[11] I See Fire (Part 1/3)
Fic Title: I See Fire
Main Characters: Jay, Crush
Pairings: Crush/Jay, slight Taecyeon/Jay and Nichkhun/Tiffany
Warnings: Expletives, brief descriptions of sexual scenes/thoughts, character death(s), violence
Word Count: 28,396
Number of prompts from the list: 1
Number of extra prompts: None
A/N: I'd like to give my thanks to A, for reading this fic and being so supportive and to M, who is so kind, loving, and patient with me. I'm forever indebted to the faith you two have in me ♥
Now a few things about the fic. The title of this fic is named after Ed Sheeran's soundtrack from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The entire story is actually two parts in total, but what you're about to read is only the first part. After the reveals, I'll work on the second part and post it as soon as I'm done.
Crush (Shin Hyosub) has a little bit of a lisp when he speaks and sings Korean and English. His “s” become “sh” sounds, but not in all cases. Depending on the word, he can sometimes pronounce it without any trouble and sometimes, he ends up saying it like, “I mish you, baby.” To simplify things in this fic, I settled with this: he lisps whenever he can’t pronounce the “s” in English (pretending that he speaks English only in the story but if the story was real life, he’d be speaking Korean with a lisp.) Since the “sh” sound isn’t a common English lisp, so I stuck with “th” instead. This means if he wanted to say, “I’m sorry” he’ll say it like, “I’m thorry.” Therefore, all “s” sounding parts in the word have been replaced with “th” instead. So words like ice, voice, sometimes, stop, and miss are all spelled and pronounced as ithe, voithe, thometimeth, thtop, and mith.
There were some tricky words like fix or frozen. The letter “x” is pronounced as “eks” so only the “s” part of that is replaced with “th.” Therefore, I wrote it as fixth which would be pronounced as “fikth.” As for “z”: that was a little more complicated, but I decided that frozen will be spelled as frothen. Regarding the words with “ss”: sometimes, the words with “ss” have an “s” sound OR a “sh” sound. Like the word miss, I’ve written it as mith because of its “s” sound. Whereas a word like obsession, I’ve left the “ss” part alone due to its “sh” sound, so it’s written as obthession. Crush can, without a doubt, pronounce “sh” sounds in Korean and English (I mean he does call himself Crush) so all “sh” sounding parts of any words have been left alone.
And the thing about Jay’s name. Nowadays, he calls himself Jay Park. In this fic though, since he’s surrounded by Korean speaking people, they call him Jaebeom or Park Jaebeom. When Jay refers to himself however, he calls himself Jay because I believe he thinks to himself in English rather than in Korean. As you will notice, others like Tiffany will call him Jay as well since they are his English-speaking counterparts, and are (were?) close enough friends to Jay to call him by his English name.
I think that's all that there is to mention. Enjoy~ ♥
I
i’m matterless now, bambino
Dark chocolate kissed the evening sky. They said the color suited me the most; but to me, the chocolate tint was every reminder of his eyes, staring coldly into my soul with frozen diamond tears threatening to fall. His petalline lips would tremble. My hands would tremble just as much. And when the tears did fall, they were like daggers twisting and turning through my darkest tangled veins, and his teardrop diamonds would break the glass of my sanity. All I heard were his clouded breaths crinkling against the frigid air and the shards of me clattering on the linoleum floor. Tell me that I was the dark chocolate underneath the silvertongue foil wrapper, and I’d tell you that you were wrong. You couldn’t savor his soul, his dark chocolate eyes by swallowing all that confection without a second thought and have it tumbling, tumbling, tumbling into an abyss of acid. You’d have to savor his soul through his lips. And he would fucking melt against your tongue.
But I’ve never had his lips. So I couldn’t tell you how good he really was.
*
I traveled under the flickering stars a little slower this time. The candle wickers behind my eyelids were still ablaze, ticking the last minutes down to ash until I had no more fire, illuminating my dilated livid pupils to see through the husky velvet of the day's darkest alter ego. I would look for him every night if Hades' eyes didn't try to inhale my fading whittling soul away from my purpose like a screaming, screeching wheeze of a drag of cancer candy and cigarette before I could rush back into the waiting portal where time didn't exist, where Hades couldn't vacuum my ocean bones to dust, and where unfortunately the man I was looking for was without protective guidance from the above-stars observatory. That meant he'd be without me. Especially if I didn't watch over him, and I had promised the homeboy I would, pound-sign-swipe and all that shit. A pinky promise, yeah. And no, that wasn’t romantic, idiot. So this time I wanted to look carefully, at least before the light blew out from behind my eyes. All I wanted to see was if he was still waiting by the curb for the bus to come. Then I would have to watch the bus swallow him up and I would feel something rise up to my throat. I'd have to stop myself from gasping by choking myself with my frostbitten fingers. (Hell, they were blue and black like I had dipped them in dry ice and black holes.) And really, he wasn’t something I should worry about. But he did. His hands were tucked tight into his pockets and the way he placed his feet, careening on the edge of the curb, letting himself wade into the buoyancy of the thin air, his body swinging to and fro, and the ends of his jacket fluttering, whisking away from the bristle of the serpentine wind. It made my stomach lurch. The way his mouth moved to the silent lyrics unknown to me and the world outside the ear-buds hidden beneath the forest green beanie, the dim street-light would catch his cherry cola tongue against his murmuring lips. Licking the cracked blood lines from the winter frost. I'd never get to know how his lips would taste.
November was coming on fast. As it always did. It had been four years since I last held his eyes. That was the last time I saw him cry, the last time I felt the daggers puncture my lungs and slit my heart. But now, even when he didn’t look at me, I still felt the pain and I forced myself to sit through it while I searched and watched over him every night he left the premises, always in the forest green beanie, summertime tank top or wintertime downy coat, and faded sweats. I had always hated the green. When I used to be there with him, I’d constantly tell him to get rid of the thing but he’d never listen. I wondered if he ever remembered me and my words of disdain whenever he put on the thing over his ruly sweaty hair after dance practice. Did he ever remember me at all?
Did he ever wonder what my lips were like?
Shut up, it's only a mild curiosity and it wouldn't kill me because I'm already dead.
He stopped teetering on the curb and he pulled his fists out his pockets, rubbing at his knuckles. He must have felt cold. Not that I could remember what it felt like being cold since I was constantly freezing anyway. It was the way I had died and I was permanently stuck in this state. Frozen as fuck and frostbitten at the joints and fingers, bones so cold some had cracked and shattered. There were a lot of hidden secrets behind my death that even I didn't know. I thought that perhaps my mentor knew, but I didn't bother asking because I needed to convince myself that I had died with a reason that would play out as a helpful domino fall in the grand scheme of things; but my mentor said that I was just avoiding the truth like a cootie plague and I’d be telling you that whatever the truth, I wouldn't be able to handle it. Am I curious? Sure as hell I am, but I have other things to worry about, like that incoming gust of wind approaching me like a stampede of air bulls which might blow the candles behind my eyes out. Shit. In the corners of my eyes I could see him down below, pacing around now, glancing at his wrist from time to time. Wait a minute. He wasn't waiting for the bus. He was acting like he was late, but the bus was about to come in seven minutes which had to mean he was waiting for something else. Someone else. From down the street, I saw a black van heading down his way. That was the company van. I debated swooping down and trying to get a close look at who the driver was or trying to make an escape from the incoming wind several hundred miles away. But he'd never gotten a ride from the company van in the evening before unless it was for his schedule; but if it was, he’d wear something nicer, wouldn’t he? I frowned. Now wasn’t the time to decide whether he was truly a fashion terrorist or whether that black van was as dangerous as white vans luring in innocent kids with candy.
And of course, I was god-awful at quick decision-making because now I couldn’t swoop down to save him or escape the wind to save myself when the gust came in full force and sent me tumbling through the air, limbs flailing. I didn’t scream. My vision went black, and after awhile of being shoved by air, clouds, and leaves, I felt something violently suck me down, my skin peeling off and my joints in pain from the struggle of not wanting to be pulled down. Fuck. I began to panic when I felt gravity start to tug my organs against inner walls, pushing against my weak frame. I could feel my bones twisting at awkward angles as the descent began to accelerate and okay, now, I had to scream. I should have realized. Hades.
*
“H-Hey Taec, it’s me, Tiffany. I swear I know it’s two AM in the freaking morning but um, we-- Khun and me-- went to the club for awhile, right? Took the company van out with some other friends and all. We went to the noodle shop after, in the little corner by the alleyway some miles away, ‘cause we were hungry-- well I was, but I was sorta passed out by the time we got to the shop and so Khun went in alone. Huh, remember the other day we were joking about how awk it’d be if we ended up seeing Jay after four years at some random place at a random time? Yeah. That happened. I mean I didn’t know, we didn’t I swear, Khun didn’t say anything if he did, so I guess he didn’t know. Well-- I-- I didn’t see anything until I heard a sound, like something crashed. They could’ve been-- um-- plates? We parked at the back so I can see through the windows all lit up to the kitchen and everything. I saw Jay walk in and Khun following him, looking like he was begging or something. I don’t know if it’s bad-- um, Jay’s yelling at him. That’s bad. I don’t want to walk in and make it a big scene, Taec, you should come over right now-- O-Oh my god. Taec, he’s got a knife! A swiss army knife! Taec, he’s got a--”
*
Something rustled behind me. Everything was velvet dark and I couldn't tell whether that was just me or my surroundings. "Hello?" I called out. I felt shaky at the thought of seeing Hades which I pushed far back into my mind before I could sweat about it and thought about how I was worried beyond hurricane's worth for my homeboy getting a ride from that company van. The rustling noise gradually got louder as my goosebumps did, and I rubbed at the sides of my arms to heat up the spidering chills honeycombed across my frostbitten skin. Then, the hushed sounds turned into footsteps. The fuck? "Uh, hello... Somebody out there?" I asked again meekly, half-expecting myself to fall into a sudden sandpit of choking darkness; and Hades cackling a fire to singe my withered heart at the electrocuted, frittered ends of me, galaxies past goodbye. I wasn't ready to go yet. I never was.
"Hey," came a soft voice from behind me, a warm breath flitted past my ear. I jumped out of my skin with a yell.
"Holy sh-- Whah--" A grip came around my wrist. "Crush?! Is that you or--"
"Yeah," he said, low voice taming my fried nerves. "Now shut up and follow me. Gotta prepare you for a meet up with the dark overlord." Was that a smile I heard in his voice?
"Fuck, what--"
“Juth’ shut up.”
I bit on my lip to stop myself from laughing at my mentor’s lisp, because god, did it feel good hearing it again. “Aight man, don’t mind me, being scared to friggin’ death ‘cause I’ve got a casual meet up with the Hadz god dude. Yup. And if this is the last time I see you before he burns me into an ashy snowman, you'll miss me right?" I imagined my mentor shaking his head with a smug face.
“Only thtupid people meet him, in cathe you didn’t know,” he deadpanned. I gave him a look and I was sure he saw it, even in the dark. "Alright, alright, yeah. I'd mith my thtupid man."
“Huh, should I be flattered by that?” I heard an amused snort. “Yeah, I guess I should be. I am your favorite thtupid man, after all.” I got a shove and an accompanied laugh from him for imitating his lisp. But come on, what a beautiful thing it was when tongue met teeth and they clashed and collided where the north and south poles didn’t align just right and you’d get the hushed ‘th’ instead of the particular ‘s’ within lip to lip amalgamation, swollen cherry burst from kissing-- I mean kithing. But the shh was ever present, as sweet nothings in my ears, as I was sure that was how he meant it, which he whispered to me during dark and stormy nights when I was in a haze of hallucinations and drunk with anxiety and beer-- I mean fear. His voice was made of strong wood and timid rain, stuttering violin strings dripping with ambrosia honey. He knew how to walk the tightrope with that voice box and pouty lips. But I wasn’t gay and he was just really good at talking. Sometimes. (Singing too, which he wouldn’t admit.) Otherwise, he was really annoying like what he was doing to me right now. My mentor tugged me a bit on a stumbling parade because I continued to repeat ‘thtupid’-- but the more he pushed and pulled jokingly on my clothes and limbs, the more I mimicked him-- until I probably blew the last straw and he pushed me hard and I fell, hit something like his knees, I hoped, as I clung onto them with dear life. “Bastard! I could have fallen into a chasm and you would have lost me forever!” I whined. “Your consequence: I’ll be sure to let Hades know that you call him Heidi ‘cause you can’t pronounce his name right.”
My mentor laughed softly as his arms came around my torso, helping me up to my feet. “Park Jaebeom, you’re tho fine.” He straightened out my clothing, as if that really mattered. “But I’m thlightly worried for you.”
“Slightly?” I asked in a high pitched voice. “I thought you cared for me wholesomely, Crush. Like boat-loads of amore and not just a slight tiny sliver of care, smaller than the new moon, bambino. Ohh no. Ohh no, baby."
