Joshua’s room is so much easier to digest in daylight. Faint glow-in-the-dark stars dot the ceiling like cookie-cut slices of provolone. Obscurely stained couch cushions shuffle around on his armchair once every week. A blanket or two is pulled up to the headboard of his bed, neatly made even in the stubborn late summer heat. Looking in on this picture of a proper, authority-fearing son, a stranger would not see the grayed paint on the windowsill, smudged by phantasmal fingerprints, or the ash, all-too-easily mistaken for dust, lining every crevice like grime under fingernails. No one bothers to turn off the revolving fan that Joshua keeps between his half-cluttered desk and his half-cracked window; no one smells the smoke that clings half-heartedly to the secondhand furniture of Joshua’s room. In fact, Joshua stopped bothering to Febreze the smell since last month, and no one is any the wiser.

Well. There’s one.

When Jeonghan walks in, he immediately crosses to the window and pushes it wide open, gulping in a deep breath of fresh air. This place is so stifling. The fan is on, as always, but the air is stale. Joshua is in a phase of pretending not to care about ventilation, and Jeonghan makes it a point to remind him how much he hates it.

“You ,” Jeonghan hisses to Joshua, still trying to swallow as much air as possible.

“Actually, I think it’s more like blowing,” Joshua offers his scholarly opinion from the mostly-deflated bean bag wedged between his bed and the wall, dirty clouds coming out of his pretty mouth like they own the place. A smoldering cigarette glows darkly between two fingers.

“Nice punctuation,” Jeonghan deadpans as the smoke rises thickly.

“Nice socks,” Joshua returns.

He at least has the decency to get to his feet, pulling himself up by the frame of his bed, grimacing as ash lands on his pillow and shaking it out with his free hand. Still, Joshua makes no move to assist Jeonghan when the latter excavates a bamboo folding fan—sent by a well-meaning aunt in her long-distance quest to “culture” her overseas nephew—from the mess of Joshua’s desk and chases the gray cloud until the air is somewhat breathable.

“Got them on clearance.”

Joshua makes an “ah” noise, and Jeonghan frowns so intensely at the smoke that escapes from his mouth that Joshua finally puts out the cigarette with an obliging smile. He casually slips the ashtray back under the bed when he’s done, making sure to cover it with a few crumpled college brochures.

Sighing, Jeonghan sits by the open window, where the hot August air is fractionally less gross but where the revolving fan doesn’t quite reach. Sunlight lights up his neatly combed hair. He tries manually fanning himself only to have his nose wrinkle at the hint of smoke clinging to the paper. He refolds the fan and lets it dangle in his hand. “Please go back to using Febreze.”

“Never.”

“As your best friend, it is my duty to inform you that your room smells like . You smell like . Joshua Hong, I refuse to have a best friend who smells this ty.”

“Jeonghan, I smell just fine,” Joshua rolls his eyes.

“You literally smell worse than you did that day when you had to assist with seventeen moxibustion appointments in a row.”

Joshua joins Jeonghan under the window and puts a sympathetic hand on his shoulder, looking into his earnest eyes as he says, slowly and deliberately, “I’m sorry that moxa happens to smell like weed.” Sitting down, he adds, “I’m also sorry that you don’t like the smell of weed.”

Joshua is expecting it when Jeonghan tries to flick his ear. When Joshua dodges out of the way, Jeonghan settles for whacking his shoulder with the folded hand fan. Joshua laughs and pushes his face away.

“Okay, okay, I stink,” he concedes, holding an admonished hand over his shoulder. “Don’t break my fan. I’ll take more showers.”

Jeonghan hums grudgingly, letting Joshua wiggle the fan out of his hand and put it back on his desk, a cacophony of school projects and old notes, the organized mess of an upstanding high school student. There is an orderly chaos to Joshua’s room, a systematic presentability with an occulted wildness. Joshua’s couch is an upholstered rainbow of stained cushions that sink under Jeonghan’s feet when he tries to sit on it with his whole body, but that doesn’t stop them from spending a whole hour sitting there together, talking about everything from the shipment of new herbs that arrived at the clinic this morning to the loud rising sophomore that works with Jeonghan at Bath & Body Works before finally switching to adjacent perches on Joshua’s bed. Joshua’s bed is a picturesque example of folded blankets and hospital corners, but under it is an ashtray and one or two thin, half-used boxes of cigarettes. And college brochures, Jeonghan registers when he happens to glance down from the edge.

