenle through the front sitting room towards the sound of Jisung’s voice. “How was—is everything okay?” Chenle hears Jisung ask.
“I’m not the one who showed up drunk to a funeral,” Jaemin mutters, and if Chenle kicks his right shoe into the wall when he takes it off, well, Jaemin can afford a dent in the wallpaper.
“I’m not drunk, Hyung,” Chenle bites out as he stalks into the kitchen to find Jisung sitting at the breakfast table, eyes wide.
“I should have known,” Jaemin says from where he’s leaning up against the sink, shaking his head like Chenle is some sort of wayward child. “This is why you finally came home? To badger that poor family and their loved ones?”
“I’m here to do my job,” Chenle snarls. “But I also have a fucking heart, and I thought Gaeul was left alone at his father’s funeral. I wasn’t interviewing him, I would never do that in a funeral hall, much less without parental permission.” Jaemin crosses his arms over his chest and doesn’t apologize for his assumption, because of course he doesn’t. “Do you really think I don’t have any ethics? I know this town revolves around your name and your feelings, Hyung, but I won’t do the same. Not anymore.”
Jisung tries to butt in, hands nervously out in front of him as he stands, as if he can referee over half a decade of poorly concealed frustration.
“Let’s calm down and talk about—”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jaemin shouts over him. “It’s our name that keeps this town alive, Chenle. That paid for your degree, for your new life in Seoul, that perched you up in your ivory tower. It’s the family business, and you are still in this family.”
“I didn’t sell my life to it, though,” Chenle insists. He chose differently, and he will not tolerate Jaemin sabotaging his career over nothing. “It’s not my burden to bear—”
Jaemin laughs, and the next thing Chenle knows, they’re nearly chest to chest, breathing in each other’s fire.
“You’re smarter than this,” Jaemin condescends. “Everything you do reflects on us. Don’t you think the Ahns have been through enough? If a reporter had approached you back then, I would have strangled them with my bare hands—”
“I was seventeen when Jeno died!” Chenle yells, as if some combination of proximity and volume could possibly make Jaemin understand that he’s in the wrong.“Not seven. And unless you’re ready to share something new about what happened that night, as far as I know Jeno wasn’t murdered, so it’s not the same situation anyway—”
“Hyung, Chenle, stop—” Jisung steps in to push them apart, and when he shoves, Jaemin stumbles back.
“There it is,” Jaemin laughs hollowly, his eyes wild. “You’re not just here to talk to the Ahn family. You’ve come back to investigate this one.”
“Hyung, come on, I’m tired,” Jisung insists, gripping at Jaemin’s forearm now that one of them is yielding. “Let’s go to sleep.”
Jaemin is no longer physically anchored in his convictions, but his words still sting as if he spit them directly into Chenle’s face.
“Do you want to interview me, then?” Jaemin hisses, sharp as broken glass. “Should you go get your recorder and your little notebook? Get it over with, so you can fuck off again and keep blaming me for the things you totally made up in your head?”
“I didn’t make it up that you undermined me for no reason tonight,” Chenle says hotly. “You did that, Hyung, not me.” Jaemin isn’t trying to fight his way back to him, not with Jisung’s hand on his arm, but his breaths are getting quicker and shallower, and it’s so predictable that it’s pathetic. Jaemin can’t ever stand to be told he doesn’t know best. “I left, and I grew up, and you still can’t stand—”
“Hyung, I think I tweaked something at work today,” Jisung interrupts, tugging at Jaemin’s arm once more. “Can you help me?” Jaemin looks at Jisung, his chest still heaving, but Jisung doesn’t back down. “Please, Hyung?”
Another beat passes before Jaemin begins to deflate, his eyes closing as he takes a deep breath. He allows Jisung to pull him towards the stairs.
“Sweet dreams, Chenle,” Jisung murmurs as they pass. “I’ll be back.”
When they reach the base of the stairs, Jisung lets Jaemin go up first, one hand on his waist as he guides him. Once they reach the landing, Jaemin mumbling something low and soft to Jisung that Chenle can’t make out, Chenle digs through his bag for his Evian bottle and his keys, and then he stalks back outside to his rental car. He’s got Mark’s number dialed on speaker and the cap off the bottle before he even sits down.
Mark picks up on the second ring, and Chenle lets out a breath he didn’t even realize he’d been holding.
