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Over the past decade or so, Khun has developed an impressive yet not at all surprising ability to predict the chances of any and every occurrence relating to Bam.
It begins like this:
Bam’s heart is so big he more dangles it by a thread on his pinky finger than wears it on his sleeve. Khun first witnessed him slice up his heart and hand it over to Rachel like it didn’t hurt at all, back on the Second Floor. Then, he died. He was swallowed by darkness and his heart stopped. Or so Khun thought.
Instead, he came back, heart beating around the string, even with a part gone for Rachel. Then, more and more pieces disappeared, the thread grew less and less taut, and even though Khun’s own heart is whole in his chest, it feels hollow. And so, he developed the defense mechanism, for Bam, he had to.
His talent — or rather, developed ability — is put to the test now, as he sits along the counter of this restaurant, feet tucked under the tall stool and elbows propped on the countertop the way he’s been specifically taught not to. If he measures on a scale of one to ten, then the likelihood of this particular situation would’ve been hovering around the seven mark around ten minutes ago, and should now be slowly ticking its way up to a solid nine-point-five. Which is, in his books, at least, practically inevitable.
Light footsteps sound from behind him. The presence lingering over his shoulder is familiar, and in that split second before Bam touches a hand to his elbow, he wonders why he even bothers.
“Hi.” Bam slides onto the seat next to him. He has his hair tied at the base of his head and a pair of round clear-framed glasses resting on his nose bridge. His cheeks are pink from the wind and he looks angelic.
“Bam,” Khun says, with no real heat behind his voice. “What are you doing out here?” Like he doesn’t know. Bam beams at him and shrugs wordlessly.
Khun tilts his head. “I’m not paying Isu, Hwaryun, and Hockney to babysit you so they can do nothing as you wander out here.” He’s not paying them at all. Not in money, maybe, but in the promise that he won’t rip them a new one when he sees them again.
The smile widens.
Khun sighs. He knows, of course, and had known before he left, that the three would always let Bam slip past their fingers (again, why does he bother?). He still has to berate him, uselessly, because they both know that wherever Khun goes, Bam will follow. But it doesn’t mean that he can just scrap his plan of regaining at least some resemblance of control over his Wave Controller, even if it’s only for show.
Recently, Bam has taken to ignoring some of Khun’s commands. Mostly smaller things like trailing out after him when Khun goes out to scope out a Floor or insisting that sleeping on Khun’s bed then moving back to his own at the asscrack of dawn (because Khun’s sleep schedule is fucked like that) isn’t even the slightest bit detrimental — “even beneficial,” he insists (lies) — to his health.
But then there are the bigger things. The potentially life-threatening things. Like Bam throwing himself in front of that spear wrapped in flame aimed up to knock Khun out of his Lighthouse. Like Bam volunteering to writhe through Evankhell’s attacks because that was apparently the only way he could perfectly replicate new techniques. Like Bam brimming with power, an inner glow rising so bright Khun had thought he would burst at the seams. That was the first time Khun had felt real terror, and he’d thought to himself: this is what being truly helpless feels like.
“Bam, it’s risky, okay?” Khun drops his voice, an eye on the woman standing bored behind the counter. “We really don’t want people knowing you’re here.”
Bam doesn’t pout but it’s a close thing. “They won’t. People still remember me with my long hair. And how about you? I get worried.”
“I’m disguised, aren’t I?” He had his hair parted and dyed black before leaving, the kind of black that left the bathwater murky and his fingers stained. He’d also dug through his Lighthouse, looking for the dark green contacts he had bought a long time ago on a whim to cover up his telling blue eyes.
Bam doesn’t argue and leans in close instead. Under the suspended lights of the restaurants, his eyes sparkle.
Khun puts one hand on Bam’s cheek and pushes his face away before he does something stupid like kiss him silly. “Fine. I’m done here anyway. Let me pay and we can go back.”
“Okay,” says Bam, big dumb doe eyes glowing with barely repressed satisfaction. Why does he fucking bother.
Laughing, Khun tugs lightly on his ponytail and pushes his plate away. “Let’s go,” he says, and Bam follows him out of the restaurant and back to their ship.
Later that week, Bam points at the milk tea with grass jelly and tapioca pearls, insisting that he wants normal sugar instead of the usual half that Khun makes him get (because “health, or whatever,” Bam teases, “like you would know anything about that”). They argue for a minute before Khun gives in like they both knew he would and he types in Bam’s order followed by his own: milk tea too, but with green tea instead of the usual black, with a third of the sugar and normal ice.
Shibisu skids by and places his own, but not before a taunting, “You care about Bam’s health like it’s your own.”
Hatz shrugs when Khun turns to him for help, pointing at his pick, “but he’s right.” Khun fixes them both with a glare, and it only becomes more withering as Shibisu shoots him a wink and disappears out the room.
Bam laughs, saying, “Well, you wouldn’t be our strategist if you couldn’t keep the team safe and healthy.”
“I do try my best,” Khun quips automatically, pulling his lips up in a smirk. He tilts his head. Pauses. He does — he really does. So then why isn’t the team safe and healthy?
It’s his job and his only one at that. Something he’s been raised since birth to do. He’s good. He’s better than most. And yet — why doesn’t it feel like enough? Because has he really kept the team safe? Kept Bam safe? Everything in him pleads for him to wrap Bam up in blankets and tuck him away somewhere safe, the same way he’d fold clear blue jewels between soft cloths and hide them underneath floorboards and behind bookshelves when he was young. Old habits die hard, they say, and they’re right.
