Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As good as Heeseung’s intentions may have been, it’s not difficult to pinpoint the moment he screwed himself over.

Initially, the plan was to get across the country as quickly as possible – or, no, that's not entirely true. If it was, he would have accepted the offer from his life-long best friend, Jay, when he said he would buy him a flight using all the frequent flyer points he’d built up from visiting family in Korea a few times a year.

But Heeseung turned the offer down in favour of driving across the country, so then that became the plan. Drive across the country as quickly as possible, stop only when he absolutely has to, no detours, no looking back.

A clean break. A fresh start. It was just what he needed.

But then he thought about it – and Jay has always said things start to go wrong for him the moment he starts thinking twice about an otherwise solid, practical plan – and changed his mind. Because tacking on just a few more hours would take him through states he’d never been to before, and the point of this solo road trip may be to find his fresh start, but it’s also to find something that made him feel excited about starting over.

There has to be something he hasn’t seen yet that’s worth going out of his way for. There just has to be.

Otherwise, what’s the point?

So, that was his first mistake, changing the plan in favour of something a little more adventurous. He’d never ventured too far into the southern states, but everything else he's seen, he found entirely uninspiring, so he might as well, right?

Wrong. And his second mistake may have been the one to really take this idea from bad to horrible, but it’s that first mistake that got him here to begin with.

And here is a backroad in the middle of nowhere – and he really does mean nowhere, because his GPS was set to take him on alternate routes and he can’t even remember the last time he saw a sign indicating a town limit or even a state border – standing helplessly next to his truck that he veered off the road into a long driveway shrouded by drooping tree branches as soon as he’d seen smoke rolling out from under the front hood.

Here’s the thing about Heeseung and his truck: he was warned, when his father gave it to him on his seventeenth birthday, that it was a fixer upper. He’d been warned that if he wanted it to last him a significant chunk of his twenties, he’d have to learn a thing or two about how to fix it when it inevitably broke down.

And Heeseung always meant to learn about cars, but he just never got around to it, and despite all odds, his trusty old pick-up truck hadn’t yet failed him, in all the years he’d been driving it.

It lulled him into a false sense of security, he supposes. When he drove it across the country the first time, leaving his hometown in southern California and driving all the way to Washington D.C., with Jay coming along for the fun of it, it had been without a single bump in the road (figuratively speaking, of course, because there was a serious pothole problem in most of the places they’d driven through). He was sure it would be able to get him through the journey back now, his drive of shame back to his home state, back to a city only an hour away from his parents’ house, despite that defeating the whole purpose of choosing the furthest university that would have him in the first place.

At the very least, he’s not moving back in with them. That’s the one silver lining in all of this, even though he dropped out in his fourth year, mere months away from what would have been his graduation day, and even though he didn’t tell them he did until they asked when they should fly out to see him get his diploma. Even though he’s admitting defeat and giving up on his foolish dream of being independent, he’s not going to have to live in his parents’ basement. That’s something.

He’ll be living in Jay’s new apartment instead, in the guest room that has already been prepped for his arrival, the one he may never see now, because he’s almost certainly about to get murdered. And maybe that’s pessimistic of him, but it’s all he can think about as he gives up on staring helplessly at the innards of his truck and looks towards the house at the end of the long driveway he’d chosen as his baby’s potential resting place.

It’s all straight out of a horror movie. His options are frighteningly limited, and becoming more so by the second, because he pulls out his phone to find it dead, totally useless to him, just like his truck, just like his problem-solving abilities. So that leaves him with, unfortunately, only two left. He doesn’t like either of them.

He can wander back down to the road, abandon his truck, and try to hitchhike the rest of the way, or at least to the nearest car rental place desperate enough to hand the keys over to a twenty-two year old with a credit score that’s probably in the negative, somehow. This option would, most likely, end with him getting murdered and dumped in a nearby swamp to be reclaimed by nature.

It almost sounds nice, peaceful, but then again, getting to leave this godforsaken place – whatever place it is, he’s still not sure – alive sounds even better.

That’s why he also doesn’t like his other option, which is walking up the driveway and knocking on the door of the house on the hill, and hoping that whoever answers doesn’t immediately pull a shotgun on him and blow him to bits. Because they’d probably have a swamp in their backyard, and they’d toss his body in there, only this one would be full of alligators, and he’d become dinner.

In the end, he likes the idea of being fed to gators a bit more. It seems like the more dignified way to go out.

So he trudges his way up the mud-slick driveway, grimacing as his once white sneakers get a little more ruined with every step. He’s sure that there is actually a risk of being shot, because wherever he may be, he knows it’s in the deep south, where the locals surely don’t hesitate with trespassers. He tries not to make his presence known until he’s already climbing the porch steps and bringing his fist up to rap his knuckles against the wood of the front door.

There’s an ornate cross carved into the middle of it. Heeseung swallows back the bile rising in his throat.

To his shock and relief, he isn’t instantly gunned down by the owner of the house whose evening he’s rudely interrupted. Instead, the door opens to reveal a rather intimidating looking man, intimidating enough that Heeseung has to fight the urge to flee, because he doesn’t seem to have a gun, so this is already going better than he thought it would, all things considered.

“Um,” Heeseung starts, rather eloquently. “Good evening, sir, um – I was just wondering if I could get some help? My truck broke down.” He gestures behind him, to where his truck was sitting at the bottom of the hill, the hood still propped open, small wisps of smoke still visible even from where they stand. “I just need to use your phone to call a mechanic and get it towed.”

“Sorry, son,” the man starts in a thick southern accent, eyeing Heeseung like he’s sizing him up as a potential threat. “You won’t have much luck with that, I’m afraid. We’ve only got the one mechanic, and he’s out of town on a fishin’ trip for the long weekend. Won’t be back ‘til Tuesday.”

Right. Of course. It’s a long weekend, because Heeseung chose the first week of July to leave despite knowing every town he intended on stopping in would be packed with people celebrating the Fourth, because he just can’t stop making bad decision after bad decision.

“Oh,” Heeseung says lamely. “Is there – uh, is there someone in the next town over?”

“Next town over isn’t for miles,” the man tells him. “And, far as I know, they all come here to get their oil changed.”

“I see,” Heeseung mutters.

“I’ve got some jumper cables, though,” the man says. “Let me bring my truck down there and see if we can’t get her started again.”

Heeseung feels his spirits lift ever so slightly, perking up at the small sliver of hope the man had just given him. “Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” he says with a slight shake of his head. “And Reverend will do just fine, if you will.”

“Sure,” Heeseung says easily, because he’s not totally surprised. The cross etched into the door and the way the man had provided him with some goodwill and kindness instead of just shooting him the moment he stepped foot onto his property had been small hints, but the robes he's wearing were the real dead giveaway. He looks like he’s just gotten back from giving a sermon, and Heeseung normally does his best to stay away from anyone that upholds the religion he’s never been fond of, but this man is, most likely, his only hope, so he puts his prejudices aside, just long enough to get him out of here. “Thank you, Reverend.”

The man eyes him one last time, still vaguely suspicious but not outright accusatory, so Heeseung assumes he’s almost in the clear from being perceived as a threat. And then he retreats into his house, the door shutting behind him, and Heeseung wanders down the stairs and starts making his way down the hill, finding himself glancing back at the house without much thought as to why he felt he had to.

A curtain in one of the upstairs windows flutters, and Heeseung’s eyes are drawn to it immediately, catching a quick glimpse of someone peeking through them, staring down at Heeseung until they disappear a moment later, likely realizing they’d been caught.

Okay, mildly creepy. Nothing he can’t handle, though. Probably.

He’ll make it out of this alive, if only to prove Jay wrong, to prove that he can do this, that he doesn’t need his frequent flyer points or his doubts about Heeseung’s ability to do a cross-country road trip by himself.

And then the Reverend parks his truck near Heeseung’s, and stomps over to it in more casual clothing and rubber boots, jumper cables in hand, and after one, two, three attempts at getting his truck to start, all of the hope Heeseung had been desperately clinging to is ripped away from him.

“Well, son,” the Reverend sighs after one last fruitless attempt, removing the jumper cables from Heeseung’s battery and shooting him a pitiful look. “You and I can push her up the driveway, and come Tuesday, we’ll call the mechanic.”

“Uh, actually, I really need to get back on the road tonight,” Heeseung says, even though he knows it won’t make his truck magically start.

The Reverend eyes him warily. “I think you’re all out of luck, my friend,” he says, a little cryptically. “What’s your name?”

“Heeseung Lee, sir. Sorry – Reverend, I mean.”

He doesn’t seem phased by his slip up. “You hungry, Heeseung?”

And Heeseung is hungry, starving actually, but he doesn’t realize it until he’s posed the question, to which his stomach decides to respond for him and growl loudly, making it clear what his answer would have been.

“My wife’s just about to have food on the table,” the Reverend says, clapping a hand down on Heeseung’s shoulder. “Why don’t you join us? We’ve got an extra bedroom you can use for tonight, and tomorrow, we can get you set up in the motel in town for the weekend.”

“That’s – that’s very kind of you, but –”

“Come on, son,” he presses on, unphased by Heeseung’s attempt to dodge the invitation. “You won’t ever have a better chicken pot pie in your life.”

And Heeseung doesn’t doubt it, but he really doesn’t want to get murdered tonight. For all he knows, there might not even be a wife, and this whole thing might be a ruse to get dinner for his pet gators.

But he is hungry. And he’s also exhausted, reasonably so after three nights of sleeping fitfully in either the cargo bed or the bench seat of his truck when it was raining. This man is a pastor. He wouldn’t murder him. It’s been a while since Heeseung last skimmed the bible, but he’s pretty sure they frown on that sort of thing.

“If it won’t be any trouble,” he finally relents, still hesitant, but the hand on his shoulder gives him two more pats in approval.

“None at all,” the Reverend says, using his grip on Heeseung’s shoulder to guide him to the back of his truck. “Now make sure you push with your legs, boy. Our hospitality doesn’t go as far as nursin’ you back to health if you throw your back out. How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-two,” Heeseung answers dutifully.

“Nevermind that, then. You’re young. You’ll bounce back,” he says, getting into position to give the truck a shove. Heeseung mirrors him, and waits for his go ahead, but it never comes. “You’re about the same age as my boy, actually.”

“Oh,” Heeseung says dumbly, because he’s not sure what he’s supposed to say, and then the Reverend tells him to start pushing, and they do, slowly inching it up the hill with surprisingly minimal resistance.

“I bet he’ll be some excited to meet you,” the Reverend says, clicking his tongue and shaking his head in something like disapproval. “He’s got about a million questions for all the city folk that come through here. Not that it happens often, but when it does, he just about talks their ears off until they leave town just to get away from him.”

Heeseung didn’t tell him he was from the city, but he’s not surprised that it was obvious to the man. He may be broke, but he’s well aware that just about everything about him still screams my parents paid for my fancy college education in the capital city. He’s also sure that everything about him screams I dropped out and wasted it, but he’d rather not dwell on that one.

“I’d be happy to answer his questions,” Heeseung tells him as they reach the top of the hill, taking a step back from the truck and walking around to the driver’s seat to put it in park before it slides all the way back down. “It’s uh, it’s the least I can do to thank you for your generosity.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” the Reverend repeats, stomping the mud off his boots with each step up onto the porch before wiping them properly on the welcome mat. “I was lying about my wife’s chicken pot pie bein’ any good.”

Heeseung shuffles in behind the Reverend, only narrowly avoiding bumping into him as he stops in his tracks and kicks his boots off before they’ve stepped off the rug that covers the floor of the entryway.

“My wife don’t want mud tracked through the house,” he tells Heeseung, looking down at his dirty sneakers. “Shame you got your nice shoes all muddied up pushin’ your truck.”

Heeseung looks down too, quite sure that he was being given a test of some sort. A city boy might ask for a towel, and truthfully, Heeseung is almost tempted to, but not for the reason the Reverend would most likely assume – he’d just rather keep the only pair of shoes he owns relatively clean. But he knows how he probably comes off to this man, and for some reason he’s decided he cares about his approval, because Heeseung kind of cares about everyone’s approval, so he just shrugs. “No worries,” he says easily, sliding them off and leaning down to pick them up and move them off to the side. “They were already pretty dirty.”

It’s a lie, and they both know it, but the Reverend doesn’t call him out on it, grunting in something like approval before turning to face the hallway and calling out, “Honey!”

Heeseung tenses as a woman peeks around the corner of the doorframe to what he assumes is the kitchen, gawking at him for a moment before smiling politely. “Oh, who’s this?”

The Reverend looks to Heeseung, clearly having already forgotten his name.

“Heeseung Lee, ma’am,” he answers.

“His truck broke down, we just pushed her up the hill,” the Reverend explains.

“You poor thing,” his wife says, putting a hand to her heart, shaking her head in pity.

“He’s gonna stay a night with us until we can see if the motel’s got a room they can spare for him.”

“Oh, I’m sure they do,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “We don’t get many visitors down here – not even on the Fourth of July weekend. Come in, dear, don’t be shy. Dinner’s just about to be done.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Heeseung says.

“Esther’s fine, honey,” she assures him, walking over to take his coat and hang it up on the rack before ushering him towards the kitchen. Heeseung just lets himself be guided by her firm hand on his shoulder, figuring he might as well go along with it, since he’s already committed to doing this, to staying here. “And you can call him John,” she says, nodding towards the Reverend. “Don’t let him tell you otherwise. He thinks he’s a big shot around here, makin’ everyone call him Reverend.”

“That’s my title,” John sighs, walking past them to sit at the dining table in the corner of the kitchen – which is huge, by the way. Heeseung thinks the pastor was likely being humble when he said they had an extra room for him. “Where’s Jaeyun?”

Esther just purses her lips in something like disapproval, shaking her head as she puts on her oven mitts and says, “I told him to come down a few minutes ago, but he said he wasn’t hungry.” She opens the oven door and pulls out the chicken pot pie, lifting the tin foil to check if it was done and humming in satisfaction.

“Not hungry,” John scoffs in irritation. “Go tell him we’ve got a guest, will you? And you can sit down, son. No need to hover in the corner.”

Heeseung complies, taking the seat diagonal from the Reverend, still feeling a little on edge, although he can’t place exactly why. So far, they seem like a relatively normal family. More normal than his own, probably. Unless this son of theirs, Jaeyun, gives off some serious murderer vibes, Heeseung thinks he has a pretty high chance of making it out of here alive.

It’ll be a story to tell Jay, at least. A story that will definitely stress him out beyond belief, but a story nonetheless. And there won’t be anything to stress about, because Heeseung won’t tell it until he knows for sure he’s lived through it, but Jay will surely find a way to be stressed regardless. It’s a talent of his.

Where Heeseung has always been gifted with the ability to roll with the punches within reason, Jay has always taken every blow and felt it, and almost always freezes up completely in situations like this. It’s part of why Heeseung wanted to do this trip on his own. If Jay were here right now, he would have high-tailed it in the opposite direction as soon as the truck broke down, would have found the nearest motel on foot and demanded they give them a room for the night. And maybe that would have been the smart thing to do, but it also would have been less adventurous, and that was the whole point of this.

Looking back at his choices throughout the evening, he starts to feel a little less on edge. In fact, he’s kind of proud of himself. He’s getting a hot meal, a place to sleep, and a chance to meet some people he never would have met, in a place he would have simply driven through without stopping otherwise. If his goal was to push himself out of his comfort zone, he’d accomplished it already.

And then Esther walks back into the kitchen with who he assumes to be Jaeyun in tow, and he mentally slaps some sense into the optimistic little idiot that lives inside of his otherwise empty brain.

Two things become obvious to Heeseung at once, but only the second one feels important, and potentially life-threatening.

The first thing is that Jaeyun clearly was not given much information on the guest he was being called down to meet, based on the way his eyes go a little wide, the way he stares at Heeseung for a moment too long, frozen in his tracks. It’s slightly embarrassing, yes, but not important.

The important thing, that life-threatening second thing, is that he’s hot. And that is life-threatening, not because he’s giving off that murderer vibe Heeseung has been fearing all night in addition to his drop-dead gorgeousness, but because Heeseung should know better than to look at a pastor’s son who lives in the Bible Belt and think anything other than stay away. Doing that would be life-threatening, for more reason than one.

But Heeseung is not thinking about staying away, not in the slightest. He’s thinking that Jaeyun has pretty hair, a warm shiny brown colour, messy and long enough to curl at the base of his neck and around his ears. What he’s thinking, when Jaeyun looks at him with a wide smile that shows off his straight, white teeth and the pink hue of his lips and the way his cheeks redden ever so slightly, is that given the chance, he’d kiss him in a heartbeat, because he looks like he’d be a good kisser and because Heeseung has always had a hard time saying no to pretty people who flutter their lashes at him.

And Jaeyun is. He’s fluttering his lashes a bit as he takes a seat in the chair next to Heeseung and says something – what he’s saying, though, Heeseung misses completely, belatedly blinking himself out of his fugue state and muttering out a pathetic, “Sorry, what was that?”

Jaeyun tilts his head a bit, looking suddenly almost puppy-like, cute and wide-eyed and innocent, and – this is bad. Very bad. Heeseung should probably retreat and start pushing his truck out of their driveway and continue on until he reaches the next state over, no matter how long it takes or how it will inevitably lead to him collapsing from exhaustion twenty minutes in.

At least he’d be somewhere that Jaeyun is not, and he’d surely be better off for it.

“I asked if you’re a new volunteer,” Jaeyun repeats, and even his voice is pretty, his accent strong and thick, with a slight lisp that Heeseung manages to find simultaneously endearing and enticing. “For the church?”

“Oh, uh – no, I’m not,” Heeseung stutters out. Jaeyun’s smile gets a little wider, a little amused. Heeseung isn’t sure that Jaeyun actually knows what he’s thinking, but he’s certainly making him feel like he does – and that can’t happen, so Heeseung just keeps talking, as if he can distract Jaeyun from picking up on the thoughts running a hundred miles an hour through Heeseung’s head, the way they’re all just variations of the word pretty. “I was just, uh, passing through, and my truck broke down.”

“Oh no,” Jaeyun says simply, not actually sounding concerned in the slightest, and then – Esther dishes up their servings of pot pie, and tells them it’s time to say grace, and Heeseung feels himself clam up, feels his palms get slick with sweat, like he’s breaking out in a fever. He might be allergic to organized religion.

But then Jaeyun is offering him a hand, and Heeseung doesn’t even hesitate, quickly wiping his hands on his pants, holding his hand out so he can take it. The first thing that he notices is that Jaeyun’s hand is soft, with knobby, pinkish knuckles, and it fits in Heeseung’s perfectly. He notices this fact in a way that’s so all-encompassing, he completely misses it when Esther says something to him, sitting down in the chair across from him and extending her hand over the table.

He takes it, and says, “Sorry?”

“You part deaf or something, boy?” John asks with another scoff.

“Oh, enough, John,” Esther scolds, shaking her head in something like exasperation. “I asked if you’d like to say grace.”

“Uh,” Heeseung starts, pausing for a moment, opening his mouth again to attempt to stutter out some kind of excuse about being tired, something that would also ideally explain the way he keeps missing entire sentences being spoken to him.

“Ma, don’t make him,” Jaeyun sighs, stepping in like some kind of guardian angel, which – all things considered, might be accurate. “He’s probably tired. I’ll do it.”

He smells good. That’s the second thing Heeseung notices. Like peaches, and honey, and a bit of sweat, because the July heat is in full effect. Heeseung suddenly becomes hyper aware of how bad he probably smells right now, considering he’s been sleeping in his truck for the last two nights and hasn’t managed to find a stop with a shower he could use yet. He’s a bit hyper aware of everything now, actually – the way Jaeyun’s knee bumps against his as he mutters out a brief, vague thank you to the big man upstairs, and the way that knee is bare, because Jaeyun is wearing shorts made of a soft, silky looking fabric that barely hit mid thigh on him, part of a pyjama set with a matching button-up top. His skin looks soft. Heeseung has to tear his eyes away from it.

“So what brings you passing through here?” Jaeyun asks as soon as he’s done saying grace.

Heeseung opens his mouth to answer, with what probably would have been a too-lengthy, rambling response, but he never gets the chance to find out for sure.

“You didn’t wanna get dressed before coming down, Jaeyun?” The Reverend interrupts, setting his fork back down on the table after taking the first bite of his chicken pot pie, shooting Jaeyun a rather severe look.

“Ma didn’t tell me we had a guest,” Jaeyun explains. “She just told me I had to come down.”

John sighs, shaking his head, and Heeseung decides to busy himself taking his own first bite, both because he’s starving, and to get away from the sudden awkwardness at the table. Esther takes her seat again, looking at Heeseung expectantly, and as he swallows the truly mediocre mouthful of chicken and flaky crust, he realizes she’s definitely waiting for some kind of comment.

“This is delicious, Mrs…” Heeseung trails off, the words attempting to slice through the air thick with awkwardness, failing and ricocheting off of it pathetically as he realizes he’d never actually gotten a last name at any point.

“Sim, honey, but I told you to call me Esther, remember?” She says with a teasing smile.

Heeseung just nods, feeling his cheeks and ears warm with embarrassment.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Jaeyun says matter-of-factly, and Heeseung keeps his eyes fixed on the bowl in front of him, even though he can feel Jake looking at him rather intently. “Why were you passing through?”

“Uh,” Heeseung starts, rather eloquently. “I just finished college in Washington, but I’m from California, so I’m driving home.”

He’s still not looking at Jake, but he can practically feel his interest pique, the way he sits up straighter, the way he stares at Heeseung even more blatantly, the bowl of pot pie in front of him going completely ignored. “California?” He practically squeals, and Heeseung finally meets his eyes to find them glittering with wonder before his gaze turns more intense and a little determined. “Where in California?”

“Near LA,” Heeseung answers. “I lived there my whole life, before I went to college.”

“And you went to school in Washington, you said? Washington D.C.?” John asks, looking a little less impressed by Heeseung’s presence in his home now that he knows where he’s from. Heeseung isn’t surprised – it’s the exact reaction he was expecting, unlike the one he’d gotten from Jake.

“Yes, sir,” Heeseung answers.

And then he gets another expected reaction, where the Reverend starts going on about what he would do if he was in the same city as the Capitol, and Heeseung checks out mentally almost instantly – both because of the more obvious reason, and because Jaeyun’s hand is patting his knee, clearly trying to get his attention. It works, but Heeseung knows it wasn’t necessary to begin with. Jaeyun’s the type of boy that would get his attention no matter what.

“What’s your name?”

Heeseung blinks, for some reason taken aback by the question.

“Your name?” He repeats, leaning in like he's also now worried Heeseung can't hear him clearly, despite them being no more than two feet apart. “I didn’t catch it.”

He’s so pretty. This is bad.

“Uh – Heeseung,” he answers after his long-term memory suddenly returns to him.

“Cool,” Jaeyun quips. “I’m Jake.”

“Jake?” Heeseung clarifies.

He just rolls his eyes, shaking his head in something like annoyance. “They won’t call me anything other than Jaeyun, but everyone else just calls me Jake.”

“Okay, Jake,” Heeseung says easily, storing the information in the space in his mind that he’d already carved out for him, the one that up until now had been filled with only memorization of the specific hue of Jake’s eyes and the shade of his hair, both a pretty brown, except for his roots, which are growing in black. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, Heeseung,” Jake says, and he likes the way he says his name, the way his lisp comes out on the s, the way the twang of his accent draws out the sound of the vowels a bit. The space carved out in his brain gets a little deeper to make room for Heeseung to be able to recall it at will. “What’s it like to live in LA? I’ve always wanted to go. Have'ya ever met any famous people?”

Jake’s excitement is palpable, and Heeseung is more than willing to indulge in it, to tell him about the time he saw Justin Bieber walk by through the glass of a grocery store window and greatly overexaggerate the details of it to impress him, but he never gets the chance.

“Jaeyun, your dinner is getting cold,” Esther chimes in, interrupting John’s continuing rant and taking Jake’s attention away from Heeseung, although only for a brief moment.

“I’m not hungry,” Jake says simply, and then he’s back to looking at Heeseung, undeterred, still smiling sweetly. “So, have you?”

“I, uh –”

“If you’re not going to eat, you might as well go finish your chores,” John interrupts, his voice harsh and unamused. “The boy’s tired, he doesn’t need you askin’ him a bunch of pointless questions.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Heeseung says quickly, but Jake’s already glaring at his father, his pink lips pursing together and forming a tight line as his brows furrow. He’s cute when he’s annoyed, too.

“I told Ma I wasn’t hungry and I wasn’t gonna eat, she told me I had to come downstairs,” Jake argues. “So which is it? You want me up there, or down here?”

For a few long moments, it’s deadly silent, Jake staring down his father while John glances over at Heeseung, and then sighs. “Eat your dinner.”

Jake looks like he’s about to protest, his mouth dropping open ever slightly, but his mother speaks first.

“We have a guest, Jaeyun,” she reminds him, her tone gentle but her gaze sharp, and Jake gives up after a moment, dropping his gaze down to the bowl in front of him, pushing his food around as his lips form a small pout. “Sorry, dear. My son likes to put up a fight for every little thing,” she sighs, shaking her head.

Heeseung feels a pang of guilt, wondering if his presence was the reason they were being unnecessarily harsh on Jake, so he just gives them what he hopes is a reassuring smile, and shrugs. “It’s okay,” he says easily. “I’m the same way with my parents.”

Jake lifts his head to smile at him again, but this one is softer, a little more discreet. And then he takes a bite of his food, and when he pulls the fork out of his mouth, he does it slowly, pressing the metal bars into the plush skin of his bottom lip, his tongue darting out to lick it clean briefly – so briefly Heeseung’s half convinced that he imagined it, but then Jake’s smile turns a little wicked, and it becomes clear that he didn’t.

“Oh, I doubt that,” Esther says. “You seem like a very respectful young man.”

Heeseung wishes that was true. He doesn’t feel like he’s respecting much of anything, right now.

“So, how long are you sticking around?” Jake asks, tilting his head, giving Heeseung a few slow blinks of his round, pretty eyes. “Hopefully not just tonight.”

“Uh, well, unless a miracle of some sort gets my truck to a mechanic before then, I think I’ll be here until Tuesday,” Heeseung says.

“Right, Mr. Nishimura is out of town, isn’t he? That’s a shame,” Jake says. “Oh! I could get Riki to come look at it in the morning.”

“Riki’s not s’posed to come around here no more,” John tells him, increasingly irritated.

“And you know there's nothin’ he can do without his dad around, anyway,” Esther says.

“He's learned a lot from helping him. He could do it. And if it’s an emergency –”

“It’s not,” the Reverend snaps. “Heeseung’s got a place to stay for tonight, and tomorrow we’re gonna get him into a room at the motel. No reason for you to get someone involved that has no business being involved.”

Jake takes a sharp inhale, letting his fork clatter onto his plate after only one bite has been taken of his dinner, planting both hands on the table to push his chair away from it. “Can I be excused? I’d like to go finish my chores,” he says, going back to staring his father down.

John just waves a dismissive hand, and Jake gets up, the legs of his chair creaking as they slide along the floor, and then he looks down at Heeseung, smiling like nothing happened at all.

“Nice meetin’ you,” he says coolly, his eyes glittering again, this time with something like mischief. “Maybe I’ll see you around?”

Heeseung can’t do much else but nod dumbly at him, forcing his mouth into what he hopes is a somewhat relaxed smile, even though he’s feeling pretty far from relaxed. He’s tense all over, and not just because of the awkward turn the night has taken, but because Jake’s still looking at him, and his question of seeing Heeseung around is starting to sound more like a promise.

And then he’s gone, leaving behind the smell of peaches and honey, faint but still enough to make Heeseung want to breathe in as much of it as his lungs can handle.

He might not survive the night after all.

“You just make yourself at home, okay, dear?” Esther says, giving him one last smile before she closes the door to his room for the night, enveloping him in a quiet that’s only broken by the sounds of crickets chirping and frogs croaking coming through the open window.

It’s hot, hot enough that Heeseung is pretty sure he’d be better off just shutting it and not letting any of the outside air in. So he does, briefly finding himself tangled in the sheer white curtain as a faint breeze finally comes through and pushes it towards him. Heeseung’s used to the heat, and the humidity, but he’s not used to it being this thick, thick enough to feel like he’s choking on it. The sun has already finished its routine of dipping below the horizon, but that hasn't done much to cool things down yet.

The bedroom Esther left him in is pristine, so tidy that he’s not sure anyone has ever even stepped foot in it, let alone slept a night in the neatly made queen sized bed in the middle of the room. Before she brought him up the stairs, John went back out to Heeseung’s truck to get his things, and Heeseung watched from the livingroom window as he took his time looking around, as if checking for anything suspicious, anything that might give him a reason to send Heeseung pushing his truck right back down their obnoxiously long driveway. He’s not sure when exactly he’d lost the small amount of favour he had gained with the man, but he’d made so many missteps throughout dinner, it really could have been any of them.

It could have been the fact that he’s a native Californian who went to school mere minutes from the White House. It could have been his small attempt to excuse their son’s behaviours that they perceived as rude. It could have been the way he looked at their son, the way his eyes practically popped out of his head, his tongue practically unfurling onto the floor, like a cartoon character being presented with a particularly delicious looking pie.

But John didn't find a reason to kick him out, so Esther showed him to his room.

He’s grateful, even if he still isn’t fully convinced that his life isn’t in danger. The bed, with its perfectly fluffed pillows and seemingly homemade quilt, looks far more comfortable than the back of his truck, and Esther showed him how to use the shower, and the steam of the water had looked so enticing that he’d had to hold himself back from jumping in then and there, clothes and all.

Nothing’s stopping him now, though. He digs out a clean pair of pyjamas from one of his two suitcases he’d brought – with just enough clothes to last him the drive, and anything else he’d thought was worth keeping, which isn't much – and steps into the ensuite bathroom, making quick work of stripping out of his clothes and turning on the shower.

Strangely, he keeps getting the feeling that he should be checking over his shoulder, glancing at the closed bathroom door as he waits for the water to heat up, unable to shake the thought that it was about to creak open. It spurs him on to shower quickly, even though he wanted nothing more than to take his time and enjoy it, to make the most of being stranded somewhere with working amenities.

Once he’s out, his wet hair plastered to his forehead and his clothes switched out for his cleanest pyjamas, he finds himself pausing at the bathroom door, hand on the doorknob but not turning it, leaning in to press his ear against the wood.

He doesn’t hear any sound, just the crickets and the frogs, even with the window closed. He slowly pushes the door open. He doesn’t see anyone, either.

He must just be shaken up from the events of the night, the unfamiliar place, the slightly creepy house at the top of a long driveway on a back road, far enough removed from civilization that his paranoia has plenty of space to make itself known. He must just be imagining things.

So he gets into the bed, sinks into it with a relieved sigh – it would still be one of the most comfortable mattresses he’d ever slept on even if he wasn’t sore all over from curling up in his truck for the last two nights – and tries to quiet his mind, tries to push out any thoughts of axe murderers or gators or Jake, because that’s important, too. He can’t think about Jake, no matter how much he’d like to, no matter how convinced he is that he can still smell peaches and honey on his own skin, even after he’d scrubbed at it, even though Jake had only sat next to him for a few minutes and hardly even touched him.

Despite his efforts, though, he’s sure that the air smells faintly of peaches and honey as he drifts into a surprisingly peaceful – but definitely not dreamless – sleep.

Heeseung wakes with a start, and becomes instantly aware of two things – there’s a hand on his shoulder, shaking him, and another covering his mouth, silencing him. His eyes go wide, and he lets out a shout – muffled entirely by his assailant's effort to do exactly that – and thrashes under the weight of the person sitting on top of him.

“It’s me,” his attacker hisses, leaning down until their noses bump, until Heeseung can start to make out who it is, even in the darkness that surrounds them. “It’s just me. Jake.”

Heeseung stills, every muscle in his body tensing up, even more so than they had when he thought he was about to get murdered. It can’t be Jake. Jake can’t be in here, in his bed, in his lap.

And then, seemingly sure that Heeseung won’t attempt to scream again, Jake removes his hand, wipes it on his silky white pyjama shorts, and pulls away so Heeseung can no longer see his face – but he can see his smile, the sharp angle of the corners of his mouth, the whiteness of his teeth, the almost predatory glint in it.

“Why are you…?” Heeseung asks, trailing off and attempting to sit up as much as he’s able to, propping himself up on his elbows and staring at Jake incredulously. “You can’t be here.”

“Why can’t I?” Jake asks with a giggle. “This is my house, is it not?”

“Well, yeah, but –”

“Shush,” Jake urges, and Heeseung snaps his mouth shut. “I just wanted to say hi. We didn’t get much of a chance to talk.”

“Right,” Heeseung says slowly. “And that’s why you’re – on top of me.”

“What are you suggestin’?” Jake says in a coy, teasing tone. “I was just tryna wake you up. You’re a real deep sleeper.”

“I know I am,” Heeseung says sheepishly, feeling guilty for implying that he was there for something else, something his subconscious likely pulled straight from the dream Jake interrupted. But then, Jake doesn’t leave, stays planted firmly on top of him, shifting his weight side to side like he’s making himself comfortable, and – right. Jake had woken him from a dream, a good dream, a dream about peaches and honey and silk pyjama shorts, and now all those things are here, in his lap, and really, Heeseung’s only a man.

He’s sure that Jake can feel him, can feel that he’s hard and pressing against his thigh, and yet, Jake still doesn’t leave.

“Well,” Heeseung starts, staring at Jake for a long moment, his eyes finally adjusted enough to see him properly. “Hi, then.”

Jake’s smile gets impossibly brighter, and he giggles again, tilting his head. “Hi, honey,” he says in a humoured tone. “Now we can really talk. My folks don’t like when I ask too many questions, but you didn’t seem to mind, did you?”

Heeseung could listen to him talk, or giggle, just to hear the little lisp that comes out even more now – likely because it’s the middle of the night, and he might have also been sleeping at some point before he decided to crawl into bed with him – forever, and never get tired of it. He’s never really cared about accents, never found them particularly inviting or off putting in any major way, but Jake’s accent, the drawl of his vowels, the twang of his words, the way it sounds like his tongue is just a bit too big for his mouth sometimes – Heeseung can’t get enough.

He should get enough, he should get his fill of it and the smell of peaches and honey and then politely send Jake on his way, back to his own bedroom, but he’s never been great at doing what he knows he should.

“I don’t mind,” Heeseung says, a little out of breath for no discernable reason.

“Hm,” Jake hums, sounding pleased, and then the hand that was still on his shoulder moves, travelling down to his chest and pressing his palm there, his other hand joining it a moment later and pushing Heeseung back until he’s lying flat on the bed again. “Or maybe you don’t want to talk at all.”

Heeseung swallows, because spit is gathering in the back of his throat, like he’s about to start drooling. “I don’t – I’m not –”

“You’re only here for a few days, right? Not even a week?”

Heeseung nods dumbly. “If I can’t get the truck fixed before then.”

“Sure,” Jake says easily, leaning in again, bringing their faces close together. Gone are the wide, innocent eyes he’d been fluttering at him throughout dinner, and in their place, a sharp, hungry gaze. Heeseung has a touch of whiplash. “Well, then. Someone should probably show you a good time while you’re here, right?”

“Jake –” he starts, but he’s quickly cut off as Jake shifts in his lap again, only this time, it feels entirely deliberate, purposeful, teasing. He bites down on his bottom lip just in time to stop any sounds from escaping in response, not wanting to humiliate himself, not wanting to encourage Jake until he finds out exactly what he’s angling for.

It becomes quite clear a moment later, as Jake slides out of Heeseung’s lap and down, until he’s sitting in between his legs, until his face is hovering only inches above the prominent bulge in Heeseung’s pyjama pants as he looks up at him through his lashes. He’s the perfect picture of temptation, stunning Heeseung into meek silence, unable to protest as his fingers hook into the waistband of his pants, and – fuck, Heeseung’s not wearing any underwear, unintentionally giving Jake easy access to what he clearly wants.

But that’s not all he wants, apparently. “And once you’ve had a good time, and your truck is all fixed up again… maybe you’ll have room for one more on your way to California.”

Heeseung blinks, his still sleep-addled mind not fully processing Jake’s words for a few long moments, but the moment it does, he props himself up on his elbows again, looking down at him with furrowed brows. “What?”

Jake stops what he was doing – which was slowly inching Heeseung’s pants down, still trying to get his dick out even as Heeseung refused to lift his hips to aid him in the process – to stare back at him, confusion overtaking his features for a moment before fading into a slow, soft smile.

“I could come along,” he clarifies, his voice sickly sweet once again. “I’m real good company. I’d make it worth your while.”

Heeseung shakes his head hard enough that he feels his brain – his tiny, useless brain – rattle around in there. “Are you – are you trying to get me off so I’ll take you to California?”

Jake pauses again, suddenly looking hesitant, like he hadn’t thought of it like that until Heeseung laid it out for him. “I guess so?” He says, head tilting, seemingly trying to understand the framing of events for himself.

Heeseung reaches down, wrenching Jake’s hands away from where they’re still gripping the fabric of his pants, taking the liberty of pulling them back up and covering himself. “Don’t – don’t do that.”