“Hey, hotshot,” Mark says. “How’s it going down there?”
“I made it nine whole hours before fighting with my stepbrother.”
For a beat, Chenle thinks the line goes dead.
“So . . . it’s going better than expected?” Mark asks hopefully.
Despite himself, Chenle snorts and lets his head thunk back against the headrest.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Chenle lies with a smile. “I got some good ideas at the funeral hall. Our deceased was quite the casanova, it turns out. It was basically an open secret.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Mark says. “The way he was murdered—it has to be pretty personal to not only strangle someone, but then to maim them after. Sounds like there are plenty of people who might have feelings about it.”
“The mutilation, though,” Chenle sighs, fidgeting the bottle cap back and forth between his fingers. “That’s what I can’t puzzle out. Teeth and fingerprints could both be used to identify the body, so the killer attempts to destroy them both. That makes sense. But then the body was left in public, still fairly identifiable? And with flowers? It’s like the killer changed their mind.”
“You’re right, that’s weird,” Mark says. “But don’t pressure yourself about it. You’re not just there to solve a murder mystery. You’re there to humanize the situation, to explore the depths of the human condition after a shocking death in a small town, in a way you’re uniquely equipped to do because this is your small town. Don’t lose sight of that.”
Chenle takes a swig from his bottle and weighs his next words very carefully, sitting there with the comfort of Mark’s steady breathing in his ear. Then he thinks, fuck it, and opens his mouth.
“The victim’s son said Jaemin fought sometimes with his father.” Chenle mentally braces himself just from the way Mark inhales, obviously winding himself up for a speech.
“Chenle—”
“He was the last one to see him alive,” Chenle pushes on. “The family runs this town. It’s not impossible that he could have arranged a hit on Ahn, if he had some secret motive, and that he could have staged it for the same day he was teaching Gaeul—“
“Whoa, okay,” Mark interrupts him firmly. “Stop. I sent you down there because I thought you might have an inside edge on a story that could be your next big piece. Was I wrong about that?”
It stings that Mark doubts him, but even more so that he doesn’t trust Chenle’s instinct on a story. That’s never happened before.
“If there’s even a chance Jaemin is involved,” Chenle says, “I can’t leave Jisung alone with him.”
“Except there’s not a single established fact pointing to Jaemin,” Mark insists. “The only facts you have are that Jaemin has a strong alibi and, as of now, absolutely no motive. To report otherwise is just dealing in libel.”
“You don’t know him like I do.”
“I don’t have to know him to know it’s poor technique, and you know that too.”
Mark sighs, as loud as a gunshot in the quiet of the car. He never yells, he just gets disappointed, and his disappointment has never been an easy thing to endure.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That was harsh. You’re just better than that, Chenle. You’re too good for it. Take a breath, check your head. Do you need to come home?”
Chenle has been longing to run home all day, and Mark is right, he has no facts to back up his gut. That’s the stuff lawsuits are made of.
But he can’t leave. Not until he knows more.
“I was venting,” Chenle says. “I’m good. I’m not going to do anything stupid. So let me be good, okay?”
Mark sighs again, but this time it’s tinged with fondness, and Chenle has long been helpless but to reciprocate Mark’s affection.
“You and I often have very different definitions of the word ‘good,’” Mark says. “Please be careful. Call me if you need anything, day or night.”
“Love you too, Markie baby,” Chenle coos. There’s an audible scoff followed by retching noises in the background of the call while Mark laughs.
“I do though,” he says quietly, once his giggles have subsided. “You know that, right?”
Embarrassing. And cute. How does this man cut Chenle’s paycheck?
“Yeah,” Chenle answers. Mark is the warmth of fondness and friendship instead of the inferno of anger; Chenle’s face pricks with it, but it’s a pleasant heat. “Tell Junnie I said hi.”
“You know as well as I do that he’s been eavesdropping this whole time,” Mark whispers.
Right on cue, he can hear Renjun’s indignant voice in the background, arguing that Mark knows how to use a speakerphone and chose not to, so he brought it upon himself.
“I know,” Chenle teases, “but better you call him out on it than me.”
Renjun yells sharply again, drowned out by another patented Mark Lee giggle.
“Goodnight, Lele,” Mark laughs, and Chenle hangs up the phone feeling lighter.