“Hey,” Bam interrupts with a gentle smile. And god, does that fucking smile hurt. “I couldn’t have asked for any other Light Bearer, you know. I want you, only, always.”
Khun exhales. “Yeah, I know.” and Bam’s gold, gold eyes say do you?
Bam moves up to sit cross-legged next to the hovering Lighthouse. He takes Khun’s hand off the keyboard where it had tensed subconsciously, running his fingers over the structure of his hands. Khun slumps down flat on his back, a free hand thrown over his eyes, and relishes in the way Bam traces the fine bones of his wrist.
Khun wants to gather all their responsibilities into one bag, lock it away and have Rak swallow the key, just for a day. Just for one day, he wants to be a child and let Bam play with his hair until his worries are swept up and away like the knots between Bam’s gentle fingers.
His Lighthouse chirps. Khun wants to throw something.
“It’s the food,” Khun says, moving to get up.
“I’ll get it,” says Bam.
Khun lets his head fall back down, throwing a hand over his eyes. The click of the front door opening echoes down the hall and Khun hears soft speaking: the familiar lilt of Bam’s voice and a foreign one. He closes his eyes for a while longer before walking down curiously, a Lighthouse trailing behind him.
“—we’re just here to take the Floor Test and rest, for now.”
“I’m here because someone on my shitshow of a team wanted to fight that Ranker. Yeah— the one Jyu Viole Grace beat.”
“Oh.”
“She doesn’t stand a chance, by the way, I’m the strongest in my team, but I’m a Light Bearer and I don’t love close combat.” Bam indulges her with a polite nod.
“Hey, what’s your position?” Khun watches as the woman leans forward, craning her neck to the side with a smile that’s supposed to be. Innocent? Alluring? Possibly constipated?
“I’m a Wave Controller,” says Bam and, because he is kind, makes no remark about how if she slants any further, she’ll pitch right over the frame of the door and find herself on her knees before him. Not that she would be too against that, probably, Khun thinks spitefully, and mentally reprimands himself.
“Hey, what a coincidence, Light Bearers and Wave Controllers make the best pairs, you know?” She puts a hand on Bam’s shoulder and slides it down his arm appreciatively, nails catching on his shirt.
Belatedly, Khun realizes that his own blunt nails had subconsciously found solace in his palms and were digging into them the same way a cold bitterness is burying itself into his chest.
Khun knows exactly what this bitterness is, and if he could, he would physically recoil away from it. Sometimes, it comes so suddenly that he imagines that it's always peering over his shoulder, biding its time and waiting for the perfect moment to twist the knife around and drive it through Khun’s back.
Jealousy is an ugly emotion. It won’t get you places, that’s what he’s learned growing up in the Khun Family. What’s the use of yearning after something if all you could do was to work harder, work smarter? Chasing after something you could never have, something you know full well you could never have; it’s fucking stupid, but he just can’t help it. It makes him so uselessly impulsive, and worse, it makes him want. It makes him think of how easy it would be to press kisses to his throat and lick away his tears.
Longing and jealousy, the two come hand in hand, and no matter how gentle the first manages to make itself sound, Khun hates both of them equally.
“I know,” Bam says, and Khun can hear the smile in his voice. It makes Ugly Monster Number One rear its hideous head and Khun fantasizes about slicing its neck.
He comes up from behind Bam. Just this once, he says to himself, and slides into place next to him, a hand slipping around to touch his waist. Bam doesn’t even hesitate, instead leans right into his touch and Khun really can’t help the smug slash of his lips. He relieves Bam from the stacks of takeout in his arms and puts them into his Lighthouse.
“Hello,” says Khun.
The woman looks at his fine-boned neck and how his sleeves are rolled up to show off his arms. Khun watches as her attention drifts away from Bam for a bit and stretches his smirk into a come-hither smile that Shibisu very lovingly describes as irritating at best and will land him into a fist-in-face situation at worst.
Then her gaze lands on his blue hair and visibly recoils. Khun, not for the first and certainly not the last time, curses his heritage. Maybe he’s risking blowing their cover, maybe he’ll later regret exposing his easily recognizable identity, but somehow, Khun couldn’t find himself caring.
“Can I help you?” asks Khun leisurely.
“’M good,” she mutters, placing a bag of drinks at their feet.
“Well.” The woman lingers. Khun restrains himself from shooting her a glare in favor of giving her another smile that could be classified as sultry as opposed to taunting if not for her reaction.
“You have my contact,” she says to Bam. “If you’re ever looking for someone to chat to, or get a coffee or whatever, I’ll always be up to it.” Or whatever? a voice snarls at the back of Khun’s head.
“Yeah,” says Bam, and thanks her. She throws him a smile, gives Khun one last weary stare, and turns on her heel with a swirl of auburn hair.
The moment the door swings shut behind them, Bam turns around without dislodging the hand on his waist.
“What was that?”
Khun drops his hand. “What was what?”
“The— you were flirting with her,” accuses Bam.
“I’m not the one with her number,” Khun counters.
“Not because I asked for it,” he says. “I don’t really know what she was trying to do,” he confesses, bending to pick up their drinks.
“I’d say it’s pretty obvious what she was trying to do,” Khun says, voice more cutting than he intended.
Bam only frowns and doesn’t say anything.
“Bam, I don’t get why you still get confused about stuff like this,” says Khun quietly. “It’s really not the first time you got hit on.”
“I’m not confused about that. I thought people could tell that I’m not interested.”
