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the nights are dreadful.
pepper heard that everytime he stumbled on jun curled up the couch, staring at the turned off television in the darkness of the living room. most of the time he was alone, holding a mug that could be filled with anything from beer to juice or coffee.
it’s been a year since jun agreed to join mars, and more than six months since he became part of their relationship. what was once only pepper and po slowly became pepper, po and dylan, and then pepper, po, dylan and jun. recently, nano was added to that list too.
five people were already more than he ever expected, but the blurred face of someone he still didn’t meet was engraved in his mind, a sweet voice and laugh he never heard before rang in his ears in a prelude of what was coming. he didn’t dare to say anything to anyone, unsure of what it meant for mars. it wasn’t like he had it easy with four other people for him to handle.
so, when he blinked awake at three in the morning, throat dry and desperate for some water, pepper expected to see the exact same scene every night. jun on the couch, sheepish smile on his lips, wide awake despite going to sleep at the same time as the others.
“i heard something. couldn’t sleep anymore.” he claimed every time pepper asked him what happened. he knew bits and pieces of his past: special forces, training, deadly, confidential missions. the details were up to jun to reveal in the future, but what he knew was enough to make his chest ache.
he was fully ready to almost beg jun to go back to bed when he stepped in the living room, but the words disappeared from his mouth the moment he saw him — or better, them.
curled up on his side, pepper saw dylan. the gray-haired slept soundly on jun’s shoulder, and what was more surprising: jun was sleeping too. on their laps, nano’s flower cushions and on the coffee table two empty mugs. it was dark, but pepper could still see dylan’s shadows timidly peek from under the couch and from the corners of the room.
despite their ridiculous arguments everyday, those two matched in some way — beyond the physical one. pepper wondered if the darkness of their past was enough to push them into a common ground that was only understood by both in quiet hours like these.
was that what happened during the nights in their living room?
a small smile tugged the corners of pepper’s lips and he silently walked back to his room and searched around for a blanket.
“per? what’s going on?” po mumbled sleepily from the bed. nano, who had his arms and legs tightly wrapped around po stirred too, a little less awake than him.
“jun is sleeping with dylan on the couch.”
“what?” both jumped from the bed, stumbling their way outside the room to check for themselves. at least nano floated to lessen the noise the three of them could cause.
po turned to look at him with bewilderment.
it felt like the natural thing to do was approach the couch, cover them with the blanket and then find a place next to them. pepper thought that it would make jun startle awake, instinct kicking in before he was even fully awake, maybe teleport too. but all jun did was snuggle closer, sighing content. po and nano found the perfect spot by dylan’s side, who also didn’t wake up.
a few minutes later, jun was snoring softly. pepper, then, realized that was the first time he heard him snore.
satisfied, the leader closed his eyes.
instead of an easy sleep, his head ached with a dull pain.
in his vision he saw his own living room, still as dark as it was now, everyone cuddling closer in a sleepy pile. the only difference was that his left side was warm and an unfamiliar pair of arms held him closely.
“i love our cuddle piles, p’per,” the soft voice that plagued his visions said, this time his smile was clearer — and it was beautiful. “we should do it more often.”
pepper blinked, the vision disappearing from his eyes. as always, he tried to not pay too much attention to it and ignore how his left side was colder than before.
six months later
the dark alleyway proved to be a great escape route from the hoard of police officers following them.
pepper’s plans were always flawless in its organization, and he trusted his boyfriends to execute it accordingly. all that was planned happened like it should: they got in, found the data and records they needed, and left in the timeframe between the guards’ changes. perfectly done, as it should.
the problem, however laid on something else. something not even his precognition was able to foresee: they got tangled with thieves.
it was an accidental bump, their group left the stolen store at the same time MARS were passing by in front of it. in a second there were screams, sirens, police everywhere and although they had nothing to do with the theft, their bags were heavy with stolen data from the governor’s office. pepper swore under his breath, trying to find a way to dismiss the robbers before they got tangled even further. using jun’s powers was like lighting a red light on top of their heads and asking to be haunted down the city and locked up.
so they ran.
in an intersection, dylan pushed them to a dark alleyway with the single command of ‘run’. at this point, pepper had no idea where they were going or what awaited them on the edge of that creepy corner of the city, but anything was better than getting caught.
“shit, it’s a dead end alley!” jun cursed, looking around in an attempt to find anything that could help them.
