Archive of Our Own

When the open road is closing in

And you can't say where it ends and you begin

When every truckstop dive's another five years off your life

When the open road is closing in

And the dotted yellow lines begin to spin

When the sky begins to fall on everything you like at all

You won't be coming home again

“You boys here for the ghost?”

Riki lifts his head, his brows furrowing, but keeping his expression otherwise entirely blank. Heeseung gawks at the old man, stunned, blinking rapidly, giving away far too much.

And Riki thought he was supposed to be the amateur here.

“Ghost?” Riki asks after a moment, slipping on the mask of the naive but eager college student he was supposed to be, keeping up the cover Heeseung recited to him earlier that day with practiced ease as they approached the welcome sign for their – hopefully very quick – stop. “Which ghost?”

He thought this would be an easy case, when Heeseung described it to him, but he didn’t think it’d be this easy, this quick.

“The Lightkeeper, ‘course,” the man says matter-of-factly, briefly distracted by staring down the uniform top of the waitress refilling his coffee mug, the one that Heeseung just finished posing deceptively innocent questions to, the one who had called them nice boys before departing to get back to her job. “You were askin’ all those questions about the murders. We only got one ghost violent enough to do ‘em.”

And, yeah. They were, and a little too loudly, too, because Heeseung, even after he’s had years to gain some, still has no subtlety whatsoever.

“Yeah,” Heeseung says, clearing his throat a bit, “We’re, uh – writing a book, actually. About the most haunted places in New England.”

It’s a good cover, Riki has to admit. According to Heeseung, the small waterfront town, nestled right on the border where Maine meets New Hampshire, had almost no real violent murders until a week prior, but they sure liked to pretend they did, for the sake of getting their tourist count up every year. They fabricated all kinds of half-century old unsolved cases, boasted about the body count of their most infamous ghosts, and before two local men were brutally ripped apart in the last two weeks, none of their gory tales had a shred of truth to them.

“They’ll be more receptive to giving us information if they think we’re just – history buffs,” Heeseung had explained earlier, when Riki pulled out his fake FBI badge with a questioning expression. “The feds aren’t getting anywhere, according to their case file. No one’s willing to answer their questions with anything substantial. But for tourists, I think they’ll talk.”

Riki had scoffed in doubt, but sure enough, the man’s eyes practically light up with dollar signs at Heeseung’s words.

“Well, I could tell you a thing or two,” the man says airily, unconvincingly casually. “I’ve been around a while, I know all the stories, and let me tell you – they’re true as can be. Of course, if you wanna quote me in your little book, I’ll need to see some compensation –”

Heeseung doesn’t even hesitate. He pulls out a wad of bills from the ATM they’d rewired somewhere in rural North Dakota before fleeing the state to come here, pulls out a fifty, and slaps it down on the counter between them and the old man. For a moment, the old man just stares at them, until Heeseung sighs, and adds another fifty. He grins, showing off his missing and yellowed teeth, and once they’re shoved into his pocket, he leans a little closer to them – and Riki wishes he wouldn’t, really, but he’s not going to complain about their first potential lead, bad breath or not – and tells them everything he knows.

It’s that simple, sometimes. It’s all about choosing the right cover, the right person to be. Riki knows that better than anyone, better than even Heeseung, even though he’s supposed to be the amateur out of the two of them, the one learning from his older brother.

As far as Heeseung knows, as far as he’ll ever know, that’s exactly what he is.

⛥⛥⛥

“What a load of crap,” Heeseung mutters, scuffing his shoe against the cracked and overgrown sidewalk under his feet, lifting his head to look over his shoulder and attempt a glance at his brother’s expression. “Can you believe they actually make money off that nonsense?”

“That guy definitely did,” Riki mutters, shaking his head in clear disapproval. His brother disapproves of almost everything he does, but he’s not in charge, so. Heeseung’s not overly concerned with his approval. “And it got us nowhere, by the way. I’m pretty sure Owen Grant and Joseph Sim weren’t murdered by an old Lightkeeper that hasn’t actually been spotted in almost a hundred years.”

“I know,” Heeseung mutters, more than a little bitterly. “That’s what I was saying –”

“Hey!”

Heeseung stops in his tracks, suddenly enough that Riki nearly collides with him, because he’s still not looking up from where he’s been staring down at the ground like it’s done something to personally offend him. Without hesitation, without any real thought, his hand moves to the holster on his back, concealed by his shirt and his jacket over top of it, but always fully loaded with rock salt.

Just over Riki’s shoulder, approaching them quickly, each step full of something that Heeseung recognizes as annoyance, anger, is a boy. A man, probably, although he’s a little on the smaller side – and he’ll admit, on the pretty side. Heeseung has eyes. He’s only human, after all.

He scans him in a split second, looking for a weapon of some kind, or something that would imply that this guy isn't human, but he only finds clenched fists and flushed cheeks, with a splotchy, mostly faded bruise on his left one.

Harmless, but then again, he can never know that for sure. He keeps his hand on his gun.

Riki turns around too, and Heeseung makes a note to scold him later for not reaching for his gun. “Hey,” he says, hesitant and confused, guarded. Not nearly guarded enough, for Heeseung’s liking. He doesn’t see him as a threat, and that, Heeseung supposes, is what makes them different. But again, he’ll scold him for it later.

“Hey,” the guy repeats again, once he’s come to an abrupt stop a few feet away from them. He’s wearing a white apron, tied into a bow that sits on the small of his waist, covering most of a light blue uniform top with the name of the diner they’d just walked out of embroidered onto it. On the opposite side, there’s a name. Jake. “Why are you asking about the – the murders?”

“We’re writing –” Riki starts, easily slipping back into the cover Heeseung brilliantly devised for them, but Jake doesn’t let him finish.

“I heard all that,” Jake says matter-of-factly. “But that doesn’t explain why you’re asking about the murders.”

“It doesn’t?” Heeseung asks, even though he knows it doesn’t. The goal, as he raises a questioning eyebrow and stares Jake down, is to see his reaction, his response.

“No,” Jake insists. “They have nothing to do with the lighthouse, or some phony ghost.”

“You shouldn’t say that too loud,” Heeseung says easily, putting on a slanting, slightly sleazy grin, gesturing vaguely at a group of tourists passing them by, paying them no mind. “You’ll ruin some poor sucker’s vacation. September’s peak season for you guys, isn’t it? It’s when the –”

“When the Lightkeeper is most active,” Jake finishes for him. “Like I said, it’s all bullshit. And it has nothing to do with the murders.”

Heeseung’s gaze flickers down to the name on his shirt again. Jake, he repeats in his mind, and wonders why it’s ringing a bell, distant and a bit buried under all the thoughts about how cute this guy is when he’s angry.

“You’re, uh – you’re Jake, right?” Riki asks, carefully, like he’s dealing with a wounded, flighty animal. “Jake Sim?”

Ah, Heeseung thinks. Clever little shit. Sometimes, he’s glad he keeps him around. Sometimes.

“Yes,” Jake huffs, clearly thinking he was doing a good job of covering up his personal interest in the topic he’d rushed to confront them about.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Riki says after a moment, and Jake winces, averting his gaze away from them for the first time in their confrontation, like he can’t bear to meet their eyes now that they’ve pieced together who he is.

“Both of your losses,” Heeseung corrects. “Owen Grant was your – friend, wasn’t he?”

“My boyfriend,” Jake grits out. “And my father was Joseph Sim. Both dead, within two weeks of each other. So I’m sure you can understand why I think this is all a little too fresh for you to be writing about –”

“Listen,” Heeseung starts, and there must be something in his tone that tells Riki he may not handle this as delicately as he thinks he should – and what gave him that impression, he has no clue – because he doesn’t let him finish.

“We do understand. And we’re really sorry,” Riki says quickly, gently, in that soft tone that Heeseung hates, the one that he only uses after Heeseung has already screwed up, when he’s trying to make up for it. This time, he didn’t even give him the chance to screw things up. “We didn’t mean to overstep. We’re just – really interested in the town. There’s uh, there’s a lot of good people here, and it’s a shame to see someone hiding behind a fake ghost story to do something so awful.”

Jake eyes him for a moment, and then says, “You’re not really here to write a book about the ghost, are you?”

Heeseung frowns. What did they do to blow their cover? What did they give away? It was Riki’s tone, surely, because no self-respecting author would ever back down that easily, not when they’re speaking to the greatest first-hand source available.

“No,” Riki says. Heeseung drives his elbow into his ribcage, finally taking his hand off his gun in order to do so. “We’re uh, we’re here to write a book about how – people take advantage of urban legends. To get away with murder. It’s more true crime than anything, but – less sensationalized.”

Something in Jake’s face changes, and Heeseung doesn’t think it’s much of an improvement, but it is something else, something a little less hostile, and he has to admit – it’s not the dumbest thing Riki could have said. He’s made their cover into a cover, and let Jake in on it, and now, regardless of whether or not he’s still unhappy with them, he might trust them just a little more.

“Well,” Jake says after a moment. “Whatever it is, just leave us out of it. I don’t want to see you asking questions around town again, okay? Go – find someplace else. Awful things happen everywhere.”

“We will,” Riki assures him.

And then Jake is gone, turning on his heel to head back in the direction of the diner, fists still clenched at his sides, marching with pure conviction in every step. Heeseung watches him go, partially to make sure he’s not going to turn around and flash inky black, demon-indicating eyes at them, and partially because – well, again. He’s only human.

“He’s right about that, at least,” Heeseung mutters, earning a hum of acknowledgement from Riki as Jake reaches the entrance to the diner. He doesn’t shoot them a demonic glare, but he does take a startled step back, when the door opens just before he has a chance to pull it open himself.

The man they were talking to, the one that scammed Heeseung out of a hundred dollars, practically hangs off the doorframe, reaching out and grabbing Jake by the waist, slurring out, “What’s it take to get another coffee around here, sweetheart?”

“You’re still drunk, Frank,” Jake sighs, attempting to shrug him off just as the old man slides his hand down to grope at his ass.

Heeseung jolts forward without thought, overtaken by the urge to slam his fist into the old man’s jaw. Riki holds him back, by the collar of his jacket, like Heeseung is a cat getting into something he shouldn’t.

He’s about to protest, but then Jake shoves at the creep himself, and hisses out, “When they kick you out of the bar because you’re too wasted, Frank, that means you go home to rot. You don’t come here.”

Frank stumbles back into the diner, and through the partially obscured windows, Heeseung’s pretty sure he sees him hit the floor, sees Jake stepping over him, stomping behind the counter without another glance spared at him.

“Huh,” Heeseung laughs a bit. “I know we just got here, but I think I might actually miss this town.”

Riki rolls his eyes when he turns to face him again, like he somehow knows that Heeseung isn’t actually talking about the town, but rather, the pretty, feisty inhabitants that make up its population. “We’re not leaving yet,” he says simply.

“We’re not?” Heeseung asks. “I don’t know, man. Seems like this whole Lightkeeper spirit thing is baloney.”

“Heeseung, Jake Sim’s boyfriend and father were just murdered,” Riki points out, glancing at his diner over his shoulder. “And he just chased us down to tell us not to look into it. You think that isn’t suspicious?”

“I’m not saying it’s not suspicious,” Heeseung shrugs. “I’m saying – even if he did tear ‘em to bits himself, regular old murder isn’t really our jurisdiction. I don’t think he even could do it, not unless he turns a bit hairy and wolfish under a full moon – and it wasn’t a full moon when Owen Grant and Joseph Sim were murdered. He’s small enough that a stiff breeze might blow him away.”

“He could be a witch,” Riki suggests. “He could be a demon, or possessed, or working with a demon, for all we know.”

“My gut is telling me he isn’t,” Heeseung says easily.

“Your gut is telling you to go back in there and order another cheeseburger to-go with a side of his number, I’m sure,” Riki says dryly, and – Heeseung resents that, even though he’s absolutely correct. “We’re staying. We’re working the case until we know for sure Jake Sim isn’t possessed.”

And Heeseung highly doubts it – although he can’t entirely place why, other than a general feeling that he liked the way Jake Sim carried himself – but he’s trying not to shut all of Riki’s ideas down anymore. It was one of his more simple requests, when the two of them reunited a year earlier, and it’s one Heeseung is doing his best to stick to.

Because if he doesn’t, he knows Riki will leave. And it’s not that he doesn’t want that – because all he ever wanted was for Riki to be far away from him, from all of this, where it’s safe – but right now, it’s more important to keep his brother close.

It’s the only way to keep an eye on him, to make sure whatever he’s been hiding from Heeseung doesn’t spiral completely out of their control.

⛥⛥⛥

“I don’t see the point in this,” Heeseung huffs, for the third time in less than ten minutes, doing another quick sweep of the treeline behind them with his flashlight. Riki sighs, and bites his tongue in an attempt to keep from snapping at him. “The murders all happened downtown. Nowhere near the world’s most decrepit lighthouse.”

“Because my –” Riki cuts off, only to sigh again, and to turn to face his brother properly. His tone turns almost pleading in a way he finds a little embarrassing, but necessary, because he knows by now that Heeseung’s disinterested aura means he’s going to have to do a little bit of begging. “My gut is telling me something’s here.”

