Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Just to the left of the old country road, the one that cuts through the forest at the edge of town, there is a path.

If you are lucky enough to see it, and then follow that path through the brambles, past the boulders shaped like a great fist, over the whistling creek, creeping by the raccoon den, you will find a waterfall.

“Fall,” might be a generous term. It is perhaps more of a stumble, a topple, a bumble of water. No more than three feet high and two feet wide, water cascading gently down the rocks and into the soft trickle of the creek. 

The creek is home to many frogs. More frogs than ecologists might expect for this location. Every type of species, some common and some exceedingly rare, some harmless and some deathly poisonous. All harmoniously, spectacularly existing in the same little creek in the woods of New England. An enigma of sorts, but it is not science.

Next to the stumble of water and chorus of a hundred croaks, so overgrown in ivy and foliage that you might miss it, is a small, stone cottage.

The shutters clack and clatter if there is a storm or not. The front door closes itself behind you even if the wind is nothing more than a kiss of air against your skin. The fire in the hearth crackles with the intensity of a full-bellied laugh. You always feel like someone is watching you, but in the warmest way. The house feels alive because it is. It’s magic.

Han Jisung sits on the floor of his magic cottage, hanging over a basin filled with salts, herbs, and sugar, eyes closed and whispering his incantation under his breath over and over again. The water bubbles, the plate in front of him holding a handful of grain, a block of cheese, and a tomato — his last one — trembles and clinks against the floor.

The shutters pound gently, the heat of the hearth licks the back of Jisung’s neck. She’s encouraging him, using her magic to boost his own.

He keeps muttering to himself, shutting out the world until it is only him and his mind. He hunts for his magic inside of himself and brings it to the surface, sifts it from his body to the tangible world. He feels a warmth in his belly that spreads to the tips of his fingers, until he feels like they would cause the water to sizzle if he touched it. So he does.

The house, the basin, and the plate come to a standstill when Jisung finishes his spell, quiet encompassing him like a blanket, body now shivering with the loss of his working magic. He dares to crack one eye open, hoping this is the time it worked.

“Ribbit.” The frog on the plate stares back at him. Big, bugging eyes looking right into his soul and his empty stomach.

“Well, fuck,” Jisung sighs. This was not a slice of pizza. And now if he wanted pizza he would have to walk through the veil, into town, and to the little joint with the bartender who always looks at him solemnly and slides him a beer with his greasy meal, free of charge.

He takes a moment to mourn his tomato. He’ll have to go grocery shopping now too.

Jisung stands and scoops the frog up into his hands, the cottage putting the slimy little thing at ease. The cottage has always had a better grasp on her magic than Jisung does, a fact that amazes and infuriates him. 

The frog grows more restless the further they get from the house, before it eventually leaps from Jisung’s palms and finds its home in the creek with all of Jisung’s other failed dinner attempts. He wonders if the frogs can sense whether they were supposed to be pizza, or a burger, or a filet mignon (that had been a particularly painful loss).

The house creaks when she’s decided that Jisung has been out long enough, admiring his creations that were not purposeful, but no less lovely for it. The pizza frog seems to have already made friends. Maybe they’re garlic toast and caesar salad.

The shutters snap loudly and Jisung startles, the frogs hopping and croaking to get away from whatever horror they think is coming.

“Yeah, I know,” Jisung sighs, making eye contact with the pizza frog once more before turning to go inside. His stomach growls loudly. It’s a shame he doesn’t have a taste for frog legs. That would kill both the hungry and bad-at-magic birds with one French stone.

When he re-enters the cottage, his phone, wallet, and the sewing scissors are waiting for him on the counter, the whistle of the house sounding like an all-too-familiar chuckle. Jisung picks up the items silently, holding the scissors by the handle and not the blade purely out of spite. 

Sometimes he feels the urge to run with scissors just to know what it feels like to do something he shouldn’t. But Jisung only ever does what he should. 

To Jisung, home is more than just where the heart is, it holds the whole vascular system. Every blood vessel, artery, and vein built into the stone of this little home. It’s safe and small here. A whole world in the space between floorboards; a pocket universe of memories and dreams and wishes of a younger Jisung.

He’s older now and memories are only made to be forgotten, dreams do not come true, and wishes are not realized. He turns the scissors to hold them by the blade, and walks out the door.

The veil is at the end of the overgrown lawn, bordered by a grouping of wild mushrooms. Jisung’s mom used to sit in the patch of grass with him as a child, plucking the mushrooms from the ground and using her magic to turn them soft and edible, like the ones from the supermarket.

Sometimes, when Jisung was in a particularly fussy mood, or down for no other reason than he didn’t have the energy to be up, his mom would pinch sugar and cocoa powder onto the fat, gray caps, close her eyes tightly and turn the mushrooms to chocolate.

“You’ll be able to do this soon, honey,” she would say, Jisung’s chubby toddler fingers shoving chocolate into his mouth faster than she could make them. “There will be so much chocolate you’ll get sick of it.”

The effort to transmute something like that would probably cause Jisung to unmake himself from skin to sinew, but his mother never even broke a sweat. He doesn’t eat much chocolate anymore.

He finds it a little ironic that his mom was able to pull poison from wild things and all Jisung can seem to do is create wild things that are full of poison. The apple fell several hundred feet from the tree and then rolled down a hill into oncoming traffic, nothing but a squashed pulp of seeds and sticky, juicy guts on the pavement.

Jisung looks up from the mushroom patch and traces his eyes over the slight shimmer that suspends itself in the air. He pinches the veil that separates his little world from the normal world, and snips it with the scissors.

The war between magicked and normal humans was more than centuries old, erased by time and history, but the wounds never healed. The veil keeps them separate, preventing the average hiker from stumbling onto Jisung’s cottage and army of frogs.

Hundreds of years ago, the magicked world was complex. Governments, schools, markets, and full towns of magicked people existing parallel to the normal world. Now, besides officials like the Magickal Bureau of Investigation, the few remaining magic hospitals, and various news outlets, that world has since dwindled to what is essentially an entertainment district. It spread thousands of miles across the country, from coast to coast. There really weren’t even roads to connect it anymore, magicked people weaving in and out of the veil through back rooms and supply closets to bars, shops, and whatever academic settings like museums and libraries were still around. 

Magicked people and businesses alike are able to thrive in their own special pocket, a secret for only the lucky few.

Jisung doesn’t feel all that lucky. Magic was his mom but it also took her. Magic was his greatest gift but the thing that caused him the most trouble, eating away at him in every way until he was nothing but bone and scraps, a husk in the shape of a person but not feeling much like one.

But magic was him, so he would be magic because there was nothing else he knew how to be.

Jisung sticks his fingers into the new gap he’s made and pulls it apart wide enough for him to slip through, hearing the veil stitch itself back up behind him. He pockets the sewing scissors; his mom’s parting gift, and his key from one world to the one that she would only give him in death.

The trek through the woods is peaceful. Autumn in Vermont is some sort of magic all on its own; the trees blotched in hues of amber and gold, the sun peeking through the leaves and painting patterns of sunlight on the forest floor. Jisung likes to follow the lines of light, wondering if mother nature can trace the ley lines intrinsically in the same way that he can. They were both always a few inches off. 

It's just chilly enough for Jisung’s favorite jacket: a thick, suede bomber. The brown fabric frayed and worn with time and love. It had been spelled – almost everything Jisung owns is – to grow with him and get warmer as the weather got colder. “So Jack Frost can’t get your nose,” his mom would say, kissing his nose as Jisung scrunched his face, pushing her away. At the time, his nose seemed like the worst thing he could lose. 

Sometimes Jisung thinks he spends so much time thinking about the past that he will live in limbo forever. Some sort of mental purgatory where he deviates further and further from the future until it's equally as intangible. 

He needs to get out of here. He knows he never will.

So he just sighs and digs in his coat pocket to find his punch card for the bar. It wasn’t real, something the bartender had drawn up with a sharpie one day upon Jisung’s arrival. Ten crudely drawn squares are spaced unevenly across the crumpled receipt paper, the last one labeled with a big star and ‘FREE PIZZA!!!’ written underneath it. “The beer is always free” is scribbled haphazardly on the bottom, so smudged it can barely be read. Jisung smiles at it. The bartender was the closest thing he had to a friend and he didn’t even know his name. Couldn’t even really remember what he looks like, just that he had a friendly face and was fond of one-liners.

Today is his free slice, a bittersweet reminder of his tenth failure in a row. A consolation prize he supposes. Jisung hopes the taste of the grease will outweigh all the disappointment.

“You’ll grow into your magic, Jisungie,” his mom used to tell him. “It’s just too big for you right now.”

Now, Jisung is twenty-three. Several inches taller, several ear piercings holier, and several years sadder than the fifteen year old his mom had known. He wonders if she would recognize him, if she’d be able to sense his magic on him or if it would fizzle out like one of his pills at the bottom of a glass of cola. If she’d look at him and upturn her nose, shocked at how he somehow carries her blood in his veins.

The problem was never that Jisung’s magic was too big for him, it was always that he was too small for it. Transmuting basic ingredients into food was entry level magic, things his mom could literally do in her sleep. No spells or scrying required, just the flick of a wrist and an easy smile on her face.

Jisung finds smiling impeccably hard.

Trees thin and give way to the cracked pavement of Main Street, Jisung stepping into town from behind the run-down post office. ‘Town’ is a bit of a stretch. The street is nothing more than the bar at the center, somehow always crowded despite the measly population. There’s a small general store full of knick-knacks and supernatural gimmicks, a library, a supermarket that’s never more than half-stocked, and a handful of businesses that Jisung can’t seem to determine the running statuses of.

He crosses the road to the bar, not bothering to look either way, much less both. No one ever drives on this road, and if today is the day Jisung gets hit, then maybe it was fate. He’s almost disappointed when he gets across unscathed, craving the sensation of disaster, a point of no return. 

Jisung doesn’t want to die, he wants to remember that he’s alive. Feel something without the assistance of a joint and a hand down his pants. He just wants something to happen. Anything really, good or bad, in any shape or form. 

He needs to get out of here. He knows he’ll never even try.

Despite it barely being eleven-thirty in the morning, the bar is packed. Quiet, autumn air gives way to the bustling sounds of drunk patrons and too-loud country music. Jisung barely misses colliding with a woman who can hardly walk as she attempts to smother her friend in a hug, excited squeals emitting from both of them. Jisung smiles politely at them, closed mouth stretching tightly over his teeth, but they don’t even seem to notice him.

Somehow, every time he comes here, no matter how busy it is, there is always the same seat open at the very end of the bar. It doesn’t matter if there are a hundred people here or four, that space is Jisung’s. He wonders if the magic from the cottage has somehow followed him all the way here, saving him a seat.

Jisung slides onto his stool, nervously clutching his punch card in his hands. He glances around. It’s even fuller than usual today, the sound so loud he can barely hear his own thoughts. Maybe that's a good thing. All this noise to finally snuff out the clattering between his ears. 

“Look who’s here.” Jisung turns his attention to the sound of the bartender approaching him from behind the counter, and he’s struck with the feeling of a thousand butterflies crawling up his throat.

Jisung doesn’t understand how he keeps forgetting this face. He’s all deep brown eyes and long lashes, high cheekbones, and a nose sharp enough to cut glass. Lips curled into something mischievous, like a cat that's about to push a plant off the counter and play in the dirt just to make it worse. 

He carries himself like he’s up to something, like there are a million secrets buried in him that Jisung could spend his entire life unearthing and still have more to learn. A question in human form, beauty so striking that Jisung’s brain can’t seem to process it, because how else could he keep forgetting?

Jisung smiles shyly. “I was craving your fine Italian dining,” he says, handing over the card. The bartender grabs it and breaks out into a grin.

“Free already?” He turns to the freezer behind him, pulls out a cheap frozen pizza and unwraps the plastic. “I’ll make sure I send my compliments to the chef,” he calls as he meanders through the back door to toss it in the oven.

When he comes back he goes right back to Jisung, despite having a bar full of customers. Jisung can feel his cheeks heat up as the bartender not so subtly checks him out, tracing his eyes over his face and then back again, but Jisung doesn’t mind. When you’ve lived your entire life shut away, raised by four walls and one roof, it’s nice to be noticed.

“Your hair is long,” the man says suddenly. Jisung subconsciously reaches for his little ponytail. The back had gotten long and he’d taken to tying it up. The cottage had even started leaving out ribbons for him in the bathroom, so he knows it has her approval.

“Uh, yeah,” Jisung responds, pulling his hand away. He shrugs in a way he hopes is coolly nonchalant and not awkward. “Thought I’d try it out.”

The bartender reaches his hand forward like he’s going to brush Jisung’s bangs from his eyes. Jisung holds his breath, but he blinks and the hand is gone, something complicated etched on the man’s face for a split second before easing back to his cat-like grin.

“I like it,” he says. “It looks good on you.”

Jisung feels so red he thinks he could transmute himself into tomato soup. “Thanks,” he manages, voice pinched.

The bartender’s grin widens and Jisung is reminded of the Cheshire cat. He wonders if that makes him Alice, but he feels more like one of the queen’s knights; a card to be played, painting flowers for eternity but never to satisfaction. He craves to climb out of the rabbit hole, leave the whimsy for the mundane. To come to this bar and flirt with the cute bartender and bring him home to a normal apartment with a lack of personality and a lock that doesn’t always work. 

He needs to get out of here. He knows he’ll be falling forever. 

“So,” the cat keeps grinning. “What are we drinking today?”

This is Jisung’s favorite part. “Surprise me,” he says, like always. 

The bartender narrows his eyes, studies Jisung like he can find his alcohol preferences through his resting face. Eventually he frowns and shakes his head, turns to the tap and pours an amber glass.

“My sources tell me you’ll love this one,” he says, placing it in front of Jisung.

