Chen – there’s no hope without fear (I’ll walk your darkness with you)

“What do you want to do today?” Kyungsoo asks, eventually.

I don’t really know. When you grow up with someone, like I did with Baekhyun, you share interests. Interest wasn’t just interest – it was whether we could share that interest.

Baekhyun liked running around. Finding new places, and exploring them. I liked that, too. We would scare our fosterers half to death. Sometimes we wouldn’t go home for a few days.

I don’t want that with Kyungsoo, though. I want to tell him about growing up with Baekhyun, about missing Baekhyun sometimes, like when I have to stand up and go home after a day at their apartment and leave the two of them alone. About going with Chanyeol to school and meeting Sehun and Kai. Being amazed that these cats can get into university, as well. Wondering if I can do the same.

I want to tell him these because I feel uncertain about where I am. Chanyeol’s apartment is a quiet dream that has stretched through many months, keeping me safe with him and Baekhyun. It makes up for moments that I miss Kyungsoo. But this sun-soaked place with the fans whirring in the living room and papers full of ink and pencil underfoot, no matter where you walk, is too good to be true. It’s too good to be true because I can feel the strings of attachment being strung tight, morphing into tension.

There are secrets I can’t tell Baekhyun, or Chanyeol. How I like to sit in the dark in Kyungsoo’s apartment, only the faint light from the clock lighting Gold and Leaf’s fishbowl. How I play games with myself, seeing how well I can sketch the spaces between bed and cupboard and table and lamp with tentative arms and legs and tail with the lights off. It’s so – still, so unmoving, I feel that I’m a kitten again and the world around me is something I can’t make sense of. How I like to sit in the bathroom and breathe as icy water falls, feeling the cold tiles and glass around me. This is my way of shutting away the empty apartment – in the dark, it’s now fun. Not lonely.

I can’t tell them this, because I would have to explain. And I would have to show them bits of me that I want to bury deep and suffocate by sheer force of will. I have to tell Baekhyun, I miss sharing his life with him. I feel happy that he’s happy with someone, but I feel sad, too, because there are parts of his life that I have no place in. I have to tell Chanyeol that I’m jealous that when he talks to me, it’s about Kyungsoo and Baekhyun. I don’t want to carry this pain with him but I don’t want him to pretend it doesn’t exist, either.

And I feel like I want something of my own, too. I feel like everyone’s moving on with their life, and if I look too closely at my own I can’t see anything there. I’m a cat that can walk and talk and breathe but it feels like none of these might mean anything.

It’s not the same, talking to Gold and Leaf.

I want to sketch my days with words to someone, so it feels like I lived them. So they feel more real.

“I want to swing on the hammock,” I say.

Kyungsoo raises an eyebrow. “That’s all?”

I don’t want to go out and do things and – be happy, and then leave the places and leave the happiness behind as well. I just want to be here, in Chanyeol’s apartment, eyes closed in the hammock. Feeling the rocking movement and the strings against my skin, holding me tight.

“No,” I say. “I’m hungry.”

“Okay.” Kyungsoo says. He pats my thigh. “I can do that.” He cooks for me, sometimes. I think he must have cooked together with Chanyeol, because they cook the same things.

--

I’m swinging in the hammock when Kyungsoo comes out with food. It’s simple food – sandwiches cut into chunks, packed with lettuce, tomato, cheese and tuna. Lightly toasted in the oven, so the cheese clings to the vegetables and the bread is warm when you bite into it. There’s soup as well, mushroom soup cooked with real mushrooms and cream and butter and just a bit of salt.

Kyungsoo’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, beside me. He’s pulled the circular, lumpy rug with a fat grey mouse over. The hammock’s slung low enough that my face is almost at the same height as Kyungsoo’s. I peer at him through the netting.

He feeds me, piece by piece. I should be embarrassed – no one has fed us, not since we were kittens – but it’s not – it doesn’t mean anything. He’s just here and focused on me and the food, alternately popping pieces in his own mouth and mine. We’re both too hungry for this to mean anything.

“Soup’s hot,” Kyungsoo warns, blowing on the spoon. He takes a sip, then pops the whole spoon in his mouth.

“Hey!” I say indignantly, propping myself up on my elbows. The hammock wobbles.

“Mm?” Kyungsoo opens his eyes wide at me. “It’s good.”

“Give it to me.”

“Tyrant,” Kyungsoo says, passing me the bowl anyway.

Kyungsoo starts to look around, as I’m drinking the soup. I want to ask him where he learnt to cook, but he gets this look on his face. A funny, tight look he has when he looks at Chanyeol, sometimes.

It’s the wall he’s staring at. The wall that Chanyeol plastered with writings -  prose, poetry. Every two weeks Chanyeol will clear up the wall, removing all the writing that doesn’t appeal to him. He stores them in huge clear files, in the spare bedroom.

“We used to –“ Kyungsoo waves his hand at the wall. “Chanyeol used to have this in his room.”

He gets to his feet, pacing over to take a piece of paper off the wall. That section is the section Chanyeol uses for his ninetail poetry, I know. The series of nine poems he’s working on now.