“Your gut?” Heeseung questions, and a long, loaded beat of silence passes between them. “Your visions, you mean.”

“My dreams,” Riki corrects stubbornly.

“You didn’t tell me you had one about this,” Heeseung points out.

Riki turns away from Heeseung again, shining his flashlight along the bottom of the lighthouse, looking for signs of a way to enter, a boarded up door, stones that look a little loose. Something. Anything. “How’d you think I found out about it?”

“I don’t know,” Heeseung says dismissively. “The same way you find all our other cases. Nerd shit. Research. Watching the news.”

Riki rolls his eyes.

“What was the vision?”

“Dream,” Riki corrects again, knowing it’s pointless, because they’ve had this exact conversation countless times, ever since he admitted to Heeseung that he’s been seeing things he shouldn’t be able to see. “It was – someone falling off the top of the lighthouse. A boy.”

“Jake?” Heeseung asks.

Riki shakes his head. “Not Jake. And – it looked like something might have pushed him.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” Riki says. “No one, from what I could see. But he fell like he’d been pushed, or – or more like pulled off of it. And I saw – an altar. At the top.”

“So we are dealing with a witch, then,” Heeseung says, reaching out and attempting to grab at a stone that looks like it may come out with enough force. It doesn’t. It doesn’t even budge.

“Maybe,” he mutters, crouching down, touching the ground in front of him. “Look at this.”

“It’s all dead,” Heeseung observes, leaning down too, taking a few blades of yellowed grass between his fingers. “Well, shit.”

“I told you. Definitely a witch. Or witches, maybe,” Riki says. “We should –”

He never gets a chance to tell Heeseung what they should do – and it’s not like he would have listened to him, anyway – because as he starts, Heeseung turns in one quick, sudden movement, and shines his flashlight over to where they parked the car, his beloved ‘67 Impala that Riki is barely even allowed to look at for too long, let alone drive.

“Do you hear that?” He asks.

“Sirens,” Riki says, because he does hear them, faint like they’re coming from the town centre they left behind in favour of investigating Riki’s flimsy, prophetic-dream-based lead.

“Let’s go,” Heeseung says automatically, wasting no time as he darts back over to the car, getting in and starting it before Riki has even managed to catch up with him, let alone pull open his creaky old door and slump into the passenger’s seat.

Heeseung’s always a step ahead of him, or at least, he was, before Riki’s brain went a bit haywire and started feeding him visions – dreams – that sometimes predict the future.

But Riki definitely didn’t predict this, and he doesn’t quite know if that’s a good thing or not.

The commotion in the town square is drowned out briefly by the sound of Heeseung’s squealing tires, and Riki doesn’t hesitate before getting out, nearly tripping over his own feet as he stumbles out of the car and pushes through the small crowd forming around the tape reading CRIME SCENE - DO NOT CROSS.

Heeseung isn’t far behind him, bumping his shoulder against Riki’s as he skids to a stop and takes a look for himself, as they both process the brutal scene before them.

And then, Heeseung mutters, “Oh, thank god,” and Riki can’t imagine what he’d be thanking him for, not until he follows his gaze and sees Jake, perfectly intact, sitting in the back of an ambulance a few steps from the carnage, but clearly still very much a part of the marked crime scene. He’s wrapped in a shock blanket, and handcuffed to the ambulance, but he’s alive, and Riki will admit that the first thing he feels is relief, too.

As suspicious as he may be of Jake, he’s still glad it’s not his entrails scattered across the pavement, his blood seeping the sliver of his pants he can see from under the oversized shock blanket.

Before Riki can figure out who the owner of the piece of rib cage near his foot was, Heeseung takes off. He weaves through the crowd, along the side of the crime scene tape, not caring who he bumps into as he quickly makes his way over to the ambulance containing Riki’s suspect – and that is what he is, however nice he may seem. Riki follows him, because again, that’s his suspect, and apparently, now the object of Heeseung’s ever-fleeting affections. He won’t let him blow this case by being himself.

He doesn’t get there fast enough, even though he arrives mere seconds after Heeseung does.

“No,” Jake says, his voice shaking, clearly on the verge of letting tears break through his state of shock. “No. Absolutely not. I told you to leave.”

“We just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Heeseung says quickly, smoothly as ever.

Jake gawks at Heeseung in disbelief for nearly a full minute, then snaps, “I’m not fucking okay.”

Riki’s attention is caught by a cop calling something out to another cop, both of them looking entirely perplexed and very distressed. He pulls him aside, and Riki squints, just in time to see him mouth a single word. A name, actually.

“Of course,” Riki says quickly, fixing his eyes back on Jake. “Of course you’re not. Look, we were just on our way out, and we saw the sirens. We’re leaving, we just wanted to make sure –”

“Make sure of what?” Jake hisses. “That it wasn’t me? You think – you think whatever’s doing this, you thought it would come after me next?”

“Whatever?” Heeseung repeats questioningly.

“Whoever,” Jake repeats. “Whoever is doing this. I’m not – I don’t know why this is happening to me, but I’m not – I’m not –”

“We’re leaving,” Riki insists, wrapping a hand around Heeseung’s elbow and attempting to pull him away from the shivering, truly petrified man in front of them.

Heeseung doesn’t budge. “You’re not what?”

“Part of this,” Jake gasps out, through steadily flowing tears. “Whatever this is, it’s not happening. It’s not – it’s not happening to me. It can’t be. I haven’t – I haven’t done anything to deserve this.”

“But what did happen?” Heeseung asks, with suspicion all over his tone. Riki can tell he’s starting to see his side of things – but of course, as usual, the moment he actually starts to believe Riki’s theory is the very same moment that Riki himself starts to doubt it.

Jake looks up at them with wide, unblinking, teary eyes, keeping them fixed on Heeseung’s face for a long moment. And then, he glances at Riki, and he must find something in his expression, because he takes a deep breath, seemingly steadies himself with it, and says, “I don’t know. I don’t – I have no idea what happened. I have no idea why this would happen. He just fucking died, right in front of me. Just like the rest of them did. Horrible, and bloody, and instant. Is that a good enough quote for your fucking book?”

“We’re so sorry, Jake. Really,” Riki mutters again, pulling on Heeseung hard enough to take him with him as he manages to put several steps of distance between them and Jake.

“Dude,” Heeseung says, somehow managing to sound harsh and criticizing and disappointed with only a word. “I know I was skeptical, but come on. What are the odds of Jake being a witness to three murders in two weeks?”

“It’s Frank,” Riki tells him. “From the diner.”

Heeseung looks over his shoulder, at the grotesque body at the center of the scene, and when he looks back at Riki, his expression is steeled in determination. “I mean, I thought the guy was a creep too, but I think a restraining order would have done the trick –”

“I don’t think he did it,” Riki says firmly. “Any of it.”

“What?” Heeseung frowns, clearly surprised by Riki’s sudden change in attitude.

“He seems terrified, Heeseung.”

“Demons are great actors.”

“But I don’t think we’re dealing with a demon.”

“Yeah, because of your vision, which –”

“My dream, but also – the dead grass around the lighthouse,” Riki points out.

“Circumstantial,” Heeseung says dismissively. “It’s colder up here. Look, let’s just – slip some holy water in the IV drip they’ve got him on, see if he burns, and if he does, we gank him. We’ll be back on the road by morning.”

“What about the witch, then? And the boy I saw falling?”

“Riks,” Heeseung starts, slow and careful, something that’s rare for him, which tells Riki he’s not going to like what follows it. “Maybe your dreams are just – a suggestion.”

“A suggestion?” Riki repeats, wrinkling his nose in clear distaste.

“Maybe it was just to get us here. To show us something hinky was going on with Jake over there, so we know who to look for.”

“Jake wasn’t in my dream,” Riki points out, and then finds his gaze wandering over to him again. He has his head dropped, and he has one shaking hand placed on his lap, and he’s crying, hard enough that Riki can see the fat droplets of salty tears as they drop and land on his lap. “Just – let me talk to him. Alone.”

“Absolutely not,” Heeseung says quickly, protectively, but it doesn’t matter, because Riki is already gone, and Heeseung doesn’t follow him, doesn’t even attempt another protest. He must know better by now, must know that there is no saying no to Riki, not when his mind is truly set on something.

Jake doesn’t lift his head when he approaches, but he seems aware of him regardless, sniffling a few times before he whispers, so quietly that Riki almost misses it entirely, “You’re not here to write a book at all, are you?”

“No,” Riki admits. They can find a different cover, if they need to. But he needs to know what Jake is thinking, what he didn’t say earlier, when Heeseung asked him what happened.

“What are you, then?” Jake asks, looking up at him, his red rimmed eyes drifting across Riki’s face like he’s trying to figure him out from the look of him alone. “Undercover feds? No offense, but – you look a little young for that.”

“We’re here to help,” Riki says simply. “We’re here to listen. And – we’ll believe you, even if no one else does,” he pauses for a moment, giving the words time to settle before he asks, “So, what happened, Jake?”

Jake stares at him for several seconds, and then he takes another deep breath, and Riki sees the moment he resolves not to answer him.

“You should leave town,” he insists. “It’s not safe here.”

“We can handle it,” Riki assures him.

“No one can handle this,” Jake blurts, gesturing wildly at the tattered body to his left. “No one can handle the – the sound of them coming, the way they rip them apart, the way –” he cuts off, because the frantic movement had been enough to get the attention of the two cops still trying to piece together what had taken place here, alerting them to Riki’s presence, to the stranger talking to the man who is most likely their prime suspect.

“Look,” Riki says quickly, as one of them starts towards them, hand threateningly placed on his gun, surely about to echo Jake’s sentiment and tell him to get far away from here, too. “Just – if you need to talk about what happened with someone, even if you think it’s going to sound totally crazy, we’re at the motel right off the interstate, okay? We’ll listen. We’ll help. I promise.”

He holds his hand out, pinky extended, and for a moment, Jake just stares at it. Heeseung is at his side again, attempting to usher him away from the scene they’re on the verge of making, but Riki stays right where he is, and waits. He knows he’s right. He trusts his instincts.

Jake reaches out, and wraps his pinky around Riki’s. There’s a bit of blood under his nail, but still, Riki trusts his instincts.

Jake didn’t do this. He doesn’t know who, or what did, but that’s exactly what they’re going to find out, and why they’re staying, no matter what Heeseung has to say about it.

⛥⛥⛥

The thing is, really, Heeseung does trust his brother. He trusts his instincts, his gut. But he trusts his own a little more, and that’s gotten him this far in life, with or without Riki at his side, with or without his newfound visions that he’s becoming a little too reliant on, in Heeseung’s opinion.

Heeseung was just fine, on his own. He didn’t want Riki’s help, because Riki’s help meant Riki’s involvement. He never wanted this life for his brother, and even though he knows Riki can’t understand it, even now, he had his reasons for pushing him away, for urging him to have a normal life, for sending him to college, even though he came back a complete and total stranger to him.

He knows Riki doesn’t understand. He knows he doesn’t trust him anymore, not fully, doesn’t respect him and everything he did to keep him safe, once it was just the two of them, once the responsibility all fell onto Heeseung’s shoulders.

And he’d do anything to earn that trust back, but then again, he knows that he can’t, because when he says that, that he’d do anything – he knows he doesn’t really mean it.

He’d do anything to keep Riki safe. He doesn’t have to understand it, or respect it, or trust that it’s the truth. It is the truth, and it’s the most important promise Heeseung’s ever made, one he’ll uphold no matter what his little brother has to say about it.

All that is to say – he agrees to stay a night in the local motel, because he trusts Riki’s gut, but he doesn’t let him seek Jake out when he doesn’t show up the next morning like Riki swore he would, because he trusts his own more.

“I’m not leaving,” Riki insists, even though Heeseung hasn’t even come close to suggesting that, not yet. “I have a feeling.”

“Okay,” Heeseung says easily, holding his hands up in surrender. “I’m not going to force you. Let’s stay here, and do your nerd shit, and see if we can’t get a lead of our own.”

Riki stares at him for a moment, his expression hard and distant and a little unsure, and then he nods, clenching and unclenching his jaw and disguising his ire with a humoured snort. “We,” he repeats mockingly. “You mean I'm going to have to do all the research while you take a nap.”

“Of course not,” Heeseung assures him, and then promptly flops down onto the cheap, springy mattress behind him, and does just that.

He wakes up no more than twenty minutes later, groggy and disoriented, and it’s to Riki shaking him. Heeseung jumps in surprise, and instinctually sends his fist flying towards his brother’s cheek, but Riki flinches away at the last second. And, okay. Heeseung never said his instincts were perfect.

Riki doesn’t seem phased, though. He seems a little wild, a little excited, and Heeseung briefly wonders if there’s been another gruesome death, before he remembers that his brother isn’t nearly as numb to all of this as Heeseung is, and that he likely wouldn’t react with interest and borderline glee at the prospect of another mysterious, brutal murder. He’d only react this way for a lead, one that will get them closer to putting an end to the murder for good. And Heeseung shares in excitement for that, too. Really, he does.

“Jake had a brother,” Riki announces. “Heeseung, are you hearing me? He had a brother.”

“Calm down, kid,” Heeseung huffs, sitting up, swatting at him until he takes a step back, and then repeating, “Had a brother?”

