conium maculatum

maybe she can ignore the truth a little longer, hold on another day, another week. selfishly, perhaps, but isn’t it only fair, cosmically, that for once she have some control over her own life? that for once, she could have what she wanted, for once she could keep herself safe?

maybe he’s been in love. it always felt like it at the time. most of his relationships were just as eclectic and fucked up as his life was. they always ended badly. he’s pretty sure they’ll all end badly (and why the fuck is he hanging around dani when he knows this -- the selfish asshole that he is, apparently). it’s impossible for things to ever end nicely with him. it’s just not in his wheelhouse. he keeps telling himself this time it’ll be different. somewhere deep, deep in the back of his mind he knows it wont be. 

he’s not allowed to be happy in that particular shade. colored over warm and pleasant. love, real love, is something he’s supposed to be color blind too. he’s not, that’s the thing of it, he wants it. but he’s not supposed to see it, or hear it, or crave it. stay colorblind, be the cosmic fuck-up bomb of a human thing you’re supposed to be. don’t deviate, don’t pull on that leash. bad dog. it’s no wonder dani treats him like he might be an animal sometimes. maybe she can see through it. accidentally feral, ill-trained.

“my sensibilities are fickle.” he corrects himself, pairs it with a lopsided looking smile that only dimples at one cheek. he drops down into a crouch to drink, doesn’t notice the steady drip-drop of whiskey collecting in puddles on the pavement until dani does. he half-wonders if more are cracked inside. fractured glass that had bounced it’s way across the pavement as soon as they got close enough to the radioactive haze of bad luck. karmic distribution. whatever the hell it was supposed to be. all jaekyu knew was that he hated it. 

he was stubborn about that hate. stole back what he could of the bottle with greedy gulps as it painted the skin of his chin, neck, sticky. a moment of ‘take that karma, you didn’t steal everything from me.’ only mildly pathetic. he can live with that. pulls the mouth of the bottle away when some of it overflows, spills over to the wrong pipe and leaves him coughing. it’s mostly empty anyway, and he’s wearing a good fourth of it, despite dani’s attempts to mop it off. but she’s a sweetheart about it. lifts his own sleeve up to help. 

“your fortune huh?” he doesn’t bother pointing out palm reading isn’t something he does. people don’t want the truth regardless. he uses it as an excuse to trace his fingers against the other’s skin, to press his lips to the center of his palm. “says you’re disastrously unfortunate, very rich, and very handsome.” he drawls back at the other, “and probably going to live a very strange life. and that you should probably tell me what the hell you were doing out in the woods all night.”

“it’s supposed to mean exactly what it sounds like.” truthfully, he knows he says some odd things at times. but that had been fairly straightforward. every time he’d warned noah against something, he’d gone and done it anyway. now, whether or not listening to jinsol was a good option was an entirely different can of worms. but his intentions were genuine, born entirely from jinsol. he wasn’t like it, not entirely. not yet. it hadn’t consumed him, taken over his mind like a disease. he liked noah, even if noah’s attention was incidental, even if noah mostly just wanted his money. he still liked the attention, liked the fake emotion he sometimes rolled out, like he might actually want to spend time with him. a red carpet treatment because he was easy to scam, and jinsol could live with that. it was more generous than most of what he was offered. he did his very best to buy whatever scraps of happiness that he could, feel-good quotes that it wasn’t possible be damned.

jinsol feathers his fingers through noah’s hair as they both drink their way through (admittedly, quite terrible) coffee. doesn’t notice the way that noah’s jaw twists in mechanical circles as he chews holes into the inside of his cheek. he’s too lost inside of his own head. sometimes it’s hard when he first comes too. like shaking off the last remnants of sleep. wiping away fog and dreams that seemed true at the time. only for jinsol, it all was sort of true. has gaps of visions and a voice that doesn’t belong to him ringing in his ears. slowly fading, but not fast enough.

he at least takes comfort in the fact that he’s a good enough liar that noah can’t pinpoint what he’s lying about. it’s nearly the only thing he’s good at, a learned skill from his father. like some time-honored family tradition. except it hadn’t been taught, jinsol had just picked up on it. used it as a crutch, as half an identity. “maybe there’s nothing else there, just lies.” jinsol offers him out like a solution, it’s probably the closest to the truth he could get. or, it feels like it to him. there is more there. a tired boy, a broken boy, a manic boy lost and aching to be found. being buried stone by stone in some trap of a cave, voice hoarse and gone from screaming. here, take this pretend version of me. it’s less mangled. more palatable. i’ll buy you whiskey and pills. it always goes over better like that. all that brutality and hopelessness removed.