He almost emptied his water bottle while they were talking, but he might as well finish it before he heads back inside. He sips at the last of it as he takes in the view in front of him; he hadn’t given the yard much attention when he first arrived. It looks like Eomeoni’s once-prized flower garden has mostly been uprooted, replaced with a tidy vegetable plot and a cozy-looking fire pit surrounded by lounge chairs. The old greenhouse has also been replaced by a newer model with nicer windows, but if Chenle squints, he can still see the shadows of a younger Jisung through the panes of glass, his lanky legs hanging over the end of the wheelbarrow. Chenle swears he hears the rhythmic thump of rubber on concrete beside him, as if conjured up by the greenhouse illusion, and when he looks to his left, the basketball hoop is still there, only the ratty net and the scratched-up backboard showing the changes of time.
Jisung had kept his greenhouse key in an Iron Man lunch box, laid at the base of the furthest persimmon tree in the yard. Eomeoni had a copy too, of course—she still kept the fertilizers and tools in there for her precious plants—but Jisung, albeit clumsy, was a goody two-shoes and could be trusted not to venture towards the back where she kept her supplies. Instead he would sit in the wheelbarrow, right near the greenhouse door, and read on his tablet whenever one or more of his brothers was outside. Most often that was Chenle, and sometimes Jeno, giving Chenle someone to dribble against whenever he was having a good week.
Outside but still inside, is the way Jisung described the greenhouse to Chenle. Honestly, Chenle could never see the appeal of reading in a metal tub next to smelly dirt and garden supplies when you could be playing basketball instead.
“He’s not very good at hiding the key, is he?” Chenle had joked to Jeno once, watching Jisung’s feet swing over the edge of the wheelbarrow in between shots in H.O.R.S.E. “It’s like he barely even tries.”
“Maybe he isn’t trying,” Jeno had answered simply, mouth pursed in concentration as he dribbled back and forth considering his shot. “You’re the only one who’d think about taking it, and if you did you’d give it back the minute he started to get upset.”
Jeno had missed his shot, but Chenle had missed his next four, and Jeno had won the game.
Chenle should probably find a way to make tonight’s mess up to Jisung in the morning. Jisung coddles Jaemin far too much for Chenle’s liking—for a moment, Chenle imagines a world where Jisung told Jaemin to go fuck himself and he and Chenle drove off into the night—but Jisung has always been sensitive to stress, and few things stress him out like family drama.
When Chenle gets out of the car, it looks like the bedroom lights are all off. He creeps back into the house and up the stairs anyway. He hasn’t gone to bed at 9pm since he was in middle school, but he’s not keen on revisiting the rest of the house without company. He needs to work, anyway. The early hour gives him time to flesh out his notes, maybe do some research. The stuff he still gets paid to do, for now, assuming he can find 800 words in the next two to three days.
Jisung’s bedroom door is open when Chenle passes. That’s not the surprising part—it’s a habit they both developed, listening for Jeno. What is surprising, though, is the toned arm thrown across his waist as he sleeps, and the head of raven-black hair buried into the back of Jisung’s neck, nearly as dark as the shadows of the night.
Chenle should have known—the family sleeps upstairs, that’s always supposed to have been the rule, and there are only so many places Jaemin could go upstairs that aren’t the room he shared with Jeno or Baba and Eomeoni’s old room down past Chenle’s door. Both options are nightmare-inducing, and for Jaemin, there was a time that phrase was literal.
It figures that Jaemin would be smothering even in his sleep. His arm draped over Jisung’s body, inserting some part of himself in between Jisung and the door, feels like a petty schoolyard warning—a reminder they belong together, and outsiders do not. That’s a Jaemin problem though, Chenle decides, as he reaches his room and tosses his empty bottle on the bed. He’ll refill it after he showers. He sits down on the mattress to remove his socks, and when he looks up, he sees them, still imposing even in the darkness. Chenle doesn’t fear the doors; however he feels about them, it’s something that hurts worse than fear.
His ears prick with the echoes of screams long-past, and in his mind’s eye he sees the right double door open, low light spilling out into the hall.