“He killed himself,” Riki says, with a bit too much eagerness, a bit too much enthusiasm considering the subject matter. “A year ago. Almost exactly, give or take a few weeks. Guess how he died?”

Heeseung knows from experience that Riki isn’t posing a rhetorical question, that he actually does expect a guess from him, so he takes a moment to get the gears turning in his brain again, and tries to give him a good one. “Ah,” he says eventually. “He jumped off the top of the lighthouse, didn’t he?”

“Exactly,” Riki says with a snap of his fingers.

“So he’s the guy you’ve been seeing,” Heeseung says, then pauses. “That didn’t come out right. I sure hope you’re not seeing any ghosts.”

“Ha,” Riki lets out a breathy, noncommittal laugh, and sits back down in front of his laptop. “It’s him, though. Jungwon,” he reads from the screen in front of him. “He was nineteen when he died. And if my dream was real, then – he didn’t kill himself. Someone killed him, but the police wrote it off as a suicide.”

“All the makings of a vengeful spirit,” Heeseung agrees. “Who’s our witch, then? Jake? Maybe – trying to take revenge on the people that killed his baby brother?”

“That’s the thing,” Riki says. “In my dream, there was no one actually there. Just Jungwon, and an altar, right? But it didn’t look like he jumped. I think he was trying to summon something, or cast something, and it – went wrong, somehow. Maybe it turned on him.”

“That’s not the thing, though,” Heeseung points out. “None of that explains why people are dying now.”

“I know,” Riki says, looking a little defeated for the first time since he’d woken him. “I don’t think we can figure that out without talking to Jake.”

“So you do think he’s involved.”

“It’s pretty clear that he’s at the centre of this,” he argues. “If it is Jungwon doing this, then he must be tied to Jake in some way. All three victims died right in front of him. Maybe he goes where Jake goes.”

“What about the night he fell?” Heeseung asks. “Was Jake there that night? If Jungwon’s one of our victims too, then that’s a pattern –”

There’s a knock at the door. Both of them jolt into action, necks straining with how quickly they turn their heads, on their feet with guns drawn before the potential threat has even finished their third knock. Riki approaches the door, slowly, without making a single sound, and peers through the peephole.

And then he sighs in relief, takes a step back, and opens the door before Heeseung even has a chance to signal him with a silent request to know who was knocking.

Jake stands there, no longer dressed in bloodied clothes or wrapped in a shock blanket or in handcuffs, instead tugging at the worn and frayed sleeves of his hoodie, wearing a cap pulled low like he’s trying to go unnoticed by anyone he’s not explicitly here to see. And who he’s here to see, it seems, is the two of them, because he doesn’t hesitate before barging into their room.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you guys,” he starts, unphased by their defensive state, their guarded stances, breezing past them and sitting on the edge of Riki’s empty bed before continuing, “But you’re fucking weirding me out, and I’d really like it if you left town.”

“What'd we do?” Heeseung asks, because as far as he knows, they’ve been minding their business in their motel room all day, unless Riki somehow snuck out in the twenty minutes Heeseung was out cold. “And how did you get our room number?”

“I asked the lady at the check-in desk what room the two freaks were staying in,” Jake says simply.

“Two freaks you came all this way to visit,” Heeseung points out, and really, he doesn’t even mean for it to take on a flirtatious tone, but he knows it does anyway, because Riki shoots him an exasperated glare. Really. Jake’s probably a demon. Heeseung wouldn’t flirt with a demon, not even accidentally.

“Because I –” Jake starts, a bit helplessly, stammering over his words for a moment before eventually settling on, “Because no one else believes me, and I don’t know what else to do. You said,” he looks over at Riki, his gaze turning a bit pleading, “You said you’d help me, right?”

“Did someone else die?” Heeseung asks, before Riki can give what likely would have been a too soft, too touchy-feely answer.

“No,” Jake says, but he looks a little horrified anyway, “But – last night, when – when Frank – died, I saw… something. And I saw it when my boyfriend died, and my dad, too.” A moment passes, and he corrects, softly, “Him. I saw him.”

“Your brother,” Riki says quietly.

“Yeah,” Jake says weakly, closing his eyes for a long moment, letting tears spill onto his cheeks again. “How – how is that possible? I – I saw him. It looked like he was standing right there, like I could reach out and touch him, and then – he was gone. Like he was never there to begin with. But I know what I saw.”

“Was Jungwon cremated?”

Jake’s eyes dart over to Heeseung when he asks the blunt question, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. “How do you know his name? How – how do you even know about him at all?”

“It’s our job to know things,” Heeseung answers, vague and practiced.

“God,” Jake sighs, the sound momentarily catching around a sob. “This is so – you’re both so weird.”

“Yeah, well. Normal people don’t usually see the ghosts of their dead brothers tearing innocent dudes apart, so. Join the club.”

“Heeseung –”

Jake stands, in one quick motion, like he wasn’t even aware he was rising to his feet until he already had. He marches over to Heeseung, getting in his face in an adorably unthreatening way, and hisses out, “He wasn’t the one doing it. And – even if he did – they’re not innocent. And yes, he was fucking cremated.”

Heeseung and Riki share a glance, and it contains a full conversation, a full argument, one that Riki wins with ease – only because Heeseung lets him win, though.

“Start from the beginning,” Riki chimes in, stepping a little closer to Jake, putting a hesitant hand on his shoulder and guiding him back towards his bed. “Please. Just – take a breath, and tell us everything about last night, and all the other attacks. Every little detail, even if you think it’s not important.”

Jake sits, takes a deep breath, and tells them everything.

He was leaving a shift. It was ten minutes after midnight, because Donna – the other waitress, the one that creepy Frank was ogling, the one that called them nice boys, something Jake points out as particularly absurd and clearly misguided – is always a little slow getting her coat on and locking up.

They close at midnight, and open again four hours later, just enough time for the cleaners to get in and out of there. Jake was not going to be there when they opened, because he wasn’t scheduled, but he was sure that Frank would be. Every night, Frank goes to the bar, and drinks himself stupid, and gets kicked out shortly before they close up at two. He then spends two hours slumped over and asleep in front of the diner, waiting for the morning shift workers to arrive and let him in, so he can refuel with several cups of coffee and restart the whole depressing cycle over again.

He’s harmless, according to Jake. Annoying, a bit of a pervert, but generally speaking, harmless.

Or, he was harmless. But that night, he’d been ejected from the bar ahead of schedule. That night, he was feeling a little less harmless than usual, and he started following Jake home the moment he and Donna parted ways for the night.

Jake could feel someone in the darkness behind him, but then again, he’s used to that. He's been feeling it a lot, lately, ever since his boyfriend died two weeks ago, when he stepped out of the house he’d only gone into long enough to – do something, although he doesn’t say what – and found Owen lying in a pool of his own blood and gore on his back porch. The only reason Jake wasn’t locked up on the spot was because there were witnesses, because both of his neighbours were out on their own porch, straining to see over the privacy fence when they heard the sound of Jake’s weepy pleas for his boyfriend to leave him alone. They saw Jake go into the house, saw Owen Grant choke and sputter and drop dead seemingly of natural causes, saw him get torn apart by some unseen force, and then, as they called for help, they saw Jake walk back out, dropping to his knees in shock, screaming in terror.

In the end, they called it a bear attack. There was no physical evidence tying Jake to the attack itself, and even if there was, the body was in a state that no human being could inflict. The neighbours insisted they didn’t see any sort of animal strike him, but then again, they’re getting a little old, aren’t they? Their vision isn’t the best. Their memory can’t be trusted. It was enough to clear Jake’s name, at least, for the most part, but not enough to make them believe in anything remotely unnatural taking place. Strange, for sure. But it was just a bear.

But Jake felt someone there. He swears it. Just beyond the tree line that closes in his backyard, he could see Jungwon, but – as soon as he tried to look directly at him, he disappeared. He could only see him out of the corner of his eye, but he knows his brother. He would recognize him instantly, even in death.

When their father died, mere days later, he could feel him then, too. And he could see him, peering around the corner of the mechanic’s shop he’d worked at their entire lives, watching as the car he was working under dropped in one fell, punishing swoop. He and Jake had been arguing about something. Jake doesn’t remember what. He’s lying, and they both know it, but he’s allowed to have this one. Just this one.

His father’s body was mangled and torn apart far beyond the capabilities of what the weight of a vehicle could do, and there was no evidence of any failure – or any tampering – with the hydraulic lift, and it was ruled as a horrible, cruelly-timed accident. Jake was questioned, and cleared, thanks to the patron of the shop waiting outside that saw the whole thing happen through their car window. But this time, Jake didn’t tell the police everything.

Because, according to him, his father wasn’t working under the car, the moment it dropped. He was dragged under the car by some unseen force, and then, there was Jungwon, in the corner of his eye, watching it crush him, watching him meet a quick and relatively painless death.

And when Frank reached out and tried to grab Jake from behind the night before, his hand didn’t even make contact with Jake’s ass before he was flung backwards, directly into the street and in front of an oncoming vehicle. The camera outside the grocery store across the street caught the whole thing, and Jake didn’t push him, didn't even turn to face him. It was impossible to understand, to explain, but there was nothing the cops could use to justify holding Jake for more than a few hours of questioning.

But every time, without fail, there was Jungwon – although they couldn’t possibly know that, either. And there was also something else, something that Jake swears had real intent to maim, which, according to him, is never the feeling his brother’s presence brings.

Jungwon would never hurt a fly. Everyone loved Jungwon. No, there’s no one that would ever want to hurt him. No, he’d never want to hurt anyone, either. He had lots of friends. No enemies. Well, there was that one guy – but that was kid stuff, schoolyard bullying, and Jake handled it, because he handled everything for Jungwon, whether he wanted him to or not. Well, because that’s just what brothers do. Yes, they got along. Yes, they were close. No, they didn’t fight leading up to his death. No, Jake doesn’t understand why he killed himself. He’s never been able to understand it. It came completely out of nowhere, and Jake was completely devastated by it.

No, he wasn’t a witch, what are you even talking about?

Something, some unseen force, is killing these men, and Jake is convinced it’s not Jungwon. But the dogs, the invisible ones he heard the distant barks of in the moment before these three men died mere steps away from him, are the ones that are tearing them apart after the fact. And, Jake insists, the dogs are the pressing matter, the thing to investigate. Not his brother’s death.

And they do believe him, because they promised that they would. But they’re not entirely convinced that they can trust Jake’s gut – so what he doesn’t know, certainly won’t kill him.

After all, nothing else has killed him, not yet, try as it might.

⛥⛥⛥

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Riki mutters under his breath.

“So you keep saying,” Heeseung says dryly, leaning his head back to rest against the driver’s seat headrest, flicking his gaze up to the roof of the car instead of the house they’re supposed to be watching, but only Riki actually is. Jake is in there, and there’s only one light on, and every so often, he catches a glimpse of him walking by the window, darting around the room in an effort to follow their instruction.

It’s well after midnight. Riki doesn’t think any of them are going to get any rest tonight.

“Hellhounds would mean a deal was made,” Riki says, like Heeseung doesn’t already know that. “But what are the odds that three different men would sell their soul in the same week, for them to die one after another like that?”

“Maybe the demon was on tour,” Heeseung suggests. “Like a travelling salesman. One week only, deal of a lifetime. Eh?” He nudges his elbow into Riki’s side, where he’s slumped into the passenger’s seat in a way that’s becoming increasingly uncomfortable. He’d put his feet up on the dash, if he wasn’t so sure that it’d end with Heeseung tossing him out of the car and driving off without him, never to be seen again.

“But it just –”

“If you say it doesn’t make sense, I’m going to shove this down your throat,” Heeseung says, waving the burrito he’d insisted they pick up on their way to stakeout outside of Jake’s house around threateningly. “None of this makes sense. Nothing we deal with ever makes any sense.”

Riki sighs, bringing a hand up to pinch at his nose bridge, still desperately trying to sort out all the details in his mind. “Jake better come out with something we can burn,” he says after a moment. “This better just be a cut-and-dry haunting case after all.”

“Something tells me we aren’t going to get that lucky,” Heeseung says through a mouthful of burrito, nodding towards the house again. Jungwon’s bedroom, where Jake was doing his search, has the light off now, and another one has turned on, closer to the front door. A moment later, sure enough, he emerges, arms wrapped around himself, head bowed in something like shame.

“There’s nothing,” he huffs out after his quick jog across the street, looking over his shoulder like he was convinced something had followed him out of the house. “My dad – he got rid of everything, like I told you. There’s nothing in his closet, his dresser, nothing he ever even would have owned, let alone a – piece of him.”

“Okay,” Riki sighs, and nods. “We’ll just have to keep looking.”

The back door to the car opens, and shuts a moment later, and they turn around to find Jake in their back seat, making himself comfortable, pulling the seatbelt across him and buckling it.

“What?” He asks, eyes wide with confusion and flitting between the two of them.

“Where, uh – where’re you headed?”

“With you guys,” Jake says, like that should have been obvious. Maybe it should have been, but nothing about Jake has been obvious, so far. After a moment of them staring at him blankly, he leans forward a bit, and says, “I’m not going back in that house. I can feel him there.”