he slips down next to noah anyway, because he didn’t tell him to leave and jinsol wants to keep pretending for a little bit longer. drops his hand into noah’s lap with an idle request he doesn’t really believe noah could ever fulfill. not even with his stack of tarot cards. he curls his fingers in against noah’s cheek as he feels warm lips brush his palm. a little chapped, but nice enough. leans in to kiss him when his words slow. he tastes like a mouthful of pennies. 

but jinsol’s grown familiar to that particular flavor, he ignores it.

“running.” truth. “from it.” mostly true. “someday it’ll get me. a strange and short life.” entirely true.

“aw shit, ” she mumbles, glances down to find the edge of her backpack a slow creeping puddle, a whine on her lips. “i think i sprung a leak.” she notes, eyes the bottles inside - unbroken, then glances at his. a hairline fracture in the bottle allows liquid to spill free slow and steady - how much of the magicked liquid is already lost? will the remainder be enough to keep him anchored? her heart starts to race, uncomfortably. “oh, shit, that’s gonna leak all over you…. drink up.” she half-jokes, bites the inside of her cheek instinctive, suddenly ill at ease.

jaekyu is a stubborn thing. that’s what his teacher had written on his report card in third grade to send home with him. it still holds true now. he’s always been a stubborn thing. headstrong, opinionated. he careens into whatever direction he decides he wants to go toward. even if the road is choppy. even if it tumbles down a rocky-sloped cliff. yeah, sometimes he makes shitty decisions. they land him in handcuffs and a split lip, blood dripping into his eyes in the back of a cruiser. but he wants to make them. he wants to decide. because there’s that thing about fate. about how it all seems to come together. that predetermined bullshit that jaekyu really, really doesn’t want to believe in, but half does. because he’s already forced into so much misfortune, a misfortune he carries with him, shackled to an ankle. so he makes his decision, so he lives wild and reckless and refuses to stay in the lines. so he pulls away and gets angry when people try to decide things for him. so he fucks up a lot. so if he knew what dani was doing, he wouldn’t really be sure how to react.

but he doesn’t, and jaekyu makes it hard to pick apart his mind. he does a good job of it, wears that mask so very naturally. a happy boy. bright-eyed with a laugh that bounces off the walls. terrible ideas, and a clever tongue. always ready to go and go and go (because he’s afraid to stop, but hardly anyone knows that). but he likes that better, people only reading part of him. because he is all those things. he likes to laugh, he is a menace, a terror, has a tongue too clever for his mouth. it’s just that there’s more. he’s not just that dumbass from high school that too many of the girls wanted to date. a puppy-dog boy that wears leather jackets enough that he scores bad boy points. there’s misery, and terror, and loss. there’s broken shards of sadness crushed into a box. ‘do not open. turn back now. i’ll punch you in the goddamn face.’ scratched across the top of it, tucked down deep behind the shuttered blinds of his ribs, the warding beat of his heart. 

fuck you, i’m happy. that’s how jaekyu lives his life. as a goddamn liar. pathetic.

at least the girls still like him.

“what if my sensibilities don’t want to be fucked?” he pitches back in a statement that’s a little weightier than he realizes, because he’s dosed up to his eyeballs and thinks he’s head over heels, follow-to-the-grave in love with a girl he barely knows. he accepts the bottle she hands over to him, because he usually just buys himself cheap two plus one bottles of soju and dani always brings him the top shelf shit. like he’d ever say no to that. “there’s a difference between stubborn and having taste,” jaekyu informs her like he might’ve been a liquor connoisseur and not some punk stealing too-large mouthfuls of whiskey straight out of the bottle. a real one would tell you to savor it, but jaekyu has a hard time savoring much of anything. he’d drink it down in a funnel if dani had brought one with her, probably. 

he drops into a crouch, heels pressed flat against the pavement as dani sits to dig through her backpack for a bottle of something with pink fruit stamped across the bottle. he wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand when dani complains. he drags on a look of surprise as he bends in a little closer to investigate, until he ends up lifting the bottle he’s holding a little higher. watches the thin stream of liquid river down to the pavement. 

god, he’s so sick of himself. 