“Oh yeah?” Jisung challenges, bringing the glass to his lips. “And who are these sources?”

“My brilliant mind and experience with drunk people.”

Jisung chuckles and takes a sip. It’s hoppy and light, the exact kind of thing he likes. 

“Well,” Jisung says, placing the glass back on the counter. “Your sources seem very trustworthy.”

He smiles again. Jisung wants him to smile at him forever, be able to count every tooth and then do it again, snag his thumb on a canine and let himself bleed. Let him kiss his wound and maybe more. How does he keep forgetting him? How does he not take up every corner of Jisung’s lonely, horny little mind?

“Just as trustworthy as my home cooking,” the man laughs, backpedaling to retrieve Jisung’s pizza.

When it's in front of him and Jisung takes his first bite, he’s reminded why he always tries to transmute instead of coming here first. He doesn’t know how the bar has managed to track down the world’s worst frozen pizza, but it’s almost impressive how bad it is. Every bite is like cardboard, but it’s exactly what Jisung needed. What he deserves. 

The pizza his mom used to transmute was better than any he’s ever had. Soft, doughy crust, gooey cheese, and rich sauce. Tasting like magic because it literally was. And love. Everything she did tasted like love.

“How does it taste?” The bartender grimaces knowingly, pouring something from the tap and slamming it down. 

“Like shit,” Jisung says between bites. “It’s perfect.”

“I’m getting that review printed and hanging it up on our wall.” The man crosses his arms and leans back against the cabinets. The soft lighting of the room paints him in an orange-y hue, highlighting tones of red in his hair.

Jisung takes another bite. It’s so tough he practically has to tear it with his teeth like meat off a bone. His jaw is getting a full workout. “Would it be your only review?”

“The only one that matters.” The joke is laced in something sincere and Jisung feels his cheeks heat again. He can’t stop looking at the man’s lips. How long has it been since he’d been kissed? More? He’s suddenly panged with a loneliness that drains from his head to the soles of his feet, grounding him to the floor and bringing him back to earth.

Jisung continues to sip on his beer, the man shamelessly watching him all the while, ignoring his other customers. But not one of them calls to him, not one cry of “more beer!” or “another round!” The bar is suspiciously quiet, and when Jisung looks around it's like a switch has flipped. 

Patrons who were rowdy a few minutes ago are having quiet conversations, heads hung low and close, whispered smiles and gentle laughs. The lighting feels dimmer, and the music has dulled. Gone is the loud sound of tractor-boy-country, replaced by something soft and palettable. entering Jisung’s ears and calming his mind. 

“Hey,” Jisung hears from behind him, close to his ear, and he startles. He turns to see the bartender hanging over the counter, face inches from Jisung’s. Jisung resists the urge to pull back. His eyes are even more mesmerizing up close, a thousand little stars connecting like constellations in his irises. Jisung wonders what folklore could be written about them.

The bartender reaches for Jisung’s wrist, uncurls his fingers from his fist and Jisung is suddenly self-conscious of his sweaty hands. The man doesn’t seem to notice or mind. He doesn’t break eye contact with Jisung as he places a piece of paper in his palm. 

“A new card,” he says. He leans in close and whispers in Jisung’s ear, breath tickling the side of his neck. Jisung shudders slightly. It’s cold. “This one has something special.”

Before Jisung can question him, he’s gone. All the sound in the bar rushes back in, a crescendo of laughter and bad karaoke, like everyone received an adrenaline shot at the same time. Jisung is a still force in a moving body, a fish in a net, unable to catch his breath or jump back in the water.

The paper still sits in Jisung’s palm, ink already smudging from his clammy hands. It’s the same as the last one: squares that look more like circles, a star that doesn’t look like much of anything, “FREE PIZZA!!!!” written with an extra exclamation mark this time. 

Part of him expects – hopes – that something special is a phone number, maybe even just a name. But instead at the very bottom, underneath the note about free beer, so small Jisung has to squint to see it is four words: “Meet me Out Back.”

Jisung shoots up from his stool, frantically looks around for the bartender, feeling sweat gather at the small of his back and his hairline. He feels so warm, his magic peaking in interest inside of him at the mention of Out Back.

He practically runs his way along the bar, searching for red tinted hair and a conniving smile, but he only finds an older blonde woman, serving drinks like she’s been there all night.

“Need something, hon?” She asks when he stops her, hands gripping the counter so tight he might splinter his fingers. 

“The other bartender,” he breathes. “Where is he?”

The woman frowns, cocks her head to the side. “Just me tonight, I’m afraid. Always just me.”

Fuck. Jisung is falling further down the rabbit hole. He should have known better than to expect a piece of normalcy in his weird little life. But still his heart is a hummingbird in his chest. 

Finally, something is happening, slowly gaining traction and rolling into motion, the rising action to a climax Jisung can’t predict but wants to chase. The contradicting feelings bundle inside him until his chest feels tight, so he ignores them and chooses to chase the mystery, to walk into traffic and get hit.

He beelines to the bathroom, just two stalls with gaps so wide you can make eye contact with whoever is using it. It’s empty now. Behind the door there’s a supply closet, labeled ‘employees only’ in fading letters. If any unassuming drunk person were to open the door, they’d find a mop and cleaning supplies so old it’s probably poisonous. Jisung opens it and he finds a piece of the veil. 

Jisung had been to Out Back once before, when his childhood friend and adulthood acquaintance, Hyunjin, had dragged him here for his twenty-first birthday. It’s just like any other bar, except the drinks are sometimes spiked with potions, the servers are all disembodied hands, and the owner is one of the greatest magic users in New England.

He pinches the veil and snips it with his scissors, stepping inside of the closet and into Out Back. Through the looking glass he goes. 

The scent of magic overwhelms Jisung’s senses as he steps inside. Some people’s smells like roses, some like cedar wood or bergamot. Some have more obscure scents like gravy or root beer flavored candy. Jisung’s smells like wood burning. Not so much the warm aroma of roasting something over the fire, but more like the ash as it peters out, flames dousing. 

Some classical-dubstep fusion plays over the speakers, rich, golden lighting making the bar look like a sunset. Ivy climbs up over every wall and surface, wrapping around glasses and helping the disembodied hands deliver drinks to the tables. The owner, Chan, is skilled in the magic of herbology, something made blatantly apparent through his decor and his menu.

Jisung’s bartender sits at a high top on the opposite end of the room, with two drinks on the table and acting like he can’t see him, but Jisung knows he must have smelt his magic the second he stepped through the veil. Was Jisung’s magic really so weak that he couldn’t sense another user? He should have known the one person he interacted with even semi-regularly would end up being one. He catches magic like a virus, something he can never shake no matter how much medication he is prescribed; medical, magical, or recreational.

As he approaches the table, he feels himself descend further and further into madness. What could this stranger possibly have to offer him. A storybook quest? A simple invitation back to his place, wanting their shared secret revealed before he did? Or something sinister, a plot dark and dwelling under his kind exterior? All Jisung hopes for is anything. For his blood to boil or maybe cool. To burst open and stitch himself back up just to know what it’s like. 

When Jisung sits down, the man offers his usual mischievous smile. No, it couldn’t be something dark, Jisung thinks to himself. This is not the smile of someone untrustworthy and sinister, this is a trickster at worst. Which is, unfortunately, just Jisung’s type. 

If the something he’s offering is a kiss, that’s a something Jisung could live with.

“I could tell you didn’t like what you were having,” the man says, sliding something bright and fruity Jisung’s way.

Jisung frowns, not because the stranger was right, but because he was wrong. The man just smiles, oblivious.

Up close, Jisung focuses his magic and finds the other man’s. It smells cold, like Jisung’s nose will start bleeding if he inhales too hard, but he can’t pinpoint the scent.

“No? I was perfectly happy with my beer.” Jisung slides the fruity drink back across the counter. He loves a good cocktail, but he loves being right more. A vine shoots up from the floor and pushes it back towards him.

Now it’s the man’s turn to frown. “But when I touched you— I could feel you didn’t.” And then Jisung starts putting the pieces into place. The weird trance over the entire bar, the fact that he could never remember the man’s face, his same seat always perfectly open and empty for him.

“Ah, mind magic?” Jisung asks, relaxing into his chair and bringing the drink to his mouth. He’ll let the enabling plants win this time. 

“Afraid that doesn’t work on me right,” Jisung continues, tapping his head and taking a sip of the drink. A dirty Shirley, definitely high on his favorites list, so he must have gotten an inkling of Jisung’s taste. “Something up here doesn’t like you poking and prodding.”

The man’s frown deepens, a crease forming between his brows. “How do I know you aren’t lying to me?”

Jisung snickers, takes a long sip and lets the sweetness settle on his tongue. “Trust me, if I knew you could tell me what I was thinking, I wouldn’t pass that up.”

“That’s why you recognized me.” Realization dawns on the man’s face. “My wards don’t work on you.” 

He crosses his arms and lets out a surprised laugh. “To everyone there I don’t even exist. They forget me the second I’m gone. But not you.”

It’s a strange concept to Jisung, not wanting to be known. He’s waited his whole life for someone to know him, would settle for that someone being himself.

“I don’t know man,” Jisung shrugs, stirs the drink with his straw and watches the funnel he creates spin to the bottom. The ice hits the side of the glass with a satisfying clank. “It just doesn’t work right.”

The man cocks his head, his eyebrow with it. “I think you’re more powerful than you realize, Han Jisung.”

Jisung stiffens at the sound of his name. He can feel the color drain from his body and onto the floor, creating patterns of red reflecting back up to him. Maybe this could be sinister.

”What’s the play here?” Jisung says casually, leaning back into his chair and folding his hands over his stomach.

The man closes his eyes and lets out a slow breath. “Okay, so. My brother Felix has been kidnapped by a demon,” he says a little too casually, steepling his fingers and blowing through them. “I want you to help me get him back.”

Jisung sits completely shell-shocked for a moment, and before he can help himself, he lets out a burst of laughter. “You want me to what ?”

A literal trip to hell was not high on Jisung’s list of predictions. He didn’t even realize demons were real. Always thought they were something magicked parents told their kids about to scare them from running off, like bigfoot or vampires. Not goblins though, those were very real.

”Listen, Jisung,” the man’s cool exterior starts to peel away, revealing something more frantic. Desperate. “I know you can transmute. You might be one of the only magic users left who can. My plan is batshit, like really fucking crazy, and it needs you.”

Jisung leans in close, palms flat on the table underneath him, sweating through the wood. “How do you know I’m a transmuter?” he whispers, as if it would matter in all the noise.

The corner of the bartender’s mouth quirks up and he laughs through his nose. “Hyunjin is an acquaintance of mine. And a bit of a blabbermouth.”

Jisung leans back and tugs on his earlobe, a nervous habit he’s had since he was a kid and could never seem to grow out of. His mind — like always — swirls with a million different thoughts, inside and on top of each other, weaving together in the loom of his nerves and worries. But there’s something in there he hasn’t felt for a long time: excitement. 

Jisung doesn’t know if he’s crazy, but he thinks he could be. He thinks he could be reckless, crack himself open and let the yolk run; messy and yellow. He thinks he could launch himself like a bottle rocket and see where he lands. He thinks he could run away with this man whose name he doesn’t even know and see what happens. He thinks he could be a batshit piece in his crazy fucking plan. Or maybe he’ll die, who knows? Who cares? Jisung thinks he could run with scissors, blade side up. He’s never even tried.

“So the flirting had ulterior motives?” Jisung half-jokes, taking a sip so large he has to stifle a cough. 

The man folds his arms and worries his bottom lip with his fingers. Jisung kind of wishes it was his own teeth. “That was all for me,” he grins. “Adds a little fun to the process.”

Jisung blushes and it only deepens as the man’s grin gets more devious. ”What’s your name?” Jisung asks, hoping the man can’t see the vibrations pulsing through him from his fingers to his feet.

He smiles. He can definitely see them. “Lee Minho.” Jisung likes the sound of it, sure and strong, soft and languid all at once. “Come on Jisung, it’ll be an adventure.”

An adventure. Jisung has never had one of those, never even thought that he could. He thought that any chance of one had been stripped from him years ago. He had become completely cyclical, living the same routine of waking up, working, failing, and sleeping over and over and over again. 

Open eyes, watercolors, produce and frogs, sewing scissors that have never touched thread or fabric, free beer and sometimes free pizza, cat smiles and advances that go nowhere, a home that welcomes and chastises him, closed eyes. Again and again, spherical, spinning and falling and crawling and trying. Always, always trying and never anything else. Always careful. Not trying where it matters. He could be batshit.

His means and willingness had been all bundled into one and then cleaved down the middle, severing him from anything outside of his precious little radius. Jisung likes safety, he likes warmth, he loves his home, but there has to be more. A thought that terrifies him just as much as it thrills him.

And here comes a beautiful stranger, opportunity in the form of Lee Minho, thinking he has the power to know everything about Jisung without realizing he’s offering him the one thing he wants most: something.

Finally, a break in the fence, a way out. A gap just big enough for Jisung to hold his breath and wiggle through. 

He has to get out of here. He thinks he’ll give it a go.

“Okay,” Jisung finally says, face splitting into a wide smile. One that still feels a bit dusty but he remembers all the same.

“That’s all it took?” Minho laughs and it's high and sweet. Not sinister at all. Not even a trickster, just a man on a mission. Determination running rampant through him. “I was ready to beg.”

Jisung is almost one hundred percent sure there is no way he will ever be able to transmute what Minho wants him to, but he’ll cross that bridge when he gets there. For now, he will wade in the joy, the feeling of something new approaching him for the first time ever.

“So, where are we going?” Jisung asks, unable to keep the excitement from his voice. “Hell?”

“Worse,” Minho shudders. “Palm Springs.”

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆

“So, uh,” Jisung stares at the door to his cottage and scratches the back of his neck. A frog jumps across his foot. “My house is like, alive.”

