Archive of Our Own

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2019.848e1 Sungchan sleeps like a big dog. He doesn’t take off that chain from his parents, not even when he’s washing his body.

2024.476e4 Sungchan was so, so nervous! I gave him a nudge of encouragement. I mean, who would reject him when he looks so good in uniform…

2026.103e2 Sungchan♡Anton♡Sungchan♡An…

Okay, no. That one’s just embarrassing. Anton dissolves the celestial scroll with a blink and falls back into the grass.

He must’ve been really out-of-his-mind bored that day to be scribbling nonsense on official divine documents. But if Sungchan wasn’t doing much, Anton wasn’t either. It’s not his fault Heaven is such a drag.

His eyes dart around the clearing. Whatever. No one’s around to tell him off for it. If anything, they could only say that Anton is piously devoted to the job—what else is a guardian angel to do anyway, but observe?

All that time watching and not participating had made Anton a very good listener. So when the Earth whispered, look at what I have, no one had heard but him—and at once, a glacier split and fell into the sea, an electrical surge shot a city’s power grid dead. Standing in the great open dome of the world, in Anton’s palms, Sungchan had looked up into the clouds, and Anton had flinched back as if he’d been caught.

Obviously, he hadn’t been. Sungchan would never know Anton, the progenitor of his blessings, not more than he would know the lingering breeze by his shoulder. But Anton was prone to that sort of meaningless fantasy anyway. The inane fantasy of being seen, and recognized. He can almost hear Wonbin’s muttered yuck.

He rolls over onto his stomach and extends a finger to a ladybug. This close, he can see the twitch of its antennae, its perfectly circular black spots.

At first, Sungchan had been a clumsy thing on off-kilter legs to prop up. He lifts it up in the air, and the ladybug’s slow crawl tickles his knuckle. But Anton couldn’t look away, couldn’t stop poking and prodding at this human’s little life, anticipating Sungchan’s every move. Smoothing out the sidewalk cracks before his shoes, keeping his coffee warm until midday—Sungchan didn’t seem to realize that his wants materialized before he even wanted them.

Maybe it was that covetous wonder on his face that first leashed Anton, and now, he hurt to stray farther than Sungchan's shadow.

He blows the ladybug off his finger, and watches that speck of red flounce in the air, before bursting into a puff of light.

Anton hasn't been punished for his proactiveness yet—so who's to say he isn't the standard, that other angels haven't gotten callous after a millennium of service. Only one thing remained unchanged: the inordinate extent of human desire. What they wished to possess, to become, to know.

He absorbs their malice and goodwill in equal measure. Anton can't judge, because he doesn't even dare to wish in the first place.

Humans all have their endearing habits in prayer. Sungchan’s prayers arrive in clusters: one miracle finds him and requests come rushing in after, riding off the high. He’s overeager, like a child extracting maximum enjoyment out of a toy until boredom. Silly, earnest boy.

Anton strokes the grass and sees wind run its fingers through Sungchan’s brown hair.

Simply, Sungchan must’ve been made for angels to gaze upon. The backyard is an unfamiliar setting, but, unperturbed, his arms are everywhere, reanimating everything he touches to life. Fingerprints smeared onto his neck, her shoulder. His eyes shift and gleam with bitter jewels, though their grit is betrayed by the girl-ish tail that wrinkles when he smiles—often, as the nerve to play is always impulsed.

Anton shouldn’t be the one on his knees, but he feels compelled to praise Venus’ dimples, praise the length of his scapula, his eyelashes. All that tenebrous resolve stirring underneath this God-gifted physicality. In its teeth, that innate, cosmic appeal pulling even an angel to violence in such a beautiful grip—like the sturdy, pearlescent handgrip of a pistol.

Anton's fingers dig into wet soil as Sungchan leans against the wall. When his smile tightens, all the dark corners of his face are amplified.

Sungchan acts like the only air he can breathe is from another's exhales. She’s a miraculous beauty herself—refined, marble features, so primly arranged like the head of a tulip, reining in an intensity that could rival hurricanes. Just to unfurl, slacken as their faces bump.

If anyone asked, Anton would describe it like Sungchan’s trying to see the inside of her mouth with his mouth. Not that anyone will ever ask him. He chews on his bottom lip. Anton should clean the dirt under his fingernails. Anton should get busy, feel worse for lingering on Earth when he belongs in Heaven.

All that time spent trying to decode the non-verbal language they speak down there, and he’s still not very good. He's only starting to understand the significance of showing your insides in submission.

But sometimes, he imagines simply speaking it without the barrier of translation. Anton could be leaning against the wall, too. He looks down and sees Sungchan’s shadow on his arm, creeping over his body as the sun moves, and the backyard moves, and when Sungchan bends over to speak to him, he would engulf Anton’s whole body in shadow. Hello. How are you?

There’s something inside Anton waiting to be seen, too.

How are you. It sounds like his spine crunches into itself when he rips himself back up to grass underneath him, the electric air. His skin is stained red, and the fluttering beat in his chest is an agitated red, too. Are humans doomed to live like this? So oversensitive. Sensory-seeking, then trapped in reaction.

Anton licks his raw lips; the lovely warmth here is unkind to his human form, always threatening to dry it up. He’s so sick of it, of himself. I’mgood,howareyou. He lurches up, feet crossing grass to mud to shallow water, and then nothing.

In immediate relief, the cold water submerges him. It’s something utterly divine, how heavenly light scatters underwater. Anton flips to face up, and the beams render him incandescent. Like a candle—though real flames would blow right through his human form.

It's what he gives up for what he gains: limberness, tactility. Engaging in sensations that are lost on, hardly significant to other celestial bodies: the biting temperature of water, the strain in his ballooning chest, the waxy foliage petting his legs. A persistent blade of seagrass wraps around his ankle, as if to keep him there, and Anton bubbles a laugh as he shakes himself free.

He swims a lazy circle, belly-up. This must’ve been the second-best surprise from Earth. Suspension in air couldn’t compare to the buoyancy of water, the effort in moving through a honey trap. He could rationalize why humans spent so long submerged in this wet environment; he imagined there was a natal attraction to it, like an amniotic cradle.

Swarms of fish carry him in their currents, and he rubs flanks with a curious shark passing by. Even with the annoying reminder resurfacing, that, yadda yadda, it's not a recreational pool, angel—the depths of the waters only grow as Anton's imagination is emboldened. His torso twists to push himself downward.

Heaven’s light doesn’t reach this deep, but pebbles glow and shiver as he swims over. Anton hums as he takes his pick: a rock with glittering striations, this one with a strange blue heat, another that reminds him of Wonbin’s pointy scepter. He gathers them against one arm, then uses the other to pull himself up into the blinding light.

He resurfaces with a theatrical gasp and shakes his dripping hair out.

“These are interesting…” The cattails nod in agreement. Sparks of unadulterated want, desperation, and greed lick his fingers as he sets each one on the mossy shore.

He rests his head on his arms, and Earth slips into focus.

Glittering striations: The flurry of dandelion fuzz makes him scrunch up his nose. Anton can’t make his cat live forever, but he can make sure their last days are spent together when he’s back home from school.