Kyungsoo stands there, framed by Chanyeol’s handwriting and pencil and blue ink, staring at the piece of paper in his hand.

“Can I see it, too?”

Kyungsoo looks like he’s going to say no, but he crosses the room to me. “Move over,” he says. I sit up, and we’re both sitting on the hammock, the netting creaking under our combined weight. Our feet can brush the rug below, if we try.

It goes,

Train ride (glass)

We take the train, today

sky clear above and

you, staring through me,

fingers balanced on mine.

I catch the lift of your lips

You smiling, saying you’re

Fine, and it lasts as long as

It takes for the call to end.

I mirror you. The hunch of shoulders,

As our foreheads meet. The quiet,

Slow, gasps as

Breath goes,

And rushes back again, lungs squeezing

You lose the words. I have no new ones

Not here, not in this tunnel, not here narrowed

to you and I, not these arctic fireworks

that explode, everywhere

we touch, raining

sparks

that numb. I am

hit, and so are you. Not these words.

Only those I didn’t mean

And those you didn’t say.

“We fought on the train before,” Kyungsoo says. “He’s using this –“ Kyungsoo draws invisible lines on the paper. “It’s about a person on a train that’s going into a tunnel. He receives a bad call and he’s leaning on the glass to catch his breath. So Chanyeol’s writing from the perspective of glass – which is why the person can look through it, the glass watches him and mirrors whatever he’s doing – and in the darkness, sensation is heightened. There are pinpricks of cold when you touch glass, which is why he calls it arctic fireworks. The use of the word raining further intensifies the sensation of cold and wet, contrasting nicely with the expectation of heat and sparks that usually comes with fireworks. He’s saying I treated him like he was a piece of glass, on that journey. And it was impossible to talk, for both of us.”

“So he – thought about all these as he was writing?”

“Maybe.” Kyungsoo smiles, wryly. “He asked me before. How I wrote. I told him that he needed to have something to say, and if he didn’t, no synonym.com or dictionary.com or stack of Shakespearean sonnets or Radiohead lyrics could help him. He came back a few weeks later with a poem.”

“What was it?” I scan the walls, curious.

“Him playing music.” The wry smile doesn’t leave Kyungsoo’s lips. “Starting with drums, because it was loud enough to drown out his parents fighting.”

Chanyeol hasn’t talked about his family, come to think about it.

“He didn’t get along with them.” Kyungsoo says. “But it was a good poem.”

“What was your first poem?” I ask.

“It was a bad one,” Kyungsoo says. “I wrote about pokemon. I was trying to, uhm, write lyrics for a new pokemon theme song. And I said halfway, let’s make it a poem, but it didn’t turn out well.”

Baekhyun and I used to catch Pokemon every Saturday morning, at ten, on the kid’s channel.

“I want to see it.”

“You don’t,” Kyungsoo promises.

“It’s in those boxes in my bedroom, right?”

“Yes-no-“

Kyungsoo shares so many habits with Chanyeol. He should have kept all his old writing, as well. I bet it’s in clear files as well.

--

The last box, the one tucked away in the corner, contains Kyungsoo’s writing. I can see him putting it on the passenger seat, next to him. Lifting it from his car first, before all the other boxes, and then hiding it below everything else later on.

There are stacks and stacks and stacks of clear files inside, neatly labelled by year, or by contents. Kyungsoo wrote so much.

It’s hot in here. It’s generally hot in Singapore in the afternoon. In Chanyeol’s apartment, we would usually pile into a bedroom and switch on the air-conditioner for a few hours. Here, with only a single fan creaking in the corner, it’s boiling.

Kyungsoo’s fascinated by his writing. He’s sitting cross-legged on the bed, sorting through the stacks of paper. The heat doesn’t seem to bother him.

“Why did you stop writing?”

Kyungsoo does this laugh that is sort of a sigh as well. “I went to work.”

“You can write, after work.”

“It’s tiring.” Kyungsoo says. “It’s...tiring, to not be able to tell the people around you what you’re doing. People go on about economies and mortgages, and I’m all about line breaks and synonyms. And I have to be the one that talks in two languages, one that’s about diction and tone and rhythm, and the other about regulations and the right equations for balance sheets. Like all languages, when you move to a different country you start using one more than the other. One language becomes more and more foreign, and one day you realize you’ve forgotten certain words. That’s just it. It’s nobody’s –fault. That’s just it. I made a choice.”

Kyungsoo still doesn’t look happy about it. I flip through the poems on the bed quietly, regretting asking that question.

“Hey.” Kyungsoo taps my tail. “What would you write about?”

“I don’t write,” I say.  “But... Baekhyun.”

It’s only been Baekhyun, all my life. Who else would it be?

People have places they remember. I have a person instead, because we kept moving. The places didn’t look the same but they felt the same. Less real and solid than Baekhyun, somehow.

If I wasn’t so scared of losing Baekhyun, I wouldn’t have shown up on Kyungsoo’s doorstep and demanded that he take me in.

Kyungsoo’s looking at me like he didn’t expect that. I don’t know why he’s surprised.

