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They are in the car again, inexplicably. Giseok has the reoccurring sensation of deja-vu, like they have been here before, too often, or he might have dreamed about it. His brother in the car with him, next to him, his kind, dark eyes and the corner of his mouth, the familiar nose broken twice in the past three years alone, and the tangible warmth of his body. Like Giseok could reach into the space between them and touch it, sink a knife right through it and watch all the blood spill out. Red.
This is not the first time Gijun has asked to meet him here, and Giseok is too aware of what they are to dismiss it as inconsequential. His brother is nothing but logical and calm, rational yet gentle, and it is these qualities that bely that innate violence coursing through him. The cruelty he possesses, that he never would unleash around his younger brother, because he had been tasked to protect Giseok since they were children, until Giseok grew into his features, his gangly limbs. His fists.
“Hyung,” he says, and watches Gijun raise a brow. He is handsome in the dim, cool light of the night, too. That is another thing Giseok has never been able to deny, something he tucked away in the furthest corner of his mind to ignore, because he knew that you could see it on his face, telegraphing every thought of his to the only plausible recipient there has ever been. Gijun, his immaterial mirror. “What am I doing here?”
Gijun smiles, soft between his teeth, pronouncing the dimple in his cheek. Giseok wants to put his mouth there, an ill-fated impulse, and looks away, out into the blankness of the forest surrounding them. This is Gijun’s sanctuary, where he goes when he wants to get away from everything, to unwind, and Giseok has no idea how, because the idea of sitting for hours in the damp, with no functioning toilet or refrigerator makes him anything but relaxed. But Gijun has always been like this, water cascading off a round stone. Shaping something elegantly simple within patient years.
“This is nice,” Gijun says, in lieu of humoring his younger brother. With his ink-black hair curling into his forehead, he appears younger than his age. It has always been Giseok who everyone thought to be the older brother, and their mother would laugh about it, tickled by that comparison, while they stood there, shoulder to shoulder, smiling politely. People still stare whenever they go anywhere together, predictably. Giseok is better at navigating social conventions, but Gijun is who people remember. More likable, easier to digest.
Giseok leans back in his seat and sighs, rubbing at his eye beneath his prescription glasses. He will have to see his optometrist soon; his eyesight is worsening and that is no good. It makes him feel older than he is, too. Next to Gijun, he would always age faster, more rapidly—lacking the gentle edge time would never be able to erode, instead all awkward, sharp angles and too-long limbs.
“What do you think I got you out here for?” Gijun asks then, before Giseok can open his mouth to repeat his question, and he turns his head to look at him, a dead bird in between the syllables like an offering. Giseok frowns, trying to parse whatever is happening inside this car but realizing that it has escaped his grasp quickly, that Gijun has this way of unmooring him, as if he could plunge his hand into the center of Giseok’s chest and curl his fist around the muscle there.
Giseok blinks, his breath getting caught somewhere up his throat, inside his trachea. The hand around his heart moving upwards, around his neck, pushing a calloused thumb into his pulse, just to check if he is still alive.
He tilts his head a little, furrowing his brows, as the woods are still and silent around them. The keepers of many secrets, he is aware. What is one more, then? They have done worse in their lifetime, certainly. There are so many dead bodies between them, to bury them you would never stop digging graves, and this is just another cut, clean through the middle, ritualistic. A beheading. A severance like murder.
Giseok leans forward, inching his body towards him, and asks, "How do you make it real?"
"With you," Gijun says, feigning no confusion for he understands his brother innately, intimately, holding a deliberate pause, "I don't have to. It already is."
Giseok watches Gijun swallow, how his throat rolls beneath the wool of his black turtleneck, and leans his face into the careful touch, how his palm will curl around his jaw and his calloused fingers brush the high bone of his cheek. Gijun touches tenderly, naturally, and when he bridges the distance between them, erasing the remaining inches keeping them apart, Giseok closes his eyes, allows the night to fall around them.
His mouth is warm, but paradoxically Giseok has always known that, and he exhales a soft breath that Gijun swallows as if he has been waiting for just that, to share the air they breathe. He licks at the seam of Giseok’s lips with no haste but no hesitation either, just a genuine desire to be inside of him, a part of him, who beckons him in and curls his hand into the collar of Gijun’s ugly, out-of-date jacket. The need to have him closer is strange and overwhelming, wanting to crawl in between the bones of Gijun’s ribs, to etch himself beneath his skin. So his brother never forgets, so he won’t ever have to let him go.
“Hyung,” he speaks but Gijun shushes him gently and holds him still, kisses him again, and time melts away. They could be anywhere, Giseok thinks, anywhere at all and it would make no difference. In the morning, his back will pinch from contorting himself to fit into his brother’s arms, but for now he does not care. The proximity is intoxicating. To get what you want is a heady feeling, the sort of rush nothing else compares to.
It is why they do what they do—why they are who they are. There are no rules, just mindless losses, brutal victories. Giseok knows all about that, is familiar with the absolution of death.
“Let me,” Gijun murmurs, as if he would ever have to ask for permission. Giseok would do everything for him, give life and body, drain his blood until there is nothing left. Gijun has no idea, he thinks. Gijun has no idea at all, how dedicated Giseok is to his older brother. How he has always worshipped at his altar, a silent devotee.
In the midnight-blue, Gijun squeezes his thigh and touches his shoulder, a wide palm on Giseok’s chest, and Giseok lets him, because he asked him to and because he is too weak to deny what he desires.
The woods keep many secrets, Gijun had told him many years ago. What is one more traded from one mouth to another, like wine. Giseok watches Gijun close his eyes, and prays for another eternity.