Blue heat: A child’s first prayer, fumbling and unsure. Her desire to win this hide-and-seek game carries its own gravitational weight. So cute. Anton pulls the shadows over her, and he holds a finger over his lips.

Wonbin’s scepter: Anton forgets humans actually struggle to change their form, and in fact, seem to be caught in a perpetual, life-defining struggle to change their form. He can’t shrink her figure, but he can stretch the dress out in the middle, just for tomorrow.

No one will ask him about this, either, but Anton imagines work like this: pressing his ear to the Earth, and all their tiny bodies scurrying over to spill their hushed secrets to him. Everybody wants to be heard; often, Anton just happens to be the only one listening.

He rubs those indents, holding evidence of struggle, no matter how small. Earth is simply overflowing with these, and the bottom of his pool has probably refilled twice over already.

So little, so demanding, and Anton can only provide. The other angels find his work ethic bemusing, if not downright off-putting—sure, the lowest order can get away with slacking off on the small, everyday miracles. After work that extends over eons, what's the reward in tying a loose shoelace, gifting a simple request for shade under a tree?

But all play, no work makes Anton… Mm, he doesn’t remember how that one goes. Falling backwards, purple races up human skin as his mass morphs into an octopus. Work is speedier this way.

It’s thankless, they complain. None of these humans know it’s Anton at their service day after day, will never sing his praises or inscribe him in worship, but—so what? He can’t help but feel there’s a greater pursuit in simple deeds: not quite altruism, but not quite egoism. He only has eternity left to ponder on it.

Eunseok would love to cut the pondering and drag Anton by his wings to more important, bureaucratic work in a higher divination, but the thought of dealing with other angels, and not humans, makes his jaw feel tense, unwilling. Strange angel, Eunseok's carping tone scrapes back.

The thing is—humans, in all their trickiness and secular pleasures, are all he knows. How many centuries has Anton spent swimming circles, thinking himself to oblivion, thinking himself into Earth? Even in the universe’s most ornate fishbowl, a goldfish is just a goldfish. Watching others’ lives play out around him in technicolor, surreal quality, of course he was attached. Of course there was an urge to stuff his gills and jump.

The universe relies on this attraction after all. Particles want their forces, salt wants the sea, doors want to close. Anton wants his useless, sentimental things, too, because he was only a victim of physical laws. They exist for a reason. If everything could be ripped apart so easily, nothing would exist.

A tentacle curls around a rock that vibrates in intensity. Even Sungchan, with his overwhelming human-ness and lust for life, is an outsider, Anton’s noticed. It's really not a big deal. No one’s a perfect fit for existing in this complicated world. Purple dots. Rough granite surface. He answers the prayers underwater in quick succession. He has no need to scramble for oxygen like humans do. It’s just another stupid game of pretend he plays.

He would touch Sungchan’s elbow. Hi—no—Hey, I’m good. And how are you? Like that. Something like that.

🪽

Things have been going too well for Sungchan lately.

Does thinking that jinx it? He crosses his fingers behind his back. But, really—it’s like his feet are guided by temperate currents, every accident clearing up before it can occur. There was a discount on his favorite flavor of Buldak. He never bumps into the corner of his coffee table anymore, the one that had caused him so much grief his shin was permanently bruised. His supervisor is finally smiling at him because he’s been on time to work everyday this month.

“Babe. I think I’m the chosen one.”

Karina takes off her glasses to wipe them off. “Chosen for what. Chenle's team on pick-up?"

"Pft," Sungchan rounds his eyes at her in disbelief. "Are you on his side? That kid acts like a tyrant on the court just because his dad knows Curry. Or what was it, his dad's uncle's babysitter’s dog’s…"

“Oh, so he actually gets to you.”

Sungchan turns to shake her by the shoulders. "Babe—the chosen one. I might be this world’s Anakin. Or the guy from the Matrix.”

She lets him finish jostling her around, before slipping on her glasses just to squint at him. “Ah, Neo? Anakin, Neo, and Jung Sungchan?”

"Add the… Atreides. What was it? Timothée Chalamet.” Sungchan makes a noise of satisfaction. “All of that on a bumper sticker."

Karina digs her socked feet into his thighs. “I’m getting a bumper sticker that says Honk if you think Jung Sungchan’s a dummy. And Dune 2 sucked.”

“Listen.” He lifts a hand like he’s cupping something. “Irene smiled at me this morning”—that does get Karina’s attention—“because I was early to work. I know, right? And I woke up so late. After all my alarms.” His other hand raises, and he smushes them together. “Boom.” He displays his palms to Karina, as if the physical manifestation of his blessings will appear like a rabbit out of a hat. “The flow of time literally slowed down just for me. Jung Sungchan is destined for greatness. Duke of Arrakis—”

She laughs, slapping one of his palms. “What happened to Irene putting laxatives in your coffee?”

“Bad sushi,” Sungchan admits, trapping her small hand to interlace their fingers.

Karina shuffles down on the couch to throw her legs over his lap. “Massage my legs. Well, don't get too complacent now. Maybe your sponsored work lunch is out to get you, too.”

Sungchan pouts. One of his hands fit around her ankle, and he smooths it up to knead her tense calf muscle. “Hey, don’t say that about our sponsor. But surely my guardian angel would do something about it. Slash her little blue Kia’s tires.”

Karina giggles. "Oh, yeah. That little guy."

Guardian angel. Beomgyu was the one who’d coined the name to mock him—like it would offend anyone but Sungchan’s mother to attribute criminal activity to divine judgment—but it had stuck. Sungchan's little guardian angel, his rubber bumper against all the world’s sharp edges. He rubs the soft back of Karina’s knee, where sweat is just starting to gather.

Not literally. It was just nice to tell himself someone was looking out for him. Made the world feel less impersonal.

There were times it really had felt like another person though. He’d never felt that angel’s grace as strongly as when he’d been interviewing for his current position.

There must’ve been fifty other people in the lobby that day, all stewing in their nerves and weakly padded resumés. Sungchan had kept his mind peacefully blank, smoothing down his tie, thumbing a paper cup of lukewarm cucumber-infused water, and passing the time coming up with OnlyFans nicknames.

Beomgyu was full of bright ideas, always eager to help out an unemployed friend. Hungchan. Hung hung sahur. Hahaha. Except nothing was funny at all. He should wear a ski mask, but his face was a big selling point, and God, would he have to shave his body every time? Because that was already hard enough, and he’d definitely have to ask Karina for help back there, and at that point, he might have a better chance asking Beomgyu’s mother…

Go for it.

Sungchan shot up, thinking it was his turn. The candidate next to him coughed and shuffled his papers further away from Sungchan. He belatedly swung his head around, but no one gave any indication of having spoken. Yet he’d heard the voice so clearly, as if it came from over his shoulder.

His heart thudded double-time as he eased himself back into his seat: not with embarrassment, but rather—as if his veins had been plugged up with some ungodly exuberance.