--

On the bed, Kyungsoo rests his head on mine. He lets me pick the pieces I want to read. I choose with my eyes closed, feeling for paper beneath my fingertips.

There’s notepaper, ruled paper. Blank paper. The back of printed pages, filled with small and crabbed handwriting.

Chanyeol writes about reality; Kyungsoo’s genre is fantasy. He has dark little tales that start ordinary, before reality starts tearing at the seams, bleeding mystery and slow horror. He takes places like schools, cafes, fields, homes – normal places – and upends them, turning them strange.

I like his fairytales the best. He rewrites or writes sequels to fairytales, slicing the happy ending apart and showing the rot inside.

I’m just repeating what Kyungsoo says. He rereads his stories, just as I’m reading them for the first time. He tells me when he wrote it, and why, and how to read it.

“Diction,” he says. “Choosing the right words. Imagery – images convey a story in a way words cannot – tone, authorial tone – most of the narrators sound like me – symbols. Images that have a commonly assigned meaning to them. Structure – how is this story shaped?”

It’s hard to see it, at first. But Kyungsoo’s persistent and I can tell it means a lot to him, that I try to understand what he’s saying. So I listen and ask questions, even though I just want to read a story on its own and be taken away by it.

It starts to make a bit of sense, over a few stories. It’s like my mind’s beginning to see the words in a different way.

“You have to ask yourself – how does this story make you feel? Why do you feel this way? It’s all words. The way the words are arranged, what the words mean to you – that’s how stories work. And if you can start to grasp how words work, you know how people use words on you. How society uses words on you. It’s like talking to yourself, analysing a story. I’m asking myself, why, and when I get an answer I know. I know why I’m sad. I know why I’m upset. I know why I’m all pumped up, excited. Or angry. I know and I’m no longer just a listener for the story. I’m a partner, I’m letting it work on me – or if I don’t like what the story’s saying, I’m keeping it away. I know.”

I’m borrowing Kyungsoo’s faith in words – it feels like he’s speaking the truth. It feels like I might understand what he’s saying, if I keep trying.

There are no love poems, though. Still, like a ghost, Chanyeol’s present; his wide smile in a playful schoolboy, his care for Kyungsoo in a sparrow spirit, Kyungsoo’s love for him in how well he sketches these characters. Pieces and pieces of Chanyeol, rendered in words, across so much. So many pages, so much time. So much emotion.

There’s a different story, under all of these. There’s one story, which is how much Kyungsoo loved Chanyeol.

When I think back to today, I will remember this - Kyungsoo, in a nest of papers and words, missing Chanyeol.

I don’t want that. I want memories of my own.

I touch Kyungsoo. Push him to the bed and sit on him, crotch to crotch.

This is the best way I can say, think of me. I stare down at his surprised face, and wonder why I’m bothered by all these  - memories, paper, Chanyeol. Kyungsoo thinking of Chanyeol.

I bend, until we’re face to face. Press my lips to his, with purpose. Move slowly, until he starts kissing back.

His hand tightens on my thigh, pushing the material of my sleeping shorts up. Open-handed touches have a way of – seeming to touch more than they really are. This one makes me tense.

I break away, not knowing why. I had boyfriends before, and it was – I could do what I needed to do. I wasn’t bad at it.

Chanyeol, and Kyungsoo.

“It’s okay,” Kyungsoo says, lifting a hand to brush my right cheekbone. “It’s okay. This is enough.”

It’s not. I don’t know when he’ll be around again. With Kyungsoo, everything is temporary.

I hold his wrist tight. I can do this.

It’s fine, I say, except it comes out as – “I don’t want you to think about Chanyeol.”

Kyungsoo’s staring. This time, when I dip down to along his lips, he doesn’t stop me. He holds the back of my head and keeps me there.

He tastes like soup and bread. I like the warmth of his mouth, the roughness of his tongue, the tiny tears in the skin of his lips. I like it all.

 “You’re not Chanyeol,” he says, when he lets me go for breath. “I know that.”

This room is hot, like a monsoon downpour. Like everything that happens here comes and clouds and leaves, without leaving a trace.

--

When we go out at last, Chanyeol and Baekhyun have the fish tank set up in our living room. Kyungsoo must have given them the key.

It’s a proper tank, this time, with a filtration system, water, colored pebbles and even a small rock with holes inside for the fish to swim in. The two guppies are floating near the surface of the water, motionless except for small twitches of their tails.

Baekhyun passes me a can of fish food.

It’s different, the way he looks at me. Like he doesn’t know what to think.

I think I recognize it. It’s the look I got, the first time I realized Chanyeol and Baekhyun were having .

Kyungsoo and I haven’t. But it’s none of Baekhyun’s business, what we do.

Kyungsoo – come, come lover(s)

Luhan’s useful here, at least. He introduces them  - Suho, Luhan, Xiumin, and asks for everyone’s names. Kyungsoo retreats to the kitchen to take drinks and count chairs – he hardly has visitors, he doesn’t have more than two chairs in his entire apartment.

Chanyeol’s shouldering the door open, chairs in his arms, when Kyungsoo returns to the living room. Chen, Baekhyun and Suho are on the floor before the fish tank, watching Gold and Leaf swim around.