Minho turns to him, his brow furrowed. “Are you fucking with me?”

Jisung shakes his head. He wonders when Minho will realize he doesn’t lie, and doesn't really have much of a reason to.

“Sick,” Minho grins and pushes on the door, but it doesn’t budge. Jisung sighs and presses his own hand to the wood, and the hinges swing open with a creak. The lights flicker on as he steps inside, fire burning gently in the hearth. He shrugs off his jacket and it suspends itself in the air before the house carries it to the coat rack, toes off his shoes and they get neatly lined up on the mat by the door.

“Holy shit,” Minho says, taking off his jacket. He holds it in the air with a curious look on his face, lets it go, and it drops to the ground. If the cottage had eyes, she wouldn’t even be looking at it. Jisung hopes she can see the side-eye he gives her.

Jisung learns very quickly that his house does not care for guests. He’s never had one before, not since he and Hyunjin were little, being homeschooled by their moms in the back room, slapping each other with their bendy rulers when she wasn’t looking and sniffing Expo markers. And that was before the house was a breathing thing.

Since Minho took his place on the settee, she hasn’t so much as made a floorboard squeak. Her stillness makes Jisung uneasy, missing her warm presence and watchful gaze. He runs a hand through his hair and then looks at his feet to see a ribbon waiting for him. There she is.

It also doesn’t take long to learn that Minho’s plan really is batshit insane. He thinks Minho might be too.

The plan is this: Minho and Jisung will pile into Minho’s 1996 Ford Bronco, they will stop at Hyunjin’s potion shop where Jisung will (lovingly) clock him for selling him out. They will then drive 2,803 miles from upstate Vermont to Palm Springs, California where Minho will meet his friend Jeongin who can pinpoint the exact location of where they need to go. They will drive up to the demon Seungmin’s door, they will knock out his hellhounds with whatever potion Hyunjin cooked up and they will then — Jisung can’t believe what he’s hearing. 

“I’m sorry, can you please say that again?” Jisung asks, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees and trying to convince himself that he was mistaken.

“I need you to transmute us into Seungmin’s hellhounds,” Minho repeats simply, as if he was asking Jisung to do something as easy as turning potatoes into french fries (something he can only do maybe four percent of the time).

“Alright, sure,” Jisung shrugs. Maybe he does lie.

He is so fucked.

“Okay, get what you need, we’ll leave as soon as you’re ready,” Minho stands and rubs his hands together. “Bathroom?” 

Jisung gestures down the narrow hallway. “Door on the left.”

Minho disappears down the hall and Jisung hears him rattle the doorknob a few times, like the cottage is keeping him out. Jisung slaps the floor lightly. “Play nice,” he hisses and a floorboard creaks. He hears the door open then.

Pizza, frogs, paint, these are things Jisung can transmute — in theory at least. But people? Hellhounds? His own body? Transmuters of old could do it. His mom could do it, often shifting herself to a bluebird and perching on Jisung’s shoulder as he fingerpainted in her vegetable garden. 

What would he do when he got to Palm Springs and couldn’t do it? What would Minho think, putting the fate of his brother into Jisung’s hands only for him to drop the ball completely?

Jisung groans and rubs his eyes with his fists, knuckles digging into the sockets until his vision is spotted in black dots. He feels the weight of his favorite knit blanket being placed on his shoulders and he smiles to himself, the cottage giving him solace, encouraging him to stay. He pulls it tightly around himself and buries his face in the soft fabric. Maybe he would never be crazy, doomed to be exceedingly normal in the only world where that was a cardinal sin.

But this was his ticket out, and he was taking it. He’ll deal with the consequences when they come. And who knows? Maybe he’d miraculously become the best transmuter to ever live overnight. The possibility was never zero.

Jisung stands, keeping the blanket wrapped around himself and goes to the bedroom to pack his things into his duffel bag.

His floor is still covered in paints and pages, and he has to step carefully through the gaps to reach his closet. Dragons, knights, and princesses stare up at him, adventures he’s never had but can give to someone else. 

He drags the duffel out of the closet, spelled to be bottomless, a great feature for a chronic overthinker who has no idea how to pack.

Almost every piece of clothing he owns gets thrown into the bag, three blankets because he gets cold when he sleeps, a deck of cards and a game of checkers because what if he and Minho get bored? He folds up his easel and slides it in, tucks his brushes into their carrier and rolls them up.

He’s just slipping his paintings into a wooden box when Minho steps into the doorway. “What are these?” He asks, squatting down to pick up one of Jisung’s paintings. It’s one of two dragons, flying midair in a pink sky, tails intertwining.

Jisung stops what he’s doing and rests his hands on his knees. “I illustrate children’s books,” he reaches out for the painting Minho is still holding, but he doesn’t give it up. 

“For magic books?” Minho’s brow furrows, probably noticing the lack of actual movement in the images.

“No, just normal ones. I work with a publisher in New York” Jisung snaps the clasp on the box shut and stands in front of Minho. The other looks up at him with his starry eyes, and Jisung is struck with the need to paint them. He thinks he could fill pages with them, every atom worthy of telling its own story. “Normal kids need magic too.”

Minho cocks his head and then smiles, handing the dragons off to Jisung. “I guess they do.”

Jisung offers his hand to help Minho up, but the other refuses, springing up and folding his hands behind his back like he’s trying to get them as far away from Jisung as possible. That same complicated look Jisung recognizes from the bar plagues his face, but it only ever lasts for no more than a split second. Jisung wishes he was the one who could read minds.

“So, you ready?” Minho smiles, covering whatever it was he didn’t want Jisung to see. And Jisung couldn’t even blame him. He was a liar, a fraud, destined to let Minho down. Guilt creeps up his esophagus and he forces it down. He was going to be selfish this one time. He will try and he will fail like he always does, and maybe he won’t. Whatever he does, he will do it with pride, because at least he’s finally testing his roots in different soil.

Maybe Jisung wasn’t the problem. Maybe it was this place and it’s forgotten memories, crushed dreams, and stilted wishes. Maybe magic couldn’t thrive where pain was already growing. An invasive species in a dwindling forest, sadness like elm trees breaking off in brittle branches and eating away the life of anything that was already there. There was only one way to know: cut the problem at the root.

“I just have to grab a few more things. I’ll meet you outside.”

Minho turns, but stops in the doorway, runs his hand down the wood. Jisung senses the cottage resist the urge to slap him with air. “What’s up with this place anyway?”

Jisung sighs and wrings his hands together. “It’s a protection spell. My mom casted it to take care of me.”

“Oh, okay.” Minho tilts his head. “Where is she now? Your mom?”

Jisung laughs, but it’s empty. “Honestly, I have no idea. But I don’t think she’s ever coming back.”

Minho nods, decides to leave it at that, and walks toward the front, leaving a lingering gaze on the main room before he exits. “I’ll be in the car.”

The second the front door shuts behind Minho, the cottage comes back to life.

“Was that really necessary?” Jisung asks as he grabs his stuff out of the bathroom cabinet. Toothpaste and contact solution and pills, things that have never left this room. 

He shuts the cupboard to see his own face staring back at him. Dark circles sit under his eyes, his hair slightly limp and his cheeks sallow. A magic human is slightly less human when they can’t properly practice their magic. He just sighs, slaps some color into his cheeks and prays for something to fix him. The daily routine.

The cottage flickers the lights in the bathroom and rattles the door. Jisung knows she’s angry. 

“Real mature,” he says with a dry laugh, zipping his duffel closed and swinging it over his shoulder. “We can talk this out when I get back.”

He goes to grab his coat off the rack but it isn’t there. “Seriously?”

Jisung starts rifling through kitchen cabinets, eventually finding his jacket in the pantry.

“You know, I’m twenty-three years old, I think I can make my own fucking decisions.” The fire crackles angrily, sending embers onto the stone floor. Jisung translates the gesture to “Language!”

He snatches his wallet and the scissors off the counter before the cottage can get crafty again, and laces up his converse. Nerves buzz through his body. He’s doing this, he’s really doing this.

“I’ll be home soon. I promise.” The cottage stands completely still. The silent treatment. 

Jisung can only sigh, kiss the pads of his fingers and press them to the wall. “I love you, but I need to do this.” He turns to open the door but it won’t budge.

“Please, ” Jisung pleads, shaking the knob violently, putting all his strength into trying to get out. All the cupboards start slamming at once, the fire hisses, flames burning hot and blue, the TV flickers on, switching between channels at a speed faster than Jisung’s fingers ever could.

“Don’t. Go. Stay. Here. Safe. Here ,” the TV puts together. Jisung feels tears threatening to fall as he presses his foot on the door, pulling on the knob with all his might, but he isn’t strong enough, he’s never fucking strong enough. Panic rises up in him. Not again, please not again.

He yells, no words, just sounds, and the house just gets angrier. She’s less of a comforting presence and more of a poltergeist, something devilish behind all her good intentions. 

The cottage is using so much magic that Jisung can see it fizzle and crack in the air, tendrils and threads of it hanging from wall to wall, dangling from the ceiling, all binding into a conglomerate right in front of him, ending in his chest.

Jisung is so sick of this life that is his, but isn’t. A lonely life full of expectations he can never reach, haunted by a memory that’s no longer present. Never good enough, but for who? Who is he trying to impress? It’s just him. Him and his static dragons and frogs and tomatoes he never gets to eat. Just Jisung and his pond full of poison, his mushroom patch full of poison, his heart and mind full of poison. Destined for greatness but never being allowed to learn what he could be great at. 

Just Jisung and his magic that never listens. Maybe it’s time he stops listening too.

Jisung stares at the magic in front of him, more than he could ever dream of controlling, staring back at him. He feels his own magic inside of him light on fire. He reaches out, anger pulsing through him like a curse, grips the magic in his fist and snips the threads with his scissors.

For a moment everything is still. The cupboards stop mid-movement, some hanging open and some shut. The floor stops vibrating beneath him, and the TV stops on the Food Network, Gordon Ramsay yelling at someone for being a fucking idiot.

And then Jisung explodes.

He feels like every inch of his body is on fire. The scent of his magic fills the room, dousing any other sense he has. He screams as he feels his body unmake and make itself over and over again. His hand in front of him switches from blue to green, from scaled to glass, human to animal, fur, claws and all. He feels every atom pull apart and then snap back into place, but it doesn’t hurt. It feels invigorating, like a pulse he was missing, like he’s finally fully alive.

His hair stands on end, burns off and grows back in. Light bursts behind his eyes and his ears pop again and again, his whole body and being convulsing. And then just as suddenly as it starts, it ends.

Sweat pools underneath him as he lays on his back, staring up at the ceiling and trying to catch his breath. The air is unusually cold, and Jisung notices for the first time in his life, the hearth isn’t burning.

There is no magic in the air, no gentle push against his bones to help him up. He can’t feel her anywhere. He squints his eyes and in the dark he can just barely see the smallest sliver of a thread, one he missed. 

“I’m sorry,” Jisung whispers, squeezing his eyes tight, tears sliding from his cheekbones to the floor. Something floats through the air and rests across his nose. A ribbon. All he can do is laugh, but it’s painful. “I’ll fix you when I come home. I promise.”

He pulls himself up from the floor, and to his surprise he feels stronger, fuller, bigger than he’s ever felt before. He catches his reflection in the mirror in the living room and has to do a double take. Even barely lit, he can see his skin is glowing, hair full and bouncy, cheeks rosy, and eyes bright. What the fuck is happening. 

Jisung rushes to the kitchen, grabs a potato and the salt shaker from the counter, and reaches for his magic inside of him. He’s never tried this without a scrying bowl or incantation, but right now he feels invincible. 

He feels his magic burn his fingertips, like if he touches any surface he’ll shock himself so bad that he’ll fly thirty feet. He hones his energy, flicks his wrist, and thinks of french fries.

The salty, greasy smell reaches Jisung’s nose before he can process what he did. He’s so giddy with the fact that he actually fucking did it, that at first he doesn’t even notice how well he did it.

French fries are falling off the center island in waves. Shoestring, sidewinder, curly, waffle, even the crinkled ones that he hates. Jisung is literally up to his ankles in salty snacks. His eyes go wide and he starts laughing. Loud. The way he hasn’t since he was a little kid, clapping his hands as his mom made mushrooms into chocolate.

Jisung feels like he could turn water into wine, a lemon into orange juice. His own human body into a hellhound, sharp teeth, fiery tail, and all. 

“Hey, Jisung you almost rea– What the fuck happened in here?” Minho is standing in the doorway, an incredulous look on his face. Eyes and lips twisted up into something between wonder and extreme confusion.

Jisung picks up a tater tot from off the counter, pops it in his mouth. “Did you pack snacks? Because I think I got us covered.”

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆

Jisung was ready for the old Bronco to be worn down, but he isn’t prepared for how downright shitty it is.

It’s more rust than paint, to the point where Jisung can’t really tell what color it once was. The tires look like they probably have enough air, but Jisung knows next to nothing about cars. He does know, however, that the front bumper should be all the way attached.

“Isn’t she gorgeous?” Minho smiles next to him, gazing lovingly at the car.

Jisung doesn’t trust whatever words will come out of his mouth so he just nods. A magic explosion didn’t kill him, but he thinks this might. 

He walks to the front of the car and brushes his hand across the bumper. He feels a shock wave run up his arm, and he pulls away quickly, hissing and shaking out his hand. When he looks back at the bumper, it's fixed, shining like it just came out of the factory.

What the fuck is happening with his magic.

“Hey, thanks!” Minho says, tapping Jisung on the ass. He yelps and jumps in surprise. “Sorry, force of habit,” Minho giggles, continuing to admire the new bumper. Jisung quirks his brow at the odd look that passes over Minho’s face, shaking out his hand like he touched a hot pan.