Every drop of sweat dried off him, lending him an aerodynamicism more fitting for a fighter jet than a junior analyst candidate. That knot of stress unwound into a bird, and then it shot like a falcon through his chest and nose-dived into an unbelievably rich well of confidence.

Sungchan blinked past crisp lobby lights, piercing in his vision like surgical loupes, and held his arms out, mystified. The next logical action seemed to be for Venom to take over his skin and start eating everyone in the room. On his father’s watch, light illuminated the hands at 11:11.

Was there methamphetamine in the water supply? Holy shit. Sungchan slipped the older woman next to him a dazed, deranged smile, and she flinched before blushing, blinking profusely at his boldness. That was another hit in his veins.

Hold on. Go for what?

Sungchan makes his interviewer burst into laughter at least ten times. Who’s counting, though? SQL jargon flows from him as if he were a savant. By the time he’s detailing his prior experience working in a fast-paced, high-volume service industry, where he was directly responsible for overseeing the financial transactions of a multi-billion dollar company (Taco Bell), she’s on the verge of tears.

Our company has been waiting for someone like you to show up, Jung Sungchan. I’ll see you on Monday.

That was Irene, by the way. On Monday, he accidentally sends a private, intimate confessional meant only for one Lee Sohee in #general, and she starts sneering at him like he’s the greatest mistake of her life. Too bad there’s no take-backs.

“Do I get a guardian angel too? Or do they only help out the least fortunate?”

Sungchan creases into a smile and leans over to pinch her cheek. “He’s right here~”

Karina purses her lips. “Gross, dude.”

He steals a kiss, and then pulls back to take her bottom lip into his mouth, slowly, intentionally, drawing out a hitched noise. Sungchan rearranges their legs so he can hover over Karina and kiss properly, but he’s been riled up since she started pretending her feet weren’t brushing over his crotch.

“Anyway,” Karina exhales. “I hope whoever, whatever’s blessing you makes you very rich and successful. Because I want to go to Cabo this summer.”

“Hell yeah. Let's swim with the sharks."

Sungchan bares his teeth at Karina in preview, and she snorts, shoving his face away. Something overwhelmingly fond balloons in his chest as he looks down into her bright eyes. He taps the pert tip of her nose. Sungchan wondered, plainly, was it love?

A semi-truck rams through the wall—or that’s what it sounds like—a screeching force sucking the air off his skin like a vacuum. Sungchan whips his head around, eyes wide, a primal fear lurching in him—the kind of evolutionary trait that sensed danger and told his ancestors: Run. He sweeps the room, chest tight.

“Sungchan?”

The blinds in the living room are closed. He swallows, trying to blink away a persistent light in his blind spot. Maybe there’s heavy construction outside, and the air pressure’s going haywire—weather’s been unpredictable lately. Climate change. Sad stuff.

Still, Sungchan clambers off her to peek between the blinds into the empty street. For good measure, he tugs the curtain closed, too.

🪽

“Anton. You need to stop.”

A lyrebird chirps. And then it churns out a melody from a human orchestra, dramatic and piercing.

“Lee Chanyoung Anton. Don’t make me say it twice.”

Anton materializes in front of the pool. His feathered wings sprout a moment later to hunch over him, but he can’t hide from an upper divinity. He would’ve been dragged out of thin air otherwise.

“Still using that ridiculous human body?”

“It’s not ridiculous.” Anton squints. “Gosh, the last time I saw you they were down there hitting rocks together.”

There’s a pause where Wonbin just shimmers above the ground, all six metallic wings wrapped tightly around his dull, burning core. The patch of land below him has already vaporized into nothingness.

Then, the wings unfurl around a lithe human body. Wonbin is so vain, of course, he fashions himself after the most beautiful face he can imagine. Feline, dramatic, a sovereign nose on regally sculpted bones—Anton hadn't known he was paying attention to human aesthetics so closely.

“Is this better?” Wonbin asks, warming a hand down his flat chest. "More our Anton's style?"

Anton hadn't intended to guilt Wonbin, but his lips quirk up anyway in satisfaction. “Good choice—" and before he can hold his tongue, "—I missed you.”

He instinctively wants to touch bodies the way humans do in greeting, but Wonbin wouldn’t understand it. Their shimmering convergence of light as Wonbin steps onto solid ground sends shivers down Anton’s spine.

A grimace wrings Wonbin’s lips. “As you already know… Your presence is missed above.” So characteristically evasive it makes Anton roll his eyes. Okay, he won’t act like he knows that Wonbin specifically asks to be assigned to him.

“Thank you.” Anton folds his hands in front of him. “I guess I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop, now.”

“What?”

Anton shrugs, don’t ask me. “What did you come here for?”

“Haven’t you been expecting me?” Pause. No birdsong, no rustling wind. Wonbin sighs, “Angel, you have a history.”

Anton could play dumb, or he could explain himself. But guilt writes his face, and his mouth sticks shut, flubbing both options.

‘History’ might go something like this: it’s a black night, and the remains of a small group huddle in a cave against dropping temperatures. Anton's moping and kicking rocks because Eunseok wants him to act your status, and the cold even cuts through his eternal flame. A fist-sized rock rolls to his human. You’ll die like this, he thinks quietly. Figure it out.

She’s very resourceful. That’s why Anton had liked her so much. Wonbin has nothing good to say though, stomping in to incinerate all of Anton's careful landscaping because that was five hundred years too early for fire—but he thought they were beyond that, honestly.

Straightening out Sungchan’s tie? That’s nothing in comparison.

“It’s something. Don’t act like you don’t excessively favor him.” Wonbin narrows his eyes. “And that little stunt you pulled—”

Anton scrunches his face and grips the top of his head. “I hate when you do that.”

Wonbin sighs, leaning so he can lay on his side in the air, propping up his arm with his scepter. “It’s not even just that insignificant human. Or any one of them that came before. Aren’t you too acquainted with them... as a whole? You spoil them like this, and now they look up to the sky with greed.”

“... You know, wanting beyond necessity was once an arcane art—”

“It’s a hazard. Their knowing exposes us.”

That muted radiance, present in any of Wonbin's forms—as a bug or a fluctuation in spacetime—emanates from his eyes. Anton is nearly bowled over by his status. He has nearly none up here compared to Wonbin, much less Eunseok. But down there, anyone would be incinerated by his pure form.

“Don’t get upset.” Wonbin rocks his scepter, eyes roaming Anton’s sagging frame.

“I’m not upset. I’m just thinking.” Anton strangles the whine out of his tone, because he’s not the same baby angel Wonbin had admonished to tears last time.

Wonbin’s voice softens anyways, like he is. “You’re a very special angel, Anton. You’re a good angel. But you need to be careful, rational, and sparse with your acts. Or soon, I won’t be the only eye on you. And who knows how merciful their judgement will be.”

Special reads as Eunseok’s strange reads as ‘troublesome’. It’s all the same criticism, wrapped up in a pretty bow or not. Anton doesn’t need Wonbin to mince his words like he was freshly conceived from His hearth.