“well, fuck. cheers.” he decides, head tipping back to drink down some more of it, feels the excess drip uncomfortable against his neck, stain at the collar of his shirt. because that’s the kind of person jaekyu is.

“what’re you doing out so late? up to no good i presume.” she slides the backpack off her shoulder and the tell tale clink of glass as it thumps to the ground reveals its contents. “i brought presents.” presents tainted with magic, of course, but this isn’t the sort of thing she’s about to tell him. not that it really needs to be a secret, because, well, its fine. its not that big a deal. its just a little bit of help. nothing more.

jaekyu doesn’t air out his abnormalities for the world to see. doesn’t wave it around like a banner, an arrow splashed across it pointing down at him spelling out bad omen, powerful. he’s not entirely sure he’s either of those things. he knows he’s something. something bad. but he’s not like dani, not jumping rabbit-fast to prove his power. trying to kick up a reaction. he buries it out back, like a murder weapon underneath layers of soil and sod. dani performs her magic tricks, and jaekyu performs a one man play. starring role: normal boy, shockingly well-adapted with the concept of magic. but the girl’s too proud of herself to really notice that. or maybe she chalks it up to her power too. it doesn’t matter much either way.

privately, jaekyu thinks dani would steer clear if she knew of his own magicked self.

perhaps if dani knew the truth she wouldn’t be so willing to play a giant game of pretend. to douse his mind in potions and brews that make him forget that he’s incidentally dangerous. that wouldn’t push him into hiding this truth deeper into himself, a knee jerk reaction that’s forced on him under this pretense of love. dani would hate me, i love dani, i can’t tell her. it’s as simple as that.

it’s not, but it makes it seem that way. jaekyu doesn’t really have a choice about it. she never gives him long enough to figure it out before he’s swept away in manufactured emotions once again.

so he picks up more guilt to heft it along with him. guilt he hadn’t really asked for, but unavoidable guilt nonetheless. he’s used to that part though. being robbed of his autonomy, not to as great of an extent. but he doesn’t know it, and so it doesn’t matter. that’s how those things work -- right? 

“i love everything.” jaekyu admits. it feels like it should be a lie, jaekyu’s not really the type to love everything. some things, sure. vibrantly, ecstatically, but not all. it feels like it should be a lie, but it’s not one. it’s strange, but a lot of things are strange. a fact of life jaekyu’s come to accept, especially lately. he tucks his hands in his pockets as his skateboard slows, shifts, changes directions to roll back to her. he feels a little bit like a puppy dog. he should hate that. that should be one of those things he could tell her. i love so much about you, except this. i’m not your pet, dani. but he doesn’t hate it, really. it just feels like he should, sometimes. when he’s alone at home and they haven’t been able to meet up for a little while.

he pulls away and she pulls a face, an expression of thoroughly present disgust, fingers snapping with a hushed mutter and the stolen candy vanishing with a pop. “that’s the nastiest thing anyone has ever done in the history of time, ” she notes hyperbolic to a fault, grimaces. “i don’t know why that’s where i’m drawing the hygiene line but it absolutely is, and you’re a fuckin’ disgrace.”  the satoori she’d once tried so carefully to scrub from her tongue in fear of the unfeminine or critical denouncements is easy on her tongue now, worn like a second skin. “you’re lucky you’re so hot.” her expression softens into an easy grin, even as she slides a hand into his hair, yanks him back down, too roughly, into a kiss she can control.

the thing about bad luck, or omens, or whatever the fuck you want to call them, is that it all collects. compounds. like layers of paint. it just gets thicker, smears of color that blend into something brackish and ugly. that’s how jaekyu feels a majority of the time. weighed down under layers and layers of it all. because no, he might not give himself bad luck. but when you pass it on to the world around you, when there’s destined to be at least one small mishap every time you’re around your friends, family, strangers on the streets. there comes a point where you want to stop ruining everything you touch. jaekyu thinks king midas had it pretty good, at least he could pawn all his shit off. what does jaekyu get? jack shit. two part time jobs and no future to shoot for.

sometimes he sits and thinks. thinks he should remove himself from situations. should hermit himself away, locked up in his apartment, try to cultivate a skill that’ll make him enough money to buy a pack a ramen a week. like taking obscene pictures for overweight forty year olds or drawing furry porn (but he’s never been particularly good at drawing, and so that’s off the table). these thoughts are fleeting, and something selfish always chases them away. he can’t do it. he’d go crazy. he’d break down. his entire being fracturing into pieces. he needs interaction, he needs friends and parties. he needs to get smashed and run from the police yanking his buddy’s arm near out of the socket to get away. 

