Chapter Text
Five minutes. Ten. Maybe less. Maybe more.
Time feels unreliable in moments like this, memories stretched and warped like plastic thrown into the kiln. The remnants are distorted beyond belief, and what’s left behind when the dust settles is a morbid shell of what once was. Every second feels thin and glass-like, something that might shatter if even so much as a breath comes out the wrong way. The whole thing is suspended in an everlasting purgatory; two people held in place by a single moment, neither is ready to finish, even as it inches toward its inevitable end. Clearly, they’re at a standstill.
The airport hums dully around them, a muted chaos. The rumble of rolling luggage catches on the floor grooves, metal zippers jingling like little reminders that everyone else has a destination to run toward. Overhead, announcements echo through the terminal with detached cheerfulness, while the fluorescent lights buzz insistently, like tired insects circling a dying bulb. People rush by in clusters, laughing, arguing, checking phones, complaining about delays, but none of it actually touches them. It’s like the world decided to keep moving while they were forced to be frozen in one singular moment. They’re sealed inside their own fragile little pocket of air, too quiet, too charged, too breakable.
Johnny shifts his stance, adjusting his weight from one leg to the other. The heel of his boot lets out a sharp little squeak against the polished floor—a tiny, stupid sound, but it cuts straight into Jean Loo’s chest. He’s been collecting these sounds, hoarding them in his mind. The crisp drag of his footsteps when he’s trying not to wake Jean after staying up late. The loose, careless rhythm of Johnny tapping his fingers on every hard surface he walks past. It should be pathetic, the way Jean registers all of it, but it feels necessary, like he’s trying to archive something precious before he’s no longer allowed to keep it. By the time he’s done, he’ll have made his own little diorama chronicling the daily life of one prickly accountant.
“So, this is it?”
Johnny asks. He tries to be brisk and breezy, but the words come out pinched. The tone is thin in places, forced in others, a little frayed around the edges in a way Johnny rarely lets himself sound. His eyes flick to his luggage and then back to Jean Loo—a silent check-in, a question quietly tugging behind the gaze. As if he needs confirmation, this is really happening. As if part of him still hopes it might not.
“Yeah.”
Jean Loo barely manages it. His voice comes out soft, softer than even a whisper, barely clearing his throat. It drags against something stuck halfway down, something that refuses to move.
Johnny inhales, shoulders rising in a slow, steady square. Then he gives one of those grins—different from the commercial smirk he’d plaster on for the patrons of a casino, so far removed from any trace of pretense or ingenuity. His smiles have always been that way: simple, sunny things that make ordinary folk feel safe without asking for anything in return. Seeing it now twists deep in Jean Loo’s chest, like the rotting ache of dread when you can picture a story’s end as clear as day, and yet you foolishly choose to venture forward anyway. But Jean Loo always knew himself to be a coward. But as cowardly as he was, he was also no fool–he knew when to pull back when he started to indulge himself too much.
“Well,” Johnny says, “thanks, Jean. You were a great host—and a fake husband.”
Jean Loo forces a laugh, the sound thin, nonexistent in his eyes. The smile moves on his mouth automatically, a gesture carved into muscle memory rather than anything he genuinely feels. “Thank you, Johnny. You were also a kind host to Jean Loo as well as a fake husband.”
Anything more than that, and he knows something inside him will crack open. He can feel the pressure building behind his ribs.
Johnny shifts again, this time brushing his fingers against the handle of his suitcase. He taps it twice. Tap. Tap. Jean Loo knows that tap. It’s Johnny’s subtle, unconscious tell—the little anxious habit he picked up when he’s trying to act like everything’s okay. It’s barely anything, but it sends something brittle scraping up along Jean Loo’s ribs, like the echo of a bruise that hasn’t healed right.
Jean wants to reach out. God, he wants to. He wants to grab Johnny’s wrist, to anchor him here, to stop his departure with his own physical weight if he can’t with his words. He wants to say Don’t go, stay, please. He wants to ask for one more day, one more night, one more dance together. Even one more stupid argument would do.
But his hands remain still at his sides.
Not after everything. Not after all the inflicted distance and silence and sharpness that piled up like snow until neither of them could see the ground anymore. Not after he spent night after night convincing himself that Johnny deserves someone easier, someone softer, someone who doesn’t love the wrong way. Someone who hasn’t pushed him away.
And definitely not when Jean Loo is certain that if he asked, Johnny would meet him with that gentle, apologetic look. The one that says I’m sorry. I cared, but I can’t anymore.
It’s no use, Jean reminds himself. He repeats it like a mantra. It’s no use.
Johnny breaks the silence at last. “Thanks for paying for my ticket as well. I feel pretty indebted to you.”
“No, no, don’t be,” Jean says out loud. On top of everything else, he’s stricken with a surge of shame at himself. All this understanding, all this kindness handed to him on a platter, and yet he chooses to twist it into something ugly and wretched. I’m the one indebted. Always have been, since the moment you chose to spare a glance at the lonely bastard at the bar, stewing in his own self-loathing. “It was Jean Loo’s idea of making you stay here for longer.”
Johnny snorts softly. “Well, it’s pretty costly, you know.”
“Nonsense.” Jean waves a hand dismissively. It’s a flimsy disguise. “He is willing to shell out a bit. It’s not like he uses his money much anyway.”
Johnny clicks his tongue, a light, amused sound.
Silence drapes over them again. This time it’s heavier, more weighted, more suffocating. Not hostile, could never be, but dense with everything they’ve both avoided saying for three weeks. It’s all the things that almost came up in conversation, only to be swallowed back down. It’s all the almost-confessions, almost-arguments, almost-admissions.
The space between them feels like a hallway full of things left unsaid, lined up like ghosts.
Jean feels his guilt pressing into him. The wound is self-inflicted. The wound is self-preserved. The wound was nursed and picked by his own two hands until it festered, leaving him open and bleeding out on the concrete.
“You were… wonderful,” Johnny says suddenly, voice steady but eyes too open. He means it. Every word. It’s the kind of earnestness Johnny offers without thinking twice, but Jean Loo doesn’t know how to hold it without hurting.
His throat tightens. He nods politely, gently. Contained. He folds all his emotion behind quick, flat retorts, the way he always does. “You are very kind, Johnny.”
Johnny’s face seemed to flicker through a torrent of emotions before Jean Loo saw a shuttered, resigned expression settle on his features. His lips are set in a tight, grim smile.
“Goodbye?”
Jean swallows, nods.
“He supposes,” he manages, voice wavering before he clears his throat, “Goodbye, Johnny.”
Johnny pauses, just for a heartbeat. Long enough for Jean to feel a spark of something reckless try to claw out of his chest, and long enough for every foolish version of himself to whisper that there is still time, still a chance, still a moment to undo this.
He’s still standing right there, just barely out of reach, still with a grimace that feels out of place on a face like Johnny’s. Jean Loo watches, as if in slow motion, the incline of Johnny’s head as he grips his luggage decisively.
“Goodbye, Jean Loo.”
Then starts to walk away.
Jean stands perfectly still. He watches the slope of Johnny’s shoulders, the confident but tired swing of his stride, the way his silhouette folds into the current of foot traffic. Johnny grows smaller with every step. Smaller, and smaller, and then gone—swallowed by the river of travelers who will never know what they just absorbed into their midst.
Only when Johnny disappears entirely does Jean allow himself to breathe unevenly. His hands tremble once, then twice. The ache in his chest rises like a wave threatening to break through his sternum. He doesn’t let it. Not here. Not where it can be seen.
