lovetincture

  Chaeyong shows up by himself, which makes Jisoo squint at him skeptically.

  Afternoon light is pouring through the tall, tall windows, making the whole pce seem lush and warm and completely unlike its nighttime self.

  “Yo, where’d you leave the baby?” he asks.

  Chaeyong clenches his teeth around a toothpick, which to be honest is a pretty nasty habit. “Sold him to a guy out on Route 21,” he drawls. “Got a good deal.”

  “Pay me back for all the cigarettes you stole then,” Minjae says pcidly from the kitchen. He’s still trying to arrange the new spice jars they picked up st night. Powder-blue ceramics and expensive-looking. They’d found them for a steal.

  “Minnie, I was trying to quit,” Chaeyong whines.

  Jisoo walks behind Chaeyong and light-fingers lifts a pack of cigarettes out the back pocket of his jeans, half-smoked and crumpled.

  “I said trying,” Chaeyong says, snatching it back and tucking it back into the pocket it came from.

  Jisoo goes to hop up, barefoot, on the couch. His cutoffs show off the delicate, long lines of his little calves and ankles.

  “So where’s Harin, really?” Minjae asks, still from the kitchen.

  “I left him at a coffee shop. You know, so we could talk things out.”

  “He’s gonna be okay?”

  “’Course. Siyeonnie’s with him.”

  Jisoo looks at Minjae, and Minjae shrugs.

  Jisoo sighs and hops off the counter.

  “I’ll make a pot of coffee,” Minjae says.

  It’s after 3 in the afternoon. He makes the coffee.

  Some of the furniture had shown up. Not the beds yet, weirdly enough, but there are modur couches in what has ended up “the living area” by default. Pstic wrap is still wrapped around it, suffocating it like a mummy, and Chaeyong tears it off so he can sit down.

  Minjae comes out with three cups of coffee for each of them. There’s extra sugar in Jisoo’s.

  Jisoo sits on one couch and Chaeyong sits on the other. Minjae picks up his cup and settles in next to Jisoo.

  “Someone followed us,” Chaeyong says, his voice low and serious.

  “What do you mean someone followed you? Here?”

  Chaeyong waves the thought away quickly. “No, no, not here. On one of the cross-country interstates. Outside Arizona? Someone was tailing us for a while. That’s why it took us nearly 5 days to make it here.”

  “Do Siyeon and Harin know?”

  Chaeyong waves that thought off as well. “No, I told them there was a friend I just had to see while we were making our way through. A detour—they’re super annoyed with me still.”

  Minjae can picture what kind of ‘friend.’ He can picture what kind of detour.

  He’s probably a bad friend because it makes him rex. It’s not a great sign that someone had followed them all the way out here, but at least they hadn’t followed them here.

  (At least Jisoo is still safe.)

  It beats in his heart, and Minjae is a bad friend because that’s all he cares about, really.

  Bad friend, bad friend.

  “Where exactly did you lose them?”

  Chaeyong cards a hand through his hair—not as sleek after so many days on the road. Even he’s starting to look a bit greasy. He sighs like the weight of the world on his shoulders, but his spine must be made of brass tacks because not an inch of impatience comes through.

  He sounds tired as shit and the coffee isn’t helping as he asks, “Got a map?”

  Chaeyong and Minjae talk in low voices craned over Minjae’s new phone, that Jisoo had helped him set up because Minjae is hopeless with technology. He can’t even set his own password.

  Jisoo should care. He realizes he should care. But his arms just feel too heavy to move—and never mind his legs.

  They lost someone outside of Albuquerque.

  Also, they’re wrong. Siyeon definitely knows. Jisoo doesn’t say that, just like he doesn’t move his arms or his legs.

  Jisoo sits on the couch with his bare feet tucked under him and his big eyes wide and vacant. He sips at his steaming coffee and stares out the window.

  Chaeyong gives Minjae a look. A pointed kind of look, and Minjae only shakes his head minutely.

  Well never let it be said that Chaeyong can’t roll with the punches. With one st look at Jisoo, he keeps rolling along.

  * * *

  Minjae had a real painting studio at home. Jisoo always used to tease him about it.

  “What,” Minjae huffed, paintbrush in his hand, poised against the canvas. “Your family couldn’t afford a painting studio with all the cigar business money?”

  “No, we can,” Jisoo said, trying to bance the paintbrush beneath his nose without moving his hands. It makes his lip do a funny stick-out-ing thing when he talks. It falls and he catches it. “Dad just thinks that art is for fags.”

  “Your dad’s a fucking fag,” Minjae says, rolling his eyes, and Jisoo brightens.

  “I know, right?”

  But Jisoo would still bring his paintings and set them up on one of the Park family’s spare easels. Miniatures, always miniatures.

  “You know you can work on bigger paintings, right?” Minjae said one day, leaning on the cart behind Jisoo, watching him paint tiny faces in perfect miniature.

  “Can’t,” Jisoo said out of the side of his mouth, paintbrushes stuffed into the other side for holding like he wasn’t afraid of lead poisoning.

  Minjae frowns. “Why not?”

  “Can’t carry it. Won’t work.”

  Minjae rolls his eyes and waits until Jisoo’s hand is off the canvas to flick his forehead. “So leave it here, dummy. Duh.”

  Jisoo rubs his forehead, smearing a smudge of cerulean blue there. It makes Minjae ugh, his little bunny teeth sticking out. They hadn’t been fixed with braces yet.

  “Yeah?” he asked, a little cautious in a way that Minjae thinks he hadn’t earned.

  But the Minjae back then had only shrugged. “Sure, why not? This pce is fuckin’ huge.”

  And it was.

  White everywhere, floor to ceiling, with big big racks for storing paintings. Jisoo did exactly one rge painting, a 6-footer of the dolphins he saw on the shore the st time he and his family went on vacation.

  It was beautiful. A sea of cerulean blue, dark and light and unduting.

  And then Jisoo never did it again.

  Minjae asked him why, told him there was still plenty more room on the shelves. Minjae’s mother hadn’t painted in years; the studio was basically only his now.

  But Jisoo just shrugged, sharp shoulders, sharp knees poking through the ripped hole of his jeans. Everything about him sharp, including his smile and eyes. “Dunno, I just don’t feel like it. Don’t be a fucking fag about it.”

  And that actually hurt enough for Minjae to not ask or offer again, even though he covered it up, even though he shoved Jisoo about it.

  And Jisoo had been in a skirt earlier that day, so maybe Jisoo just wasn’t feeling good.

  Anyway, the dolphin painting is still back at Minjae’s house, for all he knows.

  Anyway, it’s whatever.