“i’m sure we can find a way out of here.” dylan started to look around, certain of something. pepper wished he could provide some insight on that, but he was exhausted and breathless.
running across the city wasn’t in his list of to-do things, the ones with great stamina were nano and jun. he leaned back on a metal door, trying to stabilize his breathing before suggesting something. jun and dylan’s arguments were mediated by the ever pacifist nano, who floated around to make sure the police was far enough while they figured something out.
pepper just needed a moment to focus, to think without sirens or fights clouding his brain.
he just needed–
suddenly, the metal door — that he was sure was locked a moment ago — opened and sent him straight to the ground with a loud yelp.
“p’per!”
a chorus of hushed, worried voices followed another one — this one was softer, albeit as startled, and painfully familiar.
“hey, get in!”
from the floor, pepper saw the three of them exchange worried glances between each other, unsure if that was a good idea. but the sirens grew louder, the heavy footsteps of police officers running in their way got closer and, in the end, they didn’t have much choice. jun pushed everyone inside and locked the door back.
“they ran in this direction! check the perimeter!” one police officer yelled outside, the footsteps scattering around wherever they were.
for a long moment, nobody moved — he doubted they even breathed — silently waiting for a sign that they were out of danger. he heard steps crossing the place they were, quietly but still audible in the dead silence of the night. after a few seconds, the steps approached again.
“the police car is on the main street,” the soft voice said, quiet and mindful of the tone. pepper realized that the voice should belong to a young boy, and the more he spoke the more the itch on the back of his mind grew. “they might stay for a few hours patrolling the area, but it shouldn’t take that long before they give up.”
he heard that voice before.
“are we safe here?” nano whispered the question, shifting in his place. pepper sat up, exhaustion still clinging to his muscles and the dull pain on his back made it hard for him to stand up.
“here, yes.” the voice reassured, and he thought he heard a quiet chuckle. “oh, oops, sorry let me light this place up a little.”
before pepper could protest, a small flame appeared out of nowhere. his eyes grew in size, too shocked to say something. the flame was lit up on the guy’s hands. no torch, no match, nothing. the fire danced calmly on his fingers as if they belonged there.
“a mutant.” dylan gasped, voicing his own thoughts and fears.
the boy, finally visible in the darkness, didn’t seem to notice their shock, too busy looking for somewhere to place the flames on. he improvised a bonfire within a metal barrel and the flames proved enough to light up the place without bringing too much attention to them.
pepper felt like he needed to check where they were, and if that place was safe enough for them, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the mutant in front of him. he had black hair, all disheveled and probably needing nano’s super conditioning treatment, but it fell beautifully over his also dark, sweet eyes. there were smudges and worn-off band-aids all over his cheeks and neck, and nothing about these aspects were familiar to him — none except his smile.
“i think i should introduce myself,” he laughed awkwardly, breaking the sepulchral silence the others have seemed to fall into. pepper for a slightly different reason than theirs. “uh, my name’s thame. i live around here,” he pointed to the general direction of the dark place they were hiding. “and, hm, the police were following you right? it kind of happened with me too, but the officers here are pretty awful so…”
then, like a startle, the voice finally awakened the memory he was looking for.
“i love our cuddle piles, p’per!”
“we should do it more often.”
the last vision he had about the sweet, mysterious boy who haunted him for years popped up in his head.
there was no way… right?
unable to properly formulate a sentence, pepper could only watch as the boy, thame, shifted uncomfortably under the unmoving staring of the group. it was awkward, objectively speaking, but the fact he just met him felt unreal. pepper had visions about people before, but none took so long to happen. his earliest memory of him was around the time he met po, and after meeting all his boyfriends without a single trace about him, pepper was starting to wonder who and where the hell he was.
thame.
a mutant.
thame.
so that was who he was.
“uh, but don’t worry,” thame went on after realizing that no one was making any attempt to fill in the silence. “this warehouse is out of their radar because it’s always locked up.” it was hard to say if the redness covering his cheeks were thanks to the flames reflecting on the skin or he was just embarrassed. both ideas seemed plausible.
“so, how did you get in here?” dylan asked, leaning back on the metal door. his eyes kept moving from the boy to the flames.
“ah, i have my ways.” thame shrugged, stepping around the barrel to extend a hand to pepper and help him out of the ground. the leader accepted.
“does your ‘way’ involve fire, perhaps?” jun asked, bolder than pepper would’ve liked. he stood up with thame’s help and quickly shot him a glance, which was lost in the poorly lit warehouse.
thame looked up at him, then his eyes went around each of them, studying their reaction before sighing. there was something in his expression that worried pepper, in his visions the boy had a more upbeat personality, cute smiles and the clinginess of a puppy. the thame before him, however, looked like he was about to give up on life.