Jean Loo unlocks his apartment door with a care that surprises even him, turning the key as though the metal might crumble if handled too roughly. It clicks, turns, and opens with the familiar drag of old hinges. They’re sounds that usually greet him with a subtle comfort, reminders of tiny domestic rituals that anchor him at the end of long days.
Tonight, those same sounds only underscore the hollowness that lies behind them. He pushes the door open and steps inside, the soft thud of it closing behind him far too final. For a long moment, he doesn’t move. He stands by the entrance with his coat still clinging to his shoulders, letting the reality of the empty apartment wash over him. It feels different now—larger somehow, or maybe simply uninhabited in a way that is suddenly unbearable. The absence is startling in its clarity.
Johnny’s presence, which had grown so natural these past couple of weeks, had filled every corner of this apartment with warmth and noise and music that Jean hadn’t even realized he’d grown accustomed to. Johnny humming in the hallway, Johnny padding barefoot across the hardwood, Johnny teasing him about the placement of his spice rack, Johnny laughing at his own jokes, Johnny breathing, Johnny being here.
Now there is nothing. The silence expands to fit the shape of him, and for the first time, the apartment feels like a museum exhibit of a life Jean isn’t entirely sure belongs to him anymore.
Slowly, stiffly, he shrugs his coat off and hangs it carefully on the hook. The motion feels rehearsed, almost mechanical; precision is easier than thought. He toes off his shoes with the same quiet efficiency, lines them up neatly, ignoring the sudden heaviness in his chest.
It is absurd, he tells himself. Entirely absurd to be behaving like this. People come. People go. He has survived worse unpredictability, worse losses, but this just feels different in a way he can’t quite grasp. In a way, it’s surprising how love can move someone even as detached as him.
Love? He balks at himself, at his own train of thought. What would he know about something like that? It had fallen right into his lap, and like a stubborn child, he’d refused it and skittered right back into his old ways.
He forces himself further inside, attempting to let routine carry him in the places where emotion threatens to overwhelm. The familiar contours of his living room greet him: the couch too stiff for comfort, the blanket folded precisely the way he likes it, the shelves lined with books in strict alphabetical order. Nothing has changed, and yet everything has. The space looks untouched, undisturbed since morning, and the starkness of that fact lands in him like a blow. He finds himself glancing—just briefly—toward the armchair Johnny had often claimed, expecting, absurdly, to see the imprint of him still there. But the cushion is smooth, perfectly fluffed, a silent reminder that Johnny hadn’t sat there today. Or yesterday. Or any day he will have in the future.
This is ridiculous, he thinks. People leave all the time, but why now is it so different? He doesn’t know who he’s trying to convince. Himself, perhaps. The walls. The ghost of a man he hasn’t even lost properly. But the words ring hollow, insubstantial, as he drifts deeper into the apartment.
He pauses by the kitchen doorway, rubbing a hand over his brow, fighting off the unwelcome ghost of Johnny’s voice echoing faintly in his memory—soft, earnest, trembling with feeling:
You were… wonderful.
The memory lands with brutal accuracy, carving a searing pain down the center of his chest. He swallows hard, and for the sake of maintaining any semblance of composure, he pushes into the kitchen. The tiles under his feet are cold, grounding him with their steady chill.
The kitchen is dimly lit, carrying faint smells—detergent, a hint of coffee, and something he cannot place. Something cozy. Something inviting. Something that feels cruelly like the lingering presence of someone who should still be here. He shakes his head the moment the thought forms, dismissing it as sentimentality, as his own stupidity, as weakness. He cannot afford any of those things right now. Not when the ache is already threading itself beneath his ribs.
He heads toward the refrigerator out of habit, perhaps seeking a distraction, perhaps simply needing something to do with his hands. His fingers curl around the handle—and pause. A strange tension, a warning, a whisper in the back of his mind telling him that something is off. But he ignores it. He pulls.
The cold air spills out onto his face.
And the world stills.
The refrigerator is filled—not with the forgotten ingredients he had been meaning to prepare, not with the wilted greens he was half-convinced were beyond saving, not with the poor excuses of meals he’d let sit for too long. No. Instead, neatly stacked in clean containers, lined up with purposeful care, are home-cooked meals. Every container is labeled, and every label written on the container is in the same chaotic handwriting he had teased Johnny about more times than he could count.
Jean’s vision wavers. He does not breathe.
For a long moment, he simply stares, frozen by the quiet enormity of it. The refrigerator hums softly, oblivious to the way the ground has tilted under him. He feels something inside him crack. Johnny must have spent hours in this kitchen. Hours he did not have. Hours he should have used to rest, or pack, or sleep, or do anything other than think of Jean and what he might need after he was gone. Maybe even hours that Jean could’ve spent with Johnny.
The thought steals the strength from his knees. His hand tightens on the refrigerator door as though it might keep him standing.
He reaches out hesitantly, brushing the top container. The plastic is cold beneath his touch, but the warmth behind it—what it meant, what it represented—burns him through anyway. He imagines Johnny placing each finished dish into the fridge, humming to himself, wiping sweat from his forehead, glancing around the kitchen as if he belonged there. Johnny was stirring pots with exaggerated flair, claiming he was making “Michelin-star-level cuisine if Michelin judges had zero standards.” Johnny laughing. Johnny caring. Johnny is thinking about him.
A tear slips down Jean’s cheek before he even realizes he’s crying. He squeezes his eyes shut, jaw tight, breath shuddering in and out as he fights for control. The cold air brushes against the wetness on his face, making the sting sharper.
“You idiot,” he grits out. He isn’t sure if he means Johnny—sweet, earnest, foolish Johnny—or himself, the man too afraid to hold on when he had the chance. The man who let something rare and bright slip through the cracks because he was too practiced in pretending he didn’t need what he desperately wanted.
The shuddering in his chest swells, pressing inward in a way that feels punishing. He leans forward until his forehead meets the chilled metal of the refrigerator door, letting the cold ground him even as it cuts into him. His breath fogs faintly against the surface.
He’s barely functioning, but part of his gut tells him that this might be his sign to run. To follow him and undo all of this.
The thought hits him with dizzying force. For a fleeting, reckless moment, he imagines sprinting out of the apartment, grabbing his passport, and taking the first plane to Vegas. Just like…in those movies. Ones he’d catch glimpses of briefly during family dinners and flights, ones that spun lofty tales of love and loyalty and trust. Movies that dangled the dream of romance in the face of its audience and cried, Look! It’s just that easy! Go give it a try!
And for a brief, impossible second, he lets himself indulge. He imagines shouting Johnny’s name in the terminal. Imagine catching his wrist. Imagine saying everything he withheld, everything he swallowed down out of fear and pride and cowardice. The words would overflow like a dam bursting at its seams, and he’d finally unlock the secret to healing others’ wounds with just soothing speeches. He’d run a hand through Johnny’s hair, just like he’d always wanted, and tangle his fingers through the curls at the base of his neck and…and…
But then reality sinks its teeth in.
Johnny is already gone, already in the sky. Already leaving him behind because that is what Jean told him to do—not in words, but in distance, in silence, in fear.
Jean pulls the refrigerator door shut with excruciating gentleness, as though the meals inside are fragile relics. He stays there with his hand pressed flat against the metal, breathing in the dim quiet.
The apartment hums around him, indifferent to the unraveling of his composure. And Jean Loo, so reserved, so measured, so carefully held together, stands there breaking in slow motion.