Luhan has made himself at home on Kyungsoo’s couch.

“Hey,” Xiumin says. “We brought food.”

“Thanks,” Kyungsoo says. He doesn’t have much in his fridge, anyway.

“How’s everything?”

“How’s work?”

“You’re on leave,” Xiumin says. “I locked your email account down for a week too, if you didn’t notice.”

Kyungsoo hasn’t noticed. It’s a new feeling.

“Now that you’ve adopted a cat, spend more time with him. He chose you.”

Kyungsoo knows this. Legislation regarding cats has changed in recent years. In just two decades, following the Kai Act, cats are no longer luxury items to be owned – there’s a growing push for their integration into society, both in terms of education and jobs. It’s still a legal requirement for cats to have owners, though they get to choose now.

“I will.” Kyungsoo shuffles uncomfortably from foot to foot. Kyungsoo’s still worried that he can’t, though he knows he has to try.

“I was always waiting for you to come to talk to me about the job,” Xiumin says. “I know our work can get intense, but Kyungsoo, you take it to a new level. I think it’s good that we have a talk about what you want from this job and how I can help you  - be a bit happier, after you go back.”

Inwardly, Kyungsoo winces. The thought of going back is something he doesn’t want to think about now. Not here, with Chen in the same room.

“What did you buy?” He says instead.

“Local food,” Xiumin says. “I know you only buy salad, burgers, pizza... It’s appalling, honestly.”

Kyungsoo really hasn’t eaten much local food. He’s hasn’t really thought about it, to be honest.

Kyungsoo’s kitchen doesn’t have a table, so Xiumin and Kyungsoo unload the Styrofoam boxes onto his coffee table.

“You don’t even have a tv!”

“I have a laptop,” Kyungsoo says. “And Vpn, and Netflix.”

“So what’s good lately?” Xiumin asks.

“What’s all this?” Kyungsoo asks, opening the boxes.

“Liar,” Xiumin says calmly. “Ah – food? Chinese cuisine, I guess. People tend to buy a few dishes and share them.”

“It’s called zi char,” Chanyeol says, eyes gleaming. “Literally boil cook – my students took me to this awesome place behind the university – you got the salted egg cuttlefish and the sweet and sour ribs let me looove you –“

“Some vegetables, too,” Suho says. He bends over the food, searching for the right packet. “They fry it with a kind of chilli.”

“How?” Kyungsoo asks.

“You’re always buried in your work, making the rest of us look bad,” Luhan says, lazily waving Chen’s cushion around. “It’s so hard to get you to even come for lunch.”

Baekhyun and Chen are gone. Kyungsoo spins around, pulse accelerating, until he sees them through the open doorway of his apartment. Side by side, tails swishing in unison, they’re both peering over the metal railing, at the swimming pool below.

Chen says something, and Baekhyun laughs.

When Kyungsoo asked Chen what he wanted to write, he hadn’t expected Chen to say Baekhyun. He’d thought... childhood, perhaps. Food. Colors. Memories. Not a living, breathing person. But it made sense. Chen and Baekhyun had relied on each other for so long. Back in the shelter, Kyungsoo had already seen how close they were. Chen could anticipate, before Baekhyun even knew, what Baekhyun wanted. Chen would pass Baekhyun water, or biscuits, or extra blankets when it was cold at night. Baekhyun made Chen more comfortable, when he was there. Quicker to laugh. Louder, too.

“Kyungsoo!” Chen waves at him. “Baekhyun and I are going to swim downstairs!”

“Let’s all go,” Luhan says, appearing creepily at Kyungsoo’s shoulder and scaring the heck out of Kyungsoo.

“I brought a beach ball!” Suho calls, from indoors. Kyungsoo doesn’t know any of these people. Who brings a beach ball to an apartment complex?

--

Chen dunks Luhan underwater, managing to hold him down for a few seconds before Luhan slips loose.

“You little-“ His rant is cut off as he falls face-first, arms flailing.

Baekhyun surfaces, giggling. Chen and him exchange fist-bumps.

Suho has his phone out, recording them.

“Poor man,” Chanyeol says. Kyungsoo and him are by the side of the pool, legs in the water. Kyungsoo’s kicking the water lazily to warm himself up.

“He deserves it,” Kyungsoo reassures him.

“Xiumin!” Luhan yells, bobbing to the surface again. His carefully styled hair is plastered to his scalp, water pouring off the ends. “Xiumin!”

“I’m coming,” Xiumin says, jumping in. Kyungsoo has no idea how. The water’s freezing, even under the scorching Singaporean sun.

“Stay out of this,” Chen warns, pointing a finger at Xiumin. “Or face the wrath of the sea twins – “

“Are you Ursula, or Ariel?” Baekhyun asks. With both hands, he s Chen’s hair, pulling it into spikes. “Ursula, for sho, sister.”

“Byun Baekhyun,” Chen sings, turning on him. He grabs Baekhyun by the waist and sends both of them toppling into the water. There’s frothing, the water churning, before they break the surface again. Chen’s in huge gasps of air, Baekhyun clinging like a limpet to him.