“I know. But they want so much, and I have so much to give.” He runs a hand through his hair and shakes it out. “How—how can I be good in His eyes if I turn a blind eye to even the shallowest suffering? Because humans are especially so fragile, you know? Even their smallest, like, most trivial pains feel like...” Like they’ll eat me whole. Anton lowers his eyes. “... It just makes me feel bad.”

“All of them? Or just one?”

“Not even Eunseok’s impartial,” Anton retorts. Wonbin raises his eyebrow.

But Anton’s defensiveness is a paper wall. He has been expecting Wonbin to come nag him. No angel, even with Eunseok’s favor, can get away with the amount Anton has interfered with human life, and that internal admission has whittled away at his resolve over time. Not enough to stop him—just to feel the frisson of guilt with every blessing he throws Sungchan’s way.

Even in Wonbin’s lazy sprawl, his muscles are tense, defined. Anton thinks of how easily human skin separates, how much of their insides come rushing out, like it had never belonged in there originally. Faulty design was made in His image as well.

What was inside Anton that didn’t belong?

Wonbin tips his head. “What can that human do for you? Do you want him?”

Before any meek protest can even enter Anton’s head, Wonbin’s spindly fingers are prying open Anton’s lips, compelling him to answer.

Anton stutters, “I uh—lehee go—” He corrals his drool with a spiteful glare at Wonbin’s receding hand. “—I don’t love him or anything.”

“Of course. But it’s a similarly dangerous sentiment, no?” Wonbin flicks his fingers down. “He pulls at your light, very obviously.”

Anton wipes his mouth and then opens his palms. Underneath translucent skin and vacant veins, something pulses hot and red, like a dying star. He shoves his hands between his thighs, and they still burn. It doesn’t have to mean anything if he doesn’t let it.

Anton doesn’t love Sungchan. An angel can’t love a human; a human can’t love an ant.

One time, Anton had accompanied Sungchan to, what must’ve been, a human’s recreation of Anton’s omniscient power. In front of his eyes, scenes of human life played out on a large, flat surface. At first, he’d watched through the flashing images in Sungchan’s bright irises, but, strangely, began to feel compelled to face forward and experience the show firsthand like every other human seated in the room.

It was a technological feat: they had built a false reality within this reality. The story was nothing he could’ve thought up himself, so bizarre and fantastical. In one memorable scene, an attractive man suddenly became two of himself—behaving and speaking in opposition to the other self. Anton had mirrored Sungchan’s slack-jawed amazement.

Imagine that. Two Antons. Two Sungchans! He looked over, and at that moment, Sungchan had also turned to the side. Both their lips turned up. Anton could’ve lit himself on fire for less warmth.

He sees that large moving picture again. First, the Good Anton that nods along to Wonbin’s concerns, mindful of Heaven and Earth’s separation, bells jingling with every dainty step he takes. But he makes for a boring story, so Bad Anton comes in, overly fascinated with the lower concept of love. He sits with his legs in the pool, imagining what it was like to take up space. On Earth, in someone else. Anton can rub his eyes and miss a lifetime of devotion between two humans, but their soul carries the mark—scratched up and deformed, unlike his eternally immaculate purity.

What could it possibly feel like? Was it water caressing his body, accepting him wholly each time? Touching bodies as a habit. New textures in his mouth, new sounds in his ears. A reason to turn over his shoulder. A reason to leave fingerprints and eyelashes behind, because he exists, because someone has confirmed him to. A reason to let go of life. A scratch on that eternal purity.

He wants to believe Good and Bad Anton could get along. He also kind of wants one of them to die.

“It might be similar,” Anton says quietly. “But I don’t want to cause trouble for you anymore.”

Sungchan has been wishing for a lot, lately. Anton hasn’t seen his woman companion for a while, but it’s not clear if that’s related. He’s an erratic creature. All those years documenting, and Anton might only understand Sungchan as well as the back of Wonbin’s neck.

“What does similar even entail—you want to see how pink he gets inside? Is that what they say these days?” Wonbin sounds a little reproachful. But his luminescence recedes, and Anton can finally fill his straining lungs.

“Wonbin, who the heck is saying that stuff to you.” And, like, Anton's never even thought of how Sungchan looks on the inside—cut open—but, wow—

“Tch.”

A pale hand curls around his chin, then disappears. Anton’s own hand startles up to feel the lingering warmth.

“You—”

Wonbin evades Anton’s wide eyes and curls up like a child to fold back into his unknowable form. Typical.

“Don’t disappoint me anymore, angel.”

And then he’s gone. Anton keeps caressing the spot Wonbin had touched (and refused to acknowledge). His skin feels warm, everywhere. Human bodies react in such interesting ways.

It definitely doesn’t help his predicament. He lowers himself into the pool to cool off, but troublesome thoughts chase him. With each stroke, the vision crystallizes before him: Sungchan, touching his chin. No, grabbing it, and their mouths seeing each other. Sungchan, grabbing his entire body and setting it all on fire. Sungchan’s hands underneath his skin, coaxing out the light from within Anton.

He has to lay face down on the rocks and hold his breath until it deadens his racing heart. But drowning is only a short-term solution. One of the Antons has to give—bad thing this Good Anton’s all malleable inside, all copper against tungsten.

🪽

Sungchan started playing soccer when he was twelve. Of course he was good. A prodigy, even. His father drilled him on the days he didn’t have practice, and he spent those hours perfecting his penalty kick, learning to make the ball obey.

He was the designated first penalty kicker in every team. They counted on him to lift morale when the tension was at its highest—everyone sat back as Sungchan counted steps from the ball, eyebrows drawn to utmost focus, because there was only one outcome. If Sungchan wanted the top left corner, the ball was going to go to the top left corner.

Something changed after recruitment. He flubbed the first penalty kick of the season, okay, nerves of the first college soccer game, but then a free kick went so wide he’d stared at his leg like it wasn’t his own. His coach had too much faith in him, or maybe in a version of him that no longer existed, because Sungchan didn't make a single one that season. He quit after that.

Had it all been luck? If it had truly been skill, how could he have lost the ability so abruptly? Even as a disfigured memory, a copy of a copy of a copy, his body still stings with the reminder of those jagged emotions tangled in his chest, like kitchen knives piled in a plastic bag. He’d wanted to kick over every trash can in the world. He probably had. It felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath him, and he was falling face-first.

He’s still falling. Sungchan’s luck has completely dried up.

Me

Im so sorry I want to die.

I love you I love you so fucking much

I actually want to kill myself

15:12

Karina 💗🍔👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨

Do it

15:22

When Sungchan sets his phone down, he feels the cascade of each muscle in his arm contract and release in the movement. He closes his eyes.

There aren’t any more trash cans to kick. But he’s not a child. Just a grown man failure.

If only Shotaro had been there last night. Oh, Shotaro… His hands drag over his face. Some angel of reason. But, no, this was Doyoung’s treat for his department’s juniors only, so it was Beomgyu stuck to his side that night at The Crossroads. So really, only the devil on his shoulder had clocked in.

A poke of his red trident. “That guy’s gonna break his neck looking at you.”

Sungchan glanced up. The aforementioned guy probably did break his neck whipping his head away.