The man seems to linger on even after his departure. What is he supposed to do now?
The refrigerator gives no answer to his misery. That alone is enough, though. It is the universe’s way of telling him that he’s not meant to deserve, to truly experience love. The silence presses closer. And Jean remains in place, surrounded by the final proof that Johnny cared for him too much and too kindly and realizing with dawning, miserable clarity that he may have only understood the depth of it now, when it is far too late.
Johnny hates flying.
He always has. The cramped seats, the recycled air, the inevitable child crying three rows down, the pressure that claws its way into his ears, the engine’s bone-deep roar. Every part of it has always grated on him. He used to joke that planes are just metal coffins with drink service. Normally, he can sleep through anything if exhaustion hits him hard enough. But tonight, even exhaustion refuses to touch him. His body aches with the kind of tiredness that has nothing to do with lack of sleep and everything to do with what he left behind. He squeezes his eyes shut, prays for the noise to swallow his thoughts whole, but it only mutes everything except the heartbreak.
He wishes the engines were louder—loud enough to scrub his mind clean. Loud enough to shake off the memory of the quiet apartment, the too-brief goodbyes, the sad smile Jean Loo gave him like a final, reluctant mercy. Loud enough to drown out the invisible weight dragging down his chest, the gravity of all the words he didn’t say. But even at full throttle, the engines can’t overpower the nightmare of his own memory.
The cabin is dim, washed in an artificial dusk. Quiet. People with their necks tilted against seats, curled into jackets, curled into each other. Sleep comes so easily to strangers. Johnny sits in his seat, arms crossed, his legs cramped beneath him, trying to pretend he can mold himself into the shape of someone unbothered. But his body seems to be all but forgiving to him. His fingertips tremble, his foot taps restless circles, and his jaw keeps locking. His heart feels like it’s beating in an apartment two time zones away.
He turns toward the oval window. City lights scatter beneath the plane like fallen gold coins, slowly swallowed by a widening expanse of darkness. In that dim reflection—lightless glass, the faint outline of his own face—he imagines Jean’s eyes instead. Trademark blue mirroring the shade of his hair, steady, impossibly soft in moments he wasn’t prepared for, and afraid in ways he was only beginning to understand. That look, the one Jean gave him sometimes, like Johnny was something precious he never meant to hold.
“Damn it, Jean…” he whispers, barely audible even to himself. The words come out frayed on his tongue, stinging.
He shifts, trying to settle, failing. He flips through the in-flight entertainment, clicking on and off without committing to anything. Words around him blur, and not a single note of music the airline plays resonates with his artisan soul. It’s all hollow. Every distraction tastes like sand. He shuts his eyes again, and this time the memories come on their own: the rhythm of their shared mornings, Jean brushing past him in the tiny kitchen, Jean complaining in that flat monotone while Johnny laughed, Jean’s reluctant amusement whenever Johnny said something stupid enough to earn it. The way Jean’s face softened when he didn’t think Johnny was looking.
His throat tightens.
He remembers, too vividly, Jean Loo in the airport, standing just far enough away to make the distance intentional. Smiling with that polite, brittle ease bound to crack any minute. Offering a goodbye that felt clean and final and unbearably gentle. It’s akin to closing the last page of a book you don’t want to reread to spare yourself the pain of going through the hurt of reading it all over again.
“Goodbye, Johnny.”
Not even a flicker of hesitation. Not a single sign that Jean wanted him to stay. No reaching out, no lingering eyes, no cracked façade. Just acceptance.
Johnny takes in a sharp breath, and it stings.
What’s unfortunate is that Jean Loo wasn’t cruel. He’d never accuse him of that. What Jean Loo was scared of was closeness, vulnerability, the possibility that he could actually mean a lot to someone. And fear made him push, retreat, shut doors before anyone else had the chance to close them on him. It shouldn’t feel personal, Johnny knows that. But heartbreak doesn’t care about logic. His chest feels pried open from the inside.
He slouches down, scrubbing a hand over his face. “We weren’t even real,” he mutters, though the words taste bitter, dishonest. “It’s just fake husbandry, nothin’ more.”
Except that’s the biggest lie he’s told himself all year. Fake husbands don’t cook for each other at midnight. They don’t linger in the same room because silence with the other person feels more comforting than silence alone. They don’t fall asleep on opposite ends of the sofa only to wake up closer. They don’t become each other’s routine.
He presses his palm over his sternum, subconsciously trying to steady the ache blooming beneath it. “Why’d I let myself care so much…” The whisper trembles.
The flight attendant passes by, checking seatbelts. Johnny straightens immediately, instinctively hiding the vulnerability bleeding through his posture. She gives him a kind smile. He returns something faint and broken and then looks away, waiting for her footsteps to fade before he slumps back into himself.
Jean Loo’s apartment flashes again in his mind—sunlight filtering in through thin curtains, Jean standing over the stove, half-focused and half-annoyed at something Johnny said. A moment so easy, so domestic, that Johnny didn’t realize how dangerous it was to cherish. Because now, in this metal coffin thousands of feet above the ground, the memory hits like a blow to the ribs.
“I miss him already.” The words fall out before he can stop them.
The cabin hums quietly. A soft snore, a muffled cough, the rustle of someone's paperback turning pages. Johnny feels small in the midst of all that gentle noise—genuinely small for once, hollowed out and lonely in a way that squeezes behind his ribs until it hurts to breathe.
You’ll be okay, he whispers to himself, almost a mantra. You’ll live.
It sounds like a line from a script written for a version of himself who doesn’t exist anymore. He has lived alone, traveled alone, woken up alone for years, but solitude after knowing what it feels like to belong somewhere—belong with someone—doesn't feel like the old kind of loneliness. It feels newly invented and sharply personal.
He swallows thickly.
“I should’ve told him.” The sentence cracks at the end. “Should’ve said—God, anything.”
But he knows how that would’ve gone. Jean would’ve panicked. Withdrawn. Laughed it off or shut him down, or found a way to disappear behind the walls he’s spent a lifetime building. Johnny knows that. So he did the only thing he could do for someone like Jean. He let him go. He made the goodbye easy, safe, and bearable.
Now he has nothing but the imprint of what could’ve been—sitting like a ghost in the empty seat beside him. He rests his forehead against the window, letting the cold seep into his skin. It anchors him, barely.
“I’ll miss you,” he murmurs again, quieter this time. It’s a confession meant for an unhearing sky.
The plane drifts closer to Vegas. City lights begin to appear, glittering in their familiar gaudy sprawl, promising noise and neon and a hundred distractions. But Johnny feels none of the usual spark. Vegas used to be home. Tonight, it feels like the place he lands at because he has nowhere else to go.
Home is supposed to feel warm.
And without Jean Loo, nothing does.
Jean Loo does not notice the time anymore—truthfully, he stopped noticing anything that didn’t involve work or the motion of breathing sometime in the weeks after Johnny left. Morning bleeds into afternoon, afternoon into dusk, dusk into whatever comes after when you stay in the office long enough for the fluorescent lights to hum over you like a reprimand. His coworkers have learned not to check on him; his boss’s gentle suggestions about “rest” and “mental clarity” have dwindled into worried glances. But none of that registers for Jean. His world has shrunk into something tight and colorless, a small, dim room inside his chest where nothing moves unless forced.