“I guess you just don’t make it obvious enough,” says Khun with a one-shoulder shrug and goes to walk down the hall to the dining area.
He gets as far as two steps away before fingers close around his wrist and tug. The patterned wallpaper swings before his eyes and he’s only saved from tumbling straight into Bam’s arms by pure determination to not let Bam get what he wants, not right now.
“I will,” Bam tells him, except his finger is under Khun’s chin to tilt his head up ever so slightly so they’re looking eye to eye and the only comprehensible word in Khun’s head is what.
Which he very generously shares aloud, so that Bam repeats, “I will, starting from now on. I’ll make it obvious that I’m not interested.”
“Okay,” says Khun dumbly.
“Okay,” echoes Bam, and releases his chin, looking very pleased with himself. Like he’s climbed all the way to the top of the Tower and found what he’s been looking for.
“You—” Khun struggles for a while, fighting the smile worming its way onto his face. “You can’t—”
“Can’t what…?” prompts Bam, grinning.
He watches Khun’s floundering for a while more before bursting into giggles and goes skidding down the hallway, Khun’s laugh indignant from behind him, because — it’s this. It’s Bam’s million-dollar smile, pink cheeks, hair loose behind him. It’s Khun two paces behind him, feeling like he’s standing next to the sun, the real one, and — what’s a guy like him to do?
Sometimes, Bam would walk quietly into Khun’s room late at night, hair half dry and tangled from the shower. More often than not, Khun would be awake, fingers on his Lighthouse as Bam settles onto his bed. On rarer days, the lights are off and his Lighthouses are stacked in the corner of the room, dull without Khun’s shinsu flowing through them. He’d be wrapped in blankets at the right side of the bed, away from the door but facing it. On those days, Bam pads in silently, pulls Khun’s blanket tighter around him, and whispers a goodnight.
Today, Khun is awake when Bam enters. He closes the door behind him and makes a beeline for the bed, sinking into the mattress with a sigh that is too close to a groan for Khun’s liking. After a beat of silence, Khun hears rustling from behind him and knows Bam is stretching out his muscles after training. He swings his Lighthouse around to face Bam and watches him fold himself in half for a while, before returning to arranging contacts for the war.
Once Bam completes his routine, Khun watches in a mix of endearment and amusement as Bam buries himself into the sheets, sleepy and satiated and wrapped in the familiar smell of Khun’s soap. He falls asleep to the muted clicking of Khun’s keyboard and the gentle lull of his voice as he thinks aloud.
Khun listens to Bam’s near-silent breaths as he naps and thinks that he would preserve this moment like a bug in amber if he could.
They never talk much on days like this — Bam tired from training, Khun tired from telling Bam off for tiring himself out so much from training, but they still like to indulge in each other’s silent presence. Khun’s not entirely sure when they had started to gravitate towards each other like this, something natural and almost instinctive, the way Bam can pick out Khun in a crowd and latch onto his wrist, even when his blue hair is stained and mundane.
Sometimes, he thinks that it all began in the wheat field on the Second Floor. He’d found Bam, taken one look at the wide-eyed boy who was shorter and slighter than him back then, taller and holding the power of gods in his palms now, and thought I’m taking him. It scares him that that boy is now, more than a decade later, enveloped underneath his covers, sleeping soundlessly.
By the time Khun plans on going to bed, Bam is in deep sleep, a palm cradling his cheek and the other curled into a fist, tight around the blankets. His hair is still damp and sticks to his skin. Khun makes a mental note to remind himself to reprimand Bam tomorrow for not drying his hair properly.
Combing through Bam’s hair, Khun leans down so that he’s at eye level with Bam’s face. “Bam,” he tries. “Hey, Bam, you need to go back to your room.”
Bam fusses and wraps his arms around Khun’s neck without opening an eye. Khun sighs and lifts him up, letting him rest against his chest. He marvels at how small Bam feels in his arms.
“You big baby, you,” Khun says, more to himself. The helpless endearment in his voice makes him want to rip his tongue out.
He makes his way down the hall to Bam’s room. It’s dark and very obviously not lived in, lights flicked off and only the shinsu moon splashing watered-down patterns through the half-drawn blinds. Khun gathers Bam’s weight onto one arm, straining a bit, but if hailing from one of the Ten Great Families has any benefits, the killer genes are one, and Khun would be damned if he doesn’t put them to good use. He pulls back the blanket, lowers Bam onto the bed, and tucks him in.
Gold eyes flicker open as Khun pats Bam’s sleep-warm cheek, a lazily content smile spreading in a smooth arc across his lips. Bam tugs on Khun’s arm, the movement deceptively sharp for someone who was supposedly asleep. The world tilts and Khun regains his balance with a pair of sleep-blurry eyes in front of him.
“Hi,” whispers Bam.
“Hello.”
His fingers twitch and for a second Khun thinks he was about to pull him in.
“Did you change your shampoo?”
Khun blinks.
“Oh.” He leans back to rest on the heels of his feet, safely out of fuck it, one small kiss won’t hurt range. He recalls the bottle of shampoo he had blindly reached for hours ago — “I ran out. Haven’t had the time to get more of my usual.” — packaged in pale orange, with pearl liquid instead of his usual clear blue.
“You smell like Endorsi,” Bam tells him very solemnly. Khun smiles at how his eyelashes drift as he fights sleep.
“Do I?” he asks pointlessly.
“Yes. It doesn’t suit you,” he says decisively, propping himself up a bit to slant his head towards Khun’s collar and breathing in. “I like your usual better.”
