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Flot-sam-and-jet-sam, Taekwoon thinks, rolling the words over and over in his mind. It’s a small memory from a Disney movie he loved as a child, and he delights in being able to use the words now. Flotsam and jetsam, that’s what they were, and cheerfully, recklessly, fiercely so. An assortment of boys of different sizes and shapes and ages, all of them missing pieces and chips of what would have made them whole, what would have kept them on earth and their feet firmly on the ground. Here they float about together in the air, silhouettes against the sky, feet pointing back at their memories but eyes firmly on the stars and trailing fairy dust. Wendy calls them her lost boys – he supposes the names fits, but ‘lost’ implies accidental, unintentional; there isn’t a word for being lost on purpose. A voice in his ear tells him it’s called ‘running away’ –
It’s Tink, and he realises she hasn’t suddenly learnt how to read minds. She calls to him, laughing, the wild swoops of the others around him in the trees all calling out the name of the game at the tops of their voices; Run away! Run away!
Taekwoon is It, and he gives merry chase.
*
The new boy Peter brings home is a novelty they relish. Tink pesters him nonstop, looking into his ears and lifting up tiny locks of hair and chattering away at him in words he doesn’t understand yet; flashing around him so bright he has to blink away the blaze in his eyes.
“This is Sanghyuk,” Peter announces, and they all chorus the name back at him obediently.
“Where came you?” Tink trills at him, and they laugh at Sanghyuk’s confusion. She dumps fairy dust on him unceremoniously and the look on his face as his feet once more part ways with the ground leave them howling till they are weak. He takes a long time to be graceful in the air, to stop fighting the magic rather than working with it, and it takes Jaehwan and Hongbin both to teach him how to dance upon the eddies of the wind. He still looks like he cannot believe his eyes.
Taekwoon later learns he’d clung to Peter the whole way up here, the joy and astonishment they had all felt at their first flight curiously missing in this one. But he’d clung fiercely, and had needed hardly any persuasion to step out of his window and soar.
*
The boy is given to him, and Taekwoon supposes he understands why. He has, after all, been here almost as long as Wendy and Peter have, and if the new boy has any questions he is the one to ask; but he prefers to fly, and fish, and visit the mermaids than to talk. Taekwoon’s silence doesn’t extend to wishing silence in turn from the boy, however, and soon the boy learns.
“The colours here are different from Down There,” the boy breathes, drinking in hungrily everything through his eyes. The blue water, the brilliant iridescent mermaid tails, the deep jade green of the trees and rolling hills. “Everything is… more.” He turns a face alight with life to Taekwoon and Taekwoon smiles.
They sit together in a heavy quiet for a long time, watching the sun go down on Neverland and the stars begin to appear, watching over the Lost Boys quietly as they do night by night. They are captured briefly by a raiding party bearing Tiger Lily’s mark on the trek through the forest home, but let go again amiably, the braves proud at their easy conquest. Sanghyuk takes it all in with eyes as large as saucers, and Taekwoon’s suspicions are confirmed when one hands him a flower before they melt away back into the forest. A tiger lily, of course – very little escapes the princess. This was a greeting; Neverland’s newest resident acknowledged.
The flower is still by Sanghyuk’s side when they all settle into their nooks for the night, the fragrance of it perfuming the air where Taekwoon has chosen to set his hammock. Boys are haphazardly hanging out of bathtubs and other hammocks like Taekwoon’s, or rustling about on pallets of sweet-smelling reeds – it’s all a grand play-pretend of domesticity, because Lost Boys don’t need sleep and would traipse about the entire island through the bright moonlight if they were allowed to. Drowsy mumbles pad out the darkness before Wendy shushes them all and tells them to go to sleep.
Sanghyuk’s screams split the night into shattered pieces before they are abruptly cut off, Taekwoon jolted awake and thrown into consciousness before he even knows what is happening. Sanghyuk is sitting up ramrod straight on his pallet and has clamped his hands tight to his mouth, stopping his own screams even while his eyes are still seeing the terrors from his sleep. Taekwoon and the other boys flutter around him anxiously – pain and fear are not things Neverland understands. The boys rise and settle in dismay like little flocks of anxious butterflies, hands soothing Sanghyuk back to sleep in a puppy pile of arms and legs and warmth as the boys abandon their own beds in order to comfort him. Peter hangs back, face troubled, and Wendy makes Sanghyuk drink hot milk. When the last candle is snuffed out again Sanghyuk turns his face into Taekwoon’s chest in humiliation, and Taekwoon can still feel his heart thudding. He tucks Sanghyuk in closer to him and tries to lull Sanghyuk to peaceful sleep once more. The lily lies nearby, crushed.
*
Some of them take longer to forget what they have run from.
The first time Sanghyuk is cheeky Hakyeon raises a pot in his hand in mock indignation, making as if to throw it at him or hit him with it. Hongbin and Jaehwan are already laughing, the sight of Hakyeon with the wonky, much-repaired pot setting them off into mad giggling. Sanghyuk flinches violently and then freezes, staring with eyes that Taekwoon realises aren’t seeing Hakyeon in that moment. Hakyeon goes dead still, mouth opening in a concerned ‘o’, and quickly drops the pot, reaching for Sanghyuk. The sound of the pot hitting the floor has Sanghyuk darting out of the house like an arrow, Taekwoon following and leaving the cousins to comfort Hakyeon – he meant no harm.
