Sungmin organizes an entire pantry of his own down in the den.

It takes a little tunnel expansion, though, which is arduous. He hacks at the insulation foam on one end of the tunnel, clearing a path parallel to the wall. When it’s far enough away from the den mouth, far enough that he can’t see the opposite end of the tunnel, Sungmin starts cutting deeper. Larger and larger chunks of foam board go over his shoulder until he hits the bare bKyuhyun. It’s colder over here now without the insulation foam, which should help preserve his food a little longer.

When he takes a step back and surveys his progress with his hands on his hips, Sungmin blinks. This room is bigger than the RV where he and Donghae stayed for a good six or seven years. Well, if that RV were shrunk down to size.

He shakes his head. Whatever. Don’t matter.

He uses the rest of the plastic Half & Half cups as storage bins, filling them up with separate foods and stacking them up on top of each other. He only has six cups right now, not even close to filling up the space, but he feels like he’s gonna have a steady supply of those. He’s got time to fill up this whole room top to bottom. If he runs out of room getting ready for winter, maybe he can start burying cups in strategic hiding spots.

Sungmin snorts.

Burying food for winter. He’s like a ing squirrel.

-

He gathers up all the excess insulation foam and wonders what to do with it. The larger chunks, he might be able to pare down into furniture. The smaller bits, they might be good for stuffing a mattress or pillow or something. If he can find something to stuff it into, that is.

He throws it in a pile on the empty end of the tunnel, which he’s vaguely decided is eventually going to be his bedroom.

Hell, mini furniture design’ll probably turn out to be fun.

-

Sungmin goes up to the countertop one more time that day to collect some water from the sink.

It takes some strategic thinking to be able to turn the faucet on, and even more to redirect the flow of water to the side of the sink instead of into the basin with just a plastic knife, but he manages it.

Drinking greedily from the stream sates his thirst for now, but Sungmin knows he’ll need water in storage too. For now, he just fills up the water skin he always carries on his hip before turning off the sink. It’ll be enough for the night. He’ll wait for tomorrow’s plastic Half & Half cups to take down more.

There’s a window behind the sink with a wide, white sill.

Sungmin takes a seat there and sips at his water, enjoying the weight of a full stomach and the lush feeling of water running down his parched throat.

With a contented sigh, Sungmin turns and looks out the window, towards the horizon. He’s always loved the way clouds catch color, and the way tree branches climb up into the sky. The day is darkening around the edges. The clouds are heavy with purple, stained with pink, and gilded with gold. Just looking at it calms him down, making him think of a thousand past sunsets just like this one.

It’s at that peaceful, almost happy moment when the guy’s car pulls up the asphalt driveway with an angry, sputtering engine.

Sungmin jolts with shock. He’d almost forgotten about him coming back, and his is still all over the place. He glances up at the kitchen clock. It’s almost eight.

“....”

In a mad dash, Sungmin cleans up after himself, tries and fails to get the dishwashing soap bottle standing, and takes the paper towels down to his den to use as blankets, bandages, and whatever else he can think of. All the while listening to the guy’s footsteps moving up the stairs and through the halls.

He rapidly slides down the pulley with the last of the paper towels and scurries back into the depths of the cabinet before he can be spotted.

He’s safe.

Wish his nerves knew that as well as he did. His heart won’t stop thundering in his chest for a long time afterwards.

Sungmin wraps a paper towel around himself and curls up into a ball on his pile of foam, being careful not to jar his injured shoulder. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply, deliberately willing himself to relax, and listens to the familiar sounds of someone starting up a dinner.

Sungmin drifts away into dreams soon after.

-

The next morning is... slow.

Sungmin is groggy from the mind-boggling twelve hours of sleep he’s just had, so his heavy eyelids keep falling closed as he wraps his shoulder with fresh bandages. He scrubs at them halfheartedly until they feel normal again before he gets started for the day.

As expected, another six Half & Half cups are laying on the countertop. There’s a drop or two of milk left inside one before Sungmin it up. Other than that, they’re all empty.

He fills them up with water and takes them down into his den’s cellar.

After that, he’s at a loss.