“Yeah, uh, no problem,” Jisung tries playing it cool but he thinks he must sound stupid. Or like an asshole. Probably like a stupid asshole. Minho doesn’t seem to notice.

“Hop on in,” Minho encourages, opening the driver's side door. “We’ll hit the road right away.”

Jisung frowns. “Did you already pack?”

“I’m always packed.”

Jisung decides to accept that. Amongst the weirdness going on inside of him right now, Minho’s weirdness is easy to swallow. Comforting, almost.

Minho reaches across the center console and swings open the passenger door for Jisung. He’s all smiles, starting in his eyes, all the way down to the eagerness of his hands. Jisung tries to return the energy but he doesn’t think he succeeds. He feels magic shift uncomfortably in his belly, a tummy ache he can’t solve with pepto bismol and a nap.

When Jisung climbs in, he looks to the back to see what looks like a makeshift bed, a freezer, and various belongings strung about. Books are everywhere, spines broken and pages tabbed. Everything from philosophy to travel guides to erotic fiction.

“Do you sleep here?” Jisung asks, strapping on his seat belt. His hands shock again and he looks down to see what looks like a brand new buckle. Fuck.

“And live,” Minho responds, shifting into reverse and getting on the road. “Not much for being tied down, I guess.”

Jisung nods like he understands. 

”So,” Jisung is stiff in his seat, scared that if he allows himself to melt into it, something will catch on fire. “How exactly did a demon kidnap your brother?”

Minho sighs softly, but it’s contradicted by the fire behind his eyes, hot and angry. “Two months ago, I went to Felix’s apartment and he wasn’t there. I waited for him but he never came. I started snooping around and found a note saying he made a deal with a demon and wasn’t coming home. I knew it was forged.”

Two months ago, just around the same time Jisung started seeing Minho at the bar – when his trips became a lot more frequent. Jisung creases his eyebrows. “How did you know it was forged?”

”Felix would never leave me. And he wouldn’t hide something from me,” Minho smiles sadly. “He also wouldn’t pay rent for a place he wasn’t living. So I started digging and it turns out there aren’t many demons in North America, and only one who is friends with my brother on Facebook.”

“Doesn’t he have a phone?”

“Yep,” Minho says, popping the ‘p.’ “I’ve called, emailed, sent him a message on linkedin offering him a job, I even looked into a carrier pigeon. No response.”

”What would a demon want with him?”

”I guess that’s the last part of the puzzle.”

They drive in silence after that. Jisung stares out the window, one hand pressed to his cheek and the other tucked into the cuff of his jacket so he doesn’t accidentally transmute anything else. He watches orange, red, and yellow bleed together into one, and thinks about how he would mix the paints to capture the same effect. He knows he could do it, but it would never be the same. No crisp smell in the air, no soft breeze blowing through your hair, no sunshine beating on you through the gaps in the leaves. 

And then suddenly they cross the town line and Jisung is farther than he’s ever been. Just one inch, a step across a boundary that doesn’t actually exist outside of a road atlas, a moment he knows that Minho didn’t even notice, but it’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened to Jisung. 

He’s doing it. He’s getting out.

“Do you wanna play a game?” Minho asks, eyes shifting from the road for a second to look at Jisung.

“Sure,” Jisung shrugs. “What do you wanna play?”

Minho smiles his devilish smile and Jisung can’t be too sure the demon Minho is hunting isn’t himself. “Twenty questions. About us edition. Ten questions each.” Minho holds up a finger like he’s a professor giving a lecture. “Each question must be preceded by its number and you have to answer. No matter what. Capiche?”

It’s hard to imagine what Minho would want to know about Jisung. He bares it all on his sleeve, could only fill half a page with his entire life story, each day rinsed and repeated. But Jisung had a lot of questions for Minho. He wanted to know the meaning between every variation in his smile, his secrets and ambitions, why he’s willing to give Jisung full reign to know him when he’s done everything to make sure no one ever does.

Jisung smiles and leans his head against the backrest. “I didn’t realize twenty questions had so many rules.”

“I hate rules unless they’re mine.”

Jisung laughs, he feels oddly safe, secure. “Sure, let's play.”

“Okay, I’ll start,” Minho clears his throat. “One. What the fuck is up with your magic?”

Jisung sighs. He had blind hope that Minho would just let it go, blinder hope that he wouldn’t notice. But even in the short moments that Jisung has known Minho, he knows how observant he is, how he plays cool and easy but is tracking every moment like a hawk to its prey.

“I think–” Jisung squeezes his eyes shut, tugs on his earlobe. “I think I severed the protection spell. And I think it was repressing my magic, so when I cut the spell off, my magic kind of went… haywire. I — I’m actually not very good at magic —”

“I know,” Minho cuts him off, eyes staring at the road.

Jisung pauses, unsure of what to say or think. Minho had sought him out. Targeted him, essentially, all while knowing how shitty he was?

Minho turns his head from the road, smiles softly at Jisung, nothing conniving or devilish in it. Jisung decides he likes this smile more. “Hyunjin told me about your frogs.”

Jisung thinks he needs to stop giving Hyujin so many details in their bi-yearly phone calls. Now he can clock him for this too.

“But you still wanted me?” Jisung cringes at himself when he sees Minho raise his eyebrows suggestively. “I mean, wanted me to come with you? Why?”

“You might be one of the only transmuters left. If we had to hop in as frogs, that was a risk I was willing to take. My plan needed you.” Minho says it matter-of-factly, like it’s the easiest explanation in the world. Jisung wants to sit in his brain and watch his thoughts go by, grab one by the tail and see what paths it crosses before it gets clearance to exit Minho’s mouth.

“You wouldn’t if your plan wasn’t so ‘batshit crazy,’” Jisung laughs.

“Ah, but then it wouldn’t be my plan.” Jisung looks at Minho, expecting a wide grin, but he’s frowning, like he’s ashamed of something.

“It’s a good plan,” Jisung reassures. “And I think I can do it. I know I can now.” He feels his magic pulse within him, like it wants to further encourage the confidence. It’s a weird feeling, going from never feeling his magic ever to being constantly aware of its presence. Is this how other magic users live all the time? Is this what it feels like for Minho? Like he’s about to explode at any minute, magic gone wild?

Silence encompasses them again and they both reach for the radio at the same time. Minho pulls his hand back rapidly as Jisung turns the dial, careful to keep his sleeve over his fingers. Some old country song starts crooning through the grainy speakers. Jisung glances at Minho’s hand, thinking about all the times he’s avoided any accidental touches, not so much as a brushing of sleeves.

“Two,” Jisung says and he can see the corner of Minho’s mouth turn in interest. “How does your magic work?”

Minho lets out a huff of air and relaxes back into his seat, one hand on the steering wheel and one resting in his hair. “It’s complicated. It’s not like I get thoughts word for word, it's more like feelings. Concepts.” He looks over his shoulder and merges onto the highway, gaining speed. It's the fastest Jisung has ever gone.

Minho merges into the middle lane, goes even faster, body bouncing slightly, the Bronco making noises Jisung does not want to know the origin of. “And it’s more intense with touch. Like I’m getting someone's entire life in a split second.”

“But not me,” Jisung says.

“Not exactly,” Minho frowns. “With you, it’s like I can’t tell if it's real or not. Not like lies, but guesses. And I can’t influence you either.”

“Influence?”

“Like at the bar, I can push people’s thoughts one way or another. Not control them, but encourage them to make choices they would have made anyway.” He smirks. “It’s much easier with drunk people.”

“Like always pushing them to a different seat?” Jisung asks, with a playfulness in his voice.

Minho laughs. “Exactly.”

There’s a charm dangling from the mirror, a rabbit’s foot. Jisung toys with it, nudging it with his jacket-covered fingers. He’s never believed much in superstition. When everything in your life can be explained by science or magic he has a hard time believing in happenstance.

“Do you know why it doesn’t work on me?” Jisung asks, letting the rabbit’s foot swing back and forth, attempting to hypnotize him. “Your magic?”

Minho shrugs, quirks his lip downwards. “Sometimes someone’s magic is too strong, or mine is too weak. I don’t know, it’s all relative. There’s a reason magic isn’t a science.”

Jisung lived his whole life thinking he was too weak, and now in a blink of an eye, he has so much magic that it’s literally falling from his fingertips. He thinks it would be nice if Minho could simply brush a finger against his wrist or waist or neck, find all of Jisung’s little complicated feelings and put them into words for him. Jisung wishes he knew what he himself was thinking, to pull apart the thoughts like taffy and separate them into color-coded bins. To know what scared him and what excited him, what made him him and the opposite, who he is under layers of protection and a sheltered existence.

He wishes he knew anything. But he’ll settle for his own name and a vague sense of knowing what it feels like to exist. Maybe the further from home he goes, the closer to himself he’ll get. That’s how it works in the movies, right? A tragic hero embarks on a quest and learns some valuable lesson. That could be him.

“Yeah, that makes sense.” Jisung runs his hand through his hair and shifts back to the window. Fall trees give way to a concrete jungle; road signs, exits, warehouses, and factory stacks. He knows that if he were to roll down the window, he’d be greeted with the smell of gasoline and sulfur.

Jisung feels his eyes get heavy, body exhausted from whatever hell it went through, and he drifts off to the sound of Minho singing along softly to Carole King on the radio. It feels a bit like a lullaby.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆

Jisung wakes up to the feeling of no longer moving. He blinks open his eyes, trying to readjust. It’s dark out now, but a huge neon sign reading ‘Vacancy’ is flooding across the dash, turning it bright red. 

He hears something tap on his window and he looks to see Minho, just as red and smiling despite the fact that he drove for eight plus hours. Jisung rolls down the window and Minho leans in, resting his elbows on the ridge and dangling his arms inside. He doesn’t come close to touching Jisung at all though.

“I got us a room,” He says. “I brought your bag inside already.”

“Thanks.” Jisung lets out a long yawn and stretches his arms up. He sees Minho’s eyes flicker to the sliver of his tummy that peeks out when he does. He’s grateful the red light masks the tint to his cheeks. 

The room has a musty smell, the curtains are moth-eaten and so sheer Jisung can’t imagine they would cover much of anything. Only one of the three bulbs in the overhead light seems to work, and the TV is old and boxy, like he’ll be pulled through it à la Poltergeist style. But since this is the only hotel room Jisung has ever stayed in, it automatically becomes the nicest.

“Where are we anyway?” Jisung asks, sitting on one of the beds and tugging off his shoes. 

“Just past Cleveland,” Minho answers. He’s fumbling around in the bathroom. Jisung watches the shape of his shadow as he hears him turn the showerhead on. He pops his head out, smile half-lit by the singular working bulb, but no less bright. “The trust you have that I’m not going to kill you is kind of badass.”

The thought had danced across Jisung’s mind, one of his hundreds of little worries. But if this is all some extremely elaborate plot to kill him, he would be both shocked and a little impressed. And at least he would have gotten out of Vermont before he died. Jisung shrugs and lets out a loud yawn. “I guess I don’t have much to lose.”

“I think we’re going to get along great,” Minho collapses onto the bed next to Jisung, body bouncing on the impact. “You can shower first. I turned it on for you. Don’t need you turning it into a snake or something.”

“Thanks,” Jisung shudders and shoves his hands into his armpits. Maybe he should invest in a straitjacket.

Steam enters his sinuses as he approaches the bathroom, stopping in the doorway to turn back to Minho, glasses on and book already in hand. He has the front cover curled all the way around to the back, and Jisung can spot underlines and scribbled words in the margins. 

“I think this will be fun,” Jisung says, before remembering the reason they were on this trip in the first place and adding, “as fun as it can be, at least.”

Minho offers a small smile, like one you give an acquaintance in the grocery store. “I think it will be too,” he says and turns back to his book.

Jisung wastes no time in stripping himself down. He feels like he has magic all over him, a filmy layer coating him from the surface of his skin to the marrow of his bones. It feels sticky and tacky, like he could scrub it forever and still find residue.

He pulls the ribbon from his hair and the top layer of brown curls falls over his ears, soft and smelling like home. Jisung becomes almost hesitant to wipe home from his body, to squeak over it with a bar of soap. One rinse and his entire life falls down a motel drain. 

He has to get clean eventually.

The water doesn’t stay hot for long, but it doesn't get cold either, a stagnant lukewarm that is more unsatisfying than it is anything else. Jisung takes his time wringing his fingers through his hair, running the soap down his arms and legs until he feels every spare bit of magic come off of him. A phoenix reborn in water instead of flame.

When he’s done he towels himself off and tucks his wet hair behind his ears. Underneath the shampoo, he can still catch the faintest hint of the hearth.

Jisung opens the door, a waft of cold air rushing over his skin. Minho is sleeping, book covering the bottom half of his face, glasses twisted. He looks soft, like Jisung could grab him with both hands and form him like clay. With his magic right now, he could probably turn him into clay.

Jisung attempts to avoid any noises and creep around the bed, but in the dim lighting he stubs his foot right into the side of his bag. He thinks he managed to jam it right into his easel.

“Fuck,” he hisses, the expletive decrescendoing when his mind remembers he isn’t supposed to be loud. 

Minho shoots up, book flying further down the bed. He looks at Jisung for a split second, blinks rapidly and then real slow. Jisung waits for him to yell in surprise, but instead he starts laughing, a full on witch’s cackle.

Jisung frowns, still cupping his toe in his hand like that will do anything to soothe it. “What?”

“Okay, new part of the plan: fix Jisung’s magic.” Minho can barely get the words out through the breaks in his laughter. 

Jisung rushes back to the bathroom and flips the light on. The face in the mirror is his, nothing bent or out of place, but his hair is the most aggressively vibrant shade of yellow-green he has ever seen. Like a radioactive tennis ball that was also pissed on by a Clifford-sized dog. The visual equivalent to the taste of Sprite. All Jisung can do is groan, which only makes Minho laugh harder. 