Jake’s lips – plush and thick and pink, and still far too close to Heeseung’s dick for him to fully relax – pull into a pout, and Heeseung resists the urge to coo, and cave, and give him whatever he wants. “I thought you would want me to,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper.

“I mean,” Heeseung starts, panic suddenly pulling his chest tight as the minimal light reveals that Jake’s eyes are shiny and wet, “No, I mean, it’s not that, I just –”

“I thought maybe you liked me,” Jake interrupts, slumping forward like the effort of holding himself up was proving too much, only very narrowly avoiding his landing on Heeseung’s dick as he rests his head on his thigh, still looking up at him, blinking away a few tears that drop onto his pants and seep through. “You were looking at me earlier like you liked me.”

“I do,” Heeseung assures him quickly, even though he doesn’t really know him, only knows that he prefers to be called Jake, that he smells intoxicatingly sweet, and that, apparently, he’d really like to go to California. “I do like you, Jake, but – but that doesn’t mean you have to suck my dick.”

Jake blinks, staring at Heeseung for what feels like several minutes but is likely only thirty seconds or so, not a lick of recognition or understanding in his big, wet, pretty eyes. Heeseung feels the panic in his chest fade, and something achy, something sad takes its place. “So you don’t want me to?”

Heeseung sighs, reaching down and running his fingers through Jake’s slightly tangled hair without much thought. It’s soft. “Not if you’re only doing it to get a free ride across the country.”

Jake lifts his head, eyes wide with panic of his own, but Heeseung never gets anything more than a few stammered out attempts at forming a coherent sentence. He just waves a dismissive hand, freeing Jake of the burden of explaining himself.

“It’s fine,” Heeseung says, using the opportunity to pull himself into an upright position now that Jake’s face isn’t pressed against his leg, attempting to move his dick as far away as it can get from his mouth while he still has him cornered on the bed. “I’m not offended. I just generally prefer to have sex with people who want to have sex with me.”

Jake blinks a few more times. “I wasn’t going to have – have sex with you.”

Heeseung freezes. “No, yeah, of course, I just –”

“Not now, at least,” Jake continues before Heeseung could ramble his way through what likely would have been a pathetic excuse of an explanation for his assumptions. “But – but I would. Really. Not just for a free ride, I mean… I do think you’re pretty cute.”

Heeseung huffs out a quiet laugh, dropping his gaze away from Jake’s face, trying not to get distracted by the pretty boy with the pretty lips calling him cute, cute enough to potentially sleep with. “But partially for the free ride, right?”

“I just…” Jake starts, then pauses for a few long moments. “I thought maybe that’s what you’d want. Like, in exchange.”

“In… exchange,” Heeseung repeats slowly, but not judgmentally.

Jake nods, but he’s not meeting his eyes anymore, shifting his gaze downwards, like a child waiting to be scolded.

“Jake,” he starts, scooching closer, reaching out without any thought and lifting his chin with two gentle fingers, until their eyes meet. He drops his hand back into his lap, and says, “I’m not angry at you. And I really don’t expect anything like that from you, at all.”

He says it because it seems like Jake might need to hear it. He says it because, despite being virtual strangers – an odd thing to call someone who just tried to pull down his pants, he’ll admit, but it’s true – he can tell that Jake is used to this, to thinking of sex as an exchange, and to thinking that someone is angry with him for not making good on his part of the deal.

“Okay,” Jake says softly, but with a sureness that tells Heeseung he’s gotten through to him. “And – and you really don’t want me to…” he trails off, like the words suck your dick were difficult for him to get out, and Heeseung resists the urge to call him cute. “I’m – I’m good at it, I think.”

Heeseung laughs a bit, and Jake laughs too, although he sounds a little unsure that he should be laughing. “I’m sure you are,” he agrees, because he’d spent a good chunk of the night looking at Jake’s mouth, and he’d be lying if he said it wasn’t pretty central to the dream that Jake had interrupted to proposition him. He can’t say that he doesn’t want it at all, because he’d be lying, so he doesn’t say that. He asks, in a gentle tone, just in case the question startles Jake, “Why do you want to go to California?”

Jake doesn’t startle. In fact, his eyes go a bit round with something like wonder, and excitement. He smiles, bright and wide, flipping the same switch that had taken him from innocent to seductive, from seductive to teary, and now teary to hopeful. Jake seemed to jump from mood to mood like they came easily and fleetingly to him, not in a way that wasn’t genuine, but in a way that told Heeseung he doesn’t like to dwell on certain emotions when he doesn’t strictly have to.

“Why wouldn’t I want to?” Jake counters, his excitement leaking into every syllable, raising the volume of the words to a concerning level that has Heeseung’s eyebrows lifting in slight panic. He lowers his voice when he speaks again, and this time, the sultry tone returns. “Don’t worry. They’re both heavy sleepers, trust me.”

Heeseung lets out a nervous laugh. “Um,” he starts eloquently, desperately trying to remember what the topic at hand was. Right. California. “I just mean, like, is there something there for you? Or – someone?”

“Are you joking?” Jake asks, and Heeseung opens his mouth to answer, but it was seemingly a rhetorical question. “Everything is there for me. And everything that’s here isn’t there. You know what I mean?”

Heeseung shakes his head. Jake sighs, but it doesn’t contain any traces of real irritation.

“It’s not really about going to California,” Jake clarifies. “It’s more about not being here anymore.”

Heeseung nods after a moment. He can understand that, at least. “Small town life isn’t for you?”

“Is it for anyone?” Jake counters.

“I don’t know,” Heeseung shrugs. “I’ve always lived in a city. But I kind of like how quiet it is here.”

Jake’s expression changes again, flickering over to the next mood right before Heeseung’s eyes, like he has them all on demand, like he doesn’t have to work hard to bring them to the surface, not like Heeseung does. His eyes go a little blank, a little empty. “Well, I’ve always lived here. And it’s not always so quiet,” he says, and provides no further elaboration, dodging Heeseung’s gaze again. His voice is a bit bashful when he speaks again a moment later, almost shy, which is new from him, too. Heeseung finds him a little too fascinating, probably. “And… and I’ve got dreams that are a lot bigger than this town.”

He also finds him a little too endearing. He says the sentence that sounds straight out of a movie script with such determination, such bite, like he’s attempting to fight back against the idea of being stuck there with nothing more than his words.

“Maybe you could visit sometime,” Heeseung suggests, “And make sure you like it, before you commit.”

Jake shakes his head without hesitation, his expression turning serious, a bit troubled. “No, that won’t…” he trails off. “Once I leave, there’s no coming back. Not ever.”

Heeseung understands at once that Jake isn’t just chasing something, in California. He’s running from something here, in his quiet town that isn’t always so quiet.

He’s tempted, for a moment, to agree without any further thought, to tell Jake that he’d be happy to whisk him away in his shitty truck that might not even make it all the way to California, that he can bring him to his dreams, that maybe, just maybe, he can be a part of them, too.

And then he reminds himself that he only met Jake for the first time that night, and that the dreamer’s big, pretty eyes are probably just having an effect on him, making him a bit of a dreamer too, even though he knows better than that by now.

“I don’t know, Jake,” Heeseung says eventually, even though everything inside of him is screaming at him to say yes. “Can I think about it? I just… I’d be responsible for you, and your parents might not be okay with –”

“They won’t care,” Jake assures him. “Not enough to come after me, at least. And you won’t be responsible for anything. If you get me there, I’ll – I’ll never bug you again. I swear it.”

“That’s…” Heeseung starts, frowning, furrowing his brows, unable to hide his own feelings, for once. “That’s not what I meant. I just mean – if something happened, it’d be my fault.”

“What would happen?” Jake asks, blinking, his eyes wide and innocent again. “I trust you to get me there in one piece.”

“You just met me,” he points out.

“And I trust you,” Jake says firmly, and then pauses for a long moment, his gaze drifting over Heeseung’s face. “You… you wanted nothin’ in exchange, so. You’re already more trustworthy than most of the other men I know.”

A few seconds of silence pass between them, and Jake just keeps staring at him, unflinching in his determination, in his apparent trust. Heeseung tries not to shy away from it, and then presses his lips together in a line, takes a deep breath through his nose, and releases it in a sigh.

“I’ll think about it,” he says.

Jake looks a little defeated, shoulders slumping, lips jutting out in another strategized pout.

“I will,” Heeseung assures him.

“Okay. Don’t you forget about it, though,” Jake urges.

“I won’t forget about you,” Heeseung says, not even realizing his words were slightly different than Jake’s until his expression changes again, until his mouth has already dropped open in surprise. He decides to double down on them, because Jake put a lot of things on the line by sneaking in here and asking this of him and trusting him, a stranger – so it’s the least he can do to be honest in return. “I don’t think you’ll be easy to forget.”

Jake smiles again, but this one is small, and he attempts to hide it by ducking his head down and pressing his cheek to the silk fabric of his shirt where it covers his shoulder. Heeseung finds himself smiling too, and then his eyebrows raise in surprise as Jake practically throws himself onto the side of the bed not already occupied by Heeseung, nuzzling his face against the pillow, making himself comfortable.

“Uh,” Heeseung starts, unsure of how to even continue, how to question what exactly Jake is doing without sounding like he doesn’t want him here.

“C’mere,” Jake says, turning over so he’s facing the wall, reaching behind him to pat at the mattress behind him in invitation.

He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t push when Heeseung hesitates, just waits patiently until he eventually relents and lays down too, with an appropriate amount of distance between them. Jake doesn’t seem content with this, though, shimmying himself closer until his back is pressed flush against Heeseung’s front.

“Jake…”

“Shush,” he says, snuggling impossibly closer to him. “Just… just hold me for a bit, ‘kay? M’tired.”

Heeseung wants to ask if he’s sure, if he’s worried about his parents waking up and catching them, if he’d really decided in such a short amount of time that he could trust him. He wants to ask for every detail of his life leading up to this moment, wants to ask about the dream he was chasing and what he was running away from. He almost wants to ask if he could kiss him, if that would be taking advantage of him the way letting him put his mouth on him in exchange would have been, if that would shatter the trust he’d managed to gain, the trust he, for some reason, desperately wanted to keep.

But he’s tired, too. And he can’t deny that Jake’s request aligns pretty perfectly with his own interests.

So he gives in, wraps an arm around Jake’s waist, tucks his face into the junction of his neck and shoulder, and tries to tune everything else out, focusing on breathing in more of the scent he’d been chasing in his dreams all night, not daring to waste his chance at memorizing it properly – knowing full well that he’s risking getting addicted, that he’s being reckless.

After all, he’d been brought here in the first place by a desire to get out of his comfort zone, to find something worth going out of his way for. He thinks, as his vision starts to blacken around the edges, as Jake’s breaths even out and he begins to snore softly, that he might be on the right track to finding just that.

Chapter Text

Heeseung wakes up alone. He’s not surprised – in fact, he’s kind of convinced that Jake's presence was nothing more than a very elaborate dream, until he sees the rumpled sheets beside him – but he can’t deny that it’s disappointing.

Jake likely just didn’t want to get caught in bed with him, or – maybe that’s not it at all. He supposes he’s made some assumptions about Jake and his family, and whether or not they’re okay with that sort of thing – but considering the small taste of the Reverend’s politics that he’d gotten at dinner last night, he’s sure he’s not far off with those assumptions.

Maybe that’s what Jake was running from and looking for. Maybe he’s chasing acceptance, or the freedom to get into bed with any boy he pleases without fear of consequence. Or, considering what he’d said last night, the freedom to not get into bed with any boy that wants him there.

His chest aches a bit at that thought, at how truly shocked Jake was when Heeseung turned him down. If he was still here, if he could, Heeseung would hold him for as long as he wanted.

But Jake’s not here. Not only is he no longer in his bed, but when Esther calls Heeseung down for breakfast, he’s not there, either. The table is overflowing with pancakes, and sausage, and biscuits, and fruit that looks freshly picked from the trees he saw in the backyard from his bedroom window, but Jake’s not there, and they make no effort to call for him.

“How’d you sleep, dear?” Esther asks, and John glances at him over his newspaper, feigning disinterest, ambivalence – but Heeseung feels a chill shoot down his spine at the ice in his gaze, and he knows at once that Jake hadn’t just decided to skip breakfast.

“Oh, great,” Heeseung manages. “The bed was really comfortable.”

Esther looks pleased, proudly saying she’d picked out the mattress for that room, launching into a recount of all the options she’d been presented with when she drove to the nearest city to buy one a few years ago, until John interrupts with a stern voice and reminds her that they need to say grace.

Heeseung ducks his head down, sitting completely still as she goes through a much longer prayer than the one Jake had given the night before. He waits until she’s finished, until she’s expressed her thanks for her beautiful family that's currently incomplete, until she’s loaded his plate up with more food than he can realistically finish, and then asks, “Is Jake still sleeping?”

It was the wrong thing to say, and the wrong way to say it, he’s sure. But he doesn’t particularly care. He just wants, kind of needs to know where Jake is.

John drops his newspaper with a loud rustle, folding it up and tucking it under his plate, taking a bite of scrambled eggs and completely ignoring Heeseung’s question.

Does he know? Were they caught? Heeseung’s pretty sure that if they were, he would have woken up with the barrel of a shotgun in his face, and not the serene rays of morning sunlight. John seems irritated with his question, but not with him.

“Jaeyun is in town doing his errands,” Esther answers cheerily, contrastingly unbothered by the inquiry, but clearly a bit annoyed by the use of the name Jake told him to use. “He’ll be back later this morning.”

“Oh,” Heeseung says dumbly.

“You might not see him at all before you leave,” Esther tells him. “He keeps awfully busy, our boy.”

John just grunts in something resembling agreement, then seemingly decides he’d like the subject changed. “I’ve gotta get some work done, so I’ll be driving you into town once you’re finished,” he says, nodding towards Heeseung’s untouched plate like he was suggesting he might not actually wait until he’s finished, if he doesn’t start eating soon.

The Sim family has been hospitable to him, but it seems that hospitality has a time limit, one brought a little closer to its end by his interest in their son’s whereabouts. Heeseung scarfs down what he can, and doesn’t waste time before going upstairs and repacking his suitcase, making sure he doesn’t leave a trace of himself behind when he’s sure they’d rather him just disappear.

When Heeseung trudges back down the stairs, suitcases in hand and thumping against each step, John is waiting at the front door, fully dressed in his pastor’s garb, and Heeseung once again feels his palms start to sweat.

“I took the liberty of havin’ your truck towed to the Nishimura’s,” he tells him, opening the front door for him and ushering him out. “And I already called him up, so he knows to fix it first thing when he gets back on Tuesday. He says he’s most likely already got all the parts, s’just a matter of putting them in.”

“Thank you, Reverend,” Heeseung says, falling into stride with the man as he leads him over to his own truck, a gaudy bright red thing that doesn’t at all align with the kind of humility typically expected of a man of god. “What do I owe you for the tow truck?”

John stares at him like they aren’t even speaking the same language, head tilted, expression pinched into something simultaneously baffled and almost mocking. Heeseung can see traces of Jake in his face, but they’re all warped, as if someone has taken his features and twisted them until their default state is irritation, and not Jake’s usual bright, carefree smile that Heeseung can’t quite seem to stop thinking about.

He doesn’t dignify him with an answer, in the end. He just gets in the driver’s seat, and Heeseung gets in on the passenger’s side, eyebrows raising at the smooth, expensive looking leather interior. His own truck’s dashboard had peeled beyond recognition by now, looking like the leather’s natural state was spotted with beige peeking through, matching the chipped blue paint and coppery rust that covers the exterior.

When his own truck starts, it’s always with a sputter, like a plea to be put out of its misery, but when John starts his up, it comes to life with a roar. If Heeseung was more insecure in his masculinity, he might think John is trying to size him up, trying to assert dominance over him, and it might work. But Heeseung likes to think he’s pretty secure, and he doesn’t frighten that easily.

It’s not a far drive into town, which he admittedly expected. It seems like the kind of place he could walk across in less than twenty minutes, and yet, the Sim’s are certainly isolated, sitting at the top of a hill that looks down at the rest of the town in its entirety, positioned above it like a safe haven – or maybe more like a tower, built to lock away something precious.

He finds himself looking out the window, scanning every fenced-in yard, every small, run-down shop, and he knows that he’s subconsciously looking for Jake, trying to see where his morning errands have taken him, trying to make sure that he’s okay.

But there’s no sign of him, and Heeseung feels the flicker of hope in his chest sputter out completely as they pull into the parking lot of a dingy, unassuming motel.

“Just go on into the office,” John instructs, pulling Heeseung’s suitcases out of the back of the truck and rolling them over to him. “They know you’re comin’.”

Heeseung forces a weak, closed mouth smile, and nods. “Thank you for everything, sir – uh, Reverend. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t taken me in.”

John just claps a hand on his shoulder, returning his forced smile with one of his own, and then waves him away with a dismissive, “Go on, son.”

In actuality, he knows what he would have done. He would have called Jay, and Jay would have found a way to fix everything, because he always does when Heeseung really needs him. He would have left unscathed, and uninvolved in something that he feels irreversibly entangled with now. He might have been better off than he is now, worrying himself a little sick over a boy he’d only met the night before, a boy who just wanted to be held for a while and pleaded with him for a drive out of here and is now nowhere to be found.

There’s still time, he supposes. He might just be catastrophizing, even though he’s not usually prone to doing that. Jake could reappear before it’s time for Heeseung to leave, but for some reason, he feels entirely out of reach right now. Maybe, though, he was never within reach to begin with.

Heeseung feels a little nauseous as he walks towards the small building labeled office, even though he’s breathing in air that’s far fresher than his lungs are used to in the city, because there’s not even the faintest trace of peaches or honey in it.

The door to the office creaks violently as he pushes it open and drags his suitcases in behind him, cringing when they smack into the doorframe and get the attention of the blonde boy sitting at the front desk.

“Need some help with those, sugar?” He asks in a sickly sweet voice, with an accent that’s somehow even thicker than Jake’s, jumping up from his chair and rushing over.

“Oh, I’m – fine,” he protests weakly as the handles get snatched from him anyway and dragged closer to the check-in desk, which the boy settles back down at a moment later.

“You coulda just left them outside,” he tells him, leaning forward on the desk, shamelessly looking him up and down, his smile growing more pleased as he does. “We don’t have much in terms of thieves around here. We got all other sorts of shady types, but not thieves. I’m Sunoo, by the way.” He extends a hand, and Heeseung hesitates before shaking it, if only to give him time to process his quick, heavily accented words.

“Heeseung,” he tells him.

“Where’re’ya from, Heeseung?” Sunoo asks, his tone even sweeter this time.

“California,” he answers automatically. “I’m driving back there from Washington, but my truck broke down, so –”

“Oh, you’re the one Reverend Sim called about!” Sunoo exclaims, straightening up, eyes going wide in excitement as he moves back over to his computer, typing frantically on it for a few long seconds. “We got a room all set up for you, California,” he says cheerily, seemingly using the name of his destination as a new nickname. “Yunie said you’d be here for three nights, s’that right?”

“Yeah, should be,” he confirms, and then, after a pause that ends with a metaphorical lightbulb going off in his otherwise mostly dim head. “Yunie?”

Sunoo hums, then looks up, his round eyes landing on him to stare blankly for a long second, and then he seems to understand what Heeseung is asking. “Oh – Jake. He came by this morning to pay for your room.”

“Oh,” Heeseung says dumbly. “He didn’t have to do that.”

“Well, it was his old man’s money,” Sunoo clarifies. “They’ve always got ‘im running around doing all kinds of stuff. His mama don’t like to come into town too often, ‘cept on Sundays.”

“You know him?” He asks, even though that’s fairly obvious by now.

“Sure,” Sunoo says easily, turning to the hooks full of keys with various room tags on them, searching for a moment before grabbing one and handing it to Heeseung, stepping out from behind the desk and taking one of his suitcases. “He’s my cousin. I know him about as well as you can know him, which isn’t sayin’ much.”

Heeseung is about to inquire further – into the relation, and into his slightly vague words – but he doesn’t get the chance.

“I’ll show ya to the room,” Sunoo tells him, opening the door and gesturing for him to go through. “I’m technically not s’posed to leave the desk, ‘specially on a weekend as busy as this one. But I’ve gotta stretch my legs sometimes, right?”

Heeseung nods, unable to get a word in as he tries to keep up with his quick pace of walking and talking, but Sunoo doesn’t seem to need verbal agreement from him to carry on.

“My sister Minjeong usually works on Saturdays, but she decided this morning she was going to go to the beach with her friends – can you believe that?”

“No,” Heeseung says, hardly even paying attention, focused on trying to figure out how he can politely steer the topic back to Jake.

“Right? So unfair,” Sunoo sighs in exasperation, stopping in front of a door marked as room number six and stepping out of the way so Heeseung can unlock it, turning to look at him with a blatantly flirtatious smile. “But I’m only here for another half hour or so, anyway. Then my mama takes over, and I’m free as a bird. Say, you need someone to show you around town?”

“Uh,” Heeseung freezes up a bit, glancing at Sunoo and then fixing his eyes back on the doorknob as he struggles to get the key in. “Jake was going to show me around, actually, but I haven’t seen him yet today.”

Heeseung manages to turn the key, and when he looks up at Sunoo again, his eyes are narrowed in suspicion. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Heeseung says, getting the sudden feeling that he’s under investigation. “Do you, uh – do you know where I could find him?”

“I do,” Sunoo says easily, but his expression is still dripping with distrust. “But I’m not gonna tell you if you’re just gonna go an’ bother him.”

“I’m not – I’m not going to bother him,” he assures him, hoping it sounds genuine, and convincing, because Sunoo seems halfway ready to chase him out of town. And then, when Sunoo’s expression still doesn’t change, he adds, without any thought, “I’m giving him a ride, when my truck is fixed.”

And just like that, Sunoo’s face clears of any suspect, and he lights up in pure joy. “To California?” He asks, loud enough for it to echo around them, and he slaps a hand over his mouth for a moment before speaking again, quieter this time. “That’s real generous of you, Heeseung. Oh, I bet he’s just so excited. We were all gettin’ so worried about him, but he kept sayin’ he was fine, kept tellin’ us he was just going to grin and bear it. I think he just was thinkin’ he had no shot at finding a way outta here, you know? But you – you’re like, well, you must be like a miracle for him.”

“I don’t –” Heeseung starts, unsure of what he was even going to say to deny his miracle status, to insist that it's not a big deal, but Sunoo doesn’t give him the time to figure it out.

“I’ll take you over to him once I’m off,” Sunoo tells him. “Just get yourself settled, sugar. I’ll knock when I’m ready to go, ‘kay?”

Heeseung nods, and then Sunoo is gone, practically skipping his way back towards the office. Despite his mild confusion at the whole exchange, he huffs out a laugh, more of a release of tension than anything else. He steps inside with his suitcases in tow, his eyes adjusting as the morning sun is replaced by the dim light of the room, the curtains drawn, the only light source being a lamp on one of the bedside tables.

It’s certainly not as clean as the room he’d slept in at the Sim’s, but it's also still not any less menacing, with its too-loose lock, and the mysterious stain on the carpet in the corner, poorly disguised by an armchair sitting on top of it. But it's not like he’s rich in options, so he just shoves his suitcases near the dresser that he has no intention of actually using, and peels back the blankets and sheets to search for bed bugs, finding them surprisingly satisfactory.

He sits on the stiff mattress, grabbing the TV remote and flipping through the few channels available, finding a cartoon that comes in only slightly grainy to watch, and keeps his mind occupied, trying to keep the doubt creeping over him at bay.

He probably shouldn’t have told Sunoo that he’s going to be Jake’s ride out of here, but really, there isn't much point in denying what he already knows – if Jake decides he wants to go, that he's sure, Heeseung will have a hell of a time trying to convince himself to say no.

Sunoo made it sound like Jake needs to go, like he’ll be in trouble if he stays, and Heeseung certainly doesn’t like the idea of that. He may not know Jake well, but he doesn’t like the idea of leaving anyone in a bad situation, if he could be their way out – their miracle, as Sunoo put it.

It’s a lot of pressure, being someone’s miracle. Heeseung didn't ask for the pressure, but he doesn’t want to deny Jake of his miracle, either.

And he can't help but wonder – is that all Jake wants from him? Is he about to get Sunoo to lead him to someone who doesn’t actually hold any interest in him outside of his truck and where it can take him? He wants to see Jake again, would much prefer to spend the few days that he’s stuck here with him than sitting in this dusty motel room alone, staring into the possible bloodstain in the carpet and praying for someone to come and put him out of his misery too – but does Jake want to see him?

He doesn’t get much time to agonize over it properly, try as he might. Sunoo knocks after only ten minutes or so of Heeseung zoning out, earlier than he told him he’d be here, but just in time to stop him from spiralling completely.

“Ready to go, California?” Sunoo asks, leaning against the concrete column across from Heeseung’s door and flashing him another excited smile, his eyes turning into little crescents as he does. “Ma let me go early,” he adds in explanation.

“I’m ready,” Heeseung confirms.

“You sure?” Sunoo asks, but turns and starts walking anyway, Heeseung falling into step beside him without hesitation. “You look like you could use a nap.”

Heeseung manages a laugh, shrugging half heartedly. “I’m good. I just didn’t get much sleep last night,” he says, even though it's not really true.

Sunoo looks over at him, his eyes sparkling with a bit of mischief. “Oh, I’m sure.”

“Not – not like that,” Heeseung clarifies. “Just… you know. Unfamiliar place and all.”

“Okay,” Sunoo says in a light, airy, entirely disbelieving tone. “Well, we don’t have far to go, anyway. Jake’s usually done by now, so he should be at Sunghoon’s. If not, he might be at the grocery store down the road. He works there, but not usually on weekends, ‘cause – well, I’m sure you can guess.”

“Uh, not really,” Heeseung says, then adds, with a rather embarrassing amount of interest in his tone, “Who’s Sunghoon?”

Sunoo laughs, loud and full, and drives his elbow into Heeseung’s side teasingly. “No threat to you, sugar,” he says, providing no further explanation as usual. “Yunie can’t work on the weekends, ‘cause he hasn’t got time, with all the errands his Daddy has him runnin’ around and doing for the church.”

“Right,” Heeseung says dumbly, because Sunoo already implied as much. He must be tired, because he’s having a hard time keeping up with anything Sunoo is saying, the chatter he fills the air with as they walk the short distance back into the town centre, turning down a side street lined with houses, crossing over train tracks that cut through the street as every house they walk by looks more and more in a state of disrepair.

“The wrong side of the tracks,” Sunoo announces as they cross them and approach a yellowish mobile home at the end of the street, and laughs, amused by his own joke. “Sunghoon’s real nice, though. Long as you don’t cross Jake, that is – then he’s not so nice. But that goes for me, too. Like I said, you don’t have to worry about thieves around here, but if I hear you did him wrong, they ain’t ever gonna find your body. Got it?”

Heeseung blinks, looking over at Sunoo as he processes the serious tone he’d shifted to at some point in the sentence, and finds his expression dark and warning for a brief moment, before it fades away and his cheery smile returns.

“I’m just pulling your leg. Come on, now,” Sunoo says, laughing again, and then he loops his arm through Heeseung’s, tugging him in the direction of the house, opening the unlocked fence without hesitation.

“Are we allowed –”

“‘Course,” Sunoo says easily. “Sunghoon and I dated for years, you know. I know every single way to break in and out of this house.”

“We’re not breaking in, though, right?” Heeseung asks, because he can’t be too sure with the way Sunoo’s talking.

Sunoo scoffs, looking a little offended as he shoots a glare Heeseung’s way and steers him to the side of the house, marching him down the dirt path worn in the grass. “No, jeez. I’m just saying, we all just come and go. His daddy don’t care, on account of him probably being passed out drunk somewhere right now,” he pauses, then sighs. “I probably shouldn’t’ve said that. Oh, me and my big mouth.”

“I’m not going to say anything,” Heeseung assures him.

“Well, you’d best not, or you’ll end up at the bottom of the lake,” he says sharply, then laughs again, like he’d never heard anything funnier in his life. Heeseung would really rather he stop talking about murdering him while he still has a death grip on his arm, but he has to admit – he’s a little charmed by him, too. Not in the same way Jake charmed him, although he can definitely see the family resemblance the more he talks to Sunoo. From what he’s gathered so far, Jake’s a little less bold in some ways, but even bolder in other ways.

Heeseung laughs too, his a bit more stilted and hesitant, but Sunoo seems pleased with him, smiling wickedly as he yanks him around the corner of the house.

“Special delivery!” Sunoo calls out, just as a group of three people sitting on the grass playing cards come into view. Heeseung glances at them, but then his attention is caught by Jake, stretched out on a hammock a few feet away from them. His eyes are closed, but upon Sunoo’s exclamation, he pries them open and props himself up on his elbows, shutting one eye in an attempt to block the sun as his gaze falls on Heeseung. “One handsome city boy for a Mr. Jaeyun Sim.”

Jake smiles, biting down on his bottom lip like he’s overflowing with glee, and Heeseung feels all of his hesitation, all of his questioning of whether or not Jake would want to see him, melt away under the hot sun.

“Can you keep it down?” One of the boys sitting on the grass snaps at Sunoo, who seems just as unfazed by the edge in his voice as Heeseung is. He says something else, but Heeseung misses it entirely, preoccupied with smiling like a fool as he watches Jake hop out of the hammock and bound towards him with unrestrained enthusiasm.

At first, all he can do is look him over, taking in the sight of him, his yellow rubber boots covered with only a bit of fresh mud, like he'd made some effort to wipe them off before getting in the hammock, and his short overalls that end just above his knee, his white t-shirt with a small patch sewn on the sleeve, like he sloppily mended a hole in the fabric himself. And then, as Jake gets closer, Heeseung notices it – there’s a dark splotch on his cheek, a violent shade of bluish-purple, a bandaid crookedly slapped on just above it, closer to his eye, like it's intended to conceal something other than the bruise. Split skin, maybe.

Heeseung’s stomach drops, and his face falls, but Jake doesn’t see it, because he’s already close enough to wrap his arms around him, pulling him into a half hug, leaning his head on his shoulder in order to glance at their onlookers – whose expressions vary from overjoyed to confused to mildly irritated to downright pissed – to announce, “Guys, this is Heeseung.” Heeseung gets the impression that he already explained who he is and what he might be doing for him, because the boy in the middle, the one that looked merely confused by his presence, suddenly ah’s in understanding. “Heeseung, this is Jungwon,” Jake tells him, pointing at the same boy, and he waves with a polite smile on his face, “And Riki – his dad’s the one that’s going to fix up your truck,” he points out the first angry looking one, and then moves to the second, far more angry one, “And that’s Sunghoon. My best friend.”

“Nice to meet you,” Jungwon says, likely because it’s becoming apparent that the other two have no intention of acknowledging him at all. He leans over and nudges Riki hard with his elbow, and sharp, teenage-angst filled eyes flicker over to him, but still, no one else greets him.

“Nice to meet you all,” Heeseung says, forcing a pathetic attempt at a smile, unable to stop himself from shooting concerned glances Jake’s way.

The other two still don’t acknowledge him, but Sunghoon glares at Sunoo when he joins their semi-circle and asks Riki to deal him into their game, hissing out, “Why would you bring him here?”

Heeseung doesn’t listen long enough to hear Sunoo’s answer, untangling himself from Jake’s hold so he can turn and get a better look at him. Jake strains his neck and attempts to dodge his touch when Heeseung wordlessly reaches up and cups his uninjured cheek, but he manages to hold him still long enough to see a small spot of blood seeping through the middle of the bandaid.

“What happened?” Heeseung asks softly.

“Nothin’,” Jake says easily, attempting again to shrug him off. “It’s nothin’.”

“Was it –” he cuts off, suddenly unsure if he wants to know the answer.

“He didn’t catch us, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Jake says after a long moment. “He doesn’t know anything. He just… I told you he doesn’t like it when I go askin’ too many questions. That’s all.”

Heeseung reaches up with his other hand, gently brushing his fingers against the edge of the bruise, and this time, when Jake tries to shrug him off, he succeeds. Heeseung lets him go, his hands dropping back to his sides as Jake takes a step away, plastering a fake smile onto his face – his pretty face, now tinged with violence in a way it never should be.

“S’all good,” Jake assures him, his tone careful, hesitant, like he’s suddenly wary of Heeseung, and he feels his stomach churn with nausea.

“I thought about it,” Heeseung blurts out without any thought, acting purely on instinct, on wanting Jake to never feel that he has to tread carefully around him.

His eyebrows raise, and his smile drops into lips parted in surprise. “You did?” He asks, unbelieving, like he didn't even expect Heeseung to remember. He wonders, then, if it’s obvious that Heeseung didn't originally come here to give him an answer, even if that’s what he’s doing now. He wonders if it’s obvious that he came just to see his face and his smile, and that seeing those things in the state they're in now has impulsively spurred him on to make a final decision.

“Jakey,” Sunghoon interrupts in a warning tone, getting to his feet, but Jake ignores him.

“Yeah,” Heeseung says, trying not to sound as out of breath as he suddenly is. “You can come with me, if you still want to.”

“Jake –” Sunghoon attempts again.

“Sunghoon, don’t,” Jake snaps, whirling around to shoot a severe look in his direction and mouth something at him before turning back to face Heeseung a moment later. “I want to,” he says firmly, and then lets out a relieved exhale, stepping up on his tiptoes again to wrap Heeseung up in a tight hug. Peaches and honey, Heeseung’s brain echoes uselessly, and then it’s gone, Jake stepping away just enough to take his hands and hold them like they’re his lifeline. “Thank you, Heeseung. Really. I don't know how I’ll repay you, but –”

“You don’t have to,” Heeseung assures him, because that’s the last thing he wants, for Jake to feel like he owes him something. “Really. I’d be happy to have some company.”

It’s the truth, but only because that company is Jake. Generally, Heeseung is fine with being alone, and enjoyed his brief time on the road by himself, with only the sound of the radio to keep him company. But he’s fairly certain he’ll enjoy driving down the long stretches of highway with Jake in his passenger’s seat, the smell of peaches and honey filling the truck's air, and his lilting accented questions filling the silence, just as much.

It is the truth, but it’s also apparently the right thing to say, because Jake smiles softly at him as he breaks the hug and steps away, his eyes getting a little teary like Heeseung just handed him a precious gift, like he’s given him a miracle he’s been waiting far too long for.

Heeseung can feel Sunghoon and Riki’s eyes on him as Jake interlaces their fingers and yanks him in the direction of the street, sharp and watchful and suspicious even as Jake cheerily tells them that he’s just going to show Heeseung around town. They don’t look convinced, not in the slightest, but Jungwon and Sunoo wave them along with twin encouraging smiles, and Jake doesn’t seem at all deterred by the hostility from the other two.

“Don’t mind him,” he tells him as they cross back over the train tracks, his hand still gripping Heeseung’s even though there’s no real need for it anymore. “Sunghoon, I mean. He’ll warm up to you. He always does, with new people – he’s just protective.”

“Are there many new people that come around here?” Heeseung asks, because he'd gotten the impression that everyone making up the town’s population at the moment has been here for a while.

“Every once in a blue moon,” Jake says vaguely, seemingly not wanting to discuss it further based on the way he breezes past the question. “But either way, he will warm up to you eventually. Riki won’t, but he’s just like that. He’s in a bit of a rebellious phase.”

Heeseung laughs a bit, and then says, absentmindedly, “They clearly care about you a lot, though. It's nice.”

“Yeah,” Jake sighs, like it was more of a burden than anything else. “I mean, Riki only cares about Jungwon these days, but Sunghoon – he cares about everyone, even if it doesn't seem like it. Cares too much, if y’ask me.”

“How so?” Heeseung prompts gently, mostly because he gets the feeling that Jake wants to talk about it.

“Like, his old man, right? He’s never done nothin’ good for him, and he drinks all their money away – Sunghoonie had to get a job at the bar just so he could get food on the table and keep an eye on him at the same time – but he never complains. He just cleans up his puke and tucks him into bed when he disappears for days and then shows up passed out on their doorstep,” Jake rants, and for the second time today, Heeseung is being fed far too much information about a stranger – a stranger who hates him, apparently, but may warm up to him. Heeseung’s not entirely convinced. “And he took care of his mama, until she passed, god bless her, and his little sister too, until she got sent to go live with family in Arizona. He just takes care of people, and he tries his very best to take care of me, but – I don’t need anyone to do that. I take care of myself just fine. All I want’s for him to take care of himself, but he won’t. He’s got too much else goin’ on.”

Heeseung nods in agreement, feeling an achy pang of sympathy for Jake’s friend, despite not having ever exchanged a single word with him directly. He’s not surprised that this quiet, unassuming town has more secrets, more darkness than one might expect – especially since Jake told him as much the night before, although not in so many words – but he’s still unsettled by it, enough so that he can’t stop himself from looking over at Jake just as they reach where the end of Sunghoon’s road opens up onto the main street, suddenly stopping in his tracks.

Jake stops too, and looks back at him, his eyes a little wide with curiosity.

“My truck can fit three people.”

Jake blinks, taken aback by the words. “Huh?”