“i’m cursed, so i might as well do something useful with it.” the small laugh that came after saying felt forced, as if something in that situation was supposed to be funny. none of them laughed.
“curse?” dylan seemed to be on the verge of arguing further into the topic, but before he was able to pepper stepped between them.
“so, thame, have you lived in the area for a long time?” the young boy blinked, eyes jumping from pepper to dylan, unsure if he should just drop the topic or engage further. pepper prayed he followed the second option.
dylan had a hard time coming to terms with his own powers, his upbringing didn’t help either, so calling it a curse certainly hit a sore spot in him. pepper wasn’t sure if it would be for better or worse, but he couldn’t afford to scare thame off, at least, not until he understood who he really was and why he was in his visions so often.
so, arguing with dylan right now was not an ideal scenario.
eventually, thame settled his eyes on pepper.
“yeah,” he nodded, sitting on the dirty floor like he belonged there. the scene scratched his chest uncomfortably. “i know every corner of the city by now.”
“i see. we live in the neighborhood too,” pepper looked around to find something to sit on. there was nothing but debris scattered around. “about the thing with the police…” he trailed off, trying to find words to explain that they were not criminals or dangerous, but thame interrupted before he could finish it.
“don’t worry, i understand. the police officers here are always biased, especially if you don’t look like you have money.” he wrapped his arms around his knees, bringing them closer to his chest, almost curling up in a ball.
pepper exchanged glances with his boyfriends, before turning to him again. thame seemed cold, shivering slightly every time a breeze slipped in the warehouse through the cracks in the walls. he looked too fragile to be in a place like that.
“well, i think we should introduce ourselves too.” nano smiled, friendly in a way only he could sound in front of a total stranger. “my name’s nano,” he pointed to himself. “he’s pepper, this one is jun and that one is dylan.” he walked up to each of them, to not let the boy get confused with names.
thame nodded in a quiet greeting to each of them. at that moment, when he looked up at them from the ground, pepper noticed he had puppy eyes. it was a devastating realization to have in the middle of an abandoned warehouse.
“nice to meet you all, i guess.” there was a hint of a laugh in his tone. pepper gestured for his boyfriends to sit down around the warm barrel and once they did it, thame discreetly moved back, setting a clear distance from the group. pepper held it in any protest that attempted to escape his lips. “hm, look, can i just… know why the police were after you?”
pepper blinked, taken by surprise. for some reason, he didn’t expect this, though it was the most reasonable question to ask after helping someone escape authorities. everyone looked at pepper, expecting him to take the lead and answer. what was the best answer at this moment? should they admit that they were stealing confidential data from the governor’s office or let the boy think they were wanted criminals?
“we aren’t dangerous, if that helps.” he settled for the most cliché answer, hoping to not ring any alarm bells in him.
“well, i sure hope so. i’m at a disadvantage here.” thame gestured to the group and then to himself. again, pepper didn’t consider their numbers like a threat, but for a stranger alone it might be intimidating. still, thame didn’t seem to take the apparent threat as seriously as he should.
he wondered if the way his eyes looked lifeless had anything to do with it.
“we really mean no harm to you. we just got… tangled with problems by accident.”
“by accident?” he raised an eyebrow, curious.
for the first time, pepper lacked the correct words to fix the situation. his mind was in a constant state of high alert, paired with all the memories from past visions he had with thame. he felt like he was going crazy.
“it’s a funny story,” nano started talking in his place, sending him a glance that screamed leave it up to me, p’per! that, yes, was endearing, but sent a new spike of anxiety through his body. “we bumped into a group of jewelry thieves on the run two blocks ago, and the police officers thought we were part of the group.”
“what?” thame let out an airy laugh, glancing at the rest of the group as if he waited for some sort of gotcha moment where they would expose nano’s lies. when it didn’t happen, he turned to their youngest again. “seriously? why didn’t you just tell them the truth?”
“because we did a few bad things too– ouch.” dylan kicked him lightly, interrupting his too detailed recount of their latest endeavours. “but it was nothing like that though. we just have a rough history with the government in general.”
thame hummed in thought as he heard the explanation. despite the absurdity, his shoulders sagged a little in what looked too much like relief. the boy ran his fingers through his hair, a little pout on his lips as he nodded to himself.
“i see.” pepper blinked, unsure how to respond. was that it? he believed it? so not everything was lost yet?
“what about you, though? were you running away from them too?” nano kept the conversation going, shifting to sit a little closer.