“Your brother?” Heeseung asks, a thinly veiled accusation in his tone. “I thought you said his presence didn’t feel hostile.”

“It’s not. I can feel Owen in there,” Jake says, like that should have been obvious, too. “That’s where he died. I think he might still be there.”

Heeseung looks at Riki, and Riki looks at him, and they share another long, communicative glance.

“What?” Jake presses again.

“We’ll need to know where he was buried,” Riki says after a moment.

“Seriously?” Jake asks, and when their long stretch of silence confirms that they are, in fact, serious, he adds, “You guys are so fucking weird.”

⛥⛥⛥

“He’s definitely our witch,” Heeseung mutters under his breath, glancing over his shoulder where Jake is standing, arms still wrapped around himself, a sour look on his face that really doesn’t suit him at all.

“He’s not the one doing this,” Riki says firmly, with all the sureness Heeseung is used to hearing from him. Stubborn brat.

“That doesn’t mean he’s not a witch,” Heeseung insists, and turns back to the ground they were digging at, forcing his shovel deep into it, lifting a mound of relatively fresh dirt, and tossing it aside. “If there are no deals being made – which we still don’t know for sure, by the way – then someone is summoning these hellhounds.”

“Sure, but – it’s not him.”

“Look,” Heeseung sighs, turning to face Riki, leaning on his shovel where he’d stuck it into the ground, “I get that you’ve got a little crush on him, or you’re feeling some sort of psychic kinship –”

“I don’t have a crush on him. And I’m not psychic,” Riki snaps, and Heeseung resists the urge to roll his eyes.

“But Jake is,” Heeseung says. “You’re thinking it too, right? Unless he somehow managed to get two spirits to attach themselves to him, then he’s feeling ghosts he shouldn’t be able to feel.”

“Maybe they did,” Riki says easily. “He’s seen a lot of death in the last year, Heeseung. Maybe he’s – double haunted.”

“Double haunted,” Heeseung repeats dryly.

“Stop talking about me,” Jake calls out from where he’s hovering, far enough away that he thinks he won’t get caught grave digging, if they do.

Heeseung looks at him again. He’s frowning, clearly exhausted. Again, it doesn’t look right on him. He looks like the type of person that should always be smiling, carefree. And maybe he was, before all of this, but he definitely isn’t anymore.

“It’s our job to talk about you,” Heeseung points out. “At least until your ghost problem goes away.”

Jake’s eyes narrow, and he takes a few steps closer to them. “You keep saying that,” he huffs. “What exactly is your job? Are you, like – ghostbusters?”

“No,” Heeseung snorts, mildly offended. “Do you see any proton packs? Did we drive you here in the ectomobile?”

“Nerd,” Riki mutters under his breath as he continues his digging, fighting a smile when Heeseung glares at him.

“We’re hunters,” Heeseung tells Jake, taking another shovel full of dirt off the coffin and tossing it aside.

“Ghost hunters,” Jake repeats.

“Everything hunters. Demons, ghouls, wendigos, witches –” He shoots a pointed look Jake’s way.

“My brother wasn’t a witch,” Jake argues, for what was probably the third time in the last hour.

“Maybe not,” Heeseung says airily. “Are you?”

“Heeseung,” Riki sighs, exasperated.

Heeseung doesn’t waver, holding Jake’s gaze, steady and sure. Jake holds it right back, his mouth pulled into a tight frown, his brows drawn together and furrowed.

“You guys are insane,” he tells them, also for what was probably the third time in the last hour. “There’s no such thing.”

“Fine,” Heeseung says easily. “If you can come up with another explanation for why dudes keep exploding in front of you, then I’m all ears.”

“I don’t know,” Jake says helplessly. “If I knew that, do you think I’d be going to you weirdos for help?”

Heeseung spends another long second staring at Jake. Admittedly – and it is hard for him to admit this – he knows Riki is right. If there is a witch, if Riki’s dream was accurate, he knows it’s not Jake, despite what he says. They’d already run all the tests on him – holy water went down just fine, silver didn’t burn him, and he’s done nothing to give Heeseung the impression that he’s anything but ordinary.

Or, well – not ordinary. That doesn’t seem like the right word to describe him.

There’s no way to test for a witch. They appear completely regular, and they can be anyone. The only way to catch them was to catch them in the act, which means they’re nothing more than sitting ducks, until the next time someone around Jake – or, potentially, Jake himself – is attacked.

Hopefully, that doesn’t happen tonight, while they’re around Jake. Heeseung’s never met a hellhound before, but he’s heard that they’re definitely not the most agreeable, willing-to-compromise creatures, and he’d prefer them as far away from him and his brother as possible.

He looks away from Jake, back down at the coffin that Riki was just starting to properly uncover, frowning, furrowing his brows in thought.

“Heeseung, help me with this,” Riki orders, sighing in annoyance when Heeseung doesn’t make any moves to do just that. “What is it?” He asks, clearly realizing that Heeseung was having a rare moment of drawing a conclusion without the help of his nerd little brother.

“They're not trying to hurt him,” Heeseung mumbles, glancing at Jake again, taking in his perplexed expression.

“What?” Jake asks.

“They're not trying to hurt you,” he repeats. "The hellhounds."

“We knew that,” Riki points out. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t be standing here.”

“No, but – they're protecting him. Frank was following you home, right?”

“Yeah, but the other two –” Riki starts, but Heeseung doesn’t let him finish.

“Who gave you that bruise, Jake?” He asks, gesturing to his cheek, the same one that's still sporting a faint mark.

“I – I don’t –”

“Why didn’t you want to be in the house with your boyfriend’s spirit?”

“Because he’s a fucking ghost, it’s scary –”

“He hurt you, didn’t he,” Riki says softly, clearly catching up with Heeseung’s angle. “And – and your dad, too, right?

For a while, there’s only the sound of bugs chirping in the trees, and then, “Yes,” Jake grits out, his expression crumbling for a brief moment. “Yeah, but – none of that is – new, and it’s not something I needed protection from, either. I’m not… I’m not the one doing this. I swear.”

“I know that,” Heeseung says, actually trying to be gentle for once, as Jake’s eyes squeeze shut, as a few tears roll their way down his cheeks. “I know that, Jake. And I think I know who is doing this. But you’re not going to like it.”

Jake lets out a soft whimper, crossing his arms a little tighter around himself, and Heeseung gets the feeling that, regardless of all his protests, all his insistence, he’s probably had the same suspicions as they do, for just as long as they’ve had them.

And this time, he doesn’t protest. This time, he stays quiet as they pry Owen’s coffin open, as they both climb out of the grave after dousing his mangled body – and Heeseung really wishes everyone would just cremate, if not only to keep any hauntings from happening, then to save them from having to look at the desperate attempt of a coroner to respect the family’s wishes and keep him as intact as possible – with gasoline.

They stand in front of the pit, and Jake steps forward too, until he’s in line with them, leaning a bit closer to watch as Riki tosses a lit match into it.

“He was an asshole,” Jake says, as Owen goes up in flames. “An abusive, pathetic asshole. I stayed with him for two years, and I probably would have stayed with him longer, if not for…” he trails off.

Heeseung hums in acknowledgment, looking over at Jake, watching him swallow the rest of his words, watching the movement of it in his throat.

“Jungwon always hated him,” Jake says eventually, and Heeseung can hear the silent acknowledgement in it, the agreement to cooperate, to try and reshape the view of his brother he had in the name of getting answers.

He can empathize with him, really. His own little brother may not be a murderous, maniacal ghost, but he is a bit of a stranger to Heeseung, lately, a bit lost to him. He hopes Riki never becomes as lost to him as Jungwon is to Jake, but then again, he’s not sure he can see another end to the road they’ve been heading down for the past year.

⛥⛥⛥

As far as Heeseung knows, as far as he’ll ever know, if Riki has anything to do with it, he stopped hunting for the year he was in college.

That was the deal they made, the deal Heeseung insisted on, the deal Riki agreed to. Go to college, give a normal life a try, and then decide if he wants to take up the family business and join Heeseung on the road. And, as far as Heeseung knows, that’s the deal he upheld, to the best of his ability.

Riki only killed one demon during his time at Stanford, and it was a demon that found him, that had been tracking him down for weeks prior to that. It was the same demon that killed his mother, and Heeseung’s mother, and their father. He wanted to kill Riki next. Riki killed him first.

That’s the story Heeseung was told, at least. He doesn’t know that the demon was only in Riki’s reach because he summoned and trapped it. He doesn’t know that half the time he spent in the library of Stanford was spent researching the obscure and complicated ritual needed to make it possible. He doesn’t know that he was seeing the demon before that, in his dreams, that they gave him its name, gave him the ability to call out to it.

He doesn’t know that, before Riki plunged their family’s heirloom knife given to him for emergencies only into the chest of the vessel the demon was inhabiting, it told him why he was having these dreams, these visions – although he still refuses to acknowledge them as what they truly are, to acknowledge himself as what this demon made him, when he was barely six months old, dripping its tainted blood into his mouth before killing his mother and cementing Riki’s fate.

When it was done, when Riki was left standing alone in the abandoned warehouse he’d commandeered for his trap, both relieved and a little afraid – even though he’s not supposed to be afraid, not anymore, because that was supposed to be trained out of him from the moment his father sat him down and told him that everything he feared was hiding under his bed as a child was real – he could only think of one thing to do.

He called his brother.

And Heeseung picked up, even though it was the middle of the night. And he drove all the way to California to get him, even though it took him two full days to get there. And he hasn’t questioned Riki’s story once, even though he knows he could see right through the holes in it from the moment he told it.

He doesn’t know if he killed the demon or not, not truly, not in any way that was permanent. He probably didn’t. But he still got what he was looking for – answers.

Sometimes, though, he wishes he didn’t. It’s far too late for that now, and if he was given the chance to do it again, he knows he’d do it all the same, but – still. It’s more trouble than it’s worth, sometimes, having answers.

Sometimes, it’s better to stay in the dark, even if that kid inside of him is still a little afraid of that, too.

“You doing okay?” Riki asks, looking over at Jake as he leans up against the hood of the Impala beside where he's already sitting on it, knees pulled to his chest, chin resting on his knees. Heeseung would be pissed, if he could see them, but he can’t. He’d gone into the motel to shower, because he slept in the car in order to let Jake have his bed – and he’d done so with only a small handful of innuendos made about what Riki and Jake would get up to in his absence. That level of restraint is unheard of, for his brother.

In the end, though, Jake was out like a light within seconds of Riki turning off the lamp on his bedside table, sleeping surprisingly well for someone who has found out what he’s found out in the last twenty-four hours.

So, then, maybe that’s why he asks him, the next morning, if he’s okay. And maybe that’s why he’s not surprised when Jake says, after a long sigh, “Yeah. I’m okay.”

“You seem pretty calm about all this,” Riki says after a moment.

“I don’t know if I’m calm,” Jake laughs a bit. “But I’m not exactly shocked, either. I kind of had a feeling about – all this stuff. Ghosts, or whatever.”

“You mean you could feel them,” Riki clarifies. “Right?”

Jake nods, avoiding his gaze, looking almost sheepish.

“Me, too,” Riki tells him honestly. He’s never admitted it aloud before, even though he knows Heeseung is well aware. “I can see them too, sometimes. Even when they don’t want me to.”

“You can?” Jake asks, finally looking over at him, not doing much to hide his interest. “I’ve always been able to feel them, but I – couldn’t see them, not until recently.”

“But you're seeing them now?” Riki asks simply.

“All the time,” Jake says, his eyes drifting somewhere over Riki’s shoulder, his gaze going a little distant. “Just – flashes of them, mostly. No one’s ever been as present as Jungwon, and even then, I still can’t look directly at him. But I can always feel him.”

“Is he here now?”

“Yes,” Jake answers automatically. “He’s – near you. He’s kind of been following you around, actually, since last night. Maybe he likes you,” he laughs again, as he says it.

Riki goes silent and still for a moment, focusing hard on the air around him. And then he takes a deep breath, and nods, and says, “I can feel him.”

“It doesn’t feel like he wants to hurt anyone,” Jake says weakly. “Right?”

“No,” Riki agrees. “But that doesn’t mean he isn’t.”

“I know,” Jake sighs, defeated. “He’s in pain. I can feel that, too. I think – whatever it is that’s going on with him, he wants us to put an end to it.”

Riki nods. He can feel it too, Jungwon’s pain, the way it drowns out the gentleness of his aura, the way it corrupts it. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone, but he is.

“Jungwon always said it was spirits following me around,” Jake says after a moment, with a small, almost fond laugh. “I called him crazy. He was always – into that stuff. He and his friend watched all sorts of scary shit I couldn’t handle, and they… they really believed in it all. I could never tell if they were being serious or not, when they’d talk about ghosts and witches and whatever like they were real, but – I guess they were.”

Riki blinks, looking at Jake again, taking his focus off of Jungwon’s shapeless form. “His friend?”

Jake looks at him too, confusion overtaking his features for a brief moment. “Sunoo Kim. They were best friends. He’s basically family. You don’t think –?”

“We should talk to him, at least,” Riki says hesitantly. “The more information we can get about what Jungwon was doing before his death, the better.”