“Hey, I do care," Crush insisted, "But I mean, I’m not gonna get tortured like you will when I open my mouth.”
I gasped in surprise. “Wow, here I am kissing your hand, princess, and you're treating me like the lackey's lackey. Where’s the support system we had? Like you know, making me feel better about meeting H-dawg the Death Eater CEO? I feel fantastic about this already,” I muttered sarcastically. I tried to find his hand in the darkness so I could mockingly caress it but I suavely hit something else instead, hopefully his stomach and not his crotch, and heard Crush say something indistinct under his breath. "What?" I asked. He seemed to recover from an embarrassed pause with a small muffled laugh and a gentle tug at my elbow.
“Juth’, don’t open your mouth,” he said softly, his voice so near me, I could feel the warmth for days.
“Which is, as you know, damn near impossible.”
“Shut up,” he said again, lovingly.
“Oh, bite me,” I answered with a smile. Silence hung in the air between us as my mentor guided me aimlessly in the dark, when bits and pieces of a song tune fell into my mind like a veil of snowflakes on sleeping songbirds dead in the winter. I couldn't remember what the song was called or who sang it, but it definitely was not mine because I'd remember my own songs. I don't care, I don't care, I'll die for you. My mentor squeezed my shoulder painfully then, not out of sentimentality I knew, like he wanted to distract me from what was on my mind. What the hell was his problem? I stopped humming, my face all soured up with annoyance. “Isn’t there a way I could, like, not meet him?”
“Nope.”
“Why?” I didn’t get an answer, either because he was avoiding it or he was trying to come up with one. But I waited long enough. “Crush-saengie, there is no way in the world I could see you shake your head for an answer or shrug your shoulders or thrust your hips at me ‘cause I can’t see.”
“Good,” he murmured. He pulled me for a sharp turn and then stopped me, and of course, my legs didn’t understand that so I had to trip and stumble into him before he steadied me. He put something over my shoulders, slid my arms into what I thought were sleeves, and zipped up the front.
“What’re you doing?” I asked. I wouldn't be surprised if I had asked that into his shoulder out of pure blindness. But I forgot my mentor had a habit of ignoring my questions.
“Jaebeom, keep your head down. Alwayth. Don’t look up at the thound of his voithe. Juth’ don’t.”
“What? Why--”
“If you do look up, he’ll exthpect you to turn into ash and if you don’t, then he’ll know thomething ith wrong.”
I frowned. “Um, I thought everyone had candles behind--”
“Shut up,” he snapped. Well, that shut up pricked. I didn’t like the way he said it to me, almost like he was reprimanding me for finding out something I wasn’t supposed to know. Then what the hell was I allowed to know? “‘Kay, g'luck, J-bomb,” he said, giving me an encouraging shove. I grunted in irritation at his behavior because I was sure there must have been a way to skip this torture, but everyone was hiding secrets from me and maybe I was being so soft people took advantage of it. Well, whatever. But at a split second, I turned back in the direction my mentor had pushed me from and I wanted to ask, What if I never come back? because it was starting to bleed into a legitimate fear rumbling at the tips of my shivering fingers and clenched jaws. I wanted to tell Crush to watch over my homeboy, but he probably knew that. And he probably knew that I'd miss his lisp. Yeah. Okay. Time to move on. I suspected I was pushed through a doorway because now the ground underneath me disintegrated and it was up to me to levitate from falling into some more darkness, which didn’t sound like such a bad idea versus having to meet Hades.
*
“Taec, it's Tiffany again. Why aren't you picking up the phone?! I kinda need help here! Listen, um, I don't know where they went. Khun just tackled Jay and then they went somewhere behind the door that leads to the front-- um-- oh god-- I think I’m gonna go in. You should probably get over here-- Oh god, oh my god, Nichkhun?! Stop hurting--”
*
“What a shame.”
“What is?” I asked. I kept my head down to my chest as promised but Hades sounded a lot less scary than I expected. His voice was quiet and hollow. Other than that, I couldn't tell much about him because I couldn't see and that highly irritated me but somehow made Crush think that I'd be safer being as blind as a mole. Guess it had something to do with eye contact and turning into ash. Or the scary part of Hades was really his appearance and what he did, was capable of doing. So kudos to me being blind, I guess.
“You don’t know a lot of things about yourself. What a shame.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. Hold it back, Jay. Don’t retort. Don’t do anything stupid. “Is there something I should know?”
He laughed. The sound of it pounded on my chest and ribs which terrified me because I didn't expect him to have such a loud laugh from a hollow voice and somewhat relieved me from masking the pounding of my heart. I didn't know if he could hear my heartbeat, but if he did, then damn, did I hate sounding weak. “I have a count. The perfect balance. If there is one less to torture, I have to find some more.”
I gulped. He had to be talking about me. He really was going to torture me.
“But you’re different," he continued. "It’s... tragic." The way he said 'tragic' was touchy. I didn't like it.
“So, is there a way I can escape torture?” I half-expected him to turn me into ash right about then for asking a dumb question, but instead I heard him hum in thought.
“If you can find your murderer, then yes.”
What the fuck? I was so taken aback I gaped and nearly looked up at his voice but snapped my neck back down so quick that it hurt. I tried to massage the nape of my neck. “So, like, I find a replacement for the torture I was gonna get? Sounds hella fantastic.” Then I cringed for saying that because he grunted in disapproval.
But, seriously, a murderer? What the fuck? What. The. Fuck?
“Oh, what a shame,” he said after some silence. I didn’t know what to do but frown deeply. Why did he keep saying this to me?
“What do you mean by shame?”
*
I slammed my fist on the table. I did it again. And again. And again.
"Thtop it, Jaebeom."
I mocked a look of surprise. "You know what, Crush, how about you try your own advice at shutting up. You don't have anything else other than shit to lie to me with." This time I could see and Crush, sitting across from me, had looked away, ducked his head from my piercing gaze and bit his lower lip. I felt something sink in my stomach and I let out a rattled sigh. "Fine. Sorry. I'm mad and you're not fixing it like you're supposed to."
My mentor looked up, his bottom lip hidden behind his upper lip, chewing in thought. Finally, he exhaled and the dim light caught his bruised mouth. Crush had always gone boxing his lips swollen with pondering, drowning worry. In the slightest flicker, I wondered if warm running blood within a kiss tasted better than imagined and then my eyes met with his and my unflinching gaze melted and so did he, his shoulders slumping. "I can't. I can't fixth it," he breathed.
"Damn it, Crush. Damn you." I rose up from my chair and paced back and forth. I knew my mentor was following my movements with his attentive sad eyes. “Why are you even my mentor?” I asked. “Can you answer that simple question or is that so classified that you’ll have to give me another lie?” I paused to glare at his face and his lips twitched, like he wanted to chew on them again but knew that if he did, he’d have blood dripping down his chin.
“I wathn’t trying to lie to you.”
“Then what?” I asked, shaking my hands in exasperation.
“I juth’ didn’t think... you could take it, and you thaid it yourthelf that you couldn’t. And you tried to avoid it when I thought about telling you. That’th why I didn’t tell you that you were murdered.”
“You’re right! I can’t take it!” I shouted. “I can’t fucking... I don’t even...”
Crush tilted his head and looked at me with pained lines on his face. Pained, my ass. “I... I-- Jaebeom--” He stared at his own hands, wrapped tight around the corners of the table, like he was trying to steady himself. “Believe me, hyung, I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“No,” I shook my head adamantly, “No, if you really cared, you would have told me, even if it hurt. I would have been out there looking for my murderer--”
“An obthession that would turn you--”
“Shut up!” I yelled. “I’m talking!” But the moment I got his silence, I couldn’t remember whatever angry thoughts I wanted to spew out so I sunk into my chair again and tapped the table impatiently, waiting for the train of thought to come back. It didn’t. Unfair that the thing that was blocking my thoughts out like a whimpering body in the middle of the train tracks was the guilt for using Crush’s loving words shut up like a whip and venom thrown back at his face; his face did flinch when I shouted and yelled at him. But I couldn’t let myself seem weak and yielding and caving in, so he stared at me until I allowed him to talk with an unforgivable frown. He sucked in a deep breath and ignored my facial expression. Damn, he was good at it when he wanted to be. Or maybe he could actually read my real emotions despite trying to put a different face. So fuck me, he was too forgiving. I let my forehead fall to the table with a dull thud. If it weren’t for his contorted facial expressions whenever I did something deprecating to myself, I would have smacked my forehead across the table several times instead, until my brain matter was mush and matterless.
“Jaebeom, are you...” He started, but I raised my hand to wave dismissively at whatever he was about to ask. He sighed. “Fine, let me elaborate. Hadeth ith cunning. You’ll be thearching for the murderer all day and night for yearth and you’ll never find them. That’ll be your obthession, your torture,” he explained slowly, careful with his words like he was placing one bomb after another into my chest. “And the reathon I’m your mentor is... well...” His brows furrowed. “One morning I woke up, got a file, and your name wath in it. Juth’ thome general info, like date of birth, date of death, and that you were murdered. That wath all I knew, along with mentoring you until you became an angel of death like me, or until... Hadeth intervened.”
“So Hades intervened and you thought I was dead meat? And you weren’t going to do anything about it? What if he really was gonna take me in? Then what? You were just gonna let him do it?” Then I rolled my eyes. “Okay, double the dead meat since I’m already dead.”
Crush winced. “I’m not-- I never thought about it that way, Jaebeom. I wanted to thave you, but I wathn’t allowed to. I wathn’t allowed tell you anything that’d obthcure your training either. I couldn’t tell you that you were murdered becauthe--”
“Well, now that I do know, are you going to tell me who the murderer is?” I interrupted him. Crush swallowed slowly. Which meant no, he couldn’t tell me. Son of a bitch. I stood out of my chair, fuming. “Okay, from now on, I’m going to take things in my own hands and you’re not going to stop me--”
“Jaebeom--”
“Fuck it, Crush! If I don’t do it, I’ll get tortured, and if I do try, at least there’s a small chance I could actually find the murderer, but since you like to make things so hard for-- ”
“Jaebeom.”
“What?!” I cried out.
“I don’t know who it ith!” Crush yelled exasperatedly, clenching his eyes shut, pressing the palms of his hands into them.
“You’re lying,” I seethed back.
“No, I thwear, I don’t know! I thought-- I thought you knew. I mean, I meant...” His swollen lips quivered and he moved his hands away from his face, his eyes not straight on anything as they usually were. Were his eyes blurry? That reminded me of those days when I’d have to drive in a downpour of rain and I couldn’t see a thing. But he spoke softly, tiredly, “If anyone should know, it’d be you.”
I shook my head. “If I did, then why is it that I don’t remember?”
He stared at me, his vision probably still blurry, and then his eyes went out of focus again, like he was looking past me, deep in thought. I tried to ignore the sight of his eyes so watery his lashes were glistening. He was trying to figure it out. “Your handth...” he murmured after a while.
“Yeah, frozen, frostbitten, whatever. So what?”
“Well there muth’ be a reathon it’th like that.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Thanks, Captain Obvious, for deducing a critically fundamental discovery. Did you honestly think I’ve never wondered to fucking hell as to why my hands and my body are like this--” I pointed angrily at my own crumbling, fragile frame, “--and why the hell I even deserve to suffer a horrific death that I don’t even know the details about, and why the hell I still have symptoms of hypothermia, I can only fucking guess, when I sleep at night; shiver violently like I’ve got seizures all the time, like fuck, why is my life so brutal, Crush, why. I’m tired of this shit. I wanna go kill the murderer myself, show them what they did to me. Make them suffer,” I spit with acid, and Crush’s face paled, “But I can’t! I can’t fucking murder them the way they did to me if I don’t even know how they got me all like this. Unless I was shoved to the bottom of a fucking frozen lake--” I stopped, my vision clouded. My mind screamed and Crush’s mouth fell open. “Holy... shit,” I gasped. “Holy fucking spastic shit.”
“Jae-Jaebeom... you alright?” he asked quietly. I nodded slowly, lethargically, and blinked my eyes rapidly out of the blur. The wickers behind my eyelids couldn’t have reached the end of their lifelines already. He was talking again, trying to make me feel better, I supposed. But Crush’s words slurred together in my ears and I took a deep breath, the intake of oxygen rushing up to my pounding head faster and louder than I’d like. “... Maybe if you keep talking, you’ll come to it,” was the only thing I heard.
“Um, uh...” I mumbled, glancing at Crush’s sweet face once more and thinking of my homeboy for a split second-- why couldn’t I remember homeboy’s name, huh? Then I felt the ground swirling beneath me, dreaded with fear thinking it was Hades again-- but no, we struck a fair deal, I thought-- oh, there goes Crush hustling, pushing out of his chair real quickly, running towards me-- what’s going on, oh, “Fuck,” I sighed aloud, and then, bang, just black.