besides, he’d tried it once. he’d ended up sleepwalking his way into a terrible situation. maybe it’s something of a job. fate sets up these intricate bombs of situations and jaekyu is a walking matchstick. boom. feeling burnt out is just a way of living.

but he pretends he’s happy. because he refuses to let himself crack.refuses to let people peel him apart like a fractured egg shell, to let the yolk of his being leak out hopeless. no, he’s busy pretending to be pleasantly hard-boiled and content. so he decends with greedy hands and a bright smile plastered across his face, muffled laughter against dani’s mouth and a triumphant looking smirk when they part.

it lasts all of five seconds until it turns into something affronted. “dunno babe, you put my dick in your mouth after i skated yesterday. do you really have a right to yell at me about gum that’s been in your mouth?” he asks her with a poorly stifled laugh as he leans in to nip at her lower lip. “my tongue’s been in there.” he whispers conspiratorially, like dani might’ve been left out of the loop on what may or may not have been in her mouth.

“and i know you’re one. so what a pair we make, huh?” he points out, grins up at the other as if he might be paying him a compliment, before he lifts his head once more to take a gulp from his cup.

the space heater lights up, orange and artificial, but it ushers additional warmth between them. eventually jinsol’s fingers stop aching, his shoulders stop shaking, and his bones thaw. frost dripping away to leave his fingers pink in a stain-like reminder. it’s quiet in the van. just the creak of cabinets, the thump of noah’s heels, the occasional gust of wind outside that curls around the car and screams to be let in. it’s different from the vast, echoing halls of his own house. he’s not entirely sure which he prefers. but at the moment it’s nice, with noah leaning back against them, warmth gathering in the gaps of space left open, human humidity chasing away the chill that threatens to creep in through whatever gaps of space it can manage.

“even if i tell you things you don’t listen to me anyway. there’s no point.” he hums back, a weighted bias considering most of what jinsol tells him fights against human instinct. don’t look at that corpse, you’ll regret it, or don’t ask questions, you’ll regret that too. but curiosity is something that curls itself up in too many people’s skulls, an itch that grows if left unscratched. but jinsol uses it at as example anyway, because he can. scratches his fingers softly behind noah’s ear as he says it. 

“do you know? so what am i lying about?” jinsol asks him, pitches it in a whisper near noah’s ear, an action caught somewhere between affectionate and threatening. a pool of honey on a spoon, dripped over thumb tacks. sometimes it’s hard to tell. sometimes jinsol can’t figure it out himself. sometimes it feels like he’s pulled in two different directions at once. he threads his fingers back through noah’s hair as he sits up again, takes another sip from the mug, and then another, until it’s slowly drained and abandoned on the tiny table propped up near noah’s bed.

he muffles a yawn into his palm before he preps the coffee, passes it back to the other, makes one for himself and flops onto the floor, leans his head back until it rests heavy in the other’s lap. “so tell me little wanderer, are you warmer now?” he questions, grunts a protest as the other continues, “it is not my lot to know all things. just most of them.”

noah’s eyes are dark around the edges, and jinsol watches the way his lashes flutter when noah drinks him in. tentative, dubious sips. like he’s not sure he’s going to like what greets him. like he’s suspicious someone might’ve shaken a little bit of rat poison into the concoction. jinsol doesn’t particularly like that look. but he’s not unfamiliar with it. nearly everyone in his life has leveled it at him at some point or another. his father, his nanny, his collection of half-friends. he traces a finger across the arch of noah’s brow, a slow drag of a movement as jinsol presses his lips together. “i’m not lying.” he tells him. he is lying, sort of. but it’s perhaps not as outright as usual. he hadn’t chosen it. it’s nearly the same as not having time. 

he lets his lungs deflate in a slow leak of air as noah answers him, lets limbs untangle as he rolls onto his back, folds the backs of his hands over his eyes, elbows jutting out across the pillow behind him. it’s one of those sorts of answer that jinsol doesn’t like, but that he knows won’t matter in the end of things. do you like me, or it? and it doesn’t matter if you choose it. because it won’t care about that sort of thing. maybe it’ll be happy. 

so the answer is disliked, but expected. in the same sort of way he could brace himself if he asked someone the question ‘do you like me, or my money?” and who wouldn’t pick the latter? he knows the truth, a hollow ring through his bones. maybe it picked him because he’s more nothing than he is boy. had a neon sign that flickered to life the moment he was born. no vacancy -- empty rooms, please occupy. free wifi. he grins, the half cocked kind that most people take and read as cocky. usually it’s layered over in something more self-deprecating, but maybe cocky would fit him better, should fit him better. whichever.