Magic sits at his fingertips as Jisung winds his hands into his hair. He breathes in deeply, focuses on every fiber, follicle, atom that makes up his hair, and focuses his magic into it. 

He pictures himself tying his hair up in the cottage mirror, her magic helping him when his fingers got twisted. Pictures his mom giving him his first haircut, putting a chunk of brown strands in a Ziploc baggie. Pictures a hand that isn’t his run through it and tug hard, a small gasp escaping from Jisung’s lips at the sensation. The last one may not have been a memory, but a dream.

He breathes out, long and slow, and when he looks in the mirror he’s back to his old self, radioactive piss hair a thing of the past. 

Jisung steps back into the main room. “I did it,” says excitedly, like a little kid who just learned how to ride a bike.

Minho still has tears wet in the corner of his eyes from how hard he was laughing, but his words are sincere. “Already making progress on that new part of the plan.”

All of the chaos of the day wears heavy on Jisung’s bones. This morning he was turning tomatoes into frogs and now he’s in Cleveland, Ohio with a stranger. He doesn’t think he’d even want to be in Cleveland, Ohio with someone who isn’t a stranger.

Jisung crawls into bed, focusing on keeping all of his magic inwards. He pictures a ball of twine inside of him, being wound up as tightly as possible until he needs a piece. He hopes he’s able to keep it up subconsciously, he’d hate to wake up to him having turned the floor to lava.

He bundles himself in the blankets, tucking himself in up to his chin and closing his eyes. He hears the click of the lamp as Minho turns it off and the room goes dark.

Jisung is just starting to settle into a half-sleep when he hears Minho shift around. 

“Three,” Minho says. Jisung’s eye creeps open in interest and he can just make out the shape of Minho’s outline as his vision adjusts to the dark. He’s looking up at the ceiling, hands crossed behind his head and ankles crossed in front of him. “Craziest sex story.”

Jisung giggles, he doesn’t have much of a crazy anything.

There was his first time, when Hyunjin dragged him out to the houses in town. There was some big sporting event being held at the high school and there was a huge house party in honor of something in town finally happening. 

He had just turned eighteen, three years without his mom. So he went to the party, drank for the first time, taking slow sips to be a part of the action without suffering the consequences. Always careful. He danced with some girl, let her lead him upstairs, and it happened. It was nice. Nothing spectacular or crazy, but nice.

Since then it had been a handful of different bodies, men and women who he smiled at at the bar until they took him home. He always left before the morning could come. Always careful. He’d walk in the door of his cottage and she would mildly disapprove of him until he told her to stop being such a prude. 

And it was always ever just good. Always careful. Never crazy.

“I don’t think I have anything crazy,” Jisung says, pulling the blanket down from his chin. “It’s all been very vanilla.”

“Booo,” Minho jeers. “Go have wild sex.”

“Maybe some old person in Palm Springs will show me a good time.”

“Now that’s the spirit.” They both giggle, which peters off to a quiet lull, the sound of something in the room buzzing.

“I’ve never had a sleepover before,” Jisung's voice is soft, not sure if he actually wants Minho to hear him. 

“Really?” Minho questions, turning his head to face Jisung. “Maybe you would have had crazy sex by now if you had.”

Jisung can practically feel Minho’s smirk travel from his bed to Jisung’s, really hammering the suggestive language in. “You don’t have to flirt with me anymore, you know. I’ve been successfully recruited.”

There were many nights that Jisung thought that Minho would take him home, kiss him silly, take care of his body and let Jisung take care of his. Just another dream, wish, something that would never be a memory.

But then he would leave the bar and his imagery of the bartender would get fuddled, attraction forgotten only for his puppy dog crush to start all over again on his next visit.

And now here they are, in the same room but in two different beds. Jisung’s hands like fire, unable to touch, changing the essence of everything like Midas but less spectacular. And Minho’s hands refusing to touch, afraid of freezing on the essence of a person and melting into it.

There would be no hands running through hair, but there would be questions running through dark rooms. Answers funneled between two people unaware of the unknown they’re running into.

“I told you, it’s just for fun.” Jisung feels Minho’s smirk turn into a frown, can picture the creases in his mouth. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know it upset you. I’ll stop.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Jisung assures, pushing himself up to rest on his elbow. “I— I like it, I just didn’t want— I guess, I just— It’s fine, okay. Good. Really.”

“Okay,” Minho sounds unsure. Jisung wants to ask Minho if it frustrates him, that he can’t know what Jisung is thinking. Wants to ask him how he operates while surrounded by all the noise when Jisung can barely handle his own. He wonders if Minho finds his quiet peaceful or disturbing, if he’s just as clueless about how to be a human as Jisung is. But maybe he doesn’t actually want to know. 

Jisung inhales deeply, feels the breath push on the back of his throat and blows it out, eager to shift the atmosphere. “Four. Why do you like reading?”

Minho turns to his side and tucks his hands under his head. Jisung mirrors him. “I said I don’t like to be tied down. Reading means I never have to be.”

Jisung has traversed worlds on dragonback, scaled towers, and defended entire realms through the proxy of his hand and his own imagination. Always trapped between four walls but finding solace in the infinite expanse of whatever his mind could conjure.

It seems right to him, that Jisung finds comfort in his own creations while Minho finds comfort in sorting through the thoughts of others. 

“That was very poetic.” Jisung thinks he’d like to hear Minho’s own thoughts too. 

“I’ve been reading a lot of poetry lately.” Minho lets out a loud yawn but he shows no intention in training his attention away from Jisung. Jisung can’t remember the last time he had an interaction that lasted this long. Long enough to find layers unscathed and corners left dusty and undiscovered. Long enough to be interesting. To be something.

Jisung smirks, throws Minho’s own game back at him just to see what happens. “Would you read me a love poem?”

Jisung waits for a witty response but is met with silence.

“I’ve been reading about,” Minho says after a few beats too long. He pauses, face more serious than Jisung had anticipated. “About death.”

Love and death; two sides of the same coin, always barreling towards the same impending conclusions. Death is significant because it succeeds love. Love is significant because it can end. Two things that hold each other as they slowly decay, turning from something to nothing and then back again.

Love and death, the only two somethings Jisung has ever known. 

“Oh.” Jisung tugs his earlobe. When he speaks, his own voice feels small, like he can’t stop his own hand from tightening around his throat. “It’s all the same, isn’t it?”

“Who’s the poet now?” Minho smiles, but it’s tinged with a sadness so raw that Jisung feels it even through the blanket of darkness.

Quiet settles over them, nothing but a soft breeze knocking at the window and the hum of the room. Jisung moves to lay on his back, tracing patterns in the popcorn of the ceiling with his eyes. 

Minho's voice pushes through the dark, his mouth moving automatically like he had thought the words a hundred times over, eyes not looking at Jisung but over him. “We are for each other: then, laugh, leaning back in my arms, for life’s not a paragraph. And death I think is no parenthesis.” His eyes find Jisung’s again. “E.E. Cummings.” 

“See?” Jisung says, just barely over a whisper. He moves his focus back to the ceiling, afraid that a turn of the head will pull all his emotion with it. “It’s all the same in poetry.”

He shifts his eyes just enough to see Minho nod, feels something tug at the corners of his irises and threaten to spill over. “I think I like you, Han Jisung. You’re interesting.”

“Me?” Jisung lets out a surprised chuckle, and finds a pattern on the ceiling that looks suspiciously like a frog. He doesn’t know if he’d call himself interesting, doesn’t know what he’d call himself at all, no adjective seeming to fit exactly right. “I don’t know about that.”

“That’s what makes you interesting, you’re still figuring it out.” Minho sounds endeared. Almost envious.

“Do you have it figured out?”

“Not even close.”

“I think I like you too, Lee Minho,” Jisung finally lets his eyes find Minho’s, snapping like a magnet to a metallic surface when he does. Minho had already been looking at him. “I hope we figure it out.”

“Together,” Minho smiles, soft and careful, and then turns to his other side. He bundles up until he’s so small, Jisung can’t find him anymore, like a cat burrowing into freshly washed sheets. “Goodnight, Jisung.”

“Goodnight, Minho.”

Minho does not sing him to sleep this time.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆

Jisung hoped that sleeping in a different bed meant that the dream wouldn’t happen.

“Please, mom.” Jisung begs. His voice is higher, younger, full of something he grew out of but can’t pinpoint what. “Hyunjin is going too, I won’t be alone.”

His mom lets out an exasperated sigh, tucks her hair behind her ears and puts her hands on her hips. “I said no, Jisung.”

She turns back to the counter, but if Jisung had inherited anything from her, it was a stubborn attitude. Certainly not magical proficiency.

He cuts her off at the fridge, holding the brochure to the camp between her and the handle. It was an art camp, three weeks in New York with some of the best upcoming new talents. Hyunjin was already packing, perfecting the details on his oil paintings. Jisung was building his portfolio. Sketches, watercolors, and collages, a variety of everything, hoping someone would tell him what should stick.

“But whyyyy,” Jisung whines. His mom closes her eyes and exhales through her nose. If she was one of Jisung’s cartoons, there would be steam coming out of her ears. “Hyunjin’s mom is letting him go.”

“I’m not Hyunjin’s mom. I don’t want you that far away, it isn’t safe.” Jisung opens his mouth to protest, but she cuts him off, pushing him to the side to get at the fridge. “And you can’t go that long without practicing your magic.”

“I’m fifteen mom, you have to let me go somewhere .” He had never been out of the veil on his own, had barely ever been out of his mom’s eyeline. The world was happening around him and Jisung had a distinct need to happen to it.

 Jisung ducks to the ground, worms his way between his mom’s feet and the now open fridge door, popping up to block her view again. “I’ll practice with Hyunjin, it will be fine.”

She gives him a look, one that shows she knows they won’t be practicing anything remotely supernatural. He thought it was worth a shot. 

“It’s not fair!” Jisung’s voice cracks at the end, a sob threatening to choke out of his throat. All his teenage hormonal frustration combining with an ache for some form of independence.

“Life isn’t fair, Jisung!” His mom shouts back, her temper just as bad as his. Jisung can smell her magic: roasted marshmallows, charry and sweet. 

The tears start falling, hot and angry like the magic brewing in his core. “I’m going, if you let me or not!”

Jisung storms to his room, slams the door behind him and locks it, starts shoving things into his duffel bag. He hears his mom bang on the door, jangling the knob. “Jisung, you’re acting like a toddler. Open up, let’s talk.”

“Well, you treat me like one!” Jisung knows ‘let’s talk’ means ‘you listen,’ a sugarcoating to make him obedient and complacent. He feels like a pot boiling over, water sizzling on the stove top, evaporating on contact.

When he opens the door, he narrowly misses whacking his mom in the head, only serving to piss her off even more. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Her voice is pinched, following Jisung as he stomps to the front door. 

“Anywhere but here.” He reaches out to grab the door knob, but something stops him, winding around his wrist and pulling back hard. He looks down to see a vine of ivy crawling up his arm, keeping it stationary. 

He looks at his mom wide-eyed. It isn’t impossible for magic users to practice multiple magics, but it isn’t common. The toll it takes on the body and mind being dangerous outside of your natural affinity. Jisung didn’t even know his mom was learning herbology.

Sweat beads at her brow, face red. Blood trickles out of her nostril and over her lip. Her eyes are filled with rage — no, fear. She seems to age decades in minutes, and for the first time in his life, Jisung is scared of his mom. 

“Mom?” He squeaks, and something in her relaxes, but doesn’t let up.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and Jisung thinks that maybe they’re going to really talk, sit down and she’ll listen to him for once. Trust him. But then the vine tightens on his wrist, another joining to grip his other arm.

She closes her eyes and starts whispering under her breath. The cupboards in the kitchen bang open and shut, the tv flickers through channels, the shutters creak and slam, the floor shakes under Jisung’s feet as he writhes in his foliage constraints. 

Her nose is bleeding from both sides now, her hair stands on end, and her skin looks like it's on fire, glowing from the inside out. 

“Mom!” Jisung cries, trying to break free, but the magic is too strong. Or he isn’t strong enough. She doesn’t stop, keeps whispering, the house keeps quaking. 

Jisung screws his eyes shut and prays for it to be over, his senses overwhelmed by his world crashing around him. His ears feel like they’re going to bleed, his eyes shut so tightly the back of his eyelids are covered in stars. The vines curl ever tighter on Jisung’s skin until he’s certain his circulation has been cut off. 

Everything is loud and louder and then so loud Jisung doesn’t think his head can handle another sound without imploding.

And then it ends. The vines release him and Jisung’s arms slump to his sides. There is a still quiet surrounding him, quieter than anything he’s ever heard. What feels like a complete lack of sound. 

“Mom?” He tries, creaking one eye open slowly. The entryway is empty, not one sign of his mom. Not a thing in the cottage is out of place, not even a speck of dust in his eyeline. He catches sight of something on the floor and squats down to investigate. Blood. Jisung feels panic well up in him like a geyser.

“Mom?” He calls through every corner of the house, running around to the vegetable garden. He stops in his tracks when he sees that every plant has been pulled from the soil, roots ripped and ruined. 

Jisung bolts to his room, finds his duffel bag emptied out on his bed, all his shirts folded and creased in a neat little pile. He really starts to feel panicked. His vision blurs at the edges and he fears he’s going to pass out, head feeling light and dizzy. 

He feels a presence behind him, the faint smell of something sweet. Marshmallows , he realizes. Something is draped over his shoulders, and he recognizes the soft texture of his favorite blanket.

“Mom, what happened—” but when Jisung turns around no one is there. A breeze sweeps past him. It tucks his hair behind his ear.

And Jisung knows it in his bones like he knows his own name, his mom is gone. And he knows he’s never getting out.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆

“Jisung,” he hears someone call, voice high and gentle. He turns frantically, trying to find the source.