Khun laughs silently and smoothes down Bam’s hair.
“Okay. I’ll stick with my usual then, how about that?”
“That’s… good.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“‘Kay. Night, Bam.”
“G’night.”
When Khun goes back to his room, the spot where Bam had lay is still warm with his scent, so Khun pulls the blankets tight around him, shinsu moonlight falling like fairy rings around him, and stares at the ceiling until sleep silences his mind.
The first time Khun lost control over the Fire Fish, he was a week out of his coma.
It started with a headache: an insistent pounding inside his skull, an uncomfortable heat stretched hazy over his mind. It wasn’t until his vision began to blur that he decided to retire to his bed, for once before the shinsu sky was dyed from black to blue. He thought that sleep would heal him.
When Khun woke up, he was sweating, the sheets rough like sandpaper and noose-like around his legs. The mattress beneath him felt damp and hot, and the Fire Fish was meandering in figure eights in front of his eyes, steam rising in whorls around it. He wasn’t able to tell if he was hallucinating or not.
He first attempted to use his ice shinsu to wrestle down his body temperature, but it was like gripping an eel with oil-slicked hands, and every time he concentrated too hard, the Fire Fish sent burning waves of shivers through his body, causing the prodding at his head to tick like a malfunctioned Pocket. Shibisu knocked on his door shortly after, two short raps that dug right through the haze of his mind and into his brain. If Khun had been able to move even a single muscle, he would’ve blasted through that door and skewered Shibisu like a toothpick through olive.
When Khun hadn't replied, Shibisu very tentatively cracked the door open and shoved his head through the gap. The one eye Khun could see from the bed widened so dramatically that Khun began laughing, then wheezing, then coughing, and promptly threw up.
Into a Lighthouse, which hurt, but it was better than having to clean up afterward.
By the time Khun finished retching, his mind cleared momentarily, and he registered that Shibisu was hovering around him anxiously, looking vaguely distressed.
“...Khun?” came Shibisu’s apprehensive voice, skittish.
Khun groaned. “Fucking Fire Fish. If Bam hears about this, you’re dead.”
“He won’t,” promised Shibisu. “You’ll be okay?”
“Yeah. Throw this Lighthouse out, it was done for anyway.” He waved a hand. “I’m going to go take a shower.”
“Try not to slip and crack your head open. It’ll be difficult explaining to Bam what happened if I’m too busy scraping your brains off the bathroom walls.” Shibisu laughs.
Khun throws up a lazy middle finger at him. “Shut up, I’ll be fine. I’m just gonna have a nice quick chat with this little fucker right here and we’ll be all good.”
Shibisu looked at him doubtfully, but dutifully took the Lighthouse and left, closing the door behind him.
Khun slumped back against the bed, raking a hand through sweat-damp hair. Then he pointed at the Fire Fish, still swimming mockingly in front of him, flames trailing behind it in lazy arcs. It almost seemed to be glowing brighter.
“You.”
Khun was glad that Shibisu had shut the door behind him; he still wasn’t entirely sure if he was hallucinating the Fish or not.
“You pull that kind of shit again, and I swear to god, I don’t know how yet, but I will find a way to freeze you to death,” Khun warned, the finger still aimed towards the Fish or possibly empty space.
The Fish swayed in the air.
“Okay. Great. Good talk.” And then he proceeded to wrench open the door to the bathroom and bend over the toilet seat.
After throwing up at least a quarter more of his body’s water weight, Khun felt surprisingly more lucid. Now, at least, he could tell that no, he had not, in fact, somehow dreamt up the Fish’s physical form as he watched it dip in and out of his arm, faint tickles running up his arm. Then he stepped under the showerhead, the temperature turned down so low that water hissed as it fell against his skin. Khun welcomed the bite and smirked when the Fire Fish recoiled from the cold, disappearing back into his body in a whirl of flames.
He’d only just pulled a thin shirt over his head when Shibisu came barging back into his room, his Pocket visible and wobbling through the air.
“It’s not my fault!” he cried. Pattering footsteps sounded from behind him, and Khun remembers turning around in alarm as Rak came tumbling through the doorway and leaped onto Shibisu’s back. Which subsequently made Shibisu squawk at an inhuman pitch and eat the carpet.
“What’s not your fault?” Khun asked, warily.
“Rak tried to stop him too, it’s not my fault don’t kill me—” wailed Shibisu, cheek crushed against the floor.
“Warrior Turtle told Black Turtle that you passed out and vomited all over yourself,” came Rak’s very helpful input, and promptly disappeared out the doorway before Khun could yell at him.
A beat.
“And where exactly is that suicidal bastard?” Khun asked, voice carefully light as he rolled his sleeves up and summoned a Lighthouse, reaching in for a knife.
Shibisu recoiled. “Khun, wait, Hatz said he’s only telling Bam because we owe it to him and it’s only right and-and if we didn’t, Bam would somehow still find out and then he would have to murder everyone except you and it would be a disaster!”
“I don’t give a fuck about his warrior code or whatever it is. Tell me, right now.”
“If it makes you feel better, Evan also told Bam that it’s more likely a product of your overworking than the Fire Fish. So.”
Khun gave him a glare so flat Shibisu actually flinched.
