Chapter Text
There’s a boy in Seung-gil’s backyard.
Correction: There’s a boy in ripped fishnets, Docs, camouflage shorts, and a Black Flag shirt using a plastic bag and tongs to pick up a raccoon that died last night in Seung-gil’s backyard.
He briefly considers calling the police, though, he’s not quite sure what the boy is doing is even illegal. Weird, but, not illegal.
“Hey.” He calls down to the boy, instead.
The shriek he lets out is far too endearing considering the creepy action he’s partaking in. He drops the corpse, spinning to find the source of the voice.
“Second story.” Seung-gil leans his head into his hand and sighs.
Big grey eyes rimmed with enough eyeliner to put an early 2000s mall goth to shame turn up to him, tan cheeks reddening, “H-Hi.”
“Do you want a trash bag for that?” Seung-gil asks, “And maybe a snack? It’s hot out.”
“I promise I’m not some kind of serial killer.” Phichit laughs, sipping the smoothie Seung-gil made for him, “I make jewelry and artsy stuff.”
The wings of Phichit’s eyeliner disappear when he grins. His nose is slightly crooked, a scar across the bridge. His nail varnish, a holographic silver, is chipped, his nails bitten blunt. Pale white lines march along the tops of his thighs, and a bird covered in gold jewelry is tattooed on the inside of his right ankle.
Seung-gil doesn’t mention any of these things, good or bad. The bags under his own eyes and blue veins too obvious under his skin give him no right. Neither do the blooms of bruises at the crooks of his elbows or medication schedule taped to the fridge.
“You said you’re a witch?” He says instead.
Phichit nods, million-watt smile returning, “I work with spirits! I used to be mostly a sea witch. We lived near the water in Bangkok.” The grin starts to edge on this side of fake. The Thai boy looks down, “Can’t really bother with sea spirits in Vegas, though, I guess.”
Seung-gil supposes he should ask what Phichit is doing in Summerlin North, both currently, in ripped up punk clothes, with shoes that are obviously knock-offs now that he sees them up close, as well as just in general.
“Where do you live now?” He sips his own smoothie.
“Bohemian Forest Avenue.”
“That’s - “
“Like 5 miles from here, I know.” Phichit waves a hand through the air dismissively, “I work at the golf club.”
“Dressed like that?” Seung-gil almost snorts.
A pink tongue is stuck out at him. This does make Seung-gil laugh.
“I was picking up my check, dick. My bike is next to your pool. ” The mock-offended expression softens into a somewhat fond smile, “Your house is really pretty, by the way, even if the three little pools are unnecessary.
Seung-gil laughs again, “My father is a cardiologist and my stepmother is a psychiatrist for wealthy housewives - it should be. Something around here has to be.” I’m sure not, he doesn’t add.
“Do you go to some fancy private school?” Phichit crosses his legs, “I’ve never seen you around Palo Verde.”
Seung-gil shakes his head, “Too many germs in a school. I’m homeschooled. Cyberschool.”
“Germaphobe?”
He shakes his head again, “I - uh, no, I’m - “
“Agoraphobia?”
“I’m sick. Dying. Uh, my - treatments...they fuck my immune system. I can’t be around that many people at once. It’d just kill me faster.”
Grey eyes blink at him for a few long moments. He watches Phichit’s Adam’s apple bob, stretching his tattoo choker when he swallows, “Fuck, dude.”
He doesn’t say sorry, or tear up, or anything. It’s refreshing. More of a comfort than the empty condolences most people give him.
Just fuck, dude.
Phichit Chulanont makes a habit of visiting Seung-gil. Sometimes he brings bones to burn sigils into, or jewelry wire for projects. Other times it’s homework. He’s great at English but calculus is as good as Greek to him, or, it would be if he didn’t actually know Greek. Seung-gil tutors him, those days.
Days like today, though, he just lies on Seung-gil’s bed, using Dobu, Seung-gil’s elderly husky, as a pillow, and talks. He doesn’t even mind if the Tramadol makes Seung-gil doze off.
“And Mathieu, he’s so kind, but, he really just doesn’t get it, you know?” Phichit makes a vague motion with his right hand, the one not tangled in Dobu’s thick fur, “He tries to give me all these ‘parental’ talks and discuss my past and scars and what David did to me but it’s just, I dunno, I can’t do it.”
David David David, “Who is David, again?”
“Step dad that married my mom so that he could rape me.” He answers, tone so blasé Seung-gil would be somewhat worried if it wasn’t Phichit, “Reason my mother’s on murderess row and why I take 8 milligrams of Xanax and smoke a pack a day.”
“Right.”
“Anyways, his husband, Chris, is easier to talk with, but, he’s never home. He’s an editor for Vogue or something and always traveling. So the other foster kid, Yuuri, the quiet Japanese guy I told you about last time? he and I just stick together for the most part.”
Seung-gil pauses and looks up from his phone, “I thought Yuuri was your boyfriend. He’s your foster brother?”
“We fool around sometimes. He’s madly in love with some Russian exchange on the lacrosse team, though.”
So he’s single.
He doesn’t want a dying boy, though, dumbfuck.
“Have any guys in mind, then?” He asks. At least if he knows Phichit has someone, it’ll make him feel better.
Phichit chews on the inside of his cheek for a moment before answering, “Well, not really, but, this blond guy that dances at Matheiu’s studio blushes every time I come around.”
“Do you like him, though?”
Another thoughtful silence.
“He’s pretty. Long blond hair, clear skin, dancer’s body, little shorter than me.” He says, finally, “His self esteem kinda sucks, though. And he’s shy in an angry way. Like, he’s mad that he’s mad at himself. You get me?”
“Not really.”
Phichit shoots him a look, then sits up, before flopping back down, this time beside Seung-gil. He situates himself with his head on Seung-gil’s upper arm, watching him play Pokemon Gold on an emulator.
“What about you, hot stuff?” He pokes Seung-gil’s side, “Any ladies catch your attention?”
Seung-gil snorts, “I don’t like girls.”
“Any guys, then?”
“Phi, what’s the point of me dating anyone if I’ll be dead before we start senior year?”
Phichit considers that for a while, tracing shapes on Seung-gil’s forearm, “Don’t you deserve to be happy before then? Party before the lights go out, etc etc?”
Seung-gil puts his phone down and looks at Phichit. Phichit Chulanont, with his slashed plaid jeans and his vintage tee shirt from The King & I’s Broadway tour. The gold glitter flicking onto his cheeks from his lashes and the little spot on his lower lip that’s always a bit chapped and swollen where he constantly worries at it. Sweet, kind, sunshine Phichit Chulanont.
He looks away.
“It’d just be selfish of me to love and be loved by a boy, and then make him go to my funeral in a year. I’m not gonna - rip someone’s heart out like that.”
“So you’re just gonna die a virgin who’s never fallen in love?” Phichit sounds sincerely, and weirdly, broken up about the revelation.
Maybe it’s just the Thai boy’s flair for the dramatic.
“I don’t want to die with regrets, Phichit, and putting some hypothetical boyfriend through all that pain would be a regret.”
Phichit grins, suddenly, “What if it wasn’t a boyfriend?”