“What, does he know me?” Sungchan went back to inspecting foam. “If you see Seunghan’s gay little earring then take a picture. Sohee’ll cream his pants.” He kind of wanted to lick it out of the glass, but his seniors were with them at the table.

Sigh. If only he was at home, pants off, FIFA on. He’s too low on the corporate ladder to refuse an invite, but he’d have to find a way to sneak out early so he could be up tomorrow to drive Karina’s friend to the airport.

“Man, I wish. Seunghan’s a riot.” Beomgyu gets closer to his ear. “But, like, that guy wants to know you for sure. From several different positions.”

Sungchan scratched his eyebrow. “I’m not your avatar for kinky sex. How many times do I have to tell you? Are you getting laid properly?”

Beomgyu took a rattling sip of his near-empty drink. Which could mean anything.

Sungchan sneaked another look out of curiosity, and they made stilted eye contact. A severe face that disarmed easily. Sungchan appreciated that. He noticed the swell of his thighs against the stool. Fluffy. Just like Karina.

“Hm.” He pushed away his glass and tapped the table. “Look, I have to leave early tonight. I know Doyoung’s gonna be a hardass about it so if he asks, I’m coughing up blood, and it’s contagious.”

Beomgyu frowned, pinching Sungchan’s sleeve as if to keep him there. “He’s not gonna let you enter the office tomorrow if you’re coughing up blood—” His voice rose with a histrionic flair, like Sungchan was actually a biohazard, and Sungchan clamped his mouth.

Too late. Haechan turned around. “I’m sorry, who’s coughing up blood.” No volume control #2.

Beomgyu jabbed a finger at Sungchan, eyes wide above Sungchan’s hand. Sungchan daintily cleared his throat and darted his eyes away, barely dodging Doyoung’s perplexed face turning their way. He gripped Beomgyu until he could feel his teeth, and then let him go to clutch his jaw with exaggerated moans of pain.

Beomgyu got what his loud mouth deserved, but Sungchan didn’t get to slink away unnoticed. Doyoung cleared him like a health inspector (No, Beomgyu was trying to be funny. No, I don’t have strep. Or COVID), and Sungchan couldn’t figure out how to produce blood in his mouth in the ten seconds it took Doyoung to shoo Jaehyun out of his seat and sit across Sungchan.

“Sungchan, I think I expected better from you.” Doyoung frowned. Department bonding, more than a suggestion from HR, was a life’s calling to him. “Really, I hope you start spending less time with Haechan. I don’t want to hear you calling off one day because I accidentally took salvia and I’m recovering from the mental repercussions of living as Mark Lee’s small intestine for 50 years—“

“Did you like that one? I liked that one,” Haechan chimed in. Beomgyu nodded thoughtfully.

“No.”

His glass emptied for want of anything better to do, and then Beomgyu and Haechan decided to go shot-for-shot, leaving Sungchan’s pride on the line if he pussied out. The tension was up, anyway; was that Seulgi dancing on Irene? Weren’t they both married? And just when he was planning to leave, the DJ pulled out the 2000s white girl classics, and how was Sungchan supposed to resist. So he gave in to fun. To camaraderie. To company spirit? To blowjob shots with Jaehyun, to singing the wrong prechorus with Haechan, to drinking until they were red-in-the-face warning lights, and his eyes, naturally, started to wander.

Sungchan doesn’t wake up in his apartment. He rubs his eyes, and an eyelash comes off with his fingers. This isn’t his bed, and that certainly isn’t his Barca jersey on the wall.

Sungchan does not panic. To be honest, he might’ve been training his entire life for this point of extreme crisis. An inhuman calm settles over him as he inches out from under the blankets, hardly sparing a look at the other body snoring away. With each quiet step on the floorboards, he is deliberate, he is thoughtful, and he is collected; he tugs his pants on and makes a run for it with his belt flapping loose.

He eases the door shut and nearly walks into someone’s grandma. That’s his first sign to kill himself. She rolls her grocery cart past his pitiful figure as he turns around and hangs his head on the wall, still clutching his pants up at the crotch.

The second sign is when he checks his notifications to 30 missed calls from Karina and It’s over for you WHORE from Giselle. He chooses to believe his guardian angel could’ve intercepted these, and by not doing so, has given him the third sign. Ding ding ding. The slot machine of life lines up three fuck-you middle fingers. Message received.

Me

I will

If thats what it takes to make you happy again

15:25

Karina 💗🍔👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨

Are you insane

15:27

He sends a last ditch attempt. All his cards on the table.

Me

Insanely sorry!

Sorry i know i really fucked up

You can come over and shoot me

15:35

She reads it almost immediately.

The stagnant air in his apartment makes him restless. Sungchan triple checks his front door is locked, then puts his hands behind his head as he paces the living room, trying not to hold onto any thought long enough to seriously agitate him. You’ll get stuck digging a deeper hole. So dig shallow holes everywhere. He tries to be mindful with his breathing too, inhale-2-3-4, but realizes Karina taught him the technique from her yoga class—his exhale whooshes out all at once.

Work’s not going great. His tardiness is creeping back, and Haechan keeps fearmongering that they’re being forced to use AI in their projects to train the algorithm before they get “impacted”, and Sungchan, the useless little rookie, might bring a single, pristine tear to Doyoung’s eyes when he’s let go. Irene might throw a party. The gym bumped up their membership prices. He dropped a carton of expired milk, and it still smells funky in the kitchen. It’s like months of easy sailing have been overturned with a freak storm.

He clips his coffee table.

“Fuck!” Sungchan yelps, doubling over. “Shit. Oh my—Ow.” This must be divine punishment. What big sin did he even commit—they’re not counting sodomy anymore, right?

And Sungchan really does feel so fucking bad. He already misses Karina, her boozy perfume and sharp press-ons and the long handhold of her neck. He can make a terrible decision and still love her… He tests his tongue with his teeth. Hm. He can make a terrible decision and still want to be in a relationship with her.

Sohee 🤓

Why does karina have a note on IG about bisexual me…

15:39

Sungchan swipes away the notification. He lied. Isn’t there one more card up his sleeve?

All the pacing worked him up, so he has to sit down to distill all his errant thoughts into a meaningful point. An arrow in the next direction. His fingers find the creases in his jeans and smoothen them out.

Beomgyu’s voice floats back into his head, somehow more irritating than before. Guardian angel.

Were they watching at this very moment? Sungchan eyes the ceiling light like it’ll Morse code a response. It’s what he’d expected as a child, when he’d pray beside his mother and ask for the first thing that jumped into mind. New cleats. Cheeseburgers on the lunch menu. 30+ likes on his OOTD by the morning. Sometimes, there had been a flicker—inconsistent, like someone was fumbling with the electrical wiring.

”I’m not crazy,” he announces to his empty apartment.

No one knows they’re making history when they’re in it. What looked like a heavy dose of post-break up psychosis, might one day be regarded as an ingenious unraveling of the architecture of the universe. Sungchan could write his autobiography about it. He could write a Reddit post.