He sits at his desk long before the building fully wakes, the city still gray outside his window. His sleeves are rolled neatly to the elbow, his back stiff, his pen aligned perfectly with the edge of his notebook. These are things he can control because work is safe, cold, unchanging, predictable. Work cannot dissolve under your hands like something fragile. Work cannot ask to be let in. Work never laughs loudly and wipes tears from its eyes when you burn pancakes at 1 AM. Work does not smell like cologne and sunshine pressed into a hoodie. Work does not leave.
He stares at the column of numbers on the page, willing them to stay still. He’s on his fourth attempt at the same set of problems, but the digits keep swimming, blurring, drifting out of line. He blinks hard, and his eyes sting. He tells himself it’s the dry air in the office. Really, though, he knows he’s exhausted himself well beyond a simple nap. He tells himself he just needs coffee. A walk. Something. Anything. But none of that feels true, and the lie sits in his throat like a swallowed stone.
The golden band continues to sit on his finger, what was once a reminder of the only person who’s ever enjoyed his company had long since become a mockery of Jean Loo’s life. The ring is so obviously cheap, it’s the kind of ring bought at a twenty-four-hour novelty shop because at the time they hadn’t cared, hadn’t needed anything fancy, anything matching. They’d been dizzy and reckless and giddy enough to believe anything could be beautiful if you were laughing while holding someone’s hand. So currently, the ring sits on his finger as a reminder of his mistake, and he can’t seem to remove it, as then his co-workers would suspect that there’s something up with his marriage, which would further the validity of his marriage.
The truth is simpler and infinitely heavier: he has not been fine since Johnny stepped through that airport gate and disappeared into a crowd of strangers. Something in him has felt carved out ever since, as if someone reached inside his chest and scooped out the most essential fibers of his very being. He can work without pausing. He can breathe without thinking. But it was as if he had cracked a rib and refused to receive medical help–he trudged on stubbornly even as he felt his insides rattle within.
He flips the page. His hand trembles so slightly he nearly convinces himself he imagined it. He tightens his grip on the pencil, knuckles whitening. Embarrassingly, Johnny’s very existence continues to haunt him, the sound reverberating against his skull.
Loud, bright, always too big for the space it occupied, deserving of a bigger crowd, more people who care. Nevertheless, it’s a laugh that filled a room, that disarmed him, that irritated him on bad days and soothed him on good ones. A man he’s tried again and again to forget, but it just keeps slipping in through the tight cocoon he made for himself.
He shuts his eyes. Inhale, one, two. Exhale on third. Rinse and repeat.
Vegas. Neon lights paint the night in streaks of gold, red, and electric blue. Heat rising from the asphalt. Music spilling from clubs. Laughter—his own, which feels impossible to recall now, but it’s there, echoing. And Johnny beside him, arm slung casually around his shoulders, not because he needed to steady Jean, but because that was just where Johnny always wanted to be. At least that’s what Jean Loo would like to believe.
Jean remembers the scent of spilled drinks, the sugary tang of cocktails clinging to their clothes. The blurry edges of the world. The startling sharpness of how happy he’d felt. Not the soft, subtle joy he’d trained himself to tolerate—but something unrestrained. Something that terrified him in the best possible way.
He remembers stumbling together down the strip, both of them laughing at nothing, leaning into each other because it was easier than standing alone. Johnny kept calling him pretty in that slurred, sincere drawl, and Jean kept pretending not to melt each time.
He remembers Johnny saying his name, in a quiet, reverent manner, like it meant something precious. Like he meant something precious.
“Jean… you look happy.” And God, he had been.
The memory of that night keeps tumbling open, and it was impossible to push it away—
It’s a blur, difficult to remember all the details, but he can recall the tiny chapel with flickering neon signs shaped like hearts, the decor tacky enough to make Jean Loo laugh harder, that night the officiant nodding off mid-sentence as Johnny chats with him, and the paperwork that smelled like vodka because someone, probably him, spilled half their drink on it.
But above all of it, he remembers Johnny turning to him, eyes soft even through the haze of alcohol, hand tightening around his waist as he asked:
“Are you sure? We don’t gotta, sugar. Say the word, and we walk right out.”
He’s gone along remembering that, at this point, Jean Loo was more than wasted beyond memory and beyond safety. This is new. He can faintly remember cupping Johnny’s face with trembling hands, feeling the warmth of him, the solidity, the acceptance. His voice had cracked when he answered:
“I want this. I want—...you.”
He can see the way Johnny’s expression changed. Disbelief first. Then joy. Then something deeper, something that scared Jean even then—a kind of devotion he didn’t know how to hold without breaking it.
Johnny laughed, breathless, stunned. “Then let’s do it. Let’s be stupid together.”
Jean’s breath stutters in the present. His vision blurs. His heart slams hard against his ribs.
The final moment before they said their vows, Johnny leans in close, forehead pressed against his, voice low and warm and trembling.
“You sure? I ain’t lettin’ you go easy, darlin’.”
And Jean—blackout drunk but honest, brave in the way only alcohol and longing made him—had whispered back:
“Good. Don’t.”
He felt his chest seize at him because he did. He let Johnny go. Forced him to, even. He pushed him out inch by inch; out of fear, out of habit, out of some misguided attempt at self-preservation. He silenced himself. Stopped meeting Johnny halfway. Stopped laughing. Stopped reaching out. Stopped breathing correctly because every moment with Johnny felt like standing too near a sun he didn’t know how to hold.
He hears Johnny’s voice then—whimpering, wounded, the night before he left:
“He’s waitin’ on the moment I disappear.”
It’s a whisper, from a call he made. His guess was Bathsheba, but anyway, Jean Loo had proved him right.
The guilt crushes him.
His hand curls into a fist. His throat closes.
He stands abruptly, the chair scraping harshly against the floor. A sound that rings like a crack in the quiet office. A few coworkers turn, startled.
Jean barely registers them. He can’t see anything but that last look Johnny gave him at the airport—hopeful, hurting, and so unbearably patient. A look that silently asked: Won’t you stop me? Won’t you want me? Won’t you try?
He hadn’t.
But he will now.
He slams the drawer shut—not out of anger, but out of certainty. The ring stays inside, but the decision does not.
He grabs his coat with shaking hands, heart thundering like it’s finally waking up after weeks of numbness. Someone calls his name as he strides toward the door.
“Jean Loo? Are you—where are you going?”
He doesn’t answer.
He can’t. His lungs are too full of panic and adrenaline and a desperate hope he thought he’d buried. He leaves the office, steps quickening, turning into a near run by the time he reaches the lobby.
Then he’s out the doors, into the cold air, breath bursting out in visible clouds as he half-sprints toward the street. His pulse is wild. His mind is louder than it’s been in weeks.
He doesn't know exactly where Johnny is—Vegas, a chapel, a show venue, anywhere.
But that doesn’t matter.
He just knows he has to find him. Has to fix this. Has to say what he never let himself say before it is too late.
Johnny clears his throat for what feels like the twentieth time that morning, though he’s past the point of counting anything meaningfully. Numbers used to ground him—the rhythm of appointments, the predictable shuffle of paperwork, the steady tick of the chapel’s wall clock, but lately even those anchors feel flimsy.
The chapel is warm with soft, gold lighting, that particular shade designed to flatter everyone who walks under it, smoothing out stress lines and giving even the most hungover couples a romantic glow. But Johnny feels faded. Burnt out around the edges. Each bulb seems to illuminate the emptiness in him rather than soften it, and he wonders when exactly he started feeling like a ghost in his own workplace. This isn’t the first time he’s quite felt this way. Like he’s been running on emergency reserve batteries for weeks, and now they’re beginning to flicker.