“Look, Khun, put that knife away,” he pacified, “violence isn’t always the answer! Bam worries for you, okay? He still thinks what happened is his fault, so the best thing you can do right now is take care of yourself, and when we get back you can show him that you’re perfectly fine,”
Khun fell back onto the bed, guilt rising. He’d spent the first couple of days out of his coma worrying over leaving Bam alone. What Light Bearer was he if he couldn’t keep himself alive, much less his team? Why had he let his guard down, especially after all he learned? Why had his instinct failed him? Why hadn’t he just used his goddamn fucking brain? All those sick ideas and they’d all still end up useless if he’s dead.
Why hadn’t he just killed Rachel?
It would’ve been so easy. It still is so easy — thinking about the fragility of her neck, the ease with which he can collapse her throat between his hands. A flick of the wrist, a blade through her heart, and Bam wouldn’t have had to spend those years by himself. Khun wouldn’t have had to lie here, not only useless but a burden.
A hand on top of his head shocked him out of his stupor.
“He misses you a lot, you know? He’s gotten so much more powerful over the years, it’s scary, really.” Shibisu tilted his head to the ceiling, eyes almost watering. “Last I checked up with him, he’s keeping a log of things he wants to tell you once you wake up. You know what this means?”
Khun thought that his heart would fall right down to his feet and plummet through the metal of the warship with how heavy it felt.
Shibisu continued talking like Khun hadn’t just blatantly ignored him. “Means that you and Bam should get your shit together, as soon as possible.”
Khun laughed. “This you trying to make me feel better?”
Shibisu slanted him a crooked grin. “Working?”
“No, not really. There’s no shit to get together,” Khun replied. “And stop touching my head.”
“Why not? We’re friends, I know you just came out of a self-induced coma because you froze up your insides but don’t be so cold, dude.”
“Ha.”
“I just saved your life! And you always let Bam cuddle you! I can’t even touch you?”
Khun slapped his hand off and still remembers the way Shibisu had yelled his throat raw, cradling his arm and cooing at it. Hours after the event, Shibisu held a pink-splotched hand up to his face, still whining. Except it was rouge he’d stolen off Endorsi years before, and Khun knows this for a fact because he had prodded at the marks, unamused, and lifted a stained finger.
“I’m going to tell Bam!” Shibisu shouted, running off and colliding into the door frame.
Khun rolled his eyes, a small, amused, and entirely involuntary smile spreading across his face. “Yeah, you go ahead.”
Khun sometimes thinks that he was born a Light Bearer.
He grew up gathering information, thinking up ways to win battles in the quickest way possible, and to this day, he still isn't sure if he’d popped out of his mother with the same clever glint in his eye, or if he’d been taught it so thoroughly that it had become as natural as breathing. It wasn’t all that shocking when he was assigned to the position of a Light Bearer, even when Khuns are better known to be Spear Bearers.
Khun has always thought that it was fitting for a defected son to have such a position.
So Khun is a Light Bearer — and a fucking good one at that — but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t fight. Rak had been the one to suggest (or demand, more like) for Khun to participate in their joint training sessions, and Hatz had been quick to agree. Khun thinks that it’s because they both want an excuse to let out their pent-up anger onto him for all the times Khun had either told them off or mocked them or both at the same time.
Before, he’d sit in his Lighthouse, critique their technique, and give commands from high up in the air, feeling more like a god than he thinks Bam ever had. He hadn’t felt the need to properly train: he’d preferred to rely on his body and his naturally sharp intuition to take him out unscathed after a fight, and that usually succeeded.
Except that was until he’d nearly died via Baylord Paul’s fist through his gut (which he still hasn’t told Bam about, and isn’t planning to, ever), and thought: maybe a little more training wouldn’t hurt. Better safe than sorry, they say.
So, cue record scratch. Freeze frame. Yep. That’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got into this situation.
More specifically, this situation of him pinned to the ground, a teammate who is not, regrettably, Bam on top of him.
Hatz bounces off him at the speed of sound, sweeping a careful eye to the other pairs sparring around them. Khun swears it was the fastest he’s seen him move out of battle.
“Weren't you so eager to jump me two seconds ago?” Khun taunts, a smirk masking his wince as his joints ache when he pushes himself back up. It’s unfortunate what two years in a coma does to a person.
“Yeah, until I remembered Bam can and will cut my hands off,” Hatz says, unimpressed. “Let’s go again.”
“Bam wouldn’t,” Khun mutters.
Hatz doesn’t deign him with a reply, and instead, his sword comes darting up, blunt edge aimed towards his neck. Khun’s spear meets it with a clang and ice chips under their combined force. Khun whips the spear around, sweeping it towards Hatz to push him backward and taking the opportunity to reinforce his spear with more shinsu as he leaps away easily. He spins the spear in one hand, appreciating the scrape of uneven ice under his palms, the solid weight of metal perfectly balanced to shatter bones. He flexes his sore wrist in the other.
Hatz surges forward, both hands on the hilt now, intent black in his eyes. They’re both breathing heavily now as they meet blow to blow, clashing under the air-conditioned training room, sweat cooling as it slides down their necks and into the dips of their collarbones.
The pace of their sparring starts to pick up, and Khun grits his teeth as the difference between two years of extra training and experience becomes more apparent. Hatz presses forward, and Khun bobs backward, frustration jabbing at his mind as his mind responds but his body lags behind. Khun goes to parry a jab, then fumbles with a curse on his tongue as Hatz shifts, technique clean and sharp, to land the point of his sword against his ribs. It slices his shirt into two perfect halves and leaves a trail of slowly dripping red on his skin.