“If he wanted to come,” Heeseung clarifies. “Sunghoon, I mean. If he wanted to – to get away, too. He could come along.”

Jake stares at him, and Heeseung sees the moment his words set in, sees the way they leave him stunned. He says nothing at all for several seconds, and then, after clearing his throat, he tells him, “You’ve got a real good heart, Heeseung.”

Heeseung opens his mouth to attempt a response, a denial, but then Jake sighs mournfully.

“Sunghoon’d never agree, is the thing,” he informs him, with sadness all over his tone and his face. “He thinks he’d be handin’ his daddy a death sentence, if he ever did leave. He’s nothin’ like me. He’s the most selfless person I've ever known.”

“You’re not selfish,” Heeseung says automatically.

“I never said I was,” Jake says teasingly, bumping his elbow against Heeseung’s arm as they resume walking, giving him a coy smile. Heeseung knows he’s joking, but he still mutters out a quiet, sorry, and Jake laughs a bit, shaking his head. “I’m just messing with you. You’re jumpy, you know that?”

“Jumpy?”

“Nervous,” Jake clarifies. “All jittery. You don’t gotta be, around me.”

Heeseung begs to differ, because Jake is exactly the type of person that makes him nervous. He’s pretty, and he knows it, and he's not afraid to use it to his advantage. But he’s not only that, either. He’s soft around the edges, but he's not afraid to bite when he needs to. He’s been dealt a shitty hand by life, but learned to play the game anyway.

He’s far too interesting, far too good, to be slumming it with Heeseung, and yet – he's choosing to spend the rest of his morning showing him around the town that Heeseung is sure doesn’t deserve his presence, either.

“Okay,” Heeseung says as they turn onto the main road, the full extent of what the town had to offer coming into view. “I won’t be jumpy around you, then.”

“Good,” Jake says with a proud grin, and then turns his attention to the town in front of them, gesturing to it with a sweeping motion. “Well then, honey – welcome to Dead End, Alabama.”

Heeseung raises his eyebrows. He still hadn’t actually learned where in Alabama he’d ended up, although by now he’d at least been able to recall the last state marker sign he remembers passing – but he can’t imagine that Jake’s information is accurate. “Dead end?”

Jake smiles in something like delight. “Red Bend,” he informs him, and – that makes a lot more sense. “But all that’s here is a bunch of dead ends, so – that’s what she’s called, by most of the locals.”

“That’s…” he trails off, searching for the right word, then finally settles on, “Hopeful.”

Jake laughs, throwing his head back with the force of it. Really, Heeseung didn’t think it was that funny, but pride blooms warm in his chest anyway, and stays through the next several minutes, as Jake takes him on a weaving path through the town. He shows him the grocery store he works at – informing him that it’s owned by Jungwon’s parents, who only moved to town a few years ago – and the bar Sunghoon works at, and Riki’s house, with a surplus of cars in the yard in various states of disrepair. He shows him all that Dead End has to offer, which isn’t much, but Heeseung finds himself wrapped up in the tour regardless – although it probably has more to do with the tour guide than anything else.

“And that’s Sunny’s house,” Jake says, pointing at one of the nicer houses just off the main street, with a garden full of colourful flowers and a dark green bike with a basket attached to it propped up against the white fence. “My bike, though – it’s not quite as good as havin’ my own car or anything, but it gets me into town just fine. Did he tell you we’re cousins?”

“He did,” Heeseung confirms. “You guys are close?”

“Sure,” Jake says easily. “We get along just fine. Didn’t always, but – I’ve gotten a lot closer with ‘im, and my aunt and uncle lately.”

“Would they –” Heeseung starts, then pauses, unsure if he’s overstepping when he eventually continues, “Could you stay there until we leave?”

Jake’s face scrunches up in confusion, and he tilts his head as he thinks for a long moment. “Why would I do that?”

Heeseung tactlessly gestures at his own cheek.

Jake sighs. “M’not in any danger,” he insists. “It’s nothin’ I’m not used to. And I’ve only gotta deal with it for a couple more nights, so. If I leave without really leavin’, and going far, word’ll get back to him, and then I’ll be in real trouble.”

“They’d tell him? Your aunt and uncle?”

“‘Course they would,” Jake says, like that should have been obvious to Heeseung. “He’d come lookin’ there first, and they’re good folk, but no one’s willin’ to stand up to Reverend Sim,” he says in a mockingly grandiose tone.

“Any good folk would stand up to him,” Heeseung says firmly, then hesitates, adding a moment later, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have – I know they’re your family, I just –”

“S’all good, honey. Don’t be so jittery, remember?” Jake tells him, nudging his side gently with his elbow again. “They’re about as good as good folk come around here. But that doesn’t mean they’re always gonna do the right thing instead of the easy thing.”

Heeseung opens his mouth to ask how Jake is so okay with all of this, so nonchalant, but then something buzzes in his pocket, and he remembers for the first time today that he has a phone, a phone that Jay told him he had to use to call him every morning so he knows he’s okay. And now it’s pushing noon, and he’d completely forgotten.

“Sorry,” Heeseung says automatically, digging his phone out of his pocket and glancing down at it to confirm that it is indeed Jay, his rather unfortunate contact photo that Heeseung chose as a long-running joke staring at him menacingly. “I’ve gotta take this.”

Jake just gives him an easy smile and a shrug, and Heeseung takes a few steps away from him, hoping it’s enough to put him out of earshot, because he knows what’s coming when he hits answer –

“Heeseung dumbfuck Lee,” Jay seethes, speaking loud enough that Heeseung has to pull his phone away from his ear before it’s even fully pressed against it.

“Not my middle name,” Heeseung points out, earning him a frustrated groan in response.

“You don’t have a middle name,” Jay reminds him, “So I’ve decided it’s dumbfuck, you dumb fuck. Did you get any of my other calls?”

“No,” Heeseung says. “I think my service has been kind of spotty.”

“Where are you?” Jay demands.

“Alabama,” Heeseung answers automatically.

“Alabama?” Jay repeats, his tone becoming increasingly distressed. “Dude, you’re supposed to be in Dallas by now.”

“I know,” Heeseung sighs. “Don’t freak out, but the truck broke down last night.”

“In Alabama?”

“No, Jongseong, in fucking – South Carolina. I decided to walk the rest of the way.”

“What?”

“Yes, in Alabama,” Heeseung hisses, glancing over at Jake, who isn’t paying him any mind, chatting happily with an old man that he was seemingly helping pick up the contents of his grocery bag after it split open. He briefly wonders if Jake is secretly a Disney princess, and then Jay’s mildly grating voice is back in his ear with a vengeance.

“Wait, did you say you broke down last night? Where are you? Where did you sleep? If you say on the side of the road, I’m going to –”

“No, man, I broke down outside of someone’s house, and they gave me a room. Now I’m staying in a motel until the weekend’s over and I can get my truck fixed.”

“You went into a stranger’s house? For the night?”

“And lived to tell the tale,” Heeseung says grimly, and he knows Jay understands that he’s mocking him, because he scoffs indignantly.

“You could have gotten murdered,” Jay huffs.

“It was a pastor’s house,” Heeseung informs him, even though he knows all too well by now that that doesn’t make him any less dangerous. “Totally safe.”

“Dude,” Jay says dryly. “A pastor? You’re lucky to be alive. Have you ever seen a horror movie before?”

“Nope,” Heeseung says, just to irritate him. It works.

“Where in Alabama are you?” He snaps.

“Dead End,” Heeseung says automatically, then corrects, “Red Bend.”

“Dead… what the fuck? Heeseung, you’re straight up going to die.”

Heeseung just grunts in acknowledgement.

“Okay, listen,” Jay starts, slowly and carefully, like he’s dealing with a child – which, Heeseung has no comment on whether or not that's got any truth to it. “I’m going to buy you a plane ticket. You’re going to get an Uber to the airport. I will pay you back for it. Do not spend another night in the town from Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

“Pretty sure that one takes place in Texas,” Heeseung points out, unable to stop himself. “Also pretty sure they don’t have Uber out here. Or an airport. I’m good, though. I’ll just be a little delayed, but I’ll get there when I get there.”

“Heeseung,” Jay says, even slower, drawing out every vowel in a way that just makes Heeseung wish he was hearing his name from Jake instead, in his pleasant, twangy accent. He glances at him again, and finds Jake no longer occupied by helping old ladies cross the street or whatever he does in his free time. He’s looking at Heeseung, and then he’s averting his gaze up to the sky, doing a very poor impression of someone who isn’t listening in on any conversations. “What reason could you possibly have for wanting to stay in Alabama for the weekend?”

“Sightseeing?” Heeseung attempts.

Jay doesn’t even dignify him with a response.

“I’m fine. You know I wouldn’t leave my truck, anyway,” he insists, and then dares another glance at Jake, who doesn’t even try to hide the fact that he was listening this time. He just holds his gaze, and smiles a bit, his eyes wrinkling, his skin almost glowing in the sun. “And – well, honestly – I kinda –”

“Heeseung dumbfuck Lee,” Jay starts again, and Heeseung briefly considers crushing his phone into tiny shards of glass and innards in his hands, “If the next words out of your mouth are I met someone, I am getting on a plane and dragging your slutty ass back to California myself.”

“Excuse me,” Heeseung says, offended. “Why are you being so mean to me?”

“Emotionally slutty,” Jay clarifies, as if that’s any sort of improvement. “It’s only been a few months since you and Jen broke up, and you're not exactly doing well right now –”

“I know how long it’s been,” Heeseung interrupts, because he’d really rather not stand here and have Jay recount his dating history, or worse, any other aspect of his history that he has in his arsenal. “Can you just trust me for once, please?”

Jay goes quiet for a few long seconds, and Heeseung lets out a sigh with enough agony in it that one would think he’d spent centuries being tortured by Jay, and not just fifteen or so years being his best friend.

“I gotta go,” Heeseung says quickly, realizing he needs to take his chance to leave now that there’s been a lull in Jay’s panicked lectures. “I’ll call you tonight and check in. Don’t worry about me, okay? I’m just – I’ll get there when I get there.”

He hears Jay attempt to protest, but he pulls his phone away from his ear before he can be subjected to it, and slams his finger into the end button until it takes, and closes the call screen.

“Sorry,” he mutters as Jake wastes no time stepping closer to him again, resuming their slow pace of walking through the town. “That was, uh – Jay. My best friend. He’s waiting for me in California, and I forgot to tell him that I broke down.”

“He sounds, uh…” Jake trails off, like he’s trying to pick the right word.

“High-strung? Intense?”

“Interesting,” Jake finishes, choosing the polite route. “But I’d reckon those, too.”

Heeseung huffs out a slight laugh, shaking his head. “He tries too hard to take care of me, too. Like – like how you said Sunghoon is with you, sort of. He never wants me to make any bad decisions, even if I might learn something from them.”

“Just like me and Sunghoon, then,” Jake says quietly, then asks, his voice impossibly smaller, “You think sticking around here is a bad decision? Or – takin’ me with you when you go?”

Heeseung freezes for a long moment, staring at Jake slack-jawed as he tries to piece together what exactly he said to give him that impression. “That’s not what I meant,” he assures him. “Just – you know, it was a risk, walking up your driveway and knocking on your door. Jay doesn’t take risks.”

“Well,” Jake starts, then pauses for a long moment, his face twisting in consideration. Cute, Heeseung’s brain helpfully supplies. “I’m glad you took the risk.”

“Me too,” Heeseung says, then smiles a bit, an infectious thing brought on by Jake implying that he’s happy he’s here – even if that’s only true because Heeseung is going to get him out of here. “But I’m still not convinced your dad isn’t going to shoot me.”

Heeseung is, momentarily, very concerned that was the wrong thing to say, that he’d just put his foot in his mouth for what felt like the millionth time in the last twenty-four hours – and then, Jake laughs, and all the tension leaves his body in one relieved exhale.

“He won’t,” Jake says, and then his eyes slide over to him, and a sly smile overtakes his features. “Probably. But I’d avoid him anyway, just to be safe.”

Heeseung was planning on it. Truthfully, the Reverend doesn’t scare him, but at the same time, he kind of terrifies him. Anyone that could hurt someone as gentle and kind as Jake is worth being a little wary of.

“So,” Jake breaks the silence when Heeseung says nothing else, lost in his own thoughts. “You had a girlfriend?”

Heeseung curses Jay out in his mind for his ridiculously loud voice, and then sighs, “Yeah, I did. For a few years, but – it ended.”

“Hm,” he hums thoughtfully, then drops his voice to a whisper, “Is that why you didn’t want me?”

It takes Heeseung a few long seconds to understand what Jake is talking about, but as soon as it clicks into place, he turns his head to look at him so quickly that he feels his neck crack. “No,” he says firmly. “That’s not – I did want – I like guys, too,” he finishes lamely.

“Keep your voice down,” Jake says, and Heeseung snaps his mouth shut, flushing red all over even though Jake didn’t even snap at him, didn’t seem angry about his slip up in the slightest. “You’re fine,” he assures him. “It’s just – you know, kind of an open secret, but still a secret, technically.”

Heeseung nods, unsure of what else to say, guilt gripping him tightly despite Jake’s reassurance.

“What was her name?” Jake asks eventually.

“Jen,” Heeseung answers automatically. It seems like Jake is genuinely interested in hearing about his life, based on the eager way he’s looking at him, eyes wide, his almost puppy-like eagerness showing again, so he continues, “We got together in our freshman year. It wasn’t ever supposed to be serious, but then – it was, for a while. And then she was set to graduate, and I found out that I wasn’t, and we just kind of… fizzled out, I guess.”

Jake hums again, this time in something like understanding. “You didn’t graduate?”

Heeseung shakes his head. “My GPA dropped too low last semester. I failed all my classes except one, and I barely scraped by in the one I did pass,” he admits easily, even though admitting it to his parents and to Jay over two of the worst phone calls of his life had felt like pulling teeth. But Jake’s expression doesn’t change, doesn’t turn judging or mocking, and it gives Heeseung enough nerve to continue. "I think I just kind of – hit a wall, you know? I got put on academic probation, so I would need to add another semester to my degree if I wanted to get it, and when I thought about doing that, I just… I couldn’t. I had to get out of there.”

“I understand that feeling,” Jake says, and Heeseung nods, because he’s sure that he really can, probably more than Heeseung himself even does. “What was it that you were studyin’?”

“Law,” Heeseung tells him. “I was supposed to take the bar exam in September.”

“Did’ya like it?”

“Hated it,” he admits.

“Well, then,” Jake says after a moment, “Sounds to me like you did the right thing.”

“You’re the only one that thinks that.”

“Then just take my word for it,” Jake urges him.

“Sure,” Heeseung agrees easily, because he’ll listen to anyone telling him that he made the right choices in life, but he’s especially inclined to listen when it’s Jake that’s speaking. He thinks he could probably listen to him talk all day, and never get bored, not even for a moment. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you in school?”

Jake wrinkles his nose, and shakes his head. “Nope. Not many people around here are – just Jungwon, and Sunoo’s sister Minjeong, and that’s pretty much it. The rest of us just finish high school, if we’re lucky, and then we gotta get to work.”

“Did you want to go to school?”

“Well, sure,” Jake shrugs. “Just like I wanted my license, and a car, and any way outta here I could get. But it’s not for the likes of me,” he tells him, his voice getting a little more high pitched at the end, like he was imitating something someone had said to him. Heeseung can guess who.

“They wouldn’t let you go?”

“They thought I’d never come back, if I did,” Jake tells him with a grin that makes him feel like they’re in on a joke together.

“Is that what you’re going to California for, then? School?”

“Nah,” Jake shakes his head. “They were right about that not bein’ for me, at least.”

“What, then?” Heeseung pushes, because he’s desperate to soak up every bit of information about Jake that he can.

“M’not telling you that,” Jake says stubbornly, stopping in his tracks to face Heeseung, tilting his head back to look up at him with a smug smile. “If I tell you everything there is to know about me now, what’re we gonna talk about on the road?”

“We’ll find something,” Heeseung assures him.

“You think?” Jake asks, his tone dipping dangerously into flirtatious territory. “Well, I’m still not telling.”

“Okay,” Heeseung agrees, because he’s helpless to do much else when Jake is so close, looking right at him with a pretty smile, talking slow and sweet like there’s honey on his tongue. His eyes flicker down to his mouth with that thought, because it’s hard to ignore how much he’d like to have a taste of that honeyed tongue for himself – and he knows Jake notices, because his smile grows impossibly wider. It’s an endless loop, Heeseung looking at Jake’s mouth because he’s smiling, and Jake smiling because Heeseung is giving in and giving him exactly the reaction he’s looking for. “Whatever it is, you’ll be great at it.”

Jake’s smile falters ever so slightly, genuine emotion overtaking his features for a fleeting moment, and then it’s gone, swallowed back with whatever teasing comment he would have made before it came. “I won’t know until I try,” he says, his voice quiet, dim, in a way that Jake should never be. “But all I want’s the chance to try. To get away from all the dead ends.”

And their interests align perfectly, because Heeseung wants to be the one to give him that chance. Maybe it’s selfish, wanting to be burned into Jake’s memory forever, regardless of whether or not this – whatever this is – lasts beyond bringing Jake to California, whether or not they part ways in the end. Maybe it’s really selfish, to want to be the one to save him, to take him far away from here – not only because he deserves to be as free as a bird, but because Heeseung’s only ever been able to disappoint people, to let them down. It’d be nice, to mean something else to someone.

He’s not going to let Jake down. Selfish or not, he’s going to give him his chance to try, and in turn, Jake will be giving him a chance of his own – a chance to mean something in someone else’s life, to leave a mark, to be remembered. It’s more than he ever thought he’d get, and he’s not going to waste it.

Chapter Text

They make their way back to Sunghoon’s yard slowly, not in any rush to be in the company of anyone else again – despite the fact that there’s not much time left for Jake to do just that, and despite the fact that, in three days time, they’ll have nearly a week of driving ahead of them with only each other for company. It doesn’t even occur to Heeseung to leave Jake’s side, and apparently it doesn’t occur to Jake to tell him he should.

The air is stiflingly hot by the time they do make it back, the afternoon heat now in full swing, a thin layer of sweat covering every inch of Heeseung’s already slightly sunburnt skin. Jake is a bit pink too, which Heeseung tries his best not to notice, but then he sprawls himself onto the grass and across Sunghoon’s lap the moment they’re in the safety of his backyard again, and Heeseung’s helpless to fight the way his eyes drift once Jake’s eyes aren’t on him for once. His shorts ride up to reveal that even his thighs have been hit by the sun at some point, his knobby knees knocking together as Sunghoon wraps a protective arm around his waist and pulls him closer.

Jake’s eyes may not be on him anymore, but Sunghoon’s are, his gaze dark and troubled, his brows furrowed like he’s trying to read Heeseung’s thoughts. He can’t let him do that, because he doesn’t like where his thoughts are heading, and can’t imagine that Sunghoon will either. Still, he struggles to find something to look at that isn’t Jake, something half as interesting, half as enticing.

In the end, it’s Sunoo that frees him from the endless cycle that is forcing his eyes to stay fixed on the overgrown tree casting shade over where Jake and Sunghoon are lounging before his eyes inevitably wander back to Jake himself for another glance, and Heeseung is grateful for it, because he knows he wasn’t going to be able to end the cycle on his own. He waves him over to where he and Riki and Jungwon are still playing cards, patting the grass beside him and saying, “We’ll deal you in, California. Riks and Jungwon are already colludin’, so you and I can team up and split the earnings.”

“We’re not colluding,” Jungwon argues.

“You’re not subtle, Wonie. You’ve shown him your cards like, four times,” Sunoo points out. “S'all good. We’ll just play in teams.”

“There are no teams in poker,” Riki counters.

“Oh, sure. And there’s no colludin’, either,” Sunoo says with a sly wink, dealing Heeseung in and unsubtly taking a peek at each card as he does.

Heeseung’s not particularly gifted at poker – he’s only played once, in his first year, at a charity event run by his school that Jen was forced to go to, and therefore, Heeseung was forced to go to as well. He got blackout drunk, lost a hundred dollars, and woke up passed out on the floor of his dorm room. He doesn’t want to disappoint Sunoo, though, who is now seemingly playing with the aggression of someone who is sure they’re going to win, despite Heeseung bringing absolutely nothing to the table.

He can hear Sunghoon and Jake talking in hushed tones, and he doesn’t want to pry, so he tries his best to focus on the game. And when that doesn’t work, he focuses on Jungwon and Riki – who definitely are cheating, for the record – because he wants to understand them too, not out of any care for whether or not they win the game. He wants to understand everything about this town and Jake’s life before he leaves it all behind, before Jake inevitably leaves Heeseung behind, once he’s gotten his ride out of here.

Jake said Jungwon has only been living in Dead End for a few years, and it shows. Heeseung can even venture a guess as to where he lived before – because his accent is only very faint, like he only picked it up as a result of years of hanging around the others. He speaks in a way that’s familiar to Heeseung, reminiscent of the people that he’d gone to university with, people who thought that the whole world began and ended in major cities. Heeseung never wanted to be like them, and that’s part of the reason he’s here, taking this long winded way to get home so he can see something new, and he wonders if the same is true for Jungwon and his parents.

Riki, on the other hand, has clearly lived in this town since the day he was born. If that wasn’t already obvious by the lived-in state of his house when Jake pointed it out earlier, it’d be made obvious by the comfort he carries himself with, the practiced ease in everything he does, like he knows he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be. He’s not nervously shifting his gaze around when he lets Jungwon check his cards – Jungwon himself is doing enough of that for the both of them – because he knows these people, this place well enough to know that there will be no consequences for his actions. Heeseung supposes that, in a place like this, the first thing one would learn would be what is and isn’t allowed, and so it’s not a surprise that those things are ingrained in Riki.

And then there’s Sunghoon – who he knows he shouldn’t be looking at, because he doesn’t want to irritate him anymore than he already has, but unfortunately, Heeseung’s found himself unable to stop. Sunghoon, in a few ways, reminds him of Jake. They’re not quite mirrors of each other, more like two very different people who grew up together, whose lives were so entangled that they naturally gave and took pieces of the other’s personality and stature. He’s like Jake in the way he carries himself, simultaneously making himself small enough to pass by unnoticed if someone isn’t looking closely, but impossible to ignore once he is noticed.

He’s like Jake in the way that he contrasts himself just by existing. He’s got soft features, aside from his thick eyebrows, and his rare smile is almost sweet when he directs it at Jake, but there’s a sharpness there too, a bite. Jake’s bite shows in his words, his ability to snap at people he knows will snap right back in far worse ways, his ability to walk through town with his head held high, while a bruise covers his cheek, a bruise he’d only gone through the effort of hiding half of.

Sunghoon’s bite shows in the way those soft features are almost always pulled into a severe frown, and the dark circles under his eyes, but mostly, it comes in the way he clings to Jake like they were separated for more than just an hour or so. It comes in the form of his eyes sliding over to Heeseung and narrowing, making it clear that he doesn’t trust him, making it clear that his trust is selective, that it has to be earned.

Heeseung’s bite, he supposes, is that he’ll do whatever it takes to earn it.

“Don’t worry about them, sugar,” Sunoo says, cutting through his thoughts and his brief staring contest with Sunghoon, leaning in close so he can speak directly into his ear. He’s sure, to Jungwon and Riki, that it looks like they’re colluding. He’s not sure what it would look like to Jake, but it doesn’t matter, because his eyes are closed where his head rests on Sunghoon’s chest. “They’re just like that.”

“I’m not worried,” Heeseung tells him, and really means it. Jake isn’t his, not in the slightest. One almost blowjob and a promise for a road trip doesn’t make a relationship, doesn’t stake a claim, and even if it did, Heeseung still wouldn’t let himself think he could keep Jake all to himself – even though he might want to. A person can’t be owned, and a person like Jake certainly shouldn’t be. A person like Jake should be able to go wherever, and see whoever, and be whoever he wants to be. That’s the most important thing, more important than Heeseung’s selfish tendencies, more important than the way he also wants to be able to wrap him up in his arms and never let him out.

Sunoo scoffs in disbelief, and Heeseung turns to look at him, their noses almost bumping as he does. He flinches away, and Sunoo laughs, leaning back, clearly no longer concerning himself with the game they were in the middle of, or with discretion in their conversation.

“I’m not,” Heeseung insists. “I just – it’s gonna be hard for him to leave, isn’t it?”

Something in Sunoo’s expression softens, and across from them, Riki and Jungwon go quiet, no longer whispering to each other about their strategy. “Probably,” Sunoo says after only a moment’s pause, then reconsiders, and adds, “Definitely. And it’ll be hard for Sunghoon to watch him go, but – he’s not gonna stop ‘im. None of us will.”

Heeseung nods, and opens his mouth to attempt a response – maybe a reassurance that he’ll get Jake there safely, or that, if Jake wants him to, he’ll keep an eye on him once they’re there. But he never gets the chance, because Sunghoon speaks first, his voice echoing across the yard despite his earlier warning for them to keep it down.

“Stop talking about me,” he demands, his tone more impatient than actually angry.

Sunoo just sticks his tongue out at him, and Sunghoon just rolls his eyes, but as predicted, it’s Jake that ultimately catches Heeseung’s attention in the end. He had apparently dozed off at some point, because he blinks himself awake and lifts himself up into a sitting position, his bleary eyes wandering over the scene in front of him.

“You guys are still playing?” He asks, as if he didn’t notice when they arrived, too focused on passing out in his friend’s embrace. Heeseung wonders how much sleep he got the night before – he snuck into Heeseung’s room well after midnight, after all, and was already long gone with a confrontation with his father under his belt by the time Heeseung woke up, only shortly after eight.

“Riks won’t stop cheating. I’ll sit here all day ‘til I win fair and square, if I have to,” Sunoo says, taking all the blame off of Jungwon, as if Heeseung hadn’t just caught him glancing at Riki’s cards.

“Wait, what time is it?” Jake asks, sitting up a little straighter, suddenly looking panicked like he’d forgotten something important.

“You’re good,” Sunghoon assures him automatically, holding his arm with his watch up to his face and squinting at it. “You got fifteen minutes.”

Jake breathes a sigh of relief, but stands anyway, looking over at Heeseung, meeting his confused expression with a smile. “I’ve gotta go help at the church,” he explains.

Heeseung, rather belatedly, realizes that Jake didn’t take him by the church at all on his tour. He’d spotted it anyway, the tall bell tower that looms menacingly over the town, but they didn’t actually venture onto the street that it sits on, technically out of the way, yet still feeling so central. He can guess why – it probably wouldn’t have led to anything good, if his dad had spotted them together.

Heeseung can’t imagine that it’ll lead to anything good if Jake goes there now, in fact. “Is there service on Saturdays?” He asks.

“If there was, we’d all be there right now,” Sunoo huffs, not looking particularly pleased by the idea, then shoots a loaded glance at Riki and adds, “Or, well – almost all of us would be there.”

Riki avoids meeting his eyes, keeping them fixed on the blades of grass he’s ripping out of the ground one by one.

“There’s no service,” Jake tells him. “But there’s always somethin’ to be done.”

“Are you okay to go by yourself?” Heeseung questions, maybe a bit thoughtlessly.

Jake just stares at him for a moment with a soft, understanding smile, and then shrugs. “It’d be worse if I didn’t go – or if I wasn’t by myself,” he says, vague and maybe a little ominous, and then, as he bids them all a see ya later and tells them to be nice to their guest while he’s gone, Heeseung remembers something the Reverend said the night before, at dinner.

Riki’s not s’posed to come around here no more. Heeseung glances over at Riki, his hand on Jungwon’s knee, now mindlessly playing with the raw hem of his jean shorts, and something aches in his chest before he’s even really started to piece it all together.

“What does he mean by that?” Heeseung asks as Jake retreats from the safety of the yard, back out into the town.

No one answers him for several long seconds, not even Sunoo, who seemingly loves to be the giver of information. And then, to his surprise, it’s Sunghoon that speaks, his voice quiet, but still easily cutting through the heavy silence surrounding them.

“Reverend Sim don’t like any of us,” Sunghoon says simply. “We’re a bad influence on Jakey.”

Riki snorts, but it doesn’t sound particularly humoured.

“Even you?” Heeseung asks, looking over at Sunoo.

“‘Specially me,” Sunoo says with a dry laugh. “I check off the seven deadly sins like my grocery list.”

“He’s practically excommunicated,” Sunghoon chimes in, getting up and walking over to them, planting himself down next to Sunoo with a steadying hand on his knee. Sunoo leans into the touch, and rests his head on Sunghoon’s shoulder when he settles down beside him, looking perfectly comfortable with him despite his continuing intimidating aura. “The only reason the Reverend still lets him in the church is ‘cause they get the insurance money if he bursts into flames in there and burns the whole place down.”

That earns a brighter laugh from Sunoo, and a smile from Jungwon, but Riki still doesn’t lift his head.

“That’s the only time we’re allowed around him,” Jungwon says. “Jake, I mean. Obviously, we see him plenty outside of Sundays, and the Reverend knows it, but if he ever got caught…” he trails off, biting down on his bottom lip, his brow furrowing in something like worry as he takes a quick glance at Riki.

“It’d be bad,” Riki finally speaks up. “Real bad.”

Heeseung gets the feeling that he’s not just making an educated guess.

“Yeah,” Sunoo mutters, his voice a little hoarse, uncharacteristically quiet. “But Jake’s folks don’t pay too much attention to him. So long as he’s gettin’ done what they want him to get done, they can just turn their heads and pretend not to notice that he don’t listen to a word they say to him.”

“We shouldn’t be talkin’ about him when he’s not here,” Sunghoon says.

“Why not? He’s the biggest gossip there ever was,” Sunoo argues. “And besides, soon enough, all we’ll be doing is talking about him when he’s not here. Might as well get used to it.”

And that seems to stir something in Sunghoon, seems to have him bristling in irritation. He shrugs Sunoo off his shoulder – which earns him an annoyed and offended scoff in return – and then looks at Heeseung, like he’s just remembered he’s there, and that he’d likely rather him not be.

“If you’re really takin’ him with you,” Sunghoon says, slowly and deliberately, every word spoken with the clear intention of delivering a warning, “Then you better actually take him with you. I don’t want him comin’ to me all heartbroken in three days' time because you skipped town without him.”

“Why would I do that?” Heeseung asks, holding his gaze.

“Why’d you agree to take him in the first place?” Sunghoon counters. “If you don’t get whatever it is that you want from him – money, or a quick fuck –”

“I don’t want anything,” Heeseung says automatically, even though it’s technically a lie, because he can feel frustration rising inside of him like water about to boil over, bubbling at the surface. He wants plenty. But he’s not going to take any of it, not unless Jake gives it to him willingly, and he doesn’t like that Sunghoon has perceived him as someone who would do that, who would take from someone who already has so little to give. “He asked for a ride, and I’m already going that way, so I’m giving him one. That’s it.”

Sunghoon doesn’t say anything, just stares Heeseung down like he’s waiting for him to break. Heeseung doesn’t break, just stares right back, neither of them willing to back down.

“As exciting as this pissin’ contest is,” Sunoo starts with a sigh, his tone bored, getting up and abandoning their already forgotten game, “I’ve gotta get going. Ma asked me to pick up coffee creamer for the lobby, and then I’ve gotta do my afternoon shift cleanin’ the rooms. You comin’, California?”

Heeseung hesitates, not wanting to leave in case Jake comes back and he can see him again before the day ends, but also not wanting to overstay his welcome, not in Sunghoon’s backyard. “Sure,” he says, getting up too. “Nice meeting you all,” he adds, not wanting to be rude.

“You too,” Jungwon says politely. “Are you coming back tonight?”

The question is mostly directed at Sunoo, who looks over at Heeseung and informs him, “We usually go to the bar, when Yunie can manage to sneak out after dinner. I’ll be goin’ down, I can bring you. I’m sure he’d be some happy to see you there.”

“Oh,” Heeseung says dumbly. “I’ll – I’ll go, if it’s not overstepping –”

“Don’t be silly. We gotta show you how we have fun around here, right?” Sunoo says dismissively, putting a hand on Heeseung’s back to lead him away, turning to wave at his friends and exclaiming, “See y’all later!”

And he can feel Sunghoon’s suspicion about that, about Sunoo’s hand on his back, and the intentions he surely perceives Heeseung as having with him too. He can understand, at least somewhat, what it probably looks like to him, to all of them – a city boy showing up out of the blue, taking away their friend, and inserting himself into situations they likely think he has no business being in.

He knows what it can feel like, when someone comes in and tries to change a bad situation, even if it’s to change it for the better. It can feel like losing something vital, even if it’s something he always thought he’d want to let go of, when the time came.

Sunghoon isn’t going to stop Jake from leaving, but it’s going to be hard for him to watch him go, and Heeseung can’t blame him for that, not at all. He would feel the same way, and even though he’s only known Jake for less than a day, he likely will, when he drops Jake off wherever he wants to be at the end of the road that stretches out in front of them, after their long drive to his fresh start.

They can meet halfway on that common ground, at least. He’s sure that, no matter how untrustworthy Sunghoon finds him to be, he can agree with him on not making this more difficult for Jake than it likely already is.

Heeseung gets a strange sense of deja vu when Sunoo knocks on his door later that evening, three times in rapid succession, following it up with a melodic call through the wood of the door, “Get a move on, California!”

“Coming!” Heeseung calls back, even though he’s still trying to get his shirt to tuck into his pants just the right way.

“Did you change?” Sunoo asks, because he’d instructed Heeseung to do so on the walk back to the motel, wrinkling his nose at his sweatshorts and baggy t-shirt and asking if he’d packed anything a little more appropriate for a night out.

Heeseung has his entire wardrobe with him, actually – which isn’t saying much, both in terms of quantity and quality. He had to dig through the contents of his suitcases for what felt like hours before he found something even halfway decent to put on.

“Yeah, I did –”

The door clicks open, despite the fact that he definitely remembers locking it, and Sunoo steps in with a key hanging from his index finger, looking Heeseung over with narrowed, judgmental eyes.

“Sunoo,” Heeseung scolds, bringing a hand up to cover his midsection despite being fully clothed. “I could have been naked.”

“And I woulda been very impressed, I’m sure,” Sunoo says dryly, then wrinkles his nose in clear disapproval. “You’re not wearing that, are you?”

“What’s wrong with this?” He asks, gesturing to his t-shirt with a band logo printed onto it, tucked into a pair of ripped black jeans, with a flannel thrown on at the last minute – not because he’s expecting it to be cold, but because he feels like he needs the extra layer to hide under, and he’s glad for it now, as Sunoo’s analytical gaze stays fixed on him.

“D’you want me to be honest?”

“No,” Heeseung answers automatically.

“You look like a douche.”

“I said no.”

“Oops,” Sunoo says, entirely unsympathetically. “Well, now ya know. But don’t worry, I can work with this.”

“I think I’m good,” Heeseung attempts, but Sunoo is already stepping back out into the cool night, closing the door behind him, leaving Heeseung to anticipate his return and how exactly he’s going to fix him for a torturously long minute.

And then the door opens again – without a knock at all, this time, and Heeseung wonders if he’s destined to only ever befriend people with no sense of boundaries – and Sunoo enters with a sly grin and something held behind his back, hidden from Heeseung’s view.

“Ta-da!” Sunoo exclaims, revealing a brown cowboy hat, waving it around excitedly and marching over to reach up and place it on Heeseung’s head. Heeseung’s not sure he understands the vision, because he instantly feels like even more of a douche. “Now you'll fit right in.”

“Uh, I don’t know –” he starts, sheepishly reaching up and attempting to remove it, but Sunoo keeps an iron grip on the brim of the hat, forcing it to stay on his head through the brief struggle. “I think it’d go better with your outfit,” he attempts.

Sunoo smiles, but it’s entirely sinister in nature. “Well thanks, sugar. But I already did my hair. This is for you.”

“Really, I couldn’t –”

“I insist,” Sunoo says sweetly, forcing the hat down on his head until his hair is pushed into his eyes, and Heeseung sighs, giving up. He’s sure he looks ridiculous, even more ridiculous than he apparently already did – but he resigns himself to his fate, not even attempting to sneakily remove it while Sunoo is distracted and chattering happily to him as they leave his room and set off towards the bar.

The town is eerily quiet for the first part of the walk, but as they approach the only building on the street with the lights on, the air fills with raucous, thumping music, and the sound of laughter, people yelling over both to be heard. He gets the impression that the residents of the town can be divided into two categories, unevenly distributed, but equally noteworthy to understand this place. There’s the people that are drinking their night away without a care in the world, surely keeping the lights of the bar on and the music playing well into the night – and then there’s the people who are already in bed, saying their nightly prayers, getting lots of rest for church service in the morning.

He’s sure that Jake’s parents think he falls into the latter category. Heeseung knows, though, that right now Jake is probably sliding his bedroom window open, or tiptoeing down the stairs to carefully open the front door, getting on his bike and driving down his long driveway to go somewhere where the lights don’t turn off quite so early in the night.

“He should be around shortly,” Sunoo tells him, and Heeseung briefly wonders if he can read his thoughts, or if it’s really just that obvious that he’s looking for Jake, straining his neck to peer into the windows of the bar as they climb the few wooden steps to go inside.