“it doesn’t matter.” he unsticks the words from the roof of his mouth when he finally sorts through tangles of thoughts and words and auditory stimulation that isn’t meant for both of them. it’s better to pretend, better to pretend you were tying it to some abstract piece of the conversation. better to call yourself a daydreamer, say you’re lost in the clouds. anything is better than the truth. once you spill this sort of truth, well, you don’t stay put. they lock you in rooms where you can’t wander off to carve some boy’s eyes out.

how unfair.

noah pulls him back with hands pressed to his face and jinsol  rolls back toward him once more, ignores the sting of skin at the drag of a calloused thumb.”so’re you.” jinsol accuses, something conversational and lazy when noah pulls himself upright. makes use of the extra space to stretch sore limbs, though relinquishes it back to him when noah comes back with coffee that tastes sharp against his tongue.hums in ascent and buries one hand in noah’s hair when his head drops against his lap. “i think you’re a liar, noah.” jinsol tells him, wraps it up in a slow sweep of a smile as he bends in half to press a quick kiss to the boy’s forehead.

he clicks his tongue with a heavy sigh, pulls himself upright as the other suggests coffee, nods his head and swings his feet to the ground. “fuckin’ weirdo.” he murmurs, but its almost fond, his hand dropping to the top of the other’s hair to tousle the strands into disarray before he stirs up the coffee, adds a helpful amount of alcohol, passes it off to the other and makes one for himself before he thinks to pull a hoodie on over his thin top, chasing away the chill.

“i didn’t have time,” jinsol explains away with a jumbled mouthful of words. not the truth, but bordering on similarities. he’d gone to bed, and then he’d woken back up swaying in the middle of the forest on aching legs. his own body tarnished, but there wasn’t evidence enough of anything particularly terrible. nothing glaringly so, anyway. sometimes he hears bad news. sometimes he wonders if he was the one who did it.

he’s a little worried he came too so close to noah. but he doesn’t tell him that. how can he? why would he? he shouldn’t know. it’s a feeling, a resounding one. he shouldn’t know. the sky is blue, the grass is green, and cho noah shouldn’t know that jinsol came too a quarter of a mile away from his van. he swallows down the amalgamation of fear and triumph that tastes like bile on the back of his tongue. he can’t figure out which one he’s feeling. the real him. or maybe they’re both real. it’s hard to figure it out. it makes his head throb when he tries. “do you find it interesting, or me interesting?” jinsol asks him, still swamped by confusion and lethargy from walking who knows how long throughout the night. which one do you want? the question sits there, half-formed and unspoken, hanging off jumps of logic that jinsol made alone. me, or it?

it’s never you. never jinsol.

it never is. there’s only so much to absorb from a paper cutout of a boy, only so many lies you can read scrawled across its body before you start to get bored at the lack of substance. “i know,” jinsol whispers out against noah’s arm, responds to a voice that only he can hear. but he forgets sometimes, it swarms him. loud and all-consuming. it’s there. a presence. a buzzing fly of a thing he can’t shoo away. talks and talks and talks until jinsol’s worn down and forgets, forgets that it shouldn’t be real.

noah pulls him back from the beginnings of sleep and shadows with fingers curled around his face, and it has jinsol smiling at him. something slow, sweet as he traces his hand across the thin fabric of noah’s shirt. slides it up higher, a delicate trace across his neck, jaw, to layer over his mouth. hides away noah’s question and sneaks himself closer. “i just said. noah, you need to keep quiet. this town isn’t nice.” jinsol explains, mouths the words out slowly, carefully. seals them off by pressing a kiss to the back of his own hand, a kiss separated by silence. 

noah makes a funny little click of a noise, like a cat on the prowl doing it’s best impersonation of a blue jay. jinsol likes that, purrs out happy and strokes a hand at noah’s hip as he sits up. “says the pinnacle of normalcy.” he snorts back, drapes his arms overhead and lets his eyes roam the innards of noah’s van when the other rocks up to grab at mugs. he’s been there before, but he still likes it. the smell of instant coffee slowly starts to envelope him, cut with the sharp scent of alcohol when a mug’s pressed in against his palms and jinsol finally bothers to haul himself upright, sits splay-legged on noah’s mattress and takes a sip. 