“ah,” the boy flushed, the blush too obvious even in the poorly lit warehouse, scratching the back of the neck.“nothing dangerous too. i was just caught, uh, stealing some, hm, food.”
“food?” that time, it was jun who butted in the talk.
he looked like a mere spectator for a while, but pepper knew he was keeping his ears attentive to any sign of the officers getting too close. to be aware of anything that could become a threat was one of the main rules of the special forces, after all.
“yeah, i–” thame stopped for a moment, cleared his throat, and pulled his knees closer to his chest. “well, i’m homeless. so i do a few odd jobs from time to time to get something to eat. it’s usually okay, but today i got scammed. the guy disappeared after i finished the job and didn’t pay me.” the little shrug of his shoulders made something deep inside pepper’s chest ache. “it was too late to find something else, so i… well, tried the supermarket down the street. but the alarm rang and, well, here i am.”
he felt like he should’ve said something, anything, but his mouth felt dry.
homeless?
that was not… none of his visions showed him like that — like an empty shell.
the thame he saw was happier, had a bright and big smile and was full of life. it didn’t look like someone struggling to even eat. pepper had to lean on the floor to make sense of it all for a moment.
so when do his visions take place? he has been so busy with mars and po to give it more thought, sometimes he even forgot about the missing sixth person amidst everything, foolishly thinking that maybe he would be just fine waiting for him. turns out he wasn’t.
someone around him muttered an ‘i’m sorry’ that thame quickly answered with a dismissive laugh, but everything after that was clouded by a blurred vision.
he saw thame’s black, old jacket on top of a building. he heard heartwrenching sobs, labored breathes and then, the vision shifted from his back to his trembly hands holding on the handrail.
“i could never have that.” the voice, no more unfamiliar, was weak in between sobs. “it’s all so pointless why do i even hold on…”
he saw his face clearly for the first time, tears streaming down copiously, drenching his face.
he saw thame close his eyes and let go of the handrail.
then he saw thame again, this time in a cozy restaurant that nano loved, eyes shining in delight as a plate of fried rice was placed in front of him.
he saw thame’s lifeless body bleeding out in the cold pavement.
he saw thame hugging him with tears.
he saw thame burning.
he saw thame kissing his cheeks with his entire face red in embarrassment.
he saw thame–
“i love you, p’per.” his voice broke through the countless images of thame and then his body was being shaken–
“...p’per, are you–” he barely heard nano’s sentence before stumbling his way down to a corner of the warehouse, where he found a dirty barrel and threw up his coffee. there were steps coming from behind him, but he gestured for them to stay away. he needed a moment.
pepper touched his own face, tears and blood smearing his skin in an awful mix. the man was breathless by the time he didn’t feel like throwing up anymore.
what was that?
it’s been a while since he got so lost in the visions, especially with multiple futures. how could thame have such drastic endings? either he killed himself, died in a fire or stayed with them?
but how does he even approach that? how does he guarantee that his actions that night will prevent the fatal futures he saw?
pepper couldn’t just walk up to him and say ‘hey, i saw your future and you need to stay with us.’
“excuse me,” thame’s voice startled him, suddenly coming from behind his back. pepper used his jacket to clean up his face and look less bloodied before turning around. “are you sick? i didn’t get any medicine from the supermarket, but i have this cereal bar. it must be alright to eat without getting sick again.”
pepper looked down at his hands, then up at his worried eyes. behind thame he saw mars frowning in worry, almost rushing up to him but still keeping their distance as he asked them.
that’s it, he realized.
food.
food was the way.
“thank you, thame.” he accepted the cereal bar, hoping his trembly hands didn’t give away how unstable he felt. “thank you for helping us tonight too, would you mind if we paid a meal for you?”
“a… meal?” he tilted his head, frowning in a cute confusion. “you don’t need to go that far, i just opened the door.”
“i know, but that was more than you think.” pepper wished he could explain just how much more it meant. “so, can i invite you?”
thame pouted a little, deep in thought. pepper felt anxiety spike with the possibility of getting rejected and all the awful futures he saw for the boy becoming reality. he was about to push further, leaning on desperation, when thame nodded.
“why not, i guess. i don’t think i can reject free food.” he laughed, and this time it sounded more sincere — lighter, even.
relieved, pepper walked up to the group with thame.
he still had to find a way to tell everything to his boyfriends, including po, but for now, he basked in the soft warmth from the barrel while thame offered to share some of the snacks he stole earlier with them.
he could only hope he was on the right path.