And, at the risk of sounding cliché, Heeseung really can only describe the scene before them as something out of a movie. When they walk in – or, more accurately, when Sunoo walks in – the room erupts in a cheer, several groups of people turning to look at them and raising their glasses in greeting. Heeseung attempted to pull off his hat in the moment before Sunoo opened the door, but he’d stopped him with a stern look, and all of Heeseung’s worries about looking out of place are quieted when he takes a look around. Everyone’s dressed to the nines, leather hats casting shadows on their faces, perfectly shined cowboy boots catching the coloured lights that beam down from the haphazardly hung spotlights in the corners of the room, pointed at and illuminating the center of it, where a group of people are line dancing.

Heeseung would feel a little mean, pointing all of this out, comparing it to a stereotypical depiction of the American South from a cheesy movie or TV show – if it weren’t completely real, if he wasn’t looking right at caricatures come to life.

Half the town must be here, and yet, Heeseung is still looking for the one person that isn’t.

“Y’wanna dance, California?” Sunoo asks, tugging on the sleeve of his flannel, rising to his tiptoes to speak directly in Heeseung’s ear. It’s necessary, because the twangy, fast paced music being played by the group of men on the small raised stage is loud enough for him to feel the thump of it in his chest. He briefly wonders if every cent the run-down town has goes into upkeep of this bar, and then remembers that Sunoo just asked him a question.

“Uh, I’m good!” Heeseung shouts over the music. “Don’t know how!”

“Aw, c’mon,” Sunoo goads. “We’ll teach ya. Wonie and Riks are over there already, they’re real good – and so am I, not to brag or anything. We'll get you all warmed up before Jake gets here.”

“I – uh, I’ll get a drink first,” Heeseung attempts, and to his surprise, it works. Sunoo reacts to the word drink like it activated a sleeper agent in him, and he releases his grip on Heeseung’s shirt without any further struggle, telling him to order him a couple shots of tequila and then scurrying off to where Heeseung can see Riki and Jungwon dancing.

The problem with Heeseung’s plan, which he thought was foolproof, is that in his panicked attempt to get out of dancing, he’d forgotten that Sunghoon works here. And then he approaches the bar, and he’s the first thing he sees, a white towel slung over his shoulder, filling a glass with whiskey and sliding it down the surface of the bar to a slumped-over patron in one smooth motion, and as per usual, glaring at Heeseung.

“Hey,” Heeseung greets meekly, taking the only free barstool, which happens to be directly in front of where Jake’s friend is standing to tend the bar. “Uh, Sunoo wants a couple of tequila shots.”

Sunghoon just stares at him, mouth pressed into a thin, unamused line, his palms pressed flat on the bar and his arms supporting his weight as he leans forward. Heeseung stares back, and tries not to waver in his steady gaze, as if to say, I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere, whether or not you’d like me to. Not yet, and not without Jake.

But, predictably, Heeseung breaks first.

“It’s not like that, you know,” he says, bringing a hand up to rest at the back of his neck, scratching at it absentmindedly. “He’s just a friend. I think. Honestly, I’m not sure where I stand with him, but it's definitely not like that. With Sunoo, I mean,” he tacks on awkwardly, in case it wasn’t obvious.

“I know that,” Sunghoon says, his voice hard, almost distant. “I know how he is.”

Heeseung nods. “He told me you two used to…” he trails off, suddenly unsure if it was the right thing to say. It probably wasn’t. It hardly ever is, with Heeseung’s luck and lack of social prowess.

Sunghoon just nods, averting his gaze and his focus back to the empty glass in front of him, filling it with the contents of an unlabeled glass bottle of dark alcohol and passing it to someone that had walked up to the bar beside Heeseung to collect it. “Yeah. Like I said, I know Sunny well enough to not be worried about him.”

It goes without saying, then, that Sunghoon doesn’t know Heeseung well, that he’s still a stranger, and therefore has several reasons to be worried about him – about his intentions, his plans, his ability to follow through on his promises.

Heeseung nods too, and doesn’t say anything else, trying to keep his body language open and inviting and ideally trustworthy. Sunghoon stares at him a while longer, and then pours another two drinks, keeping them both for himself, turning to the girl working behind the bar with him and calling out, “I’m takin’ my break.”

She just rolls her eyes, and waves him along, and Sunghoon doesn’t hesitate, walking over to the end of the bar and, once he checks again to make sure he still has Heeseung’s attention, nodding towards one of the few empty booths lining the walls. Heeseung doesn’t hesitate either – he follows Sunghoon, and sits down across from him, folding his hands in front of him like they’re about to negotiate a business deal, then moving them to his lap when he starts to overthink his every move, when he starts to become a little too aware of how uncomfortable the situation he’s found himself in really is.

Sunghoon slides one of the drinks he’d poured across the short distance between them, and Heeseung accepts it, taking a long drink as Sunghoon does too. A few very eye-contact heavy moments pass, and then Sunghoon wipes his hand across his mouth, and says, “Couple’a years ago – right after Jake and I graduated, he met a guy.”

Heeseung has to lean closer to hear him properly, because one of the guys on stage is in the midst of an impassioned banjo solo, and he definitely doesn’t want to miss a word of whatever it is Sunghoon is about to tell him.

“On the internet, I think. I don’t really know. He never told me the full story,” Sunghoon sighs, mournful and burdened, and continues, “He just told me he started talkin’ to a fella who was gonna come get ‘im and take him to Nashville. We all told him he wasn’t gonna show up, ‘cause what are the chances of that – but then he did. We all met him, an’ he seemed like a nice enough guy, and that was that. But it didn't matter, anyway. Jakey was… he was desperate. He would’a gone with anyone, anywhere. And this guy knew that.”

Heeseung feels a pit settle in his stomach, tight and hollow. He opens his mouth like he’s going to protest – and maybe he is, because he’s no longer sure that he wants to hear this, nor is he sure that he should be hearing it. But Sunghoon doesn’t give him a chance to protest, just pushes on with his retelling of events that Heeseung is helpless to tune out of.

“Like I said, he never told me the full story. But next thing I know, Jakey’s at my door first thing in the morning, the morning we were s’posed to – to say goodbye, and he’s just bawlin’, and none of us can get ‘im to calm down. But eventually, he told us his saviour decided to skip town without him.”

“Why?” Heeseung blurts out in disbelief, his chest aching right alongside his stomach now.

“All Jake would tell me s’that he wouldn’t give him what he wanted,” Sunghoon quotes, his jaw clenching and unclenching.

Heeseung leans back in his seat, taking another long drink, emptying the glass completely and setting it back down on the table with a hollow thunk. His mind, rather unhelpfully, conjures up the memory of Jake the night before, his cheek pressed to Heeseung’s thigh as he looked at him through his lashes, asking him to bring him to California, telling him he’d make it worth his while.

I just thought that’s what you’d want, Jake had said. In exchange.

Heeseung feels his stomach turn once with nausea, with guilt, with unbridled anger. He knew, even in that moment, that there had to have been someone who made Jake feel that way, who made him think that Heeseung would want something in exchange, but he never would have imagined that the situation would be so eerily similar. Jake crawled into his bed and propositioned him because he thought that was what he had to do, because someone had told him that that was what he had to do.

“He gave up, after that,” Sunghoon continues, but this time his voice is hoarse, and barely audible over the noise of the bar. “Jake was always so set on gettin’ out of here, but after that, he just – he stopped tryin’. And then you showed up out of the blue, and suddenly, my best friend’s got all hopeful again. And I ain’t seen Jakey hopeful in a long time. So – I don’t know if you really know what you signed up for, if you plan on followin’ through – but you can’t back out. You can’t skip town. Because if you do, I don’t think he’s gonna survive it. D’you get what I mean?”

Heeseung drags his eyes up from where he’d been boring them into the chipped wood of the table, forcing his gaze back on Sunghoon’s face, taking in the dark circles under his eyes, the soberingly serious expression on his face. “I do,” he confirms. “And I’m not going to skip town. Not without him, at least.”

“Good,” Sunghoon nods. “That’s good, ‘cause –” he cuts off, clearing his throat like he's on the verge of getting choked up but fighting tooth and nail against it, “‘Cause his old man’s never hit him where other people could see it before. He was always more careful than that. But I think he’s startin’ to care less about what people think – because everyone knows, they just pretend not to.”

Heeseung presses his teeth into his bottom lip, hard enough to send a sharp jolt of pain through him, anchoring him in the moment even as every instinct inside of him tells him to shy away from it in discomfort, in horror. And Sunghoon doesn’t seem content to let him, either, and he’s glad for it.

Jake doesn’t get to shy away from it. Heeseung shouldn’t be able to either, if he really wants to understand him, to know him.

“Because back when the Reverend still cared about what people were thinkin’ of him and his family, he once beat him so bad his appendix burst a week later,” Sunghoon says, matter of factly, like he’s telling him something he’d heard on the news and not something that happened to his best friend. He’s not shying away from it, even though it’s ugly. Heeseung tries not to either, even though he feels like he might be sick. “So can you imagine what he’ll do when he stops carin’ about what people think?”

Heeseung shakes his head, because he doesn’t want to imagine it. He hopes he never has to see it come to fruition, either. He hopes that all Jake has ahead of him now is a long road to somewhere no one will ever lay a hand on him again.

“Yeah,” Sunghoon says bitterly. “I don’t wanna imagine it, either. Jake – he’s got the best heart of anyone I’ve ever known. He deserves a real good life, Heeseung. Far from here. So, all that is to say – I’m sorry ‘bout how I treated you earlier,” Sunghoon says, forcing a small smile onto his tired features. “You’re welcome here, so long as you don’t overstay your welcome. You and I are good, so long as you leave on Tuesday with Jake in that truck with you, and you get him out of here safe and sound.”

“I will,” Heeseung says, with all the sureness he can manage to put into the two words. “I’ll get him to a better life.”

Sunghoon holds his gaze for a few long seconds, and then he nods, his smile turning ever so slightly more genuine. He leans forward, his empty glass in hand, and clinks it against Heeseung’s. “Good man,” he says, then stands, and tells him, “I’ll get you another drink. And I’ll get Sunny’s shots, too, but I’m also gonna ask you for another favour – make sure he paces himself. I don’t need him getting all messy and throwing up in the bathroom I just cleaned.”

Heeseung looks over his shoulder, where Sunoo is dancing now, clearly having given up on waiting for Heeseung to get drinks judging by the red solo cup in his hand, sloshing liquid onto his shirt as he tips his head back and laughs loudly at something Jungwon is shouting over the music. And then he looks back at Sunghoon, but he’s already gone, back behind the bar, leaving Heeseung a bit stunned, feeling like he might have imagined the whole encounter. But then he waves him over to collect his drinks, and just as Heeseung reaches the bar, the front door swings open again, and –

Well. Really, Heeseung would just like to take this moment to thank whoever invented denim, and whoever thought to craft the fabric into jeans, especially flared ones that sit right on his hips, a sliver of skin exposed by a slightly cropped t-shirt, hugging his thighs just right and swishing back and forth, just a little, as he walks. And he’d like to thank god, even though the two of them aren’t usually particularly close, for putting the idea into Jake’s head to wear them.

Another chorus of cheers erupts as Jake shuts the door behind him and beams, like he’d just walked into a crowd of adoring fans, and Heeseung thinks that feels right. He thinks everyone should react exactly like this when Jake walks into a room – especially when he walks into a room in those jeans.

“Hiya,” Jake giggles, and Heeseung jolts out of his trance, tearing his eyes away from Jake’s legs and up to his face. He hadn’t even realized he was walking over until it was too late, until they were already face to face. “You’re here.”

“So are you,” Heeseung points out, because that feels more noteworthy. Jake should know by now, even after such a short time, that where he is, Heeseung will find a way to be too.

Heeseung is trying his hardest not to gawk, but Jake smiles a little wider, and he feels one of his knees actually buckle, just a bit. He’s wearing lip gloss. There’s a small chance that Heeseung might pass out.

“I like your hat,” Jake says with a giggle, reaching up and pulling at the brim ever so slightly, covering Heeseung’s eyes until he adjusts it to see his face again. “Is that for me?” He asks before Heeseung has a chance to respond, glancing down at something on the bar, just for a moment, and then his eyes are back on Heeseung, warm brown pools for him to get a little lost in.

Heeseung has no idea what he’s talking about, but he kind of thinks everything should be for Jake, so he just nods.

“You’re sweet,” Jake coos, and then picks up and easily throws back one of Sunoo’s tequila shots. Heeseung can hear Sunghoon laughing at him, and realization belatedly sets in. “Hey, d’you wanna dance?”

And Heeseung knows he’s not going to be able to say no, even though he sure would like to. He’s not a terrible dancer. He’s been told he has a sense of rhythm, at least enough so to get him through a dance or two at a club. But he’s completely out of his element here, and he knows any attempt at trying to learn, trying to fit in, will only lead to embarrassment for him.

He opens his mouth to say something, to come up with some weak excuse that gets him out of dancing while also making it clear to Jake that it’s not because he doesn’t like the idea of dancing with him, but his mind goes blank. Luckily, though, it’s not an issue – because Sunoo appears out of seemingly nowhere behind Jake, reaching around him to grab the other shot sitting on the table and taking it, then wrapping his arms around Jake’s shoulders.

“They’re settin’ up the open mic,” Sunoo tells them meaningfully, and Heeseung is suddenly terrified that he’s about to suggest he partake in it. Again, Heeseung’s not a bad singer, but he mostly saves it for the shower. And his only audience for that has been Jay, during their teenage sleepovers, and he definitely didn’t enjoy it, based on the way he’d bang on the bathroom door and tell him to shut up halfway through his slightly screechy renditions of Mariah Carey songs.

“Oh, I’m –” Heeseung starts, but he never gets the chance to finish what would have likely also been a pathetic excuse to get out of it – because Sunoo is whisking Jake away without waiting for a response from either of them. Jake doesn’t protest. He just laughs, throwing his head back as the bright sound overtakes him, drowning out Sunoo’s chattering about which song he expects to hear from him tonight as he shoves him in the direction of the small stage, still occupied by the band and the banjo guy, but now with a microphone sitting center stage.

“Yer up first, Jakey?” An old man with a long grey beard and a leather vest hollers, holding out a hand in offering.

“I guess so,” Jake shrugs, and takes it, letting himself be pulled up properly onto the stage as they continue to shuffle things around to make room for him.

The whole atmosphere of the bar seems to shift the moment Jake steps up to the mic, taking it from its stand and carefully kicking the cord away from where it was attempting to wrap itself around his ankle. In the moments prior, everyone had been talking or dancing or drinking, but now, a hush falls over the room, and all eyes are on Jake, just as enraptured by him as they all should be, as Heeseung is, watching his shy smile grow a little wider as he brings the mic up to his lips.

“Hi y’all,” Jake says, seeming almost entirely unfazed by the amount of attention he’s attracted, holding his head high, even as he adds, “I’m sure you’re all sick of me gettin’ up here, but – you’ll have’ta let me sing for y’all one more time, since we have a special guest and all.”

Jake’s eyes slide over to him, and a few others do, too. Heeseung is grateful he chose to stand near the back of the room, practically cowering in fear as Jake indirectly mentions him, only a few steps away from the exit, just in case he feels the urge to flee. And he does, but – his curiosity, as well as his ever persistent inability to look away from Jake, is winning at the moment.

Someone sitting in one of the booths whoops encouragingly, and a few other goading cheers come from the crowd still occupying the dance floor, waiting for Jake to provide them with something they can move to.

“Oh, you’re too kind,” Jake laughs, and pulls the mic away from his face as he turns to mutter something unheard to the guy with the banjo, who then gestures to the rest of the band. It’s clear this is routine for them, even more so when they start playing a swinging, upbeat honky-tonk tune without any preamble or hesitation.

Heeseung vaguely recognizes the song – it could be something that was on one of his grandmother’s old tapes, the ones she used to play on a tinny speaker through the open kitchen window while they were out in her garden, maybe Dolly or Reba – but he’d be helpless to put a name to it if he tried. He’s a little distracted. Because Jake is the one that’s singing it, the first few words ringing out clear and honey-smooth, his accent impossibly more pronounced as his voice fills the air around them.

The lyrics aren’t even registering with Heeseung, even though they probably should, because Jake keeps shooting coy smiles and even a few winks his way, moving across the stage with a confidence that makes it clear how intimately familiar he is with the space around him, commanding the room as everyone starts dancing with him.

He’s a natural. Heeseung had already gotten the impression – and some indirect confirmation – that Jake is comfortable in his skin, comfortable with who he is, but even if he hadn’t, it’d be obvious to him now. He’s practically glowing as he dances from one end of the stage to the other with practiced ease, leaning down to sing a few lines directly to Sunoo, who has positioned himself in front of the stage to do some twirling that doesn’t match the line dancing the rest of the room had fallen back into.

Jake sends another beaming smile Heeseung’s way, and he feels himself flush from head to toe. He wonders, distantly, if this is how Jay felt when he went to a One Direction concert at the peak of his crush on Harry Styles.

He finishes the song, and earns an eruption of hoots and hollers from the crowd, as well as a few shouted requests for an encore – mostly from Jungwon and Riki – that he seems to have every intention of following through on.

Jake whispers to the band again, and another song starts a moment later, and – Heeseung still can’t look away from him. He’s fallen into some sort of trance, only able to gawk at Jake’s tan skin lit up by the lights around him, only able to hear the perfectly-pitched lilting melody cutting through all other potential distractions.

“You’re gonna catch flies, California,” Sunghoon shouts over the deafening music, using Sunoo’s nickname for Heeseung mockingly as he whisks past him with two mugs of foamy beer, delivering them to a man and a woman sitting in a booth together. When he circles back, he adds, now with nothing but fondness in his tone, “I mean, he’s good – but he’s also a total show-off.”

“I heard that, Sunghoon Park!” Jake says from the stage, seemingly in the middle of dancing his way through an instrumental break, not breaking his stride even as he points an accusatory finger at Sunghoon, who flips him off in response before heading back behind the bar. Heeseung, now a little too aware of his awed expression, forces his face to arrange itself into a smile now that Jake’s attention is back on him.

And it stays on him, after that, Jake becoming shameless in his rather heated glances as he finishes his encore – this one, Heeseung definitely recognizes from his grandmother’s obsessive collection of Loretta Lynn tapes that she played near constantly – and takes a sweeping, giggly bow, soaking up the applause and raucous cheers and wolf whistles.

Heeseung thinks, for the first time, that he’s just caught a glimpse of Jake truly in his element, of Jake somewhere that almost deserves him, that doesn’t force him to shy away or hide himself or be afraid – at least, not right now, not when he’s like this. When he’s like this, he’s undeniable.

Heeseung thinks it looks right. He thinks it should always be this way. And he hopes that, soon enough, it will be.

“Hey,” Heeseung greets, slightly out of breath – for no reason, really, because he hasn’t moved a muscle since Jake got up on that stage – as Jake approaches. “That was – I mean, really –”

“Thanks, honey,” Jake chirps, and it sounds a bit teasing, but even in the dim light around them now, Heeseung can see that his cheeks have turned a little pink. He hadn’t shown an ounce of shame on stage, but now, standing in front of Heeseung, he’s blushing, and reaching up to push at the brim of Heeseung’s hat until it covers his eyes, giggling when he’s forced to readjust it just to keep looking at him.

“I don’t think country music has ever sounded so good to me,” Heeseung adds, finally having found some coherent thoughts to put into words.

“Well, you clearly just haven’t heard enough of it, then,” Jake says, a bit bashfully.

“I’ve heard all I need to hear,” Heeseung says, unwavering in his insistence that he really did like it, that he’s not making fun of Jake, not even close.

“Oh, stop,” Jake groans, but he’s smiling, even as a gentle fist collides with Heeseung’s arm, even as he wrinkles his nose in distaste. “Flattery isn’t gonna get you out of that dance you owe me, y’know.”

Heeseung groans, shaking his head as Jake takes hold of him by the fabric of his shirt and starts yanking him in the direction of where his friends have once again resumed their dancing, although this time it’s far less organized. Someone else has taken the stage, and they’re a little too off-rhythm for any proper line dancing to take place, so Sunoo has taken to swinging Jungwon around while Riki watches, his face screwed up in a mix of concern and amusement as he watches his boyfriend very nearly avoid collision with several other patrons of the bar.

“You’re going to make me make a fool of myself after you just did all that?” Heeseung asks in offense, gesturing at the stage.

“I’ll go easy on you,” Jake assures him, releasing his grip on his shirt in favour of joining their hands together, fingers interlocking as Jake pulls him a little closer. He lets go with one hand in favour of sliding it up to rest on Heeseung’s shoulder, grinning in amusement when Heeseung’s arm falls limply to his side and taking quick action to correct his mistake, forcibly moving his hand to his waist.

Heeseung, instinctually, glances over at the crowd of people, the habitants of the town that apparently can’t keep a secret from Jake’s intimidating father to save their lives.

“Don’t worry ‘bout them,” Jake assures him. “They’re not payin’ us any mind. And if they are, they’re all wasted enough to forget about it by morning.”

Heeseung swallows back his doubts, and nods, letting Jake sway them side to side at a pace that matches the upbeat tempo of the song being performed now. All things considered, what they’re doing shouldn’t be scandalous in the slightest – Heeseung kind of feels like they’re two old people at a sock-hop – but he still keeps his head down, and keeps his gaze on Jake, like the potential threats surrounding them will simply dissipate so long as he follows Jake’s instructions and pays them no mind.

It’s easy, too easy, getting caught up in Jake.

Eventually, the man monopolizing the open mic starts a slurred rendition of Take Me Home, Country Roads, and the entire room around them starts singing along in off-key unison. It’s loud, loud enough that when their pace slows and Heeseung sees an opportunity to ask Jake the question that’s steadily becoming more and more top of mind with every passing minute, he has to lean in until his mouth is almost pressed to his ear to do so.

“So… is that the dream you’re chasing in California?”

Jake pulls back, blinking owlishly at Heeseung in confusion. Heeseung tilts his head towards the stage, and watches as Jake’s expression dims, just a bit. “It is,” he admits, sheepishly, suddenly the most unsure of himself that Heeseung has ever seen him. “I know it’s a longshot, but – I have to try.”

Heeseung nods, and presses his lips into a small, sure smile. “You could do it,” he tells him, leaving no room for doubt in his tone. “I think you can really do it, Jake.”

For a long moment, Jake just stares at him, his eyes wide and a little shiny with something Heeseung recognizes as hope, and he remembers Sunghoon's words from earlier. He doesn't ever want Jake to have to lose that hope again, and he has no intentions of taking it from him.

He hopes that Jake can see that in his eyes, that his intentions are good – and he thinks he actually might be able to, because after a moment, Jake pulls away from him, keeping their hands joined, his sincere expression fading into something more coy, almost playful.

“Come on,” Jake says. “I wanna show you something.”

Heeseung doesn’t fight when Jake starts pulling him in the direction of the exit. He just goes willingly. Why wouldn’t he? He thinks he’d blindly go anywhere, so long as Jake is the one leading him there.

They stumble out into the ever so slightly cooled night air, and the quiet outside is briefly broken by the commotion inside the bar until the door swings shut behind them, muffling the thumping music and making them feel more alone than they have all day in the eerily dark and silent town beyond the bar. Jake lets go of one of his hands, but keeps his grip on the other, and uses it to lead Heeseung around to the back of the building.

Here, it’s even darker, with no windows for the lights from the bar to spill out of, and no streetlights. Heeseung can barely even make out Jake’s face, but he can feel his presence, can feel him moving closer as they slow to a stop. Maybe Heeseung should be a little freaked out. Maybe he should be thinking about Jay’s panicked comparisons of his situation to slasher movies. But he’s not.

He’s thinking about how he can feel Jake’s face mere inches from his, how he can feel his smile, and as his vision slowly adjusts to the darkness around them, he can see it, too, and it’s enough to quell any miniscule doubts about his safety that may have been planted by Jay’s paranoia.

“Is this what you wanted to show me?” Heeseung asks.

“No,” Jake says, but he doesn’t make any moves to put distance between them. He just pauses for a moment, then tilts his head back, looking up at the sky above them. “I wanted to show you this.”

Heeseung looks up too. The sky is cloudless, making it easy to see the moon and the array of stars illuminating it. They’re bright, shockingly so, and Heeseung’s sure he’s never seen quite this many of them at once, clusters upon clusters of little white dots adorning the otherwise black sky. His breath catches in his throat, and he knows Jake can hear it, because he laughs, light and airy and sweet.

Heeseung looks down at him, and finds that Jake is already looking too, a small, almost bittersweet smile on his face.

“They don’t look like that in the city, huh?”

Heeseung shakes his head.

“I figured,” Jake shrugs. “It’s one of the only things out here that’s actually worth seein’, so. I thought we’d better get a good look at them while we still can.”

“I don’t know,” Heeseung says, as Jake tips his head back again, his smile turning a little more genuine when he looks at the stars, all the while something starts to ache in Heeseung’s chest. “I’ve definitely found a few other things worth seeing out here.”

Jake looks at him again, the smile all but wiped completely from his face, his eyes shining once again with that same hope from earlier, still coming so easily to him even after so many people have tried to take it away. For a moment, he just stares at him, and then he releases his grip on Heeseung’s hand and reaches up, closing his fists around the fabric of his flannel again.

They were already so close, their breaths already mingling in the space between them – the space that suddenly feels charged with something, some kind of electricity magnetizing them, drawing them even closer together, and Heeseung knows it’s useless to even try and fight against it, so he doesn’t. He’s still not sure that Jake really wants this, that he’s not just giving Heeseung what he thinks he wants, but he can’t bring himself to put more space between them regardless. It’s selfish of him, and he doesn’t want to be selfish when it comes to Jake, but – surely, just for a moment, he can have this. Just this, and just this once.

Jake’s lips brush against his, like he’s testing the waters, waiting to see if Heeseung will turn his head and turn him down again. Heeseung wishes he was strong enough to, but he isn’t, so Jake gets a little bolder, one hand moving to rest on Heeseung’s cheek, the other winding around his shoulders. And then – Jake kisses him properly, his soft, glossy lips pressing hesitantly against Heeseung’s chapped ones. Something sparks in Heeseung the moment he does, and he’s galvanized into a response, wrapping his arms around Jake’s waist, pulling him in until there’s practically nowhere they aren’t touching, until his stupid hat is pushed off his head and forgotten on the ground beside them, deepening the kiss as Jake lets out a stuttered gasp of surprise.

He must have thought Heeseung was going to push him away. Heeseung probably should push him away, but he doesn’t – not yet, at least.

And then, Jake’s tongue swipes across his bottom lip, and the more logical part of Heeseung’s brain steps in and takes over, even though he kind of wishes it would leave him be for a few more stolen moments.

He pulls away. Jake chases him, attempting to reconnect their lips, but before he can, Heeseung says, “You don’t have to do this, if – if you don’t want to.”

“Do I seem like I don’t wanna?” Jake asks, clearly exasperated by Heeseung’s constant hesitance.

“I mean, I just –”

“Listen,” Jake sighs, wrapping his other arm around Heeseung’s shoulders, keeping him close, forcing him to look him in the eyes as he says, “You’re real sweet, Heeseung. You’ve been nothin’ but a gentleman. I know you aren’t gonna force me to do anything I don’t wanna do. An’ that makes me want to do this. You get it?”

Heeseung nods dumbly. Jake doesn’t waste any more time.

He crashes back into Heeseung, and this time, there’s no hesitation from either of them, not even a moment of it. This time, Heeseung allows Jake access to whatever he tries to access, be it his tongue sliding into his mouth, his hands roaming down his back, the way he pushes forward and walks them backwards until Heeseung’s back hits the side of the building. Jake is all over him, like he’s trying to make him feel how much he wants this. Heeseung feels it.

He feels it in his desperation, the way he kisses him like he thinks this might be his only chance, like he’s finally acknowledging the fact that their time here – behind this bar, before someone comes looking for him, or in this town, before he leaves it behind forever – is dwindling. Heeseung makes several attempts to slow him down, cradling the back of his head to try and set the pace of their mouths moving together, but Jake isn’t phased, in fact, it only seems to spur him on.

“Jake,” he attempts, but it comes out muffled against Jake’s mouth, and it’s quickly followed by a small hiss as Jake’s teeth scrape against his bottom lip. “Jake, someone might see –”

“I don’t care,” Jake mutters, and then, as if to prove his point, one of his hands settles on the button of Heeseung’s jeans.

The logical part of Heeseung’s brain is fighting a tough battle here, but ultimately, he knows it’s going to win. His fingers wrap around Jake’s wrist, and he wrenches his hand away, leaning back until his head smacks against the wall behind him in his effort to put space between them.

“I’m startin’ to take you rejecting me personally,” Jake says, a pout overtaking his features. “If you… if you really don’t want me, or something, you really could’a just said –”

“No, Jake, it’s really not that,” Heeseung sighs, letting his eyes shut for a moment as he tries to regain his composure. “I do want you. But I don’t want this to happen here.” He gestures vaguely at the dumpster they’re standing beside.

“There’s nowhere else,” Jake counters. “We can’t go to the motel, ‘cause Sunny said my uncle’s gonna be watching the cameras to see who comes in and outta that room. And it’s not like we can go to my house, either. We aren’t exactly plentiful in our options.”

“Then –” Heeseung starts, pausing for a moment, reconsidering whether or not he actually wants to say what it is he was going to say. “Then we can just wait.”

“‘Til when? Marriage?” Jake scoffs, crossing his arms, and Heeseung visibly tenses all over. “Oh, I’m just jokin’, jeez. I’m not gettin’ married anytime soon, and I’m not planning on waitin’ until then either – even if my daddy thinks I am.” He grins with pride after he says it, and now Heeseung’s tense and flushed with embarrassment. This really couldn’t be going any better.

“I just… I don’t want you to think –”

“I’m not thinkin’ anything, Heeseung. You’re not takin’ advantage of me, you’re not treatin’ me like I’m some floozy. I just like you. I like talkin’ to you, and I liked kissing you, and I’d like to keep doin’ that, if you don’t mind.”

“I like you, too,” Heeseung assures him, without acknowledging the rest of his words. He doesn’t think he could explain his thoughts to Jake, explain why he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to go any further. He doesn’t think he could tell Jake that he doesn’t want him to feel tied down to him without sounding condescending. He doesn’t think he could tell him that he doesn’t want him to regret this without sounding self-pitying.

He’s never been the best with words, especially when it comes to assigning them to his own feelings, especially when it comes to doing so for the sake of someone else, someone who doesn’t understand him, someone who clearly wants to.

He can understand Jake’s frustration. It seems to him that they both want to know each other – but also that they’re both unwilling to let the other in. Jake will continue to be a bit of a mystery to Heeseung, and Heeseung will continue to be a bit of a source of frustration to Jake, and he knows, in that moment, that one weekend and one road trip spent together won’t be enough time to remedy that.

But – then again, that’s likely all they’re going to get. So maybe it’ll be enough time to start, to try.

“Then do somethin’ about it,” Jake sighs. “Make a move. I can’t be any clearer than that, honey.”

Heeseung swallows back all his further concerns, putting them away for another day, maybe closer to the end of this, when they’ll inevitably rise again like nausea and demand he expel them. For now, he’s going to ignore them. For now, he’s going to do the same thing he’s been trying to do since they first met – he’s going to give Jake exactly what he wants, what he deserves.

He takes a step closer to Jake, and watches as he perks up a bit, his chin raising to bring his face more level with Heeseung’s despite their small difference in height, his eyes flitting over his features like he was searching for something in them. He doesn’t know what he finds, but it can’t be anything too bad, because when Heeseung leans in, he doesn’t stop him. In fact, he pulls him closer again, hands tangling in his hair, tongue sliding into his mouth in a way that has Heeseung letting out an almost relieved sigh.

It is a relief, not holding himself back anymore – not that Heeseung ever really stops holding himself back, but this is probably the closest he’s gotten to the feeling in a while – and giving in. He’s only known Jake for a day, but it feels like he’s been waiting a lifetime to touch him, and when he finally does, letting his hand brush against the bare skin below Jake’s cropped shirt, slightly dizzy at the sight of the lace waistband of his underwear where it sticks out of his jeans, he knows he’s not going to be able to hold back now, even if he still kind of thinks he should.

“Touch me,” Jake pants out against his mouth, like he knows Heeseung might not find the nerve to take this further on his own. “Heeseung, please –”

Heeseung rests the tips of his fingers on the button of Jake’s jeans, fiddling with it for a moment as he struggles to undo it, and Jake’s open-mouthed kisses turn impossibly more heated, giving him all the encouragement he would need to give him what he wants, but making it difficult to pull himself together and focus long enough to actually follow through and do it.

Jake seems to realize this, because he breaks the kiss for a moment, and Heeseung looks down, huffing out a quiet laugh as he continues to struggle regardless, but eventually, he pops the button free from its denim prison. Jake laughs too, and as Heeseung moves to trace his fingers along the white lace of his underwear and feel them for himself, he jolts forward and presses his mouth to Heeseung’s neck, and all the focus he’d managed to grab hold of is wrenched away in an instant.

“Jake,” Heeseung breathes, his hand shaking ever so slightly as he tries to hold it still, tries not to let it slip under the fabric prematurely. “Is this – are you –”

“Don’t you dare even ask,” Jake mutters, his hot breath fanning across Heeseung’s neck and warming him all over to an uncomfortable degree. “Touch me.”

Heeseung lets out another breathy laugh, but he doesn’t argue, now that he’s sure that his own interests aren’t completely selfish, that Jake really does share them, that he wants this. He slides his hand into Jake’s underwear, the underwear he might have picked out knowing Heeseung would see it, because Jake may look innocent, but Heeseung has learned the hard way that he’s perfectly aware of the effect he has on him, and how to use it to get his desired results.

Jake certainly seems pleased with these results, Heeseung thinks, as he drops his head onto his shoulder and rolls his hips forward before Heeseung has even fully wrapped a hand around his cock and given it an experimental stroke, taking a moment to appreciate the feeling of Jake in his palm, hard and dripping, just as eager as Heeseung expected him to be.

He must have worked Jake up with his hesitance, his unintentional teasing, because it doesn’t take long to bring him to the edge. Heeseung can’t imagine his technique is impressive – after all, it’s been months since the last time he had sex, and probably years since he last had sex with a guy – but Jake doesn’t seem to mind, pressing his face into Heeseung’s neck to muffle his drawn out sighs and moans, gripping his shoulders so hard he’s sure he’ll find imprints of his nails in his skin later, half-moons of proof that this really happened, something that Heeseung might need once it’s over, once he starts to convince himself that it was all too good to be true.

Jake comes apart as Heeseung holds him, the sounds spilling from his lips raising in pitch and volume in a way that Heeseung would be concerned about drawing attention to them, if he wasn’t so lost in their melody, just as captivated by his voice now as he was when he was on stage, as he has been from the very first moment he heard the enticing twang of his accent.

“Oh – oh my –” Jake whines, cutting himself off like he was about to take the lord’s name in vain but couldn’t quite get it out, and Heeseung picks up his pace, tightening his grip ever so slightly, until Jake trails off into a slurred, near-indecipherable chant of what he thinks is supposed to be his name, and comes with a shudder and a cry.

And then – the door next to the dumpster swings open, and Jake’s whimpering moan turns into a groan of pure anguish.

“Oh, jesus fuckin’ christ,” Sunghoon snaps, as Jake and Heeseung rip apart, Heeseung’s head once again colliding with the wall behind him, quickly taking his hand out of Jake’s jeans and wiping the mess he’d made of it on his own without any thought. “Really? Behind the dumpster? That’s classy,” he says dryly, punctuating his expression of disgust with a judgemental glare sent Heeseung’s way.

“I – I tried to tell him,” Heeseung defends, slightly out of breath, his heart pounding in his chest from the exhilaration of watching Jake come undone and the sheer panic of thinking they’d been caught by someone even less forgiving than Sunghoon.

“You offerin’ your bed, then, Hoonie?” Jake counters stubbornly.

“Fuck no,” Sunghoon retorts, then fixes his gaze back on Heeseung. “Sunoo yacked up all the drinks you weren’t supposed to let ‘im have. So you’re cleanin’ the toilet.”

“What?” Jake asks, outraged. “How’s that his problem? You’re the one that makes the drinks. You shoulda just cut him off.”

Sunghoon doesn’t break his eye contact with Heeseung, but he does hold up the toilet brush that he’d apparently had in his hand the whole time, his expression flat and uncompromising.

Heeseung joined a fraternity, in his first year of university, back when he thought he might be the sort of person who got something out of being in a frat. He gave up halfway through the initiation process, but still – he knows when he’s being hazed.

He shoots Jake a reassuring half-smile, because he definitely isn’t unsatisfied with what they’d managed to do before they were interrupted, and steps around him, approaching the stairs Sunghoon is standing at the top of and taking the toilet brush from him.

In a weird way, it kind of feels like a baton pass, which could only be possible if he and Sunghoon were on a team of sorts now, so – he doesn’t mind. He’ll clean the damn toilet.