*
“Hey, um. It’s Jay, um... We need to talk, Taec. Shit went down at the restaurant we used to go to for our birthdays, huh, remember them? ... Anyways, I just wanted to clear the shit up... you know? What the hell am I doing. Okay yeah, I understand if you don’t want to talk to me, I am a bastard and I’m sorry and this sounds-- shit, this is so sappy, I’d rather die. Or just you know, if you-- we-- us, could talk-- fuck, my mouth doesn’t work, fuck, shit, sorry I don’t-- Aight man. Just. Hope you’re not mad, I mean, just be fine and safe, homeboy. I wanted to tell Khun I’m sorry but he doesn’t give a fucking damn but I know you do-- if you still do-- I hope-- Uh. Listen, I gotta go. The regular bridge on Friday night next week, yeah? Not that I’d expect you there. Just. Consider it if you’re the Taec I know. I mean, no obligations or whatever but just-- yeah. Gotta go. See you... or not. Bye.
“Hey, Jay again, can you just ignore the previous voicemail? I’d appreciate it, homeboy. ‘Night. Oh, uh, hope you’re doing good. ... Shit. That’s not the right thing to say-- ‘Kay, you know what, official good night. Good... Have a good sleep. Not with someone, I mean-- fuuuuck, just sleep nicely without-- with-- you can fuck whoever you want but if you’re sleepy, don’t forget that you probably need a con-- Shit. Shiiiit. Ignore me. Bye.
“Hey, it’s me again, about that voicemail after the one I told you to ignore? Pretend you don’t know about it. Pretend you don’t even know me at all. Aight man. Bye.”
*
Somewhere along the way, I faced the sky again and it was dark chocolate. No, those were his eyes. His chocolate eyes were my sky. I guess. But once I caught a glimpse of it, it was gone once again, my limp, curled up body floating in dizzying rotations in the freezing cold water. Half the time I’d see the murky chocolate of sky and half the time I’d see the bellowing depths of black below me, parts of some bottomless lake. I was sure I’d been circling the frozen waters for days, and it had been pretty lonely. If only there were fish here, at least I could make some friends, right? Yeah. Sure thing, Jay, sure thing, I told myself. Wait a minute. I shouldn't be in a frozen lake anymore. I mean, I died years ago, why am I back here? Frantically, I tried to swim up to the top, but the water pressure was a lot heavier than I gauged and all my movements were in slow-motion. Everything hurt. How was I able to breathe? Fuck. When I thought about breathing-- I realized I couldn’t-- my lungs began to pierce with agony. I scrambled, but something kept weighing me down. I ignored it. I saw the surface, but to my horror when I reached out, it was solid thick ice. Where did I enter the lake then?! I tried to push the ice, hit it, punch it, but nothing happened. Shit. I’m gonna die. But you’re already dead, some other voice told me. No one will ever care about you anymore. I know, but homeboy-- he’ll be worried, I need to-- Those weren’t his eyes. The dark chocolate. Those were not his eyes. I screamed in terror. Fuck, oh fuck. What’s--
I woke up with a startling yell. First thing I saw was my mentor at my bedside, rising up from his chair so fast he nearly knocked the chair over. He grabbed my hands, which I belatedly realized were around my neck and he held them tight for reassurance. Before he could even ask, I panted, “I’m okay, I’m okay.” The wheezing took a bit to die down.
“You sure?” he asked, concern written all over his face. There were dark circles under his eyes, he looked like the saddest panda I ever saw. He shouldn’t have been up all night for me. I wasn’t worth it. But he kept repeating his question in his undivided gaze towards me, I watched his pupils dance back and forth with fervor and a night’s worth of silent tears. I nodded slowly.
“Yeah, I’m okay. What about you, though? Why were you crying, man?" My voice sounded hoarse.
He looked away from me, his eyes averted. "I wathn't."
That was a questionable answer. "Wanna tell me what happened?”
“You fainted and you hit your head on the edge of the table.”
“Oh, fantastic, am I still dead?”
“... Yup.”
“Oh, balls, I was hoping I could reverse my death by trying to die again despite already being dead.”
He snorted.
“Hey, give me props, I used the verb ‘to die’ in all its forms.”
“What about ‘dying’?”
I sighed. “You never give me credit for my hard work.” He waited for me with a smug face and I sighed again. “Fine, you can give 92.87% of the credit to gravity for pulling me into the table, head on.” Damn it, he was still having that smile on his face and I sighed exasperatedly. “I’m dying for you, babe, to kiss me, to love me, so badly that I’d promise to die for you a thousand times over, even when my deaths are numb and countless; and h’oh god, I’d die to see your naked self lusting over me a little dead in the night, in the bed, inside of you, when we fuck. How about that? Is that good enough?”
Crush blushed furiously. “That’th not-- um, well-- um, not appropriate,” he said biting his lip from an embarrassedly flushed smile and dipping his chin low. He gingerly touched his burning scarlet cheeks so quick his hands were back to grasping the edge of the bed rail again. “Um,” he cleared his throat, “You forgot ‘deadly’?”
“You’re so hard to please!” I groaned, but I couldn’t hide the malicious grin or stop myself from wiggling my eyebrows at him. “But I could bet Hades’ ass that you’re not hard to please in bed, are you?” I teased. He went so scarlet red that he burst into laughter, bent over his knees. “Crush, hey," I called out to him, "I love you so... deadly.”
He couldn’t stop laughing in full flush. “Hyung-- don’t-- juth'-- no-- that doethn’t thound right.”
“Yeah, whatever, babe. Can I call you babe? That sounds right.”
My mentor shook his head, unable to wipe off that unbelievable grin. “No, we’re not doing that.”
“We? You thought I wanted you to call me babe too? You’re cute.”
“What, no, w-we’re a team,” he said unconvincingly, even to himself, “That’th why I said ‘we’--”
My turn to snort. “You use ‘we’ like we’re a couple--”
“-- of guyth who help each other out! Becauthe we are the bethteth’ of friendth in the whole wide world.”
“But friends totally fuck each other though, am I right?”
Crush let out a mixture of an embarrassed laugh and a defeated sigh. “Juth’ shut up and--"
“I’d actually die to see you try to shut me up,” I challenged.
“-- and get some retht. You're really drugged up right now."
"No, gimme your best shot, buddy. Silence me."
Crush grinned lopsidedly. "You want me to gag you?"
"Ooh, you're like that, Crush maestro, I didn't know. What other kinks are you into?"
Crush pulled on the collar of his jacket and hid as much burning cheek as he could. "I-I didn't mean it like that--"
"What else? Urethral sound--" Crush covered my mouth with his hand and muffled the rest of my answer. I mumbled some more things but found it useless so I quieted down, and he looked at me with stern eyes, his face pink from embarrassment. Finally he seemed to trust me and he let go. "Cock rings or--!" I began loudly, but he shut my mouth again, damn it. I laughed into his hand until he couldn't handle the moisture on his palm and he moved away, wiping his hands across the thighs of his jeans.
"They gave you a lot of drugth," my mentor said, as if trying to convince himself that was the perfect explanation to my lewd outlandish comments.
"Princess, I'm like this all the time," I waggled my eyebrows at him.
"Yeah, unfortunately. But with more--"
"-- enthusiasm," I cut in, with a sleazy grin.
"I wath gonna thay more drugth." He shook his head, his mouth in a flat smile.
"But I'm not on drugs! I'm totally okay!" I cried out, overdramatically, waving my hands as wildly as I could underneath the blankets.
"Athide from the fact that you fell and hit your head!"
"Now why would they give me meds for that? Actually, why is there even a floating hospital in the sky?" My mentor shrugged, his face puckered up with a sour distaste. What, don't like my attitude? I wanted to ask, paw at him for scrutinizing every damn detail like I wasn't allowed to be human. "I mean, I'm already dead, so a shit ton of meds or a shit ton of blood, I’m still dead. It doesn’t change a thing."
Crush pursed his lips. "But I want you to take care of yourthelf, Jaebeom. What I don't want ith for you getting any clever ideath like burning yourthelf to ash before Hadeth can get to it or chopping off a finger or two. Underthtand?"
"Hey guy, I've never thought about harming myself ever. But! But you lead me to believe that I had committed a fucked up suicide which brought me here, to learn the ways of the angel of death. That's why I got mad at you,” I said, gritting my teeth. I had been mad at him and talking about it sparked something angry inside of me and I could probably run with it like putting gasoline to fire. Not good. I saw the small frown on his face. “But, I’m not mad at you anymore," I said slowly. "I can’t be. You don’t deserve it.”
Though he was still frowning and his brows furrowed, I knew he was thinking about whatever universe-filled thoughts he had, about everything. Something must have changed in his thoughts, as if a meteor had trailed the sky with all its white and connected the twinkling planets into a constellation of dots, strung together. The corner of his lips sweetened. "Park Jaebeom, you're tho fine, y’know. And thappy."
Did he just call me sappy? I cringed and shivered but I saw his pleased look, the stars in his eyes. Hell, could I have that look from him over anything else? Momma, I finally got a boy to smile because of me. Get the camera. I moved an arm out the blankets, dragging all the wires with it too, and motioned him to come closer, so I'd see the sparkle of shooting stars and the speckled rain of stardust in his eyes, his pouty lips parted with a flustered dazzle. "Hey, I love your lithp, y'know that?"
If possible, Crush smiled more than a mile, with that dreamy look on his face. And I have to admit I was half-surprised he didn’t throw a pillow in my face for saying lithp. But he knew I wasn’t teasing him. I stared at his face while he found something fascinating on the floor to look at, more thinking I supposed. A crumpling emotion took over me and I swallowed my gasp before he could hear it. I turned away and stared into the nothingness of the dark. For the longest time I hated the black, but this time it was oddly soothing. Maybe it was because the darkness masqueraded my fears.
"But, I'll never be first on your list," I sighed longingly.
"You're first on another list," he murmured.
I turned to look at him. "Am I? Which one?"
"The weird, talkative, and relatively dumb one." Those lips never stopped quipping a smug remark.
"Yeah but you like me like that." I glanced above me and then back at him.
"Yeah, I do.”
I grinned. "And you wouldn't have me any other way?"
"Yup."
"Is that top or bottom?"
"Shut it, Jaebeom."
*
It was between the lighter and the swiss army knife. And I locked myself in the bathroom so I wouldn’t have any last minute decisions to chicken out. Lighter or knife. Lighter or knife. My mentor had mentioned I could burn myself to ash and chop off a limb if I wanted. Why didn’t I think of that sooner? It was a fantastic idea. And come on, it’ll be easy, I egged myself on. This would solve all the problems in the world, like as if just my own existence alone was the cause of them anyhow. Alrighty then.
It happened really fast, lightning quick. I stabbed myself in the chest and groaned, which hurt a lot more than I expected. I used my other hand to twist the handle in deep, and now I was choking. Something cool came up my esophagus and I choked on that, bent over the sink, palms of my hand gripped onto the counter to balance myself. To my horror, I found a splatter of dark red drops all over the sink, and when I looked at myself in the mirror, the reflection was quickly covered in the spray of blood too. Now I was getting dizzy. Oh boy. Ohh boy.
Something wasn’t right. Oh wait, yeah, I stabbed myself. I swayed, feet stumbling on each other and the sickening feeling imprisoned my head as I watched blood oozing out and drenching my shirt deep scarlet. The saliva and blood, a thinner concoction, dribbled out of my wheezing mouth. Fuck. In the distant background, I heard someone calling my name, followed by a pounding on the door. Where was I? Shit yeah, the bathroom, right.
I couldn’t stand anymore. My knees buckled and I hit something on the back of my head. A sharp pain rang through and clutched the walls of my head like needles and ants and I groaned if I could without throwing up more spittles of blood. The shouting got louder and lots of things clattered to the ground and within a second, a sweet silhouette hovered over me. Hey, I recognized that face. I tried to reach up to him, but when I did, all sorts of pain shot up in different places. “Hey,” I tried to say, more like screech, but that came out garbled and triggered a hacking convulsion where I’d cough violently, choke, and then cough again like I had chalk and nails in my throat. Bubbles of blood frothed out of my gasping mouth and what other fluids there were.
I felt myself being hoisted up, my limbs felt like jelly, dangling in nothingness. I was slid into another surface, softer by a million times compared to the tiled floor in the bathroom and whatever that was I had hit the back of my head with. I tried to mumble because I had something important to say, but I couldn’t because all that goddamn iron-tasting shit was in my mouth and I’d rather have real shit in my mouth than this. Without a warning, the dagger was yanked out of me with a fucking staggering pain that I shrieked like a banshee and convulsed like a fish out of water. I’m dead, I’m fucking dead, I screamed to myself. It was already done. It was already done ages ago.
You don’t get to say a lot of goodbyes after that final one. It was done.