Curious, Jeonghan pokes one of his feet in and slides out a battered blue-and-yellow paper with “UCLA” printed boldly across the front. He holds it up to Joshua and raises his eyebrows, offering an enticing smile. “Thinking about graduation?”

“No,” Joshua says, a flat edge to his voice. He pretends not to see the brochure, waiting until Jeonghan finishes flipping through it and throws it back under the bed. When he does, Joshua seems to let out a breath. “Senior year doesn’t start until next week.”

“Shua, I know that you’re a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of guy, but this is cutting it kind of close, even for you.”

Joshua clenches his jaw. It’s a bit of a sore point, his general indecision with what to do with his future.

“I know.”

End of topic. Joshua lets himself fall all the way down and presses the back of his head into the purely cosmetic comforter that he never actually sleeps with in the summer, eyes angled toward the ceiling of plastic stars, as if he can push the answers out if he tries hard enough. Next to him, Jeonghan generously makes no comment.

Jeonghan had sneaked into Joshua’s room one night, an “excursion,” he called it, to position all the stars by hand. He swears otherwise, but when Joshua looks up, he can recognize the loose, freehanded outlines of the constellations glowing with his best friend’s quiet whirlwind of perfectionism. Big stars and little stars that will always whisper summer back at him.

“Seriously,” Joshua says, lying with one hand flat on his stomach, “How long did it take you?”

Joshua does that sometimes, asking questions without context. Jeonghan is generally better at deciphering them than most, but maybe that’s because he’s just as bad, prone to leaping between topics without transitions. Jeonghan traces his gaze to the stars and seems to connect the dots.

“Too long for an ungrateful brat like you, that’s for sure,” Jeonghan replies too easily as he kicks back to join him, knowing that it’s the deflective answer Joshua expects but isn’t looking for. The bedsprings hiss and squeal, the downy comforter bouncing around Joshua’s ears as Jeonghan goes through the motions of lying down without ever really settling. Somehow, despite the calm look on his face, Joshua gets the feeling that Jeonghan is never quite content. He’s the kind of person who dreams big, who hangs stars, who lights matches without burning them. Even Joshua can’t contain that much. “Your bed is old.”

“Your face is old.”

“Your humor is old.”

“Your humor is old.”

Jeonghan snakes a hand through the maze of disheveled bedding, latching onto the delicate shell of Joshua’s ear and clamping down hard. Joshua’s voice vanishes—he doesn’t want to give Jeonghan the satisfaction of yelping; then he would never hear the end of it—as he reciprocates in kind, pinching Jeonghan’s ear right back in a silent battle of the wills.

Which, being the stubborn s that they are, naturally goes on forever.

“This really hurts.”

“Who taught you how to pinch this hard?”

“I did. You’re just weak.”

“You little—”

“Ow, ow, ow! Okay, count of three?”

“. . .”

“One. Two. Three.”

“. . . You know it’s not going to be that easy, right?”

“Agh. Fine.”

Joshua rolls off first, making sure to give Jeonghan’s ear one last exasperated twist. Jeonghan lets go of Joshua with much more ease, probably because he is silently laughing. The smiling glint of his teeth almost floats in the dark, a real Chesire grin. When Joshua turns his face away to sulk into his pillow, Jeonghan tries to tug it out from under him.

“Aw, don’t be mad,” he entreats. Joshua doesn’t budge. “We were having fun just then.”

“I’m not mad.”

“Well, you’re not napping in the middle of the day, either,” Jeonghan points out, fighting a fresh wave of exasperation out of his voice. “That means you’re mad.”

Silence.

“Have you ever thought of getting a piercing?”

Joshua still doesn’t look, but his pillow-muffled voice comes out like an olive branch. “That’s random, Jeonghan.” It’s an old quip that he uses, signaling that he knows when Jeonghan is changing subjects but isn’t going to argue. The frustration ebbs a little. “It’s not like I’m going to.”

“Come on, you can be hypothetical,” Jeonghan appeals. “Piercing, yes or no?”

“A piercing? I don’t know, Jeonghan.”

“You could pull it off.”

Joshua pulls his face out of the pillow to give him a dubious look. Seizing the opportunity, Jeonghan reaches for Joshua’s ear more gently, just to cup it. Joshua freezes, the breath out of him by the sudden contact, but Jeonghan doesn’t seem to notice, staring at the side of his face intently enough to burn. Batting off physical contact is nothing when they’re just fooling around, but he can never quite figure out what he’s supposed to do when Jeonghan gets into one of his more examining moods.

Suddenly, Jeonghan’s nose scrunches up, snapping Joshua out of his stupor. “You still smell like .”