“Jisung.” There it is again. And a nudge to his shoulder. He turns again and—

“Jisung,” his eyes fly open to the sight of Minho hanging over him, poking him with the corner of his book. “Get ready. Hyunjin is waiting for us.”

Jisung shoots up in bed, t-shirt clinging to his back with sweat. He puts his face in his hands, making sure to focus on keeping his magic pulled in. It doesn’t feel as wild now, like it settled somewhat, but still ready to jump out at the slightest nudge.

“Bad dream?” Minho asks, pulling his shirt over his head and replacing it with an oversized hoodie. Jisung does his best not to trace the lines of his skin with his eyes.

“Bad memory.” Jisung pulls himself off the bed and starts rummaging through his bag for clean clothes and underwear. Almost every night for eight years, the same bad memory replayed over and over again. He wishes it wasn’t real. He doesn’t believe in wishes.

“All the same, right?” Minho pulls his toothbrush out of his bag, puts toothpaste on it and shoves it in his mouth, no water before or after.

Jisung looks at him wide-eyed. “You masochist.”

Minho grins, toothpaste catching in the corner of his lip.

”How do you know Hyunjin anyway?” Jisung asks.

“Went to school with Felix. Now, get ready,” he repeats, words muffled as he shuffles to the bathroom. “Columbus is two hours away if I speed and Hyunjin has no patience.”

Jisung groans. “God, do I ever know that.”

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆

When Minho first told Jisung that Hyunjin had opened a potions shop behind the veil in buttfuck nowhere Ohio, this is exactly what he had pictured. 

Quaint, cozy, hand painted lettering reading “Paints & Potions” on a wooden sign. Windchimes dangle from the doorway, pretty sounds matching the pretty atmosphere. Flowers climb over trellises at both sides of the door, everything rosy and soft. Romantic. Very Hyunjin.

“He’s excited to see you,” Minho says, hands in his pockets. They’re standing outside the door, waiting for Jisung to build up the courage to go in. Minho didn’t push him, and Jisung thinks they could both be content to stand there forever. He might just try.

“It’s been a long time.” Jisung lets out a huff of air and tucks his hair behind his ears. He left it down today; the ribbon wouldn’t stop getting tangled in his fingers.

The last time he saw Hyunjin was two years ago for his birthday, and three years ago before that. Splitting apart after the other went off to study at Ohio State University while Jisung stayed and studied online. 

At first he came back once a month, and then for holidays, and then not at all. Jisung never learned why. So they had settled for weekly phone calls until those calls turned biweekly, and then monthly, and then only birthdays. Catching up in March and September on everything that had happened in between, Hyunjin only making a surprise appearance for Jisung’s twenty-first. A night he admittedly doesn't remember much of.

Hyunjin got out. Sometimes Jisung wishes that Hyunjin would have helped him get out too, but then he shuts himself down. No amount of shooting stars or dandelion fluff would have saved him. Certainly wasn’t saving him now.

Jisung is just getting the nerve to walk in and re-introduce himself to the only real friend he ever had, when the door to the shop flies open, slamming into the yellow siding.

“Han Jisung,” Hyunjin says, standing in the opening, arm outstretched to hold the door open. His hair had gotten longer too, framing the pretty angles of his face. There’s someone standing behind him, a short man with massive arms and a bright smile. 

Jisung can’t help the smile that engulfs his face. As scared as he was, he missed him. “Hwang Hyunjin.”

And then Hyunjin is squealing and barreling towards him, wrapping his arms around Jisung and squeezing so tight he loses his breath. Jisung is briefly worried about his magic, scared he’ll accidentally turn Hyunjin into a bug and crush him, but his magic feels calm in his presence. Like it’s home.

Jisung lets himself settle, grips Hyunjin hard and melts into him. He really had missed him, didn’t even realize how much he did until he had him again.

He supposes it’s all the same: Loving someone and missing them. A smaller form of a death, more digestible, but just as easy to grieve.

“Oh my god, you got hotter,” Hyunjin says, peeling himself off of Jisung but continuing to pin his arms to his sides.

Jisung snorts. “You liked my instagram post three days ago.”

”Okay, but it’s different in real life.” Hyunjin finally relinquishes his grip on Jisung, peeking over his head and smiling. “Hi Minho.”

Jisung turns his head to see Minho give a small wave, standing far off to give Jisung and Hyunjin their space.

There’s a cough from behind Hyunjin and the man from the doorway approaches. 

“Oh, sorry!” Hyunjin chirps, draping himself over the man as he gets closer. It looks natural, sliding together like a perfectly matched puzzle, no need to even wiggle the piece. “This is Changbin. My boyfriend.”

So this is why Hyunjin stopped coming home. He found a new one.

Changbin grins and wraps his arm around Hyunjin’s waist. Jisung is suddenly hit with the desire to be touched in any capacity. Fingers woven through his, a friend locking their elbow into the pocket of his own, the feeling of his mom pushing his hair back and kissing his brow.

“Nice to finally meet you,” Changbin holds out a hand and Jisung shakes it. He side-eyes Hyunjin, trying to figure out how a conversation about an obviously long-term relationship never made it to their birthday calls, but Hyunjin averts his eyes. He’ll get it out of him.

Hyunjin separates himself from Changbin’s side, but their hands find each other, fingers slotting together without thought. 

“Well,” Hyunjin is all smiles, bright and easy. Happier than Jisung has ever seen him and his heart aches in more ways than one. “Let me show you around.”

Jisung isn’t surprised to see that the shop is just as cute on the inside. Hand-bottled potions and art supplies line the wooden walls. Half of the back wall is white from the middle down, covered in handprints and children’s doodles. Scarves, tapestries, and windchimes dangle from the ceiling, easels with canvases of every size in every corner, not an inch of surface left untouched.

A long wooden table occupies the far end of the space, covered in little beakers and jars of ingredients. Plants and herbs Jisung remembers Hyunjin picking up when they were kids, some sixth sense letting him know which ones were the right ones. 

Hyunjin’s work is everywhere, some moving with magic, some completely stagnant. Hyunjin always had one foot in both worlds, striking the balance and walking the line without so much as a teeter. His signature flowers and portraits of people kissing, as well as his things that feel a bit darker and sadder, but all him just the same.

”What do you think?” Hyunjin asks, pulling a smock out of a drawer and tying it on. 

“It’s perfect, Hyunjin,” Jisung’s voice is soft, the emotion surprising even himself. “Really.”

Hyunjin stands only a few feet away, but Jisung feels every mile and year of distance between them. An entire life lived away from him, always propelling forward while Jisung stayed completely still, sometimes even retreating backwards; Always careful. Always alone.

”I missed you,” Hyunjin holds out his hand, red string between them re-tying.

Jisung grabs his fingers, squeezes tight. “I missed you too.”

”He’s not kidding,” Changbin pipes in from behind the potions table. “Sometimes he cries because he wants to tell you a joke and you aren’t here.” 

Minho snorts, but keeps his eyes on one of Hyunjin’s paintings: two people embracing so tight they look like one figure.

”It’s true, I’m insufferable,” Hyunjin nods.

”You could always just call me, Jinnie,” Jisung laughs. 

Hyunjin sighs. “Not the same.” 

Jisung pulls his hand from Hyunjin’s, tie severed once again. “No, it’s not.”

A crash sounds, shattering glass splitting the tension in the room. Changbin looks up wordlessly, the top half of a broken jar in his hands.

”Don’t date a human, Sung,” Hyunjin huffs, but there’s nothing but love in his voice. “Magic hates them.”

Jisung doesn’t think he fairs much better.

Minho clears his throat. “Is this a bad time to ask for what we need?”

Hyunjin claps his hands and raises his eyebrows like he forgot Jisung and Minho had ulterior motives for being here.

“Right, yeah.” He starts rummaging through bottles on the wall, opening drawers when he can’t find what he’s looking for. “I still can’t believe you convinced Sung to do this.”

Jisung suddenly remembers his ulterior, ulterior motive.

“You,” Jisung hisses, narrowing his eyes and pointing at Hyunjin. Hyunjin stands and puts his hands up, smiles sheepishly. “Why are you telling random people I’m a transmuter?”

“Honestly, when Minho asked me if I knew any, I thought it was some weird kink.”

“It could be,” Changbin chirps, sweeping glass into a dustpan. Minho just shrugs.

“And I mean, look at him,” Hyunjin swings an arm around Jisung’s shoulder and gestures to Minho, face growing red. “He’s your type exactly, Jisung. I thought I was helping you out.” And then Jisung’s face is burning too. 

Hyunjin smirks at Minho, something devilish in his face.

”Hey—“ Minho starts, but Hyunjin cuts him off.

“And when I showed him your picture, I knew you were his,” Hyunjin pats Jisung’s shoulder hard enough to propel him forward, feet catching and stopping right before he barrels into Minho. Hyunjin has always been less of a matchmaker and more of an annoyingly stubborn bug when it comes to Jisung’s non-existent love life. “I’ll just brew you a fresh potion, be right back. Bin?”

Changbin glances between his boyfriend and the two blushing idiots Jisung knows he and Minho look like. He grins. “Coming, babe.”

When the two slip past the beaded curtain that must lead to the back, Jisung distracts himself by reading the potion labels, analyzing Hyunjin’s brushstrokes, doing anything except looking at Minho.

He’s just trying to figure out how Hyunjin managed to texture sand so well when he feels a puff of air on his neck.

“Five,” Minho breathes directly into Jisung’s ear, and Jisung does all but shiver. “Am I really your type?”

Jisung turns around, Minho’s face hanging right in front of his, eyes like stars drilling right into his own. He can feel the chill of his magic, the icy aura of him. Jisung wonders how someone who laughs so warmly can have magic so cold.

The answer is yes, yes a thousand times over. He thinks Minho must be everyone’s type. A man pulled straight from Jisung’s dreams, everything he never wanted to wish for but did by accident. 

Minho’s hands are pulled tightly behind his back, he hovers carefully over Jisung, delicate and calculated. Jisung would never be any closer than Minho wanted him to be. 

Jisung detonates and Minho dismantles; two sides of the same catastrophe. Minho only floats, never falls, and Jisung has never even gotten his feet off the ground without crashing back through the surface. He hardly ever even tries.

His eyes dip to Minho’s lips before he can help himself and Minho smirks, the way he does that sends Jisung spiraling down the rabbit hole. He thinks he’d like a joint right now. 

“Six,” Jisung says, keeping his eyes on Minho’s lips for a beat longer. The top one is plush and round. Jisung wants to feel it in his teeth. “Am I yours?”

Minho steps back, suddenly becomes very interested in a pink scarf hanging from the ceiling. Jisung thinks the blushes on both their cheeks must have been enough of an answer to meet the rules of the game.

“Do you want some condoms with this paralyzing potion or do you have that covered?” Hyunjin and Changbin stand in front of the curtain, beads swaying and clanking behind them.

Jisung jumps and reaches to snatch the little bottle of blue liquid from Hyunjin’s fingers.

“Just that is fine,” Minho answers like it was a serious inquiry. With Hyunjin it probably was. 

“So how does it work?” Jisung asks, eager to move on to a different topic.

“Its a small dosage of oleander, normally lethal, but I'm so good that it won't do much harm. Just get the hounds to ingest it. With water, a treat, human flesh it doesn’t matter,” Hyunjin shrugs. “It will knock them out right away.”

Oh, yes, ‘just.’ “And they’ll stay asleep?” Jisung wasn’t going to get mauled before he even attempts the greatest transmutation of his life. 

“Yep,” Changbin nods. “Then you can grab some fur and turn yourself into frogs or whatever it is you do.” It sounds like a jab, but Jisung can see on Changbin’s face that he genuinely does not understand. Maybe dating a human wouldn’t be so bad.

“Jisungie’s got this,” Minho smiles. “He fixed the bumper on my car, how hard could a hellhound be?”

“If you can fix that piece of shit, you can do anything.” Hyunjin raises his eyebrow and Jisung meets his eyes, wordlessly communicating that they have a lot to discuss. Hyunjin laughs and then frowns. "When you get Felix, please tell him to call me. I can't watch Grey's Anatomy without him."

Hyunjin convinces Jisung and Minho to stay for two cups of tea before they finally manage to worm their way out the door. Jisung had made Hyunjin brew each cup in front of him, ensuring that he didn’t slip anything extra in there. 

He did not want a repeat of when they were eleven and Hyunjin gave Jisung an elephant trunk for three hours through his chocolate milk. Who knows what he could do now. He’d probably add something to turn Jisung’s bones to jelly. Or some magical viagra to make him and Minho fuck. On second thought, maybe meddling wouldn’t be so bad.

”I really did miss you,” Hyunjin pouts, hanging in the window of the Bronco as Jisung buckles up. “That’s my fault, and I’m sorry.”

Jisung takes Hyunjin’s hand and gives him a big squeeze. “It’s my fault too. I’ll visit again, I promise.” And he thinks he actually will.

“Or I’ll come to you. I want to see your new frogs” Hyunjin giggles, and then frowns, nostalgia creeping from the creases in his face Jisung doesn’t remember being there. Sometimes he forgets they’ve both gotten older until he looks in the mirror and is temporarily surprised by the body that he’s in. “And I miss the house.”

Jisung feels his heart race at the thought of his cottage, dark and dreary, life doused out with the hearth. He does his best to mask his sadness. He’ll fix her, he has to. “She misses you too.”

“Call me when you get to California, yeah? I have a lot to tell you about.”

Maybe the string could drape across states, wrap around trees and run under rivers. Jisung squeezes Hyunjin’s hand again, remembering how they’d clasp their fingers together as they wandered through the forest, poking at squirrels and running through leaves. “Me too.”

“Ready?” Minho asks, turning the key in the ignition. The car stutters a few times before the engine begins to purr, loud and dangerous.

Jisung nods and rolls up his window, waving to Hyunjin. He watches him get smaller in the rearview mirror as they drive away, until he’s no bigger than how Jisung remembers him. 