He straightens the white collar of his Elvis Presley getup. It still fits properly, still looks decent enough, but he can’t remember the last time he cared about how he looked.
Truthfully, he hasn’t really done anything since Jean Loo. Most days, he barely remembers to eat unless a coworker leaves snacks near his station, and even then, he sometimes stares at them for hours before realizing they were meant for him. But he insists on pretending things are fine because pretending is easier than sitting still in the quiet and acknowledging the hollow ache that crawls into the center of his chest each time he lets his mind drift.
Still, he persists. He clears his throat again and forces a smile towards the couple standing in front of him: a nervous bride with trembling fingers and another teary-eyed bride clutching his hands like they’re the only thing tethering her to the ground. They look at each other like no one else exists. Like the world has funneled down into this tiny chapel, into the space between their joined hands. Johnny used to believe in that feeling without irony. Used to chase it, nurture it, hold onto it like it meant something about the life he could build one day. Now he can only imitate the belief with the precision of someone who knows the choreography but no longer feels the music.
His voice slips automatically into the practiced cadence, the showman charm he could perform even while half-asleep. It’s warm, steady, and comfortable. A tone he once used playfully with Jean Loo, that night when everything had felt absurd and electric and too close to something real.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate the union of two souls—”
He wonders if Jean Loo would ever like being called beloved. If Jean Loo even remembers the way Johnny had leaned on him that night, laughing, too tipsy to stand without bracing against the nearest warm body. If he remembers Johnny saying it with the kind of reckless affection he usually keeps hidden under jokes and glitter. The memory rises with intrusive clarity—neon lights in their eyes, the sound of slot machines warping their sense of time, the strange gravity that kept drawing them closer instead of apart.
Johnny exhales through his nose and snaps his attention back to the script before it can drift into dangerous territory.
“—a promise to cherish, in good times and in bad—”
How ironic, he thinks, that he’s officiating other people’s certainty while tiptoeing around the collapse of his own accidental marriage. He spent the last weeks haunted not by big dramatic memories but by tiny ghosts: the empty side of the bed where someone else’s warmth used to be, the quiet kitchen devoid of Jean Loo’s oddly precise tea routine, the sudden lack of clipped, judgmental yet strangely comforting comments. Everything in his apartment feels wrong now. It’s all too spacious, too clean. He didn’t realize how much Jean Loo had disrupted his perspective on his own life, how wrong he’d been observing his own reality until the other had shown him a new angle to things.
He inhales and keeps reading, as if ignoring the ache can make it dissolve.
“—and to stand by each other through every trial and joy that may come—”
The bride sniffles, delicate and earnest. Her soon-to-be spouse wipes her tears with a thumb, tucking a loose curl of wispy pink hair as she does so. Something twists inside Johnny, sharp at first, then dull, then something like a soft collapse. Not quite pain, not quite longing, just this quietly devastating mix of want and regret and the knowledge that he once had a reason to hope for something similar. He wonders what Jean Loo is doing at this exact moment. Probably working. He always seemed to be working. Planning, predicting, preparing. He lived his life like every problem had a solution if handled early enough. Johnny had loved that about him. Loves that about him still, apparently, because the feeling hasn’t faded with distance or time. Heartbreak doesn’t dissolve neatly; it lingers like cigarette smoke woven into the threads of your clothes, faint and stubborn and impossible to wash out fully.
He flips the next page slowly, almost too slowly, because his hands feel momentarily disconnected from his body.
“If anyone objects to this union, speak now or forever hold your—”
“Stop the wedding!”
The voice booms through the chapel like something out of a movie. The bride gasps, the other is startled. Johnny’s reflex is to fight an eye roll because Vegas weddings attract their fair share of disasters: drunk uncles with opinions, bitter exes who think rom-com rules apply, and tourists stumbling into the wrong chapel shouting the wrong lines. He braces himself to gently redirect the chaos, keeping his eyes fixed on the officiant's book.
But something about the voice…
He feels a jolt. A flicker. A recognition he refuses to entertain.
Almost familiar.
No. That’s insane. Impossible.
He grips the edges of the book tighter, knuckles whitening. His heart is suddenly too loud in his ears, climbing higher and higher in his throat as if trying to escape. Urgent in a way that sounds like someone running out of time. Someone desperate.
Johnny’s pulse stutters. There's a pull inside him, a dangerous, magnetic tug, the kind he hasn’t felt since—
No. It cannot be.
Vegas is small, sure, but not small enough for fate to play jokes this cruel. Not small enough for the universe to align like this. Not small enough for the one person he has been trying desperately not to think about to appear right when Johnny has almost (almost) learned to go numb.
He swallows hard, throat dry, tempted—painfully, recklessly tempted—to lift his gaze. To confirm the impossible. To let hope, that reckless traitor, flare up one more time.
He tells himself not to. To finish the ceremony. To be professional. To maintain control.
But the pull wins.
Johnny looks up, and he’s right.
It’s Jean Loo.
Jean Loo is running. Really running.
Not jogging, not hurrying—literally running in the way a life runs out of your hands. Running like the ground is tilting beneath him, and the world is sliding away, and the only way to keep anything, anything, is to outrun panic itself. His breath tears through him in ragged bursts, hot and metallic on his tongue. His tie flaps somewhere behind him like a discarded piece of silk trying to escape. His dress shirt clings to him, damp and constricting, every movement tugging at him like it wants him to stop.
Vegas is so fucking enormous that Jean Loo fears that it could take all week for him to find Johnny. It really shouldn’t be this big; it’s frustrating. It shouldn’t be this blinding with neon. Jean Loo’s gonna get a headache before he finds him.
He dodges a tourist holding a margarita bucket, narrowly avoids a man in a feathered headdress, and skids past a bachelorette party shrieking with laughter. He cuts through the noise, through the bodies, through the bright carnival of a city that suddenly feels monstrous in its size. It swallows sound. It swallows hope. It swallows time. And he needs time—God knows he needs it, he needs to find him tonight—but his time is running out faster than his lungs can replenish.
He keeps running.
Every step feels like peeling skin. Every inhale burns. His body screams at him to stop—and he would, he wants to, but he can’t, because stopping means admitting he waited too long, that he hesitated, that he chose pride over love, and love is heavier, stronger, crueler, and he’s carrying it now like an anchor dragging behind him.
The first chapel he bursts into is so aggressively jungle-themed he almost expects a lion to greet him at the altar. He hears the faint trills of Katy Perry in the background.
A bewildered couple stares at him mid-vow, the guests following in tandem. Clearly, wrong address.
Jean Loo’s voice comes out in a desperate sputter. “Non. Wrong. Wrong place.”
He stumbles back out, nearly tripping over an animatronic toucan.
Back on the sidewalk, he runs again.
His heart slams against the cage of his ribs with such force he wonders if he might crack open from the inside. His vision blurs from the sting of sweat. He can taste fear on his tongue. It’s bitter, metallic, familiar in the way shame, or at least his own, always is.
The second chapel has a giant pirate ship sticking through the wall and a minister dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow. He gets halfway down the aisle before realizing Johnny would rather die than officiate dressed like that.
No. Absolutely not. Johnny would probably set himself on fire before officiating here.
He whirls around and bolts before anyone can ask him why he’s there.
By the third chapel, he’s shaking, sweating, practically vibrating out of his skin.