“Baeeekhyun,” Chen whines, as they sink back in again.

Kyungsoo’s considering going in – it’s not healthy, spending so much time underwater – but Xiumin’s already there. He holds Chen and Baekhyun apart, hand under their arms.

“They’re just playing!” Chanyeol yells. “No need to be too hard on them!”

“No, I think...” Kyungsoo trails off, as Xiumin winks at him. Xiumin had said, if Kyungsoo had read his lips correctly –

“Twin terrors,” Luhan mutters, dog-paddling slowly towards them. “Good job, Xiumin.”

Xiumin smiles, tousling Luhan’s hair the moment he’s within reach.

“Hey, stop that,” Luhan says, batting at his hand. Chen and Baekhyun are drifting closer, one on each side of Luhan.

“Sorry,” Xiumin says sunnily, before he pushes Luhan’s head down. The cats each grab one of Luhan’s shoulders, pushing him downwards.

“Sneaky,” Chanyeol says in awe. Kyungsoo had seen right. Xiumin had said, “let’s pants Luhan.”

Sure enough, the three of them duck underwater. There’s a lot of kicking, Luhan surfacing desperately to yell at Suho - @#$%^ $$$$ - but a thin scrap of material, black with hot pink stripes, bobs to the surface of the pool, floating slowly away from the commotion.

“There are kids around here!” Kyungsoo hollers. He likes this complex, he doesn’t want to get kicked out.

Chanyeol’s laughing so hard he slips and falls into the pool (with a bit of a push from an irritated Kyungsoo).

“Go and get it!” Kyungsoo says, pointing. Chanyeol advances closer, instead.

“No. No. It’s cold-“ Kyungsoo yanks his legs out of the water, but Chanyeol catches hold of them and drags him in. He’s – he still moves closer, though, puts a hand on the back of Kyungsoo’s head and lets him fall against his chest, so Kyungsoo doesn’t hit the back of his head on the edge of the pool.

Kyungsoo’s gasping. From the fall, from the water. From the feeling of Chanyeol’s bare skin against his and the hot sun and the freezing water. Instinctively, he presses closer to Chanyeol, tangling their legs together. It’s cold.

Chanyeol’s laughter dies away, soon enough.

“Soo?”

Kyungsoo – hears Chanyeol, feels him speak, as well.

There is nothing more that Kyungsoo has regretted letting go, other than Chanyeol. Not even writing.

Everything’s still fresh in Kyungsoo’s mind, as he disentangles himself from Chanyeol. Reading all those stories again brought the years with Chanyeol back to him. Having him and Chanyeol touch, now, dissolves the present into the past.

“I love you,” Kyungsoo says, looking up at Chanyeol. Looking him in the eye. “I’m sorry I let you go.”

He swims away from Chanyeol, towards the rest of the people. Everyone’s staring at them, frozen in a tableau. Suho’s holding Luhan’s pants and the camera, Luhan has his legs wrapped around Xiumin’s waist – Chen and Baekhyun watch, but they aren’t onlookers. Not really, anymore.

Baekhyun breaks away from the knot of people, paddling towards Chanyeol.

Kyungsoo can read Chen’s expression, now – he’s confused. Scared. Wondering. Hurt.

He lets Kyungsoo hug him, fists resting on the small of Kyungsoo’s back. From the corner of his eye, Kyungsoo can see Baekhyun raising a hand to Chanyeol’s face, wiping at his eyes.

Kyungsoo might never be able to let Chanyeol go, but he should try. For both of them, and also, for Chen and Baekhyun.

Chen – come, come, lover (s)

The lights go off, when Baekhyun and I are bathing after the swim.

I’m not worried. I’ve done this so many times before – turned off the lights and made my way through Kyungsoo’s apartment in the dark. Bathed, ate, slept without even brushing a switch. It’s like I don’t even notice, when the lights are out, because everything’s the same and will always be the same.

You can do everything in the dark, if you’re used to it.

That’s not true for Baekhyun. He s around, fingers landing on the slippery skin of my hip.

“Chen?”

“Be careful,” I say, catching his fingers in mine. They’re wet and foamy from his shampoo. It smells like milk, in here. It’s good that neither of us is scared of the dark.

“It’s cold,” Baekhyun says.

“Mm.” I pass his fingers to my left hand, then for the lever with my right.

The water’s hot and sudden, punctuated by a hissing noise as it hits the shower floor. Hastily, I turn the lever – it’s too hot -

Baekhyun sighs. His elbow hits my hip, then he’s pressed against me, sharing the spray.

It’s not – Baekhyun and I grew up with each other. But it’s different, here, when I can’t see him. When I can feel his wet legs against mine, pressed closely together from feet to legs to thigh to hip.

Baekhyun leans past me to adjust the lever. His head bumps against my chest, wet hair rough.

“Hey!” Any hotter and my skin’s going to peel off. I can feel it pinking already, from the heat.

“It’s cold,” Baekhyun whines.