“Sure, but – I don’t think Sunoo will be much help,” Jake says, unsureness leaking into his tone in a way that Riki can tell is genuine, not meant to cover up a lie, not meant to protect the closest thing he has left to family. “He’s even more harmless than Jungwon was.”

And, based on what Jake’s idea of Jungwon’s harmlessness is – that is, three dead and mangled bodies in only two weeks – then Riki can only imagine what Sunoo Kim might have in store for them.

“Get off my car,” Heeseung snaps, startling both of them and drawing their attention to where he’s stepping out of their motel room and locking the door behind him. “Neither of you know how to treat a lady.”

Riki snorts, shaking his head as he stands up straight, taking all his weight off the Impala and offering Jake a hand. He takes it, and slides off the hood of the car, flashing an apologetic, but still slightly teasing smile Heeseung’s way.

“We’ve gotta make a stop, first,” Riki tells his brother as they get into the car, Jake shuffling his way to the middle of the bench seat in the back.

“Thank god,” Heeseung sighs. “That lighthouse creeps me out.”

“How do you think I feel about it?” Jake reminds them, even though he’d been on board with the idea of revisiting the spot where his brother died, to see if he can get a stronger connection to him there, to see if they can find anything that might be anchoring his spirit to their world.

Heeseung snorts, but he doesn’t bother with a witty retort. He has a bit of a soft spot for Jake, and it’s obvious to Riki, and he’s not so sure it’s a good thing – even if it’s one that Riki shares, too.

“Two stops, first,” Heeseung corrects as they pull out of the parking lot, holding up two fingers like it’ll make his assertion harder to argue against. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, Riks. And that’s the most important thing I’ll ever teach you, got it?”

⛥⛥⛥

Sunoo Kim lives in, quite possibly, the most run-down apartment building Heeseung has ever stepped foot in – and that’s saying something, considering the fact that investigating haunted spots is what he does for a living – but he’s a lively little thing, contrasting the worn and suspiciously stained state of the carpet under his feet as he gasps, and pulls Jake in for a tight, squeezing hug.

“God, Jake, you could have called!” He exclaims, burying his face in his shoulder for a long moment as Jake wraps his arms around him in return, albeit with a little more hesitance. Sunoo lives in the nearest city, about a forty minute drive. Jake told them he moved there, out of his parent’s house, after Jungwon’s death, and he hasn’t stepped a foot past the welcome sign for the small town they grew up in together since.

“Sorry,” Jake says, a bit sheepish, a bit strained, likely from how tightly Sunoo was squeezing him.

“Don’t be,” Sunoo breathes, pulling away and holding him at arm’s length, like he’s trying to get a good look at him. “I’m so happy to see you,” he says, and then – his eyes flicker over to Heeseung and Riki, where they’re standing a few steps behind them, and adds, “And even happier to see that you’ve brought me two handsome strangers.”

Riki and Heeseung share a glance, and Heeseung can’t help his pleased grin, even though it earns him an eye roll from his brother.

“Harmless,” Riki mutters under his breath. Jake shoots him a glare over his shoulder, and Heeseung wonders if he’d missed something.

“Ha,” Jake breathes after a moment, still clearly a little stunned. They filled Heeseung in on who Sunoo was, for the most part, and he quietly admitted to them that he hasn’t seen his brother’s best friend since the day of his funeral, that they talked on the phone sometimes, but that he couldn’t bear to see his face, not when he was so used to seeing it with Jungwon’s. “I, uh. Look, Sunoo, I know we talked about the – about what happened with my dad and Owen, but –”

“Oh, god,” Sunoo mutters, horror overtaking his excited expression. “I still can’t believe it. And – and that creep from the diner, too? Jake, I really think someone might have cursed you.”

Heeseung frowns. “Why would you say that?”

Sunoo blinks, looking at him like he’d already forgotten his presence entirely. “Well, it’s pretty obvious that’s what’s happening here, right?”

Jake glances over his shoulder, at Riki, like he’s the one running the show, the one in charge. Whatever it is that Heeseung missed, it was clearly a bonding moment for the two of them. Fine. At the very least, Riki’s next words are the same ones Heeseung would have chosen.

“We’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

Sunoo’s eyes flit between the three of them, his brows drawing together and then smoothing themselves out a moment later. “Feds?” He asks, looking at Jake now, with something like betrayal in his eyes. “They look a little young for that.”

“They’re – friends,” Jake says, after only a moment of hesitation. “They’re here to help. They want to figure out what – what really happened to Jungwon.”

Sunoo’s eyes light up again. Heeseung expected that they would, because Jake also told them, with his head bowed in something like shame, that Sunoo never believed his friend’s death was a suicide, that Jake distanced himself from him partially because everytime they had a conversation, it always ended with Sunoo begging Jake to side with him, to help him convince the police to reopen the case. He’s always believed that someone – something, actually – killed Jungwon.

“Come in, come in,” he says quickly, stepping aside and waving them through the doorway. Riki and Heeseung go first, scanning the apartment for any visible threats, but Jake hesitates. Sunoo steps closer to him, putting a hand on his arm, and says, “I’m glad you’re reconsidering this, Jake. Really. Thank you.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing, Sun. But you have to be honest with them,” he urges, a little helplessly. “You have to tell them everything.”

⛥⛥⛥

Everyone loved Jungwon. That much, at least, Sunoo insisted was the truth.

He was kind, and generous. He would do anything for a friend, even though he only ever really had one of those. He and Sunoo were close, really close. No, not like that, although, sometimes – but it doesn’t matter. They were best friends first and foremost, and no one understood them as well as they understood each other.

Everyone loved Jungwon, but they never really understood him. He was distant, from everyone but Sunoo. He hid a lot of things, from a lot of different people. He had strange, off-putting interests, and spoke about them in strange, off-putting ways. Even Sunoo didn’t know what to say to him, sometimes. He scared Sunoo, sometimes, when he got really serious about it, when his face would get almost shadowy with anger, with darkness, when he’d talk about what he’d do to those that hurt him and the people he cared about, if he was powerful enough.

“That’s not true,” Jake interrupts, before Sunoo has even really had a chance to begin. His hands are shaking.

“Jake,” Riki says softly, leaning a little closer to him where they’re sitting on Sunoo’s lumpy, secondhand couch, “Just – let him finish.”

“Jungwon wouldn’t say that,” Jake insists. “Sunoo, he’s not – he wasn’t some –”

“He was your brother,” Sunoo says gently, sympathetically. “He’s still your brother. But he wasn’t exactly who you thought he was. Not always.”

Jake stands, shaking his head. “I’m not – I’m sorry. I can’t listen to this,” he says, and shoots a glance at Riki, pleading and hopeful. Riki winces, but he doesn’t make any moves to leave. Jake may not be able to see this through, but Riki has to.

Heeseung doesn’t seem to mind, though. He stands too, puts his hands on Jake’s shoulders, and guides him gently towards the door. “You don’t have to, then,” he says, carefully, his expression unreadable to Riki, neutral in a way that he knows is practiced.

Maybe Heeseung doesn’t want to hear this, either. Maybe talking about brothers, distant and unknowable and a little strange, is hitting a nerve for him, too.

⛥⛥⛥

Jake slumps against the brick wall, squeezing his eyes shut, taking quick, laboured breaths, and Heeseung keeps his hands on his shoulders, trying to keep him from collapsing completely.

“It’s okay,” Heeseung assures him, firm but still gentle, trying not to overwhelm him, but also knowing he probably will, anyway. Jake’s already overwhelmed. He’s probably drowning, a bit, in all the information, new and old alike, all the ways he’s already trying to recontextualize it, all the ways he’s still not ready to hear it.

“This is so – this is all so fucked,” Jake breathes, tipping his head back to look at the sky above him. “You’re fucked, Jungwon. Absolutely fucked.”

“He’s not up there,” Heeseung says. “He’s here. With you. That’s why we’re doing this, right? So he’s not stuck here anymore.”

Jake drops his gaze back to Heeseung after a moment, but keeps his head tilted towards the sky, so he’s forced to look at him through his lashes. “Where will he go? When – when he’s really gone?”

Heeseung pauses, his mouth dropped open like he was on the verge of giving him an automatic answer, a practiced one. A better place, he might say, to someone who wouldn’t see right through it, like he knows Jake will.

“I don’t know,” he admits eventually. “I’ve never known.”

“But you – you send people there anyway.”

“Spirits,” Heeseung corrects. “We send spirits there. Wherever it is, it’s where they're supposed to be.”

“And you’re not curious?” Jake asks. “About – if it’s good or bad there?”

Heeseung shakes his head. “It’s not my job to be curious,” he tells him. “It’s just my job to make sure they get there anyway.”

Jake scoffs, his bottom lip wobbling for a moment. “Aren’t you a well-trained soldier,” he says, and Heeseung feels the words, in his chest, like a sharp, stabbing pain. He wonders if Jake can read minds, too, along with seeing ghosts, if that’s how he so quickly figured out how to wound him where it hurts most.

He turns away from him, clenching his jaw for a long moment, taking a few deep breaths of his own.

“My brother is – he was a good person,” Jake says, and Heeseung can tell he’s crying, but he can’t bear to turn around and see it for himself. “If there’s a good place to go, then – he’ll go there.”

⛥⛥⛥

“I was worried about him,” Sunoo continues, once the door has closed behind Heeseung and Jake, once a few beats of expectant silence have passed on Riki’s end of the conversation. “Really worried. I mean – we’d been messing with some weird stuff. Spells, that he found in some old book in the library. We were floating pencils, and like, tripping Jake’s boyfriend when he walked by us. Nothing – nothing dangerous, you know? I mean, looking back, it was all dangerous, but we thought it was harmless. I thought it was harmless.

“But I think Jungwon always knew we were getting into some dark stuff. He always – he’d talk about it like we were ascending, or something, like we were becoming gods. I was a little scared of him. I was really scared of him, towards the end. And he was – I don’t know what Jake told you about their relationship, but I’m almost positive he lied. He probably didn’t mean to, because he really always did see the best in him, but…

“Jungwon was… he was angry, and he loved Jake, but they didn’t really get along. Jake was overprotective. Jungwon was overprotective. They butted heads over it all the time, Jake trying to protect Jungwon while Jungwon was trying to protect Jake. Their dad wasn’t any help, because he was a violent, abusive drunk, and all he ever did was pit them against each other. And Jungwon wanted to leave, but he couldn’t, because Jake refused to. He wanted to stay with his boyfriend, even though he was a violent, abusive asshole. And Jungwon just – he really couldn’t understand, why Jake was staying with all these people that hurt him, why he wasn’t choosing to leave with him.

“Whatever it is that Jungwon and I were getting into, he was way more into it than I was. We, uh – we made this altar, at the top of the lighthouse, and Jungwon found a spell to make it totally inaccessible to everyone but us, and he just – did it. Just like that. That was the moment I realized I was totally in over my head, but… I stuck around. I helped him do some bigger spells, like – putting hexes on people.”

“On who?” Riki asks.

“Owen,” Sunoo says simply. “For starters. Just – little things, really. Nothing I thought was doing any real harm. But still, I… I was scared of him, you know? I stopped going to the lighthouse as much, and I kind of distanced myself, and I regret it so much, because he was just – he was gone, after that. He was gone, and then he was really gone, and I went up to the lighthouse after he died and our altar was all burnt and there were scratch marks on the floor like something was dragging him off of it, and I just – I knew –”

Sunoo cuts off, taking a deep, steadying breath, tears filling his eyes and spilling over his lash line.

“I’m sorry,” Riki says carefully. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Of course it was,” Sunoo snaps, showing any capacity for anger for the first time since they arrived. This person, Riki can see, would be tempted by the idea of revenge, of dark magic. But then he’s gone as quickly as he appeared, and there’s just Sunoo, shoulders slumped, head bowed in shame, sniffling a few times as his tone softens and he insists, “Of course it was my fault. I never should have abandoned him. He needed me. And he – he got too deep in it because I wasn’t there to pull him out, and he was in over his head, and something killed him for it.”

Riki reaches to his left, grabbing a box of tissues from the side table, passing it to Sunoo and watching him carefully as he wipes at his eyes and nose. After a while, once his breathing has calmed a bit, once he’s no longer fighting to get words out, Riki asks, “What do you think Jungwon was trying to cast, when he died?”

“I have no idea,” Sunoo answers after a moment, just as Riki feared he would. “The book was burnt, too. And it was nothing I’d ever seen before. It was – dark, though. Really dark. I could feel it. Whatever it was, it was meant to kill. And – I guess it did. I guess it still is, right?”

⛥⛥⛥

“What about you and Riki?” Jake asks eventually.

“What about us?” Heeseung keeps his eyes fixed on the ground, his body still turned mostly away from Jake, scuffing the dirt beneath him with his boot.

“You’re brothers, aren’t you?”

Heeseung looks over at him. Jake smiles, just a bit.

“I can tell,” he says. “You guys argue the same way Jungwon and I did.”

“I thought you said you got along,” Heeseung points out.

“We did,” Jake says simply. “The way brothers do. Right?”

Heeseung nods.

“You would have done the same thing,” Jake adds after a moment. “To protect him. If – if someone was telling you he’s evil, and he’s hurting people, killing people, you would have said the same thing.”