It was unexplainable all that time. Long stretches in life where anything he asked for seemed to fall right into his hands, no matter how undeserving he was. That overwhelming presence that occasionally touched down, like a higher being trying to reach him through weather patterns or radio songs or a sotto voce remark in the back of his head. And if it wasn’t squashing him like a bug, it must’ve been out of benevolence.

But why Sungchan? What was he meant for?

He’s not particularly inclined to the occult. He has enough going on without worrying about LeBron throwing up masonic symbols or whatever the fuck—this is why Sohee gets those insane stress dreams he recounts like they’re spiritual messages.

Sungchan doesn’t dream, which Sohee likes to argue is more psychopathic, but it’s not like he can control that. Most things in life are outside of his control. He’s made peace with this: it’s called the external locus of control, and recognizing that improves your lifespan by maybe five years.

But there was something else interfering with what lay within and outside of his sphere of control. He could only ascribe those events to chance so many times—and who knew if that entity, with so much power, could turn on him one day? Better to establish a good rapport first. A firm handshake.

Really, Sungchan’s not crazy. That’ll be the first line of his autobiography.

… At the very least, no one will be his witness. He squeezes his hand into his knee to cease its shaking, then sets his hands into prayer, dropping his forehead against them.

“Hello, Guardian Angel, err, Angel of God.” He hasn’t been to church since he was, what, twelve? “Be my light and guide me through these incredibly trying times. I’m calling upon you today because… I have a request.”

“You’ve definitely helped me in the past. I’m starting to realize that, and, uhh, I’m sorry it took me so long to figure that, figure you out. But, thanks. But, they weren’t really things I explicitly asked for, so I guess for the first time I’m being direct about what I want.”

He sucks in through his teeth. ”I made some big mistakes. Like… I’m sure you know so I won’t explain them. First of all, could you help out my ex-girlfriend, and make sure she’s doing okay. Yoo Karina, you can look that up in, what, I feel like you should have some kind of people dictionary.”

“And for me.” His mind, extremely unhelpful, goes blank at this imperative moment. “I'm just—do you think I’m capable of truly loving someone?”

It slips out of him, leaving his mouth bobbing open. The words affect the air like a confetti popper. Jarring, idiotically juvenile. It rains down on him in the aftermath.

“... Because I must’ve not loved her,” Sungchan mutters under his breath. “I guess it’s childish, but I want to fall in love one day. That sort of feeling where it happens, and you just know it in your bones. And I—I want my good fortune back. I might be the last person on Earth to deserve that sort of blessing, but you’re my angel, right? So I’m being selfish.”

He takes a deep inhale, really tries to connect his roots with the interlinked web of the world, with the winged little baby he imagines is doing him a solid, and exhales. “Thank you. Amen.”

🪽

Amen.

Anton startles up from the grass. Never had he received a direct prayer, been called upon specifically. The prayer had fallen upon no ears but his, and it was from none other but his Sungchan.

It was just… He sends a distraught look to the pool.

Anton’s own land disobeying him felt like the highest betrayal, but there was no other way to describe the blank, lifeless state his pool had taken on. For days now, there were no ripples or frothy waves calling out for Anton’s help.

He could still look into Earth, at Sungchan’s solemnly bowed head, but there was no way for him to interfere without using his pool—it was a conduit for the divine powers he couldn’t contain in this weak body.

Regardless, he reaches his hand in, ignoring the hum intensifying in his ears, until he jerks out. He grabs his wrist, watching the skin blacken and peel. The water felt like it was going to snap his wrist off.

Clearly, a boundary has been established. A stern warning to stay in the celestial realm and stay out of Earth.

Maybe his last intervention had been too much. He thought Wonbin’s visit was the end of it, but someone was clearly still displeased. Anton had only wanted to provide an answer to Sungchan’s question—is this love? See for yourself.

Perhaps too much of his own curiosity had seeped in. Too much morbid fascination with bending things until they broke.

He tries again, forcing his fist past the impenetrable barrier, but it spits him out again. This time, he comes out with only a stump of his hand.

“... F*ck.” The heavenly mandated self-censor doesn’t help his irritation. “F*ck this seriously.”

On principle, Anton doesn’t swear, duh, but—am I capable of love?—the weight of Sungchan’s wanting stuffs his throat and threatens to choke him. Outside, an unassuming matte white. Inside, rings within rings like a stone that’s been trialed by fire, consumed by lava then thrown out. His prayer hardly shook, but Anton could see it in the desperate shape of his soul. Sungchan was asking for love in the unflinching, eternal.

Anton has been alone for a long, long time.

That’s all. His knees sink into the soil, and grass curls around his calves. Anton must’ve overstayed this body, because a terrible, grounded influence whispers to him, how hard could it be?

Anton has felt this way about humans before Sungchan. The only question was if there would be anyone after him.

He turns up at the light until his human retinas burn and shrivel up. His blinks feel dry, and then wet.

It would be simple. For Yoo Karina, Anton could snap his fingers and make any passerby fall madly in love. To be kind, and efficient, he would push that woman who already harbored feelings for her. She could move on and forget all about Sungchan.

For Sungchan, Anton wouldn’t need to comb through Earth to find someone. He’s watched how those around Sungchan move with him, how Sungchan moves alone. Loving Sungchan would be the easiest thing he’s ever done.

Wonbin was wrong; Anton’s not good. There’s always been a crack, and he picked it open out of revulsion, then listlessness, and now his ascetic body yawns open and dreams these ridiculous, kinetic dreams. All primitive, heat-seeking, oily snakeskin through his fingers, utterly, damningly un-angelic. Lesser beings would gouge their eyes out at his tamest desire.

Anton almost laughs. What’s the point in fighting himself on this. It’s so clear that he'd breached the point of no return a long time ago.

One more try.

Don’t, comes sternly.

“Go away, Eunseok.” He gets farther, but more of his forearm is lost to the punishing water. This must be the trade-off. Your silly human body for your silly human interest.

An ear-splitting shriek greets him, and before Anton can scramble back, he’s yanked away, tendons popping at the pressure.

“No!”

… You absolute idiot.

“Eunseok.” Anton swallows past his dry fear. “You can’t stop me at this point.”

Mountain-sized gates clang and reverberate. The waves ruffle his feathers, and he squeezes his eyes shut at the onslaught of wind. When he tries to peek them open, he has to close them again immediately at the secondary onslaught of pure light beams screaming at his already damaged retinas.

Ugh. The Upper Heavens don’t even try to be hospitable.

“Open your eyes, fool.”

This time, the surroundings are shadowy and still. Anton knows the immense power it took to create darkness out of Heaven’s light, though he always harbored a guess that Eunseok preferred that sort of environment.

“You already sent Wonbin to yell at me,” Anton grumbles. "Isn't that enough?”

Eunseok appears as a pinprick particle of light, darting around the dark space. “Wonbin doesn’t even know how to raise his voice at you anymore. He failed me.”

It doesn’t seem fair that Wonbin and Eunseok saw each other more than once a sometimes. Anton wonders when they would tire of each other, if ever. How many universes would collapse and birth in that time.

When Anton opens his mouth to respond, his knees fall out underneath him. “Oh—!”