*
“Hey, Khun here. If Jay’s trying to apologize to you, ignore him. He doesn’t get it, he needs to learn that not everyone has it their way. He thinks that I got the universe to pamper me but it’s not my fault. The company decided what they decided, and for him, he was just less fortunate. I feel bad for him, but he’s acting like a baby about it. Right? We talked about this, Taec. Just ‘cause he called doesn’t mean anything. He didn’t call you for years anyway, when he should’ve. He put the barrier between all of us. Wooyoung tried to talk to him several times more than any of us did, and Jay wouldn’t give a shit about it. Remember all that? Remember all those times you had to face the audience alone and take the blame for it because of what Jay did? Anyways, I’m really hungry for potstickers. I need a buddy to eat with. I also need a rational buddy. You with me, Taec?
“Oh yeah, um, I need a favor... Could you talk to Tiffany for me? I don’t know what’s the deal with her, but she just won’t talk to me-- hasn’t been talking for awhile. Be casual about it. Thanks.”
*
Fuck, why was his face the first I always saw after waking up from something really god-awful? I shut my eyes quickly and pretended I hadn’t woken up yet. Sleep took me away again in minutes before I could think about anything else. But he looked like he’d been crying.
*
Darkness invaded my eyesight when I woke up again. I groaned. Somebody forgot that I was constantly blind.
“Crush?” I called out. Um, no, that couldn’t have been me. My voice was so foreign and groggy like a frog’s croak and a toilet’s burp. I cleared my throat. “Hey, Crush, you there--”
I paused. Never in my short life up in the clouds had I ever thought about not having my mentor at my side whenever I needed him. He had always been there. And when I wanted to disappear, he let me, despite the fact that he didn’t want that. But he gave me my space anyway. So, fuck, what would happen the day that he wasn’t there anymore? I couldn’t-- Fuck. Was homeboy okay? I needed to know-- “Crush!” I yelled. “Crush, you need to be here, I can’t-- I can’t--”
I choked a prickling fear back down my throat. Stop it, Jay, stop being a pussy. I would just have to accept the only other guy who cared about me was gone out of my life like the way I eventually grew to accept my own death thinking that it was suicide, and just like the way I grew to the idea that my homeboy would find a girl someday and have kids of his own and he’d never know what my lips were like and I him. But I never even got to say goodbye to either of them. They’d never know what I had wanted to say, which I was now cursing the hell out of myself because if and when they were to appear, I’d flip out and I’d never be able to say anything. But it wasn’t like that stuff was important, I mean it was important, but not important enough to say until they were gone and I realized that I should’ve said it when I had the chance. Problem was, I never could remember what I wanted to say until something drastic happened, and fuck, that was always how human nature worked. Nothing would get moving until something bad happened. Wow, I really was a sappy guy. I cringed. I hated that. No, I would never be sappy. Who gives a damn? I could move on. Simple as meeting Hades tomorrow and getting an eternity of torture. Yep.
Oh momma, help me. I wondered for the slightest second what she could be doing. If she ever missed me? And my dad, and what about my brother? How was he? What about my former bandmates, like Wooyoung? That kid was born to be a star. He had it in him. If only he wasn’t so distracted. And so Korean. I always thought that the kids in the company had a chance, a really good chance, but they were just so Korean. But I guess that was also what made them special, and exactly what made me stand out from them. It was what made me alienated because I wasn’t exactly Korean enough. I felt something burn in me. Crush always said if I were any of the elements, I’d be fire because of all this pent up frustration and anger and desire. I got angry fast, and I could fucking run with it, be first in a marathon if I wanted, be first on the stage if I wanted to do that too, be whatever. Do whatever. I wrote what I wanted when I felt the fire and never once did I think that the fire I wrote could one day burn me like a slap in the face.
Huh. Something was oddly familiar about this. I had written something incriminating... yeah. Something bad. I got caught. This was worse than getting caught with pants down, hand on crotch, and porn moaning through the speakers full volume. (I wasn’t going to confirm if that had really happened anytime soon, haha, smug face at me all you want.) This was much worse. Now who ratted me out, I wondered--
“Jaebeom,” a whisper fluttered in the darkness. The sickly warm feeling hit my face like a door in the nose and I forgot to breathe like my heart forgot to beat steadily and I attempted to swallow the gasp which had me choking in a way too familiar like I’d stabbed myself. I didn’t need that reminder. My chest hurt like hell and my head rang a dull pain. Somewhere along the way, the Joker had to be asking me, “Why so serious?” Sure thing, this was an appropriate time to laugh.
“‘Bout time," I said. "I missed you." That was the gayest thing I ever said and I was not doing that again anytime soon. But I wondered if his eyes sparkled and his lips followed a curveball straight to heaven.
“Can I...” My mentor held my hand and squeezed it.
“Yeah,” I nodded, trying out this nicety thing for once. “Yeah, I’d like that.” I opened my mouth, and he pulled out a lighter after much fumbling with the zipper, I heard, with him cussing under his soft breath and he finally clicked it on. The strings in the back of my throat lit up and I tried not to swallow on it because I’d done that before, smart ass that I was, and then I was a dying wailing dragon, coughing badass smoke rings and calling out to momma for mercy. Crush did laugh, that bastard. Anyway, finally, when the light reached my eyes, it wasn’t like the way you woke up from sleep, when things started out foggy and gradually got brighter, more vivid. This was a thunderbolt of shock, everything came back with startlingly full color like a tidal wave to the brain, and usually I’d have a headache for a couple hours after that. I hated it. But at least I could fucking see.
I saw his face. Nope, I didn’t want to see that face. Hollowed and pale. Restless. I turned away and coughed, wheezing from withered lungs. Shivered at the wave of coolness coming over my body. That didn’t make sense. I was freezing cold all the time, but I still felt the fire, I still felt angry. Nothing was going to be resolved if I kept getting myself stuck in a hospital bed, whether or not it was in the sky. But like I said, I couldn’t be mad at Crush. He didn’t do anything wrong, aside from the fact that he freaking lied to me about what I thought had been suicide, and was now a murder mystery, and just-- yeah, I should move on. Not the sap guy. But you know what? I wanted to be mad at him because I knew he cared about me and maybe I was mad about that. Maybe I wanted out. I needed him out of my life. I coughed again. “Do it,” I said harshly. I felt like I could rip the sheets off the bed and slam him roughly, face to the wall, and fist him in the ass so hard, he’d moan and whimper and cry for mercy out of his bleeding bruised lips.
“Do what?” he asked gently.
“Just do it!” I cried out. “Say it! Tell me that I’m a fucking idiot for hurting myself, and that I should’ve listened to you because you’re always right and that I should've followed the rules because they’re there for a reason and that you wanted me to be alright, so that one day, if you ever needed to leave, you could, because you’d have the reassurance I wouldn’t do anything dumb like what the existence of my life amounts to, and that I wouldn’t go psycho and hurt other people too!” I sucked in the cold air angrily, to steady myself. Something in my conscience wobbled and cracked and flew out of orbit.
He didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to hear him say anything. Even though I said that I did. But I didn’t. I especially didn’t want to see his face. “D’you know that I hurt people when I was alive?” I asked quietly.
“No, I didn’t,” Crush spoke up from behind me. “I never thought that you would.”
“Well, you’re wrong,” I said loudly. “Purely, ass-fucking wrong.” Again, I heard nothing in response, except for the small clinking, the zipper on his jacket probably hitting the side of the bed railing. “What, aren’t you going to sigh exasperatedly and tell me that I’m better than that?”
“You do whatever you want. I’m tired, Jaebeom.”
Now I turned around. I took a long inhale of his face. He looked so lifeless, I had forgotten he was as dead as I was. I swallowed slowly. “What? What do you mean by that?”
“I’m tired. Okay?” he asked.
“So are you gonna leave?”
“I don’t know what I should do,” Crush murmured, glancing down to the floor. He gripped at the railing of my bed, and I watched his fingers kill the plastic as much as he could without leaving a mark. How I wish my murderer could’ve done that to me. If Crush had been my murderer, I would’ve fallen in love with him. His sweet baby-faced magic could’ve sent me to a place where things were pretty and I wouldn’t have to worry about stuff that were completely out of my hands. I wouldn’t have to be furiously angry about irrelevant things and go iceberg crazy at night because it was so fucking cold I could just bash someone’s face in like the ice did to the Titanic. That made me grimace. That meant I could kill thousands if I wanted. Headline: Murdered kid froze the world in a breath. Yeah, I’d be a legend, and Crush would be the princess I could never save because everything I said earned a punch and a fall and he should've deservedly beaten me to a pulp because I didn’t know how he dealt with me for so long if I didn’t even know how deal with myself for a few minutes, holding a knife in one hand and a lighter in another. Turned out Hades was right. What a shame. I couldn’t get myself to say more, without wanting to choke on ice and fire at the same time. “I, um...” he began. He sniffled. “I got the word out.” I gave him a look and he must’ve known. “Athked if anyone knew about the murderer.”
“That’s against protocol, you little shit,” I answered softly. His grip tightened like a choke-hold.
“I know that! You alwayth do that to me, Jaebeom! You alwayth forthe me to break the ruleth--” He stopped and shook his head, complexion contorted in distraught. “And then I look like the bad guy. And I don’t want that. I wanted to be good to you. But I gueth I wath never enough.”
No, I wanted to scream at him, no, he had it all wrong. But I couldn’t get myself to say it. “So leave,” I muttered.
Crush’s bottom lip disappeared past his upper, and he stared into the dark, brows furrowed. His foot tapped the floor impatiently. “I did. I left you for three weekth.”
“Three weeks?!” I yelled. My eyes widened. “What?”
“I met a guy. Thaid he could help. For a prithe.”
“So?” I choked.
“I found him at a themetary.”
“Wait, wait, wait. You were on earth? You actually got on earth??” Crush ignored that question, his eyes hard and glaring. He wouldn’t look at me, even when I finally gave him my undivided attention towards him. “So?” I prompted.
“He confirmed it. Your final rethting plathe wath at the bottom of a frothen lake, in the middle of the night. There wath no entry in the ithe ‘cauthe you entered through the lake by river.”
“He saw me get dumped into a river? Did I drown or was I killed somewhere else?”
“Drowned. It wath tho cold. The impact wath hard too.”
“What, the river was deep?”
“No... you fell from a bridge.”
Bridge? What bridge?! That took a long time to sink in. But knowing myself, it wouldn’t really register in my dead-ass brain until days later when I was really thinking about it. I glanced at Crush to see if there was more that he wanted to say, but now his face looked torn and his eyes were so sunken in like craters, I wanted to reach out and hold him. But Crush wasn’t telling me the whole story. “You’re hiding something.”
“We, um... I, um...” He didn’t say anything for a long time, like he couldn’t. Ashamed.
It dawned on me, but I pushed it far back out from my head because that was crazy batshit. Crush couldn’t have done it. Hell to the fucking no. “No,” I said. “No.”
But he didn’t deny it.
“No. No, Crush, no you didn’t. Tell me you didn’t.”
He swallowed hard, a stuttering sob back down his throat, and his face crumpled like a trainwreck.
“NO!” I shouted. “No no no no no no no no no. Fuck no! Let me kill this bastard too. Let me kill him.” I found myself begging, breaking down, wanting to give him something better than what fucking asshat was shitting on him. But Crush shook his head, still unable to look at me. He was on the verge of tears. “Crush, why?!” I tensed up and everything in me shook.
“I juth’ didn’t want you... to...”
“NOO!” I screamed. I grabbed his collar so hard, he gasped with hurt and his watery eyes finally met mine. “You let him use you,” I heaved with anger. “You let him use you, why?! Why the hell would you let him do that to you?!”
Fuck, I broke him. I broke Crush. This was all my fault.
“But you know what he thaid? He thaid that I let you uthe me,” he murmured into my face. The pupils in his eyes shifted, and he swallowed. I felt an ache in my chest destroy me atom by atom.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head. “I’d never do that. Crush, you mean... a lot to me.”
“But, not enough, remember?”
I understood it now. Homeboy meant more to me than Crush ever would. But I wished it weren’t that way. I wanted to hold onto his collar forever. I wanted his lips forever. But was that because I missed homeboy and needed an impulsive outlet or was it really because I wanted Crush to be with me?
I turned away, letting go of his collar. “Yeah,” I answered hoarsely. “Yeah, that’s right. How many more bastards are you gonna fuck to get an answer for me? Whose grave did you fuck over? Did you like it? Was it worth it?”
“Yeah,” Crush retorted. Now he seemed angry. That was new. Maybe it was because I didn’t appreciate his “effort.” But why the fuck would he hurt himself for me? That was so damn stupid. So fucking damn stupid even I wouldn’t do the same for him. Oh. Oh. I guess he was hurt because he had just realized that.
“Get away from me, you dirty insolent whore,” I whispered. I didn’t bother to look at him. I wouldn’t bother to look at him anymore.