“Yeah,” Heeseung says without hesitation, because he did, once. When his father was still alive, when Riki was a kid, he got angry enough to storm off and, somehow, level a few trees in the forest behind their house to the ground, their dad pulled Heeseung aside and told him, one day, you’re going to have to stop him. And if you can’t stop him, then you know what you’re going to have to do instead. Heeseung didn’t hesitate then, either. He told his dad where he could shove it, and it was the first time he ever disobeyed a direct order from him. Riki doesn’t remember any of it. But Heeseung does, and he sees all of it, again and again, every time he closes his eyes. His anger, his hatred. The way it corrupted, instantly and totally. The way he was still his brother, despite it all, the way Heeseung still loved him, the way that stopping him in the way their father asked him to was an unbearable thought, and still is. “Yeah, I would have.”

“Good,” Jake says with an approving nod, letting his eyes flutter shut where he’s still propped up against the wall. “We understand each other, then.”

Heeseung presses his lips into a thin line, and nods too, letting his eyes drift over Jake’s features, soft and pretty, but still sharper than he’d once thought. “Just don’t lie to us again,” Heeseung orders.

“I won’t,” Jake says, without opening his eyes. “I trust you, now.”

And Heeseung doesn’t know what he did to earn that trust. He didn’t get the bonding moment with Jake, doesn’t have the strange, psychic kinship thing going on. He’s had every intention of sending his brother back where he belongs, regardless of whether or not he’s going to a good place or a bad place. But when he says it, Heeseung knows he’s talking to him. Jake trusts him, to do the right thing for his brother.

The same way he would if it was Riki suffering, if it was Riki that needed him. The way brothers do.

⛥⛥⛥

Riki pushes the door to Sunoo’s apartment building open, and instantly regrets it, instantly wishes he’d waited a few more seconds, because the air around Heeseung and Jake is charged and electric. Charged with what, he’s not sure, but it’s thick enough that he nearly chokes on it.

They’re just standing there, facing each other, several feet apart. But Jake’s smiling in a bittersweet way, and Heeseung’s expression is hard and unreadable, like it almost always is when they’re on a job, but there’s something lying just underneath of it, not nearly as concealed as he’d probably like it to be.

Riki had, clearly, interrupted something. A moment, of some kind.

But Heeseung is only caught off guard, stunned, for less than a second, and then his eyes dart down to Riki’s hand at his side, his fist closed around the chain of a silver locket that still swings back and forth, even as he’s gone completely still.

He doesn’t need to ask what it is. He already knows. His expression turns a bit somber, and his eyes slide over to Jake for a brief moment, and then he says, through a sigh, “Well, Jake. Ready to say your goodbyes?”

Jake looks at Riki too, and follows Heeseung’s gaze, his head tilting when he sees the locket. “That’s Sunoo’s,” he says. “He never takes it off.”

Riki steps forward, handing Jake the locket, letting him open it and see for himself, knowing what he’ll find in it. A lock of Jungwon’s hair, innocently and unknowingly taped in place, keeping him anchored to their world.

“Oh,” Jake says softly, his voice breaking around the word. “Oh, Jungwon. I’m so sorry.” He brings it up to his face, pressing the locket to his cheek, like he’s trying to embrace his brother one last time.

Riki’s pretty sure Jungwon is here with them. He can feel him a little more than usual. He’s sure that now that Jake has the locket, he can, too.

“We, uh,” Riki starts, his own voice a little thick with emotion, the words catching in his throat, “There’s something else, though.”

“What?” Jake asks, looking a little panicked, lifting his head and holding the locket to his chest, like he’s afraid they’re going to take it from him.

“We can’t burn it yet.”

“Why not?” Heeseung asks, but it sounds a little knowing, like he’s come to the same realization Riki did, even without hearing Sunoo’s story.

“The spell,” Riki says simply. “Jungwon was casting a spell when – when he died. A dark one. And I think I know what it was, and I think that, if we send Jungwon back before we can undo it, it won’t stop happening. People will keep dying.”

“How do we undo it?” Jake breathes, no longer arguing for his brother’s innocence, his uninvolvement. Acceptance, it seems, came to him at some point during his conversation with Heeseung. Riki can’t imagine how that’s possible, how Heeseung could accomplish that, but apparently, he doesn’t know his brother as well as he thought he did, either.

“That’s what we have to find out,” Riki says with a long, drawn out sigh, one that can only be brought on by the knowledge of how much research he has ahead of him.

“Should we go to the lighthouse, then?” Heeseung asks. “If we can get up there, we might be able to figure it out a little faster.”

“Sunoo has to be the one to let us in,” Riki tells him, not bothering to explain the spell they’d cast on it, because he’s sure his brother can figure it out for himself. “And he won’t go there.”

“He doesn’t have a choice,” Heeseung says, blunt and direct as ever.

“I can find the spell,” Riki assures him. “Trust me.”

Heeseung pauses, and swallows, and after several long seconds, he nods. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll let you do your nerd shit.”

And what he doesn’t say, what Riki knows he’d never say, is I trust you. Not because he wouldn’t mean it, but because it’d be handing him a little too much power. And if there’s one thing he knows Heeseung doesn’t trust him with, it’s power.

Riki thinks about Jungwon, and for the first time, he thinks he can understand why.

⛥⛥⛥

Heeseung looks over at Jake, waiting for him to say something, anything.

He just stares straight ahead, where Riki is retreating into their motel room for a night of research, and he’s fiddling with the locket that he’s still refusing to part with, the last piece of his brother, the piece they were going to take from him too, soon. His hands are shaking again. Heeseung can’t entirely understand why he wants to reach over and take one of them, but he does, and he doesn’t stop himself from doing just that.

Jake looks over at him, eyes red-rimmed and a little wild, his bottom lip wobbling, tears gathering but never actually falling. He squeezes Heeseung’s hand, just once, and it feels like he’s trying to say something, but Heeseung’s not hearing it.

“I should go home,” he says after a moment. “Right?”

“That’s up to you,” Heeseung says easily. “I’ve slept in the back of this car more times than I can count. I’ll be just fine, if you want my bed again.”

Jake smiles a bit, still holding Heeseung’s gaze. “But I should go home,” he repeats. “Because – eventually, everything’s going to go back to normal, right? So I should get used to it. To being alone.”

Heeseung stares at him for a moment, tracing the outline of his dimly lit face, mostly shadow, but still soft, and vulnerable, and trusting. He knows he can’t answer him truthfully, knows that Jake doesn’t want the truth right now, so he nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it’ll all go back to normal.”

He can tell Jake doesn’t believe him, but it doesn’t matter. He’d heard what he wanted to hear. He fixes his gaze straight ahead, and Heeseung lets go of his hand in favour of putting it on the steering wheel, turning the car back on and pulling out of the parking spot they’d occupied for mere minutes.

The drive to Jake’s house is silent, but when they arrive, and Jake gets out of the car, Heeseung does, too. He’s not sure why. He just does.

“This might sound silly,” Jake says, stopping in front of where Heeseung is leaned up against the driver’s side door of the car, turning to look at him over his shoulder with a small smile. “But I’m still kind of worried my ex might be hanging around. Wanna come check for monsters under my bed?”

And, really. Heeseung knows a proposition when he hears one. He’s an expert at picking up on them, and he’s even better at accepting them.

“Well,” Heeseung starts, a slow grin unfurling on his lips, a bit sleazy in a way he hopes Jake finds charming, “That is my job, after all.”

“All clear,” Heeseung tells him, rising to his knees from where he was crouching down, sweeping his flashlight across the underside of Jake’s bed, clicking it off and setting it aside. “You’re officially ghost free. Well – except for Jungwon, I guess.”

Jake’s sitting at the edge of it, and as soon as their faces are level, he scoots closer and puts his hands on his shoulders, letting them slide up to rest on Heeseung’s neck a moment later, trailing a flushed heat across Heeseung’s skin with his touch. “He’s not here,” he tells him. “I can’t feel him right now, I think – he might have stayed with Riki. We’re all alone.”

“Well, no offense to Jungwon,” Heeseung starts, his gaze drifting slowly across Jake’s face, even more shadowed than it was in the car, in the inky blackness of his bedroom, of his eerily empty but no longer haunted house, “But I’m glad Riki’s the one getting haunted for a bit, then.”

Jake smiles, and Heeseung thinks it’s the first real, full smile he’s seen from him. He wants to take another moment to look at it, or maybe a few, to try and commit it to memory for when it inevitably fades, but he doesn’t get the chance. Jake leans in, and closes the distance between them, as miniscule as it already was, bringing him into an instantly heated kiss, moving his hands to cup his face, as Heeseung’s hands rest on his waist, pushing him gently backwards, rising slowly so their mouths don’t have to disconnect as he lays Jake down in front of him. He goes willingly and easily. He trusts Heeseung, and he doesn’t know what he did to deserve that, but he’s certainly not going to waste it.

Hands wander, and breathy noises are huffed out against lips, and Heeseung can’t believe he ever thought Jake was anything other than human. He’s not sure he’s ever met someone more human, more real, even with the gift – the power, really, because Heeseung’s still not sure it can be called a gift – that Jake has. He’s extraordinary, but he’s still not unordinary. He’s human, and Heeseung can feel it, his heart beating faster under his skin when he presses his hand to his chest, his breaths coming heavier and heavier as Heeseung drags his mouth down the plains of bare skin as he reveals them.

He’s human, and he’s breakable, and even though he hasn’t broken yet, with everything he’s been through, Heeseung still doesn’t want to test his limits. He keeps his touches gentle, and swallows Jake’s cries and whimpers when they’re gasped against his lips, and – maybe that’s the problem.

Maybe that’s why Heeseung’s chest feels like it’s aching.

Maybe he’s got a bit of a soft spot for him, nestled right between two toughened ribs, and it’s enough to let something poke through to his heart with every kiss. Maybe, if he’s not careful, it’ll draw blood, and leave a scar, one that he’ll feel every time he thinks about their time in this town. And maybe, maybe, that’ll be often, too often, in a way that will surely feel like he’s torturing himself, like he’s swerving off the road in favour of keeping his eyes on the rearview mirror.

But, despite that, despite knowing better, Heeseung just wraps his arms around Jake, and pulls him impossibly closer.

Heeseung hears a faint click as Jake leans over him, and then the room fills with light, warm and diluted by the lampshade, making Jake look a little fuzzy around the edges as he settles back down where he was laying on his bare chest and smiles up at him, blinking slow and a bit sleepy.

His hand slides up from where it was resting on his chest, and his fingers brush across Heeseung’s cheek. “What’s that from?”

“Hm?”

“This scar,” Jake clarifies, running his index finger carefully over it once more. “You have a lot, but that’s the only one on your face.”

“There’s more,” Heeseung corrects. “They’re just harder to see. That one’s a bit fresher, so it hasn’t faded yet.”

Jake hums, and Heeseung shifts just enough to reach into his pants pocket, where they were discarded carelessly on the floor beside him. He pulls out a closed switchblade, runs his thumb over the latin etched into the side of it, and slides it under Jake’s hand, pressing the cool metal into his palm.

“It was this knife that did it, actually,” Heeseung tells him. “A shapeshifter snuck up on me. It’s made of silver, so he couldn’t touch it, but he grabbed my arm and tried to slice my neck open. With my own knife. Sick bastard.”

Jake laughs a bit, and Heeseung thinks it’s the first time he’s heard the sound from him. It’s sweet, soft and bordering on a giggle. He could probably listen to it all day.

“They can’t touch silver?” Jake asks, turning his hand over to get a better look at the knife, tracing the latin inscription with his finger.

Heeseung nods. “It kills them, too. Most things, at least. Not demons, but – werewolves, fairies, skinwalkers, all that.”

“And those are all real,” Jake says dryly, not actually a question, more of a reminder to himself.

“As real as you and I are,” Heeseung answers anyway.

“What does it mean?” He asks after a moment, still tracing over the letters making up the latin phrase.

“Ne puero gladium,” Heeseung reads, then translates, “Don’t give a sword to a boy.”

“That’s a bit ironic,” Jake says softly.

“Yeah,” Heeseung laughs a bit. “My dad was pretty proud of that one. It was the first knife he gave me. I was six. He handed it to me, translated it for me, and then told me if I was going to keep the knife, I had to learn how to use it. How to – carry on the family legacy.”

“When you were six?” Jake repeats, lifting his head to look at him, turning onto his stomach so his chin is pressing into Heeseung’s chest instead of his cheek, the knife still clutched in his hand. Heeseung should probably be a little more on edge, considering he’s just armed Jake while all his other weapons are still on the floor of his bedroom, out of his reach. He gave a sword to a boy, handed him something he doesn’t know how to use. But he’s not on edge. Maybe he trusts Jake, too, a bit.

“He wanted me to be prepared,” Heeseung says, because he can’t help but make excuses for his father, even now. “He knew what was out there.”

Jake hums. “And now I do, too,” he says, almost absentmindedly.

Heeseung watches him turn the knife over in his hand for a moment, and then says, without any real thought, “You should keep it, then.”

“I don’t know how to use it,” Jake points out.