He barges inside only to be greeted by an Elvis five inches shorter than Johnny and with a suspiciously German accent.
Nope. Wrong again.
This time, he walks out slower, chest tight, hands on his hips.
What if I never find him? What if he’s already in the middle of a ceremony and I’m barging into a dozen strangers’ weddings like a lunatic? What if he sees me and tells me to leave? What if he’s happier without me?
His throat constricts.
He grips his hair, tugging once.
No. No, you coward, keep moving. He loves weddings. He must be in one of these ridiculous chapels. You just have to find the one with… with…
With what?
He doesn’t know. Just Johnny. Funny Johnny. Loud Johnny. Absolutely fucking ridiculous Johnny.
The only person who ever made his life feel less like a quiet grayscale.
Jean Loo wipes his face with a trembling hand, inhales sharply, and starts running again. Every step feels heavier. Every breath feels thinner. His mind races nearly as fast as his legs:
He will laugh at you. He won’t forgive you. He’ll think you’re doing this out of pity. He’s already moved on. He doesn’t want you. Why did you sign the papers? Why did you let him walk away? Why did you stand there like a statue at the airport? Why didn’t you—
He shakes his head violently, as if he can shake the thoughts loose.
He has to at least try.
A cab honks at him. He leaps back with a curse.
He can feel his heartbeat in his ears, in his fingertips, in the soles of his feet. He tastes fear. He tastes regret. He tastes the very real possibility that he has already lost him.
Please, he thinks, chest aching. Please still be here.
He reaches the sidewalk again and looks up. Another chapel.
A giant inflatable Cupid sits on the roof holding a crooked bow. The neon sign flickers, with only a few letters left. The paint is peeling. It looks like it should’ve been condemned five years ago.
This must be the place. He doesn’t know what it is, but something tells him that Johnny would absolutely work here. The faint crooning of Kim Carnes reaches for him through the doors.
Jean Loo feels his throat swell with something like hope and dread all mixed together. This has to be it.
He braces one hand against the wall, trying to steady his breath. His body is shaking. His knees feel unsteady. His heart feels like it’s trying to crack open his ribs from the inside. He swallows.
If he’s not inside… I don’t know what I’m going to do.
He pushes the door. His palm is slick on the handle. His breath stutters. Here goes nothing.
The chapel door groans when he pushes it.
A long, dragging creak, like the building itself hesitates to let him in. The air inside is cold. Artificial. It smells faintly of old carpet cleaner, fake roses, and cheap hairspray. Jean Loo steps forward, chest heaving, breath loud in his ears. His vision blurs at the edges. Everything feels like it’s happening underwater. The chapel is small, dim, and tacky.
A couple stands at the altar, hands clasped, eyes shining. The guests turn slowly, one head after another swiveling in his direction. And in the center of it all—
Johnny.
Elvis jumpsuit. Hair slicked back. Blue eyes so bright that even the fluorescent lights can’t seem to drown them out.
Jean Loo’s heart stops. Actually stops.
His body stops with it—just one instant where his breath, his thoughts, the frantic pounding of his blood all freeze.
Johnny’s lips part. His brows pull together. His eyes widen in something between dread and disbelief. For a split, suspended second, no one moves.
Then Johnny looks up to meet his gaze.
“Stop the wedding!”
Jean Loo’s voice splits the chapel’s hush like a blade hurled without aim. It rings out much sharper than he intended, rawer than he imagined. It ricochets off of church pews, stained plastic windows, and the collective breath of every startled guest. The moment after is a hollow, reverberating cavern, so quiet he can hear the aftershiver of his own voice tremble back to him. It tells him that he’s too late, that Johnny has resigned himself from him and from any chance of romance.
He doesn’t remember deciding to speak. He only remembers the sensation right before: the crushing weight of knowing that if he stayed silent, if he let the world continue untouched, he would have to live the rest of his life carrying an unspoken truth like a stone jammed under his ribs. So he moved—no, he broke. Something in him cracked open, and the sound clawed itself free. And now he stands frozen in its wake, breath dragging through him like it’s scraping past thorns. His knees threaten to give way, but he locks them, forcing himself into stillness. He has already leapt; there is no ledge to scramble back to.
The air feels too hot in the chapel, too sticky. He wipes at the sweat gathering on his brow with the back of a shaking hand. His palm is clammy. His throat is scorched. His chest feels too small to contain the chaos inside him. And yet he forces himself to lift his chin even as dozens of eyes pierce him—some offended, some amused, many simply curious. He feels like a sinner walking willingly into his own execution.
Johnny turns to look elsewhere.
The motion is slow, as though dragging through water. His expression is clearly a soft, best effort at an explosion; shock, confusion, something like pain blooming beneath the surface.
“Jean Loo…?”
Hearing Johnny say his name like that—quiet, uncertain, almost frightened—hits harder than any punch. It shoves the breath out of Jean Loo’s lungs. He swallows against the tightness in his throat. His tongue feels too big, and he feels too clumsy to actually speak. His heartbeat is a thunder rolling behind his ears, threatening to drown out thought itself.
He bows his head, breath quivering.
“Pardonnez-moi, Johnny. Jean Loo lo—”
The words snag on something raw, something terrifying. His courage stumbles. His stomach plunges. His entire being feels like it drops toward the floor—and maybe it does. Maybe a part of him splinters and falls, trying to escape through his shoes.
Then, in a single, reckless inhale, he lifts his head again.
Screw it.
“…No. No, I love you… Johnny.”
The confession doesn’t simply leave his mouth—it tears free from him, jagged and trembling. The words taste like surrender, like a door opening too suddenly, like a wound that’s been waiting weeks to bleed. They ripple through the room in a way he can feel physically, like the air shifts, like everyone inhales sharply at once.
A guest’s phone actually slips from her fingers and thuds gently against the carpet.
Johnny’s eyes widen—not shining with joy, but with something far more frightening. They glisten the way a glass of water trembles right before spilling—fragile, shimmering, full of pressure. It’s distinctly filled with hurt, confusion, fear, and a thousand questions he doesn’t have the breath to ask. A thousand questions that Jean Loo is reaching out for right now.
“…You can’t just say that,” Johnny whispers, voice breaking. “Not after you were okay with signing those papers. Not after everything we’ve been through.”
The words land with the force of a blow. Jean Loo actually feels his body flinch, a sharp tightening in his chest as if someone reached inside and twisted. He places a hand over his heart on instinct, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt like he might be able to contain the pain before it spills out in front of everyone.
But he steps forward anyway.
One foot. Then another. Slow, careful, trembling. Every movement feels like a prayer, solemn and meek. Jean Loo has been utterly winnowed down.
“I know,” he breathes, voice soft but crushing under its own honesty. “I know, Johnny. And I am sorry. Truly… deeply sorry. I was a coward. I was afraid. I was—”
His voice falters again. The truth seems to be much too real and honest for him to continue. It presses against his throat like it wants to choke him on its way out.
He swallows, hard, and forces himself to continue. He reminds himself that there’s no backing out now.
“If there is anything these past five weeks have taught me… it is that I love you.”
The admission pours out in a rush, thick and trembling. His throat closes around the last word, threatening tears he refuses to let fall—not here, not in front of strangers, not when Johnny’s eyes are the only ones that matter.
“I never knew how much love I had in me until you—until you stayed.”
He barely gets the words out before the world tilts into silence. The kind of silence that has him holding his breath, reminding him he is teetering on the edge of either salvation or ruin.
Then—
“Um—excuse me?”