*
[ Next]
*
Main Characters: Jay, Crush
Pairings: Crush/Jay, slight Taecyeon/Jay and Nichkhun/Tiffany
Warnings: Expletives, brief descriptions of sexual scenes/thoughts, character death(s), violence
Word Count: 28,396
Number of prompts from the list: 1
Number of extra prompts: None
A/N: I'd like to give my thanks to A, for reading this fic and being so supportive and to M, who is so kind, loving, and patient with me. I'm forever indebted to the faith you two have in me ♥
Now a few things about the fic. The title of this fic is named after Ed Sheeran's soundtrack from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The entire story is actually two parts in total, but what you're about to read is only the first part. After the reveals, I'll work on the second part and post it as soon as I'm done.
Crush (Shin Hyosub) has a little bit of a lisp when he speaks and sings Korean and English. His “s” become “sh” sounds, but not in all cases. Depending on the word, he can sometimes pronounce it without any trouble and sometimes, he ends up saying it like, “I mish you, baby.” To simplify things in this fic, I settled with this: he lisps whenever he can’t pronounce the “s” in English (pretending that he speaks English only in the story but if the story was real life, he’d be speaking Korean with a lisp.) Since the “sh” sound isn’t a common English lisp, so I stuck with “th” instead. This means if he wanted to say, “I’m sorry” he’ll say it like, “I’m thorry.” Therefore, all “s” sounding parts in the word have been replaced with “th” instead. So words like ice, voice, sometimes, stop, and miss are all spelled and pronounced as ithe, voithe, thometimeth, thtop, and mith.
There were some tricky words like fix or frozen. The letter “x” is pronounced as “eks” so only the “s” part of that is replaced with “th.” Therefore, I wrote it as fixth which would be pronounced as “fikth.” As for “z”: that was a little more complicated, but I decided that frozen will be spelled as frothen. Regarding the words with “ss”: sometimes, the words with “ss” have an “s” sound OR a “sh” sound. Like the word miss, I’ve written it as mith because of its “s” sound. Whereas a word like obsession, I’ve left the “ss” part alone due to its “sh” sound, so it’s written as obthession. Crush can, without a doubt, pronounce “sh” sounds in Korean and English (I mean he does call himself Crush) so all “sh” sounding parts of any words have been left alone.
And the thing about Jay’s name. Nowadays, he calls himself Jay Park. In this fic though, since he’s surrounded by Korean speaking people, they call him Jaebeom or Park Jaebeom. When Jay refers to himself however, he calls himself Jay because I believe he thinks to himself in English rather than in Korean. As you will notice, others like Tiffany will call him Jay as well since they are his English-speaking counterparts, and are (were?) close enough friends to Jay to call him by his English name.
I think that's all that there is to mention. Enjoy~ ♥
I
i’m matterless now, bambino
Dark chocolate kissed the evening sky. They said the color suited me the most; but to me, the chocolate tint was every reminder of his eyes, staring coldly into my soul with frozen diamond tears threatening to fall. His petalline lips would tremble. My hands would tremble just as much. And when the tears did fall, they were like daggers twisting and turning through my darkest tangled veins, and his teardrop diamonds would break the glass of my sanity. All I heard were his clouded breaths crinkling against the frigid air and the shards of me clattering on the linoleum floor. Tell me that I was the dark chocolate underneath the silvertongue foil wrapper, and I’d tell you that you were wrong. You couldn’t savor his soul, his dark chocolate eyes by swallowing all that confection without a second thought and have it tumbling, tumbling, tumbling into an abyss of acid. You’d have to savor his soul through his lips. And he would fucking melt against your tongue.
But I’ve never had his lips. So I couldn’t tell you how good he really was.
*
I traveled under the flickering stars a little slower this time. The candle wickers behind my eyelids were still ablaze, ticking the last minutes down to ash until I had no more fire, illuminating my dilated livid pupils to see through the husky velvet of the day's darkest alter ego. I would look for him every night if Hades' eyes didn't try to inhale my fading whittling soul away from my purpose like a screaming, screeching wheeze of a drag of cancer candy and cigarette before I could rush back into the waiting portal where time didn't exist, where Hades couldn't vacuum my ocean bones to dust, and where unfortunately the man I was looking for was without protective guidance from the above-stars observatory. That meant he'd be without me. Especially if I didn't watch over him, and I had promised the homeboy I would, pound-sign-swipe and all that shit. A pinky promise, yeah. And no, that wasn’t romantic, idiot. So this time I wanted to look carefully, at least before the light blew out from behind my eyes. All I wanted to see was if he was still waiting by the curb for the bus to come. Then I would have to watch the bus swallow him up and I would feel something rise up to my throat. I'd have to stop myself from gasping by choking myself with my frostbitten fingers. (Hell, they were blue and black like I had dipped them in dry ice and black holes.) And really, he wasn’t something I should worry about. But he did. His hands were tucked tight into his pockets and the way he placed his feet, careening on the edge of the curb, letting himself wade into the buoyancy of the thin air, his body swinging to and fro, and the ends of his jacket fluttering, whisking away from the bristle of the serpentine wind. It made my stomach lurch. The way his mouth moved to the silent lyrics unknown to me and the world outside the ear-buds hidden beneath the forest green beanie, the dim street-light would catch his cherry cola tongue against his murmuring lips. Licking the cracked blood lines from the winter frost. I'd never get to know how his lips would taste.
November was coming on fast. As it always did. It had been four years since I last held his eyes. That was the last time I saw him cry, the last time I felt the daggers puncture my lungs and slit my heart. But now, even when he didn’t look at me, I still felt the pain and I forced myself to sit through it while I searched and watched over him every night he left the premises, always in the forest green beanie, summertime tank top or wintertime downy coat, and faded sweats. I had always hated the green. When I used to be there with him, I’d constantly tell him to get rid of the thing but he’d never listen. I wondered if he ever remembered me and my words of disdain whenever he put on the thing over his ruly sweaty hair after dance practice. Did he ever remember me at all?
Did he ever wonder what my lips were like?
Shut up, it's only a mild curiosity and it wouldn't kill me because I'm already dead.
He stopped teetering on the curb and he pulled his fists out his pockets, rubbing at his knuckles. He must have felt cold. Not that I could remember what it felt like being cold since I was constantly freezing anyway. It was the way I had died and I was permanently stuck in this state. Frozen as fuck and frostbitten at the joints and fingers, bones so cold some had cracked and shattered. There were a lot of hidden secrets behind my death that even I didn't know. I thought that perhaps my mentor knew, but I didn't bother asking because I needed to convince myself that I had died with a reason that would play out as a helpful domino fall in the grand scheme of things; but my mentor said that I was just avoiding the truth like a cootie plague and I’d be telling you that whatever the truth, I wouldn't be able to handle it. Am I curious? Sure as hell I am, but I have other things to worry about, like that incoming gust of wind approaching me like a stampede of air bulls which might blow the candles behind my eyes out. Shit. In the corners of my eyes I could see him down below, pacing around now, glancing at his wrist from time to time. Wait a minute. He wasn't waiting for the bus. He was acting like he was late, but the bus was about to come in seven minutes which had to mean he was waiting for something else. Someone else. From down the street, I saw a black van heading down his way. That was the company van. I debated swooping down and trying to get a close look at who the driver was or trying to make an escape from the incoming wind several hundred miles away. But he'd never gotten a ride from the company van in the evening before unless it was for his schedule; but if it was, he’d wear something nicer, wouldn’t he? I frowned. Now wasn’t the time to decide whether he was truly a fashion terrorist or whether that black van was as dangerous as white vans luring in innocent kids with candy.
And of course, I was god-awful at quick decision-making because now I couldn’t swoop down to save him or escape the wind to save myself when the gust came in full force and sent me tumbling through the air, limbs flailing. I didn’t scream. My vision went black, and after awhile of being shoved by air, clouds, and leaves, I felt something violently suck me down, my skin peeling off and my joints in pain from the struggle of not wanting to be pulled down. Fuck. I began to panic when I felt gravity start to tug my organs against inner walls, pushing against my weak frame. I could feel my bones twisting at awkward angles as the descent began to accelerate and okay, now, I had to scream. I should have realized. Hades.
*
“H-Hey Taec, it’s me, Tiffany. I swear I know it’s two AM in the freaking morning but um, we-- Khun and me-- went to the club for awhile, right? Took the company van out with some other friends and all. We went to the noodle shop after, in the little corner by the alleyway some miles away, ‘cause we were hungry-- well I was, but I was sorta passed out by the time we got to the shop and so Khun went in alone. Huh, remember the other day we were joking about how awk it’d be if we ended up seeing Jay after four years at some random place at a random time? Yeah. That happened. I mean I didn’t know, we didn’t I swear, Khun didn’t say anything if he did, so I guess he didn’t know. Well-- I-- I didn’t see anything until I heard a sound, like something crashed. They could’ve been-- um-- plates? We parked at the back so I can see through the windows all lit up to the kitchen and everything. I saw Jay walk in and Khun following him, looking like he was begging or something. I don’t know if it’s bad-- um, Jay’s yelling at him. That’s bad. I don’t want to walk in and make it a big scene, Taec, you should come over right now-- O-Oh my god. Taec, he’s got a knife! A swiss army knife! Taec, he’s got a--”
*
Something rustled behind me. Everything was velvet dark and I couldn't tell whether that was just me or my surroundings. "Hello?" I called out. I felt shaky at the thought of seeing Hades which I pushed far back into my mind before I could sweat about it and thought about how I was worried beyond hurricane's worth for my homeboy getting a ride from that company van. The rustling noise gradually got louder as my goosebumps did, and I rubbed at the sides of my arms to heat up the spidering chills honeycombed across my frostbitten skin. Then, the hushed sounds turned into footsteps. The fuck? "Uh, hello... Somebody out there?" I asked again meekly, half-expecting myself to fall into a sudden sandpit of choking darkness; and Hades cackling a fire to singe my withered heart at the electrocuted, frittered ends of me, galaxies past goodbye. I wasn't ready to go yet. I never was.
"Hey," came a soft voice from behind me, a warm breath flitted past my ear. I jumped out of my skin with a yell.
"Holy sh-- Whah--" A grip came around my wrist. "Crush?! Is that you or--"
"Yeah," he said, low voice taming my fried nerves. "Now shut up and follow me. Gotta prepare you for a meet up with the dark overlord." Was that a smile I heard in his voice?
"Fuck, what--"
“Juth’ shut up.”
I bit on my lip to stop myself from laughing at my mentor’s lisp, because god, did it feel good hearing it again. “Aight man, don’t mind me, being scared to friggin’ death ‘cause I’ve got a casual meet up with the Hadz god dude. Yup. And if this is the last time I see you before he burns me into an ashy snowman, you'll miss me right?" I imagined my mentor shaking his head with a smug face.
“Only thtupid people meet him, in cathe you didn’t know,” he deadpanned. I gave him a look and I was sure he saw it, even in the dark. "Alright, alright, yeah. I'd mith my thtupid man."
“Huh, should I be flattered by that?” I heard an amused snort. “Yeah, I guess I should be. I am your favorite thtupid man, after all.” I got a shove and an accompanied laugh from him for imitating his lisp. But come on, what a beautiful thing it was when tongue met teeth and they clashed and collided where the north and south poles didn’t align just right and you’d get the hushed ‘th’ instead of the particular ‘s’ within lip to lip amalgamation, swollen cherry burst from kissing-- I mean kithing. But the shh was ever present, as sweet nothings in my ears, as I was sure that was how he meant it, which he whispered to me during dark and stormy nights when I was in a haze of hallucinations and drunk with anxiety and beer-- I mean fear. His voice was made of strong wood and timid rain, stuttering violin strings dripping with ambrosia honey. He knew how to walk the tightrope with that voice box and pouty lips. But I wasn’t gay and he was just really good at talking. Sometimes. (Singing too, which he wouldn’t admit.) Otherwise, he was really annoying like what he was doing to me right now. My mentor tugged me a bit on a stumbling parade because I continued to repeat ‘thtupid’-- but the more he pushed and pulled jokingly on my clothes and limbs, the more I mimicked him-- until I probably blew the last straw and he pushed me hard and I fell, hit something like his knees, I hoped, as I clung onto them with dear life. “Bastard! I could have fallen into a chasm and you would have lost me forever!” I whined. “Your consequence: I’ll be sure to let Hades know that you call him Heidi ‘cause you can’t pronounce his name right.”
My mentor laughed softly as his arms came around my torso, helping me up to my feet. “Park Jaebeom, you’re tho fine.” He straightened out my clothing, as if that really mattered. “But I’m thlightly worried for you.”
“Slightly?” I asked in a high pitched voice. “I thought you cared for me wholesomely, Crush. Like boat-loads of amore and not just a slight tiny sliver of care, smaller than the new moon, bambino. Ohh no. Ohh no, baby."