He doesn’t know what else to do. He’s already got everything he really needs for basic survival. Shelter, food, and water. Other than that... He’s got nothing. It’s weird. It’s not like he’s bored or agitated, he’s used to those cutting away at him, no, he’s just... it’s like his mind’s somehow gone hushed and gentler than usual.

He perches on the edge of a chicken noodle soup can, and just sits there for a while. Takes a bite of cashew and a shot of water every now and again. It’s quiet in the house, so quiet he can hear birds chirping from outside the kitchen window.

Sungmin’s really not used to feeling... whatever this is.

It’s... nice.

-

The next week or two go pretty much the same.

The guy wakes up around eight every morning, leaves, comes back around eight every night, makes dinner, goes to sleep a few hours later. It’s pretty consistent, which makes it easy to get used to. The coffee bean grinder gets less terrifying every single time. He’s started thinking of it as more of an alarm clock than an earthquake.

Other than the guy, Sungmin’s pretty much got everything under control.

He has enough of everything he needs, so he barely leaves his den at all. He mostly just sleeps, eats, and waits for his wounds to close up. Yeah, every so often he sneaks out to take a , or he climbs up to the countertop and cleans off his wound, but that’s about it. It’s a pretty laid-back time.

And it shows. Every time he wakes up, everything hurts a little less.

Slowly but surely, he’s healing.

-

He runs out of water in the next two weeks. Has to go make a countertop run. Everything is a helluva lot easier to do, now that his shoulder’s closed up and doesn’t scream when he moves it. Still, he hasn’t really been up and around as much lately, and the trip tires him out more than he thought it would.

He decides to keep slumming around this place until his shoulder’s back at a hundred percent.

-

It takes a few more weeks for that to happen.

Waiting so long, lying around in the same place, and doing basically nothing for so long has got Sungmin feeling restless. When he finally tears off his bandages for good, he can’t wait to get out and explore.

There’s not a single pang of pain in him anymore, not even in his oldest, deepest scars, and he’s jonesing for some adventure. He slings his crossbow over his back, sheathes his knife, and jumps out of the cabinet onto the tiled kitchen floor with a bright grin on his face.

Casing the joint on the ground floor is pretty easy. There’s the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, and a tiny coat closet in the front hall across from the door. The real trouble comes with the stairs. Sungmin doesn’t want to make more marks on the wood; might get him noticed.

So instead, he throws away his dignity and jumps up on his tiptoes to grab the first step’s edge. He pulls himself up on the tread’s landing with some effort.

One thing’s for sure. Living here’s gonna make Sungmin real in’ good at parkour.

A loud, unexpected chuckle bursts out of him.

The sound surprises him. He realizes that he hasn’t spoken in awhile.

He’s huffing and puffing by the time he makes it to the upstairs landing, with the hint of a smile still chasing the corners of his eyes. Fourteen stairs in all. Pretty tough, but not impossible. Sungmin puts a hand on the smooth blue wall, supporting his shaking legs, and catches his breath.

Turns out the upstairs is pretty small, too. There are two bedrooms and a bathroom, and that’s it. Everything’s pretty sparse up here; he finds some buttons, some string, some bubble wrap, and that’s it. The only things that stick out are the pictures tacked up on the wall over the bed in the east room.

Sungmin’s gonna go out on a limb here and guess that it’s the guy’s bedroom.

He squints up at the pictures. They’re old and filled with creases, like they’ve been folded up more times than he can count. There’s a kid and the guy smiling together, his arm slung over the kid’s shoulders. Must be his little brother or son. The other picture has a few more people. Along with the guy and the kid, there’s a pretty woman holding a newborn baby. They’re all sitting together at a park, having a picnic on a sunny summer day. It looks awful nice, like one of them perfect families Sungmin’s seen in TV commercials and magazine ads.

Sungmin frowns and thinks about the four empty chairs circling the kitchen table downstairs. Maybe that kind of perfect family ain’t meant to last long. Not in real life.

He heads back downstairs in a heavy mood, even though he’s got a pretty good haul of junk to bring back to the den.

-

When the guy is walking around the kitchen later that evening, Sungmin takes more of an active interest.

He creeps up and watches him from the cracked cabinet door as he roots through the refrigerator for ingredients. He pours some milk into a glass, throws some frozen lasagna into the microwave, and voila, dinner.