“You still are ,” Joshua replies on reflex, and Jeonghan is so amused by the rare display of cursing that he retracts his hand to laugh. The imprint of Jeonghan’s hand feels clammy on Joshua’s face, a side effect of the dry weather. He rubs it off against the pillow. “Okay, your turn. Do you want a piercing?”

Jeonghan absentmindedly touches his own ear, a blink-and-miss-it kind of gesture. Joshua hides the relief that unfurls inside his chest that the ear thing is just another Jeonghan thing, not anything he should be concerned about. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell.

“I think I could handle it, but it’s not my style.”

 

The pale but fierce September sky threads through Joshua’s hair as he hurries for the mall, bracing the straps of his backpack to keep it from knocking against his tailbone. It's just like Jeonghan to call him at the last minute. He wasn’t even planning on going into town today, wasn’t planning on running past evenly-spaced palm trees in ripped jeans and a graphic tee, but if there's anything Jeonghan knows, it's that he has Joshua wrapped around his finger. And Joshua hates it.

A merciful wave of air-conditioning blasts out as he skids to a socially acceptable pace in front of the automatic doors. Gasping for breath in a way that causes a few shoppers to glance at him in concern—he’s seventeen, almost eighteen, and this is probably his sign to stop smoking—Joshua fixes his clothes and makes for the food court, trying to look as unremarkable as possible. He really hopes that his sweat washes out of this shirt.

The food court is Jeonghan’s default meeting place inside the mall. It's one of the few ways that he adheres to his self-proclaimed motto of keeping work and pleasure separate, as Joshua politely refrains from pointing out because he happens to actually like the mall food court. He thinks it's the curved latticework of the ceiling that does it, the crisscrossing white lines that turn the dome into a bright blue skylight. When he was three or four, his father had taken him to an observatory like that: domed ceiling and electric sky, big hands and blurred face. His father is out of the picture even in his memories.

Jeonghan is sitting at a small round table by himself, nursing a smoothie.

“What took you so—Wow, you look sweaty,” Jeonghan says, pulling the straw out of his mouth as Joshua pulls up a chair. He frowns, eyes doing a once-over on the bangs sticking to Joshua’s forehead and the bedraggled backpack dumped next to his feet. “Did you run here?”

“Yes, Captain Obvious,” Joshua glares, which probably would have been a lot more menacing if he wasn’t still mostly out of breath.

Jeonghan stares at him for a moment, then returns to his smoothie. “Your lungs are .”

“Your drink is .”

Jeonghan, the insufferable , looks bemused. Slurp. “It’s so weird when you curse.”

Joshua eyes the smoothie level inside Jeonghan’s clear plastic cup as it falls, slowly but surely. It’s already almost empty, and he’s already preparing himself for the frenetic mess that is Jeonghan on a sugar high. There’s already an unnatural brightness to Jeonghan’s eyes, a spark that usually isn’t there unless he has been hatching some new scheme. They’re barely a month into school, and Jeonghan has already single-handedly covered the principal’s car in hot pink Post-It notes and set off the fire alarm. Granted, the last one was a Chemistry accident involving a lavender-scented hand sanitizer and a Bunsen burner twice his age, but still.

“I got you something,” Jeonghan says before Joshua can ask whether there’s another escapade for him to politely decline. Setting down his now-empty smoothie, Jeonghan lifts up a gingham bag that Joshua hadn’t noticed and pushes it across the table, a smug, expectant, slightly giddy look on his face. “Bath & Body Works” is proudly printed on the side. “Open it.”

Joshua delicately raises his eyebrows. “Isn’t it kind of rude to open it right away?”

Even as he says it, he’s drawing out the pale blue tissue paper. Knowing that he has won, Jeonghan just waits with feigned comfortableness until Joshua reaches the small, thin black-and-white box at the bottom. Hand closing around the lightweight packaging, Joshua pulls out the little box and blinks at the strange, candle-shaped thing inside.

“You got me a light bulb.”

Stifling a laugh, Jeonghan reaches over and flips the box right-side-up. “It’s called a fragrance plug, you idiot.”

Now that it's facing the right way, Joshua can see the word “wallflowers” written prettily across a sticker on the front of the plug. Fitting, Joshua thinks with a sardonic appreciation, but it feels almost too dainty to come from Jeonghan. Glancing over the small print, Joshua reports, “It says it's an eye irritant.”