“Hey, I do care," Crush insisted, "But I mean, I’m not gonna get tortured like you will when I open my mouth.”
I gasped in surprise. “Wow, here I am kissing your hand, princess, and you're treating me like the lackey's lackey. Where’s the support system we had? Like you know, making me feel better about meeting H-dawg the Death Eater CEO? I feel fantastic about this already,” I muttered sarcastically. I tried to find his hand in the darkness so I could mockingly caress it but I suavely hit something else instead, hopefully his stomach and not his crotch, and heard Crush say something indistinct under his breath. "What?" I asked. He seemed to recover from an embarrassed pause with a small muffled laugh and a gentle tug at my elbow.
“Juth’, don’t open your mouth,” he said softly, his voice so near me, I could feel the warmth for days.
“Which is, as you know, damn near impossible.”
“Shut up,” he said again, lovingly.
“Oh, bite me,” I answered with a smile. Silence hung in the air between us as my mentor guided me aimlessly in the dark, when bits and pieces of a song tune fell into my mind like a veil of snowflakes on sleeping songbirds dead in the winter. I couldn't remember what the song was called or who sang it, but it definitely was not mine because I'd remember my own songs. I don't care, I don't care, I'll die for you. My mentor squeezed my shoulder painfully then, not out of sentimentality I knew, like he wanted to distract me from what was on my mind. What the hell was his problem? I stopped humming, my face all soured up with annoyance. “Isn’t there a way I could, like, not meet him?”
“Nope.”
“Why?” I didn’t get an answer, either because he was avoiding it or he was trying to come up with one. But I waited long enough. “Crush-saengie, there is no way in the world I could see you shake your head for an answer or shrug your shoulders or thrust your hips at me ‘cause I can’t see.”
“Good,” he murmured. He pulled me for a sharp turn and then stopped me, and of course, my legs didn’t understand that so I had to trip and stumble into him before he steadied me. He put something over my shoulders, slid my arms into what I thought were sleeves, and zipped up the front.
“What’re you doing?” I asked. I wouldn't be surprised if I had asked that into his shoulder out of pure blindness. But I forgot my mentor had a habit of ignoring my questions.
“Jaebeom, keep your head down. Alwayth. Don’t look up at the thound of his voithe. Juth’ don’t.”
“What? Why--”
“If you do look up, he’ll exthpect you to turn into ash and if you don’t, then he’ll know thomething ith wrong.”
I frowned. “Um, I thought everyone had candles behind--”
“Shut up,” he snapped. Well, that shut up pricked. I didn’t like the way he said it to me, almost like he was reprimanding me for finding out something I wasn’t supposed to know. Then what the hell was I allowed to know? “‘Kay, g'luck, J-bomb,” he said, giving me an encouraging shove. I grunted in irritation at his behavior because I was sure there must have been a way to skip this torture, but everyone was hiding secrets from me and maybe I was being so soft people took advantage of it. Well, whatever. But at a split second, I turned back in the direction my mentor had pushed me from and I wanted to ask, What if I never come back? because it was starting to bleed into a legitimate fear rumbling at the tips of my shivering fingers and clenched jaws. I wanted to tell Crush to watch over my homeboy, but he probably knew that. And he probably knew that I'd miss his lisp. Yeah. Okay. Time to move on. I suspected I was pushed through a doorway because now the ground underneath me disintegrated and it was up to me to levitate from falling into some more darkness, which didn’t sound like such a bad idea versus having to meet Hades.
*
“Taec, it's Tiffany again. Why aren't you picking up the phone?! I kinda need help here! Listen, um, I don't know where they went. Khun just tackled Jay and then they went somewhere behind the door that leads to the front-- um-- oh god-- I think I’m gonna go in. You should probably get over here-- Oh god, oh my god, Nichkhun?! Stop hurting--”
*
“What a shame.”
“What is?” I asked. I kept my head down to my chest as promised but Hades sounded a lot less scary than I expected. His voice was quiet and hollow. Other than that, I couldn't tell much about him because I couldn't see and that highly irritated me but somehow made Crush think that I'd be safer being as blind as a mole. Guess it had something to do with eye contact and turning into ash. Or the scary part of Hades was really his appearance and what he did, was capable of doing. So kudos to me being blind, I guess.
“You don’t know a lot of things about yourself. What a shame.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. Hold it back, Jay. Don’t retort. Don’t do anything stupid. “Is there something I should know?”
He laughed. The sound of it pounded on my chest and ribs which terrified me because I didn't expect him to have such a loud laugh from a hollow voice and somewhat relieved me from masking the pounding of my heart. I didn't know if he could hear my heartbeat, but if he did, then damn, did I hate sounding weak. “I have a count. The perfect balance. If there is one less to torture, I have to find some more.”
I gulped. He had to be talking about me. He really was going to torture me.
“But you’re different," he continued. "It’s... tragic." The way he said 'tragic' was touchy. I didn't like it.
“So, is there a way I can escape torture?” I half-expected him to turn me into ash right about then for asking a dumb question, but instead I heard him hum in thought.
“If you can find your murderer, then yes.”
What the fuck? I was so taken aback I gaped and nearly looked up at his voice but snapped my neck back down so quick that it hurt. I tried to massage the nape of my neck. “So, like, I find a replacement for the torture I was gonna get? Sounds hella fantastic.” Then I cringed for saying that because he grunted in disapproval.
But, seriously, a murderer? What the fuck? What. The. Fuck?
“Oh, what a shame,” he said after some silence. I didn’t know what to do but frown deeply. Why did he keep saying this to me?
“What do you mean by shame?”
*
I slammed my fist on the table. I did it again. And again. And again.
"Thtop it, Jaebeom."
I mocked a look of surprise. "You know what, Crush, how about you try your own advice at shutting up. You don't have anything else other than shit to lie to me with." This time I could see and Crush, sitting across from me, had looked away, ducked his head from my piercing gaze and bit his lower lip. I felt something sink in my stomach and I let out a rattled sigh. "Fine. Sorry. I'm mad and you're not fixing it like you're supposed to."
My mentor looked up, his bottom lip hidden behind his upper lip, chewing in thought. Finally, he exhaled and the dim light caught his bruised mouth. Crush had always gone boxing his lips swollen with pondering, drowning worry. In the slightest flicker, I wondered if warm running blood within a kiss tasted better than imagined and then my eyes met with his and my unflinching gaze melted and so did he, his shoulders slumping. "I can't. I can't fixth it," he breathed.
"Damn it, Crush. Damn you." I rose up from my chair and paced back and forth. I knew my mentor was following my movements with his attentive sad eyes. “Why are you even my mentor?” I asked. “Can you answer that simple question or is that so classified that you’ll have to give me another lie?” I paused to glare at his face and his lips twitched, like he wanted to chew on them again but knew that if he did, he’d have blood dripping down his chin.
“I wathn’t trying to lie to you.”
“Then what?” I asked, shaking my hands in exasperation.
“I juth’ didn’t think... you could take it, and you thaid it yourthelf that you couldn’t. And you tried to avoid it when I thought about telling you. That’th why I didn’t tell you that you were murdered.”
“You’re right! I can’t take it!” I shouted. “I can’t fucking... I don’t even...”
Crush tilted his head and looked at me with pained lines on his face. Pained, my ass. “I... I-- Jaebeom--” He stared at his own hands, wrapped tight around the corners of the table, like he was trying to steady himself. “Believe me, hyung, I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“No,” I shook my head adamantly, “No, if you really cared, you would have told me, even if it hurt. I would have been out there looking for my murderer--”
“An obthession that would turn you--”
“Shut up!” I yelled. “I’m talking!” But the moment I got his silence, I couldn’t remember whatever angry thoughts I wanted to spew out so I sunk into my chair again and tapped the table impatiently, waiting for the train of thought to come back. It didn’t. Unfair that the thing that was blocking my thoughts out like a whimpering body in the middle of the train tracks was the guilt for using Crush’s loving words shut up like a whip and venom thrown back at his face; his face did flinch when I shouted and yelled at him. But I couldn’t let myself seem weak and yielding and caving in, so he stared at me until I allowed him to talk with an unforgivable frown. He sucked in a deep breath and ignored my facial expression. Damn, he was good at it when he wanted to be. Or maybe he could actually read my real emotions despite trying to put a different face. So fuck me, he was too forgiving. I let my forehead fall to the table with a dull thud. If it weren’t for his contorted facial expressions whenever I did something deprecating to myself, I would have smacked my forehead across the table several times instead, until my brain matter was mush and matterless.
“Jaebeom, are you...” He started, but I raised my hand to wave dismissively at whatever he was about to ask. He sighed. “Fine, let me elaborate. Hadeth ith cunning. You’ll be thearching for the murderer all day and night for yearth and you’ll never find them. That’ll be your obthession, your torture,” he explained slowly, careful with his words like he was placing one bomb after another into my chest. “And the reathon I’m your mentor is... well...” His brows furrowed. “One morning I woke up, got a file, and your name wath in it. Juth’ thome general info, like date of birth, date of death, and that you were murdered. That wath all I knew, along with mentoring you until you became an angel of death like me, or until... Hadeth intervened.”
“So Hades intervened and you thought I was dead meat? And you weren’t going to do anything about it? What if he really was gonna take me in? Then what? You were just gonna let him do it?” Then I rolled my eyes. “Okay, double the dead meat since I’m already dead.”
Crush winced. “I’m not-- I never thought about it that way, Jaebeom. I wanted to thave you, but I wathn’t allowed to. I wathn’t allowed tell you anything that’d obthcure your training either. I couldn’t tell you that you were murdered becauthe--”
“Well, now that I do know, are you going to tell me who the murderer is?” I interrupted him. Crush swallowed slowly. Which meant no, he couldn’t tell me. Son of a bitch. I stood out of my chair, fuming. “Okay, from now on, I’m going to take things in my own hands and you’re not going to stop me--”
“Jaebeom--”
“Fuck it, Crush! If I don’t do it, I’ll get tortured, and if I do try, at least there’s a small chance I could actually find the murderer, but since you like to make things so hard for-- ”
“Jaebeom.”
“What?!” I cried out.
“I don’t know who it ith!” Crush yelled exasperatedly, clenching his eyes shut, pressing the palms of his hands into them.
“You’re lying,” I seethed back.
“No, I thwear, I don’t know! I thought-- I thought you knew. I mean, I meant...” His swollen lips quivered and he moved his hands away from his face, his eyes not straight on anything as they usually were. Were his eyes blurry? That reminded me of those days when I’d have to drive in a downpour of rain and I couldn’t see a thing. But he spoke softly, tiredly, “If anyone should know, it’d be you.”
I shook my head. “If I did, then why is it that I don’t remember?”
He stared at me, his vision probably still blurry, and then his eyes went out of focus again, like he was looking past me, deep in thought. I tried to ignore the sight of his eyes so watery his lashes were glistening. He was trying to figure it out. “Your handth...” he murmured after a while.
“Yeah, frozen, frostbitten, whatever. So what?”
“Well there muth’ be a reathon it’th like that.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Thanks, Captain Obvious, for deducing a critically fundamental discovery. Did you honestly think I’ve never wondered to fucking hell as to why my hands and my body are like this--” I pointed angrily at my own crumbling, fragile frame, “--and why the hell I even deserve to suffer a horrific death that I don’t even know the details about, and why the hell I still have symptoms of hypothermia, I can only fucking guess, when I sleep at night; shiver violently like I’ve got seizures all the time, like fuck, why is my life so brutal, Crush, why. I’m tired of this shit. I wanna go kill the murderer myself, show them what they did to me. Make them suffer,” I spit with acid, and Crush’s face paled, “But I can’t! I can’t fucking murder them the way they did to me if I don’t even know how they got me all like this. Unless I was shoved to the bottom of a fucking frozen lake--” I stopped, my vision clouded. My mind screamed and Crush’s mouth fell open. “Holy... shit,” I gasped. “Holy fucking spastic shit.”
“Jae-Jaebeom... you alright?” he asked quietly. I nodded slowly, lethargically, and blinked my eyes rapidly out of the blur. The wickers behind my eyelids couldn’t have reached the end of their lifelines already. He was talking again, trying to make me feel better, I supposed. But Crush’s words slurred together in my ears and I took a deep breath, the intake of oxygen rushing up to my pounding head faster and louder than I’d like. “... Maybe if you keep talking, you’ll come to it,” was the only thing I heard.
“Um, uh...” I mumbled, glancing at Crush’s sweet face once more and thinking of my homeboy for a split second-- why couldn’t I remember homeboy’s name, huh? Then I felt the ground swirling beneath me, dreaded with fear thinking it was Hades again-- but no, we struck a fair deal, I thought-- oh, there goes Crush hustling, pushing out of his chair real quickly, running towards me-- what’s going on, oh, “Fuck,” I sighed aloud, and then, bang, just black.