The sharp voice snaps the tension like scissors.
One of the brides is glaring at him, hands on her hips, tapping her heel with impatient authority. Her bride mirrors her posture, unimpressed.
“This is very sweet and all,” the first bride says, exasperation dripping from every syllable, “but could you not do this in the middle of our ceremony?”
“Seriously,” her partner adds. “This is our big day. We booked this slot fair and square. If you’re gonna have a romcom moment, do it outside.”
Johnny looks over at them, up at a clock. He has a face that’s hard to read, but Jean Loo tries to decipher as much as he can. “Yeah, folks, we’re kinda on the clock here.”
Jean Loo goes still, mortified. It’s over, isn’t it?
“Ah. Yes. Yes, of course.” He bows stiffly, formality coating his movements like armor that’s much too heavy for him. “Pardon. Jean Loo will… wait outside.”
Johnny only nods, and so Jean Loo backs away, step by step. Every inch feels ridiculous, humiliating, vulnerable, as much as it is shattering. His fingers tremble, breath stutters. Each movement is a small surrender. A death sentence.
The door nudges against his back. He slips out.
The chapel door swings shut with a soft, final thud—like a punctuation mark on a sentence he hasn’t finished speaking.
And outside the neon chapel, in the warm, buzzing Vegas air, Jean Loo finally exhales a trembling breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.
Jean Loo presses his back against the sunbaked stucco wall, the heat of the Vegas evening pressing against his shoulders, sticking his shirt to him, making him feel claustrophobic and exposed all at once. His elbows are tucked in, but the gesture does nothing to make him smaller, nothing to make him less present, less vulnerable. He can feel the pulse in his temples, a rapid, frantic drumbeat that matches the hammering of his heart, and every now and then a tremor runs down his spine as if his body itself is trying to expel the tension that has been coiled inside for weeks, months, maybe years.
Every time a pair of heels clicks across the sidewalk, every time the wind kicks up a swirl of dust and confetti, every time a distant laugh echoes from inside the chapel, his stomach lurches, twists, knots itself into shapes that feel like they might never unravel. He imagines Johnny, out there somewhere beyond those doors, pacing, maybe checking the clock, maybe muttering under his breath, maybe standing still and holding himself rigid because he has learned that standing still can somehow keep the world from breaking him.
Jean Loo doesn’t know if he is imagining right or wrong, but the image is vivid enough to make his chest tighten so hard he thinks he might actually suffocate under the weight of it. He closes his eyes for a fraction of a second, and behind the lids, he sees Johnny’s face: soft, hopeful, tired but trying to appear unbothered, hair a little mussed, smile half-smiling, blue eyes that glint with some secret light that Jean Loo wants to reach for but is terrified he will never touch again.
Every second stretches unkindly. The sun shifts, shadows creeping across the wall, and Jean Loo’s mind does not slow—it will not stop, cannot stop. He counts heartbeats. He counts blinks. He counts cars that pass. He imagines every possible way he could have failed, every way he could still fail.
What if Johnny never comes out? What if Johnny walks out with the newlyweds, laughing and bright, pretending that Jean Loo’s declaration was some kind of ridiculous Vegas spectacle, a joke to be scorned at later? What if he comes out angry, frustrated, hurt in a way that he cannot forgive? What if he never speaks again? What if he walks away and Jean Loo is left standing here, a crumpled, sweating, desperate figure in the harsh light of the Strip, screaming into the wind that carries no answers, only heat and dust and the faint hum of slot machines from somewhere down the road? Every imagined scenario plays on repeat, a relentless loop of terror, regret, and self-recrimination.
He runs his palms down the sides of his pants, damp from sweat, over and over, each time hoping the gesture will do something, anything, to steady him. It does nothing. He grips his hands together, fingers knotting, twisting, letting the nails dig into his skin, just to feel something besides the empty, electric dread that hums through every nerve. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, then back again, pacing a few short steps along the stucco wall, trying to burn off some fraction of the anxiety, trying to create movement where there is no way forward, no control.
He thinks about everything he has done wrong, everything he has failed to do, every cowardice choice that has led him to this spot in the desert, sweating and waiting like a fool, hoping desperately that his life will hinge on a single moment, a single look, a single word from the person who has made every day feel more vivid than it should.
He imagines what it will be like when Johnny finally appears. Will his voice shake? Will his hands be steady enough to reach out, to touch, to plead without looking pitiful? Will he sound foolish, like a man who has only just realized he loves another human being?
He imagines the worst—Johnny turning away, eyes flashing in hurt, brushing past him, walking out of his life forever—and the mere thought makes his stomach convulse. He swallows hard, but his throat has dried to sandpaper, and nothing passes. He tastes nothing but the metallic tang of fear and sweat and the salt from his own panic. His mind drifts to the picture on his desk, the small photograph from Broadway, thirty dollars and yet priceless, the proof that Johnny was real, that he existed in the same small corners of his life that now feel so painfully empty. He wants to grab it, hold it, but there is no desk here, no refuge, no small comfort. Only the bright, punishing desert sun, the faded neon of the chapel, and the impossible wait.
Jean Loo’s chest aches, a constant pressure, like he is trying to hold in an entire ocean with his ribs. He wonders how long he can survive like this, standing outside, trapped in a purgatory of hope and terror. He imagines Johnny—blue eyes soft, weary, hurting—turning toward him finally, face unreadable, and in that imagined moment, he knows that all his mistakes, all his cowardice, all his shame, will be laid bare. And yet he cannot move, cannot run, cannot hide. He is pinned, suspended between the promise of love and the dread of rejection, between the memory of all the joy Johnny brought and the haunting possibility that he may have destroyed it forever.
He whispers, barely audible, into the dry desert air:
“Please. Even if it is to tell me no. Even if it is to end things for good. Just one more chance. One more moment. That is all I need.”
He repeats it again, mutters it under his breath, over and over, a mantra that does nothing to calm the storm inside him, but that he cannot stop saying. Each repetition stretches time further, every word a small, trembling act of desperation.
The chapel doors swing open.
Jean Loo’s lungs catch. His stomach twists. His knees weaken. Time, which had stretched endlessly, snaps, and in the sudden motion of the doors, the world becomes crystal clear
Johnny steps out. Blue eyes, slightly slouched stance, hands in pockets, tired, soft, wary. There he is.
Jean Loo can finally, somehow, breathe.
He looks like sunlight walking into shadow. His classic white-and-red Elvis suit catches the glow of the strip, making him appear soft and unreal. His eyes, however, are sharp with something wounded.
“Jean Loo.”
Just his name, nothing more, but the sound of it nearly brings Jean Loo to his knees.
He turns, breath catching. “…Johnny.”
The relief in his voice is unmistakable, so is the fear and the overwhelming ache of wanting something he isn’t sure he deserves
Johnny stops a few steps away, arms crossed, breath steady in a way that makes Jean Loo feel exposed. “Jean Loo, I think you’re sweet an’ all, but I just can’t.” His voice wavers only slightly. “You really hurt me back there.”
The words strike deep. Jean Loo feels them physically, like a slow blow blooming inside his chest. He lowers his gaze for a moment before forcing himself to meet Johnny’s again.
“Jean Loo knows this well,” he says softly, each word chosen carefully, painfully. “And he is sorry, Johnny. He was… too cruel to treat you the way he did. Too selfish to think only of himself, and too afraid to admit what he truly wanted.”
Johnny huffs a quiet, humorless breath. “Well, at least you know.” His voice stays guarded, a fragile wall made of old hurts. “Why’d you even come back?”
