Chapter Text
Sjin swats the wasp, easy as can be, and then yelps and yanks back his hand from the sweaty vinyl of Sips's car. It's about negative one degrees outside and the heater is turned all the way up and Sjin's fingers are smeared with yellow flesh, the tip of one long digit turning red. Sips's forehead is beaded with moisture and he's already shucked himself of his coat of arms: two flannel shirts, his track jacket, his dad's old army coat.
"Bit me!" He says, voice high with pain. Sjin hair that flips in the front and a shitty teenage mustache and his beard is growing in almost invisibly, but he's stupidly proud of it. He's taken off his nice jacket and he's wearing a t-shirt that reads "KISS ME I'M GRANDMA" and Sips has long since stopped asking about his sense of humor.
"Don't be such a baby," Sips says, pronouncing the last word all wrong, as they are wont to do. "Do wasps even bite?"
"This one did," Sjin replies, and glowers at Sips, obviously not happy with his unsympathetic reaction. "What a brat."
"You killed it, Sjin," Sips says, and laughs at Sjin's pouty face. Sjin sticks his pointed tongue out at Sips, and Sips gives in to the childish urge to try and grab it. He misses, of course. His gloves are sitting on the dashboard and snow is falling gently, silently, landing on the windowshield quiet as anything. "You big dummy, give me your hand."
"You're the dummy," Sjin grumbles, but thrusts his hand in the direction of Sips's face. It's smeared in wasp blood and his fingers look so delicate. Up close, Sips can see all the tiny hairs on his knuckles and the crookedness of where he broke his pinky in seventh grade. "What's a wasp doing in the winter, anyway?"
Sips leans in and kisses the tip of Sjin's finger, right where the sting is. He knows that wasps don't bite. Sjin sighs a little bit, a poignant sound. He pulls his hand away gently after a second and looks at it.
"Much better," he mutters, then looks up at Sips, his green-blue eyes catching Sips's own muddy brown ones. "Thanks, buster."
It's a cliche, but he could get lost in Sjin's eyes. He has every freckle memorized. He knows the exact width and diameter of the tiny scar next to Sjin's right eyelid, and he knows how it got there, too: an unwieldy run with a pair of scissors at five years old. He knows Sjin has a larger scar across his lower belly from an appendectomy and he's run his fingers across it in the shadow of dusk, lying in Sjin's bed, being quiet to avoid waking his parents.
"Are we going to get out of this car?" Sips asks, slouching low and looking at the snow. It's late enough that the street lamps are lit and they illuminate every single flake. The street they're on is silent. "Your mom's gonna worry."
"She can wait," Sjin says, turning to look at his house out the window. They've been idling outside for close to an hour now and Sips usually wouldn't mind spending time with Sjin, but he's a but worried that Sjin's parents hate him.
"Really, Sjin, she's done enough waiting alrea--"
"She's fine!" Sjin snaps, and Sips puffs up instinctively. Loud voices make him loud, too.
"Don't you yell at me, mister," Sips says, voice blunt, and stabs his thick finger into Sjin's pigeon chest. "Don't you fucking yell at me-"
"Get off my back!" Sjin yells, loud enough that Sips goes silent. Sjin squabbles, sure, they're teenagers and they get into thousands of squabbles, there have been weekends where they've abandoned each other entirely, but Sjin doesn't yell unless something is really wrong.
"Jesus," Sips says, looking out of Sjin's face, "Sorry."
"No, it's not-- it's not you, it's.." And Sjin is scrambling for words, hands butterflying around. "It's college." His hands drop. He looks out his window.
"Oh," says Sips.
Here's the thing.
They're going to separate. They have to. And here's why: Sips is going to go to some shitty little community collage and Sjin is smart, too smart for that, he's going to some fancy rich college for architects.
Sjin's offered, before, to go to the same college as Sips, but Sips will not, under any circumstance, allow that. He would rather die. Sjin is smarter than him and Sjin is not going to waste his talent, Sjin is going to get out of their crummy town and become successful, he has to. He just has to. Sips is going to become a construction worker or best case a used car dealer but Sjin has to get out of this fucking town.
"We've talked about this," Sips says, a little coldly. His hands are suddenly numb. It feels like someone's dropped an ice cube down his shirt.
"Still," Sjin says. "Still, still..."
"No still," Sips says.