Chenle was six when his Mama moved them to Korea. She had wanted him to know his father, and that required coming here, to this town full of strangers and whispers and dead pigs. He understands it now—Baba came from money and had married into more of it, and Mama wanted a better life for Chenle than what she thought she could provide—but he had been so confused, and so afraid, the first night he’d ever spent in this room. She’d dropped him off at the front door with a letter and one final kiss on his cheek, and then she’d disappeared back down the long, winding drive towards town. Chenle had rang the doorbell as he’d promised her he would, and Baba had answered, and then the screaming he couldn’t understand had started not long after.
Chenle’s bedroom had been Baba’s office, back then. A cream futon across from Baba’s desk had served as his place to sleep that night, as it did every night until Eomeoni had decided it served her better to keep him and he needed a room more equivalent to that of her sons’. Chenle had sat down on the futon shaking, trying not to cry or run out the door back towards Mama like he’d promised he wouldn’t do, and then a door opened somewhere close by. Warm, low lamplight had spilled out into the hallway, and two confused faces had poked out through the crack in between a set of double doors, directly down the hall. They’d so obviously been twins—matching heights, matching haircuts. One of them had stepped out of the room frowning, a deep furrow between his brows, but he’d changed course for another room down the hall when a small, scared voice called out from within it.
When the other boy finally looked down the hall, he’d been so startled to see Chenle sitting there. His mouth had rounded out and eyes went wide, and Chenle had held his breath, just in case he started screaming too. But then the boy had blinked, and in the next moment he changed the orientation of Chenle’s whole world, because he’d smiled, and he’d waved, and Chenle had felt it for the very first time—that inevitable, near-gravitational pull towards loving Jeno.
Chenle hadn’t smiled all day before then, but he couldn’t help the one that cracked across his face as he waved in return. He would have at least one friend here, until Mama came back for him.
Footsteps had come bustling up the stairs then, belonging to the screaming woman he would later come to know as Eomeoni.
“Jeno!” she had barked. There was a small basket full of what looked to Chenle like leaves and linens and a few colored glass bottles tucked under her arm as she continued to scold the little boy down the hall.
“Goodnight, Jeno,” Chenle had mouthed as he waved goodbye. Jeno had shyly waved back once more, and then Eomeoni had blocked him from Chenle’s view, ushering Jeno back inside his room.
Baba had come upstairs a few moments later to explain that Chenle would be staying with them for a few weeks. Then weeks had turned into months, and months into years, and now Chenle sits here once again, missing someone from the four corners of this room.
Even when he heads to his en suite to shower, Chenle can’t bring himself to shut the door to the hall.
Chenle finally goes to bed shortly after midnight. He is awoken maybe thirty minutes later when someone slides under the covers on the other side of the bed.
“Are you feeling better?” Jisung whispers. Even in late spring, his oversized feet feel like icicles when he shoves them under Chenle’s ankles. Eomeoni always fretted that Jisung was just a little too lanky to have good circulation, and although Chenle always hated to agree with her on anything, she was probably right about that one.
“Are you?” Chenle asks quietly.
“At least you’re talking to each other,” Jisung jokes. When Chenle doesn’t so much as smirk, Jisung sighs. “Spit it out, Chenle.”
“You shouldn’t have to give him something to coddle, Jisung.”
The darkness is always deep, this far out of the city, but Jisung’s eyes are darker still as he takes in Chenle. For all that Chenle loves him, sometimes the depth of how much Jisung feels is uncomfortable, because Chenle can’t always see where it ends. There’s no one in the world Chenle knows like he knows Jisung, and even then, Jisung still gets stuck within storms that Chenle has never been able to chart a course out of. That’s how he’s looking at Chenle now, with something fathoms-deep in the warm brown of his eyes, and this late at night, Chenle can’t chase him that far down without drowning himself.
“I don’t have to,” Jisung says quietly. He scoots forward until they’re nearly forehead to forehead, as close as they can be on separate pillows. “You’re finally here again. I don’t want you to leave.”
“You know I’m going to leave,” Chenle chides. It comes out with a gentleness he didn’t intend, the one that Jisung seems to leach out of him at times. “Why don’t you come with me for a while, when I do?”
“With the hours you work?” Jisung shakes his head, his hair feathering out from the friction. “You’re the one who always said I can’t be left alone in the house.”
“Yeah Jisung, but you can,” Chenle insists. “Of course you can.” Chenle is being a little too loud for the time of night, and he can tell from the way the light casts across Jisung’s face that he didn’t shut the door behind him when he entered, but it doesn’t matter to Chenle if Jaemin wakes up. He doesn’t have anything to say that Jaemin shouldn’t hear. “You got your degree mostly online, and you don’t even really use it. You stay here, working in a business you don’t even like, living in the same house you always have. What is keeping you here?”