‘you gonna tell me or is this gonna go into the ‘weird shit about jinsol’ column?” he queries after a moment of letting the other curl into him, when jinsol’s toes no longer feel like the boy might actually be the walking dead, when there’s a little more color in his cheeks and a little less gathered in frigid ears and extremities, when noah’s had time to warm the other’s hands between his own.

“it’s january.” jinsol reminds him like he might’ve forget. like noah might’ve been the one missing a crucial step and not himself, in too-thin of a jacket left for too many hours outdoors. in jinsol’s defense, it wasn’t really his own decision. he wasn’t presented with the night like a gift he chose to dive into. no, it was a hard push of a situation. head slamming, bouncing off a jagged rock, left to an unconscious drift across the darkness and cold. he figures it must’ve only been a few hours. his fingers aren’t genuinely frostbitten, just aching. they start to pinprick, a needling sharpness as noah slowly rubs warmth back into them.

“you like my weird bullshit.” it comes out like a reminder, traces dark eyes across noah’s profile as he curls himself in a little closer. until the trembling starts to slow, the clack of his teeth sounding less like a frantic receptionist typing up a late email. he thinks it’s true though. a little bit. because without weird bullshit, he wouldn’t be jinsol. and noah seems to like him well enough. or maybe jinsol’s beginning to slowly delude himself about that too. forgets in bits and pieces that noah is probably only sticking around to siphon money away from him. jinsol’s a leaky faucet of a person, lets wealth drip-drop out to whoever waits around long enough. perpetually ignores that he’s in need of repair. just lets his cracks run deeper.

he trains his eyes back on noah when a question reverberates through his chest. doe-eyed, can be taken for sweet if you’re willing to believe in that sort of thing. the fact that jinsol has a way of looking like an angel was probably half the reason he got away with as much as he did, slipped away from sticky situations and lied his way toward a nebulous freedom. “you shouldn’t ask so many questions. you’ll make it mad, it’ll get you too,” it comes out like a sigh. fragile and flighty. traces one hand up the length of noah’s body, across his hip, stomach, chest, balances his palm near the other’s heart, taps a finger along to the beat he finds hiding underneath his skin. 

he smiles, crooked and bright, before he leans in to press a kiss to noah’s jaw. 

this registers suddenly, as he watches the other’s nose crinkle in a wince. his pupils are blown wide and feral, his hair tousled and tangled, his expression haunted, a little vacant, a little distracted. “what’re you doin out here anyway?” he questions bluntly, a hint of suspicion in his voice, an incredulous laugh to follow as the other speaks, “of course, “ he reassures, “i love having visitors first thing in the morning, before i’ve brushed my teeth,” this is tacked on in an obvious drawl, mirth slow spreading like molasses.

it had been one of those nights. in that way where you whisper those, a creeping edge of trepidation curling at your tongue. dangerous gossip. so it’s been one of those nights, those nights that have been stacking up higher. jumping from once a month to once a week. one of those nights that’s blotted over in black and scarlet. one of those nights where he pretends he doesn’t know. forcibly shoves his way into denial. because what else can he do? he has three options. one, pretend he’s normal (an obvious choice to make, though one that’s losing ground as things begin to spiral. again.). two, he decides he’s insane. three, he gives in, he listens to the thundercrack of a voice that’s chipping away at his skull. he gives in, unlocks that chest of memories buried deep in his head and remembers. greets this dark, ever-present monster of a thing that’s long since made a home of his body.

it doesn’t belong to you anymore.

“i know.” jinsol hisses back, caught up underneath his breath, spit out jagged as he trips over a stray root that’s growing warped through the deer path he’s managed to find. it’s not quite dawn, the sky a pepper-cloud of gray-black as it tries to wake the sun. he end up at noah’s by chance.

is it, though?