“Y’all’re too sweet,” Sunoo slurs, wrapping his arms around Heeseung and Jake’s respective shoulders and pulling them closer until their skulls knock against his, a clear attempt at a hug, painful as it may be, and impossible as it may be, considering the way they’re already supporting his weight and keep him upright. “I mean, I woulda gotten home jus’fine all on my own, but here y’all are, carryin’ me. Too sweet.”

“You would not have made it home fine,” Jake corrects, then says to Heeseung, “Last time, Sunghoon found him passed out in Auntie’s garden the next morning.”

“At least I remembered to go out back, so Minjeong didn’t find me first,” Sunoo counters, then shudders. “She woulda dragged me back inside by the neck and grounded me herself.”

“And that’s worse than Sunghoon sprayin’ you with the hose?”

He never gets to hear Sunoo’s response, because he trips over his own feet, erupting into giggles as Heeseung is forced to take on more of his weight to get him the few remaining steps to the gate of the white fence surrounding his house.

“I got him from here,” Jake tells him, taking over and pulling Sunoo closer to him with the arm still wrapped around his shoulders. Heeseung doesn’t protest, because he’s capable of understanding why Jake wouldn’t want to risk his aunt and uncle seeing him, so he just lets Jake take his cousin into the safety of his house, digging a spare key out of his pocket and unlocking the front door with only a brief struggle as Sunoo slumps bonelessly against his side.

So he waits. He’s not sure if he should wait, if Jake was trying to tell him to leave, but he stands awkwardly near the front gate anyway, scuffing his shoe against the dirt road under his feet as he restlessly shuffles side to side, surely doing a great job at not looking suspicious.

Jake emerges a few minutes later, and he looks surprised to see Heeseung still there, but not upset, his eyes going a little round as a seemingly pleased grin unfurls on his lips.

“Can I, uh, can I walk you home?” Heeseung asks, nerves suddenly overtaking him in a way he’s sure is impossible to hide from Jake.

Jake’s smile gets a little sad, and he just stares at Heeseung for a few long seconds, clearing his throat once before he says, “You probably shouldn’t.”

“Right,” Heeseung says, feeling a little silly for even asking. “Of course. But – you’ll be okay on your own?”

Jake nods, his expression getting a little more genuine, a little more sure. “I always am,” he assures him. “But if you’re really so eager to spend some more time with me, you know where I’ll be tomorrow mornin’.”

Heeseung blinks. It takes him a moment to even remember what day it is tomorrow, and then realization sets in. “Oh,” he says dumbly. “And that – that would be okay?”

Jake shrugs, laughing a bit. “It’s a free country,” he tells him. “No one’s gonna have anything to say about a man tryin’ to get a little closer with god while he’s in town. And my daddy’s not gonna turn anyone away – he can’t resist preachin’ to a full house.”

Heeseung nods, pressing his mouth into what he hopes is a good impression of an easygoing smile. He and god really aren’t close at all, and he has no intention of getting closer with the big man anytime soon. But he’d like to get closer to Jake, and if he needs to go to god’s house to do that, then – he supposes he might just need to recruit Sunoo to help him dig through his suitcase and find anything that could be remotely qualified as his Sunday best.

“Okay,” Heeseung agrees, getting the instant gratification of watching Jake’s smile brighten as soon as he does. “I’ll see you there, then.”

Chapter Text

The church bells are already ringing, and Heeseung still hasn’t found his one and only dress shirt.

He knows it’s in one of these godforsaken suitcases, but he just can’t find it – not to mention, there’s no telling what kind of state it’ll be in when he does. He didn’t put much care into folding any of his clothes before shoving them into their makeshift home for what was supposed to be a relatively short and simple road trip across the country.

He did have the thought that he should ask Sunoo for help, to see if he could find another shirt for him to wear. Not one of his own, of course, because he’s pretty sure they’re not the same size in anything, but he’s also pretty sure that Sunoo would have been able to come up with something. Maybe Sunghoon would have been feeling generous.

Either way, he never got a chance to find out, because he’d taken one step into the motel’s office only to be met with the Reverend’s face, like something straight out of a nightmare he doesn’t remember having, but clearly still feels the effects of.

It only took him a moment to realize that he was face to face with Sunoo’s father, not Jake’s, and that the two brothers had just enough similarities to confuse Heeseung’s already sleep-riddled mind. And then he’d retreated anyway, muttering out a nevermind, sorry, I figured it out in the hopes that he’d assume he just had a question about where to get an extra towel or something equally as non-threatening.

So, Heeseung’s shit out of luck with that idea. But it’s fine. He just needs to find this stupid dress shirt, the one he’d worn no more than a few weeks ago, the one he swears he remembers putting in his suitcase instead of the garbage bag full of clothes he later donated.

“Motherfucker,” he curses when he finally spots the light blue fabric and closes his fist around it, yanking it out of where it’d been balled up and buried under all his single socks without another to complete the pair. It’s wrinkled beyond saving, and the bells are still ringing, and – he doesn’t know the rules. He doesn’t know if the bells mean the service is starting soon, or if it’s already started, if he’s going to be making a scene now by walking in late with his wrinkled shirt and clueless expression.

He forces himself to make a quick decision, and yanks the shirt over his head without undoing most of the buttons and no more than thirty seconds later, Heeseung is letting the door to his room click shut behind him as he practically sprints in the direction of the church, adjusting the collar of his still unsightly shirt as he goes, tucking in the bottom half of it to his also fairly wrinkled dress pants and hoping he’s not about to make a complete and total fool of himself.

Heeseung’s parents were both raised religious, but by the time they were married and expecting him, they’d already decided that they weren’t going to force Heeseung, or themselves, to go to church. The three of them went on Christmas, at the request of his grandma and his rather pushy aunt, but outside of that, Heeseung can count on one hand the number of times he’s even stood inside of a church, let alone attended a service at one.

And now, here he is, approaching the paint-chipped stairs of the equally run down church he was too creeped out to even look directly at the day before, taking a pamphlet from an old lady who greets him with a warm, if not slightly confused smile, and taking a seat in the very last pew, in the very back corner. And he’s doing it all to see Jake, who’s standing just off to the side of the altar, doing a very poor job of keeping his voice to a whisper as he argues with his father, his face pulled into an uncharacteristic and rather unsettling frown as he gestures behind him.

“I was here all afternoon,” Jake hisses out, and that’s all Heeseung catches before the Reverend shushes him and he drops his voice a little lower, swallowed up by the blaring melody coming from the organ.

He’s probably the most reserved – and the least himself – that Heeseung has seen him so far. He’s wearing a white dress shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows even as his mother keeps trying to tug them down while she fusses over him, tucked into perfectly ironed black dress pants. His hair isn’t nearly as wild as it usually is, slicked back with gel and sitting neatly behind his ears. He really doesn’t look like the Jake he knows at all, at least, not any version of Jake he’s seen expressed so far, in environments where there aren’t any expectations being forced upon him.

He looks a little pale, and tired. His lips are pouty, and his eyes are a bit shiny as he’s brushed off by his father, who is clearly trying not to draw attention to their disagreement as he tries to force Jake into his seat in the pews, front and center, tries to put him on display as their perfect son who never argues, even though Jake ultimately shrugs him off and stomps away. He’s failing at keeping away attention, miserably so. Everyone in the building is looking at them – but some of them are doing it with a little more discretion than Heeseung is, at least, watching them out of their peripheral vision instead of blatantly staring.

The Reverend’s eyes dart over to Heeseung as Jake marches down the center aisle, and his gaze is accusatory, and angry, and he knows at once that whatever he and Jake had disagreed about, he was a part of it. He’s not surprised. Heeseung just holds his gaze, unfazed by the man’s intimidating aura, even as they stand in his church.

Jake slides into the pew Heeseung is already occupying instead, and with everyone else flocking to the front rows like they’re at a concert, he’s uninterrupted as he shuffles closer to Heeseung, until their thighs and arms touch, until Heeseung can feel how tense he is. He breaks eye contact with the Reverend, and looks at Jake, concern surely overtaking his features in an instant.

“You okay?”

Jake nods, clenching and unclenching his jaw. “I’m fine,” he says. “I just… can’t sit up there with them today. Don’t think I could stomach it. Not with this,” he gestures to the bruise on his cheek, “Not when I’d have to smile and pretend everything’s all normal. I used to be able to do it, but – I think I’m startin’ to not care much anymore.”

“That’s alright,” Heeseung assures him. “Soon enough, you won’t have to care at all.”

Jake meets his eyes, and smiles a bit, soft and grateful. Heeseung feels him relax ever so slightly, leaning back against the bench seat just as his father steps up to the altar.

The service begins with a hymn sung by the choir, and it gives Heeseung a weird, achy feeling in his chest, one that persists as the Reverend starts reading scripture from his thick, worn bible. Heeseung, for the most part, tunes him out with ease. Partially because he has very little interest in the Baptist interpretation of the text, partially because Jake is doing his very best to distract him, taking advantage of their otherwise empty pew and lacing their hands together, running his thumb over Heeseung’s fingers until he gets bored of that and moves on, pulling at a loose thread Heeseung didn’t realize was hanging off of his dress pants.

He’s cute. He’s really, really cute.

And then the Reverend instructs them to bow their heads for prayer, and Jake sits up a little straighter as he does, the hand fiddling with the string on Heeseung’s pants moving to rest on his knee instead. Heeseung’s ducked his head, too, so he gets to watch as Jake inches his hand a little higher, squeezing lightly at his thigh.

Heeseung glances over at him, but Jake’s eyes are closed, and he’s muttering under his breath – either he’s actually saying a prayer, or he just wants anyone looking to think that’s what he’s doing – as his hand slides higher and higher up his thigh. Heeseung has the thought that he should definitely stop him, but it takes him a moment too long to actually follow through with it, and by the time he grabs Jake’s hand with his own and slides it back down to his knee, he’d already reached the top of his thigh and was in the process of inching even higher without hesitation.

For a moment, Jake is content to just keep his hand on his knee, restlessly tapping out a rhythm just for the two of them as the Reverend drones on and on. But only for a moment, because his hand starts moving again, so slowly at first that Heeseung thinks he’s imagining it.

“Jake,” he whispers, as quietly as he can manage, because the Reverend is still the only one speaking, save for when everyone echoes in a chorus of amen – and then the prayer is done, and they lift their heads, but Jake’s hand stays planted firmly on his mid-thigh.

“What?” Jake asks, tilting his head and staring at Heeseung, the perfect picture of innocence.

“You shouldn’t – do that, here,” Heeseung says lamely, unsure of himself even though he’s pretty sure he’s right, that what Jake is trying to do would be considered, at the very least, a bit blasphemous.

“What am I doin’?” He asks again, just as his hand makes one quick, smooth movement up the entirety of Heeseung’s thigh, settling on the zipper of his pants and palming once at him over them.

Heeseung’s spine goes ramrod straight, and he puts his hand over Jake’s on instinct, trying and failing to wrench it off as Jake easily slides it right back into place every time. Heeseung takes another moment to pray for mercy, even though he knows it’s a little too late for that now.

“Your dad is looking at us,” Heeseung tells him, because he is, staring them down as the choir warbles out the first notes of another hymn.

“I don’t care,” Jake reminds him, clearly taking Heeseung’s thoughtless reassurance to heart, grinding his palm down one more time.

“Jake,” he attempts again, still keeping his voice down even though he kind of feels like screaming, if only to release some of the tension he’s carrying.

“Tell me you want me to stop, and I will,” Jake insists.

“We shouldn’t –”

“That’s not what I said,” he says in a melodic, teasing tone.

Heeseung just bites down on his bottom lip, and that alone is seemingly enough of an answer for Jake, who brings his free hand up to his mouth to try to keep his pleased giggles from echoing around them. Heeseung can see Sunghoon, sitting in one of the rows diagonal from theirs, subtly looking over his shoulder at them and mouthing, just as judgmentally as he had the night before, really?

Heeseung opens his mouth to attempt a muted defense of his own, but then Jake’s hand is finally sliding back to rest on top of Heeseung’s, lacing their fingers together in what he assumes is a silent promise of peace.

And then – the Reverend turns his back to start setting up communion, and Jake stands, keeping a tight grip on Heeseung’s hand so that, when he starts to move, Heeseung has no choice but to follow.

They attract eyes, but only a few – someone is playing the organ again, and it’s drowning out the sound of their footsteps as they practically sprint out of the main hall of the church. Heeseung expects Jake will just lead them outside, but he takes a sharp right, dragging him down a long hallway as Heeseung frantically asks, “Where are we going?”

“Well, if we shouldn’t in there,” he says vaguely, tilting his head towards the source of the still-echoing music, “Then we should go somewhere we can, right?”

He takes one last left, down a much shorter hallway, one that ends in an ornate door with a cross built into the wood, the same as the one on the front door of their house. He pulls it open without hesitation, clearly familiar and comfortable with every inch of this church, but especially this room, the small office they step into, and – Heeseung can guess why.

He looks around as Jake locks the door behind them. There’s a framed photo of Jake as a child sitting on the desk in the center of the room, wearing the same robes that the members of the choir are wearing today. There’s a framed family photo beside it, of a teenage Jake with both of his parents at his side, a fake smile plastered on his slightly rounder cheeks.

“Is this –”

“The Reverend’s office?” Jake finishes, slightly mocking as he calls his father by his title, letting go of Heeseung’s hand in favour of looping his fingers through Heeseung’s unused belt loops and pulling him closer. “Maybe.”

And Heeseung could point out how bad of a choice this was, that if the Reverend comes looking for them – which he’s sure he will at some point, probably to chase Heeseung down with his fabled shotgun – this will likely be the first place he’d look, but he doesn’t. He just lets Jake pull him in, goes willingly without an ounce of a fight, not even when Jake starts pushing him backwards and crowds him up against his father’s desk.

For a long moment, Jake just stares up at him, his pretty brown eyes unblinking and expectant, surely waiting for Heeseung to protest, to tell him no. When he doesn’t, he smiles, slow and a little wicked, and then he unceremoniously drops to his knees.

Now, Heeseung protests. He can’t help it. There’s something seriously wrong with him. “You – you don’t have to –”

“Shush,” Jake silences him, his fingers working deftly at Heeseung’s pants, undoing the two buttons at the top, unzipping the zipper he’d been fiddling with in his earlier attempt to get a rise out of Heeseung.

And the thing is, it worked, even if Heeseung didn’t want it to at the time. Heeseung felt heat settling like a stone in his gut from the moment Jake’s hand landed on his thigh, and now, as Jake looks up at him through his lashes and starts the process of stripping Heeseung of his pants, it’s only a matter of time before Jake discovers just how affected he really is by him.

“You really are a gentleman, Heeseung,” Jake mutters, hooking his fingers into Heeseung’s underwear, teasingly tugging at the elastic before snapping it back against his skin. “But did’ya ever consider that I want to do this? Just ‘cause I like you?”

Heeseung blinks. Truthfully, he didn’t, not really. He’s kind of incapable of looking at Jake’s interest in him as anything other than part of a transaction they’d started the night before, or worse, as pity, regardless of how much Jake had insisted that wasn’t the case.

“I’m a little offended, to be honest with you,” Jake huffs, but he’s smiling, in a teasing manner that tells Heeseung he doesn’t really mean it, “That you’d think I’d throw myself at someone just because they’ve got a truck. You should give both of us more credit than that.”

And, yeah – he’s right. Sunghoon told Heeseung that Jake had been unwilling to sleep with the last guy that offered him a ride. He told him that Jake rejected him, and that he lost his way out of here because of it. He crawled into bed with Heeseung and asked him to take him to California, sure, but that’s clearly not a pattern of behaviour.

Maybe – just maybe – Jake had more than one reason for propositioning him.

But before he has a chance to properly dwell on his really rather insightful words, Jake tugs on the elastic of his boxers again, and this time, he pulls them all the way down, freeing Heeseung’s cock from where it had been straining against them for several painful minutes now. Heeseung’s breath catches in his throat at the sight he’s treated to then, the sight of Jake’s pretty, round eyes flitting over his dick, which looms just over his face as he brings a hand up to wrap around the base of it.

“So, we’re good, then?”

Heeseung nods without a moment’s hesitation.

“Good,” Jake quips, stroking his hand up and down Heeseung’s length almost mindlessly. Heeseung digs his nails into the wood of the desk, and attempts to brace himself – although by now, he knows that it’s kind of impossible to prepare for Jake. “‘Cause I’ve been waiting for this.”

And Heeseung believes him, because Jake leans in without hesitation and licks a stripe up his length, like he can’t bear to hold himself back anymore, like he really has been hungry for this. Heeseung doesn’t want to deny him of it. He doesn’t think he could deny Jake of anything, really.

It’s clear, as Jake swirls his tongue around the tip of Heeseung’s cock and gathers the precome that was already beading there, that he’s practiced at this. Heeseung’s not sure if he’s actually done it before, because there are brief moments of hesitation and a lot of glances upwards, as if to check on Heeseung’s enjoyment of what he’s doing, but he’s definitely practiced. And that image, of Jake attempting to give head to a cucumber from his mother’s garden or something of the sort, is as adorable as it is – well. Heeseung really is only a man, at the end of the day.

“Shit,” Heeseung hisses as Jake starts to sink down on his length, inch by inch, achingly slow, letting him bask in every second of the feeling. He tips his head back, because he can’t look at Jake right now, at the plush, pink lips wrapped around his cock, at the way he winces as he tries to take more of his length but still doesn’t back down from it, his determination overpowering any lack of experience or intimidation at Heeseung’s size – which he’s willing to admit definitely doesn’t fall on the smaller end of the spectrum.

Jake pulls off after a moment with a wet, gasping cough, jerking his hand up and down Heeseung’s spit-slick length a few times before making another attempt at swallowing him down. Heeseung wrenches one of his hands off of where he’s gripping the desk for dear life and lets it find purchase in Jake’s hair, tugging at the stands without thought, earning a quiet, pleased moan from him as he briefly chokes and recovers before Heeseung’s instincts kick in and he uses his grip to pull him off of him.

Heeseung can’t believe this is happening. For many reasons. He still kind of can’t believe Jake is even real, so eager and so pretty, and he can’t believe he’s being so reckless, risking so much just to steal a few minutes alone with Heeseung in his father’s church.

Even if this is just Jake using him, either for a ride or for a bit of rebelling before he goes, he doesn’t mind. He’s just glad he can be of use for someone like Jake.

“You’re so good,” Heeseung manages, carding his hands through Jake’s hair as the words seem to burst out of him. Jake is good at this, a natural, but he’s also just so good, so pure of heart, so utterly enchanting. He doesn’t know how else to put it into words, not yet, not after only a day and a half of being lucky enough to know him, so he just leaves it at that. “Fuck, Jake, you’re so –”

Jake swallows around him, practically suctioning himself to Heeseung as he manages to take more than he’d been able to so far, and –

“Jake, I’m – you should –” he attempts to pull Jake’s hair, to send the message that he can’t quite complete verbally, but Jake just stays where he is, his throat contracting around Heeseung as he looks up at him with his pretty eyes through his wet lashes, and – it’s over. Heeseung can’t hold himself back from letting out a low groan as he comes, maybe a little too soon, embarrassingly so, but he can’t bring himself to focus on anything other than Jake, wincing with the effort to swallow as he pulls off, a few drops of Heeseung’s come spilling onto his chin before landing on the carpet between them.

Heeseung drops to his knees without any thought, putting both hands on Jake’s shoulders, stammering out, “I’m sorry, I – I tried to warn you, I –”

Jake opens his mouth and sticks his tongue out for a brief moment, showing off his swallowing ability and looking rather pleased with himself. Heeseung chokes out a surprised laugh, and then brings one of his hands up to cup Jake’s cheek, pulling him in for a chaste kiss.

“Can I…?” He trails off, moving his other hand to rest on Jake’s stomach, sending a clear message.

Jake nods, not even trying to hide his eagerness to get Heeseung’s hand down his pants again, but just before he can give him what he wants – as per usual, and without hesitation – someone tries to turn the doorknob.

Heeseung tears himself away from Jake, who is already getting to his feet with a beaming, almost giddy smile, gripping Heeseung’s hand again and pulling him up, as a familiar voice echoes through the wood of the door.

“Jaeyun, open this door now,” the Reverend hisses, clearly still trying to keep his voice down, to avoid drawing any more attention.

Jake brings a hand up to cover his mouth for a moment, plagued with giggles as he leads Heeseung over to the window and unlocks it.

“What –?” Heeseung starts, pressing his lips into a thin line to cut himself off when Jake shushes him again. He lets go of his hand long enough to slide the window open, and Heeseung’s eyes go wide with surprise when he swings his leg over the side of it and drops. He moves to lean over the window sill, and finds Jake crouched behind a bush on the ground – which is no more than four feet below him, a far less dangerous drop than Heeseung had perceived it as – waving his hands in a gesture that tells Heeseung he’s expected to follow.

“Jaeyun!” the Reverend barks, clearly losing patience. Heeseung hears the unmistakable sound of a key being jammed into a lock, and he doesn’t hesitate, clumsily climbing out of the window and dropping to the ground beside Jake.

They don’t bother closing the window behind them – he’s sure it’s obvious they were in there, anyway – as they take off running towards the street. The first few people are starting to file out of the church, all of them taking their time shaking hands and making small talk, paying no mind to the boys fleeing the scene of the crime, of their small thrill, and the way their hands find each other again, clinging tight as the breeze whipping past their smiling faces starts to feel a little lighter – as it starts to feel a bit like freedom, however temporary it may be.

They’re breathless by the time Jake leads Heeseung through the broken part of the chain link fence closing in Riki’s backyard, lungs aching as they pass the rows upon rows of broken down, rusted cars. Riki is, apparently, the only one of them that doesn’t bother with saving face and going to church anymore. He’s also the only one of them that has a vehicle, something Jake stressed as being vital in the pursuit of getting away from his father for the day.

He’ll knock on every door in town, if he has to, Jake had told him, entirely nonchalant, deceptively unbothered. So we should probably get out of here until he calms down.

Riki is in the garage, based on the music blasting from that direction, and Heeseung’s eyebrows raise in surprise as they approach. His truck is in there, the hood propped open as Riki leans over it, wearing grease-covered coveralls that are a bit short in the arms and legs for him, paying them no attention as Jake tiptoes up behind him and attempts to startle him.

“Boo!” Jake exclaims, digging his fingers into Riki’s side. He doesn’t even flinch, shooting Jake a bored look over his shoulder.

“Oh, you got me,” Riki says dryly, his gaze briefly sliding over to Heeseung before he fixes it back on Jake and keeps it there. “What d’you want?”

“Can’t I jus visit my favourite little –”

“No,” Riki interrupts before Jake can get carried away. “Shouldn’t you be at church?”

“Shouldn’t you?” Jake asks stubbornly.

“M’not welcome,” Riki says simply.

“Everyone’s welcome,” Jake sighs, and it’s clear to Heeseung that they’ve had this exact conversation countless times before.

“You’re barely welcome, most days,” Riki points out.

“But I still go,” Jake says. “And so does Jungwon, and no one says anything, so if you wanted to, you could –”

“Well, I don’t,” he says firmly, and that’s clearly supposed to be the end of it. Jake, apparently, doesn’t get the memo.

“Well,” Jake huffs. “M’just saying, things would be a lot easier for the both of you if you did.”

“Because things are so easy for you,” Riki counters. “What do you want, Jakey? Spit it out.”

Jake sighs, rolling his eyes in exasperation. Heeseung feels a bit like he’s watching an exhausted parent try to wrangle their angsty teenager – and he’s not entirely sure which one of them is which. “A drive,” he says, putting on a sweeter tone now that he’s asking Riki for a favour. “Out to the creek.”

It’s Riki’s turn to sigh, but it’s obvious to Heeseung that he’s not actually irritated in the slightest. “Can’t you see I’m busy? I’m tryna get your ride out of here in workin’ condition. That’s top priority.”

“I thought you weren’t allowed to fix it,” Heeseung chimes in, quickly realizing that it would have been better to maintain his silence when Riki glares at him.

“D’you see anyone here that’s gonna stop me?”

Heeseung just shrugs.

“Don’t be a brat,” Jake orders, and – it works, actually. Riki turns back to face Heeseung’s truck, letting out one last long, mournful sigh, like Jake is putting the weight of the world on him, and closes the hood.

“I’ll go get changed,” Riki mutters, stomping off without any further argument, even though Heeseung gets the impression he definitely could argue further, if he had any real desire to do so.

And then they’re alone, Riki’s music turned off and leaving them in comfortable silence as Jake moves to the driver’s side of Heeseung’s truck, peeking through the half-open window like he’s trying to see what Heeseung sees when he’s sitting there. “So, this is her, then?”

“The one and only,” Heeseung answers.

“Cute,” Jake hums. “I always wanted a truck like this. But havin’ something to drive would mean havin’ something to drive out of here, so that was outta the question. I’ve been savin’ my money from workin’ at the grocery store, but I thought it’d be a little suspicious if I showed up one day with a truck. My daddy would assume the worst, and it’d be in the junkyard by the next mornin’.”

“You don’t think he suspects you’re leaving now?” Heeseung asks.

“Oh, he definitely does,” Jake laughs a bit. “But he’s not gonna be able to stop me.”

He says it with such sureness, such conviction, and Heeseung feels a pang of something like pride at the amount of faith Jake has in him. He’s acting out, going against his father in bigger and bolder ways, and he’s doing it because he trusts that, come Tuesday, he’ll never have to see him again.

Of course, if something goes wrong, then – Heeseung would only have himself to blame, his own promises and the way they made Jake take risks.

“And, uh, you’re sure you can’t stay at the motel with me?”

Jake looks over at him from where he’s investigating the sparse contents of the truck bed, a small, almost pleased smile overtaking his features. Heeseung’s face flushes, just a bit, and he avoids his gaze, because he’s still kind of stuck replaying the image of his dick in Jake’s mouth, and now’s not really the time to be reminiscing on that. For his own sanity, for the purpose of staying on task, he should probably force it out of his memory entirely – but he’s not sure it’ll be that easy.

“I’m sure,” he says. “I don’t want to drag Sunoo and all them into this.”

“Your dad is pissed,” Heeseung points out, rather unhelpfully. “I just – I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Nothin’s gonna happen to me,” Jake assures him, sounding far more confident than Heeseung would be, if he was in his position. “It’s just two more nights. Trust me, it’ll be a lot worse if I don’t show up.”

Heeseung’s not convinced, not in the slightest – but Riki emerges from his house a moment later, now dressed in swim trunks and a t-shirt, arms crossed over his chest and that persistent frown still etched into his features, and his chance to attempt to convince Jake to not go home that night is gone before he could even seize it properly. Jake loops his arm through Heeseung’s, and pulls him along as Riki wordlessly leads them over to his own truck.

“We’ll have to get in the back, if we’re pickin’ the others up at the church,” Jake informs him, a little sheepishly.

Riki shoots Jake a look that tells Heeseung this is somewhat of a routine for them, too. “What’d you do?”

“Nothin’,” Jake says stubbornly, opening the tailgate and gesturing for Heeseung to climb up. He does, and then offers Jake a hand, which he takes and uses to pull himself up too. “It’s just best if we’re not seen right now.”

Riki rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t protest, shutting the tailgate behind them and getting in the driver’s seat as Jake sits down on the floor of the truck bed, flopping onto his back and stretching out, perfectly hidden from any onlookers. Heeseung does the same, and Jake turns on his side to face him as Riki pulls quickly out of his rather uneven driveway without any concern for their comfort.

“I might have been wrong about Riki not warmin’ up to you,” Jake says, and Heeseung looks over at him in confusion. He didn’t reach anything resembling that conclusion over the last few minutes. Quite the opposite, actually. “You’ve got a lot in common. You’re both obsessed with lecturin’ me.”

“We care,” Heeseung corrects.

“Well,” Jake huffs, “Riki’s not one to talk, anyway. He’s always makin’ things more difficult for himself.”

“How so?” Heeseung prompts, but Jake is easily distracted by the truck slowing to a stop after less than a minute of driving, propping himself up just enough to peek over the side of the truck.

Heeseung dares a glance, too. Riki has pulled over just down the road from the church, and Sunoo spots him almost instantly, waving his arm around over his head enthusiastically from where he stands, trapped in a conversation with his parents and a few old ladies, one of them still actively trying to pinch his cheek.

It doesn’t take Sunoo long to round up the rest of them, clearly understanding what’s happening without needing to be told. He wiggles his fingers more subtly at Heeseung and Jake as he approaches with Jungwon and Sunghoon in tow, and they both drop back down to remain hidden as they pile into the truck – Jungwon beside Riki, Sunghoon beside Jungwon, with Sunoo lounging across both their laps – and Riki starts driving again.

“Like, m’not saying he should just keep his head down,” Jake continues, and it takes a moment for Heeseung to remember what they’d been talking about before the brief interruption. “He is who he is, and everyone already knows, but – I dunno. I’m gonna worry, when I’m not around to keep an eye on him.”

“Everyone knows about him and Jungwon, you mean?” Heeseung asks, sitting up and leaning against the side of the truck when Jake does too, once Riki’s gotten them far enough away from the church and to the outskirts of town.

“Everyone knows about him,” Jake clarifies. “They only suspect the rest. But Jungwon – he doesn’t have the same kinda pressure, I guess, where he’s not from here, an’ he’s gone most of the year. He doesn’t need to keep up appearances as much, not like Riki should be.”

“How do they know about Riki, then?” He asks, even though he kind of suspects and fears the answer to that – he remembers Riki’s face, when he alluded to what happens when they get caught hanging around Jake as being real bad, sullen and distant and giving away more than he probably thought he was.

Jake sighs, glancing over at Riki in the driver’s seat, then shifting his gaze to the slightly rusted floor between them. “He had a crush on me, when we were in school,” he says simply, smiling a bit. “I thought it was cute – harmless, y’know? He just kinda followed me around like a little lost puppy. I figured he’d get over it. And then one day, we were in my backyard, and he just – he went for it, bless his little heart.”

“He made a move?” Heeseung asks, laughing a bit.

“He planted one on me,” Jake laughs too, shaking his head. His smile, slowly but surely, begins to fade. “Didn’t know anyone was watching, of course. But we found that out pretty quickly. He got both our asses kicked.”

Heeseung winces, trying his best not to imagine it, the two of them – younger, innocent, still hopeful, and being punished for it.

“That wasn’t the worst of it, though,” Jake says after a moment. “‘Cause then Sunday came around, and Daddy got up there and started doing his usual preachin’. And then he finished the service by askin’ everyone to pray for Riki and his… his urges.”

“That’s… awful,” Heeseung says, unable to come up with anything more eloquent than that in his horror.

“It was,” Jake confirms, and then leaves it at that.

“It makes sense, why he wouldn’t want to go back, then,” Heeseung points out, hoping he’s not overstepping by inserting himself into their argument.

“Of course,” Jake says sympathetically. “But I just… I hate to hear the way people talk about him, like he’s –” he cuts himself off, shaking his head as if to get rid of the thought. “I guess I do wish he’d keep his head down. Just until he leaves.”

“He’s leaving, too?”

Jake nods, biting down on his bottom lip for a long moment. “Yeah. End of the summer, he’s goin’ with Jungwon to the city. It’s not like it’s perfect there, but – it is better, so.”

Heeseung wonders if Jake realizes the irony in what he’s saying – in wanting Riki to keep his head down until he leaves, for his safety, while refusing to lower his for his own. He wonders if he understands why Heeseung – why all of them – are concerned, or if he really does think his situation is different, that he’s more equipped to handle the very same things he’s so concerned about hurting his loved ones.

“Anyway,” Jake starts again, no longer looking in Heeseung’s direction at all, his eyes drifting to stare at the scenery they’re leaving behind, the trees whipping past them, the dirt kicked up by the wheels of Riki’s truck, “I guess all I’ll be able to do is worry about them, soon enough. So I’d best get used to it.”

“I’m sure you’ll all keep in touch,” Heeseung says, hoping he sounds convincing.

Jake looks at him again, his eyebrows pinched together ever so slightly. “How’d you deal with it?”

“Hm?”

“You moved from one side of the country to the other,” Jake reminds him. “Was it hard?”

Heeseung swallows, and finds his mouth uncomfortably dry. He’d really rather not talk about this, has gone out of his way to avoid it countless times with countless people, but – he should know by now that he can’t deny Jake anything. “It was hard,” Heeseung says, the rest of his words coming easier to him than he’s used to after he manages the small admission. “I, uh. I didn’t have as much to leave behind as you do, but – it was hard anyway.”

Jake nods, seemingly appreciating his honesty. “What did you leave behind, then?”

“Jay,” Heeseung says automatically. “Just Jay, mostly. I’m not… I was never really close with my parents. I thought I’d be fine on my own because of that, but – I don’t know. I got pretty lonely.”

It’s an understatement, but Heeseung isn’t going to elaborate beyond that, and Jake doesn’t seem to expect him to, either.

“But you won’t be alone,” Heeseung reminds him after a moment. “I’ll be there, if you ever need anything.”

Jake smiles a bit, just a simple upturn of his lips, and Heeseung can tell that something’s still bothering him, but – the truck turns down an impossibly bumpier dirt road, this one surrounded by trees with branches hanging so low, they have to move and sit closer together in the middle of the truck bed just to avoid getting their eyes taken out by one of them. Jake giggles a bit as Heeseung ducks to dodge a particularly spiteful branch, and leans a little closer, bumping their foreheads together for a brief second, forcing a slightly nervous laugh to bubble out of Heeseung too.

“You guys aren’t taking me out here to murder me, are you?” Heeseung asks.

Jake laughs a little harder, shaking his head. “Why would we do that?”

“I don’t know,” Heeseung laughs too. “I think Jay’s paranoia is getting to me a bit.”

Jake looks at him for a long moment, and then smiles, and it looks a little endeared. Heeseung feels his face and ears flush with mild embarrassment, and then that embarrassment turns to brief, mild horror – he’d forgotten to call Jay. Again.

It’s too late now. They’re out in the middle of nowhere – even more nowhere than usual, and with even less service than usual – and Heeseung is a little preoccupied with trying to make sure Jake keeps smiling. He’ll just call him when he gets back to the motel. Jay’s prone to panic, and he’s even more concerned with Heeseung’s well-being than usual these days, but he'll just have to trust him. Just this once.

“You don’t gotta worry,” Jake assures him. “You’ll see in a minute or two.”

And Heeseung does in fact see a minute or two later, after Riki takes one last sharp turn and parks the truck at the edge of a small clearing, once again nearly taking out both of their eyes as he makes no effort to dodge branches. Once he’s safe, Heeseung lifts his head, looking out at the view they’d arrived at.

They’re parked alongside a small creek, the water rushing towards the edge of what looks to be a relatively small cliff, one that drops into a significantly larger lake. Heeseung’s stomach fills with dread and flips uncomfortably.

“We’re not…” he trails off, feeling his palms begin to sweat.

“Jumpin’?” Jake finishes for him, hopping over the side of the truck bed with ease, one of his feet slipping out from underneath him and dipping into the water beside him. He doesn’t even flinch. Heeseung grips the side of the truck like a lifeline. “That’s the plan. You scared?”

Heeseung doesn’t answer, but he’s sure that the look on his face says enough.

“Oh, c’mon,” Sunoo teases once he’s hopped off of Sunghoon’s lap and onto the grass they parked on, grinning in amusement. “It’s barely even twenty feet.”

“It’s thirty,” Sunghoon corrects, unhelpfully. “Give or take a few. We haven’t actually measured it.”

“Okay, know it all,” Sunoo huffs. “I’m jus’ sayin’, it’s not enough to kill you. Some light injury, maybe, worst case. But that’s it.”

“That’s reassuring,” Heeseung mutters.

“Just come look,” Jake suggests, holding out a hand in offering. Heeseung, despite generally being inclined to take every opportunity to touch Jake when one is presented to him, hesitates. “It’s perfectly safe, I promise. You can see for yourself and then decide. If you don’t wanna jump, I’ll show you the path to get down so you can still swim.”

The thing is – he considers it. He’s not the strongest swimmer, not to mention terrified of heights, which he’s feeling right now, goosebumps prickling on skin that’s covering ice-cold veins, but still, he considers it. He’s trying to get out of his comfort zone, trying to understand Jake, and he thinks conquering this particular fear will get him closer to both of those goals.

And, besides. Heeseung’s brushed against death before, bumped shoulders with it and cowered away in fear, and that didn’t feel like this. When he takes Jake’s hand, and inches closer to the edge of the cliff, it doesn’t feel like he’s in over his head, staring down the metaphorical barrel of something he knows could fire at any moment, something unsurvivable. He’s familiar with that feeling, and he knows when to run from it.

After all, running from it is what had brought him here, to Jake, to this feeling that, when he peers down at the small waterfall crashing into the lake below it, the same way he will if he chooses to jump, shares no resemblance with death.

It looks a whole lot more like life, and really living it, which is exactly what he set off on his road trip to do.

“Incoming!” Someone shouts from behind them, and Heeseung doesn’t even have time to process it before Jake is pushing against him, sending him a few stumbling steps to the side, to safety – even though his heart, now in his throat and pounding with fear, doesn’t seem to realize that at first – as Riki barrels past them and leaps off the edge of the cliff, forming a perfect cannonball as he drops into the water below.

