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There’s dark corners here, places untouched by the buzzing fluorescent lights that flicker and sway, shadows cast inky and sharp off tiled walls.
Jae-Heon’s got one hand on his sword and the other curled around a shot of soju. The bottle stares at him, a silent judge of green and glass, the flirtatious curve of its shape like an oft-remembered lover, teasing and tempting. There’s a Bible in his pocket—a small one, a gift from his preacher to read on long bus rides and between classes. Its spine bites into the skin of his thigh.
This is his desert, these are his forty days. His Devil on the table, promising him kingdoms and riches, promising him life, promising him, promising him, promising him. Something more than rubies, sweeter than the Lily of the Valley, more precious than frankincense. Temptation beyond temptations. Desire beyond desire. He is a son of the Father. He is just a man.
“No.”
Rough, harsh, a voice of gravel and grit. Unforgiving fingers squeeze around his wrist. Jae-Heon’s grip loosens, just a little, just enough for someone to snatch the soju from his hand. His eyes follow it, watch the tantalizing slosh of liquid as it sweeps up and past another man’s lips.
“I wasn’t going to drink it.”
His arm is released, and Jae-Heon draws it back, rests it across the flimsy metal table. The bottle winks at him, inches away, begging to be touched.
“I know.”
Sang-Wook sits opposite him, shoulders hunching forward—always guarding, always ready to take another hit.
“Rough day?”
“God will not test us beyond what we can bear.”
“Not what you said the other day.”
“I didn’t need to believe it the other day.”
Sang-Wook’s eyes follow Jae-Heon’s as they refocus back on the bottle.
“Do you want me to take it?”
“I want you to drink it. All of it. So I can watch you,” Jae-Heon sighs, “and I can pretend.”
Sang-Wook stares at him. Looks past him. Blinks once, blinks twice.
“Fine.”
Something gets tossed onto the table. Jae-Heon tears his eyes away from the bottle to see a half-crushed, half-smoked box of cigarettes sitting next to his hand.
“I don’t smoke.”
“But I do. We’re trading. I drink for you, you smoke for me.”
“And we get to be miserable together.”
“Exactly.”
Jae-Heon draws the pack of cigarettes into his hand and flicks it open. Four of them, lined up like teeth, waiting in silence to be plucked. He takes one. He puts it between his lips. It feels. It feels nice, almost—a touchstone, feather-light and sticking to the wet of his mouth.
“Got a light?”
Sang-Wook’s mouth pulls something like a smirk as he reaches into his breast pocket and takes out something that glints silvery—a lighter, well-used, well cared-for. He thumbs at the lever with a practiced hand, lets the orange light wisp up and flicker in the blue-green mood of the room. He thuds his elbow on the table, extends his hand and the lighter towards Jae-Heon. Waits.
And it’s intimate, the way the little flame dances between them, the way it makes the scar on his face look like raindrops shattering and sparkling on the water—it’s not hard to think of Sang-Wook as beautiful, not just in the way that he looks but in the way that he exists, a creature caught in a tangle of brutality and gentleness, of compassion and pain. Jae-Heon leans forward, guides cigarette to fire with his index and middle fingers, and waits for it to catch.
“Suck in a little. Slowly,” Sang-Wook mumbles, “There, now it’s lit. Inhale, but not too much. You’ll sick if you do. And hold it in for a second, let it cool down.”
The smoke is hot in Jae-Heon’s mouth—he hadn’t, for some reason, expected it to be hot. There is a tinge of nausea in the back of his throat, perhaps sourced from nervous excitement as opposed to his first hit of tobacco.
“Take out the cigarette and breathe the smoke in. It’ll probably make you cough—”
And cough, Jae-Heon does—first a sputter, then a great, heaving rattle, coming from the spasming muscles of his abdomen. His eyes are watering, his face burning, and while he is not a man who usually concerns himself with the concept of “cool,” he feels decidedly uncool in the moment.
“Good try.”
“That…was awful.”
Sang-Wook doesn’t say anything, just swipes the bottle from the table and takes a hearty swig. His face scrunches against the burn of alcohol.
“So’s this.”
“You don’t drink?”
“I like the peach kind better.”
Jae-Heon laughs as he takes another drag—punctuated by fewer coughs this time and a warmth in his chest as he blows the smoke past pursed lips.
“Quick study.”
“Had to be. It’s either hit or be hit when it comes to swordplay,” Jae-Heon stops for a moment, considers, “Life’s like that, too.”
“Hits make you stronger.”
“They also make you hurt.”
Sang-Wook answers with a sip, eyes cast down. About half of the soju is already gone, which is a very sad but very important thing. Jae-Heon stamps out his half-smoked cigarette on the floor and takes out another. He doesn’t want another. He wants a drink.
“The others sometimes ask me if we’re in Hell. If this is some kind of…divine punishment for our sins.” Once again, Sang-Wook offers him a light, and once again, Jae-Heon accepts. “Do you think we’re in Hell, Sang-Wook?”