A triumphant smirk spreads like molasses across Hatz’s face, and Khun would be a lot more irritated if he wasn’t busy shoving down the lukewarm tingle rising to his skin the way a crabby Endorsi shoves tissues back into their boxes after ripping out practically the entire stack.
Hatz’s smirk slides off his lips and is replaced with something akin to concern if Khun didn’t know any better. “I can see the Fire Fish,” he informs him.
“Oh really, thanks, I didn’t know,” Khun hisses, then decides he needs Hatz on his side for now and adds more civilly, “I overused it the other day, so now it’s throwing a fit. It’ll be fine.” He scowls at the Fish and hopes that the combined ice of his glare and shinsu would be enough to push it back under his skin, which, as it turns out, is. The Fish disappears in a swirl of red and takes the unease with it, but remains just underneath the surface, and Khun is left feeling like he’s standing at the point where sand and water meet.
“Join another group,” says Khun, pushing his spear back into a Lighthouse. “Tell them something came up.”
Hatz looks slightly uncertain, but he nods anyway, and for once, Khun thanks his simple-mindedness.
He heads back to his room and pulls off his no longer usable shirt as the door swings shut behind him. Heat flounders up and down his body, and he entertains the fact that the Fire Fish might be throwing a dance party beneath his skin. He briefly wonders if it’s having any fun by itself.
There are shallow cuts running across his skin, dark red and scabbed over, too prominent on his pale complexion. Khun traces a finger over one that goes over his stomach and up to his ribcage. It’d been given to him by Rak two days ago, spear cutting through shirt and into skin, shallow but still enough to draw blood. Khun had struck him back hard enough to bruise his brown hide, two-thirds out of contempt and the remaining third to cut Rak’s guilt.
The wound should’ve healed already, but Khun is sure that the Fire Fish had managed to inhibit his healing, because it’s a spiteful little bitch and because everything comes with a price, it whispers into his mind. Khun mentally flips it off.
A knock sounds against his door just as he starts setting up a Lighthouse.
“Khun?” comes Bam’s voice.
“Come in,” calls Khun.
Bam enters and doesn’t do a double take at Khun, who is shirtless, sweaty, and has his hair scraped back for training. Khun is not entirely sure what that says about their relationship. He walks straight to where Khun is sitting at the edge of the bed and nudges his Lighthouse to the side.
“What did Hatz say?” asks Khun before Bam could begin his sentence.
“He didn’t have to say anything. I heard him when he was saying something about the Fire Fish.”
A grave overlook on Khun’s part.
“I’m fine,” Khun assures.
Bam only raises one eyebrow and runs an assessing look over his body. A finger is raised and he taps it against the gash Khun had traced seconds ago. His blunt nail scratches against his pebbled skin and Khun fights the urge to lean into his touch like a dying man.
“Rak,” Khun says in explanation. “The Fish is just acting up.”
Bam moves to the next cut, and then the next, and Khun watches with faint amusement as the crease between Bam’s eyebrows deepens with each wound.
“I don’t trust it.” And he looks very close to somehow inhaling the Fish and taking its volatile power for himself. Khun thinks that Bam might’ve always been the one who’s the most terrified of his new power.
Khun lets out a gentle laugh. “Something as fragile as trust doesn’t really exist in a place like this, Bam.”
“But I trust you. Don’t you trust me too?”
“You, with your own safety? No. In general, I do.” Khun fumbles a bit before he exhales and says, “that’s why your trust in me should be enough. I’ll be careful with it, I promise. Do you believe me?”
Bam traces a years-old scar just above the waistband of his shorts. “I always believe you.”
“See? Don’t worry so much, Bam. I can handle myself.”
“I know,” Bam hums, the pad of his finger running over a faded bruise next to his belly button.
Khun sighs and tries very hard to not let it come out sounding too much of a whine. “Bam, I’m going to need you to stop running your hands all over me, otherwise I’m kicking you out of my room for inappropriate behavior.”
“I’m not—” Bam protests. But drops his hand from where it was resting along his ribs.
Khun can see Bam visibly fight the pout on his lips.
“I don’t like it when you get hurt,” he says.
“You don’t like it when anyone gets hurt,” Khun points out very reasonably.
Bam promptly loses the fierce battle and his mouth curves into a pout. “Yeah, but I especially don’t like it when you get hurt.”
“How could you be biased like this, Bam?” Khun teases.
“I can’t help it,” he says, sounding vaguely upset.
“I don’t mind it,” Khun tells him. “As long as you don’t endanger yourself or others in the process.” Because he’s seen the twitch, the distraction in Bam’s stance when he gets injured, even just barely, in battle.
“Is it bad? If I think that sacrificing a couple of people’s lives in exchange for the safety of yours is something I could do?”
Khun looks up in surprise. He’s never heard Bam voice thoughts like these. Slowly, he says, “Bam, you’re asking someone who doesn’t exactly have the most impeccable moral compass.”
Bam grimaces. “I know—I mean, I don’t think you’re a bad person, but… I’m not going crazy, am I?”
“You’re not. I think like that too, if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s perfectly normal to want to protect the ones you—” he nearly slips up. “—care for.”
Bam’s fists are clenched tight in his lap. “But it’s more than that. It’s more than just protecting. When I saw Rachel last time, I was so angry. You were safe then, but I was still so angry. It felt like it was swallowing me whole, and all I could think of was that you got hurt because of me, because of her, and somehow I needed to get rid of her. But… before that, I wanted to hurt her. I wanted her to hurt as much as you did and as much as I did, and the urge was so terrible and overwhelming and it was like this great big whiteness of compulsion, and the only way to stop it was to… kill her.”