“Taking a human body to these heights…”

“You took me here!” He pushes himself up onto his intact arm, glancing sideways at his useless legs. Great. He’ll have to rebuild it all from scratch again, and muscles were already so hard to sculpt.

“You really look like a wretched creature right now,” Eunseok hums, almost content.

Anton ignored the singing on his right arm, necrotizing flesh up to his elbow, and tucked what remained to his chest. He doesn’t glare at Eunseok, but when he flashes his eyes up, that simmering frustration bubbles up to the surface and mars his vision.

“... Don’t get upset.”

“Both of you are so—” Anton clamps his lips shut.

Suddenly, he realizes that, despite ripping him away so carelessly, there was something Eunseok could do for him that no one else could.

Even if Eunseok couldn't understand it, he must've felt it. Anton's suspension between Heaven and Earth, more than a mental humiliation, was a physical pain. He could not have been created, so painstakingly forged by divine fire, just to not belong anywhere. To not belong to himself, even.

“Eunseok… You have to help me.”

He doesn’t need to explain. Nothing can hide in Heaven—he’s sure all his nasty thoughts have already been projected like a billboard in front of Eunseok.

The choir sings in warning. Like a hand opening from a fist, Eunseok’s wings begin to unfurl from that tiny light, hundreds of eyes nested within the feathers rousing awake. Anton catches his pulse between his teeth, reminding himself that it’s just Eunseok, no matter his status or his proximity to Him.

“Angel." Half the eyes lazily point to him, the other half refusing to even witness Anton. "You completely forget yourself. When I offered to bring you up, you told me you wanted to focus on simple pleasures. Small acts of service.” Eunseok leans down, six ivory wings flapping with him. “What you’re asking for right now, is not simple nor small.”

Anton takes in shallow breaths, shrinking underneath his massive seraph form. “I—I can admit my faults, Eunseok. But how can I stop what I feel? The only way is to see it through.”

Eunseok is motionless. A cat’s eye narrows to cast judgement on Anton, and he bites his lip, pleading to it.

“Do you wish to drag Heaven down to Earth?”

“Of course not,” Anton whispers. He’s never considered the other option, however, and the image of Sungchan prancing through his clearing, submerged in his celestial waters makes him feel—gosh. His nails dig into his palm. “I’ll exist to regret it. Oh, Eunseok, if you want me to cut off my wings and drag myself through Hell like a wicked creature in repentance, I will.” Anton’s voice breaks as it rises in urgency. “I have to be with him.”

“Wonbin was soft on you.” Eunseok’s light begins to hum at a low frequency. The way it makes Anton’s chest rumble reminds him of his fledgling days, when he’d hide in the canopy of his wings, thinking nothing could reach him. “He told me you were lonely. That I should go instead of just sending him.”

Anton bites down until his lip bubbles and bleeds.

Things get lost in eternity, in Heaven’s gauzy white sheets. Anton has never faulted Wonbin or Eunseok for their absence—but it ended up like this anyway, didn’t it?

“I don’t have to be lonely,” Anton says softly. “Please, Eunseok.”

“So this is what it’s like,” Eunseok mutters. “Rearing young…”

Tendrils of light escape Eunseok, swirling with the cerulean below them, until a large whirlpool forms. In the rushing air, Anton spots flashes of pink, brown—human colors. And that specific shade of brown…

“Is this—?”

“Forty days. That’s all.”

A well of water emerges from the center, and Anton gasps at the familiar sight. He leans forward to rub his face into Eunseok’s feathers. “Thank you, thank you.”

One wing covers him, a burning weight over his back. “Forty days. You will come back to me, angel.”

His pinky finger dips in, and celestial strength arcs through him. For the first time, Anton is the one wishing as the whirlpool spins faster and starts to suck his body in. Anton closes his eyes and takes a deep breath—it’s just like swimming—before dunking his head in.

Rather than cooling, heat presses tightly against him. Anton realizes he’s being compressed beyond his human body’s limits. Skin, muscle, and hair sears off until light is all that remains—and then he’s untethered, nearly weightless besides the mass of that small, white stone.

He coils around it, siphoning the hushed prayer out, and spilling one of his own. Jung Sungchan will love me—they’re spinning, or hurtling downward—Lee Anton. At maximum velocity, his mind begins to slow. And for the first time in eternity, Anton’s thoughts completely stop.

🪽

Sungchan hasn’t felt a bounty on his head like this since college. Even if graduation freed him from his long chain of slighted exes, it hadn’t freed him from Giselle. Opening packages feels like Russian roulette knowing she probably sic’d an Etsy witch onto him.

Or maybe she’d forgone the middleman—middlewitch—and she’s ritually sacrificing his childhood stuffed animal on a pentagram herself. Hopefully Karina’s whole girl gang is there, bonding over cutting off Sungchan’s dick or something. He’s well aware of the healing nature that sort of conversation can bring.

He wouldn’t even question where Giselle digs up crusty emotional support Daldal. Karina has had all but free reign of his apartment these past few days. She’s been collecting things she left behind—her electronic toothbrush travel case, hair clips, tupperware. Meanwhile, Sungchan had loitered like a stranger in his own apartment, watching her leave his cabinets in disarray as she searched for anything of his that she wanted to take as well.

”Have you ever even touched this emulsifier?”

”… Take it.”

Surprisingly, she engages in the conversation he throws out. All civil, of course, he's not an actual monster, but the principle of it was still antagonizing. Part of him wanted to push her to an emotional extreme that could finally knock him out of his stupor: cut the rope, and drop the anvil. However, Karina also knew that withholding the outburst was just as unsatisfactory to Sungchan.

It’s when he tries cracking a joke about her moving onto the female version of him, that Karina sends a look over her shoulder so pained, pleading, he figures he should just be waiting in the lobby instead.

So recently, he’s had a lot of time to himself, energy with no outlet, that he spends interrogating himself in an armchair.

And here’s the kicker, as in, Sungchan literally feels it like a bicycle kick to the gut: he doesn’t know why. He wasn’t sexually unfulfilled with her—but he couldn’t deny emotional cheating was a habit in relationships he’s never managed to shake off. It was a fact of life he’d accepted. Like being left-handed. At least, he thought he had the decency not to act on it.

Why did you do it? Why didn’t you think of her? Did you ever even love her? His teeth find a hangnail on his thumb and cut it off at the base. What’s wrong with you?

Sungchan groans, dropping his head into his hands and rubbing his cheeks until blood flow hopefully resumes to the making-good-decisions part of his brain. He peels his face up to some kid watching him, food delivery in hand. And what’s your fucking issue—

He averts his eyes. Goddamnit. It’s Mr. Hong’s daughter—Sungchan bought her Pokémon cards for Christmas. He has no beef with that kid. She accepts his overcompensatingly bright smile with a concerned look and continues to the elevators.

Sungchan is the worst person alive. He shifts his eyes. No, he’s not. But he might be the worst person in this apartment complex.

