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The water is black.
Not metaphorically. Not poetically.
Just black, thick and lightless and cold enough that it steals thought the moment it closes over us.
Jet doesn’t remember deciding to jump.
He remembers pressure. Something foreign inside his chest, behind his eyes, hands that weren’t his shoving, forcing. He remembers Charn shouting his name once, sharp, startled, and then the world tilting.
And then water.
The possession doesn’t feel dramatic. It feels efficient. Cruel in how practical it is. Jet’s body moves with purpose that isn’t his own, dragging both of them down, deeper, away from air, away from sound.
Charn fights.
Of course he does.
Jet watches it like he’s trapped behind glass, Charn’s hands clawing at stone, at current, at him. Charn always fights. Always chooses action, even when fear would be easier. Even when silence would be safer.
Jet has loved him for that longer than this lifetime.
Water fills Charn’s mouth.
Jet feels it like it’s happening to himself.
Something inside him fractures.
The force holding him snaps, not gently, not cleanly. It breaks like a bone under pressure. One second Jet is drowning inside his own body, and the next-
He’s awake.
Fully. Horribly.
Charn is limp in his arms.
“No-”
Jet doesn’t finish the word. He can’t afford to.
Charn’s body is heavy in a way that has nothing to do with muscle. Dead weight is a phrase people use casually. It is not casual. It is devastating. It is the exact moment when Jet knows something is wrong beyond panic.
He kicks.
The water burns his lungs. Every second stretches into something unbearable. His mind is screaming calculations he doesn’t want to make- how long has he been under, how long can a body last, how long-
He drags them up.
Breaks the surface with a sound that is half sob, half gasp.
“Help!” Jet shouts, but the river doesn’t care.
He hauls Charn onto the shore with shaking hands, skin numb, muscles screaming. Charn’s head lolls uselessly to the side.
Still.
Still.
Jet drops to his knees.
“No, no, no- Charn-”
He shakes him. Too hard. Desperate.
Charn doesn’t respond.
Jet presses his ear to Charn’s chest.
Nothing.
The world narrows to that absence.
This is my fault.
The thought lands with terrifying clarity.
Not the curse. Not the possession.
The waiting.
Jet has spent months telling himself that restraint is love. That holding back is protection. That delaying happiness is the same thing as preserving it.
He has said not yet so many times it has become a prayer.
Now all he can think is, what if I waited too long?
Jet fumbles through CPR with hands that won’t stop shaking. He knows what to do. He’s memorized it like everything else that might save Charn someday.
Chest compressions. Count. Breathe.
“Come on,” Jet whispers, tears blurring his vision. “You’re- you’re not allowed- ”
He breathes for him.
Again.
Again.
Charn’s lips are cold.
Jet has kissed him before. Briefly. Carefully. Like stolen moments could stretch forever if they were quiet enough.
He thinks of another life, one he remembers only in fragments and feelings. Silk sleeves brushing in candlelight. Fingers lingering too long on wrists. The way love had to hide behind language that was never spoken out loud.
Two women in the 1940s, pressed together in shadows, sharing looks instead of names. Promises instead of futures.
*If we wait, we survive.*
*If we wait, we stay alive.*
Jet sobs as he presses down on Charn’s chest.
“I did it again,” he chokes. “I waited again.”
He remembers telling Charn they should be careful. That they should solve the curse first. That love could wait.
Charn had nodded. Always understanding. Always willing to meet Jet where he stood, even when it hurt.
Jet had told himself that was kindness.
Now it feels like cruelty dressed up as virtue.
He breathes again.
Nothing.
Jet’s vision tunnels. The world tilts sideways, unreal.
“I’m sorry,” he gasps. “I’m so sorry- I should have chosen you- I should have chosen us-”
He presses his forehead to Charn’s, shaking.
“You were right,” Jet whispers. “You always were. Love doesn’t wait. It ends if you don’t touch it.”
His mind is already moving somewhere darker, somewhere final.
He imagines Por Kru’s face when he tells him. Khem’s silence. The way the house will feel wrong without Charn’s presence, too quiet, too empty.
He imagines another lifetime slipping through his fingers again.
Jet presses his mouth to Charn’s and breathes one more time, harder, desperate.
“If there’s any part of you still here,” he begs, voice breaking completely, “please. Please don’t leave me alone in this life too.”
He slumps forward, forehead against Charn’s shoulder, sobs tearing out of him in ugly, animal sounds.