His eyes are down, but somehow Khun can feel the pleading in them. “Sounds like perfectly normal human emotions to me.”
When he looks up, his eyes are huge and gold. “I just don’t want to be alone.” Again, Khun hears.
Khun doesn’t know what to say. Instead, he moves back and runs a hand through Bam’s hair so that Bam lies down and puts his head in Khun’s lap. Bam takes the hand stroking his hair and places it over his chest so that the faint beats of his heart pulse up Khun’s arm. Two fingers loop around Khun’s wrist, one against the artery running close to his skin and pressed down slightly. He can feel his own pulse under Bam’s finger.
“Don’t worry, Bam,” Khun says, Bam’s skin is warm under a layer of cotton. He stares across the room at the slate gray metal wall, then down to see that Bam’s eyes are closed, eyelids thin enough to see the blue-green veins tracing patterns of cobwebs over golden eyes. They flicker open and meet Khun’s. Khun runs a hand over Bam’s eyes, feeling the butterfly-wing brush of eyelashes as they drift shut again.
“Don’t worry,” he says again.
“You won't be alone again. I’ll follow you no matter where you go.”
On lazier days, Bam sits cross-legged on the couch, with Khun next to him, legs stretched out, head propped on a hand. Rak lies sideways on top of them, head resting on Bam’s knee, clawed feet on Khun’s thigh like they are now; Bam patting Rak’s rough scaled head like he’s a puppy and two seconds away from cooing at him. A movie is playing on the TV in front of them, one of the trashy rom coms that Endorsi and Shibisu absolutely adore and that Anaak would rather stab her foot, set fire to herself, cry in front of anyone, and repeat the entire process in that order than watch even two minutes of it.
Khun honestly couldn’t care less. He doesn’t mind it— likes it, even, because Bam enjoys times like this the most. Just the three of them: Bam and Khun sitting side by side, Rak splayed out on their laps, mostly to annoy Khun and partly because he knows the solid weight of his mini form comforts Bam. Khun taunts Rak, half out of habit, half to see the hopelessly endeared smile on Bam’s face as the two of them shoot meaningless insults back and forth. It’s what Khun very fondly calls his “I talked to these idiots once, and now I’m stuck with them forever” time (“Not you, though, Bam, you’re a sweetheart and you could never do anything wrong.” “...you’re callin’ me an idiot?” “Yeah, I’m calling you an idiot.” “You fucker—“), and it’s an actual allotted slot in his mental schedule, boxed, highlighted and labeled in gold.
“I crave a drink.” Khun stands up, purposefully letting Rak’s legs slide off the couch so that he hangs lopsided on Bam’s lap. He ignores Rak’s yelp in favor of turning to give Bam a smile. “Want anything, Bam?”
Bam lifts his head from where he was endearingly way too invested in the crappy film and returns the smile. “A ramune, please?”
“So polite,” Khun grins, casts one look at where Rak is not-so-endearingly equally as invested in the film, and moves towards the kitchen.
He’s halfway down the hallway when he hears a familiar bellow.
“YOUR LEADER WANTS BANANA MILK.” Khun winces for Bam’s ears.
“Yeah, well, my leader can come fetch his banana milk himself,” yells back Khun, with as much mocking in his tone as his father has children.
“GET ME BANANA MILK,” hollers Rak.
“Get it yourself you fucking alligator!” Khun shouts. He turns around and leans against the wall. Three seconds, he thinks to himself.
Three. Two. O—
Rak comes barrelling down the hall right on cue, scaled feet tapping against the marble floor. His legs are short and stubby, and he looks so comical that Khun would burst into laughter if he doesn’t know that Rak can and will shift back into his uncompressed form and sit on him.
He ends up settling for a snicker, one hand over his mouth mockingly, so Rak changes courses and hurtles straight towards him instead. Like a hypothetical bull in a hypothetical china shop, except the china shop suddenly becomes not so hypothetical as Rak surges and sends the two of them crashing into one of Bam’s vases and to the floor. Or, more accurately, one of the four season-themed vases that Ha Jinsung had gotten him, the set personally delivered by the High Ranker himself.
Glass explodes around them.
Well, shit, goes Khun’s brain.
They’re both unharmed, unsurprisingly, because Khun, with his heritage and thus naturally enhanced body, would rather die than let something like glass cut his skin and because Rak. Is an alligator, who, instead of the usual more brawn than brain, is entirely all brawn and zero brains.
“The fuck’s that supposed to mean,” Rak says, brushing glass off his skin. My point exactly, thinks Khun in relish.
“What,” repeats Rak, and Khun suddenly realizes if he might’ve been thinking aloud. Because Khun’s brain-to-mouth filter fails to work once he goes past a certain level of stress, and apparently he has just passed it.
“Clearly,” Rak grumbles.
They both look at the mess they created.
Bam pokes his head into the hall, concern on his tongue. “Are you guys…?”
“It was his fault—” both Rak and Khun start to say (shout) at the same time. They pause to glare at each other.
Bam tilts a head at them and Khun tries not to feel like a child about to get scolded.
“Sorry, Bam,” Khun says, as remorsefully as possible. He hopes he does a good job, but it’s hard to be apologetic when the vases are ugly as shit and Khun personally thinks that he and Rak did the world a favor by getting rid of one. He briefly considers tricking Hatz into ruining the other three. But because he always caves in anyway, he adds: “I’ll get you a new one, if you want.”
“It’s okay,” Bam says. “Jinsung won’t get too mad.”