“You're an eye irritant,” Jeonghan retorts. When Joshua’s lips slide for a second, threatening to smile, something in Jeonghan’s face falters. After a moment’s pause of glancing down at the pastel-colored table, Jeonghan adds quietly, “It would be easier if you quit.”

Joshua doesn't bother answering that. He’s not sure why Jeonghan still bothers to ask when they both know it's not happening any time soon, but then again, everyone is entitled to dream, Jeonghan more than most.

Instead of addressing the pleading undercurrent in Jeonghan’s voice, Joshua neatly places the Wallflowers plug back inside the bag and covers it with plumes of blue tissue paper again, smiling thinly. There's a faint buzz in his chest, the excitement of receiving a gift, but now it's overshadowed by the silent question behind it. He wants to be grateful, wants to turn the conversation back to a lighter note, wants Jeonghan to stop making sad eyes at his smoothie, and so he clears his throat. “Thanks for the plug. I'll try it out.”

“You better,” Jeonghan warns, jumping on board to switch topics, albeit a little less quickly than usual. He braces the empty smoothie with one flitting hand. “I spent seven dollars on that thing.”

“Wow, seven whole dollars,” Joshua echoes, and Jeonghan makes a face at him as he gets up to throw his cup away.

Joshua stands up, swinging his backpack onto the table so that he can tuck the Bath & Body Works bag inside, and tries not to watch Jeonghan do his thing. Despite the teasing tone, Joshua can't help the keen sense of self-consciousness that crawls up his neck, leaving prickling skin in its wake. Jeonghan is the kind of decently-off kid who receives an undisclosed amount of allowance from his parents every week but refuses to spend any of it unless he can match it with his own earnings as a part-time store employee. He is stubborn and proud and utterly bent on snatching every inch of independence he can. It's why, Joshua secretly hypothesizes, Jeonghan pulls pranks and picks colleges and calculates the exact change he needs for gas every week to get to and from work. It's why Jeonghan delegated him as his best friend—because Jeonghan doesn't want to owe anything to anyone, and Joshua is the last person on Earth who would ask him to account for himself.

Joshua doesn't really ask for anything, actually, and he doesn't think he'll ever get over how weird it is getting something from Jeonghan, how perplexing it is to know, doubtlessly, that this is something Jeonghan, the frugal one, the tetherless one, the unsentimental one, spent his own money on. Joshua can't figure out why, and maybe there's something he’s missing, but he pushes it aside and decides to settle for being grateful.

“Seriously, though,” Joshua says as Jeonghan circles back, “Thanks.”

“Aw, don't mention it,” Jeonghan replies, tilting his head with an easygoing smile. He’s sort of standing there, a few feet in front of Joshua with his hands absentmindedly propped on his hips, as if waiting for something else. When Joshua squints at him, he realizes that there’s still that glittery look in Jeonghan’s eyes, a wavery impatience as he stands in place, and it's not just from the smoothie.

Joshua narrows his eyes. “Jeonghan, why did you really call me here?”

This must be the opening that Jeonghan was waiting for because he grins, teeth flashing in the steady stream of sunlight that comes in from the glass ceiling, “Well, I finished my shift, and today is your day off, so I thought we could do some perusing.”

“Perusing” is Jeonghan’s word for window-shopping, for store-hopping, for bumping elbows and debating over snacks and stopping at every kiosk and backlit display case until neither of them can feel their arms or legs and Joshua insists on finding a comfortable bench so that he can let himself liquefy into a miserable mush while Jeonghan cracks jokes over his stamina. Jeonghan has the unfair advantage of knowing that Joshua would never pass it up for anything.

“I have homework,” Joshua warns, pettily, because it’s a weekend and he’s already caving.

“I'm sure your English project wouldn't mind,” Jeonghan grins.

So it comes to be that they buy three cups of fresh pretzel sticks and refill the dip twice; spend half an hour legitimately lost inside a Forever 21; wave at a smiley Seokmin as they pass Bath & Body Works; spontaneously go Dutch on stress balls with little faces on them from a kiosk worker with hamster cheeks that look almost just as squishy; and sequester themselves on the thick edge of an outdoor fountain, punctuating their sentences with watery eruptions and batting each other with the lukewarm water every time one of them says something too dumb or too philosophical or too both. Sometimes, Joshua thinks, not entirely unfondly, that someday, this is what his memories of being a teenager will be like: days gone by in the blink of an eye, hours wasted doing nothing except being together and being too dumb for adulthood and too smart--y for their age. Splash.