*
“Hey, um. It’s Jay, um... We need to talk, Taec. Shit went down at the restaurant we used to go to for our birthdays, huh, remember them? ... Anyways, I just wanted to clear the shit up... you know? What the hell am I doing. Okay yeah, I understand if you don’t want to talk to me, I am a bastard and I’m sorry and this sounds-- shit, this is so sappy, I’d rather die. Or just you know, if you-- we-- us, could talk-- fuck, my mouth doesn’t work, fuck, shit, sorry I don’t-- Aight man. Just. Hope you’re not mad, I mean, just be fine and safe, homeboy. I wanted to tell Khun I’m sorry but he doesn’t give a fucking damn but I know you do-- if you still do-- I hope-- Uh. Listen, I gotta go. The regular bridge on Friday night next week, yeah? Not that I’d expect you there. Just. Consider it if you’re the Taec I know. I mean, no obligations or whatever but just-- yeah. Gotta go. See you... or not. Bye.
“Hey, Jay again, can you just ignore the previous voicemail? I’d appreciate it, homeboy. ‘Night. Oh, uh, hope you’re doing good. ... Shit. That’s not the right thing to say-- ‘Kay, you know what, official good night. Good... Have a good sleep. Not with someone, I mean-- fuuuuck, just sleep nicely without-- with-- you can fuck whoever you want but if you’re sleepy, don’t forget that you probably need a con-- Shit. Shiiiit. Ignore me. Bye.
“Hey, it’s me again, about that voicemail after the one I told you to ignore? Pretend you don’t know about it. Pretend you don’t even know me at all. Aight man. Bye.”
*
Somewhere along the way, I faced the sky again and it was dark chocolate. No, those were his eyes. His chocolate eyes were my sky. I guess. But once I caught a glimpse of it, it was gone once again, my limp, curled up body floating in dizzying rotations in the freezing cold water. Half the time I’d see the murky chocolate of sky and half the time I’d see the bellowing depths of black below me, parts of some bottomless lake. I was sure I’d been circling the frozen waters for days, and it had been pretty lonely. If only there were fish here, at least I could make some friends, right? Yeah. Sure thing, Jay, sure thing, I told myself. Wait a minute. I shouldn't be in a frozen lake anymore. I mean, I died years ago, why am I back here? Frantically, I tried to swim up to the top, but the water pressure was a lot heavier than I gauged and all my movements were in slow-motion. Everything hurt. How was I able to breathe? Fuck. When I thought about breathing-- I realized I couldn’t-- my lungs began to pierce with agony. I scrambled, but something kept weighing me down. I ignored it. I saw the surface, but to my horror when I reached out, it was solid thick ice. Where did I enter the lake then?! I tried to push the ice, hit it, punch it, but nothing happened. Shit. I’m gonna die. But you’re already dead, some other voice told me. No one will ever care about you anymore. I know, but homeboy-- he’ll be worried, I need to-- Those weren’t his eyes. The dark chocolate. Those were not his eyes. I screamed in terror. Fuck, oh fuck. What’s--
I woke up with a startling yell. First thing I saw was my mentor at my bedside, rising up from his chair so fast he nearly knocked the chair over. He grabbed my hands, which I belatedly realized were around my neck and he held them tight for reassurance. Before he could even ask, I panted, “I’m okay, I’m okay.” The wheezing took a bit to die down.
“You sure?” he asked, concern written all over his face. There were dark circles under his eyes, he looked like the saddest panda I ever saw. He shouldn’t have been up all night for me. I wasn’t worth it. But he kept repeating his question in his undivided gaze towards me, I watched his pupils dance back and forth with fervor and a night’s worth of silent tears. I nodded slowly.
“Yeah, I’m okay. What about you, though? Why were you crying, man?" My voice sounded hoarse.
He looked away from me, his eyes averted. "I wathn't."
That was a questionable answer. "Wanna tell me what happened?”
“You fainted and you hit your head on the edge of the table.”
“Oh, fantastic, am I still dead?”
“... Yup.”
“Oh, balls, I was hoping I could reverse my death by trying to die again despite already being dead.”
He snorted.
“Hey, give me props, I used the verb ‘to die’ in all its forms.”
“What about ‘dying’?”
I sighed. “You never give me credit for my hard work.” He waited for me with a smug face and I sighed again. “Fine, you can give 92.87% of the credit to gravity for pulling me into the table, head on.” Damn it, he was still having that smile on his face and I sighed exasperatedly. “I’m dying for you, babe, to kiss me, to love me, so badly that I’d promise to die for you a thousand times over, even when my deaths are numb and countless; and h’oh god, I’d die to see your naked self lusting over me a little dead in the night, in the bed, inside of you, when we fuck. How about that? Is that good enough?”
Crush blushed furiously. “That’th not-- um, well-- um, not appropriate,” he said biting his lip from an embarrassedly flushed smile and dipping his chin low. He gingerly touched his burning scarlet cheeks so quick his hands were back to grasping the edge of the bed rail again. “Um,” he cleared his throat, “You forgot ‘deadly’?”
“You’re so hard to please!” I groaned, but I couldn’t hide the malicious grin or stop myself from wiggling my eyebrows at him. “But I could bet Hades’ ass that you’re not hard to please in bed, are you?” I teased. He went so scarlet red that he burst into laughter, bent over his knees. “Crush, hey," I called out to him, "I love you so... deadly.”
He couldn’t stop laughing in full flush. “Hyung-- don’t-- juth'-- no-- that doethn’t thound right.”
“Yeah, whatever, babe. Can I call you babe? That sounds right.”
My mentor shook his head, unable to wipe off that unbelievable grin. “No, we’re not doing that.”
“We? You thought I wanted you to call me babe too? You’re cute.”
“What, no, w-we’re a team,” he said unconvincingly, even to himself, “That’th why I said ‘we’--”
My turn to snort. “You use ‘we’ like we’re a couple--”
“-- of guyth who help each other out! Becauthe we are the bethteth’ of friendth in the whole wide world.”
“But friends totally fuck each other though, am I right?”
Crush let out a mixture of an embarrassed laugh and a defeated sigh. “Juth’ shut up and--"
“I’d actually die to see you try to shut me up,” I challenged.
“-- and get some retht. You're really drugged up right now."
"No, gimme your best shot, buddy. Silence me."
Crush grinned lopsidedly. "You want me to gag you?"
"Ooh, you're like that, Crush maestro, I didn't know. What other kinks are you into?"
Crush pulled on the collar of his jacket and hid as much burning cheek as he could. "I-I didn't mean it like that--"
"What else? Urethral sound--" Crush covered my mouth with his hand and muffled the rest of my answer. I mumbled some more things but found it useless so I quieted down, and he looked at me with stern eyes, his face pink from embarrassment. Finally he seemed to trust me and he let go. "Cock rings or--!" I began loudly, but he shut my mouth again, damn it. I laughed into his hand until he couldn't handle the moisture on his palm and he moved away, wiping his hands across the thighs of his jeans.
"They gave you a lot of drugth," my mentor said, as if trying to convince himself that was the perfect explanation to my lewd outlandish comments.
"Princess, I'm like this all the time," I waggled my eyebrows at him.
"Yeah, unfortunately. But with more--"
"-- enthusiasm," I cut in, with a sleazy grin.
"I wath gonna thay more drugth." He shook his head, his mouth in a flat smile.
"But I'm not on drugs! I'm totally okay!" I cried out, overdramatically, waving my hands as wildly as I could underneath the blankets.
"Athide from the fact that you fell and hit your head!"
"Now why would they give me meds for that? Actually, why is there even a floating hospital in the sky?" My mentor shrugged, his face puckered up with a sour distaste. What, don't like my attitude? I wanted to ask, paw at him for scrutinizing every damn detail like I wasn't allowed to be human. "I mean, I'm already dead, so a shit ton of meds or a shit ton of blood, I’m still dead. It doesn’t change a thing."
Crush pursed his lips. "But I want you to take care of yourthelf, Jaebeom. What I don't want ith for you getting any clever ideath like burning yourthelf to ash before Hadeth can get to it or chopping off a finger or two. Underthtand?"
"Hey guy, I've never thought about harming myself ever. But! But you lead me to believe that I had committed a fucked up suicide which brought me here, to learn the ways of the angel of death. That's why I got mad at you,” I said, gritting my teeth. I had been mad at him and talking about it sparked something angry inside of me and I could probably run with it like putting gasoline to fire. Not good. I saw the small frown on his face. “But, I’m not mad at you anymore," I said slowly. "I can’t be. You don’t deserve it.”
Though he was still frowning and his brows furrowed, I knew he was thinking about whatever universe-filled thoughts he had, about everything. Something must have changed in his thoughts, as if a meteor had trailed the sky with all its white and connected the twinkling planets into a constellation of dots, strung together. The corner of his lips sweetened. "Park Jaebeom, you're tho fine, y’know. And thappy."
Did he just call me sappy? I cringed and shivered but I saw his pleased look, the stars in his eyes. Hell, could I have that look from him over anything else? Momma, I finally got a boy to smile because of me. Get the camera. I moved an arm out the blankets, dragging all the wires with it too, and motioned him to come closer, so I'd see the sparkle of shooting stars and the speckled rain of stardust in his eyes, his pouty lips parted with a flustered dazzle. "Hey, I love your lithp, y'know that?"
If possible, Crush smiled more than a mile, with that dreamy look on his face. And I have to admit I was half-surprised he didn’t throw a pillow in my face for saying lithp. But he knew I wasn’t teasing him. I stared at his face while he found something fascinating on the floor to look at, more thinking I supposed. A crumpling emotion took over me and I swallowed my gasp before he could hear it. I turned away and stared into the nothingness of the dark. For the longest time I hated the black, but this time it was oddly soothing. Maybe it was because the darkness masqueraded my fears.
"But, I'll never be first on your list," I sighed longingly.
"You're first on another list," he murmured.
I turned to look at him. "Am I? Which one?"
"The weird, talkative, and relatively dumb one." Those lips never stopped quipping a smug remark.
"Yeah but you like me like that." I glanced above me and then back at him.
"Yeah, I do.”
I grinned. "And you wouldn't have me any other way?"
"Yup."
"Is that top or bottom?"
"Shut it, Jaebeom."
*
It was between the lighter and the swiss army knife. And I locked myself in the bathroom so I wouldn’t have any last minute decisions to chicken out. Lighter or knife. Lighter or knife. My mentor had mentioned I could burn myself to ash and chop off a limb if I wanted. Why didn’t I think of that sooner? It was a fantastic idea. And come on, it’ll be easy, I egged myself on. This would solve all the problems in the world, like as if just my own existence alone was the cause of them anyhow. Alrighty then.
It happened really fast, lightning quick. I stabbed myself in the chest and groaned, which hurt a lot more than I expected. I used my other hand to twist the handle in deep, and now I was choking. Something cool came up my esophagus and I choked on that, bent over the sink, palms of my hand gripped onto the counter to balance myself. To my horror, I found a splatter of dark red drops all over the sink, and when I looked at myself in the mirror, the reflection was quickly covered in the spray of blood too. Now I was getting dizzy. Oh boy. Ohh boy.
Something wasn’t right. Oh wait, yeah, I stabbed myself. I swayed, feet stumbling on each other and the sickening feeling imprisoned my head as I watched blood oozing out and drenching my shirt deep scarlet. The saliva and blood, a thinner concoction, dribbled out of my wheezing mouth. Fuck. In the distant background, I heard someone calling my name, followed by a pounding on the door. Where was I? Shit yeah, the bathroom, right.
I couldn’t stand anymore. My knees buckled and I hit something on the back of my head. A sharp pain rang through and clutched the walls of my head like needles and ants and I groaned if I could without throwing up more spittles of blood. The shouting got louder and lots of things clattered to the ground and within a second, a sweet silhouette hovered over me. Hey, I recognized that face. I tried to reach up to him, but when I did, all sorts of pain shot up in different places. “Hey,” I tried to say, more like screech, but that came out garbled and triggered a hacking convulsion where I’d cough violently, choke, and then cough again like I had chalk and nails in my throat. Bubbles of blood frothed out of my gasping mouth and what other fluids there were.
I felt myself being hoisted up, my limbs felt like jelly, dangling in nothingness. I was slid into another surface, softer by a million times compared to the tiled floor in the bathroom and whatever that was I had hit the back of my head with. I tried to mumble because I had something important to say, but I couldn’t because all that goddamn iron-tasting shit was in my mouth and I’d rather have real shit in my mouth than this. Without a warning, the dagger was yanked out of me with a fucking staggering pain that I shrieked like a banshee and convulsed like a fish out of water. I’m dead, I’m fucking dead, I screamed to myself. It was already done. It was already done ages ago.
You don’t get to say a lot of goodbyes after that final one. It was done.