His little guardian angel should be figuring it out for him, but it’s been radio silence for a while now. Perfect. Sungchan lost the coin-flip on his sanity as well. He hates it when he doesn’t understand himself. It makes him feel—he stares at the lines in his palms, held up on his knees—bad. Shit.

Everything happens for a reason. So maybe their relationship would’ve ended even worse if they kept it up. Maybe Sungchan was guiding Karina under the velvet rope to the next bigger and better thing. That sounded upstanding. Feminist, even.

The longer he looks at his hands, the more they feel detached from his body. His mind moves sluggish, like he’s in a dream—because that’s something Sungchan does now.

Last night, he’d been fighting the waves in one of those Olympics training pools, except there was a big open mouth on his tail-end waiting for him to lose his pace. He woke up suffocated from his blanket, coughing up spit.

Shotaro had kindly suggested restarting therapy. Beomgyu told him to get an exorcism.

He’s entertaining the thought that a demon has been swapping consciousnesses with him, debating the political merits of blaming the gay demon for cheating, when some clumsy idiot walking by bumps his phone off the table. Sungchan watches it clatter to the ground, and he’s sure his face isn’t settled kindly when he glances at the stranger.

“Oh, I’m so sorry…”

He fixes it up, fast.

“Didn’t need that anyway,” Sungchan jokes, quickly leaning over to grab it, then snapping back.

The witch got him. His soul has been lifted to heaven. First of all, yes, heaven. And second of all, is he being greeted by angels? Are those trumpets of rapture or of love?

Sungchan stands up like he’s yanked by a wire. The stranger takes a step back, looking equally stunned.

Now, he’s not desperate enough to start writing poetry to repair his image, but it feels uncouth to simply rove his eyes over this guy like a glistening Wagyu beef burger. Still, his eyes only know how to eat: arrogant, rounded features down to his terse cupid’s bow, cutely drawn to fire. Fluffy black hair curls under his ears, and with the loose white shirt hanging off his tall, limber build, he looks like a sweet puppy who made a wish to be a real boy. Or a cherub who’d gotten lost on the way to Eden. Or a life-changing Grindr lay.

Fuck! It’s an infidelity demon that just happens to be gay, okay.

“Excuse me.” Sungchan clears his throat.

The stranger’s been indifferently wandering his eyes around the lobby, but also not moving at all. So Sungchan’s not sure why he jumps in surprise when he speaks.

The words dry out of Sungchan’s mouth the moment this man’s attention, with the force of a second sun, lands on him. Probably for the sake of self-preservation.

“Sung—chan?” His voice sounds weak and un-practiced, all air. Unexpected, but appealing. He almost gets distracted from the fact that he doesn’t know this guy.

“Have we met?” Sungchan glances down like he might’ve been wearing a name tag this entire time.

His eyes had followed Sungchan’s down, and now they follow him back up. He wets his lips. Not answering.

“You… Didn’t I see you at The Crossroads? Ah, when was that?” Sungchan recovers, brushing the side of his hair back. Fumbling at this critical moment—he might as well let Giselle eunuch him.

He’d gone back… Just recently, right? Post-breakup, dragging Sohee along to make him feel bad for him, Sohee not feeling bad for him at all, yeah, yeah.

His face, as shockingly beautiful as it was, seemed familiar. Flashes, polaroids of memory come back to him. A sharp white smile, tousled hair, giggling as Sungchan manhandled him in place. A powdery scent smothering him like a freshly-laundered blanket.

“Oh, Sungchan, I remember that too.” His voice floats and shimmers in the air, pleased. When he smiles, the corners curl up like a cat.

Sungchan tips his head. He has a feeling he knows how the rest of this conversation will go. “Unforgettable night, hm? I think the only thing I forgot was to get your phone number. And your name?”

“I don’t have a phone number,” he says evenly. “I go by Anton.”

“An-ton...” Sungchan’s mouth feels around the syllables like two glassy marbles. “You’re really funny.”

Anton tucks his head shyly, but Sungchan can tell it’s a calculated veil of innocence. Especially when he bites his lip, swelling it up to a grapefruit color, and peers up at Sungchan underneath his lashes. That’s not innocent, but it might be a love letter.

“Oh, but, where is this—?” Anton looks up, blinking oddly at the cove lights in the ceiling.

Sungchan looks around too, like they might’ve teleported somewhere else while talking.

“This is my apartment building? Wait.” He holds out a hand and laughs. “Are you lost?” Is it your first day on Earth? he also wants to ask. But that’s mean, so maybe something more like Did you get lost after you fell from…

“No. I followed you home last night.”

”Eh?” Sungchan stops laughing.

Anton looks dead serious, and, hm, stalker game is, still, game, but Sungchan can’t help angling his feet towards the doors. He can deal with weird—but wasn’t this some sort of crime?

“Sorry, that’s not what I meant to say.” Anton shakes a hand through his hair, frowning. Maybe he’s actually nervous, because he doesn’t stop fidgeting with his body. He rubs his nose bridge. “You don’t like it when people say weird things like that…”

“Aw, you’re not weird. Who said you’re weird?” Sungchan reaches out to tame Anton’s messy hair, lingering by a shiny cross in his ear. He can so deal with weird. Especially when weird looks this good. Anton doesn’t offer an explanation for what he actually meant to say, but Sungchan can deal with that, too.

Anton doesn't move when Sungchan taps the cross. He might not even be breathing. On closer inspection, Anton’s eyes are impossibly black: swallowing all the light nearby, or maybe emitting a light so pure that everything else dimmed in comparison.

More memories slice through—Sungchan pressed against Anton, from shoulders to hips, crooning Katy Perry into his ear just to feel his body shake in laughter. Sungchan’s fingers past his puffy lips, scraping the ridges of his hard palate. Sungchan fitting his palm against the crook of his trembling knee and pushing back. More tactile memories, sweaty and soft, passing by with just the hair-raising sensation of a bullet sinking through feathers until he reached a hardened core. An unbelievable heat.

A matchstick scores inside his hindbrain, and Sungchan feels really sick of just thinking about all this.

“I think we had a good start that night.” His finger trails down to Anton’s jaw, and he watches his throat bob. “Are you going to follow me up to my apartment too?”

Anton jerks from his touch, and Sungchan's insides plummet.

“Fuck. Sorry. I’m not a pervert. I think I’m being challenged by God and I—“

“No, never!” Anton snatches his dropping hand and brings it back up to his face. “No. I just find this all hard to believe. That it would work like this… So perfectly…” He trails off into a mumble, like he’s only speaking to himself.

Sungchan tips his head, feeling Anton's hand like a hot iron around his wrist. He’s way too cute. Like the underside of a kitten’s paw, all pink and sensitive. “You think we’re perfect?” The kind of cute Sungchan dreams about roughing up.

That Hail Mary from weeks ago resurfaces, and his fingers twitch. There was no way…

Bless up, Sungchan tells his guardian angel. I’ll lure Sohee out of his cave as a virgin sacrifice. I’ll drink his blood. I’ll do anything you want. Does god actually love me? Do you love me?

Anton leans into Sungchan's palm, guileless. His smile is pointed like an arrow. “Yeah. I do.”

🪽