 

Joshua sees the party from a quarter of the way down the street, pulsing with maxxed-out stereos and strobe lights that he can guess just how Jeonghan got his hands on. Jeonghan is notorious around their school not only for his pranks, but for his other charms, too. Sleeping. Schmoozing. Throwing parties. Talking anyone into anything. The other houses of their suburb are dark, as if Jeonghan has figured out a way to all the light into his house and now it is imploding in bursts of blues and purples. He wouldn’t put it past him.

Joshua tucks the foil-wrapped package under his arm, the rustle all but unnoticeable under the faint waves of music coursing under his shoes.

When Joshua walks inside, not bothering to ring the doorbell, no one bothers to care. The foyer is all slithering bodies and forgotten coats, leather gear, denim jackets, and wool cardigans mashing together on shoe racks and spare corners. One end table is bristling with red plastic cups. The drinks inside ripple whenever someone slams a door or opens the one that leads into the basement, from which Joshua can hear the sound of enthusiastic keyboarding and smooth crooning, no doubt the well-received products of Seokmin’s three-man band. Jeonghan invited them to play one night two or three weeks ago, and by this point, it’s clear that they’re going to be one of the more permanent fixtures at his parties.

It’s like the airwaves are at war in Jeonghan’s house. From the living room, Joshua can hear the intoxicating, stuttering beats of a rap ballad; passing the bathroom, he catches snatches of what sounds like Bruno Mars; in the kitchen, someone is playing “Thriller” as loud as his phone will allow. He doesn’t notice that the live band has taken a break until the basement door bangs open, briefly revealing a roar of applause, and Soonyoung stumbles out, dragging another junior by the sleeves of his sweater and mashing their faces together so hard that Joshua almost expects his make-out buddy’s glasses to break. It’s weird. One day, you’re buying stress balls from some guy at the mall; the next, you see him kissing the living daylights out of that kid from your advanced English class at your best friend’s house party.

Not one for intruding on Soonyoung and Wonwoo’s frighteningly tongue-heavy make-out session, Joshua calls out a polite “wow” and continues on his way. He already knows where he’s headed.

When Joshua comes into the kitchen, which always looks so much bigger and smaller when there are ten-something high schoolers crammed into it, Jeonghan greets him by planting a big, sloppy kiss on the side of his face. He looks good, Joshua registers, wearing his regular jeans and a nice black shirt that gives his dark eyes the impression of depth even if it is clear, looking into them, that he has had a sip or two. One arm comes to rest amiably around Joshua’s shoulders, anchored by an amber bottle of beer. There’s a cooler of mostly-melted ice and a few lingering aluminum cans in front of the kitchen island where Joshua surmises that the drinks must have been; beverage-shaped semicircles are crushed into the valiant floes that remain.

Cracking a faint smile over his best friend’s thick mop of hair, Joshua comments, “You’re looking drunk today.”

“It’s night, Joshua,” Jeonghan snarks back weakly, taking the opportunity to nuzzle his face into the juncture between Joshua’s neck and shoulder. Joshua studiously pretends not to notice, instead focusing on the random partygoers milling around with miscellaneous junk foods and rummaging through Jeonghan’s fridge. Jeonghan sighs into Joshua’s skin, his breath gross and warm, and murmurs at the exact volume necessary to reach only Joshua’s ears, “I’m going to sleep. This is it, Shua, I’m going to sleep. Wake me when I'm eighteen.”

Because, even when he’s maintaining a slight buzz, Jeonghan is too stubborn to say “when the party's over,” and they both know it.

There's a throaty vibration to Jeonghan’s voice that resonates down Joshua’s spine. His mom cat-sits for her friend in the city sometimes, a smushy-faced creature who is probably at least a hundred years old now, and when Joshua was still in middle school, he would tag along and try to pet the kitty whenever he was feeling brave. He learned, over a few weeks, that this cat would run away if he approached first but would come up to him in its own time and on its own terms. And, when the cat was in a remarkably less foul mood, Joshua learned that this particular cat liked being scratched behind the ears. That's what the vibration reminds him of, that full-body purr designed to travel all the way to his toes.

“Really?” Joshua quirks an eyebrow, feigning casual remarkably well. His sleeve is slowly soaking up the condensation on Jeonghan’s bottle, the cotton fibers of his t-shirt greedy like the xylem of a plant, and his headspace is disorientingly hot, almost claustrophobic, where Jeonghan is resting, and he is scared to pull away first.

Jeonghan huffs, a light chuckle. “No, not really.”

Jeonghan chooses that moment to release him, and again, Joshua feels that sense of hyperawareness where Jeonghan had just been. Just when he remembers the package hanging helplessly in his fingers, Jeonghan hones in on it, too.