"Fuck you," Sjin says, but he doesn't mean it. There's no venom in his voice. Sips sneaks a look at him, he looks-- deflated. He touches his wasp-stung finger to the frosty window, begins sketching something illegible.
"Don't," Sips says, for no real reason.
"It's just-- just..." and Sjin swallows, his throat clicking. "Just, I don't want to leave." Another swallow. "You."
"Don't do that," Sips says. He tries to make out what Sjin is drawing. It looks like a house. His heart flip-flops, tries to rise up into his mouth. Don't do this, he thinks, desperately.
"Don't--" Sjin says, himself, and stops, and he's looking at the window still but Sips realized with horror, mounting rolling horror deep in his belly, that he is crying.
Sips reaches his hand over but the gap between them seems infinite, somehow. He watches his own arm crossing the cup holder full of trash and gum wrappers and passing the clutch and hand break and stop just inches away from Sjin's bare skin.
"Jesus," Sips says, quietly. "Hey..."
He can't make himself touch Sjin. He doesn't know what to do, what to say. He can't do it.
Sjin sniffles, loud, wipes his face with his long-fingered hands. "I could go to state college, Sipsy," he says, voice pitiful. Sips looks up at the windowshield, watches each flake of snow as it falls and thuds itself against the glass, a mindless death.
"No," Sips says, firmly.
"I could, we could both go to the same place, we-- we could, you know--"
"No," Sips says, again, and Sjin whips around to look at him. His eyes are red and his cheeks are wet. He looks miserable, he looks sad, and Sips is making it worse. Sips is hurting him. Sips's own heart thuds, thuds, thuds.
"Why?" Sjin says, and tears roll down his face again while Sips watches. "Is it-- do you not want me there?"
There's a buzzing sound, a gentle sound, and Sips looks around for the source. Anything not to meet Sjin's eyes. There's a hole in one of his car speakers and as he watches a wasp crawls out, wings fluttering.
There's a wasp nest in his car. The wasp buzzes away and Sips thinks about reaching out and grabbing it and letting it sting his hand, thinks about sticking his whole fist into the heart of the nest.
"You know goddamn well it isn't that," Sips says, finally. He cannot meet Sjin's eyes. I'm saving you, he thinks, but doesn't say. Trust Sjin to get melodramatic and not look at the bare facts. I'm saving you, I'm saving you. He watches the wasp crawl across his dashboard, slowly, surreally, transparent wings flickering away.
Sjin sighs, covers his eyes with his hands. "I don't know," he says, after a long pause. "I don't know."
Sips looks at his own hands, strong and calloused and stubby-fingered, splayed out on his lap. He is silent. The air is thick with tension and it chokes him, fills his mouth and nostrils. You need to get out of here, he thinks. You're too good for this goddamned town.
"You son of a bitch," he says, instead of that. "You stupid son of a bitch, you make me so goddamned angry."
"Fuck you," Sjin says, and this time there really is venom in his voice. He pulls his hands away from his face, balls them into fists. "Oh, fuck you!"
There's another buzz, joining the first one, as another wasp climbs out of the hole in Sips's speaker.
"You're too goddamned weak, that's your problem," Sips says, and his heart aches, but his voice is furious.
"You're…" Sjin says, and takes a deep breath, and pounds one of his fists down on the dash, disrupting the wasps, "You're worthless!"
There's silence.
Sips feels nothing, inside. It feels like the antarctic. It feels like outside.
"Your mom's probably worried," he says, with no inflection.
Sjin doesn't look at him. He twists around, gets his coat on. "Yeah," he says.
He opens the door, shoving the latch in the way the crappy car requires. The silence from outside is deafening. Sjin gets out of the car, body dexterous and quick, and stands outside in the snow for a second, looking in.
"Thanks for driving me," he says, voice dull.
"Okay," Sips says, back.
Sjin stands there a second more, obviously wanting to say something, anything, say "i'm sorry", say "fuck you", but he says none of those things. He closes the door, instead, and Sips watches as he walks across the road, body silhouetted in the dark, and climbs up the stairs to his front door.
Sjin rings the doorbell, and Sips watches his mom open the door, watches the light from inside blare out against the white snow, stretching across the street. They're obviously talking about something, maybe yelling, but Sips's world is quiet except for the buzzing of wasps.
Sjin goes inside, after a minute. The door closes, the light is suddenly shut off.
Sips sits there, for another moment. His head is silent, his heart is silent. After a tic, he rolls down the window and lets the wasps out.