I tug him closer, hand slipping around his bare waist. “It’s not, you’re just not under the water-“

“ouch,” Baekhyun agrees, voice suddenly next to my ear. “turn it down-“

We both breathe in relief as the temperature slips back to something more comfortable.

Baekhyun turns, and I’m conscious of him – , balls and all - against my hip. Baekhyun, too, because he mumbles a sorry.

“You and Kyungsoo had ?”

I want to lie to him, but I don’t, in the end. He takes silence as an answer, though.

“Ow – yah, yah, yah – Byun Baekhyun” –  it takes me stamping on his feet before he stops biting my shoulder.

“What was that?” I can actually trace teethmarks on my left shoulder.

Baekhyun’s grip on my hand is so tight it’s painful.

“Chenn,” he whines.

“What is it?” I ask, grudgingly. I should ignore him, the brat.

“What if Chanyeol moves away, one day?”

I should have – I should have expected this.

“Where are you going?”

“I said if. The writing residency isn’t permanent, and this house isn’t Chanyeol’s.”

“Oh.” The water feels good on my face, drowning words before they crawl out of my mouth.

“Will you come with us?” Baekhyun presses.

I didn’t think of it. I don’t want to think about it, because it makes me feel awful and small and more than a bit scared. I want to say no, but there’s Kyungsoo. I want to say yes, but there’s Chanyeol and Baekhyun.

“Don’t know,” I say. It comes out muffled and unhappy.

Baekhyun touches my shoulder, then there are lips on my cheek, fingers turning my head to face his. There’s a kiss, tentative, before Byun Baekhyun ing bites my lips.

I bite back, hard. All the anger stitched in and held back, under the seams of my skin, rises in a hot tide. Things were never supposed to change, we never wanted to make choices that would take the two of us apart. It was never supposed to be this hard, to grow up and get our own lives.

It’s like we don’t fit – noses bumping, chins knocking against one another. Bruising. But Baekhyun and I have always been stubborn. Soon enough I’m catching the fat swell of his lips, the roughness of his teeth. Then inside, to the soft-rough sensation of his tongue, the veined roof of his mouth.

Moving in tandem, in unison. Sharing the same breath of air.

Water’s drenching my eyelids, crowding my mouth as Baekhyun and I. It’s slippery and wet and clean, clean, clean. Washed clean, replaced only with Baekhyun.

Baekhyun’s coughing, from the water. The lever’s shockingly cold in my hand as I push it shut.

It’s too cold, with the water turned off. I turn to the heat of Baekhyun’s skin instinctively, tucking myself as close to him as I can. Left arm sliding under his right, body to body. Face rubbing along his collarbone, like the cats we are.

Baekhyun’s squeezing me tight, as hard as he can.

I don’t even dare to think about a place without Baekhyun. I don’t – I am placeless, without Baekhyun.

“We can go back to the shelter,” Baekhyun jokes weakly. It might be a joke, it might not. I don’t know.

“Chanyeol still likes Kyungsoo. So much.”

I know about how Kyungsoo feels towards Chanyeol, of course. I think of agreeing, but I remember how Kyungsoo swam away from Chanyeol, towards me. How Baekhyun could sense that something was wrong with Chanyeol.

It’s not as easy to leave, this time.

“I didn’t know you minded,” I say. 

Dry laugh, from Baekhyun. I guess I deserved that. I mind, too, as much as Kyungsoo seems to be turning towards me.

Baekhyun’s hand is down my hip. I step back, away from him. Find a towel and push it into his hand instead.

Here, shuttling between Kyungsoo’s and Chanyeol’s apartment, I’m happy and sad at the same time. All the time, it seems.

--

We’d stick to each other when we were young, piecing together a safe, separate world for ourselves.

We grew up, made friends, had different interests. Became different people.

We’re sticking together like when we were young, tonight. Baekhyun and I squeeze onto Chanyeol’s beanbag (Chanyeol brought all his chairs over) together, legs tangled, sharing the same plate of food and two forks.

“This is good,” Baekhyun says, dangling a mysterious green vegetable that looks like it was cooked in a witch’s cauldron in front of me. There’s chilli and red sauce dripping from it.

“Kang Kong,” Chanyeol supplies. He’s sitting with Suho and Xiumin at the coffee table, but he’s been listening in to us.

It’s salty, spicy and a bit crunchy at the same time. Baekhyun wipes the oil off with his thumb, while I try not to choke on the leaf.

“Have you tried this?” Kyungsoo kneels on the floor in front of us, offering a plate filled with what looks like onion rings.

“Squid cooked in salted egg yolk,” Baekhyun says. He pops one into his mouth, closing his eyes as the taste hits. I take one for myself.

It’s good. Hot on the tongue, salty and sweet in a way that lingers. Even the smell makes me hungry.

 “Here,” Baekhyun says. He takes one piece and holds it out for Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo looks like Baekhyun’s trying to hit him. But he still takes it anyway, biting delicately into the ring.

“I’ll expect this back in the office, Kyungsoo,” Luhan says, as he passes us. “You on your knees, serving us...”

“You’d know, seeing how much time you spend on yours,” Kyungsoo says. “Xiumin’s blinds get a good workout everyday.”