“This is our home, Chenle,” Jisung says patiently, a tired line Chenle has heard a hundred times through the phone. “This is all that’s left of us. You left because you needed to, and that’s okay. But we all need different things.”
“Is that why he even sleeps with you now?”
“What are you, jealous?” Jisung grins wide, and Chenle resists the urge to shove his face down into the pillow. “I promised you I would come back!”
“Yeah, after midnight,” Chenle gripes. “Like I’m the other woman.”
“Oh my god, turn over,” Jisung insists, his eye-roll visible even in the dark.
“Do you even remember how to be the big spoon?” Chenle grumbles, swatting at Jisung’s hands as they move towards his shoulders. “Maybe you should turn over.”
“Will you quit fighting me when you don’t want to?” Jisung asks.
Chenle huffs loudly, one final show of how hard he tried to resist until Jisung made him capitulate, and then he turns over.
Jisung cuddles in behind him, pressing his face to the nape of Chenle’s neck as he tangles their legs together.
“You know he used to get nightmares in their room,” Jisung says, his breath a gentle pressure against Chenle’s skin.
“I know.”
“They didn’t stop when he was downstairs either, even after you left. He’d start talking in his sleep, and he’d keep talking, until he was screaming.” Jisung takes a shuddering breath and places one hand over Chenle’s ribs. “I’d wake him up, but he’d still be screaming.”
“What’s your point, Jisung,” Chenle says. He closes his eyes against the memories of Jaemin’s night terrors and reaches for Jisung’s hand instead. He pulls until Jisung’s arm is fully over his side, wrapping his fingers around Jisung’s wrist.
“He doesn’t get them anymore,” Jisung explains. “He hasn’t for about two years now. Does that help you understand?”
“I guess.”
“You two . . .” Jisung sighs and rolls his wrist out of Chenle’s grip to hold onto Chenle instead, his thumb settling soft over the low thread of Chenle’s pulse. “You could be so sweet, you know? Like kittens curled up in sunshine. We’d be out in the yard waiting for Eomma to come up the drive with Jeno, back from the doctor’s, and you and Jaemin would lay out in the grass, pointing at clouds and bickering over their shapes. You’d laugh, and I’d look out from the wheelbarrow and pretend the greenhouse door was a picture frame. I’d wish I could freeze time, so you’d stay happy together. But after . . .”
Chenle is trying to keep his eyes from wandering down the hall, but he knows the doors are looking back at him regardless. He wonders, before today, when the last time was that anyone said Jeno’s name in the house.
“After Jeno,” he murmurs.
Jisung exhales.
“After Jeno, yeah.” Jisung shifts behind him, the heat of him coming in even closer against Chenle’s back. It’s too hot for this; Chenle will start to sweat through his tee shirt in a few more minutes, unless they kick the covers off.
Chenle doesn’t move.
“Jaemin needs to love, Chenle,” Jisung explains gently. “But he doesn’t think you need him to love you anymore. He doesn’t think you want it.”
“I’m not sure Hyung and I have the same definition of love.”
“I think you just don’t always understand each other,” Jisung offers diplomatically. Chenle breathes deep and fights down the urge to insist that Jaemin started it. “But he shouldn’t have assumed the worst of you tonight. It wasn’t right to accuse you of being cruel and unethical.”
It really is getting too hot. He should ask Jisung to move. Chenle lies there for a heartbeat or two in their comfortable silence, the kind that forms when you have the choice to speak but don’t need to, and decides that he can indulge Jisung and overheat for a little bit longer.
“Are you going to go back to him once you’re done sucking up to me?” Chenle asks.
Jisung scoffs, squeezing Chenle’s wrist until Chenle begins to squirm and giggle, trying to escape the pressure.
“Is that what you call loving and supporting someone after an argument now?” Jisung asks. “‘Sucking up?’ Damn, the city changed you.”
“Just wondering if I’m going to sweat to death before morning comes,” Chenle teases. “That’s all.”
Jisung squeezes Chenle’s wrist once more and withdraws his head from Chenle’s neck.
“I’m right here, Chenle,” he says. “I’ll stay until you fall asleep.”