And, yeah. But Heeseung’s not his father, no matter what anyone else has to say about it, no matter how well he trained his little soldier. He doesn’t want to teach Jake how to use it, even though it’d be the smart, sensible thing to do. He doesn’t want Jake to have to adjust to this life, not like he had to. He just wants him to have the knife, so that when Heeseung thinks about him, when he takes a long look in that rearview mirror, he can tell himself that he didn’t leave Jake completely defenseless.

“That’s okay,” Heeseung says after a while. “You won’t need to, once this is all over.”

“I don’t need to have this knife, then. Not if it has sentimental value for you.”

“It doesn’t,” Heeseung assures him, even though it definitely does, but he wants Jake to have it anyway. “Just – keep it. It’ll give me some peace of mind, when we – when we hit the road again.”

Jake smiles at him, but it’s tinged with sadness, this time. Maybe a bit of pity. Heeseung doesn’t need to be a psychic to know what he’s thinking. You care about me. You don’t want anything bad to happen to me, when you won’t be around to stop it. And if you were around, you would stop it, because you care about me.

“How am I going to get my peace of mind, then?” Jake asks, and again, Heeseung hears what goes unspoken. I care about you, too.

“I’ve got bigger knives than that,” Heeseung assures him.

Jake laughs again, and this time, the sound is even brighter, fuller, like it had burst out of him without his permission. Heeseung’s chest aches again, just a bit. And then he goes quiet for a few long seconds, opening and closing his mouth once like he had something to ask, but wasn’t sure if he was allowed to ask it. In the end, when he poses a question, Heeseung knows it’s not the question, but he can tell he’s still going to get there eventually.

“So, you and Riki – you’re always on the road, right?”

Heeseung nods. “I haven’t slept in the same bed for more than a week in years.”

Jake’s mouth pulls into a small frown, and he takes a deep breath through his nose, and asks the question, the one he was holding back. “Is it hard? Being – hunters?”

Heeseung doesn’t answer for long enough that he’s sure Jake is questioning whether or not he’s even going to, if he’s going to find a way out of it instead, like closing his eyes and pretending to fall asleep, or leaning in to kiss him again. He doesn’t. He just takes a while to think about it, and then he says, his voice barely even loud enough to be considered a whisper, “Yeah. Yeah, it’s hard.”

And, the thing is, Heeseung’s never admitted that to anyone before. Not to Riki, definitely not to his father, not to anyone in any of the towns they’ve passed through. He’s proud of what he does. He’s proud of who he is. But it’s hard, it’s all hard, and it’s rare that he even allows himself to acknowledge that, let alone put it into words, let alone speak them aloud. As soon as he does, he feels some of the weight they’d been putting on him dissipate, just enough to make it a little easier to breathe.

“But,” he continues after a moment, when Jake doesn’t say anything, letting his answer hang in the air between them in a way that makes Heeseung feel like he has to correct it. “The people we help, the people we save – it’s worth it. It’s all worth it.”

“Even if you can never have a normal life?”

“I don’t…” Heeseung starts, pressing his mouth into a thin line, like he’s hoping when he opens it again, there’ll be a different answer on the tip of his tongue. I will one day, maybe. Or Riki will, one day, and that’s enough for me. But that’s not what comes out. What comes out is honest, painfully so. “I don’t think we were ever meant for a normal life. I don’t think I’d know what to do with one, if I had it.”

Jake turns his head until his cheek is pressing into Heeseung’s skin again, fixing his gaze on the knife in his hand, turning it over a few more times. “I get it,” he says eventually, softly, like it’s hard for him to admit, too. “I think I kind of feel the same way.”

⛥⛥⛥

Riki’s alone in their motel room, only a handful of minutes into his research, when he feels someone else join him.

He looks over his shoulder as the hair on the back of his neck raises, and sure enough, out of the corner of his eye, there’s Jungwon. He’s a little more there than he usually is, too, holding a proper form without flickering in and out of sight, not just a shapeless feeling anymore.

He’s sitting on the edge of Riki’s bed. And he’s looking at him, expectant, like he’s been waiting for Riki to notice him, or maybe building the nerve to reveal himself to him. He’s the same boy from the photo Riki found of him, the one used in his obituary, the one where he’s smiling up at the camera with the sun shining in his face – but he looks different, dimmer, paler, a little more sunken around the eyes. More like the version of him Riki saw in his dream. He doesn’t look dead, though. He looks deceptively alive, but tired, like he’s an overworked teenager that bit off more than he could chew.

That is, Riki supposes, exactly what he is, what he was before he died, what he is now, in the afterlife. The way Sunoo described him, the way Riki has come to understand him, he was always both at once. He was that bright boy, but he was also this burdened one, and he wonders if Jungwon ever let those two sides coexist, or if he kept them separate, if Riki is being let in on something akin to a secret, seeing him like this now.

“Hey,” Riki says, his voice even and calm. “I thought you’d be with Jake. He went back home, right?”

I don’t want anything to do with what they’re doing in that house, Jungwon says, or – more like projects, straight into Riki’s mind, without making any actual sound.

Riki snorts, and shakes his head. “Typical,” he mutters, because he’s used to this, to Heeseung finding a local to love for a day and then leave behind. His trail of broken hearts stretches from one end of the country to the other, and he doesn’t know why he thought it’d be any different with Jake.

He turns in his chair, half expecting Jungwon to disappear when he does, because he doesn’t seem to do well with being looked at head on. But he doesn’t. He holds Riki’s gaze, steady and real.

“You know,” Riki starts, quirking one corner of his mouth up into an easy grin, aiming for nonchalance and hopefully landing somewhere near it, “You’d be saving me a lot of time if you just told me what spell you cast.”

I would if I could, Jungwon says. But it didn’t have a name. It was just labeled as a protection spell. I didn’t even know what it would do, until it was too late.

“They tend to frown on that,” Riki tells him. “Witches. They don’t cast spells without knowing what they do.”

Yeah, well. I wasn’t a real witch. Just an idiot with a book.

“I don’t think you’re an idiot,” Riki says automatically. “You were just trying to protect Jake, right?”

Riki hears the sound of Jungwon’s laughter echo through him, brittle and weak. I was, he agrees. But I was an idiot about it. We got into a fight, about his boyfriend, that night. It was always about his boyfriend, when we fought. Or it was about Dad. But he never – he never listened to me.

“Older brothers,” Riki says, and Jungwon laughs again. It’s a little lighter, this time, and Riki feels a strange sense of accomplishment.

Yeah. I just… I should have just tried harder, to get him to listen. I thought – that if he wouldn’t protect himself, then I’d just have to go behind his back and do it for him. I didn’t know the spell I used was dark magic. I mean, I did, because I’d been using dark magic for weeks at that point, but I didn’t know it was that dark. I thought it’d just – keep them all away from him.

“But it kills anything that tries to hurt him instantly, right?” Riki clarifies.

It kills them, Jungwon confirms. But it doesn’t kill them instantly. It marks them, and summons hellhounds. It’s – it’s slow. Painful. They rip them apart, and eat them alive.

“But they’re not alive,” Riki points out. “Jake says they’re already dead, by the time the hellhounds get to them.”

Jungwon goes quiet, and for a brief moment, Riki loses track of him, like he’d slipped back beyond the veil for a moment, like he’s trying to hide.

“It is you, isn’t it?” Riki says after a moment, feeling the last piece of the puzzle click into place. “You’re killing them. You’re – mercy killing them. Because you – you didn’t die from the fall. You were alive when the hellhounds came for you.”

It’s another handful of long, silent seconds before Jungwon answers him, and when he does, he’s still barely visible, still hiding.

They went easy on me, really, he says. I think it was because they knew I was the one that summoned them. But – they also knew I was hurting Jake. That I’d been hurting Jake, not – not physically, but it didn’t matter. I was hurting him by being so awful to him, by distancing myself from him, and I was going to hurt him worse, if they let me live, if they let me keep going down the path I was on. So they – they dragged me to the edge, and threw me off, and when that wasn’t enough, they…

He trails off. “It’s okay,” Riki says quickly. “You don’t have to… I’m sorry.”

Don’t be, Jungwon insists. I got what I deserved. I brought it on myself. I just – even though all those people, that hurt Jake, they were assholes, I still couldn’t bear to watch it happen to them, too. So I killed them first. I guess – I was still trying to protect Jake. I didn’t want him to have to watch them suffer, even if he had to see everything else, even if they deserved to suffer. Jake doesn’t deserve to suffer. And – I wouldn’t call that mercy.

“What would you call it, then?”

Weakness, Jungwon answers. I don’t know why I ever cast that spell, why I ever got involved with dark magic in the first place. Because I’ve never been anything but weak, and – I should have known I wouldn’t have been able to handle it.

“I don’t think you’re weak,” Riki tells him. “I think… if it was my brother, if he needed help, and I thought I could save him, or even just give him time… I would have done the same thing.”

He did, really. He summoned a demon he wasn’t even supposed to know existed, because he was worried his brother would be its next victim, after it had already taken so much from Riki. He tapped into a darkness he knew would only grow stronger, and he let it consume him, because he wanted to protect Heeseung. He’d lost his brother’s trust over it, and his own trust in himself, in his sanity, in his ability to keep the growing darkness at bay, but if he could do it all again, he wouldn’t change a thing.

Jungwon, without being told, seems to understand regardless, because he stares at Riki like he’s looking right through him, sifting through his memories, seeing their similarities for himself. He doesn’t know if that’s actually possible, or if Jungwon just has the ability to make someone feel like that, like he knows more than he strictly should.

I would have liked you, Jungwon tells him. When I was alive. I think we could have been friends.

“Jake said the same thing,” Riki says, and clears his throat a moment later, his ears and cheeks slightly warm. “I think I would have liked you, too. I can feel it.”

Jungwon flickers again, hiding from something entirely else now, something Riki can’t even begin to understand, even as he lives through it. A moment of his own, and however strange it might be, he thinks it suits him. Them.

“Come back,” Riki says automatically, turning back around in his chair, facing the laptop in front of him, the books strewn around beside it. “Jake and Heeseung aren’t going to help me look for this spell, but – you’ve got nothing else going on, right?”

My schedule’s wide open, Jungwon answers, and Riki feels him again, a little closer, hovering just behind his shoulder. The afterlife is really boring, you know.

“Well, I hope your idea of fun is looking through dusty old books for obscure spells,” Riki mutters, just as the pages of one of his books start to flip, seemingly all on their own, if he didn’t know any better.

Actually, Jungwon starts, in a slightly smug, amused tone. That’s exactly my idea of fun.

And, yeah. Riki probably should have guessed that would be the case, all things considered.

⛥⛥⛥

Heeseung doesn’t mean to spend the night, but he does, and come morning, he’s only roused by the sound of his phone ringing where it was still in the pocket of his jeans. He blinks his eyes open, flinches away from the still-rising sun shining through the windows, and attempts to reach for it – but there’s a weight on him, keeping him in place with arms wrapped around him, like they’re trying to keep him from leaving.

Jake. He’d almost forgotten where he was, who he was with, in his disorientation. In his sleep, he’d been back home, his childhood home, and Riki was there, but he could only barely see him through shadows, with inky black demonic eyes to match. Now, though, he’s awake, the sun is shining, and Jake is here, really here, and it’s not a dream.

“Hey,” he says, softly, jostling Jake just enough to have him stirring awake and loosening his grip on him. He looks up at him, his eyes still half shut, still adjusting, but he smiles when he sees him, and it makes Heeseung’s chest ache, a bit. “Sorry, I’ve – gotta answer my phone. It could be an emergency. Hell, it’s never not an emergency.”

Jake doesn’t say anything, his expression turning a little pensive, but he does roll off of him, moving back onto his own pillow and pulling the blankets up to his chin. He looks younger than usual, even though Heeseung knows they’re around the same age. Maybe they’re both just young. Or maybe Jake is just feeling a bit more like a scared kid, today, the day that they’ll most likely be saying goodbye to his brother for good. He can’t blame him for that. He’d feel the same way, and he wouldn’t be able to find nearly as much acceptance as Jake has.

He grabs his phone, takes half a second to check that it is Riki calling – it wouldn’t be anyone else, anyway, not unless something is very wrong – before accepting the call and holding the phone to his ear. He turns away from Jake, when he does, just in case Riki has something to say that he might not want to hear.

“I’ve got it,” Riki blurts out, not even waiting for Heeseung to greet him properly. “I’ve got the spell, and I know how to undo it.”

“Good job, kid,” Heeseung says.

“It wasn’t me,” Riki says simply. “It was Jungwon. He helped me look.”

“Jungwon?” Heeseung repeats, and feels Jake shift, feels the bed dip under his weight as he sits up and leans closer to Heeseung, trying to hear for himself anyway.

“Yeah, he – he’s been with me all night,” Riki tells him, then quickly corrects himself and adds, “He’s been helping me research all night.”

“No freaky ghost shit?” Heeseung teases.

“No more than usual,” Riki huffs. “But it doesn’t matter. We found it. It, uh – is Jake there?”

“Yeah,” Jake answers, his chin hooked over Heeseung’s shoulder now so he can speak into the phone, too. “Am I better off not hearing this?”