Xiumin coughs into his beer, hiding a smile. Luhan flops on the couch, ignoring Kyungsoo. He jabs Xiumin’s back with his feet.

Chanyeol lifts a plate of meat – I think it’s meat – from the table.

“Try the butter chicken,” he says, with his mouth full.

I feel thoroughly spoilt, but I don’t want to move from Baekhyun – from the smell and feel of him, curled around me. So no one moves. Chanyeol sighs and comes over, ladling the buttery meat onto our plates with his plastic fork.

Baekhyun makes happy noises, as he bites in. Chanyeol puts more onto our plate.

“Can you cook this?” Baekhyun asks, between bites.

“Maybe,” Chanyeol says doubtfully, as he sits, cross-legged, beside Kyungsoo.

“It’s deep-fried,” Kyungsoo says, poking at the meat with his own fork. “In butter, and...I can’t tell. I could try, tomorrow.”

“It’s Tuesday,” Chanyeol says. “I’m clearing my leave,” Kyungsoo replies. “For a week. Come over for lunch tomorrow?”

Kyungsoo didn’t tell me that. I swallow, pushing down my hopes.

Baekhyun’s ears are ticklish against my collarbone. He taps my thigh with fingers, reassuring.

I feed him another squid ring, just as Chanyeol says, “okay.”

I want to have both Kyungsoo and Baekhyun around. Chanyeol, too.

We spend the rest of dinner like that, Baekhyun, Chanyeol, Kyungsoo and I. Chanyeol and Kyungsoo talking, swapping stories about writing and work, while Baekhyun and I share food and wordlessness.

Baekhyun and I share a hand of what Chanyeol calls da di – Tite, a card game. Luhan frowns fiercely at his hand, Xiumin’s tapping the floor impatiently with his next card, while Suho’s laying out his royal flush on the top of the pile.

“Game,” he says, satisfied.

“Game,” Xiumin echoes, dropping his last card (a three) on the pile.

Luhan puts a pair of tens, suspiciously eyeing Baekhyun.

“Next,” Baekhyun sighs. I pull out a pair of queens out, saying “ignore him.”

Luhan says something in Chinese. It sounds like a protest.

“Game,” Baekhyun says, laying our last card (another three) out.

“What did he say?”

“A gentleman doesn’t turn back after raising his hand,” Suho translates.

“You speak Chinese?” Luhan asks, surprised. “That was a bad translation, by the way.”

“I play with a lot of cheats,” Suho says breezily. “Who always try to convince me to waive the bet... pay up, Luhan.”

There’s clattering from the kitchen  - Chanyeol yelps. He comes out of it, shirt drenched with eggs and milk.

“I have big shirts in the spare bedroom,” Kyungsoo shouts after him. “In one of the boxes.”

I put a four of hearts down absently, before I realize what’s in the spare bedroom.

Chanyeol’s already turning the knob, as Kyungsoo appears at the door of the kitchen, face white. I’m skittering across the floor as I can, cards falling from my hand.

“Whoa.” Chanyeol stares, taking in the room. “What’s all this?”

He’s already reading something, by the time I reach. Kyungsoo’s a step behind me.

“This looks familiar?” Chanyeol says.

“My old writing,” Kyungsoo says shortly, pushing past both of us. He starts to open the boxes, ripping the masking tape on them. “Go out. I’ll pass the shirt to you.”

Chanyeol’s still reading, eyes softer.

“I said, go out!” It’s loud enough to break through Chanyeol’s reverie. He hesitates, then puts the piece of paper down again. Looks around the room, like he’s trying to take as much of it in as possible.

I’ve never heard Kyungsoo shout before. I don’t like it. I don’t like people shouting, in general.

I’m gripping his arm, hard enough he tries to pull away.

“Can you-“ I swallow. “Stop it.”

“He’s-“

“He saw you write most, if not all of this,” I point out. “Can you talk to him. Please. Can you-“ I take a breath, remembering the warmth of Baekhyun’s fingers in mine. I can’t give up Baekhyun. It’s not fair to ask Kyungsoo to let go of Chanyeol. “Please,” I say. “Please talk to him, he- talks to me about you. All the time. And you talk to me about him, and I don’t. Chanyeol meant so much to you, him and writing. That whole period of time, I can’t. I wasn’t there then and he was, and you love stories and he does, as well. And I think you want to go back there, that period with Chanyeol and – books and writing. You need to-“ not make a choice. I don’t understand any of this. “You need to talk to him,” I say lamely.

Kyungsoo’s completely, thoroughly scared. I can see it, in his eyes.

“You want me to – get back with Chanyeol?”

“No.” I don’t want that. “I want it to be like just now. All four of us.”

“Is this some cat thing that I don’t know about?”

Kyungsoo’s scared, angry and lashing out. I know that, but it still stings. I’m not a political cat person by any means, but even I know how long it took to get past all the misinformation surrounding cats and our habits. There was the belief that we were fundamentally different, cats and humans, and couldn’t be reasoned with or understood. Most of this had been overturned by the time Baekhyun and I were born, but remnants always linger.

“I didn’t mean that.” Kyungsoo scrubs his face with his hands.