Heeseung, against his better judgement, looks down again, and watches the water ripple with Riki’s impact as he resurfaces. His stomach turns again, but this time, he just swallows back his nausea, looks over at Jake, and nods.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll – I’ll try.”

Jake beams at him, and then tugs hard on his hand to pull him away from the cliff, back towards the truck. Heeseung is momentarily confused, until he remembers that they’re both still fully dressed – his phone is still in his pocket, which would have been a true disaster – and that Jungwon is waiting his turn to take the same leap that Riki had. He doesn’t even hesitate, running along the side of the creek with the comfort and familiarity of someone who’s done this countless times.

In that moment, standing there, watching Jake strip out of his stuffy church clothes until he’s only left in his boxers, watching Jungwon hurtle towards the water and Sunoo follow closely behind him, he can’t help but notice how familiar it all is to them. He can’t help but notice that, despite all the ways this town, the people in it, the limitations it brings, have tried to tear these people down time and time again, they still move throughout it like it belongs to them, like they have nothing to fear.

Heeseung thinks it might be rubbing off on him, their fearlessness. He hopes it is.

He doesn’t hesitate anymore, unbuttoning and shrugging off the stuffy dress shirt he probably should have abandoned long ago in favour of the t-shirt under it, the thick July heat barely dispersed by the shade they’re standing under now, having him sighing in relief once he’s free of one of his layers. Jake watches him undress without any effort to disguise it, giggling in a way Heeseung finds infectious, unphased by Sunghoon’s muttered, “Y’all are gross,” before he jumps too, leaving them alone with only the sound of the leaves rustling with the slight breeze and the hum of the cicadas.

“Still scared?” Jake asks a moment later, as they approach the edge of the cliff again. Heeseung spots the others, standing out among the murky greenish-blue of the lake, Riki splashing Sunoo as he screeches in terror, Jungwon jumping on Riki’s back in an unsuccessful attempt to slow him down, Sunghoon coming up from where he’d plunged into the water and pushing his hair out of his face, just in time to become the new victim of Riki’s splashing attacks.

Heeseung nods, and the motion makes him a bit dizzy. He’s scared, but he’s not going to let fear alone stop him. “You aren’t?”

“Sure,” Jake agrees easily. “I’m always scared.”

Heeseung looks over at him, his brows furrowing a bit. “It doesn’t seem like it,” he tells him, hoping it sounds like the compliment he means it as. “You always seem so – fearless.”

“Practice,” Jake answers simply, kneeling down after a moment, like he can tell Heeseung might need a few minutes to gather himself before they do any jumping. Heeseung sits too, a little further from the edge, despite the way Jake sits down comfortably and lets his legs dangle over it. “I was a real anxious kid. Just – a little ball of nerves.”

“Really?” Heeseung asks, trying not to look down at the water, even as all the commotion echoing up from below them demands his attention. He keeps his focus on Jake, which is easy, and he feels a little less dizzy.

“Yeah,” Jake admits with a small laugh, keeping his gaze fixed forward. “I used to go to my mama, and cry my eyes out about something happening to her, or Daddy – but especially about something happening to the dog we had when I was growin’ up. She was a good dog, but she was always tryin’ to get out, and get off her leash when I walked her. She didn’t like feelin’ trapped. I didn’t understand why, back then.”

It goes without saying, then, that he can understand her instinct to escape now.

“I would hold her leash so tight and pull her back so hard that my hands would get all cut up and bloody by the end of it,” Jake continues after a moment, “And I would just cry the whole time. My parents never understood. They’d always say – if she leaves, she’ll realize how good she had it here and come back,” he snorts, and shakes his head. “I think I knew, even back then, that no one would ever realize that, once they left. So I just prayed that she’d stay, because that was all I knew to do, you know? But I was scared of that, too.”

“Of praying?”

“Of god,” Jake clarifies. “Because I thought I wasn’t prayin’ good enough, hard enough, and I always thought he was mad at me. I thought he’d punish me, and let her run away. And my mama, she – she always told me I had to pray, every night, or he might. And then…” he pauses, looking over at Heeseung for a long moment, dropping his gaze to the ground between them before he continues, “And then one night, I fell asleep without praying first. Next morning, I wake up, come downstairs, and the front door is open. Her leash is out there, but she’s not on it. And I knew it was my fault, because I didn’t pray for her to stay the night before. And she never came back, even though Ma said she would.”

“That’s… Jake, I’m so sorry,” Heeseung says. “But it wasn’t your fault.”

“I know that,” Jake says eventually. “I know that now. But back then, I thought… you know, I figured out that I never really had much to lose in the first place. But I was scared of god taking it from me anyways. I thought that if he did, I’d only be able to blame myself, for not being good enough to deserve it.”

Heeseung hesitates, biting his tongue to keep himself from asking the question that keeps coming to mind. And then Jake lifts his gaze back up to his face, and smiles, soft and sad and knowing, and he stops holding back. “Do you… do you really believe in all of it?”

“In him?” Jake asks, and Heeseung nods. “Yeah, I do. Everyone has to believe in something, right? I don’t – I don’t believe in him the way I should, maybe, the way my parents want me to. They way they believe is all about fear, and that’s not… that’s not what I want for myself. For my god. I know it wasn’t him punishing me by letting my dog out – it was Ma, opening the door and letting her off her leash. People do awful things in the name of fearin’ god. And I guess that’s what I’m scared of. People. But… that fear still doesn’t rule my life, because I believe in something bigger than it. You know what I mean?”

Heeseung nods again. He can’t think of anything remotely insightful to say. His mind has gone unsettlingly quiet.

“Do you have anything like that?” Jake asks after a while.

“I don’t,” Heeseung answers automatically, then looks down at the lake, at the boys still dunking each other under the water, then back at Jake. “I… I didn’t.”

Jake smiles a bit, like he’s reading Heeseung’s thoughts, like it’s obvious he’d found something to believe in the moment he rolled into town. Maybe it’s Jake himself. Maybe it’s all of them. Maybe it’s just this, sitting on the edge of an unfamiliar cliff above an unfamiliar lake, watching them dive fearlessly into it despite the ways it could harm them, watching Jake smile even after he recounted yet another instance of a moment where Heeseung would have lost the ability to believe in anything, telling him he still does anyway, an act of rebellion in and of itself, an act of fighting, of living.

Believing out of fear doesn’t sound like something worth doing, to Heeseung. But the kind of believing that Jake does, that all of them do – he can see the appeal.

“Well, good. It’s never too late to find somethin’.”

“Yeah,” Heeseung agrees, then clears his throat, because he can feel a lump forming in it. “I think that’s why I’m here.”

Jake’s smile brightens, and he stands, not bothering to brush the dirt off his bare legs as he extends another hand in offering to Heeseung. He takes it. He doesn’t even hesitate. “Go on, then,” he says, gesturing for Heeseung to step closer to the cliff.

Heeseung steps closer. He takes one last look at Jake, smiling, his skin speckled with gold where the sun shines through the leaves of the trees, instead of looking at what lies ahead of him, and then he closes his eyes, and – he jumps.

Heeseung takes a gasping breath in the same moment he resurfaces, trying desperately to fill his lungs even though they’d only been unable to take in more oxygen for a few seconds as he plunged into the lake. His ears are ringing a bit, and over the sound of water splashing violently around him, he can hear Jake crashing into it too, a little to his left.

“There ya go, California!” Sunoo cheers as Heeseung wipes at the water in his eyes and dripping down his face, pushing his hair back and blinking until they’re all more than just blurry shapes to him.

All he can manage is a thumbs up and a wet cough in response, and he hears the chorus of laughter it gets, and then – Jake reappears in his peripheral vision, not struggling nearly as much as Heeseung had, rising to the surface gracefully like the water is working with him, not against him. He swims closer to Heeseung, and steadies his mild flailing with a hand on his shoulder, one eye shutting to block out the sun now hitting them directly and smiling, bright and wide as always.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Jake asks, and Heeseung’s lungs are still burning, so he just shakes his head. Jake laughs, one of his hands moving to cup his cheek for a moment, his nose wrinkling in something like fondness.

It really wasn’t so bad. Not at all.

And then Riki resumes his attacks, this time with a new target, thrusting his hands forward and sending a wave of water their way. Jake gasps in surprise, and then he’s gone, taking a deep breath and darting through the water with ease to yank Riki under in retaliation. After that, it’s all out war.

Heeseung keeps his distance, partially out of concern for his own safety, partially because he can’t shake the feeling of being an outsider, can’t bring himself to dive head first into a moment that doesn’t feel like it’s for him. In less than two days, Jake will be on the road away from this place, these people, so letting him have this to himself just feels like the right thing to do.

And then – he realizes Sunoo’s unaccounted for in the dogpile they’re currently executing on Riki just as someone jumps on his back and shoves him forward, just in time for Jake to appear in front of him, a slightly wicked smile on his face, hands planting on his shoulders and pushing him under the water, and Heeseung goes without a fight.

His eyes sting when he opens them, and he’s sure that’s a bad idea, because who knows what kind of bacteria this lake contains, but – it’s worth it. Because Jake’s eyes are open, and he’s right in front of Heeseung, smiling like always, completely in his element, like always. Heeseung’s lungs are still burning. He moves closer anyways.

Kissing underwater feels a bit strange. Kissing Jake feels a bit strange, like something he still can’t get used to, something he still can’t quite convince himself he deserves. But underwater, it’s so quiet. He can’t hear the sound of Jake breathing – because neither of them are, something that will matter in a few seconds, but something he’s ignoring for the time being in favour of staying in this moment a little longer – or the sound of their mouths moving together, or his friends groaning in disgust. But he can feel everything a little more, Jake’s hand wrapping around his arm, either to pull him closer or to pull him up when the moment comes that they need to go back to the surface, their hair getting in their faces as they start their ascent. He can feel time slow around them, giving them more of it even though they really shouldn’t have any at all.

And then they reach the surface, both of them taking gasping breaths against each other’s mouths to fill their lungs, the water between them no longer enough to stop Jake from moving closer and wrapping his arms around him properly. They pull apart, but stay close, Jake practically hanging off of him to keep them from drifting out of reach of each other.

“I think they’re cute,” Jungwon mutters, and Heeseung didn’t hear what he was responding to, but he can guess.

“They’re gross,” Riki insists.

“Y’all aren’t much better,” Sunoo points out, and as if to prove his words, Heeseung hears the distinct sound of someone’s face being covered in loud, smacking kisses, and then the sound of Jungwon yelping in protest. He manages to look away from Jake just in time to watch Sunoo’s attack of affection send them both into the water again.

He loses track of time pretty quickly after that. It’s easy to, when all that surrounds them is nature, when it feels like they’ve carved out their own pocket of the world, away from anything real, any obligations, any passage of seconds and minutes. They’re all far less violent after that, swimming in slow circles and gossiping about the town folk, including but not limited to the girl that Sunoo’s sister Minjeong has been ditching all her shifts in favour of hanging out with, and the extramarital affair that two members of the church’s choir have so clearly embarked on.

They ask Heeseung questions, not in a way that feels interrogative, just curious. They ask about California, about the school he went to in Washington, and his road trip, carefully avoiding any mention of when he’ll continue it, when he’ll take Jake with him and hit the road again. Heeseung can’t blame them for that. He wouldn’t want to talk about it, either, if he wasn’t going down that road with Jake.

Sunoo is the first one to get out of the water, expressing a desire to get some sun and taking most of the more gossip-y parts of the conversation with him as he goes, but the violence doesn’t break out again, and Heeseung is glad for it. He’s tired, not used to spending this much time in the water, and it must show – because when Jungwon swims to the shore of the lake and joins Sunoo where he’s lying in the tall grass, Jake glances over at him and says, “You can go too, if you want. Take a break.”

“Yeah,” Riki agrees, and Heeseung is momentarily confused by his show of genuine concern before he continues, “You’re huffin’ and puffin’ like your lungs are about to collapse.”

Sunghoon laughs, which clearly encourages Riki, who starts doing an impression of what sounds like a fish out of water to Heeseung, but he knows it’s supposed to be him, and neither of them are deterred by Jake’s scolding warning to leave him alone. Heeseung doesn’t mind. It’s a little funny, and it’s the closest thing he’s gotten to a bonding moment with Riki since he arrived, so he laughs too.

“Go on,” Jake insists, shooting a disapproving glare at his friends that doesn’t do much to hide the smile slowly unfurling on his lips, giving Heeseung’s shoulders a gentle shove. “We’ll be in here for a while. It’s hard to get me out of the water, once I’m in it.”

Heeseung just smiles, and nods, not putting up an argument, because watching Jake from the shore sounds just as nice. He makes his way to the edge of the lake, and wonders if Jake will like living near the ocean, if he’ll appreciate it in a way Heeseung never did, hating the lingering taste of salt water in his mouth and the sand sticking to his skin and the ever-present sense of danger he never quite got over. Jake probably wouldn’t feel it at all.

He joins Sunoo and Jungwon in the middle of a conversation, Sunoo propped up on his elbows, squinting so he can see Jungwon where he sits, cross-legged and facing him, pulling individual blades of grass until they break.

“We’re going to have an extra room anyway. And you said you wanted to come,” Jungwon mutters, exasperation leaking into his tone, and he glances up at Heeseung as he takes a seat on a large, mostly flat rock a few feet away from them, smiling like he’s trying not to make him feel unwelcome, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I don’t understand you at all.”

For a moment, Heeseung thinks he said the last part to him, because he’s still looking at him, but Sunoo is the one that sighs, long and drawn out, tipping his head back like he’s trying to soak up as much of the sun as he can. “I said I would think about it,” he corrects, then lifts the sunglasses he borrowed from Riki onto his forehead and looks over at Heeseung too. “What do you think? Can’t you see me livin’ in California?”

“Uh –”

“Don’t answer that,” Jungwon warns. “He’s trying to get out of his lease.”

“I never signed any lease,” Sunoo reminds him. “You can’t tie me down, Jungwon Yang.”

“I’m not trying to –” Jungwon cuts off into a groan of irritation. “But when you get into UAB, you’re going to need somewhere to live –”

“I haven’t even applied yet,” Sunoo scoffs. “And I’m not even sure I want to. You know school’s never been my thing.”

“You didn’t apply?” Jungwon asks, looking genuinely hurt, and Sunoo visibly softens, sitting up again and reaching over to pat Jungwon’s bare leg.

“I told you, I don’t know what I wanna do yet,” Sunoo says carefully. “I might go to school, I might travel, I might stick around here ‘til Sunghoon leaves. I don’t want him to be all alone.”

“Sunghoon’s never leaving,” Jungwon sighs.

“He will,” Sunoo says, and he sounds completely sure, not even a little bit worried. “Give him a few months without Jake and the rest of you, with only me for company. He’ll come to his senses. Say, California, you got an extra room where you’re going?”

Heeseung hesitates, unsure if he’s allowed to answer this time, but Jungwon doesn’t stop him. “Uh, no. I’m already just – moving into my friend’s apartment. He has a pull-out couch, though. You could always crash with us for a bit, if you’re ever passing through.”

Sunoo beams at him, but there’s faint traces of genuine surprise in his expression. “You mean that?”

“Sure,” Heeseung says easily, then glances at Jungwon, and sees the furrow of his brow, the pout on his lips, the way he fidgets with the blade of grass between his fingers. “But – school is good, too.”

It’s weak, and entirely unconvincing, especially from someone who just told them that he’d dropped out, and Sunoo laughs a bit.

“I’ll consider my options,” Sunoo says, then nudges Jungwon’s leg with his ankle until he looks up and meets his eyes. “Really. I will. And you and Riki, you’re…” he trails off, a loaded beat of silence passing between them. “You know how I feel about you both. But you’ve got each other, and I just – I got a lot of options, right? Not everyone can say that. I don’t want to just take it for granted and choose the easiest one.”

“The easiest one,” Jungwon repeats, his voice small and a little dry.

“That’s a good thing,” Sunoo insists gently. “But you know I love to make things harder for myself.”

Heeseung looks over at Jake. He’s on Sunghoon’s back, his chin hooked over his shoulder, his arms wrapped around the middle of his chest, and wonders how many options he had for his future, before he chose the one he’s going to go down now. Jake might not have many options, but still, Heeseung hopes this one is easy for him.

By the time the rest of them get out, trudging back up to the top of the cliff with the path Jake had mentioned before, dripping water on the loose gravel and darkening it in colour every bare-footed step of the way, the sun has reached a peak in the sky that tells Heeseung it’s late afternoon, and he can feel his skin stinging a bit from over-exposure to its rays.

Riki has towels under the seats of his truck, and they all wrap themselves up in them, Sunghoon reaching over with his bunched up in his hand and aggressively drying Jake’s hair for him, Jake leaning into it like an enthusiastic puppy and laughing joyfully. His face is a bit sunburnt, too, his nose and cheeks dusted with pink, and Heeseung commits the sight to memory, takes a mental picture and tucks it somewhere for safekeeping.

Sunghoon and Sunoo clamber into the truck bed for the ride back into town this time, and none of them make an effort to hide this time – not even Jungwon, where he sits beside Riki in the front of the truck, leaning his head on his shoulder just as they pass the sign that marks the town limits. Heeseung watches them, and tries not to feel the ache in his chest too much. He’s just glad they’re getting out, too.

Everyone’s tired and hungry from the sun and the swimming, so it’s decided they’ll all get changed and meet back at Riki’s, so he can drive them to a diner in the next town over. It’s clear that the decision is made because of Jake, because none of them want him to go home or risk being spotted by his dad, but no one actually says as much – likely because they know Jake, stubborn as he is, would probably insist on going home if they did.

Riki pulls into the parking lot of the motel first, and – right away, something feels off. He’s not sure what it is until they pull into a spot next to a car that he’s sure wasn’t there when he left. It’s an expensive car. It feels entirely familiar, even though he’s certain he’s never actually seen it before.

And then Sunghoon, with his nose wrinkled in disgust, says, “What kind of a douche rolls into a place like this with a car like that?”

And – dread settles in Heeseung’s stomach just as understanding clicks into place in his mind. He only knows one douche that would do that, and sure enough, when he strains his neck to look through the driver’s seat window, there he is.

“Oh no,” he breathes, getting to his feet without hesitation and climbing over the side of the truck bed with relative ease. “Oh, god.”

“Heeseung, what –” Jake starts, but he never gets a chance to finish the question.

The driver’s door to the car opens just in time for Heeseung to land in front of it and slam it closed.

“Dude,” Jay barks, his expression pinched in annoyance. “Let me out.”

“No,” Heeseung says firmly, holding the handle in place even as Jay tries to force it to move. “You’re not really here. This is a nightmare.”

“Wow,” he says dryly. “I’m happy to see you again too, Heeseung.”

“I told you not to come,” Heeseung insists.

“And I told you that if you didn’t check in with me, I’d be getting on the first flight out of LA.”

“Well, you’ve checked in. I’m clearly alive and well. Now you can go back –”

“Let me open the door,” Jay sighs. “Heeseung, I swear to god, I will run you over –”

Heeseung, aware that he probably shouldn't be making that big of a scene right now, takes a step back. He lets Jay open the door just enough to shimmy out of the car.

“Why are you naked?” Jay asks judgmentally, giving him a once over.

“I'm not naked,” Heeseung counters, because last time he checked, he wasn't.

“Oh, of course, my bad,” Jay says sarcastically, “Why are you only wearing your boxers walking around the world's creepiest town?”

“I didn't have a swimsuit with me,” Heeseung says, glancing back at the rest of them, all in various states of undress – although the rest of them had, at least, been given a t-shirt from the stash under Riki's seat to replace their stuffy church clothes, whether or not they were actually wearing them, like he'd packed up the truck with this very scenario in mind. Heeseung was an unexpected variable, though, so all he was left with was a borrowed towel to try to keep some of his dignity with.

It's a mistake, looking back at the truck. Jay, as if noticing them for the first time, follows Heeseung's gaze, and his frown deepens.

“Hi,” Sunoo greets first, unfazed by the strange dynamic on display, raising his hand to wave at Jay with a friendly smile on his face. “You must be Heeseung’s friend.”

“I thought I was,” Jay answers cryptically.

“Oh, don't do that –” Heeseung sighs in frustration.

“What else am I supposed to be thinking right now?” Jay exclaims, and – alright. They’re doing this, here and now, he supposes.

And then, before Jay gets a chance to air out the one thing Heeseung would really rather not have aired out, someone else climbs over the side of the truck, drops to the ground beside them, and extends a hand in greeting towards Jay.

“Jay, right?” Jake asks, his voice soft and sickly sweet. “S'nice to meet you. I'm Jake.”

He's an angel. He must be. Heeseung can't imagine anyone not being completely and utterly charmed by Jake, and yet, Jay's eyes narrow in suspicion, and he stares at his hand, but he doesn't shake it.

“I see,” Jay says after a moment, and Heeseung swears he can see the gears turning in his head, the smoke practically shooting out of his ears.

“Can we please talk about this later?” Heeseung attempts.

“Heeseung, no. I've been worried sick about you for months – years actually, and I've tried to give you the space you asked for, and I tried to be supportive of this stupid road trip idea, but I can't – I won’t just let you toss me aside again so you can keep running from your problems,” he says, then insists, “I won’t let you. You need to come home, and you need to focus on getting better, not – not whatever this is.”

“I will,” Heeseung assures him. “I promise, I will. I just – I'm not leaving without my truck.”

Jay stares at him for a moment, his expression one of pure exasperation. “You… you were ready to leave everything behind a week ago, Heeseung. You can't convince me this is about your truck.”

Heeseung feels himself tense all over, every muscle in his body going rigid and still. For several long, painful seconds, there's only silence, and then he manages to clear his throat, and force out, “I wasn't trying to leave you behind, Jay. I was just…” he trails off, still unsure how to put how he'd been feeling into words, because really, he was trying to leave Jay behind, even if he didn’t think of it like that at the time, so he just repeats, “I'm not trying to leave you behind. And I’m not running. I just need time.”

Jay stares at him for a while in a mixture of hurt and disbelief, and then he shakes his head. “Fine, Heeseung. If you really want me to go, I'll go.”

“Jay –”

“No, I'll leave. But if you're not back on the road by Tuesday, I swear –”

“He will be,” Sunghoon chimes in, in a flat, hard tone. “But it's not up to you, anyway.”

Heeseung is, admittedly, a little surprised that Sunghoon is trying to stand up for him. However this situation is coming off to them – which he’s sure isn’t an entirely accurate picture, because they don’t have all the information, because they barely know Heeseung and all the things that led him here – has clearly made Jay out to be the bad guy, the controlling, overbearing friend. And no matter how often he finds himself cursing Jay’s tendency to be a controlling, overbearing friend, he also knows that he made Jay this way, that he left him with no other choice.

Jay loves him. He doesn’t know how to do it in a normal, well-adjusted way, but it’s fine, because Heeseung doesn’t either. It works for them. It really seems like it doesn’t, to anyone who doesn’t know them as well as they know each other.

And they know each other well, like the backs of their own hands, and – Heeseung has missed him.

“Sunghoon, leave it,” Jake mutters. “It's none of our business.”

“You're right,” Jay agrees. “It isn't. I don’t… I don’t even know who you people are, but –” And then his eyes finally move from Jake over to where Sunghoon is standing, still in the back of the truck bed, towering over him in what he's sure is meant to be an intimidation tactic, and Heeseung watches a few things happen in the span of less than a second. First, he cuts himself off, his words – which likely would have only made this whole thing much worse – dying in his throat and sputtering out with a helpless, “Uh,” before his mouth snaps shut and his eyes go a bit wide and Heeseung has to look behind him to make sure he didn’t just see something out of one of those horror-movie slashers he’s been so worried about.

There’s nothing there. Just Sunghoon, frowning at Jay like his mere existence is offensive to him. He looks back at Jay, and watches as his best friend’s eyes practically turn to giant cartoon hearts.

Oh. Well, that’s – he can work with that, actually.

“Jay, this is Jungwon, and Riki, and Sunoo,” he starts, pointing each one of them out even though he knows that Jay isn’t going to take his eyes off of Sunghoon anytime soon. “And that’s Sunghoon,” he tells him.

“Jay,” he says uselessly, even though they’ve all most likely picked up on his name by now. “I’m – Heeseung’s roommate.”

“Roommate-to-be, when I get back to California,” Heeseung corrects. “And my best friend. And he’s allowed to yell at me, Sunghoon, so you can lower your weapons.”

Normally, any reference to these strangers Jay is already suspicious of having weapons would send him into a full spiral. But he just laughs, half-hearted and awkwardly loud and a bit stunned, and Heeseung knows there won’t be any further questioning about what would make him want to take his time before getting back on the road. He probably gets it, now.

Speaking of. He looks down at Jake, still at his side, and joins their hands together, shooting him a reassuring smile. “And, uh, this is – Jake,” he tells Jay.

Something in his tone must act as confirmation to what Jay was surely already suspecting, because he manages to tear his gaze away from Sunghoon, and fixes it on Jake, his brows furrowing all over again, undoing any brief progress they’d made.

“You’re –”

“A friend,” Heeseung finishes for him, before he can say anything offensive, which he likely would have, even if it was just about Heeseung and his perceived emotional sluttiness and not an attack on Jake. “They’re all friends,” he tells him, like he’s trying to calm a guard dog before it bites.

Jay seems to study Jake for a moment, his narrowed eyes slowly drifting over the rest of them, too, before landing on Sunghoon again. “I’m staying,” he decides, and it seems like it bursts straight from his chest, surprising even himself when he says it. “I’m staying, and I’m making sure you leave when you’re supposed to.”

“As if we want ‘im to stay,” Sunghoon mumbles, clearly unaware of the way Jay’s ogling him.

“The more the merrier,” Sunoo declares, in his familiar, strategically flirtatious tone.

“Of course,” Heeseung relents, softening his hard stance, only after Jake has squeezed his hand reassuringly. “Of course you can stay, Jay. I’m sorry for telling you to leave.”

“I was going to stay whether or not you wanted me to,” Jay clarifies in an irritated huff, his arms crossing over his chest for a moment before dropping helplessly back to his sides. He seems to deflate a bit, and Heeseung doesn’t know what he’s done to upset him now, but he’s not surprised that he’d found a way. All he can seem to do lately is upset Jay. “I’m sorry – I’m sorry I wasn’t there, before.”

He’s being vague, probably on purpose, being considerate of their audience, because he knows Heeseung, knows that he can barely acknowledge his problems to himself, let alone share them with people he’d just met.

“It’s okay,” Heeseung assures him, and really means it. Jay wasn’t there before because Heeseung wouldn’t let him be there, because he’s spent the last four years pushing him further and further away, only to call him out of the blue and quietly admit that he needs him, that he doesn't have anyone else. Jay took it in stride. He’d said, come home, then. You’ve still got me.

And then, the next day, Heeseung changed his mind, because that’s what he does, and he’d dropped the news about his spontaneous road trip on him mere minutes before he departed.

He couldn’t ask anyone to stick with him through what he’d put Jay through over the last few years, and yet – he’s here. He’s here, they’re here, and he can still see the hesitance in Jay’s expression, the disbelief – or maybe it’s his belief that’s showing now, his belief that he was too late, that he’d failed Heeseung – so he releases his grip on Jake’s hand, and pulls Jay into a tight hug.

“It’s okay, Jay. You’re here now.”

Chapter Text

“So that’s him, then?” Jay asks from where he’s made himself comfortable on Heeseung’s bed, slumped against the pillows and looking up at him with raised eyebrows. “That guy? He’s the reason you’re staying?”

“He’s not the reason I’m staying,” Heeseung lies, stepping out of the bathroom, holding his towel tightly around himself as he starts searching through his suitcase for something to wear. “My truck –”

“Get real, dude,” Jay scoffs, but it doesn’t sound nearly as angry as it would have ten minutes earlier.

“He’s one of the reasons,” Heeseung sighs. “And his name is Jake.”

“He’s cute,” Jay says nonchalantly. “But not cute enough to be worth moving to Alabama for.”

Heeseung spends a brief second hating his guts, a natural instinct to anyone saying anything that isn’t dripping with affection for Jake, and then he gets over it, and sighs. “I’m not moving to Alabama. I’m leaving once my truck is fixed.”

Jay eyes him for a moment, his expression once again pinched in doubt.

Heeseung sighs again. He knows Jay isn’t going to drop this, not until he tells him the whole truth. The only problem is, he’s not entirely sure the whole truth will improve the situation at all. Still, it’s worth a shot. It can’t possibly get any worse.

“I’m leaving,” he repeats. “But uh, Jake is – he’s coming with me.”

Jay, for a few long seconds, just stares at him, blinking faster than usual, eyebrows slowly drawing together in confusion. “He’s… to my apartment?”

“Not necessarily,” Heeseung shrugs. “I can get him a hotel room.”

“With what money?” Jay asks, then pauses. “No, actually, better question – why?”

He lets out one last sigh, long and drawn out, moving around the corner and going back into the bathroom to get changed, leaving the door open so Jay can still hear him. “He just – he needs a way out of here. I promised him I’d take him with me.”

“Are you in… like, a relationship with him? Because I don’t think that’s a good idea for you right now –”

“We’re not in a relationship,” Heeseung tells him. “He just needs my help.”

Jay doesn’t say anything for a while, forcing Heeseung to step out of the bathroom once he’s fully dressed again, to see the look on his face.

“What?” He asks, a bit helplessly, seeing the genuine concern etched into Jay’s features.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing here, Heeseung?” Jay asks. “I mean, you – you need to help yourself right now, and I know how you are, but you can’t just take on the first pet project –”

“He’s not…” Heeseung starts, uselessly trailing off before he can defend Jake properly. “What good would it do me, if I just went back to LA with you right now, and just sat around in your apartment? I am helping myself, Jay. I told you, I wanted to – I wanted to find something worth…”

It seems that Heeseung can’t finish any of his sentences, when they’re ones that really matter. He kind of wants to put his fist through the nearest wall.

“Living for?” Jay finishes for him, his voice raw and strained and full of hurt.

“Yeah,” Heeseung admits. “That’s why I did this road trip. I needed to find something worth living for.”

Jay doesn’t speak for a while, and then he nods, and says, his voice barely above a whisper, “I guess I kind of thought you already had that.”

Heeseung feels all the fight leave his body at once, and he deflates, forced to sit down on the edge of the bed to keep his knees from buckling. “Jay,” he starts, pausing for a moment to actually try and actually find his words before he just starts carelessly stringing together sentences. “This isn’t… none of this is your fault. You know that, right?”

“You could have died, if you didn’t call me,” Jay says, no longer dancing around the thing they’ve been dancing around for the last week, in every phone call, in this very impromptu visit. “And I wasn’t there. You didn’t – you couldn’t even tell me how you were feeling, I couldn’t even help you, because I wasn’t there. You don’t trust me anymore, and that’s my fault. I knew you were struggling, but I still believed you when you said you were fine. I should have been there.”

“I pushed you away,” Heeseung corrects. “That’s not your fault.”

Jay pauses, eyeing Heeseung in something like suspicion. “And this… this trip, it’s not about you avoiding me.”

Heeseung shakes his head. “Not at all,” he assures him. “I’ve just felt… so stuck, for years now, and I – I remembered how good – how free I felt when you and I drove across the country a few years ago. I guess I wanted to feel that again. And – and I have been. I really feel it again.”

“Wow,” Jay mutters after a moment. “I’m being totally selfish, aren’t I?”

“A little,” Heeseung says teasingly, earning a small laugh from Jay. He sees the way the tension starts to leave his body, his shoulders dropping, his muscles relaxing, his expression softening. “But I am, too.”

“I’m just… I’m really glad you’re okay, Heeseung.”

“Me too,” he says, and really means it. “And I’m glad you’re here to see for yourself that I am.”

“And this… this Jake guy. I don't need to be worried about that, do I?”

“No,” Heeseung says softly, maybe a bit fondly. “I just want him to feel that freedom I'm feeling, too. That's it.”

Jay nods. “Okay. I – I trust you. I'll try to trust you.”

Heeseung laughs, reaching over and patting Jay’s leg where it restlessly shakes, a clear sign that he’s still anxious, despite all of Heeseung’s attempts at reassurance. But it’s fine. It’s progress.

“So, uh,” Jay starts, clearing his throat, averting his gaze to anything that isn’t Heeseung. “His friend. Sunghoon. What’s his deal?”

“Other than probably hating you?”

“Man,” Jay groans. “You think I blew it already?”

“Oh, totally,” Heeseung snorts. “Sunghoon already doesn’t take well to strangers. But a stranger that rolls up in a car like that? You’re screwed, dude.”

“It’s a rental,” Jay says weakly. “It was all they had.”

“I’m sure it was,” Heeseung says dryly. “And I’m sure he’ll warm up to you.”

“You think?” Jay asks, unable to hide his eagerness.

“If you’re nice to Jake,” Heeseung says coolly. “Otherwise, you’ll be enemy number one. Trust me.”

Jay pauses, pressing his lips into a tight line, furrowing his brows, seemingly troubled by the idea of being nice to the person he’s likely still convinced Heeseung is going to throw everything away for. He doesn’t protest, in the end, but he definitely doesn’t agree, either.

He’s not entirely wrong, to be fair. Heeseung probably would throw everything away, if Jake asked him to. He’s done it before, for much less. But Jake would never ask.

All he’s asking for is a ride. And even if Heeseung was expecting something in exchange, Jake would have already given him more than enough. He’s more than enough, all on his own.

He just needs Jay to see that.

Jay joins Heeseung and Jake in the back of the truck this time, anxiously gripping the side of the truck bed as he interrogatively grills Jake, not unlike the way Sunghoon had questioned Heeseung on his intentions the day before.

Heeseung doesn’t stop him, because Jake doesn’t seem bothered by it – in fact, Heeseung’s pretty sure he finds the whole thing quite amusing, based on the poorly concealed grin he’s hiding by pressing the back of his hand into his mouth. Jay never knows when to call it quits, of course, so Heeseung has to gently mutter, too far, Jay, a few times, but other than that, he stays out of it. The least he can do, after everything he’s put Jay through, is let him play overprotective best friend for a while.

The drive to the next town is surprisingly long. They really are isolated, in Dead End, in their not-so-quiet town. And Jake’s house sits above it, at the top of a hill with no cell service, away from the rest of them, away from safety, however relative it may be.

Heeseung has to figure something out. He can’t let Jake go home tonight.

Jake had gone to Sunghoon’s place to change, apparently having some of his own belongings stashed there – and Heeseung feels a small sliver of hope at the idea that Jake has some kind of contingency plan in place, just in case – because Heeseung’s fairly confident in assuming that the slightly cropped t-shirt and the raw-hem, low-rise baggy jean shorts don’t belong to Sunghoon, although the brown cowboy boots might. He looks far more himself than he did earlier that day, when he was in his church garb, stuffy and restricting and all the things that Jake should never be subjected to.

His hair, once again back to its slightly long and fluffy state, is tied back into a small ponytail, leaving only the tendrils that curl in at the base of his neck. In the sun, the brown shade looks even more warm, almost golden, and Heeseung wonders if he has to dye it to that shade, or if he was just made to be sunshine personified, warm and crawling across Heeseung’s skin, burning it and leaving a mark that he knows will outlast this weekend.

He hopes it does, at least. He hopes that, if they do part ways at the end of the road ahead of them, Heeseung will still be able to see Jake in the dusting of red across his own nose, that the skin won’t peel and replace itself with something that’s never felt Jake’s warmth before.

There will be other warmth in his life, at least – he’s going back to sunny California, after all, and Jay will be there, overbearing as ever but still a source of warmth, once Heeseung gets comfortable letting him in again – but he can’t imagine any of it will ever feel the way this does.

Heeseung came out here in search of life, of something worth living it for, and he knows he found it. But now all he can do is worry about what happens when he loses it, when Jake inevitably realizes that Heeseung doesn’t have nearly as much warmth to offer him, when he inevitably starts to feel like a shadow over Jake’s endlessly bright future and decides he’s better off without him in it.

It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.

“Where are we going, anyway?” Jay asks, finally putting an end to his interrogation, turning his attention to their surroundings. “There’s no way it’s this far to the nearest town.”

“The nearest town doesn’t have anything, ‘cept a gas station and a gun range,” Jake informs him. “Not to mention, everyone there knows us.”

“What are we hiding from?” Jay presses, suspicious all over again. Heeseung sighs.

“My daddy,” Jake says simply. “He’s tryna kill Heeseung.”

Jay’s eyes go wide, and he looks over at Heeseung with clear panic all over his face.

“He’s joking,” Heeseung clarifies. “I think.”

Jake just giggles, and shrugs, and leaves it at that.

Jay’s worries are quieted – at least, a bit, because Jay’s worries are never truly quieted – only a minute later, when Riki takes a right turn that has them finally heading towards signs of human life again, pulling into a gravel parking lot of a run-down looking diner another minute after that. Small rocks kick up behind them as he backs into an unmarked parking spot, and there are two men leaning against the tailgates of their respective trucks beside them, their attention drawn by the raucous noise of gravel under tires and the radio blasting the angsty rock radio station Riki keeps it set to, one that Heeseung is sure doesn’t get a lot of airtime in this particular area.