A Lighthouse comes floating over and Khun dumps the biggest pieces of glass into it. “Easy for you to say. I think every time he sees us together, he gets closer to reliving his old days.”
“He won't,” Bam consoles, going into the kitchen to grab a broom.
Rak scoffs. “Yeah, like Candy Turtle would dare hurt your Blue Turtle.”
Bam colors and makes a sound of vague protest. “Khun’s not mine, Rak,” he reminds him with the repeated exasperation of a kindergarten teacher permanently used to reprimanding a particular child.
“Not yours my ass,” Rak snorts with the air of a Khun family kid who thinks he knows better than the kindergarten teacher and will spend the rest of his life believing that he knows better than said kindergarten teacher.
Bam sighs.
“Shut up, ‘gator,” Khun says for him.
Rak roars something incomprehensible, makes another leap at his shins, and they tumble to the ground in a mess of long limbs, scaled claws, and Bam’s half-hearted pacifying in the background.
Khun has a habit, something that has been with him ever since he was young. Possibly the only thing about him that has stayed entirely unchanged — bar his blue hair and eyes — as he continues killing and scheming his way up the Tower.
He’d thought that the habit would die with his sister, would drain away like blood from slitted wrist, filling the bathtub with red, would wither like shinsu-starved fruit, and disappear soon after he’d become a Regular. And he’s sure that it would have if he hadn’t met Bam.
Sometimes, Khun thinks that he can’t live without him, and wonders if he’s being dramatic. He follows Bam like the stars follow the moon, like Rachel follows the stars, like Bam follows — had followed, he always needs to remind himself — Rachel. He’d always thought that complete and utter devotion towards a person that is not yourself is useless. Stupid and useless, and could come around to take a bite out of your ass one day.
But his habit clings to him the same way he clings to Bam and it’s like he’s going against every fiber of his being each second he allows himself to stay with Bam. It’s unnerving, how he needs to be so close to Bam and so far away at the same time
Even in the Khun family, he’d been more than capable, always being able to manipulate reality in ways he wanted, people folding like playing cards underneath his fingers with a few words. He’d never felt too threatened about his own abilities. Until Bam. Until the boy with the too-young eyes and the too-soft hands and the too-easily-moldable powers
This nothing and something between him and Bam, he doesn’t want to put a name on it. He doesn’t dare put a name on it. It isn’t easy, the words cling tight to his teeth, hanging on like their lives depend on it. And maybe they do. Because love doesn’t belong when you’re climbing your way up the Tower, only things like revenge and greed.
Khun finds it ironic how Irregulars have such muddled and defined fates at the same time. With Guides tripping all over themselves to read Bam’s fate, even when it’s clear that no matter which path he takes — if he takes a path at all or just bulldozes the Tower down like he could — he’ll end up holding a sword to Jahad’s throat.
Bam grows so fast it terrifies him. And the only thing that terrifies him more is when Bam looks up at him, blood on his hands (not his, never his), bodies strewn around him like dead moths that had flown through flame, and his eyes are the same clear golden all those years back. The same confusion, the same determination, hands shaping shinsu the same way they had gripped the Black March.
Currents closest to the shark are the gentlest, pressed closest to the skin and hiding in the streamlined water. But the deeper into the oceans it goes, the colder, rougher the waters get, and Khun can’t hold on forever. But for now, he’ll cling on tight as he can.
Love is a gentler, more acceptable form of greed, separated by barely anything like the fine line between need and want. And they’re already toeing that line, because Bam tumbles into everything heart first instead of head, lands already running, and would shoot past the finish line if Khun wasn’t there, waiting.
He won’t say it, because he knows. That before he realizes, the I love yous will turn into I want yous and then into I need yous.
He thinks of Daniel and Roen and their broken romance. He thinks of the way Daniel orbited around the thought of her. He thinks of the look in Daniel’s eyes, hollow, carved from bone, how Roen makes them light up and then crumble into ash with only a mention.
Gone crazy for love, Khun remembers thinking.
Has he, too?
His perfect devotion towards Bam — Khun would call it crazy if it were anyone other than himself. Because crazy is irrational. Impulsive. Making gambles when you can’t afford to, using pawns when they could’ve been saved. And he’s none of that.
But how far would he go for Bam? Side with the devil? Though aren’t they all devils already? Haven’t they all got blood staining their hands and filling the crevices between nail and skin? Don’t they all dance with death like ballroom partners under glazed lights with eyes for each other only?
Khun doesn’t allow themselves to hold hands. Because temptation is a forbidden fruit and Khun already has his hands around it. His nails dig into the flesh, juice running down his fingers and dripping trails of pink turning black on his skin. His touch leaves fingerprints of gray. Through Bam’s hair, pale on his neck, pooling like watercolor on places his skin had torn open.
He sees the marks when he holds him. Now, when Bam tucks himself underneath the curve of his neck, curling himself in to fit on Khun’s lap in a way that is at once too intimate and not intimate enough. Bam pulls off the hair tie securing his hair and lets it fall loose to reach his shoulders. His corded muscles shift as Bam presses closer to Khun’s collarbone, hands resting loose across his waist, and makes a soft sound of content. He’s warm and soft and pliant as Khun runs his fingers through his hair and down his back, and it almost makes him forget that he’s holding a god in his arms.
When Bam leaves to return to his room, Khun can’t help but think that it’s not the first time, and won’t be the last, that Bam will have to walk away from him.
After all, minnows can’t swim with sharks forever.