“You’d know better than me,” Sang-Wook grumbles, takes another gulp of alcohol—it’s going down easier now, the burn becoming an old friend. Jae-Heon remembers it fondly. Misses it, like he misses warm baths and sound sleep and the sun on his face.
“I used to think so, maybe. But I don’t anymore.”
“Why?”
Jae-Heon smiles.
“Because God doesn’t send good men to hell,” He looks Sang-Wook in the eye, “And you’re a good man, Sang-Wook.”
Sang-Wook grimaces. Shakes his head in quick jerks.
“Don’t,” he grumbles, and he gulps from the bottle. Chokes a sputtering cough. Eyes water—against the alcohol, against the accusation of goodness, against every horrible thing he ever thought about himself in the lonely and the dark and the death.
Jae-Heon bites the end of his cigarette. Probably shouldn’t do that. Probably shouldn’t reach a hand—his sinner’s hand, his unworthy touch—across the table and place it on top of Sang-Wook’s scuffed knuckles.
Jae-Heon would absolve him, if he could. Would wash his feet in perfumed oils and tears and lay palm leaves on the ground so he wouldn’t have to touch the dust and the dirt and the blood and the grime. Would light cigarettes like candles and let them scald the cathedral of his ribcage if it meant Sang-Wook would believe his praises.
“Good men…” Sang-Wook starts, falters. Looks at the bottle for and answer and only gets more questions, “Good men don’t do what I do. Your book’s even got a rule about it.”
“’Thou shalt not kill.’ Sixth commandment,” Jae-Heon takes the cigarette from his mouth and stubs it out on the table in front of him. Sang-Wook scoffs. His hand twitches beneath Jae-Heons, defiant butterfly birdwing itch.
“But there’s another one. A more important one—the most important one, the one that God wants us to keep even if we forget every other commandment on the list.”
Sang-Wook jerks his hand away.
“I didn’t come here to get preached at—”
“’Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ It’s the golden rule.”
Sang-Wook swallows another mouthful of soju. Angrily. Violently.
“Killing,” he spits, “is the opposite of loving.”
“No. Apathy is.”
Silence cuts between them. There’s only a mouthful of soju left, but, God, does Jae-Heon want it. Wants to Judas kiss the lips of the bottle and sell himself for a handful of silver.
But he doesn’t.
“For everything there is a season,” Jae-Heon recites, “and a time for every purpose under heaven…”
“Stop.”
“A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant and be planted. A time to plant, and a time to pluck up which is planted.”
Jesus wept tears of blood in Gethsemane. A tear of salt tracks down Sang-wook’s cheek, but it is no less bitter, no less hurt.
“A time to kill,” Jae-Heon says, “And a time to die.”
Sang-Wook slams his fist on the table. The soju tips, falls, shatters across the floor. Splashes onto Jae-Heons shoes. Glass like emeralds across the tiles—green, the color of sickness, the color of life, the color of the apartment complex that houses their mismatched band of survivors and rot and mold and antiseptic and the little sprigs of growth in their makeshift graveyard.
“You don’t know,” Sang-Wook hisses, “you don’t—”
“I know enough. I know you.”
The stench of spilled alcohol is thick in the air—tempting, cloying, makes Jae-Heon want to vomit, makes Jae-Heon want to lick it off the floor and chase the buzz that has for so many nights evaded him and left him in restless, gasping sleep.
He stands. Too quickly, enough to have his vision fuzzing gray. Not enough food, not enough rest has begun to wear him down. Perhaps it’s cruel to leave Sang-Wook like this, but the undertow of temptation threatens to drown his good sense. If he doesn’t get away, he’ll find another bottle—Jae-Heon knows where they are, counts them sometimes when nobody else is around, the last gasp of dying addiction reminding him of what he could still become if he isn’t careful.
Jae-Heon takes up his sword. Pivots on his heel. Takes a step and then stops when he feels a hand encircle his wrist. Turns back around to see Sang-Wook, hard-faced and tear-stained and staring.
“I,” Jae-Heon chokes, “I need to. Leave. I’m sorry, I—”
And he is being kissed. The mouth on him equal parts damnation and salvation, vice of alcohol and virtue of love returned making his heart swoop. Closes his eyes and lets Sang-Wook suck the traces of tobacco from his breath and swallow it down. Burned lips, so rough, so cracked and torn, moving sweet and soft as the hands—those bruised hands, those lovely and terrible and holy hands—grip at the front of his shirt to pull him closer.
This is worship. This is love.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.
This is scratching an itch. This is making a promise. An apology. Hope. Despair. Life. Light.
“Take it,” Sang-Wook breathes against Jae-Heon’s mouth. He clumsily slips the smashed packet of cigarettes into Jae-Heon’s shirt pocket. “Please, I—”
“Okay,” Jae-Heon says. “I’m sorry, I—”
“I know.”
“It’s not—”
“I know.”
Like a seal upon his heart. Like a seal upon his arm.
“Go,” Sang-Wook says, and Jae-Heon obeys.
For love covereth a multitude of sins.