It’d be hard for them not to draw attention, with Jay and Heeseung and even Jungwon’s apparent distinct city-boy auras, and the varying degrees of skin being shown by Jake and Sunoo, and the scowls on Riki and Sunghoon’s faces, but still. He can feel the two men watching them closely as they walk by, and then he feels all eyes land on them as they file through the propped open, flimsy screen door of the diner.

“This place is fucking scary, dude,” Jay mutters under his breath as they fall to the back of the group, with Jake and Sunoo leading, marching over to a booth without any hesitance, heads held high. Heeseung just smiles a bit, and shrugs. Jay has no idea how scary it can get, how scary it has gotten, but he also doesn’t know the way all of them navigate it with ease and confidence anyways.

They pile into the one booth in the diner that can seat the seven of them, knees and elbows bumping accidentally as they slide down and make room for each other, and then on purpose when Sunoo and Riki get irritated enough with each other to start making intentional jabs. It stops just before it escalates, when Sunghoon reaches past where Jungwon sits beside him and smacks Riki across the back of the head, telling him to stop fuckin’ around in a sharp tone.

“You always take his side,” Riki says, with a childish pout that Heeseung isn’t used to seeing on him. He looks younger than usual, like this, scolded by the group’s de facto father figure – not that Sunghoon would ever admit to holding that title – and throwing a small tantrum over it.

“My hero,” Sunoo swoons overdramatically, kissing the palm of his hand and blowing it in Sunghoon’s direction. Sunghoon catches it and mimes crumpling it like paper. “Ugh, nevermind. I just remembered why we broke up.”

“Keep your voice down,” Jake reminds them from behind the menu he’s holding up to his face. He knows how to walk the line, which only makes the times that he refuses to, that he insists on standing up to his father and then returning home and putting himself in harm’s way, that much more frustrating.

And he’d like to do something with that frustration – namely, find a way to convince Jake that they have something better to do tonight, to keep him occupied and safe – but then Jay nudges him in the ribs, not in an attempt to start another war, just to get his attention.

He leans closer, ducks his head down like he’s trying to go completely unnoticed even as he nods towards Sunoo, and asks, “Are they…?”

Unfortunately for Jay, though, he doesn’t know how perceptive Sunghoon can be yet. Heeseung thinks he’s probably about to find out.

“Is that a problem?” Sunghoon snaps, his brows furrowing in annoyance as he leans forward, staring Jay down like he’s trying to break him mentally.

Jay, naturally, crumbles instantly. “No, no,” he says frantically, sitting up a little straighter. “No, of course not, I’m – I’ve had – I’m not –”

“Hoonie, you’re scarin’ Heeseung’s little friend,” Sunoo scolds.

“Little?” Jay repeats helplessly, like he’s just watched his dreams of being taken seriously by Sunghoon get crushed under one of Sunoo’s converse.

“If we spook him too much, he’ll take off and take California with him.”

Jay looks confused, until Heeseung points at himself, and says, “I’m California.”

“Sure,” Jay says slowly. “Well, if anything, I’d take off and leave Heeseung behind to fend for himself.”

Heeseung snorts, knowing full well that he’s not even remotely telling the truth. And it seems like the rest of them know it, too – because they were there for the argument earlier, the one where Jay made it clear he was leaving with Heeseung come hell or high water – because Sunoo and Jungwon share a knowing glance, and Jake presses his lips together, still hidden behind his menu from everyone but Heeseung beside him, concealing his amusement with Jay’s lie.

“You should've come earlier, actually,” Jungwon chimes in. “There’s not much to do around here on a Sunday night.”

“No?”

“Nah, everyone’s busy repenting for what they did Saturday night, and swearing to god it won’t happen again,” Riki mutters in a mocking tone.

“Shut it,” Sunghoon bluntly reminds him of their setting and the appropriate way to speak of god in it – just in time for a waitress to approach their table with a pen and a notepad.

None of them – except Jake – have even looked at the menu, so it takes them a minute to pull themselves together and decide what they want, but she’s patient with them, calling them all sweetheart and even pinching Riki’s cheek when she recognizes him from when he towed her truck to his dad’s shop a few months back. He blushes furiously red, and presses his lips in a line like he’s trying to physically stop himself from protesting, but he doesn’t shrug her off – nor does he shrug Sunoo off, when he takes it upon himself to pinch his other cheek a moment later.

“You’re not from here, are you, honey?” She asks Heeseung before he’s even had a chance to open his mouth, let alone speak and try to order, gesturing between him and Jay.

“Uh, no,” Heeseung answers sheepishly. “We’re not.”

“We don’t get many tourists out here,” she says, and it’s not an accusation, but Heeseung’s stomach sinks with dread regardless.

“Yeah, we’re just – passing through,” he says, a bit weakly, hoping she’ll leave it there. He doesn’t want any more attention drawn to them, even though it’s a little late for that, at this point.

Luckily, though, she does leave it, clearly sensing Heeseung’s unease and just scribbling down his request for a simple cheeseburger and fries, promising them it’ll only be a little while before retreating back to the kitchen. Heeseung lets out a sigh of relief he didn’t even know he was holding in.

“Ah, got it,” Sunoo declares, snapping his fingers together, sitting up a little straighter in excitement as the waitress brings all their drinks over and distributes them. “We’ll take ‘em cow tippin’.”

Heeseung snorts, knowing by now that Sunoo’s suggestion was merely a joke, but when he looks over at Jay, he’s blinking in surprise, eyes wide and a bit fearful.

“That’s – that’s really a thing?”

“He’s messing with you,” Heeseung informs him, before Jay embarrasses himself too severely.

Sunoo sighs, slumping into his seat. “You’re ruinin’ all my fun, California.”

“Well, whatever y’all end up doing,” Jake starts, speaking up for the first time in a while, crossing his arms over his chest, like he’s trying to seem a bit stern, “You’ll have to do it without the truck. And without Heeseung or I.”

Heeseung looks at him, then, and it’s his turn to look completely and utterly stunned. He’s about to question what other plans he’s being included in without prior knowledge, but he’s interrupted before he even gets the chance.

“Oh, gross,” Sunghoon mutters disapprovingly.

“Without my truck, you mean?” Riki asks, with an irritated frown and a tilt of his head, leveling Jake with an unamused stare.

“You’re lettin’ me borrow it,” Jake says simply, sweetly.

“Last I checked, you didn’t even ask, and I definitely didn’t agree.”

“There’s good money in it for you,” Jake assures him.

“Fifty,” Riki requests.

“Twenty-five,” Jake lowballs, and Heeseung wouldn’t consider that good money, but then – Riki doesn’t actually seem like he plans on denying Jake anything he asks for, or in this case, demands. After all, they have the same goal – keep Jake from going home tonight, keep him from being in harms’ way. This, whatever this is, whatever Jake has planned, seems as good of a way to do that as any.

“Forty-five.”

“Forty, and that’s my final offer,” Jake says firmly.

“Deal,” Riki accepts, reaching across the table and shaking Jake’s hand. Heeseung, still a little unsure of what exactly was happening, takes a poorly timed sip of the Coke he’d ordered, only to choke on it when Riki continues, “Forty bucks, and you gotta promise not to fuck on my seats. Do it in the back, if you have to.”

Heeseung sputters out a wet cough, and a bit of soda shoots out of his nose. Jay slaps a hand down on the middle of his back, and Heeseung can practically feel the amusement rolling off of him in waves – clearly, he’s starting to come around on this whole situation, if he’s finding humour in the idea of Heeseung practically being sold off to Jake for a night.

But Heeseung, despite his shock and his brief brush with death, is fine with it, too. It’s kind of ideal, even if the blatant discussion of it has him a little low on oxygen and a little red in the cheeks, because at least he knows where Jake will be tonight, and he gets to be with him.

Jake laughs, tipping his head back in a way that makes Heeseung choke again, just a bit, as he watches him. He shakes Riki’s hand again, and says, “We’ll do our very best.”

“Jay,” Sunoo starts, practically hanging out of the window of the truck in order to talk to them in the back, unfazed by the fact that it’s still moving, pulling into the driveway of Riki’s house, albeit rather slowly for once. “You any good at poker? We’re s’posed to have a rematch, ‘cus someone was cheating last time we played.”

“Pretty sure all of you were cheating,” Jake mutters, as Jay turns to face Sunoo, a bit startled.

“I’m – alright,” Jay answers, noncommittally.

Heeseung knows he’s terrible, because he doesn’t even understand the concept of a poker face, of not wearing all his cards on his metaphorical sleeve, in more ways than one. Whatever Jay is feeling, when he’s feeling it, everyone can tell with ease – or, at least, Heeseung can tell.

That’s why he pulls him aside, once they’re all out of the truck, once Jake and Riki are in the middle of some kind of staring contest as he holds the keys above his head and just out of reach, and asks, “You’re fine if I leave you with them for a while, right? Sunoo can take you back to the motel whenever you want to go. I just – I kind of need to keep Jake from going home tonight. It’s a long story,” he says, a bit sheepishly, his cheeks warming a bit at the thought of what they’d done that morning to get Jake in trouble.

Jay snorts, and shrugs. “Yeah, you go keep him busy, Heeseung,” he says, suggestively, with a sleazy grin.

Heeseung punches him gently in the shoulder, and it turns into a real, easygoing smile – a rare sight from Jay, at least, a rare thing to be directed at him. He gets it, though. This place, these people, had a similar effect on him, in a similarly small amount of time.

“Honestly,” Jay continues after a moment, glancing over at where Sunghoon is already setting up a poker game in the bed of one of the many broken down trucks littering Riki’s yard, “I think I might be able to win Sunghoon over.”

Heeseung laughs, and it comes out more fond than teasing, even though he definitely means to tease him. “I bet you can,” he says dryly. “Go work your magic, dude.”

“Go work yours,” Jay counters, with another sleazy waggle of his eyebrows, and then he’s off, walking over to Sunghoon and surely coming up with any good excuse to sit beside him for the game.

And that was, without a doubt, the least burdened, the least heavy conversation he’s had with Jay in years. While he was gone, while all Jay could do was worry about him, every phone call laced with concern, every brief and increasingly rare reunion for holiday breaks spent trying to pry information out of Heeseung like he was being interrogated for a crime. At a certain point, Heeseung’s friendship with Jay became less of a friendship, more of a hostage situation, and he wasn’t sure they could ever really get back what they once had, the carefree, easy friendship of their youth.

For the first time in a long time, he thinks they might be able to. And the relief is enough to have him a little giddy, unable to hide his pleased grin as he approaches Jake and Riki, catching the tail end of their conversation.

“You agreed to forty,” Jake points out.

“And now I’m back up to fifty,” Riki says simply. “Come on. I need it for something. You’ll thank me when you know what it is.”

“Then just tell me,” Jake huffs, making an attempt at reaching for the keys again, but Riki’s quicker – and taller – than him, stretching even more and holding them further away before he can make contact. “I swear, you’re the most annoying –”

“I got it,” Heeseung assures them, pulling a crumpled ten dollar bill out of his pocket and holding it out in offering. Riki glares at it, like he’s perfectly willing to swindle Jake out of every dollar he has to his name, but is offended by the mere existence of Heeseung’s money – but he takes it anyway, after only a moment’s delay, seemingly entirely for dramatic effect.

“Was that so hard?” Riki grins, shoving the bill into his own pocket. “Well, pleasure doin’ business with you both. Bring her back in one piece.” He slaps the side of the truck affectionately, and then he’s gone, taking his winnings and setting off to, most likely, bet them all away.

“That kid, I swear,” Jake mutters, shaking his head in a way that does nothing to hide his affection for him. And then he looks at Heeseung, and smiles, and – right on cue, Heeseung’s heart starts beating a little faster in his chest. “Well, hopefully you’ll get your money’s worth, at least.”

Heeseung wrinkles his nose in distaste. “Don’t say it like that.”

Jake laughs, delighted, reaching over to slap Heeseung’s shoulder teasingly, before moving to the driver’s side of the truck and opening it. “You comin’, honey?” He asks, when Heeseung doesn’t move from where he’s standing, still a bit stunned by the whole thing.

He moves then, though, because he’s not going to be able to deny Jake anything, let alone this, a perfect setup for his plan to keep him far away from his own home – and, admittedly, keeping him close instead doesn’t sound like a bad side effect of that plan at all.

Jake is not a very good driver.

Heeseung doesn’t want to be mean, but he’s really just glad that he’ll be the one doing all the driving when they leave Dead End, and he’d be gently suggesting that he do it while they’re still here too, but – Jake didn’t actually tell him where they’re going. He didn’t ask, to be fair, because he does trust Jake, even as he hits every pothole along the way, even as he misses a few stop signs entirely, going at least ten over the speed limit as they fly past the sign marking the town limit for the third time that day.

“Not even going to ask if I’m takin’ you somewhere to murder you, this time?” Jake asks, ending the brief stretch of silence that Heeseung didn’t quite know how to break.

“No,” Heeseung shrugs. “If it’s just you, I’m not worried. You wouldn’t even be able to lift my body out of the truck to dump me somewhere, so. At least I know you’d get caught.”

Jake laughs, bright and a bit shocked, and it’s enough to have the truck swerving into the oncoming lane for a brief moment. Luckily, there’s no one around for miles and miles, but still. Heeseung grips the safety handle above his door, just for peace of mind.

“I’m more worried about you killing both of us, at this rate,” he adds.

“Oh, c’mon,” Jake glances over at him and sighs. “Not you too. I’m a great driver. I don't technically have a license, but I’ll get us there in one piece. That’s all that matters.”

“I’m not so sure,” Heeseung mutters.

“Well, I guess I’ll see how good your driving is once we hit the road,” Jake says smugly, and then his smile wavers, just for a moment. He goes quiet again.

Heeseung doesn’t prompt him, doesn’t try to make empty conversation, partially because he’d feel a lot better if Jake kept his eyes on the road, partially because he’s not sure he really knows what to say.

He can’t help but feel guilty, a little, about being the one to take Jake away from this town. He knows it’s a good thing, that it’s something Jake begged for, something the people around him have described as a miracle, but – then he sees that, the wobble of Jake’s bottom lip, and he wonders if it might be a little too soon, if Jake might need a bit more time to say goodbye.

If he asked, Heeseung thinks he’d stay a little longer, and give Jake that time. If he asked, he thinks he’d even come back in a couple of months, drive all this way just to pick Jake up, just to give him the chance to have one last full summer with his friends before they all part ways. But then again, really, if Jake asked him to do that, if Heeseung obliged, all he’d really be doing is making the people that love Jake sick with worry, making them continue to witness his pain even as he tries to cover it up. And he’d be including himself in that category, too.

So, then, maybe he’s just being selfish. Maybe he’s taking advantage of Jake's pain, in a way, and that makes him feel sick with something entirely else, makes his stomach turn in a way he knows isn’t caused by Jake’s driving.

Maybe he feels a bit guilty about all of it, as Jake pulls off onto a dirt road enclosed by trees, similar to the one they’d taken to get to the creek, but a little more cleared out. Jake only has two days left in his hometown, at most, and yet he’s here, with Heeseung, and he can’t quite understand why.

If Jake is just trying to guarantee that Heeseung will take him with him, even if he’s not quite ready to go, then he doesn’t know what he did to give him the impression that he has to. Because, after all, if he asked, Heeseung would come back. If he feels like he owes Heeseung something, if he’s just trying to repay a debt by borrowing his friend’s truck and getting them time alone, then he definitely doesn’t know what he did to give him the impression that he has to do that.

Because Heeseung thinks, at this point, he owes Jake a great deal more than Jake owes him.

Jake doesn’t owe him anything, really. And he likes the idea that that has nothing to do with it, that he’s spending his precious time with Heeseung because he wants to. It’s a nice idea, but that doesn’t mean it’s true.

“We, uh,” Heeseung starts, unsure of what he was even going to say until it’s too late, until he’s already spoken, and Jake’s attention flickers over to him for a brief moment. “We don’t have to… do anything, you know. I’m really not expecting –”

“I know,” Jake says, softly, and then sits up a little straighter, rolling his shoulders back and smiling, like he’d been emboldened by the words, like he's a bit high on them. “Yeah, I know. And – y’know what? I don’t think I want to.”

Heeseung, despite technically just being rejected by Jake, smiles too, and finds that it’s entirely genuine. “Cool,” he says.

“It is cool,” Jake confirms, then glances over at Heeseung again, nearly missing a rather sharp turn, but looking entirely unfazed by the way he’d almost wrapped them around a tree. “I don’t think I’ve ever been able to say that to someone before.”

Heeseung’s chest aches with pity, but he doesn’t let it show on his face. He just keeps smiling, because Jake is smiling, because he gets the feeling that this is kind of a moment for him, driving to a secluded area with a boy and knowing there’s no expectations, or not caring, even if there are. “You can say it to me,” he assures him.

“I mean,” Jake starts, bringing the truck to an abrupt stop, turning the wheel a few times and starting to back up, which adds a whole new level of danger to the situation, but Heeseung just smiles through it and hopes that it’s not tinged with anxiety, “Not that I don’t think it’d be a real fun time, or anything. And I do like you lots.”

“I like you, too,” Heeseung says easily.

“I know,” Jake laughs a bit. “That’s why I thought – maybe you’d just want to spend some time with me anyway.”

“You were right,” he confirms, earning another small, pleased laugh from Jake.

The truck comes to another screeching halt, and Heeseung’s not sure where Jake has brought them, because his view is inhibited by the thick groves of trees that line the dirt road, but then Jake unbuckles, and gets out, calling through the open window as he walks to the back of the truck, “Hurry up, now, or we’ll miss it.”

Heeseung obliges, clambering out of the passenger’s side door as soon as he’s unbuckled, looking over at where Jake is already standing, at the foot of the truck bed, gesturing to where the sun is slowly dipping below a small range of mountains, ones that are clearly far from them, but perfectly visible from the clearing on the hill Jake had driven them to the top of. The whole sky is lit with hues of pinks, oranges, and purples, and just like when Jake showed him in the stars, awe overtakes him, and Heeseung’s breath catches in his throat.

“Thought you’d like it,” Jake says proudly, and when Heeseung looks back at him – it feels right, to look at Jake again, even with the stunning view in front of him – he’s already settled down in the very back of the truck bed, with a folded blanket in his lap, even though it had barely even begun to cool down yet. “And I just… wanted to see it one more time, I guess.”

Heeseung frowns, just a bit, and moves to join him, sitting beside him and making sure he’s not too close, not even letting their knees bump, making no moves to inch closer. It feels a bit silly to shy away now, considering all the ways they've touched each other over the last two days, but he doesn’t want Jake to feel like he’s going against his words, doesn't want him to think he really does have expectations for how this night will go, contrary to his assurance that he doesn’t.

Jake doesn’t seem to share in his apprehension, anyway. He slides closer to Heeseung, and leans against his side, letting his head drop onto his shoulder and keeping it there, wrapping both arms around one of Heeseung’s like he’s trying to make sure he can't put space between them again. He's not planning on it. He’s following Jake’s lead, and he won’t lie and say he doesn’t want him close.

“Are you…” Heeseung starts, fixing his eyes back on the picturesque view, now that he can’t see Jake’s face anymore, “Are you sure you’re ready to leave?”

Jake doesn’t say anything, for a while. When he does, the words are soft, barely audible over the sound of the forest, of the trees rustling, of the bugs chirping. “No,” he says. “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready. But – it’s time, anyway.”

And Heeseung wants to follow his question up with another, far more pathetic one, but he doesn’t. He wants to ask, are you sure you want to leave with me, but he doesn’t. He gets pretty close, but Jake speaks again before he gets the chance.

“What about you?” He asks, and it takes Heeseung a moment to understand what he means.

“Was I ready to leave Washington, you mean?”

“Yeah,” Jake confirms. “Was it easy to say goodbye?”

Heeseung thinks about it for a moment. “Yeah, actually. It was. But – I told you I didn’t have much to leave behind in California, right? In Washington, I had… nothing. Nothing at all.”

Jake nods, and Heeseung feels the movement of it on his shoulder. “You did say you weren’t happy there,” he says, carefully, like he’s concerned about startling Heeseung. “But your friend seemed real worried about you. I thought maybe there was something else going on.”

“Your friends are worried about you, too,” Heeseung points out, allowing himself this one small deflection, this last-ditch attempt at getting out of letting Jake dig deeper into his past.

“Yeah,” Jake says, seemingly unfazed, continuing after a moment, “Because I’ll die, if I stay here.”

Heeseung hums in acknowledgement, and takes a deep breath to the best of his ability, because his lungs feel like they’re starting to close up, like they’re still trying to keep it all in, even as Heeseung resigns himself to finally letting some of it out. “That’s why Jay was worried about me, too,” he admits. “Because I was going to die, if I stayed there.”

“I thought so,” Jake says softly. “He said – you were gonna leave everything behind.”

Heeseung nods, pressing his lips into a tight line for a moment, giving the words time to sit on the tip of his tongue, to get them ready to be spoken aloud for the first time since he called Jay, sitting on the floor of his bathroom with his head in hands, an empty bottle of pills on the tile floor beside him and his own desperate vomit in the toilet, feeling like each small admission of needing help was ripping his throat to shreds. This time, for some reason, they come out a little easier.

“I was,” he says. “Like I told you, I – dropped out, because my grades weren’t good enough to graduate. And my ex, we were already broken up for a few months, but then she was gone, because she moved back home, and I realized I didn’t really have anyone else, because I wasn’t really talking to Jay or my parents anymore. I just… I wasn’t in a good place, I guess. I hadn’t been in a good place, for a while, but I didn’t fully realize it until I was alone. And I just – I started thinking about the idea of going home, and telling my parents that I didn’t graduate, after lying to them for months, and I knew I couldn’t, but I also knew I couldn’t be stuck in Washington with – with myself anymore, and I just…” he trails off, taking a moment to find the right words. In the end, he doesn’t. He just skips over them entirely, and says, “I tried to… I just wanted to make it all stop. And then I – I freaked out, and I called for help, and then called Jay, and he told me to come stay with him. He wanted me to fly over there, but I decided to drive.”

Jake hums, and holds his arm a little tighter, like he’s encouraging Heeseung to keep talking, but he doesn’t, not for a few moments. He just stares at the sky, growing darker with every passing second, and realizes that it doesn’t trouble him, the sun setting. He knows it’ll come back in the morning, and everything will be light again. And, besides – the sky doesn’t seem nearly as dark as it used to, not anymore.

“I thought, you know… if I couldn’t find something to live for in the places I’d already been, I should try to see something new. I thought maybe I’d find – I don’t know. Proof, maybe? That there’s still good out there? Maybe that sounds silly –”

“It doesn’t,” Jake assures him. “I look for that kind of proof every day,” he admits, “Even though I’m not really supposed to. I’m supposed to believe without proof, right? But it’s not always that easy.”

Heeseung nods. “It’s not,” he agrees. “It was kind of impossible, for me.”

“Well, have you found it yet, then?” Jake asks, with that sweet, hopeful tone Heeseung is so used to hearing from him. He can’t imagine how he does it, how he stays so hopeful, but he’s glad he does.

He’s glad he does, because when Heeseung answers, “Yeah. I think I have,” it’s not a lie. He’s found all the proof he could ever need, here, in this town, in the hope in Jake’s voice, still there, even after all that’s been done to try and take it from him.

Jake is looking at him again, and Heeseung manages to turn and face him properly again, wanting to see the hope in his eyes, too. He’s smiling, softly, knowingly, like he understands the unspoken implication of Heeseung’s words, like he feels it, the same thing that Heeseung is feeling. “I’m glad,” he says, and Heeseung can tell he really means it. “And I’m really glad you made it here, Heeseung.”

Heeseung smiles too, but he knows it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I am, too.”

“And not just –” Jake starts, cutting himself off, his brows furrowing like he’s thinking hard about what he wants to say. “And not just because you’re taking me with you. I’m glad you’re here, you know?”

Heeseung nods.

“And I… I think you did just about the bravest thing someone can do, still being here,” he tells him, conviction overtaking the hope in his voice, like all his energy is being spent on making sure Heeseung knows he means what he’s saying. “I know how hard it is to keep going. And I know how hard it is to look for proof when you’ve convinced yourself there is none. But you – you did it. You made it out. That’s really somethin’, Heeseung.”

“You’re making it out, too,” Heeseung tells him.

Jake smiles, and nods. “Maybe… maybe we’ll find a little bit more proof, on our way to California.”

Heeseung knows he will, at least, and he won’t need to look very far. He hopes Jake finds it too, but Heeseung will have all the proof he needs, all the proof he could ever need, that hope and life and good people are still out there to find, and he’ll have it right beside him, in his passenger’s seat.

“I had my first kiss here, you know,” Jake tells him, once there are no traces of the sun left in the sky, nothing but inky darkness and the faint glow of the stars surrounding them. It’s hard to even make out his features, even though he’s so close, now that they’re laying down and facing each other. Jake’s curled in on himself, his head resting on a balled up hoodie they found under the seat of Riki’s truck, and Heeseung’s resting his cheek on his palm, trying his best to defy the darkness and get a good look at Jake’s face, anyway.

“Oh, yeah?” Heeseung prompts, unable to fight the smile growing on his own face. “Did you steal Riki’s truck for that, too?”

“No,” Jake snorts. “Riki woulda been like, thirteen. Of course, that didn’t stop him from tryin’ to be my first kiss, but someone else beat him to it. He was on the football team. He had a girlfriend, although I didn’t know that at the time.”

Heeseung’s smile wavers, and falls, and his lips pull into a small frown, instead. Even though he can barely see him, Jake still reaches out and brushes his thumb against his lips, like he’s trying to encourage him to smile again, even as his story takes on a bittersweet tone that leans far more bitter than sweet. Heeseung manages to, but it’s still achingly sad, and not at all convincing.

He wishes all of Jake’s stories were a little happier than they always turn out to be. He deserves to have more stories with happy endings.

“When someone starts drivin’ up here on a date, we all know what it means,” Jake tells him. “It’s like – you’ll be having a perfectly pleasant evenin’, and then they take the turn onto this road, and you’re like… oh. Alright. And next thing you know, they’re leaning in, and – I never was good at sayin’ no to people, even though I’m supposed to. And this guy – he was really into it, knowing he was my first kiss. He tried to go further than that, but I told him I was waiting for marriage, and he… he liked that, too. I got outta the car and walked the whole hour back to my house,” he laughs, a bit, and shakes his head, almost like he’s reminiscing on a fond memory. Heeseung laughs too, but mostly, it’s with relief.

“Good for you. That’s – awful,” he says, after a moment.

“Oh, sure,” Jake says, with a small shrug. “Everyone’s awful, around here. But they all show up to church on Sunday and pretend they’re not. I didn’t wanna be pretending like they do, but – like I said, I’m not good at sayin’ no. And… I liked feeling wanted, y’know? I mean, I knew what they were there for. They all wanted the pastor’s son to corrupt, or the – the damsel in distress to save, and I’m not that, but when I’d give them that, and play into it a bit, they’d get all weird about it. Like… they only wanted me when they thought I had no agency of my own, y’know? I was the only one that wasn’t allowed to pretend. Only they got to decide who I was.”

Heeseung nods, feeling a brief flare of anger under his skin. “You deserve better than that.”

Jake smiles, just a bit, and doesn’t agree or disagree with Heeseung’s statement. He just pauses, for a moment, and then continues, “It’s the same with my folks, too. They decided that I was happy, that I was good, and pure, and they don’t care if it’s true or not. They only care that I make it look like it’s true, you know? As long as I’m doing what everyone expects me to be doing, that’s all that matters – but then that’s not enough, either. I’m never convincing enough. Never real enough. It’s… exhausting, honestly.”

“I get it,” Heeseung says, because he really, really does. He can’t think of a time in his life that he was more exhausted than when he was doing exactly what he was supposed to do, what was expected of him, trying to be the perfect son, friend, boyfriend, student. He was never more tired, never more frustrated, hopeless.

Jake’s expression softens impossibly more, his eyes getting a bit shiny, reflecting the small amount of light around them coming from the moon, reducing the thing in the sky to nothing more than two white dots in the middle of his irises. Heeseung thinks it’s just as beautiful, just as hard to look away from as the real thing is. Maybe even more so.

“Yeah,” he says. “You do, don’t you?”

Heeseung, unprepared for the attention to shift to him, feels his face flush, too. He’s warm all over, now, every inch of him on fire, and all Jake is doing is talking, laying beside him without touching him, looking at him with round, shiny eyes. In the end, all he can manage is a small shrug.

“You’re not like them,” Jake whispers after a moment.

“I’m… I’m not perfect,” Heeseung says weakly.

“No,” Jake says gently. “Of course not. I’m not either, not even close. But – that’s the thing. I don’t feel like I need to pretend to be perfect around you. I can just be me. Like… even with my friends, they’re – they’re great. I love them. But I can’t let them see me beat down by life, you know? They already waste too much time worryin’ about me.”

“It’s not a waste,” Heeseung says quickly. “They love you.”

“I don’t know why they do,” Jake admits, his voice quiet, a bit hoarse, like it’s difficult for him to get the words out. “I feel like all I do is hurt them. Just… just by existing around them.”

“I get that, too,” Heeseung assures him, keeping his own voice soft. “I tried to push Jay away, for a long time, because of that feeling. But – it didn’t work with him. All it did was hurt him more, and he still loved me anyway. You can’t stop them from loving you. Even if it hurts. They get to be the ones to decide that it’s worth it.”

He’s not really sure where it comes from, his words, and how true they sound. They shouldn’t sound true, because he’s not even sure he believes them, but they come to him easily, and they feel unquestionable, undoubtable. Maybe because he needed to hear them. Maybe because, if they weren’t coming from his own mouth, he would doubt them, until he managed to break them down, rearranging them until they spell out a message that aligns more with the way he’s lived his life up to this point.

But he doesn’t want to live that way, not anymore. When someone wants to love him, he wants to let them. It’s not easy, but he has to try, because being alone isn’t an option.

For a while, Jake doesn’t say anything. He just stares at Heeseung, in a way that actually starts to creep him out, a bit, with the shadows on his face making him look a little less real, a little less like Jake – and then, he inches closer, and presses his face into Heeseung’s chest, wrapping his arms around his middle, and he’s himself again, warm as ever.

Heeseung’s heart beats fast and loud enough that he’s concerned it might be bothering Jake where he’s pressed against it – and then he lifts his head, but he’s smiling, still soft, still sweet, still hopeful, and he leans in, pressing a slow, barely-there kiss to Heeseung’s lips.

Heeseung lets him, for a moment – because he wants to be able to let him, difficult as it may be – but in the end, he still pulls away, putting a hand on Jake’s shoulder when he tries to chase him. “I don’t…” he starts, licking his lips like he’s trying to get the taste of Jake off of them, so it doesn’t tempt him. “I’m more like those other guys than you think, Jake,” he says, because he has to say it, because Jake has to know, has to have all the information, damning as it may be, before he decides whether or not he wants to kiss Heeseung.

Because he isn’t any better than them, not really. When the others call him Jake’s miracle, his saviour, he likes it, likes the way it makes him feel like he’s worth something. When Jake got on his knees for him, when he let him touch him outside of the bar, he wanted it, had been wanting it, and if Jake decides that he actually does want to do what everyone else comes here to do, Heeseung knows he won’t be able to resist.

He doesn’t want Jake to feel used. That’s the last thing he wants. But he can’t deny that Heeseung kind of, sort of feels like he’s using him, sometimes.

He waits for Jake to understand that, to somehow see through Heeseung’s skull, to sift through all the proof he’d surely find in his mind that he isn’t nearly as good as he thinks he is, as Heeseung has surely tricked him into thinking he is.

But, then again – maybe he should give Jake a little more credit, like he asked him to, when he was on his knees in the church for him, willingly. Maybe he should give himself a little more credit, even though he’s never really known how to do that.

Because he smiles, the same way he did before, untainted by Heeseung’s admission of guilt, and says, simple and firm, “You’re not like them. But – even if you were, then I still get to decide whether or not I want to be hurt by you. Right? It’s my choice. I decide whether or not it’s worth it, and – it’s worth it, Heeseung.”

And – apparently, he’d found a way to doubt his own words anyway, in the end. But now that they’re coming from Jake, in his thick, lispy accent, Heeseung can’t seem to find the same room for doubt, can’t seem to bring himself to deny them.

The least he can do is give Jake a choice. The least he can do is let him decide for himself, because whether or not he’s better than those guys, he knows he wants to be. And maybe that’ll be enough for Jake, even though it’s not even close to what he truly deserves.

Jake decides, makes his choice, and leans in again, and Heeseung lets him. He lets Jake crash into him, lets him take two fistfuls of his shirt and pull him closer, and he kisses him back like he’s trying to devour him, because he can’t help himself, because he wants to. Jake doesn’t seem to mind, at least, meeting it enthusiastically, reconnecting their mouths every time Heeseung attempts to pull away, to give him another moment of pause in case he’s changed his mind, in case Heeseung has gone too far by scraping his teeth against his bottom lip, by letting his tongue slip into his mouth.

Jake doesn’t change his mind, doesn’t back down. He just pushes Heeseung until he’s laying flat on his back, and crawls on top of him, pressing his palms flat against his chest and kissing him absolutely senseless. And he was already a little bit senseless, already found Jake’s mere existence a bit overwhelming, in the best way possible. But this – having Jake on top of him, all over him, being able to run his hands up and down his waist and the small of his back and properly touch him again, sliding his hands under the hem of his shirt and feeling his soft skin under his fingers – it’s more than Heeseung ever would have even allowed himself to want. It’s certainly more than he thought himself deserving of, but clearly, Jake has made the decision that he is deserving of it, that he’s worth it.

And then – Jake pulls away, and Heeseung lets him. He sits in his lap, and smiles down at him like he’d done something to deserve that, too. It’s an unburdened, unapologetic smile, and Heeseung meets it with a small laugh, bubbling out of him without his permission, like it’d been waiting for the moment he let himself exhale, the moment his lungs didn’t feel so tight, to slip out unnoticed. Jake laughs too, and neither of them can seem to stop, for a minute or two, until they’re breathless all over again, for an entirely different reason.

Jake leans in again, still letting out squeaky giggles, but he presses his face into Heeseung’s neck this time, and just stays there, shifting until he’s laying down again, half on top of Heeseung, half laying beside him.

“I think,” Jake starts, thoughtfully, pressing his face into Heeseung’s shoulder, wrapping around him again, like he’s perfectly content in his embrace, like he’s right where he wants to be, like he’s who he wants to be, without any pressure to pretend. Heeseung hopes that’s the case, at least. He wraps his arms around him too, and it seems to be all the encouragement Jake needs to continue. “I think you’re my proof of good things, too.”

And that’s a lot for one person to be, really. It’s a lot of pressure, but then – it’s pressure he’s been putting on Jake, whether or not he fully realized it, so it’s only fair that Jake put it on him, too.

The pressure was already there, before all of this. This way, at least, if they’re proof enough for each other, if they’re in this together, the weight of it all might feel a little more evenly distributed, and a little easier to bear, for once.

Chapter Text

While they sleep, curled into each other in the truck bed, their blanket discarded at their feet because it never did cool down enough to need it, Heeseung dreams.

He’s not sure that it was a good dream, and he only remembers flashes of it once he stirs, and sees Jake’s sleeping face, inexplicably at peace, not a single trace of worry in his expression. Heeseung doesn’t feel at peace – and for a moment, as he looks back out at the view of the mountain range, which now has the sun shining uncomfortably bright above it, he half expects that he’ll find Jake’s dad there, shotgun in hand, ready to put an end to his son’s streak of misbehaviour once and for all.

There’s nothing there, just the sky and the sun and the mountains, the trees drooping into the view and framing it, the late morning greeting him with their equally unburdened songs.

And yet, Heeseung still gets the feeling that their time has run out.

It’s Monday. They’re still stuck here for another day. Another night, where Jake might try to insist on going home, where Heeseung will desperately try to keep that from happening, where he might fail, and be forced to watch Jake set off to handle something he shouldn’t have to handle alone.

Maybe Riki will come through with a miracle. Maybe, despite Jake’s admission that he’s hardly been allowed to work on cars with his dad, that he’s still only just learning how to fix his own truck, Riki already has Heeseung’s started and ready to go in his yard. Heeseung is supposed to be Jake’s miracle, but he’s not sure that he can be, without one of his own.

Jake stirs, and, like he can tell Heeseung is in need of reassurance before he’s even taken a proper look at him, he smiles, soft and sweet. It’s interrupted by a yawn a moment later, and despite all his worry, Heeseung laughs a bit as he stretches his arms over his head and then slumps down again when he’s done, seemingly trying to fall right back asleep.

“Can we stay up here all day?” Heeseung asks, and Jake looks over at him again, opening one eye and smiling, clearly amused by the meek question.

“Well, sure,” Jake says easily. “But we might get hungry. Riki’s got lotsa things stashed in here, but food’s not one of them. Not after the incident with Sunoo’s apple.”

Heeseung snorts, and shakes his head. “I don’t think I even want to know.”