“shut up. shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up.” jinsol spits out the words angrily as he scrubs his palms across the rough fabric of his jeans. fraying patches gather in sporadic holes, like they might’ve gotten snagged on a bramble bush at some point. there’s no blood painting his hands a vicious red this time though, and that’s what pushes the half-frozen boy into knocking at noah’s van door. he can catch a sliver of his reflection in the side mirror of the vehicle. wild hair, a cut striped across the bridge of his nose. it’s thin. he glances down again, similar marks lace their way up his arms. he’s not sure how it happened, or why. they remind him of claws. or maybe nails. it’s hard to concentrate though when his teeth are rattling hard enough to shake his mind around inside his head. numbed toes and vibrating limbs as another gust of wind circles in on him.

he slips inside when he finds noah’s voice. maybe he shouldn’t, but noah parks out far from the town. his own house is miles away. he aches with cold. the door snaps shut behind him. jinsol doesn’t feel like himself. noah’s face makes him want to. sometimes. not always.

when the knock comes at his door he’s not surprised, he doesn’t have to guess who it is, just barks a gruff, tired, “c’min” that slurs together, the kettle on his stovetop beginning to whistle loudly, a blistering sound that crowds out the stacatto knock of the other’s hand, dispels the distant song of birds. “you come to laugh at me in my cold squallor?” he laughs, despite the fact the interior of the van is warming quite nicely, now, despite the fact he poured a pretty penny into his mobile abode over the years. he folds his hand around the other’s wrist, feels his pulse jump like a humming bird’s wings beneath his grip. “tea?”

jinsol looks windswept. his hair is wound up into tangles of curls that frame his face in wobbly edges. his eyes are blown open wide -- perhaps by the wind as well -- his clothes in a general disarray. of course, this isn’t an out of place look for jinsol. an aesthetic that matches the atmosphere, matches the jittery boy that seems like he might be blow away at any second by a particularly strong gust. a tornado continuing it’s path of destruction elsewhere. some far away land that doesn’t yet know the destruction he may very well bring. but for the moment he lingers, sweeps his way through beaten down almost-paths that wind maze-like through the forest. leaves crunching like hollowed out bones underneath the heels of his newly bought sneakers. his old friend’s chucked into the river.

eventually he stumbles across the ramshackle van that noah calls his home. it has a certain charm to it, jinsol supposes. vastly different his blocky estate. though both seem out of place in the old, earthy town. jinsol figures they both are as well. he feels like it, at the very least. out of place. out of his mind. he doesn’t really know what to do about it though, so he trudges on. ignores it. shakes away abstract thoughts and a voice that doesn’t belong to him as he wraps his knuckles against the door.

“that threat is really much less pleasant.” she determines, nose crinkling a little bit even as she grins, shifts to fit their lips together, fingers sliding against skin as the other protests. “of course not, darling, “ she agrees with a sleepy sigh, fingers stroking against the line of his jaw, “you’re much more than a puzzle.” she adds, in sultry promise. “and much more fun.” she’s sure he won’t appreciate this comparison either, so she silences him preemptively with a kiss, lips bruising and teeth catching, a feline purr of sound in the back of her throat as she presses more demandingly against him.

“sure,” jiho answers in turn, voice bone-weary. sure he can, because what other option would be left? sure he can, because a large part of him believes that noeul’s not as powerful, as entirely otherworldly as she thinks. a prophet of death, sure. a telephone operator transferring static-filled transcripts to the world of the living. line one, please hold. and then the announcement. it comes out grand to everyone, and jiho thinks it’s just because death is so enshrouded in mystery. but what does he care about death? he’s been facing it for years. so sure, he’ll kill death’s mouthpiece. after all, he’s death’s pet. a hell-hound with fangs, claws, and a body count to make sure the fire blazing eternal underneath their feet never runs out of kindle, the kind comprised of sin-laden souls.

he’ll drag noeul down with him when he joins them. her hand tangled around his leash, forever thinking she's in charge until it’s too late.

somehow, the thought comforts him.

“that’s why i picked it.” jiho lies. not that it’s a particularly big lie, or one that matters. just does it to continue the banter as their lips fit together. patches of skin swell in time to his pulse. an ache that continues to throb -- double that where noeul has her weight pressed down against him. jiho doesn’t really agree with what noeul spits out next (but then, jiho doesn’t agree with noeul a lot in general). she doesn’t give him any time to vocalize this though. cuts off his words with lips, and tongue, and teeth. 

he lets his fingers splay stiff against her hips, the joints swollen and fractured. he wants to throw her, sometimes. pick her up and toss her clear across the room. a jangle of delicate bones, and he wonders if they’d clatter like keys. a pretty wind chime sweep as she collapses in a pile. she pisses him off, she knows she pisses him off. so jiho refuses to do it, just to spite her. the bitch.