He wishes he didn’t believe in memories either.

“How’s your magic?” Minho asks when Hyunjin finally becomes invisible.

Jisung reaches inside himself and mentally pokes his magic, it feels something akin to poking a sleeping bear. He’s met with a calmness, but something bubbling underneath.

“I don’t think I have to worry about any more accidental transmutations, but I’m scared to use it.” Jisung admits

Minho nods, tight lipped. “And you?”

Jisung meets Minho’s eyes “I’m good.”

He can’t tell the difference between his truths and his lies anymore.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆

It’s somewhere between Columbus and St. Louis that Jisung spots Bigfoot on the side of the road. 

They had been driving for hours, stopping only once to get gas, eating shitty sandwiches and sharing a grape soda on the curb outside the convenience store. 

Minho never seems to get tired of driving. Sometimes he acts like Jisung isn’t even there, singing along to the radio loudly. His sweet voice fills the space like water, until it's a song Jisung recognizes and he jumps in too, Minho all smiles when they find the harmony.

They play I Spy and the license plate game, call out slug bugs when they see them, but Minho never hits Jisung’s shoulder.

Jisung forgot what it was like to have a friend, to be able to tell his random thoughts to someone else instead of letting them ricochet off the walls of his own mind, getting muddled and ugly. He expects it to be hard to settle into something comfortable, but the small space makes it easy. Minho makes it easy. Something built off of free beers and the world’s worst pizza.

Minho is smart and funny and strange and Jisung can’t tell if he wants to be him or be inside of him (it’s probably a bit of both). 

He likes to go on spiels about bad books he’s read and worse poems. Jisung thinks Minho might have read every book in the world, references pouring out of his mouth that Jisung has to cross-reference in his own mind at a rapid pace. Flipping through mental files on classics and whatever else the state put in his homeschool curriculum.

Minho asks to know Jisung’s thoughts on everything, wants to find the points where they match and strike them aflame. Music and anime and avoiding their problems. Jisung thinks it's a great foundation.

“How’d you start doing kids books?” Minho asks, presumably the only genre he hasn’t read the entire catalog of. 

Jisung shrugs. “I like art, I like kids. Sent some stuff around and got lucky I guess.”

“And do you like it?” Minho pulls his water bottle out of the center console and takes a long swig, Adam's apple bobbing. Jisung finds himself mimicking his swallows. 

He smiles and focuses his eyes back out the window, watching a world of illustrations fly by him in real time. “I love it.”

“I can tell,” Minho smiles back at him.

“What? Finally able to read my mind?”

“Don’t need to.” His smile keeps curling, a cat pacing back and forth, cornering its prey and skulking down. Jisung is waiting to get eaten alive and choked back up just so he can be swallowed again. “I can just tell.”

“Guess I’m not that mysterious after all,” Jisung sighs.

“Afraid not,” Minho snickers. “That’s my brand.”

Jisung wants to ask Minho a hundred questions, numbered and unnumbered, seeing the ones he chooses to answer and which ones Jisung would have to apply his own rules to to get out of him. He wants to sit here forever and peel back Minho’s endless layers until he can differentiate the texture of his bones through touch alone. He wants to know him, and wants Minho to know him too. Wants someone to know him, wants to know himself.

But Jisung’s legs get antsy, begging to get their blood running again, accustomed to long jogs through his woods and even longer walks. And then he sees it.

It’s the first billboard in miles: “CRYPTOZOOLOGY MUSEUM: FREE ENTRY, NEXT EXIT” it reads. Some poor sap in what has to be the Bigfoot suit equivalent to Fergie’s National Anthem is blown across it. Low resolution and highly pixelated with his arms outstretched, reaching for the edges like he’s trying to escape.

Jisung shifts his eyes to Minho, sees the other looking right at the billboard and then to Jisung. Wordlessly, he turns on his blinker, changes lanes, and takes the exit.

This is the kind of adventure Jisung has always craved. Magic loses its magic when it’s your everyday reality. He wants to speed down the highway, eat too much fast food, get high and vandalize a golf course. He wants to go to a roadside museum and look at irrefutable proof of Bigfoot’s existence while a tuna fish sandwich churns in his stomach. He wants to experience ages fifteen to twenty-three all at once in two times speed. He wants to be batshit in the most normal way.

He wants to fall out of the rabbit hole and never stop flying.

“This is it,” Minho says, awestruck. He’s barely shifted the Bronco to park before Jisung is climbing out of the door. “This is the funniest thing I will ever see.”

The museum is just a big warehouse in the middle of nowhere. No less than thirty Bigfoot cutouts decorate the entrance, a few mothmans and Loch Ness monsters thrown in to spice things up. “Do you believe?” is written above the entry, red paint dripping.

The Bigfoot from the billboard stares at Jisung from above the door, somehow even sadder up close. Jisung stretches his arms out, mimicking him. “I believe,” he says and Minho cackles.

“Will you make a believer out of me too, Han Jisung?” Minho is standing on the foot of the Bronco, body halfway out the door. The sun is just starting to set, catching in Minho’s hair and making him shield his eyes. His smile splits his face open, creasing his eyes even further, and Jisung feels a bit breathless. He thinks Minho might be making a believer out of him. A believer in somethings, in everythings, and nothings all at once.

“Hey, so we close in twenty minutes,” a college-aged employee stands in the door with her arms crossed, wearing a mustard yellow polo and popping her gum. “Are you coming in or not?”

Whoever owned this place must have gotten a killer deal because there isn’t nearly enough stuff to warrant the amount of space. Or maybe they were just hopeful that someday there would be.

Black curtains are hung to make it feel smaller, and gaudy statues and display cases fill up the ten foot by ten foot space at the center. Jisung would be shocked if it didn’t even take them the full twenty minutes to see everything and then go around again.

In the middle of it all is an abomination of a Bigfoot sculpture. It has to be at least fifteen feet in height, casting a shadow over Jisung that almost reaches the warehouse doors. It’s covered in tangled knots of fur, a woody smell clinging to it like it was shaved from live animals. Jisung prays to himself that it wasn’t.

And for some reason, this artist chose to interpret Bigfoot’s image with a massive dick and massive pecs to match.

Jisung imagines the sculpture in a gallery, critics and art snobs surrounding it, pointing at the penis with their pencils and whispering about the intention behind it. 

From what Jisung knows about the art community, the artist was probably just really horny with a monster porn fetish. Or who knows, maybe this artist is the only person to not only see Bigfoot, but also fuck him.

“If that was inside me, it would reach my ribs,” Minho says casually, hands in his pockets, a cool lean to his posture.

Jisung laughs loudly, the sound cutting and echoing through the near-empty room. “What if he’s a grower too?”

Minho gets closer to the statue, one hand on his chin in a comical display of deep thought. He leans in so his eyes are directly at the head of the wooden dick. “Then it would come out of my mouth.”

“Two for one deal.”

“No wild sex, huh?” Minho flashes a shit-eating grin and gives Jisung the side-eye. “Maybe this guy is your chance.”

Jisung feels his face turn pink, but his giggle is all joy. “Bold coming from someone with a book called ‘Mated to Mothman’ in his backseat.”

“Speaking of my lover,” Minho shifts his body to a much smaller statue of the aforementioned, with the most insane ass Jisung has ever seen. Were all cryptid enthusiasts this horny? “Seven. Bigfoot vs. mothman. Who’s winning?”

Jisung snickers. “You’re wasting a question on that?”

“My rules, Jisungie,” Minho tsks, giving a light slap to mothman’s ass.

“Please don’t touch the displays,” the employee deadpans from the front, feet perched on the desk with a volume of One Piece cracked open in front of her.

When she turns back to the manga, Minho does it again.

“Bigfoot, no question.” Jisung responds. “He’s like four times the size, and could apparently crush someone with his penis alone.”

“I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Han Jisung?”

“Sounds like you want to know what I like.” Jisung barely knows what he likes himself, but he mentally pats himself on the back for his burst of wit and the way Minho’s blush spreads from his nose to his ears. He wonders if Minho can feel the ice of his magic getting soft at the heat.

If Jisung were to paint him, he would press his brush in the center of his face, watch the pink bleed from the center and coat his watercolor skin. He doesn’t think he’d ever be able to get the likeness quite to the point where it would be comparable to the real thing.

“I’m staying loyal,” Minho sighs, keeping his cool and leaning his arm onto mothman’s shoulder. “I’m a sucker for an underdog.”

“More poetic,” Jisung smiles.

Minho matches him. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.” But then Minho catches something over Jisung’s shoulder, tilting his head and squinting his eyes.

“What?” Jisung says, turning to investigate, but he sees it too. There, in the gap between two of the curtains, is the smallest hint of a shimmer. The veil. “Oh shit. What do you think is back there?”

Minho reaches into his pocket and pulls out a box cutter, pushing down the lever and revealing the blade. He cocks a brow and smirks. “You wanna find out?”

Sneaking behind the curtains isn’t very hard, the employee giving up on her lowly patrons. Minho slices his box cutter down the length of the shimmer, the satisfying sound of scissors cutting through wrapping paper.

“What if the real Bigfoot is back here?” Minho teases, one foot already through the veil. 

“Then my chance at wild sex is even closer than we thought.” Jisung grabs the edge of the veil and tugs slightly, a subtle purple sheen reflecting off of it.

“Bigfoot and mothman are totally fucking, by the way. Sorry you had to find out like this.”

”Maybe they need a third.”

“Make that four,” Minho’s laughter fades as he slips into the veil, body waving like a hologram until it's gone altogether. 

Jisung takes a deep breath and makes sure his magic is packed down deep inside of himself. He hasn’t had any more incidents, but the veil is a funny thing, a vacuum of magic, and Jisung doesn’t want to take any risks.

He releases the breath, long and slow, and steps through. 

The room he enters is much smaller than the warehouse it’s veiled in. No bigger than his cottage in square footage, but when he looks up, it seems endless. A staircase winds up and up, balcony landings at each level, turning the room into a citadel of sorts. 

Soft, purple lighting floods the space. Which, for what appears to be a museum, Jisung finds to be a bit of an odd choice. More reminiscent of a club than a place for academic endeavors. He’s happy to feel only a slight shift in his magic, like a sleeping dog too lazy to do anything but creep an eye open.

This place seems to have the opposite problem of the cryptozoology museum: too many things for too small of a space. Jisung imagines magicked architects of the olden days — transmuters — pulling up on the building to expand it like a slinky. Nowhere to go but up 

Artifacts cluster on the walls and displays that sit suspended off the floor. A man old enough to look like he could join the displays soon sits behind a desk towards the back. He raises his hand to wave so slowly that Jisung thinks he too may have gotten older in the time that passed. 

The magic of the place smells musty, like moth balls and cobwebs. Jisung does his best not to scrunch his nose in mild disgust.

Newspaper clippings and movie posters trail their way parallel to the stairs, some in motion and some stagnant. Poltergeist and Paranormal Activity and Casper . There are gadgets and gizmos, halloween decorations, and a Ghostbusters costume on a mannequin that looks like it could be the real deal.

Candles float in the air, just to remind Jisung that they are behind the veil more than anything else. Jisung frowns, unable to figure out what the magickal niche this place falls into is when it hits him.

Ghosts, Jisung realizes. Everything here is about ghosts.

Magic had made a lot of things less magical for Jisung. Parlor tricks and sleight of hand were boring in comparison to chocolate mushrooms and disappearing mothers. Films distracted him with their lack of accuracy. Magic in novels seemed too complicated for what it actually was, something breezy and kind, not suffocating — at least not in theory.

There was little mystery in the world for magic users, everything explainable in at least some way. A spell could tell you what someone was thinking, a google search could tell you why the sky was blue. Everything had a reason and then countless reasons for those reasons – almost everything. 

The magicked world could never seem to close its fist around the idea of death.

The one great mystery. Magic users had spent centuries trying to crack the code of resurrections, of communing with the dead, of trying to prove that there was a veil behind the veil, housing those once here and now gone.

Jisung had dabbled in the research, wanting to know if he could find proof of a purgatory where he could reach in and pull his mom out. He never had much luck. And here was a whole museum of it. Years of research and memorabilia — magical and non-magical alike — in the middle of Missouri.

He knows demons are real now. Maybe that means Hell is too, maybe Heaven, maybe a limbo in between. All these religions and their ideas of death, maybe at least one was right. Or maybe he would keep chasing this impossible thing, this pipe dream, and keep hoping that magic and science combined would somehow create a positive and not cancel each other out.

“A death museum,” Minho says. He’s looking at a display about ghost towns — cities once populated by magic users before being cut from the veil when they were no longer occupied. “Feels a bit like fate.”

“I don’t believe in fate,” Jisung sighs and swats away a cute little halloween decoration that won’t stop whacking him in the face. The contrast between items of the occult and ghosts with rosy cheeks almost makes him laugh. “Only bigfoot.”

“This is where we differ, Han Jisung. I believe everything is fate.” Jisung likes when Minho uses his full name, like he’s special. Like a character on a grand quest, a whole book series starting with Han Jisung and the — . He thinks he’d title this one Han Jisung and the Hot Guy Obsessed with Death. It’s a working title. “The fact that we’re both alive on this planet right now, that’s fate.”

“More like a domino effect.” A bunch of coincidences toppling together to get an end result. An experiment set in motion to test space and time. All to put these two people on the same wave, for Minho to push Jisung out of his hamster wheel and get him running for real. For Jisung to pull on Minho’s leash and get him to stop choking himself on his own inhibitions. Or something like that, maybe.

“Will you make a believer out of me too, Han Jisung?” No, probably not.

Fate, coincidences, Bigfoot, ghosts, wishes and dreams and memories, love and death. Believing and not believing. Somethings and nothings and everythings. And Jisung standing in the middle of it all, his whole world expanding and condensing right in front of him.