“You definitely don’t,” Jake says darkly, and then shudders. “If you’re worried, about me goin’ back down there – don’t be. My daddy’ll be in the church all day. He never shows his face at the Fourth celebrations, and my mama doesn’t, either. They’re both allergic to fun.”

Heeseung blinks. He’d forgotten entirely about the holiday, even though it was the whole reason he was stuck here to begin with. It’s strange, the way time is passing here, the way Heeseung is simultaneously so aware of it while it also feels like it’s reached a complete and total standstill. The only way he feels time now, he supposes, is in relation to how much of it Jake has left, how much longer he has to stay, but it doesn’t feel like it’s actually moving, like they’re actually making progress towards the moment he can leave.

But now, it’s the Fourth of July. And something about that doesn’t feel right either, the flashiness of the holiday, all the commotion it brings. He thinks the town should be eerily quiet today, mourning the loss they don’t even know they’re about to go through. But he’s pretty sure that, at the bottom of the hill, he can already hear fireworks being set off. It doesn’t feel right.

They’d slept in, and it must be nearing noon, because Heeseung really is hungry, and he knows that as much as he’d like to, he can’t keep Jake hidden away until it’s time to leave. He’d be no better than his parents, if he kept him from his friends on his last day, if he tried to cage him up.

And, besides. Riki’s high rate of fifty dollars only covered one night with his truck, and Heeseung certainly can’t afford to double that and keep it for another.

So he relents, and lets Jake drive him back down the hill after only another hour or so spent there talking about nothing in particular, gripping the safety handle the whole time and listening to him sing along to the radio under his breath, somehow still peaceful even now that he’s awake, like the morning birds are as they sing. Right now, he looks just as free as they are, even though Heeseung knows he’s still ultimately caged.

Heeseung watches him, and tries to imagine him in California, truly free, no cage in sight. A songbird, stuck in LA traffic, singing along to the radio with all the windows down, at peace – because he’s stuck, but not nearly as stuck as he used to be. He wonders, maybe a bit selfishly, if Heeseung will be in the passenger’s seat then, too, or if Jake will have already flown away from him.

He knows he’ll let him go, even if he won’t want to. Heeseung doesn’t want to just be a new, more comfortable cage for Jake. He wants to see him fly away, even if he knows that means he’ll be left behind.

Heeseung’s stuck with himself, and he’s going to have to get used to that, one way or another. He’s going to have to stop being his own cage, and if he has to be alone sometimes, then he’ll be alone – but never truly alone, because he knows Jay won't let that happen – and he’ll learn to be okay with that.

Dead End is the most lively Heeseung’s ever seen it as they drive through the town centre, the park in the middle of it all, already overflowing with more people than Heeseung even knew lived here.

“People from the other towns nearby usually come here,” Jake tells him as they drive past and keep heading towards Riki’s place to return his truck. Heeseung wonders, not for the first time, if Jake has the ability to read minds. Or his mind, at least. “We don’t have much excitin’ stuff goin’ on, but – they’ve got even less, I guess.”

Heeseung nods, straining his neck to peer past Riki’s house and into the backyard as they pull into the driveway. “I kind of thought they’d all still be here,” he says, looking at the broken down truck they’ve clearly been using for their poker game, the deck of cards still sitting there, the abandoned pillows they used as seating and their hoodies draped over the tailgate.

“Oh, I’m sure they only just left,” Jake laughs a bit, turning the key and shutting the truck off. “Poor Jay probably got suckered into another rematch this morning. They’ll go on forever, if no one puts a stop to it.”

“Something tells me Jay was fine with that,” Heeseung mutters, adding when Jake shoots him a questioning smile, “He’s pretty competitive, too.”

“Oh, and it’s got nothin’ to do with the way he’s been looking at Sunghoon, does it?”

Heeseung is trying to be a better friend, and probably should keep this under wraps for Jay. He’s trying. But he knows he’s going to fail, just this once, the moment Jake looks over at him and smiles again, soft and bright and a little teasing. “Uh –”

“Don’t worry,” Jake says simply, before Heeseung even gets the chance to stumble over his words and surely ultimately still fail at denying anything. “I think it’s good. I’m not overprotective of Sunghoon, like he is of me,” he continues, with an eye roll that Heeseung knows is only meant to disguise his fondness for his friend. “Things didn't work out with him and Sunoo, and for good reason. But I think having someone to care about in that way, someone that cared about him too – it was good for him.”

“Jay always cares,” Heeseung mutters. “He cares about everyone. Too much for his own good, really.”

“Maybe they’ll make a good match, then,” Jake suggests.

Heeseung laughs, but he’s sure it doesn’t sound genuine, because something bittersweet has bloomed on his tongue, and when he swallows it back, it travels all the way down his throat and leaves a pit in his stomach.

It sounds awful, when he allows himself to think it, but part of him hopes that Sunghoon and Jay don’t hit it off, even though he knows there's not much point. Jay falls hard and fast, always has, but he would rather his best friend be spared from feeling what Heeseung himself surely will feel tomorrow, at the end of this, like he’s leaving something behind. Heeseung is taking Jake with him, and he’s still feeling it, but Sunghoon’s staying, and Jay’s heart might not survive that.

Jake must be able to read all of this on him, too, because he reaches over and takes Heeseung’s hand in his, squeezes it once reassuringly, and says, “You in the mood for celebration, then?”

“Not really,” Heeseung says weakly, with a small laugh.

Jake smiles, and it doesn’t reach his eyes, but his tone is still sweet when he agrees, “Me neither.”

But they go anyway. They walk the short distance from Riki’s house to the park, no longer hand in hand, but bumping shoulders and elbows very few steps. Jake giggles every time it happens, like he’s finding a small thrill in it, in all the secrets he’s carrying, in walking with Heeseung and knowing that, in only a day, they’ll be driving away from the town he’s called home all his life.

The town itself, at least, isn’t much to leave behind. Even with everyone out, even with the grill already sizzling, and the kids screeching as they bolt past them, and the sun casting warmth across every inch of the scene, it’s not much.

It’s not nearly enough for someone like Jake, at least – and that’s why he’s leaving.

The people, though – Jake’s friends, Heeseung’s friends, however unlikely they may have been, taking up a picnic table that not one of them are actually sitting properly on, talking animatedly through bites off of popsicles and ice cream cones, waving them over as soon as they spot them – that’s a different story, and one that’ll be much harder to tell in the past tense, when Heeseung inevitably has to.

But, for now, they still have one more day. All they can do is try to make it a good one – and it’s already off to a pretty good start.

And then – after they’ve eaten to the point of stomachaches, after they’ve endured all the teasing Riki and Sunoo and Jungwon are capable of dishing out about their night with Riki’s truck, and they’ve decided that they’ve seen everything the Fourth celebrations have to offer and they’d be better off heading up to the creek for another afternoon swim – the Reverend shows up.

The church is only a few houses down from the park, but they don’t see him coming, not until he’s already heading straight for them – stumbling towards them, really – with an accusatory finger outstretched in their direction.

“Oh, that’s –” Sunoo starts, stopping in his tracks, stopping the group altogether as he does, actually seeming fazed, worried, for once. “That’s not good.”

“Jake, you should go,” Heeseung says quickly, under his breath, bumping his elbow against Jake’s arm and hoping it’ll jolt him into action.

But Jake doesn’t move. He’s gone completely still too, staring straight ahead with his jaw clenched and his brows drawn. After a full twenty-four hours of avoiding his father, he’s face to face with him, possibly – hopefully – for the last time, and he looks like he’s bracing himself to take the worst hit yet, to just grin and bear it for a little longer, like he always has.

And Heeseung, he just – he can’t let him take it.

He takes a step forward, putting himself at the front of the group, in front of Jake. All eyes are on them, and that makes sense, because the town’s beloved pastor is visibly drunk and about to berate his son, two things that, before this weekend, they only ever would have been able to speculate about.

But now, he grabs Heeseung, taking hold of the collar of his shirt with two sweaty fists, pulling him closer until he can smell the vodka on his breath. He doesn’t lower his voice, though, when he barks out, “I want you out of my town. Now.”

“Daddy –” Jake starts, and it sounds like a plea, but for what, Heeseung isn’t sure. Maybe for his father to protect his reputation, to not do this in public, because Jake’s heart is surely soft enough, big enough to still care about his father, even now, after everything he’s put him through.

“Your town?” Sunghoon interrupts, before he can finish, and his tone is full of nothing but venom as he jolts forward and attempts to shove the Reverend off of Heeseung. “You just think you’re good enough to own everything, huh? You think you’re god or something?”

“Sunghoon, stop,” Jake hisses out, just barely cutting through the commotion, so he has to raise his voice when he repeats, “All of you, stop.”

“Go ahead,” Heeseung goads, and that’s the opposite of what Jake is asking him to do, but – he doesn’t care. He has no reputation to protect, and he definitely doesn’t care about this man’s reputation, his ability to keep control of a town he’s done nothing but poison the well of. “Show everyone who you really are, Reverend.”

“You little shit –”

“It won’t make him stay,” Heeseung interrupts calmly, holding the Reverend's gaze, unwavering and sure, even as Jake attempts to separate them by force, even as Jay comes up behind him and urges him to just leave it. He’s tuned out everything else, everything that isn’t the flare of his anger, bubbling inside of him and forcing out words, full of vitriol that he didn’t even know he was capable of. “You can’t control him. You don’t own him. You can make yourself feel big, and you can make everyone else feel small, but you still can’t make him stay.”

“Heeseung –”

“You think it’ll be worth it? Then go ahead. Show everyone what kind of man you really are. Because you’re not a man of god.”

And Heeseung’s not surprised when the hit lands, a moment later, but he is still thrown off his balance by it, pain blooming across his cheek as he stumbles backwards and collides with another body – Jay, probably, maybe Sunghoon too, keeping him from hitting the ground.

The Reverend, though, isn’t quite as lucky.

Because Riki charges at him, growling in a way that reminds Heeseung of a rabid dog, both hands making contact with his shoulders without any effort to hold back, shoving him to the ground with a series of expletives and insults spoken too quickly for Heeseung to process, but punctuated by him towering over the man and spitting on him. And Heeseung’s glad that he wasn’t the one to strike the pastor in the end, because he can only imagine how long Riki has been waiting to do that.

It’s hard for him to process anything that happens in those few seconds, all the flurries of movement and shocked gasps and not-so-hushed whispers as Riki makes a grown man feel as small as he makes everyone else feel for once, but when he snaps out of his daze, Sunoo’s father is there, pulling his brother upright and practically dragging him away, having the decency to look embarrassed on his behalf, but demanding that Sunoo come with them.

And Sunoo hesitates, for a moment, glancing at Heeseung once he's back on his feet with the help of Jay and Sunghoon, and then at Jake, weeping with his head down and his fists clenched at his sides, shaking his head as Jungwon tries to reassure him in a calm, soothing tone. Heeseung can’t blame him for the hesitation, nor would he blame him if he chose to go with his father – because he’s staying, at least for now, because he has to keep existing within the confines of the status quo in town, however shaken it may be now – but he doesn’t. He just takes a step closer to Jake, and pulls him into a tight embrace, letting him wet his shoulder with tears, rubbing a hand up and down his back.

Heeseung feels guilt creep across his skin, joining the weight of his actions that was already starting to settle down on top of him, making it a little hard to breathe. He knows he’s made a mistake, that he’s just made everything worse, like he always does, even though that was the opposite of his intention, of what he wanted to do for Jake. He knows without Jake even needing to say anything, so when he does, when he pulls away from Sunoo and looks at Heeseung, it feels like someone’s twisting a knife that’s already been plunged into his gut.

“I’m sorry –” he starts, breathless with the effort to get his words out first, but it doesn’t make a difference. Jake’s overtake his, swallow them up, and they go unacknowledged.

“Why did you do that?” Jake hisses through choked out sobs, and it’s a new side of him, one that Heeseung hasn’t seen yet, his anger palpable, his usual cool and calm demeanor nowhere to be found.

“He was – I was just – trying to help,” he finishes lamely.

“He knows I’m leaving now, Heeseung. How in the world did you think that was gonna help me?”

“I just – I couldn’t let him…” he trails off, knowing that there was no good explanation, at least, not one that won’t reveal that he was telling the truth when he told Jake he’s just like all the other guys. He wanted to protect Jake, to save him, and in doing so, he’d taken away his agency, his ability to choose how he wanted to handle the situation.

He’s no better than any of them, and now Jake can see that, plain as day.

Jake takes a step away from him, and wraps his arms around himself, tears still rolling down his cheeks, his breath still coming heavy and ragged. “I don’t need you to fight my battles for me. I don’t need you to protect me. I just needed you to get me outta here, and now – now you can’t even do that,” he says, his words harsh and full of hurt. “I do like you, Heeseung, but you’re not my saviour. You’re just a guy with a truck.”

Heeseung recoils, feeling a bit like he’d just been punched for a second time. He blinks, once, twice, and wonders again if Jake is reading his mind, if he’d seen into his thoughts, if he’d found them so distressing that he had no choice but to speak them aloud.

And, once he’s heard them put into words, he realizes how wrong they sound, how little they reflect how he actually feels about Jake. He’s been so wrong about all of this, and it feels impossibly late to correct it now – but he has to try.

“I know that,” he says, softly, speaking to the ground between them more than he is to Jake. His voice breaks around the words, just a bit, but he forces himself to continue, “I know I’m not your saviour, Jake. But – you’re mine, and I just – I couldn’t watch him hurt someone who saved my life. I’m sorry.”

Jake doesn’t say anything, not even after a few seconds pass. He just stares at him, his expression of pure betrayal fading to something sadder, something almost pitying. And Heeseung can’t memorize what pity looks like on Jake’s features, he just can’t, so he turns away from him, and starts walking, and doesn’t stop, not when Jay calls for him, not even when he hears Jake let out another soft whimper.

He can live with just being a guy with a truck. He’s fine with it. What he can’t live with, though, is being someone that Jake pities for wanting more than that, deep down.

Heeseung stares down at his hands, folding and unfolding them in his lap, and thinks about god.

He’s never been much of a believer in anything that he couldn’t see, couldn’t touch. He’s never been swayed by sentiments of a higher power, of being here for a reason, of doing good just to see the pearly gates at the end of it all. Heeseung’s never felt a hand guiding him through life. He’s been blind and fumbling around for something that makes sense from the moment he was born, and he’s always envied the people who felt like they were part of god’s plan.

The closest he ever got to believing in something, in serendipity, and everything happening for a reason, came when he broke down at the end of Jake’s driveway.

Before that, he’d always felt a bit like he’d been put on Earth by mistake, like he’d snuck his way through life so far, merely tricking people into thinking he was meant to be here. Meeting Jake, realizing he could help him, realizing he could save him – it’s the closest to anything resembling fate, or god, that Heeseung has ever felt.

Heeseung, in a chance encounter, managed to stumble upon something like a plan for him, something he’s been searching for his entire life, a purpose. And it only took a few sentences and one punch to derail it, because that’s what he does, because that’s the only purpose he’s ever really had – destroying everything good that’s ever been handed to him.

He’d gotten so caught up in it, the whole damned thing, the feeling of being a saviour and the feeling of being wanted, and he lost sight of a truth he’s known his entire life: he’s no one’s saviour. He’s not even his own saviour. He’s a dot on the map of someone’s life, a dark spot that they have to pass by to get to the bright light of their future. He pushes them forward, but he doesn’t carry them there. He’s not a saviour.

And now, he’s sitting in his dingy motel room, holding a small bag of ice to his throbbing cheek, and even he wants to leave himself behind, wants to get in Jay’s stupid rental car and drive to the airport and abandon the version of himself he’d started to become here, right where he found it in the first place, because he can’t take it with him, can’t let himself remember what it felt like to be good for someone for one brief, wasted moment. He won’t survive it, carrying that version of himself around, no longer being able to reach it.

He’s sure that Jake won’t want to come with him now, but – maybe he could leave his truck behind, too. Maybe Jake could drive himself to California, or wherever he wants to go, because even though he’s not the best driver, and technically unlicensed, Jake is capable of being his own saviour. He’s never even needed a guy with a truck, really. He just needs a truck, and Heeseung could leave him with that. He could, at the very least, do something to help Jake, to brighten the dark spot on the memory of his escape that Heeseung is sure to become.

He knows Jay is outside, because he followed him back to the motel, forced a bag of ice into his hand, and told him he’d be waiting in the car, if Heeseung wants to leave. And then he added, in a softer tone, but I really think you should stay.

Jay’s only been in Dead End for one full day, but apparently, even he managed to find a new version of himself, one that apparently encourages Heeseung to take risks.

But Heeseung’s never listened to Jay’s advice before – so why would he start now?

The new version of himself might have, but he’s leaving it behind. So he stands, and zips both of the suitcases he’d packed up minutes earlier only to leave them sitting there, in limbo, waiting for him to make a decision, and drags them over to the door, and – someone knocks on it.

“One second, Jay,” Heeseung calls out, fumbling with the room keys in his pocket so he can leave them on the table and ideally check out without having to go to the front desk and speak with Sunoo or anyone in his family. “I’ll be right out.”

The door opens, and Heeseung takes a step back to avoid any further blunt force trauma to his skull, and – of course, because nothing is ever that easy for Heeseung – Sunoo steps into view, a small, inexplicably pleased smile on his face. “He’s already got the engine runnin’,” he says, nodding towards Jay’s car, parked in the spot in front of Heeseung’s room. “You’re really in that much of a rush to get outta here? Without sayin’ goodbye?

Heeseung sighs, feeling all the fight he could have put up in response to the judgment in Sunoo’s tone leaving his body at once. “I just – I don’t want to make Jake uncomfortable. I don’t want him to feel like he’s being forced to leave with me. I’m not taking the truck, so – so he can still go, I just… I can’t go with him.”

“Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Sunoo says, and Heeseung can tell he means it to be light, teasing, but he feels himself bristling with defensiveness anyway. “He snaps at you once, and you skip town? That’s not the foundation of a very healthy relationship, y’know.”

“He doesn’t want a relationship with me,” Heeseung says, simple and sure. “I’m just a guy with a truck.”

Sunoo sighs, and glances over his shoulder, making a sweeping gesture back and forth in front of his neck until Jay obliges and shuts the engine off. And then he looks back at Heeseung, and in a tone that leaves no room for argument, orders, “Come sit with me, California.”

Sunoo takes just a half step to the left, and plops himself down on the bench that sits between his open door and his neighbour’s closed door, patting the spot beside him. Heeseung takes it, and refuses to think about why it’s so easy for him to change his mind, to stay in this town a little longer, to hear his friend out.

“Is he… is Jake okay?” Heeseung asks, his voice already coming dangerously close to breaking around the words.

“He’s okay,” Sunoo tells him gently. “He’s with the others. The Reverend’s with my parents, he’s not – he won’t be comin’ to look for him anytime soon.”

“Good,” Heeseung says, and clears his throat, reassured that Jake is with people who will take care of him.

“I’m sorry it all went down that way,” Sunoo says, after a few moments pass of Heeseung alternating between staring at the concrete floor beneath him and the sky in front of him, the sun just starting to hang lower in the sky. “But I’ll tell you somethin’, and I’ll only tell you once – I know my cousin about as well as you can know him, and he definitely didn’t look at the last guy with a truck the way he looks at you.”

“But –”

“I’m talkin’,” Sunoo reminds him. “You’re listenin’.”

Heeseung presses his mouth into a thin line, and nods.

“The only thing Jake has ever known is that when you love something, you get punished for it. It gets taken from you, and then it gets punished, too. That’s how his Daddy raised him. That’s why he keeps everyone at arms’ length, even me, even Sunghoon. He’s trying to protect himself, and he’s trying to protect us, and he’s trying to protect you, now. He doesn’t want to lose anything else he loves.”

“He doesn’t love me,” Heeseung says, and it feels like the words have to rip through barbed wire caught in his throat to make it out of him, to acknowledge that there was even the potential of love between him and Jake, that they could have been more than what they really were – that is, someone who needed a drive, and someone who could have given him one. “He loves the idea of freedom. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but – that’s not what I am.”

“Does it matter what you are if you feel like freedom to him?” Sunoo asks gently.

“I don’t know,” Heeseung says, after a moment spent considering the question. “I don’t think you can love someone if they’re only an idea to you.”

Sunoo hums, and pauses. “But you do,” he says eventually.

“I do?” Heeseung looks over at him, brows drawing together, and takes in the small, reassuring smile on Sunoo’s face.

“You love the idea of Jake loving you, right? Of bein’ worth him loving you, of bein’ his saviour and feelin’ like you matter because of it,” Sunoo says, simply, and Heeseung wonders if it’s been that obvious all along, if that’s why Sunghoon and Riki didn’t trust him, at first, if that’s why Jake knew he’d be able to get him to agree to his plan with ease.

“I – I don’t –”

“It’s fine, Heeseung. I’m not judgin’ you. I’m tellin’ you it’s fine,” Sunoo says firmly, frustration leaking into his tone. “You two hardly know each other at all, and when you hardly know someone, all you can do is love the idea of them. We’ve all done it, all this time with Jake, because he’s never let any of us in the way he’s let you in. And when all you’ve got is an idea, but you love it, then all you can do is love it and hope that it’ll become like more than that. You don’t leave, and let it just stay an idea. Jake hurt you, and that’s – that’s probably the most real he’s ever been with you, whether or not he really meant it, which – between us, I’m tellin’ you, he didn’t. Now’s not the time to back down, ‘cause if you want to know him, really know him, then you should want to know him when he’s scared, or a little mean, or a little pissed at you. I’m sayin’ this as lovingly as I can, but you need to grow a little more backbone, California. Don’t leave. Not yet, at least.”

“I think…” Heeseung starts, pausing for a moment to give Sunoo’s words time to settle with him, to really sink in, because he wants to hear them, wants to try and see a point of view that isn’t his own, for once. “I think I’m scared, too.”

“Yeah, I gathered that much,” Sunoo knocks his shoulder into Heeseung’s, and laughs, and Heeseung can’t help it – he laughs, too. “But that’s a good thing, y’know. When you’re scared, it usually means you’re on the right track.”

And knowing that, knowing when he’s on the right track, is a luxury for someone like Heeseung, something he’s been searching for, something he set off on this road trip to find. He knows better than to turn it away when it’s presented to him – and, admittedly, he thinks he’d take any track, if he thought it would lead him to Jake wanting him again, to being more than just a guy with a truck to him. Heeseung wants to be more, and not just for Jake – he wants to invest in himself, wants to believe in himself, wants to leave all his doubts behind instead and get back on the road heading towards countless new versions of himself. He wants to care about people, about himself, about everything he loves that might get taken from him – but might also stay, maybe, if he’s lucky.

Heeseung never thought of himself as being wealthy in luck. And then he broke down at the end of Jake’s driveway.

“Okay,” he says, nodding, dropping his gaze back to the ground in front of him, a small smile growing on his face without his permission. He takes a deep breath, and then looks at Sunoo again, grinning, nudging him with his shoulder, and continues in a teasing tone, “I wasn’t expecting you to be so wise, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” Sunoo says, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You totally underestimated me. You took me for some kind of brainless hick. But someone’s gotta have some wisdom around here, or all us forgotten folk stayin’ behind would be screwed.”

Heeseung laughs again, shaking his head. “I’m glad they have you, then. I won’t worry as much.”

“Hm,” Sunoo hums, a bit triumphantly, holding his head high and letting his usual pleased grin overtake his features again. “You definitely don’t gotta worry. But I hope you’ll still call, California.”

Heeseung realizes, maybe a bit belatedly, that this all sounds like a goodbye, even though Sunoo’s convinced him not to leave. He recognizes Sunoo’s tone, his posture, his words, because he’s heard and handed out so many goodbyes in his life, and knows them better than almost anything.

And then, Sunoo stands, and confirms it as one, holding out a hand in offering. “C’mon, then,” he says, pulling Heeseung to his feet when he takes it. “Tell Jay to drive that stupid car over to Riki’s, and we’ll meet him there.”

“Riki’s?” Heeseung asks, unsure, hesitant, even though he knows what Sunoo is telling him, without actually telling him.

Sunoo beams, his whole face lighting up, and Heeseung – he really is glad that he’ll be here a while longer, that he handles this town and everything it throws at him the best out of all of them, that Sunghoon and Riki and Jungwon can rely on him. But he also hopes that Sunoo gets out, that he can get on his track too, and follow it to somewhere he really thrives, wherever that may be, however long it takes him to get there.

He hopes all of them can get out, in their own time. And he hopes that tonight, if he is leaving tonight after all, won’t be the last time he sees them. And Heeseung doesn’t often let himself hope, but right now, it’s all he can do.

And when Sunoo smiles at him, and he says, “Yeah. He’s got somethin’ for you,” Heeseung knows that, despite everything, despite all the odds stacked against them, he was right to hope.

For a moment, when he and Sunoo round the corner to Riki’s backyard, he thinks that Jake might really have changed his mind, that he decided not to come after all. He helps Jay take his suitcases out of the too-small trunk of his stupid car, and tries to ignore the ache in his chest, and then – he hears him, the twang of his lilting accent echoing from behind where Heeseung’s truck was sitting, moved out of the garage and into the driveway.

“You could have just told me what you needed it for, though,” Jake says, and Heeseung realizes he’s talking to Riki, who’s leaning over the open hood of his truck. “You didn’t have to scam me.”

“I don’t think you know what a scam is,” Riki mutters. “I told you I needed fifty bucks for something, and that you’d thank me for it. Was I lying?”

“Have I thanked you yet?” Jake asks.

“No,” Riki stands upright, and shrugs, waving his wrench vaguely in Jake’s direction. “But that’s because you’re rude. I worked all weekend to get this busted truck in working condition, and I even paid to fill the tank with gas –”

“With my money,” Jake interrupts.

“Details,” Riki huffs.

“You’re such a brat.”

“You really want those to be your last words to me?”

“Are you planning on never speaking to me again?”

“Are you planning on thanking me?”

“Okay, enough,” Jungwon pleads from where he’s sitting with Sunghoon on the back of Riki’s truck, his tone irritated, but his expression entirely fond. Sunghoon’s smiling, too, but it’s not quite reaching his eyes. “You’re going to make sure he doesn’t want to talk to us anymore.”

Jake laughs a bit, and moves to pull Jungwon into a half hug, and now that Heeseung can see him from where he’s standing – lurking, admittedly, because Sunoo and Jay have already moved close enough to be properly seen, but he can’t quite bring himself to – he can see tears in his eyes, catching and reflecting the minimal amount of sunlight left, making him look even more ethereal than usual. “I could never,” he says, and his voice breaks around the words, even as he tries to keep it steady. “I’ll call so often, you’ll be sick of my voice.”

“I’m sure we will be,” Sunoo drones teasingly. “‘Cause I expect to hear about you gettin’ a record deal the second you get to California, and then I wanna hear you on the radio, ‘kay?”

“No pressure or anything,” Jake mutters exasperatedly.

Jay circles around Riki’s truck with the clear goal of hovering near Sunghoon, like he’s waiting for him to notice him. And Sunghoon does, but only for a moment, because then he turns and looks directly at Heeseung. “Hey,” he calls out. “Don’t just stand there. We’re in a time crunch now, thanks to someone.”

“Ha,” Heeseung manages, as he feels the weight of Jake’s gaze land on him. “I, uh –”

“Yeah, yeah,” Riki interrupts, waving a dismissive hand, shutting the hood of Heeseung’s truck and walking over to him, dangling his keys off his index finger and pressing them into Heeseung’s palm after he grabs hold of his wrist and forcibly turns it to face upwards. “Y’all can kiss and make up on the road. We’ve got bigger things to worry about. When the sun goes down, they’re gonna start shootin’ off fireworks, and you two are gonna hit the road. The Reverend’s still lickin’ his wounds at Sunoo’s folks’ place, so as long as you keep your headlights off while you drive through town, no one’s gonna notice. Got it?”

“You – you planned this?” Heeseung asks, a bit stunned.

“Yeah,” Sunoo snorts. “We planned on you gettin’ punched in the eye.”

“He can’t stay here anymore,” Sunghoon says, standing from where he was still sitting on the tailgate, moving close enough to be able to put a firm hand down on Heeseung’s shoulder. “So all we planned on was you gettin’ him out of here. Like we agreed, right?”

Heeseung nods. Sunghoon smiles, just a bit, and nods too.

“Good,” he says, and pats Heeseung’s shoulder one more time. “You turned out to be decent, you know. An idiot, but a decent one.”

“Thanks,” Heeseung says dryly.

“And, uh,” Jay interjects, appearing suddenly at Heeseung’s side, like he was intent on staying within Sunghoon’s line of vision until the very last second. “I really meant what I said. If you ever want to come see California for yourself, I’ve got a pull-out couch.” He holds his outstretched thumb and pinky finger up to the side of his face, mimicking a phone call.

Sunghoon just stares at him, eyes narrowed, but Heeseung can see the faintest, barely-there trace of a smile raising the corners of his lips. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says.

“And that – that goes for any of you,” Jay tacks on, rather belatedly, with a small, nervous laugh, fooling no one, because he’s still only looking at Sunghoon. “But… but just say the word, and I’ll book you a ticket. I’ve got all kinds of frequent flyer points.”

Sunghoon doesn’t even dignify him with a response, retreating back to where Jake is standing without so much as a glance over his shoulder, but still, Heeseung knows that whatever Jay had done to try and get on Sunghoon’s good side the night before, it’s working. Because as Sunghoon retreats, and wraps an arm around Jake’s shoulders, Heeseung can see a flash of numbers written in black ink on the back of his hand, faded like they’d been there long enough to survive a few hand-washings, but still legible enough to make it clear that Sunghoon is still ultimately trying to preserve them. It’s a phone number. He doesn’t have to guess whose it is, either, because Jay is still grinning like he’d won the lottery.

And then Jay wraps an arm around Heeseung’s shoulders too, jostles him a bit with the force of the half-hug, and says, “I’ve gotta head out if I want to make my flight. But if I don’t see you at my place within a week, I will hunt you down again.”

“I wouldn’t expect any less,” Heeseung jokes, and sends his friend a small, grateful smile.

Jay returns it, ruffles his hair, and then turns his attention to the rest of the group, all gathered around Jake in a semi-circle. “It was nice to meet you all. I’m glad you turned out not to be murderers.”

“You never know,” Jungwon says darkly. “There’s still time.”

And that’s enough to jolt Jay into action, releasing his grip on Heeseung and departing, the wheels of his stupid car kicking up gravel in his haste to make his escape.

Heeseung’s suitcases are put back where they’d been before all of this, everything he owns fitting into the back of his truck bed, and still leaving more than enough room for Jake’s lone backpack. As he tosses it in there, and Riki moves it to fit snugly beside Heeseung’s belongings, he lets himself really look at Jake for the first time since he walked away from him in the park earlier that day.

He’s wearing black, head to toe, complete with a baggy hoodie with the hood pulled up, like he’s trying to blend into the darkness they’ll be using to make their escape once and for all. It’d be kind of adorable, if there weren’t tears streaming down his cheeks, if his lip wasn’t wobbling with the effort not to fall apart, if he wasn’t getting a little bit closer to doing just that with every embrace he’s pulled into by his friends.

Heeseung gives him as much time as he needs, trying not to observe too closely as he buries his face into each of their shoulders, like he’s trying to breathe them in one last time, trying to memorize their scents and the feeling of holding them in his arms. He kisses Riki on the cheek, and says, “Thank you for everything, you little shit,” but everyone else gets a few whispered sentences, ones that Heeseung doesn’t allow himself to be privy to at all, because he wants this moment to belong to Jake, and Jake only, so that when he looks back on it, it doesn’t have to be tainted by the Heeseung’s presence, if there is an abrupt end to the road ahead of the two of them.

But then, after he and Sunghoon have finished a long, tight embrace, after Sunghoon turns away to wipe at his face so no one can see his tears, Jake turns to Heeseung, and he says, soft and careful, “I’m… just – before we leave, I just wanted to say –”

“It’s okay,” Heeseung interrupts gently. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to,” Jake insists, as stubborn as Heeseung has come to expect him to be. “I just want to tell you that – I’m really glad it was your truck that broke down outside of my house. I’m really glad it’s you. I’m glad that you – that you saved yourself, and that you’re savin’ me now. You… you really are saving me, Heeseung. I’m sorry for what I said. I know you don’t – you don’t have to believe this, but I really didn’t mean it. I’m… I’m happy with the choices I made, even if…” he trails off, a little helplessly, putting a premature end to his rambling that Heeseung still finds achingly endearing.

Even if it ends, Heeseung fills in for him. Even if it hurts. At least we had the freedom to choose it. He couldn’t agree more, really.

“I believe it,” Heeseung says, simply, and means it. Even though he can’t see or touch Jake’s words, he believes them anyway, because he has to believe in something. “I believe you. And I’m sorry, too.”

And they haven’t said everything they need to say to each other, not yet, not even close, but – there’s time for that. They have a long road ahead of them, and even if it comes to an end, even if they part ways, they have more than enough miles to figure out whether or not that’s what they really want. Heeseung knows his answer already. He hopes that Jake will find the same one, somewhere between Alabama and California, somewhere outside of his Dead End that wasn’t so dead after all.

Jake smiles, teary-eyed but genuine, and he looks like he’s about to take a step closer, maybe to touch Heeseung, to find that concrete proof he’s not supposed to even want, but he doesn’t. He just lets his hand twitch at his side, once, twice, and keeps smiling at Heeseung, until Riki chimes in with a groan and a reminder, “I told you to kiss and make up on the road. Don’t make the rest of us watch.”

Jake laughs, and Heeseung laughs, and the air around them feels suddenly impossibly lighter, like it’s making way for them, like it’s finally ready to award them freedom, no longer trying to weigh them down and keep them stuck. Heeseung takes a step back, and then another, and moves to the passenger’s side door, the air then filling with a loud, familiar creak as he holds it open in offering.

Jake doesn’t hesitate. He hops in, and when Heeseung shuts the door behind him, he cranks the window open, leaning forward and sticking his head out of it in a way that reminds him of an eager puppy. “Now behave, y’all, or I’ll turn right around and come back.”

“Don’t you dare,” Sunoo chokes out through his tears, and they all laugh, then, at the ridiculousness of the idea of Jake ever coming back, ever putting himself back in his cage, now that he’s finally about to fly free from it.

Heeseung, not for the first time, thinks that if he was looking for proof of good people, of love, of a reason to keep going, he found it here. As he gets in the driver’s seat, and turns on the engine that Riki worked tirelessly to get running again, and the first fireworks shoot into the night sky, as Jake’s friends stay in the rearview mirror, huddled together and waving goodbye with wistful smiles, he knows that he’s found more proof than he could ever need.

Heeseung tries his best to dodge every pothole on the worn down highway, to keep Jake’s head from bumping against the window as he leans on it and snores quietly.

The sun, though, doesn’t have the same consideration for him – and Heeseung gets it, really, because he thinks the sun should always be shining on Jake – as it starts a slow rise above the horizon and stirs him from his slumber.

He sits up a little straighter, taking a deep breath that turns into a yawn, and stretches his arms over his head, as much as the truck’s low ceiling will allow. And then he looks at Heeseung.

He’s keeping his eyes on the road, even though they’re uncomfortably dry now, after the sleepless night he’s had – because the plan is to get Jake as far as possible before making any stops – but he can still feel Jake’s gaze on him, can feel his small smile, and the way it grows and brightens when Heeseung tells him, “We’re just about to Dallas.”

A moment passes, and Jake doesn’t say anything, but a hand lands on top of Heeseung’s where it’s resting on the gear stick, wrapping around it and squeezing once. And Heeseung allows himself a glance, then, and takes in the view of Jake, with his head resting on the window again, smiling at the passing scenery, a few tears sliding their way down his cheek.

Heeseung squeezes back. And they aren’t each other’s saviours, or at least, they’re not just each other’s saviours, but Jake’s hand in his, the way he squeezes it like he’s trying to silently thank him – it’s more than enough for Heeseung to feel saved, anyway. It’s enough for him to feel hopeful, and optimistic, and above all else, free. It’s a good feeling, and it’s one he’s been waiting to feel for a long time.

He hopes Jake can feel it, too. He hopes it stays with him, wherever he goes from here.

And as Jake looks at him again, smiling that same giddy smile as he rolls down the window and lets the morning breeze roll over him, as he lets out a few seemingly unintentional peals of excited giggles through his continuing tears, Heeseung thinks there’s a good chance it will, that Jake will cling to it with all the stubbornness he knows he’s capable of, that he won’t ever let it be taken from him without a fight.

But more than that, he hopes that the road ahead of Jake is an easy one, one that he doesn’t have to fight his way through, free of potholes, free of dead ends. He hopes he finds all the proof he needs. And if Heeseung doesn’t end up being there with him to see it too, he just hopes that he still thinks about him sometimes.

He hopes – because Heeseung isn’t going to deny himself the privilege of hoping anymore, of believing – that Jake will think about the feeling of saving someone and being saved, about their joined hands, squeezing each other tight, carrying each other across the state borders that start to look like finish lines, now that they’ve crossed just enough of them to feel like they’re really on their way.

He hopes the feeling stays with Jake, but more than that, Heeseung hopes, and kind of believes, that he can stay with Jake, too.