“Is that for me?” he asks, an insufferable grin blossoming across his face as he nods his bottle in its direction and takes a swig.

Joshua shakes his head and shifts so that he has both arms secured around the package with what he hopes is a matching smirk. The foil crackles under his fingers. “Not until you’re eighteen.”

Jeonghan watches him for a moment with an unreadable expression. Then someone drops a can of Pepsi on the floor, sticky brown liquid immediately slashing a jagged line over the linoleum tiles, and Jeonghan gives him a thin, tired smile. “Eighteen can't come soon enough,” he says in that low, hidden voice.

Then he digs a fistful of napkins out of the pantry closet and hands them off to the shocked-looking freshman responsible for the spill, a kid with a strong, square jaw and soft, scared eyes. Duty calls. Even on his birthday eve, surrounded by people who don't know any better, Jeonghan can’t let go of his pride as a host. Taking his cue to leave, Joshua ducks out of the kitchen, bracing the gift to his chest while being careful not to crush it. The last Joshua sees of the kitchen is Jeonghan repeating the same nuzzly greeting with a newly-surfaced Seokmin. Joshua shakes his head, an upward quirk to his lips, and disappears up the stairs when no one else is looking. Jeonghan knows where to find him.

Jeonghan’s room is a sharp contrast to his character. It's no surprise to Joshua that Jeonghan would choose to make his room appear as the epitome of teenage rebellion, refusing to make his bed or hide his mess. Pens are strewn across the room. Half-printed papers are simply dropped on the floor. Socks can be found on every surface from Jeonghan's lava lamp to his laptop, all washed with a fresh-smelling detergent, all mismatched. At first glance, there is no rhyme or reason to Jeonghan’s interior design; it stands in complete contrast to Jeonghan’s taste for immaculacy and eye for minute detail. Joshua thinks he has it figured out, though. Joshua thinks that Jeonghan is trying to make a point.

Peeling off his shoes is a relief. Joshua sets his Vans down in one of the few spots on Jeonghan’s floor that isn’t covered in questionably clean laundry or tiny plastic jacks and takes the liberty of plopping himself onto Jeonghan’s bed with a long-awaited sigh. The aluminum foil around his gift is starting to go soft, so he leaves it on the nightstand in hopes that it will hold itself together long enough for Jeonghan to open it. Jeonghan’s laptop is already lying, abandoned, at the center of the mattress. After a moment of just lying there and letting the distant, muffled sounds of the party sink in, Joshua tugs it over, removes a fox-patterned sock from the keyboard, and boots it up.

Three hours later, as the party winds down, Jeonghan enters the room to find Joshua calmly torrenting Season 4 of Sailor Moon.

“Our resident pirate,” Jeonghan declares, pulling at the laptop.

“Arr,” Joshua responds. He successfully holds the laptop in place, smiling involuntarily when Jeonghan lets out a defeated sigh and settles for lying down somewhere behind him, exhausted.

“You know it isn't yours, right?” Jeonghan asks, idly trying to sneak a hand onto the touchpad so that he can mess with the download. It's their afterparty, Joshua blithely wreaking havoc on Jeonghan’s computer and Jeonghan blinking slowly in his bed. Later, they might even make it to Season 5.

Jeonghan is turning eighteen, and the rest of the world is none the wiser.

Joshua doesn't even look up as he singsongs, “Pirate.”

Jeonghan laughs, a tired but gentle sound that feels warm and soft like a fireplace. He sounds like he could fall asleep at any minute.

Joshua suddenly remembers something.

“Speaking of yours,” Joshua says, trying to nonchalantly incline his head toward the nightstand but instead turning it into a less-than-smooth jerk of his chin.

At the reminder of the present, Jeonghan props himself up on an elbow to glance at the nightstand then back at Joshua. He lifts his eyebrows slightly. “Aren't you going to get it for me?”

Joshua pauses for a moment, hands still on the computer. “It took half an hour to get to twenty percent. You better not shut it down now,” Joshua warns. Never mind the fact that it's Jeonghan’s computer. Joshua has been using it for anime even before he figured out Jeonghan's password. Which was “password.”

Relenting, Joshua rolls off the bed to retrieve the gift as Jeonghan teasingly grabs at the laptop. He has no real interest in closing it, though, so he just leaves it on the download screen and lowers the brightness so that it doesn't use up too much battery.

“You know,” Jeonghan mentions as Joshua holds out the gift with both hands, “technically, I have been eighteen for seventeen hours now.”