Sungmin watches him eat at the kitchen table, sitting in the same exact chair he always sits in. He wonders which chair used to belong to the guy’s kid, which one belonged to his wife, and which one belonged to the toddler.

The guy’s shoulders are stooped in a sad, defeated line. Every bite of food he takes is like watching a stilted machine go through the motions.

Sungmin averts his eyes and slinks back into his den for the night.

-

It rains. Nothing heavy, just a light spring shower.

He hears it sprinkling onto the kitchen window like little music notes before the guy even starts moving around upstairs. Waking up to that is definitely gentler than waking up to the coffee grinder. He’s always liked the rain, except for when it washes him out on a hunt. It’s soothing. Cleansing.

Reminds him of a time before everything, one time in particular where he curled up by his momma’s legs and high heels and listened to her pick at a borrowed guitar.

Sungmin sits up on the windowsill that day, and idly hums along with the raindrops as he whittles down a stick he’d found out in the yard. He’s thinking of using a whole bunch of planks to give his den wooden floors and walls. Maybe even a bed frame.

He keeps an eye on the window as he works. Weather like this, there’s bound to be a rainbow.

Lucky for him, turns out there’s four.

-

The guy gets back home and his boots squeak wet on the floors instead of his usual sharp click.

When he sits down to dinner, He still got dark brown, damp hair. He kicks off his wet boots under the table and inhales his hot microwaved meal at record time. Sungmin winces when he shoves a still-bubbling bite of macaroni into his mouth; that’s got to hurt. But all he does in response to the burn is hiss a little. Then he just keeps on eating.

Sungmin chews his lip. It didn’t rain all that hard today, but the guy’s sopping wet. Dripping all over the tiled floor, even.

He figures he must work in the outdoors.

-

A few days later, there’s a banging on the front door around noon.

Sungmin shoots up straight with wide eyes.

“Kyuhyun!” a man’s loud voice shouts. “Kyuhyun! You there? Kyuhyun!” He bangs on the door a few more times. “Kyuhyun, you ornery bastard, open up. It’s Heechul.”

Since nobody but Sungmin’s home, there’s no answer.

“Open the damn door, Kyuhyun, I just wanna talk to you. You got your time, okay? I gave you time, didn’t I?”

He’s pretty persistent, Sungmin’ll give him that. After another ten minutes of talking to the closed front door, Heechul finally gives it up.

“Maybe next week, then, huh?” he sighs with a note of defeat.

The porch creaks as Heechul mutters his way back to his car. Sungmin hears him drive away on some silent engine. Probably one of them hybrid cars, if he had to guess. He settles back down with a plump raisin when the house is calm again.

So.

The guy’s name is Kyuhyun.

-

A thicket branch snags on Sungmin’s clothes the next time he’s out collecting sticks in the backyard. The thorn tears right through the worn fabric of his sleeve and leaves a white scratch on his arm.

It’s pretty annoying, but at least it doesn’t break the skin.

Small mercies, or whatever.

Sungmin patches it up the best he can with some of that string he found, but he knows the shirt’s not going to last much longer. He’s got to make some for himself, looks like.

There’s only a couple coats hanging up high in the front hall closet, so that’s a dead-end. He digs through the clothes in the upstairs for materials next, though, and that trip’s more successful.

He gets a few more buttons to add to his growing collection from the bedroom closet, two small black ones and one large green one. And there’s a fraying tag inside one of the button-up shirts; he cuts it off the lining and stuffs it away. He can use it for string.

Shifting his grip on his new haul, Sungmin steps out of the bedroom and heads back towards the stairwell.

The hallway is filled with light today, he notices. Much brighter than usual. He remembers this hallway full of overlapping, dank shadows, but right now, all Sungmin can see are dust motes dancing in the air like fireflies. It’s filtering in through the second bedroom door – which Sungmin thinks is strange. He’s never seen this door left open like this in all the weeks that he’s been here.

Sungmin hesitates in front of the doorframe, eyes straying over the wooden floor glowing gold in the sunlight before landing on a closed cardboard box.

That’s new.

Sungmin’s eyes flicker on the thick, plastic packing tape sealing up