Jean Loo inhales like the question knocks the breath straight out of him. He takes a hesitant step closer, the neon reflecting on his cheeks like trembling brushstrokes.
“Johnny… I…” He presses a hand against his chest, as if steadying the frantic beating beneath. “I never really thought I’d have a life past working in that cubicle. That little room with the flickering light, the drafty vent, the stale coffee. Before you said anything that night… I never noticed how empty my desk looked. How empty I looked.
He laughs softly, but there’s no humor in it—just sorrow. “After you left… I put up a couple of things since then: A plant, a postcard, a photo,” he swallows hard. “The picture of us. The one the photographer charged us thirty dollars for on Broadway. That one.”
Johnny’s eyes soften by a fraction. “I… I see.”
The encouragement is tiny, if there at all, but Jean Loo clings to it like a lifeline.
“Before I met you,” he continues, “I had accepted the fact that I would live and die in that bleak office, surrounded by paperwork, doing the same dull accounting job until I…” He waves a hand vaguely. “Until I pass out or simply fade away. I had no direction in my life.”
He takes another step, voice trembling now. “And it could still be true. That might still be the life waiting for me, but when you came into the picture, Johnny—mon Dieu—you ruined everything.”
Johnny raises a brow. “Ruined, huh?”
“Yes. Ruined.” Jean Loo’s voice cracks, raw and earnest. “You messed everything up. You made my life complicated. You—” He inhales sharply. “You made it better. So much better than now, going back to what I was before feels like suffocating.
His hands tremble at his sides.
“You even left me food in the fridge before you flew home,” he adds, voice dropping to something small, almost frightened. “I still don’t know if that was you telling me to chase you, a sign to stay, or just out of your kindness… but I have been clinging to the hope that you meant something by it. I mean, surely you did.”
The lights flicker across Johnny’s face like passing thoughts.
“The day you boarded that flight,” Jean Loo whispers, “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the little moles on your chest and face, how you over-season your food, how you break into song at anything I say, how unfairly good you are at crossword puzzles. Your eyes—mon Dieu, your eyes—they change with the room. Greenish-blue sometimes. Yellowish-blue. Sometimes they’re everything at once.”
He closes his eyes for one fragile heartbeat.
“You are so impossibly easy to love, Johnny.” His voice is thick, breaking. “And I know you think you are messy, or-or too much, difficult, or whatever. But you are not. You could never be. Not to me.”
Johnny blinks rapidly, a weak attempt at holding himself together. “I don’t think I overseason my food,” he mutters, careful. “I think you just got some weak taste buds, hunny.”
A tear slips down Jean Loo’s cheek—not because he’s sad, but because hearing Johnny tease him again almost buckles him.
“Bordel,” he says, stepping close enough for their breaths to mingle. “You are so frustrating.”
Johnny lets out a tiny, broken laugh. “Takes one to know one, I guess…” He’s blubbering a bit. “You don’t mind the singing? The whole,” He gestures to himself, still clad in the ridiculous Elvis getup. Glitter in his hair. “You know. Maybe, you’re just a big fan of the king of rock and roll himself.”
Jean Loo frowns and wipes angrily at his eyes. “I know what I want. And it’s not some stupid rockstar six feet underground. And I’m not looking for anyone else when I see you. Don’t you know that? You’re just so–so…you’re you, Johnny. That’s more than enough for me.
“I didn’t know what people meant when they said love comes at you when you least expect it. Thought it was all bullshit to be honest, but maybe I should’ve listened because you just came swinging in like a bulldozer. Wrecking all the walls and routines I’ve built for myself.”
“Like I’m intruding?” Johnny’s goading him a bit; he can’t help it. Their last fight still sits at the back of his brain.
“Intruding? Never. You just slipped right into the place you were always meant to end up in. Or, maybe I was always meant to end up this way. Next to you. Right by your side, even if it means following you off some faraway cliff.” Jean Loo meets his eyes again, dead on.
“I think I’ve been dishonest with you, love, and it’s time I come clean. Truth: I love you. Truth: I want to be your husband again, doesn't matter if we’re drunk out of our minds or what. If-if you’d have me, I’d like to be yours. Again. And for you to be mine.”
For a moment, neither moves.
The air between them is electric—thick with weeks of longing, fear, regret, hope. Jean Loo reaches up, hesitates, then cups Johnny’s cheek with trembling fingers.
“Johnny,” he whispers, “Please. Let me try again. Let me love you properly this time. No fear. No distance. No running away.”
Johnny’s breath stutters, and Jean Loo leans in. No hesitation this time.
He pulls Johnny into a kiss.
A kiss that aches, trembles, says everything he could not bear to lose again.
And Johnny—bless him—kisses him back.
For a long moment, longer than either of them will ever admit, the world simply stops. The neon signs, the distant shuffle of tourists, the brides hollering just feet away around the corner with their friends… everything fades into a warm, humming blur.
There is only the press of Johnny’s lips against Jean Loo’s, tentative at first, then certain, then unbearably gentle, like the kind of forgiveness that doesn’t need words. Jean Loo feels something inside him loosen, something tightly coiled for years, and the release is so profound it almost knocks him breathless.
Johnny’s hands shake where they rest against Jean Loo’s chest, and for once, Jean Loo lets himself hold them there because the truth is simple: he’s tired of running from the one thing that ever made him feel alive. The kiss tastes like promises still clumsy around the edges, like second chances whispered into warm night air, like fear melting into something kinder, braver.
And when they break apart, foreheads touching, breaths tangled, neither speaks. They don’t need to.
Johnny’s smile, wobbly, is a maybe. Jean Loo’s trembling exhale is please. And somewhere above them, Vegas keeps shining, garish and loud and ridiculous, as if blessing this silly, reckless, beautiful miracle of two people somehow finding their way back to each other.
In the quiet that follows their kiss, the world doesn’t so much fall away as it settles. Everything finally lets go after holding itself taut for far too long. Jean Loo stays close enough that their foreheads brush, close enough that the warmth of the moment has nowhere else to go but into them.
There’s no rush to step back, no instinct to hide; instead, there’s this delicate, stunned stillness, as if neither of them can quite believe they managed to close the distance they’d been circling for way too long.
Johnny laughs under his breath, almost disbelieving, and it ghosts across Jean Loo’s cheek like another tiny confession. One of his hands is still at their jaw, the other trembling a little where it rests against their waist, and he doesn’t even try to pretend he isn’t clinging.
They breathe in, breathe out, and the whole thing feels so absurdly fragile and impossibly right that it makes their chest ache in the sweetest way.
Outside, the night goes on, uncaring, but here, between them, there’s a warmth that wasn’t there before, something tentative and new like the beginning of a story they were both terrified to ask for. And as they ease into a second kiss—slower, surer, touched with the kind of tenderness that could undo a person—the only thing that matters is that they finally stopped running from it, from each other, from everything they never had the courage to name until now.
Under the crackling, weak lamp lights that buzz, attracting the moths, under the stars twinkling their own songs, under the clouds, the passerby to all that there is to be seen, Jean Loo realizes that this tragedy, his tragedy of the prosaic life, was never one to begin with. The belief that his life was a cataclysm at the hands of his self-imposed mundanity was always a view to be challenged as long as he was alive because Jean Loo was never meant to be ordained in this life of varying greys, and the truth is that he, just like the nature of man, has always longed for something more, bigger than himself.
Thank you, Johnny.