“That's great. Really trippy.”

“Skip the sarcasm,” Jeonghan rolls his eyes, already prying open the big metallic leaves of aluminum foil. Joshua barely has time to worry his lip before Jeonghan reveals the cookies, weird mixes of nuts and raisins and coconut shavings and unidentifiable food objects that have hardened to room temperature. Jeonghan looks up. “Did you bake these?”

Joshua pointedly glances at the eclectic batch of ragtag cookies. “Do you really have to ask?”

Finding this valid, Jeonghan picks up a Nutella cookie and takes a tentative whiff. When it passes this test, he holds it up to eye level and examines it against the strange orange glow of his lava lamp. “This is going to leave crumbs.”

“That's generally what birthday cookies do, Jeonghan.”

“As opposed to what, non-birthday cookies?”

Joshua decides not to pursue this argument, preferring to sit back and watch Jeonghan take the first bite. It's satisfying, the way Jeonghan’s face lightens with pleasant surprise. He still doesn’t look entirely awake, but he chews for a while, slowly, like a connoisseur. It’s nice, Joshua realizes, being able to just relax like this. Jeonghan’s look turns grudgingly thoughtful as he finishes the cookie.

“These aren't entirely horrible,” he concedes.

Joshua shrugs, watching as Jeonghan carefully refolds the aluminum foil around the remaining cookies, marveling how the Jeonghan who refuses to rip the most disposable choices in wrapping paper, who applies early for colleges, who throws parties every week even though they drain him, who always lets the fresh air into Joshua’s room, and who handles these small wonders with such care is also the Jeonghan who lets his own room go to waste. Joshua wonders why Jeonghan doesn't let himself be known for these charms, for all the microscopic battles that come with his aspirations of becoming a better person, but if Joshua is being honest with his selfish side, he doesn't mind having this Jeonghan to himself. Distracted by these musings, he returns, “You aren't entirely horrible.”

And there it is again. Jeonghan, looking at him with something unreadable in his eyes. He looks tired but awake. Joshua sees a sudden glimmer in his face.

Making up his mind, Jeonghan sets the foil-wrapped cookies back onto the nightstand and slides off the bed, holding up Joshua’s shoes and gesturing for him to follow suit.

“Get in the Vans. We’re going to the mall.”

“Jeonghan, the mall closed at nine.”

“I know a guy.”

Jeonghan’s guy is a bright-eyed Claire’s employee who goes by Jun. For someone called in at about two in the morning, Jun is shockingly energetic as he leads them inside and turns on the lights, babbling all the while. Within five minutes of meeting him, Joshua finds out that Jun is a fellow senior, a cat person, a pianist, and a Gemini.

“Wait,” Joshua says, standing near a rack of sunglasses and trying to be as unobtrusive as possible while Jun is busy searching the back room for something, “so that means you were born in . . . ?”

“June,” Jun readily fills in, not noticing when Jeonghan elbows Joshua hard in the ribs. Misattributing the strangled noise that comes out of Joshua’s mouth, Jun happily chuckles, “I know, right?”

Joshua absentmindedly rubs his wound. He still doesn't know what Jeonghan is planning, but the fact that they're inside a Claire’s is already giving him a few guesses, none of them good. Even so, all his suppositions do nothing to lessen the surprise when Jun emerges with a bright blue piercing gun in hand.

“So, do you know which earrings you want?” Jun asks, looking right at Joshua.

His face screams innocence, but Joshua’s mind screams something else:

Oh, no. No way.

Instead of answering, Joshua turns to give Jeonghan what he hopes is a withering glare. However, he has a feeling that he might be coming off as more frazzled than anything, judging from the not-very-reassuring smile that Jeonghan gives him in return. Frazzlement, too, would be an accurate description of what he’s feeling. They’ve only discussed piercings once, and even then, it had been hypothetical. At least, Joshua had thought it was hypothetical. This whole situation is an unprecedented violation of that boundary, and Joshua is just confused.

“I saw you glancing at earrings the last time we perused the mall,” Jeonghan explains, evenly, like it's no big deal. “You're more obvious than you think.”

“That doesn't mean I actually want a piercing! Jeonghan, my mom would ground me for life.”

“You've never been grounded before,” Jeonghan rolls his eyes, trying to ease Joshua forward. Joshua’s jaw tightens. “This wouldn't be such a bad place to start.”

“It would. It would be such a bad place.”