He thought he got out, but maybe not. Passing through perpendicular planes but never on an upward slope. He thinks he’ll keep climbing.

“But isn’t that fated too? The way the dominoes fall?” Jisung can tell from Minho’s expression that he’s just aiming to push his buttons, the verbal equivalent to a slap on the shoulder.

Jisung indulges him. “That, my dear reader, is physics.” It’s hard to tell in the purple lighting, but Jisung thinks he sees Minho’s ears turn pink. He mentally pats himself on the back again.

Minho wanders over to a glass display case filled with Ghost Hunters -esque equipment. EVP readers and ghost boxes, and more primitive things like ouija boards and spirit candles. Jisung catches Minho’s reflection in the glass. A small smile, a sheen to his eyes making the constellations look even brighter. 

“Eight,” Jisung says, accidentally jolting Minho out of whatever world he was in. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“In a way.” Minho turns to face him, the same melancholy expression still on his face. He shrugs. “When Felix’s mom married my dad, they … weren’t around often. So we made our own fun. Felix got really into Scooby Doo, Haunted Mansion, anything a little spooky.” Minho’s smile widens, his gaze far off like he’s replaying his memories in the glass.

“I don’t know why, he was scared of everything,” he laughs. “But we started ghost hunting, running around the house and outside through the veil. We even wandered over to the cemetery one night. Felix only lasted about three minutes before he was nearly pissing himself and we had to turn around.”

”Did you ever find anything?” Jisung wants to reach out, take Minho’s hand and feel his cold skin in his. He takes a step further away instead.

”No,” Minho shakes his head, still smiling but softer. “Just the wind. But that could be a ghost, right? We’re all just energy. Magic, non-magic. When we die that energy has to go somewhere. Physics, or whatever. Why not the wind? Or a tree? Everything is a ghost. It’s all the same in the end.”

Jisung shortens the distance between them again, reaches his pinky to Minho’s until the moment right before they touch, the chill of his skin hitting Jisung’s like a breeze. Or a ghost.

Jisung had grown up inside of a ghost. Lived and breathed in it. Let it’s hearth warm him, let it scold him for staying out late and smoking pot with the windows closed. Let it brush his hair and brew his coffee. The ghost had raised him, the remainder of his mom’s magic filling the space she once occupied. Becoming the space. Sometimes he thinks he became a bit of a ghost himself, watching the world happen from some unseen point.

Minho looks down, eyes focusing on the space where their fingers could join if he wanted them to. He doesn’t move closer or further away, stone still. Jisung swears he can feel Minho’s pulse through the proximity, and feels his own heartbeat sync to it.

“We’re going to get him back, Minho,” Jisung says quietly to Minho’s reflection in the glass. The EVP reader starts beeping. “I promise.”

Jisung has always believed in promises.

“Pinky promise?” Minho lifts his own finger to hover right in front of his face, eyes crossing slightly as the refocus.

Jisung mirrors him. “Pinky promise.”

Their fingers cross in the space between them, skin kissing but not quite touching. Flirting with the idea of it before Minho pulls back. Jisung knows he shouldn’t feel disappointed, but he does. Cursing his own magic for not working right, for fuddling Minho’s and keeping his touch at bay.

Jisung wonders if Minho would touch him if his skin didn’t feel like a mystery, if the idea of not knowing a person scares him as much as Jisung is eager to be known.

Something catches Minho’s eye and the moment is broken. Jisung thinks his mind must move a thousand miles a second, already halfway to the next adventure before he’d even stopped to experience the first one.

Jisung follows him to a newspaper clipping on the wall. It’s laminated, but the page has yellowed with time. The Conjurer, the masthead reads. The magic world’s one and only newspaper, aptly named for spontaneously conjuring itself in Jisung’s mailbox every week.

He doesn’t always read it, using it more as a surface to paint on top of, moving pictures and magical recipes staring up at him as he paints his normal dragons. But this is an article he knows well.

“Woman spells herself out,” the headline reads. No name, no picture. Jisung had asked them not to. He refused to provide any comment.

“I always thought this was just urban legend,” Minho sounds almost giddy. “Using so much magic that it eats you alive. Do you think it’s legit?”

Jisung bites his tongue so hard he feels blood. His magic churns in his stomach, and it feels like it’s wailing, aching to grieve the magic it was built from. He feels his eyes get watery, and is unable to stop a tear from leaking out the corner. He wipes it away before Minho can see.

“Maybe,” Jisung does his best to keep his voice light and level. “Doesn’t sound much like physics or magic though.”

He must not do a very good job. “Hey, are you okay?” Minho asks, voice suddenly gone tender.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jisung chuckles and wipes his eyes. “Just really dusty in here, that’s all. You ready to get back on the road?”

Minho cocks his head, and Jisung can see a number dangling on the end of his tongue, but he must decide his rules shouldn’t apply here. “Yeah, let’s go.” He smirks and Jisung feels his heart settle and stagger all at once. “I have to give mothman’s ass one last look though.”

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆

The motel that night is somehow worse than the first. Jisung loves it, a type of terrible so new to him that he can’t help but be in complete awe. The mattresses are about 3 inches thick, the lamp is the only (just barely) working light, and the smell is so putrid that Jisung thinks this place could have its own section at the death museum.

He takes a cold shower – not by choice – but the shock of water is nice. It means he doesn't linger too long, not wanting to catch on thoughts he doesn't really feel like thinking. He still can’t get the ribbon in his hair.

Minho may not be able to read Jisung in a magickal way, but his people skills clearly went beyond that. He made an extra effort to keep Jisung laughing throughout the last few hours of their drive, even buying him an ice cream sundae at the Dairy Queen they stopped at for dinner.

Jisung ate it fast enough to give himself a brain freeze. He wishes that the ice cream could actually freeze parts of his head, break it off in chunks and let it melt into some unseen pocket of his mind, never to be seen or heard again. But it only gives him a short burst of pain and a giggle from Minho. Worth it.

“Mind if I keep the light on?” Minho asks when Jisung crawls into his bed across from him. His words are obstructed by the pen in his mouth, ready to underline new passages in whatever book he broke out tonight. 

“That’s fine, I was going to sketch anyway.” Jisung digs in his bag for his sketchbook and a 6b pencil, smooths out the covers and crosses his legs, resting the book in his lap. 

A curve of graphite forms into a tail, curled around an egg. The dragon sleeps soundly in its nest, cradling its young, full moon hanging above them. Jisung had become quite attached to this family of dragons, and the author didn’t seem to have plans to stop writing them any time soon. Jisung liked to imagine his own stories as he drew them. Where would he take them next? What adventures await them? What would happen if he pressed his own pen to the page instead of bringing life to someone else’s?

Jisung and Minho work quietly together side by side, the sound of pencil scratches filling up the space. Light chuckles from Minho when he reads something funny, groans when he reads something that isn’t. 

Jisung likes his background noise, the way he feels like he’s experiencing the book vicariously through him. He wonders if Minho can do the same through him, even if his magic can’t.

“Does it ever bother you,” Jisung starts without thinking. Minho pulls his head from his book, starts twiddling the pen through his fingers. “That you can’t read me?”

Minho unwraps the cover from around the book and closes it. Frowns. “Does it bother you that I can’t?”

Jisung shrugs in response and erases furiously. He can’t seem to get the bend of the wing just right.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Minho says, crossing his arms behind his head and leaning back against the sad excuse for a headboard. “It’s actually kind of nice. Not knowing.”

“I know you told me before, but tell me again. What’s it like usually?” Jisung doesn’t know why he’s so captivated by Minho’s magic. Maybe it’s the idea of having a thousand thoughts swimming through your brain but not all of them being your own. For it to be nice not to know instead of aching to know anything. Maybe if Jisung had an affinity for mind magic he wouldn’t be so trapped in his own cycle of thinking, and instead get stuck on someone else’s. He thinks he could sit in Minho’s head for a while. Maybe for forever.

“It’s always a little different.” Minho takes his glasses off and sets them on the nightstand beside him, runs his hand through his hair only for it to flop back down into the same place. “When I’m just looking at someone, I have to really concentrate, and even then it’s just, like, whispering. But with you it’s so quiet it’s like there’s nothing.”

Jisung snickers, eyes glued to his page as he textures the scales. “That’s the homeschool education for you.”

“You’re very smart Jisung,” Minho says seriously. Jisung can feel his eyes freezing into him, so he meets his gaze and smiles. Minho smiles back. “There are people who block me out, but it’s like you do it without knowing. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain.”

“And, touch?” Jisung asks quietly, mind stuck on pinkies and noses and lips fractions apart.

“Touching someone is like, instead of whispering, they’re talking really loud. Sometimes shouting. But I can, like, sort through it when I concentrate. Find a feeling and latch onto it. Sometimes it’s a sentence, a concept, a song.”

“But with me there’s nothing?”

“No.” Minho’s brow furrows. He puffs his cheeks and lets out a long breath. “Everything. With you, there’s everything. Like every thought anyone has ever had is in your head, and when I concentrate, I can find things, but they don’t feel real. With other people, there’s no question, but with you I’m just guessing.”

“Do you think it could be different? Now that I cut off the protection spell?” Jisung doesn’t want to sound desperate, but it’s almost a part of his nature at this point. To crave something, anything. Touch, a friend, a listening ear. Minho is the closest he’s had to anything in a long time.

Minho shrugs. “Only one way to find out.” He drapes his arm across the space between them, palm up, welcoming Jisung in. 

“You sure?” Another question without a number, a game within a game. Jisung tugs his earlobe and then holds his hand out tentatively, fingertips moments from Minho’s.

Minho nods and Jisung drops his hand. A shock of cold and then electricity flies up his arm. He feels his magic bubble up high enough that he has to consciously push it back down, afraid that it will snap and turn Minho to stone.

A hundred, a thousand different little expressions flash across Minho's face. Each one wildly different and somehow exactly the same. It must only last a second but it feels like an hour.

And then Minho’s hand is gone, being cradled in his other, a look of bewilderment in his eyes.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Jisung says, now clutching his sketchbook in both hands, tight enough for the graphite to rub away on the dragon’s snout. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Minho says, releasing his hand and taking a moment to look at it. To look at Jisung. “I’m sorry. That was just. A lot.” 

Minho blinks a few times, body resettled, easy expression back on his face, but a bit stiffer. Jisung can feel Minho’s magic retreat back into him, the temperature of the room rising. He hadn’t even realized how cold he’d become, his blanket bundled around him like a cocoon and smelling like home.

“No, Minho, don’t be sorry.” Too little and then too much. Always too something. Too careful, too quiet, too bold, too stubborn. Never just right. Never just anything. So much and so little that it all cancels out to nothing at all. “I don’t know what's wrong with me.”

Minho sits up, something serious in his eyes. No longer sparkling, but burning. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Jisung. You’re just strong, that’s all.”

“Is it always like that?” Am only I like that?

 “No,” Minho shakes his head. He readjust himself so that he’s back to his usual position. Crossed arms, crossed legs, all of him closed off and open at the same time. “Not that intense.”

“But something like it?”

Minho nods. A soft smile, curls onto his lips. Jisung likes that he always smiles slowly, like he wants you to see the whole process from beginning to end. From his mouth to his eyes.

Jisung sets his sketchbook down and twists on to his side, facing Minho. Mimicking his dragon but much less ferocious. Small, careful. Always careful.

He swallows and it tastes thick. “Is it hard then, with, like, you know—“

”Sex?”

“Yeah,” Jisung nods, cheeks red. Not being suggestive, but genuinely curious. “What’s it like then?” No numbers. Just a question. One that only needs to be answered if Minho thinks the answer is worth giving. If he wants Jisung to know him beyond the rules he created. Chess on a cribbage board.

“It’s easy enough to ignore most of the time. If it’s good.” Minho grins, wide and messy. Jisung thinks if he touched him again then maybe he would have a sense of what everything feels like too. “And most of the time they aren’t thinking much anyway.”

Jisung laughs, deep from his belly like his magic is laughing too. 

“I like your laugh, Han Jisung.” There's something funny on Minho’s face, a smile so small that Jisung knows it’s his and his alone. “It’s so happy. Cute.”

“Thank you,” Jisung says and cringes at himself. He must have wasted all his wit. He clears his throat, finds a sillier tone. “What about when it isn’t good? What then?”

Minho is silent for a moment, seemingly thinking hard, and then bursts into laughter. “One time,” he starts laughing again, unable to finish his sentence. Jisung just keeps looking at him and his crooked grin, face red with joy, eyes like crescent moons eclipsing the stars. 

“One time, this guy was just not into me at all ,” Minho finally gets out through his laughter. Jisung has a hard time wrapping his head around not being into Minho, but he might be biased. “And he just kept singing the Spongebob theme song in his head, and I accidentally started fucking him to the rhythm of it.”

Jisung joins Minho in his laughter. And maybe this is what batshit is. To be in St. Louis, Missouri with someone who is a stranger but also not, laughing at something that might not be that funny, but is because you find it funny together. “Dude, you have to be kidding me,” Jisung chokes out.

“Dude, I’m so serious,” Minho brushes a tear from his eyes, a few stray chuckles slipping past his lips every few seconds. “And it worked. We both finished.”

Jisung starts laughing all over again. And Minho has that small smile again. And he’s looking at him until Jisung’s laughter peters off and then they’re both just looking at each other. No, Jisung thinks to himself, this is what it is to be batshit.

“It doesn’t bother me that I can’t read you, Jisung.” Minho says softly, coming full circle and turning to his side. He turns off the lamp. Jisung misses his shape the second it disappears. 

He likes having a friend. He likes having that friend be Minho. 

Minho’s silhouette nestles into the pillow, nuzzling his cheek into his hands underneath him. “You’re like a complicated poem. Or reading something in a different language. And I like learning.”

Jisung hopes his language isn’t dead.