This is what mourning feels like, he thinks. This hollowing. This sudden rewriting of every future.
He has already lost him.
Jet presses his forehead into Charn’s shoulder and lets himself go still.
This is it, he thinks.
This is the part where the world keeps moving even though his doesn’t.
His hands are numb. His chest aches like it’s been hollowed out and left open to the night air. Somewhere far away, someone is shouting, but Jet doesn’t turn. He can’t leave Charn’s body. If he does, then it becomes real in a way he isn’t ready to survive.
So he stays.
And his mind betrays him.
It starts quietly, the way dangerous thoughts always do.
He sees them graduating.
It’s ridiculous, cruel, even, but the image comes fully formed, vivid as memory. Charn in his graduation gown, glasses pushed up his nose, hair refusing to behave no matter how many times he smooths it down. Jet standing beside him, pretending not to stare, pretending his chest isn’t so full it hurts.
Charn leans over and murmurs, “We survived.”
Jet had laughed in the dream. Soft. Disbelieving.
They had survived the curse. The waiting. The ache of wanting something they weren’t supposed to reach for yet.
Jet imagines them bowing to Por Kru before leaving, promises exchanged quietly, reverently. Coming back to Ubon not as students, not as boys trying to be good, but as men choosing where they belong.
He sees the house.
Small. Wooden. Close to the river. Not grand, not impressive. Just enough space for two lives that want to fold into each other. Jet imagines mornings there, bare feet on cool floors, Charn half-awake, leaning against the counter while Jet makes coffee too strong because he always does.
Charn complains. Jet pretends not to listen.
There’s laughter. Easy, domestic, earned.
Jet imagines Charn coming home smelling like sun and dust, sleeves rolled up, hands busy with things that matter. Jet imagines reaching for him without hesitation. Without permission. Without fear that something terrible will happen if they’re too happy.
He imagines loving him openly.
Not loudly. Not recklessly. Just honestly.
In the dream, they grow older. Lines form at the corners of Charn’s eyes. Jet learns the exact cadence of his moods, the quiet tells that mean Charn needs space or warmth or teasing.
They fight sometimes. Of course they do. But they always come back to the same place, bare feet on the same floor, hands finding each other in the dark like they were always meant to.
Jet imagines all of it in a single, brutal rush.
Every day he told himself to wait.
Every version of happiness he postponed.
And now-
Jet squeezes his eyes shut.
“I wanted to give you that,” he whispers into Charn’s unmoving shoulder. “I was trying to be good. I thought… I thought if I waited, I could protect it.”
His throat closes.
“But I waited again,” he says, voice breaking. “Just like before.”
Another life flickers through him unbidden, dim rooms, careful touches, love that existed only in glances and half-spoken promises. Two women who never got to imagine a future because imagining it was dangerous.
Jet understands now.
The curse was never just about fate or spirits or punishment.
It was about silence.
It was about love that never got to live loudly enough to survive.
“I don’t want to be brave anymore,” Jet sobs. “I just wanted you.”
He presses a hand flat to Charn’s chest again, though he already knows what he’ll find.
Nothing.
Jet’s breathing stutters. The world feels far away, unreal, like he’s already stepping into a life without Charn and doesn’t know how to turn back.
“I see it,” he whispers, tears dripping onto Charn’s shirt. “I see us. I see everything we were supposed to be.”
His voice drops to something small. Childish.
“Please don’t let it just be something I imagined.”
Jet slumps forward, grief crushing him under its weight, already mourning the life he never got to live.
Already saying goodbye.
And then-
Charn coughs.
Once.
Hard.
Jet jerks violently, heart slamming against his ribs.
Another cough, wet, ragged, real.
Charn gasps, water spilling from his mouth as his body remembers how to breathe.
Jet collapses over him with a broken sound that is half-laugh, half-sob, clutching him like the world will steal him away again if he loosens his grip.
“You’re here,” Jet cries. “You’re still here-”
Charn’s eyes flutter open, unfocused but alive, lips curling faintly even through the pain.
“Sorry,” he rasps, like this is nothing. Like, he hasn’t just shattered Jet’s soul.
Jet cups his face with shaking hands.
“No more waiting,” he whispers fiercely. “Not in this life. Not ever again.”
Charn’s fingers curl weakly into Jet’s shirt, anchoring him.
Some loves survive lifetimes.
Theirs refuses to drown.
And this time, Jet will never ask it to wait again.