Joshua’s voice is cracking a little and he doesn't know why. At the checkout counter, Jun is idly making shapes with his cheeks and poking his fingers of his free hand into them. The other is still wrapped around the piercing gun, holding it at a safe distance. When he happens to glance over and catch Joshua’s unease, he slides into a concerned frown for the first time in their short acquaintance. He puts the piercing gun down on the counter. “Hey, it doesn't have to be the piercing gun. I'm training for a salon, so I know how to use needles, too. But you really don't have to get a piercing at all, especially if you're uncomfortable. My job isn't to scare you. If you need more time, that's not a problem.”

Joshua softens at Jun’s words, but they don't even begin to stifle the indignation flaming under his skin. Jeonghan is still insistent on acting nonchalant, but Joshua can see how he has started looking at the floor, letting a curtain of bangs hang over his face. Jeonghan is always running into things head first, rushing in like time is a race, reaching for hypotheticals without knowing if he’s ready, but this one feels like a betrayal of trust. It's not like Jeonghan to push him into something without consulting him first. A piercing is one surprise that Joshua doesn't take lightly. Piercings last.

Jun’s earring glints in the fluorescent lighting as he passes them to put the piercing gun away. It’s a long, silver earring that reminds Joshua of the wind chimes they keep in front of the clinic.

Joshua averts his eyes, but they catch on the reflection in the dark, glossy store window. Overlaying the ghostly mall, he can see the displays of accessories, the wall of little stuffed animals, the multitude of earrings standing silently on their delicate hooks, the microcosm of the store in one dreamlike scene, every detail down to the slow, sullen shuffle of Jeonghan's feet and the bewildered, out-of-his-element furrow in his own eyebrows rendered clearly on the glass. Joshua in a breath, fighting the urge to touch his face. He knows he doesn't have Jun’s loose posture or Jeonghan's smoldering assurance, but the contrast is so much clearer when he is seeing it reflected in third person. With his clean-cut looks and methodical clothes, Joshua doesn't look spontaneous or rebellious. He doesn't look like he just walked out of a party, and maybe he really didn't, because he always steps through Jeonghan’s front door but never enters the fray, choosing to retreat upstairs while everyone else is in the floors below, being young and making bad choices and losing pieces of themselves and gaining others. The worst thing Joshua has ever done is smoke, and even then, it’s only in the privacy of his room. Nothing visible, not like Jeonghan with his extravaganzas or Seokmin with his band or Soonyoung with his libido or Jun with his earring.

Joshua doesn't mean to—he doesn’t want to give Jeonghan the satisfaction; he has already determined that Jeonghan is never going to hear the end of this—but he makes up his mind.

“Let's do the needles,” Joshua says before Jun can close the door to the back room. Jun pauses, a surprised but hopeful expression blossoming across his features. He’s not the only one. Joshua can feel Jeonghan’s astounded gaze prickling on the side of his face. Trying to blot out the burning feeling snaking up his neck, he adds, “In the, uh, lobes. If it's not too late.”

“It's never too late!” Jun exclaims, immediately rushing back inside like some piercer fairy. He sounds so enthusiastic that Joshua can't help letting out a relieved breath. “I'm a morning person anyway! I'm totally awake for this.”

Meanwhile, Jeonghan is staring at him with wide eyes, sulking forgotten. “Both lobes?” he asks incredulously, as if checking whether this is the same Joshua.

“What about it?”

Jeonghan shrugs meditatively, but his expression remains openly curious. “I don't know, I was thinking something more asymmetrical.”

Joshua gawps at him. This, coming from the person who dragged him here in the first place. It’s unfairly difficult to focus on being angry when Jeonghan has a habit of distracting him with this brand of input. Then again, Jeonghan has always been something of a perfectionist. Throwing his hands up, Joshua finally gives up on trying to decipher his best friend’s mind and asks, “Am I getting a piercing or not?”

“Right, right, your call,” Jeonghan says, a slight upward curve to his lips that Joshua finds more than a little annoying at the moment. He claps Joshua on the shoulder. “You do you.”

Saving Joshua from a reply, Jun emerges from the back room again. Jun seems to be trying to control the nervous, giddy smile on his face with little success, but Joshua finds that suddenly, he doesn't quite mind. Once he has his mind made up, a cold sense of calm seems to have taken over. “Are you ready?”

So just like that, Joshua gets his first piercings, one in each lobe. And he gets grounded for a week.

(Later, his mom reluctantly admits that the imitation diamond studs do look good on him, and he gives her a long hug because he has a feeling that they won't be his last piercings. Not by a long shot.)