“What we have now,” I say, “is not – isn’t going to  hold. Chanyeol and Baek, you and me, you and Chanyeol, Baek and I. It’s all tense and pulled tight. Maybe we’re all selfish. Maybe I am. But I want to try this.”

I want to hug Kyungsoo and say things will be fine, but there are decisions he needs to make on his own.

“Chen?” Baekhyun’s standing at the door of the room. Chanyeol left, when we weren’t looking.

“Talk to him, please,” I say. I don’t touch Kyungsoo – instead I leave.

-

“I told him, to try. With Chanyeol.”

Baekhyun’s face is so frozen it hurts. His throat works.

“Chanyeol and Kyungsoo, you and me, you and Chanyeol, Kyungsoo and I. Maybe we can have all these at once.”

“You’re-“ Baekhyun stops. Thinks about it, really thinks about it. “D’you think so?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

--

Suho, Luhan and Xiumin take us downstairs for supper. Even Chanyeol’s raising his voice to shout at Kyungsoo, by the time we find our shoes and they get their wallets and the lift comes.

There’s a huge hawker centre just across the road. It’s two-storeys high, and packed to the brim with stalls.

It’s what I like best about Singapore. That there are places like this, where you can go in in t-shirts and shorts and sit around small tables, being absorbed into this crowd of people all out to eat and talk with no barriers. That there are people who don’t care whether you’re a cat or a human, or whether you wear silk or singlets and slippers.

It’s funny, but that’s the way of Singapore. It’s fast-paced, but you can also come to a complete stop, if you know where to look.

They tell us about Kyungsoo, then. Baekhyun’s very curious and keeps asking. I can’t hold back my questions either but most of them are already asked by Baekhyun.

Kyungsoo works the hardest, Suho says. Luhan disagrees, because Suho’s the boss and Suho’s nuts and needs a life, too. Maybe even more than Kyungsoo. Xiumin says that Luhan works from home – heck, Luhan works on holiday. It’s guaranteed.

None of them actually know much about Kyungsoo, I realize.

Kyungsoo – I’m sorry I hurt you, but not sorry enough to leave

Kyungsoo has this theory about people. The longer you know them, the harder it is to stay with them. Year after year, the attachment builds up. So does the annoyance as well; the irritation that rubs raw, slowly working the hurt wide and deep over time.

It’s like that with Chanyeol. Having Chanyeol around kept Kyungsoo sane and happy, but the fights also hurt bad. Chanyeol calling Kyungsoo a corporate slave, demanding time that Kyungsoo didn’t have. It got easier, to be a bit louder and louder each time, until they were both yelling at each other in the confines of their tiny apartment.

It’s like that now. Chanyeol tries to talk to Kyungsoo, Kyungsoo resists and says that he didn’t mean to keep these, he should have thrown it away. Wants to gather it all up and bin it (he really means it). Chanyeol loses his temper and says that Kyungsoo hasn’t changed and likes to hate himself. Kyungsoo says he’s doing the best he can and Chanyeol has no right to talk to him, since he wasn’t around.

“You didn’t even – you didn’t even say, let’s work it out! You got into your car and left right away!”

“Did you contact me after that?” Kyungsoo asks, folding his arms.

“I messaged,” Chanyeol says. “Twice! You didn’t reply!”

Kyungsoo winces, remembering those days. It had been easy, to focus on work and lose the rest of the days.

“You texted hi!”

“I had stuff written, that I wanted to send you.” Chanyeol says. “If you replied.”

“What was it?”

“It’s on my wall, actually.” Chanyeol says. “It’s, uh... Nine poems, remember? I have four, from back then. Five, that I wrote recently.”

“Okay,” Kyungsoo says. “Let’s see it.”

“Go ahead,” Chanyeol says, gesturing. “I want to read your stuff.”

It’s a challenge.
 

“Ok,” Kyungsoo says. “Keys.”

--

When the rest of them come back, Chanyeol and Kyungsoo are sitting on their own doorsteps, papers spread around them. They both have their hallway lights , spilling pools of light into the dark corridor.

“This could be tighter,” Kyungsoo says. “In the gaps / Between yesterday and today – what kind of rhythm is that?”

“Hey – I wrote that poem for you! You’re supposed to be touched, not touchy!”

“Hi,” Suho says, beaming. “We bought groceries. And food.”

“Give me that,” Chanyeol says, holding out his arms.

Kyungsoo’s looking at Chen, who’s holding hands tightly with Baekhyun. Holding back, from Kyungsoo.

Chen’s right. Kyungsoo’s happier than he has been in recent years. Not tumbling, free happiness, but rather a reaching back into a past that Kyungsoo hasn’t looked at for very long, without guilt or anxiety.

“Hey, come read this,” Kyungsoo says to Chen. “Baekhyun, as well.”

Baekhyun’s the one that pulls Chen forward.

“Here,” Kyungsoo says. Chen crouches to read it, and Kyungsoo drops a kiss on his cheek (Kyungsoo can be sneaky).

“Thank you,” he whispers.

Chen’s ears don’t stop twitching for a while, after that.