*
“Hey, Khun here. If Jay’s trying to apologize to you, ignore him. He doesn’t get it, he needs to learn that not everyone has it their way. He thinks that I got the universe to pamper me but it’s not my fault. The company decided what they decided, and for him, he was just less fortunate. I feel bad for him, but he’s acting like a baby about it. Right? We talked about this, Taec. Just ‘cause he called doesn’t mean anything. He didn’t call you for years anyway, when he should’ve. He put the barrier between all of us. Wooyoung tried to talk to him several times more than any of us did, and Jay wouldn’t give a shit about it. Remember all that? Remember all those times you had to face the audience alone and take the blame for it because of what Jay did? Anyways, I’m really hungry for potstickers. I need a buddy to eat with. I also need a rational buddy. You with me, Taec?
“Oh yeah, um, I need a favor... Could you talk to Tiffany for me? I don’t know what’s the deal with her, but she just won’t talk to me-- hasn’t been talking for awhile. Be casual about it. Thanks.”
*
Fuck, why was his face the first I always saw after waking up from something really god-awful? I shut my eyes quickly and pretended I hadn’t woken up yet. Sleep took me away again in minutes before I could think about anything else. But he looked like he’d been crying.
*
Darkness invaded my eyesight when I woke up again. I groaned. Somebody forgot that I was constantly blind.
“Crush?” I called out. Um, no, that couldn’t have been me. My voice was so foreign and groggy like a frog’s croak and a toilet’s burp. I cleared my throat. “Hey, Crush, you there--”
I paused. Never in my short life up in the clouds had I ever thought about not having my mentor at my side whenever I needed him. He had always been there. And when I wanted to disappear, he let me, despite the fact that he didn’t want that. But he gave me my space anyway. So, fuck, what would happen the day that he wasn’t there anymore? I couldn’t-- Fuck. Was homeboy okay? I needed to know-- “Crush!” I yelled. “Crush, you need to be here, I can’t-- I can’t--”
I choked a prickling fear back down my throat. Stop it, Jay, stop being a pussy. I would just have to accept the only other guy who cared about me was gone out of my life like the way I eventually grew to accept my own death thinking that it was suicide, and just like the way I grew to the idea that my homeboy would find a girl someday and have kids of his own and he’d never know what my lips were like and I him. But I never even got to say goodbye to either of them. They’d never know what I had wanted to say, which I was now cursing the hell out of myself because if and when they were to appear, I’d flip out and I’d never be able to say anything. But it wasn’t like that stuff was important, I mean it was important, but not important enough to say until they were gone and I realized that I should’ve said it when I had the chance. Problem was, I never could remember what I wanted to say until something drastic happened, and fuck, that was always how human nature worked. Nothing would get moving until something bad happened. Wow, I really was a sappy guy. I cringed. I hated that. No, I would never be sappy. Who gives a damn? I could move on. Simple as meeting Hades tomorrow and getting an eternity of torture. Yep.
Oh momma, help me. I wondered for the slightest second what she could be doing. If she ever missed me? And my dad, and what about my brother? How was he? What about my former bandmates, like Wooyoung? That kid was born to be a star. He had it in him. If only he wasn’t so distracted. And so Korean. I always thought that the kids in the company had a chance, a really good chance, but they were just so Korean. But I guess that was also what made them special, and exactly what made me stand out from them. It was what made me alienated because I wasn’t exactly Korean enough. I felt something burn in me. Crush always said if I were any of the elements, I’d be fire because of all this pent up frustration and anger and desire. I got angry fast, and I could fucking run with it, be first in a marathon if I wanted, be first on the stage if I wanted to do that too, be whatever. Do whatever. I wrote what I wanted when I felt the fire and never once did I think that the fire I wrote could one day burn me like a slap in the face.
Huh. Something was oddly familiar about this. I had written something incriminating... yeah. Something bad. I got caught. This was worse than getting caught with pants down, hand on crotch, and porn moaning through the speakers full volume. (I wasn’t going to confirm if that had really happened anytime soon, haha, smug face at me all you want.) This was much worse. Now who ratted me out, I wondered--
“Jaebeom,” a whisper fluttered in the darkness. The sickly warm feeling hit my face like a door in the nose and I forgot to breathe like my heart forgot to beat steadily and I attempted to swallow the gasp which had me choking in a way too familiar like I’d stabbed myself. I didn’t need that reminder. My chest hurt like hell and my head rang a dull pain. Somewhere along the way, the Joker had to be asking me, “Why so serious?” Sure thing, this was an appropriate time to laugh.
“‘Bout time," I said. "I missed you." That was the gayest thing I ever said and I was not doing that again anytime soon. But I wondered if his eyes sparkled and his lips followed a curveball straight to heaven.
“Can I...” My mentor held my hand and squeezed it.
“Yeah,” I nodded, trying out this nicety thing for once. “Yeah, I’d like that.” I opened my mouth, and he pulled out a lighter after much fumbling with the zipper, I heard, with him cussing under his soft breath and he finally clicked it on. The strings in the back of my throat lit up and I tried not to swallow on it because I’d done that before, smart ass that I was, and then I was a dying wailing dragon, coughing badass smoke rings and calling out to momma for mercy. Crush did laugh, that bastard. Anyway, finally, when the light reached my eyes, it wasn’t like the way you woke up from sleep, when things started out foggy and gradually got brighter, more vivid. This was a thunderbolt of shock, everything came back with startlingly full color like a tidal wave to the brain, and usually I’d have a headache for a couple hours after that. I hated it. But at least I could fucking see.
I saw his face. Nope, I didn’t want to see that face. Hollowed and pale. Restless. I turned away and coughed, wheezing from withered lungs. Shivered at the wave of coolness coming over my body. That didn’t make sense. I was freezing cold all the time, but I still felt the fire, I still felt angry. Nothing was going to be resolved if I kept getting myself stuck in a hospital bed, whether or not it was in the sky. But like I said, I couldn’t be mad at Crush. He didn’t do anything wrong, aside from the fact that he freaking lied to me about what I thought had been suicide, and was now a murder mystery, and just-- yeah, I should move on. Not the sap guy. But you know what? I wanted to be mad at him because I knew he cared about me and maybe I was mad about that. Maybe I wanted out. I needed him out of my life. I coughed again. “Do it,” I said harshly. I felt like I could rip the sheets off the bed and slam him roughly, face to the wall, and fist him in the ass so hard, he’d moan and whimper and cry for mercy out of his bleeding bruised lips.
“Do what?” he asked gently.
“Just do it!” I cried out. “Say it! Tell me that I’m a fucking idiot for hurting myself, and that I should’ve listened to you because you’re always right and that I should've followed the rules because they’re there for a reason and that you wanted me to be alright, so that one day, if you ever needed to leave, you could, because you’d have the reassurance I wouldn’t do anything dumb like what the existence of my life amounts to, and that I wouldn’t go psycho and hurt other people too!” I sucked in the cold air angrily, to steady myself. Something in my conscience wobbled and cracked and flew out of orbit.
He didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to hear him say anything. Even though I said that I did. But I didn’t. I especially didn’t want to see his face. “D’you know that I hurt people when I was alive?” I asked quietly.
“No, I didn’t,” Crush spoke up from behind me. “I never thought that you would.”
“Well, you’re wrong,” I said loudly. “Purely, ass-fucking wrong.” Again, I heard nothing in response, except for the small clinking, the zipper on his jacket probably hitting the side of the bed railing. “What, aren’t you going to sigh exasperatedly and tell me that I’m better than that?”
“You do whatever you want. I’m tired, Jaebeom.”
Now I turned around. I took a long inhale of his face. He looked so lifeless, I had forgotten he was as dead as I was. I swallowed slowly. “What? What do you mean by that?”
“I’m tired. Okay?” he asked.
“So are you gonna leave?”
“I don’t know what I should do,” Crush murmured, glancing down to the floor. He gripped at the railing of my bed, and I watched his fingers kill the plastic as much as he could without leaving a mark. How I wish my murderer could’ve done that to me. If Crush had been my murderer, I would’ve fallen in love with him. His sweet baby-faced magic could’ve sent me to a place where things were pretty and I wouldn’t have to worry about stuff that were completely out of my hands. I wouldn’t have to be furiously angry about irrelevant things and go iceberg crazy at night because it was so fucking cold I could just bash someone’s face in like the ice did to the Titanic. That made me grimace. That meant I could kill thousands if I wanted. Headline: Murdered kid froze the world in a breath. Yeah, I’d be a legend, and Crush would be the princess I could never save because everything I said earned a punch and a fall and he should've deservedly beaten me to a pulp because I didn’t know how he dealt with me for so long if I didn’t even know how deal with myself for a few minutes, holding a knife in one hand and a lighter in another. Turned out Hades was right. What a shame. I couldn’t get myself to say more, without wanting to choke on ice and fire at the same time. “I, um...” he began. He sniffled. “I got the word out.” I gave him a look and he must’ve known. “Athked if anyone knew about the murderer.”
“That’s against protocol, you little shit,” I answered softly. His grip tightened like a choke-hold.
“I know that! You alwayth do that to me, Jaebeom! You alwayth forthe me to break the ruleth--” He stopped and shook his head, complexion contorted in distraught. “And then I look like the bad guy. And I don’t want that. I wanted to be good to you. But I gueth I wath never enough.”
No, I wanted to scream at him, no, he had it all wrong. But I couldn’t get myself to say it. “So leave,” I muttered.
Crush’s bottom lip disappeared past his upper, and he stared into the dark, brows furrowed. His foot tapped the floor impatiently. “I did. I left you for three weekth.”
“Three weeks?!” I yelled. My eyes widened. “What?”
“I met a guy. Thaid he could help. For a prithe.”
“So?” I choked.
“I found him at a themetary.”
“Wait, wait, wait. You were on earth? You actually got on earth??” Crush ignored that question, his eyes hard and glaring. He wouldn’t look at me, even when I finally gave him my undivided attention towards him. “So?” I prompted.
“He confirmed it. Your final rethting plathe wath at the bottom of a frothen lake, in the middle of the night. There wath no entry in the ithe ‘cauthe you entered through the lake by river.”
“He saw me get dumped into a river? Did I drown or was I killed somewhere else?”
“Drowned. It wath tho cold. The impact wath hard too.”
“What, the river was deep?”
“No... you fell from a bridge.”
Bridge? What bridge?! That took a long time to sink in. But knowing myself, it wouldn’t really register in my dead-ass brain until days later when I was really thinking about it. I glanced at Crush to see if there was more that he wanted to say, but now his face looked torn and his eyes were so sunken in like craters, I wanted to reach out and hold him. But Crush wasn’t telling me the whole story. “You’re hiding something.”
“We, um... I, um...” He didn’t say anything for a long time, like he couldn’t. Ashamed.
It dawned on me, but I pushed it far back out from my head because that was crazy batshit. Crush couldn’t have done it. Hell to the fucking no. “No,” I said. “No.”
But he didn’t deny it.
“No. No, Crush, no you didn’t. Tell me you didn’t.”
He swallowed hard, a stuttering sob back down his throat, and his face crumpled like a trainwreck.
“NO!” I shouted. “No no no no no no no no no. Fuck no! Let me kill this bastard too. Let me kill him.” I found myself begging, breaking down, wanting to give him something better than what fucking asshat was shitting on him. But Crush shook his head, still unable to look at me. He was on the verge of tears. “Crush, why?!” I tensed up and everything in me shook.
“I juth’ didn’t want you... to...”
“NOO!” I screamed. I grabbed his collar so hard, he gasped with hurt and his watery eyes finally met mine. “You let him use you,” I heaved with anger. “You let him use you, why?! Why the hell would you let him do that to you?!”
Fuck, I broke him. I broke Crush. This was all my fault.
“But you know what he thaid? He thaid that I let you uthe me,” he murmured into my face. The pupils in his eyes shifted, and he swallowed. I felt an ache in my chest destroy me atom by atom.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head. “I’d never do that. Crush, you mean... a lot to me.”
“But, not enough, remember?”
I understood it now. Homeboy meant more to me than Crush ever would. But I wished it weren’t that way. I wanted to hold onto his collar forever. I wanted his lips forever. But was that because I missed homeboy and needed an impulsive outlet or was it really because I wanted Crush to be with me?
I turned away, letting go of his collar. “Yeah,” I answered hoarsely. “Yeah, that’s right. How many more bastards are you gonna fuck to get an answer for me? Whose grave did you fuck over? Did you like it? Was it worth it?”
“Yeah,” Crush retorted. Now he seemed angry. That was new. Maybe it was because I didn’t appreciate his “effort.” But why the fuck would he hurt himself for me? That was so damn stupid. So fucking damn stupid even I wouldn’t do the same for him. Oh. Oh. I guess he was hurt because he had just realized that.
“Get away from me, you dirty insolent whore,” I whispered. I didn’t bother to look at him. I wouldn’t bother to look at him anymore.
*
[ Next]
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