Taekwoon takes his time to find Sanghyuk. When he finds him by the mermaids’ lagoon he isn’t surprised.
The mermaids’ song is haunting and has ice on the edges of their voices, and it seems apt for the mood Sanghyuk is in.
“You will forget,” Taekwoon says once it’s cool moonlight bathing them and not sunlight – disjointedly, Taekwoon remembers how unsettling it was when he first arrived and time ceased to matter; no chores, no work, no studying, just disconcerting freedom. He’d had to force himself to let go, to uncoil his worry from deep within him and give it to the island to take away, and he wonders if Sanghyuk’s fraying around the edges has this adding to it – and he’s not sure if it sounds more like a promise or a bald order. He has never been good with words.
Sanghyuk looks at him in the silver light, his eyes intense. He doesn’t speak for a long while.
“Good,” he finally says after Taekwoon has stopped expecting an answer.
*
Taekwoon moves their beds away from the others to stop waking them up at night with Sanghyuk’s nightmares. Sanghyuk tries staying up obstinately refusing sleep, scared of what he will see and unwilling to have his dirty laundry aired so much in public. He falls asleep nonetheless, exhausted from romping with the pack all day, and when he wakes up gasping and hoarse Taekwoon is there. They go for long walks when Sanghyuk cannot go back to sleep, treading lightly through the forest and sometimes thrilling themselves by seeing how close they can creep up to Tiger Lily’s camp before they are discovered and cheerfully hogtied as prisoners. Sometimes they stay long enough to have breakfast with the tribe, and sometimes when they are let go they wander off to curl up under a big quiet tree and let the stars look after them as they go to sleep.
Sometimes Taekwoon has to hold him, shake him fully awake because Sanghyuk’s eyes are open and staring but he isn’t here, he’s back Down There, replaying whatever made him jump into Peter’s arms with nothing more than a promise of never again. Sanghyuk startles and looks at Taekwoon like he’s never seen him before, fingers grasping fitfully at Taekwoon’s arms.
Sanghyuk stubbornly begins making a nocturnal map of the island, even after Taekwoon laughs at him. “You can’t map this,” he says, gesturing with his arm to encompass the island. “It’s not even the same for each of us.”
Sanghyuk stills at this. “You see it differently from how I see it?”
“We all do,” Taekwoon says softly. “That’s the point.”
*
And then one day Sanghyuk finally sleeps through the night. He wakes up with the morning sun shining in his face and Taekwoon watching him silently from his hammock above Sanghyuk’s pallet, the treehouse already a riot of noise and movement fading into the background of their nook, where it seems the only peace and quiet left in the house reside.
Sanghyuk blinks, feeling like he’s chasing after smoke in his mind, trying to grasp it with fingers unsuitable for netting fleeting, insubstantial memories. He frowns for a moment, the feeling niggling at him, but when he looks up at Taekwoon, snuggled in his hammock such that all Sanghyuk can see is Taekwoon’s eyes watching him unblinkingly, it distracts him enough that the last wisp of remembrance slips through his mind and disappears on the thin breeze coming in through the leaves.
“Let’s go have breakfast,” Sanghyuk says, and his stomach lets out an approving growl.
*
Sanghyuk hovers nearby, trying to hide himself as far as possible in the eaves of the townhouse and gripping Taekwoon’s hand in warning not to drift out too far into the view of the passersby on the street down below them. Taekwoon is gazing into the house, the warm light spilling out of it painting his pale skin gold. The family inside is having dinner and Taekwoon watches them as if he’s watching a show, eyes flicking lazily over each person and the living room, over the furniture and the paintings on the walls.
“You didn’t forget,” Sanghyuk murmurs, and Taekwoon’s hand tightens in his.
“I didn’t want to. Not like you.”
Sanghyuk lets his mind scrabble momentarily against the void of his past, letting it fade back into calm nothing. Taekwoon has never talked to him about what he left behind, or why – Sanghyuk quietly watches Taekwoon watching the family, and notes how the women have his eyes.
“Do you have nightmares,” Sanghyuk asks haltingly later, and Taekwoon turns his gaze sharply on Sanghyuk, the question there all too plain.
“I don’t remember what mine were about,” Sanghyuk answers. “I just know I had them. And you helped.”
Taekwoon turns to face Sanghyuk, their bed for the night soft moss in the shadow of the Mountains. He doesn’t reply, and Sanghyuk thinks he maybe understands how come Taekwoon was always awake in time to soothe him down from his terrors.
“I’ll help you now,” he promises, and reaches out a hand to stroke Taekwoon’s hair like Taekwoon used to do for him, centring him and chasing away the demons. It feels awkward, and Sanghyuk thinks that it is possible he did not used to be the kind of person that would do this; but it comforted him, and he wants to offer comfort to Taekwoon now. He caresses Taekwoon until his hand grows heavy and Taekwoon’s eyes flutter closed, lulled by the whistling of the wind through the Mountains and the trees and the sure weight of Sanghyuk’s fingers in his hair.
“I’m here,” Sanghyuk whispers, and goes to sleep with the stars keeping watch.
*