“Maybe,” Riki says sheepishly. “It was a really dark spell, and uh, it – Jungwon was the first victim.”

Jake hums. “I figured as much, actually,” he says softly. “It’s okay. Tell me.”

“It was a protection spell, and he – he had good intentions, and he didn’t really know what it would do,” Riki starts, and Heeseung wonders just how much bonding he and Jungwon did in the last few hours, for him to be making himself nearly breathless with the effort to defend him. “But it summons hellhounds, and sets them on anyone that hurts you, Jake. It’s kind of vague, so we still don’t know what exactly that means, but – the spell kicked in on the one year anniversary of his death, we think, because it’s tied to him. He got more powerful as a spirit, so the spell did, too. But – he was the first person it killed.”

Heeseung can tell that Riki’s not telling them the full story. He’s leaving something out, and Heeseung thinks he knows what it is – and if he’s right, he can understand why he would. Jake doesn’t need to know everything, especially not if it’s going to warp his perception of his brother even more. As far as Jake needs to know, the hellhounds are killing these men. As far as Jake needs to know, his brother is still innocent, still going to whatever good place Jake thinks is waiting for him.

It’s a good call. Heeseung would have made the same one.

“Why?” Jake asks, his voice cracking a bit, the simple word holding countless different, conflicting emotions.

"Because he was hurting you,” Riki says simply, gently.

Jake takes a sharp, shaky inhale, and Heeseung feels him nod in understanding.

“How do we undo it, then?” Heeseung asks.

“I can do it,” Jake says automatically. “If it’s tied to Jungwon, then – it must be tied to me, too, right?”

“No way,” Heeseung says firmly. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Jungwon did it –”

“Jungwon was already a practicing witch. You’re not. It’s too powerful of a spell for your first time.”

“And – it would corrupt you, Jake,” Riki chimes in. “You’d never be the same after. There’d be a darkness in you, and you wouldn’t ever be able to get rid of it. It’s not worth it.”

“Of course it’s worth it,” Jake says sharply. “He’s my brother.”

Heeseung turns his head until he can look at Jake, until his side profile comes into view, his determination clear on every feature. He understands, really, he probably understands better than anyone could – but he still can’t let him do it. He doesn’t want Jake to learn how to use the knife. He doesn’t want him to wade deeper into the waters of this world, not when this situation has already been attempting to hold his head under the current, to drown him in it.

“I don’t need your permission,” Jake insists, when neither of them speak again. “If it’s the only way, then –”

“It’s not,” Riki interrupts. “It’s not the only way, but – the other way isn’t going to be much better.”

“Tell me,” Jake orders.

“We’ll need Sunoo,” he says. “And we’ll need Sunoo to be okay with – with letting Jungwon in.”

“What, possessing him?” Heeseung asks, stunned at the mere suggestion. “That’s even more dangerous.”

“For anyone else, it would be,” Riki says. “But Sunoo’s already got some experience with dark magic. Jungwon told me they used to summon spirits and – let them possess them, just for a few minutes. So he could handle it, and we know Jungwon’s not going to hurt him while he’s in there. We need him to let us into the lighthouse, anyway, so. It just – it makes sense.”

“I… I can go talk to him,” Jake says, eventually. “He might agree, if – if he knows he’ll never have to go to that stupid lighthouse again.”

“He won’t,” Riki assures him. “If everything goes right, he won’t have to. And neither will you. It’ll all be over.”

Jake doesn’t say anything. He just pulls away from where he was leaning on Heeseung, slumps back down onto his pillows, and goes quiet, staring up at the ceiling with a distant gaze, pressing his teeth into his bottom lip.

“Thanks, Riks,” Heeseung says, in the end, because he is thankful, because he really does want this to be over for Jake.

He wants him to have a normal life, even if he won’t know what to do with it.

“I’m not the one to thank,” Riki says, before hanging up, and it sounds a little proud, and Heeseung knows what he’s trying to say.

He’s not going to thank Jungwon. He may be their saving grace, in the end, but he’s still the one that started all of this, that put Jake through hell in the first place. He was just trying to protect him, but he hurt him, and one doesn’t cancel the other out.

But, then again – as he looks at Jake, as he watches him try to keep himself stable, as he watches him fight tears in the name of getting through this, he doesn’t think he can blame Jungwon, for wanting to protect Jake, even if he’d gone about it in the wrong way. There’s never a right way, when someone is trying to take away someone else’s agency.

Jungwon was wrong to cast that spell. But Heeseung was wrong to force Riki into a normal life, knowing he was always meant to be where he is now, on the road with him, no matter how much he might prefer to see him safe and sound and far away from all of this.

It’s selfish, inherently, loving someone, wanting to protect them. So, then, Heeseung might be able to look down on Jungwon for what he did, but he does understand why he did it.

And – for no reason that he’s willing to admit – he hopes that Riki can understand, too.

⛥⛥⛥

“We’re going to need more salt than that,” Riki says quietly, watching as Heeseung reloads his freshly cleaned shotgun. “Hellhounds are vulnerable to it, but not as vulnerable as we’d like them to be.”

“We don’t even know for sure they’ll come. But we’ll make a circle around us,” Heeseung mutters. “Unless it’ll interfere with the spell.”

“Jungwon says it shouldn’t.”

Heeseung looks up at him, and Riki can see the question in his eyes, the one he’s hesitating to ask, for some unknown reason. He’s never known his brother to exercise restraint before. “Is he still here?”

“I don’t know,” Riki says. “He might be. I can’t feel him, though. Maybe he went with Jake, but – maybe not. He was pretty anxious about seeing Sunoo again.”

Heeseung hums. “Hey, uh,” he starts, shifting his gaze back down to the gun in his hand, likely just to avoid meeting Riki’s. “Is that like – a thing? You and ghost boy?”

“No,” Riki says softly, because he knows Heeseung won’t approve of a friendship with a ghost, let alone any strange, unexpected connection that could go beyond that, if they had more time. “We just – understand each other.”

Heeseung looks relieved, for a moment, and Riki isn’t entirely sure why.

“What about you?” Riki asks hesitantly. “And Jake?”

“We’re leaving soon,” Heeseung says, an answer to his question, even if it wouldn’t really seem like one, to anyone that doesn’t know him as well as Riki does.

“Doesn’t mean it’s not a thing.”

“What about you?” Heeseung deflects. “Still got a crush on Jake? Are you jealous?”

Riki doesn’t give him the reaction he’s surely looking for, doesn’t let him get away with the attempted subject change. He just shrugs, smiles a bit, and says, “I mean, he’s nice, and, uh –”

On Riki’s bedside table, there’s a brief but loud electrical hum, and then the bulb in the lamp shatters. They both look over at it, in varying states of shock, and then, for a moment, he can feel Jungwon there. He laughs, shaking his head in admitted fondness.

“I guess he's still here,” he says.

“Clearly,” Heeseung mumbles. “And clearly, I’m asking the wrong person about crushes. Just – don’t answer that. I don’t think Jungwon wants to hear it.”

Riki goes quiet for a while, turning his own gun over in his hand, the one Heeseung gave him for the first birthday he celebrated back on the road with him. And then he looks at his brother again, and feels a bit of an ache settle in his chest.

“You should be careful,” he tells him. “With Jake. Anyone with intent to hurt him, in any way –”

“I’m not going to hurt him,” Heeseung assures him, and Riki doesn’t know how he could possibly say that when, in a few hours, they’ll be hitting the road again and never looking back. “I'm trying to protect him.”

“I think if this week has taught us anything,” Riki starts, hesitant and careful, “It’s that those are the same thing, sometimes.”

Heeseung’s eyes flicker up to meet his, just for a moment, and he nods. “I know,” he says. “I know that, Riks.”

It’s an apology, even if it doesn’t sound like one – it never does, with Heeseung. It’s an acknowledgement, at least, of all the ways his protection ultimately hurt Riki, hurt their relationship. And it’s a promise, to try and do better. Most likely, knowing Heeseung, an empty one, one he won’t be able to keep, the next time he convinces himself he’s doing something good for Riki by pushing him away, by keeping him in the dark.

Still, Riki accepts it. He doesn’t know what else he could do, other than accept it, because he’s wasted enough time being angry with Heeseung, blaming him for the things he did when he was no older than Riki is now.

Really, in the grand scheme of things, they don’t talk anything out. They don’t talk about the visions, they don’t talk about the demon Riki killed in college and what it told him and what it means for him, what it will mean. They don’t have to, because he knows Heeseung is already aware, already seeing what’s coming at the end of their road, no prophetic visions necessary.

But there is still a long road ahead of them, and Riki knows that, one day, he’ll have to tell him everything. And he doesn’t know if Heeseung will be able to let him live, once he knows about the darkness inside of him, once he surely sees him as a monster. He doesn’t know if he’ll still want to hurt him in the name of protecting him, or if he’ll hurt him in the name of protecting everyone else.

He won’t blame him, if he does. It’s his job. All he can do is hope that, even if his brother can’t let him live, he can still love him, even if it’s just the memory of him, untainted by what he will surely become.

That’d be enough for Riki.

Jake and Sunoo are late, but they do show up with plenty of time to spare before the hour that the spell has to take place in ends, backlit by the dimming headlights of Sunoo's car, Jake a few paces ahead of Sunoo as they approach the lighthouse that Heeseung and Riki are already leaning up against, a large bag of salt dropped at Riki’s feet.

“Thank you for coming,” Riki says to Sunoo as soon as he’s close enough to hear him, as Jake goes to Heeseung’s side, taking his hand in his, forcing their fingers to interlace even as Heeseung goes rigid and still. In his other hand, he’s holding the locket.

Sunoo doesn’t lift his head, but he says, “Of course. Anything for Jungwon.”

Riki glances over at Heeseung and Jake, then back at Sunoo, and takes a step forward, lowering his voice a bit. “I’m sure he’ll tell you this himself when he’s, uh – when he’s in you, but he doesn’t think it’s your fault, either. And he forgives you, either way.”

Sunoo’s eyes screw shut for a moment, and he takes a deep breath before he nods, and opens them again. “Let’s get this over with,” he sighs, and gestures for Heeseung and Jake to step out of the way.

They were, apparently, standing right where the entrance to the lighthouse once was, because Sunoo presses his palm flat against one of the stones, and they all begin to shift, sliding out of the way to reveal a small wooden door.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Heeseung huffs in mild awe. “He was a pretty good witch, huh?”

Not a witch. Just an idiot, Riki hears, from Jungwon’s shapeless form, steadily becoming clearer with every passing moment. He snorts, and Jake must be able to hear him too, now, because he meets Riki’s gaze with a knowing smile and teary eyes.

“Yeah,” Sunoo agrees, smiling sadly. “Let’s just hope he’s still got it.”

They climb the stairs to the top of the lighthouse, and sure enough, the altar from Riki’s dream is still there, burnt and scratched and damaged, but still there. Sunoo stands in the middle of it, with Jake, nodding as he whispers reassurances to him, and Heeseung and Riki get to work making a salt circle, leaving it open just enough to welcome Jungwon into it, into Sunoo, and then they’ll close it – trapping him there, but keeping anything else that might try to stop them from breaking the spell out.

“I hate this place,” Sunoo says, loud enough for them to hear, once they’ve both set the salt aside, taking handfuls of it and readying themselves to finish the circle. “I’ve always hated this place. All the fake legends and stories people would tell about it, and – and the way none of them cared, when something supernatural – something awful actually happened here. Like, everyone here, they were so proud of being a haunted town, but when someone actually suffered the consequences of that, no one wanted to talk about it. No one wanted to listen. I wish – I wish they would have talked about you more, Jungwon. I wish we would have listened to you, while we still could. And I know nothing can ever make up for that, but… I’m listening now. We all are.”

It’s an invitation, of sorts, one that Heeseung and Riki know Jungwon doesn’t strictly need, but likely was waiting for anyway. Because, mere seconds later, Sunoo gasps, and one of his knees buckles – and Jake reaches out to grab his shoulders, to steady him, and Riki sees the moment he stops being Sunoo, the moment Jungwon steps into him. Sunoo – Jungwon – blinks, and stands up a little straighter, and says, soft and simple, “Jake.”

Riki and Heeseung pour their salt, finishing the circle, trapping Jungwon. It doesn’t feel right, like caging a dog Riki knows won’t bite, but it’s for their protection, even if it kind of hurts, too.

And Jake – he just crumbles, leaning forward, gripping the collar of Sunoo’s jacket as he presses his face into his shoulder and lets out a gasping sob.

“Jungwon,” he cries, pulling him as close as he can, like he can really feel his brother, even if he’s in the shape of someone else. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I –”

“It’s okay,” Jungwon says, and it somehow sounds like him, too, like he’s hearing him properly speak for the first time, hearing what his voice actually sounded like when he was alive. “It’s okay, Jake. I’m sorry. I never should have…” he trails off, surely realizing that, with the time they had left, he wouldn’t be able to get through every apology needed to make things right.

He can’t make it right, but he can make it all feel a little closer to okay, maybe.

“I’m just really happy to see you,” he says after a moment, even though he’s been seeing Jake, since the very moment that he died, following him around and watching his every move, until he was strong enough for this moment. He’s more himself than he was then, anyway, even as he’s in a body that isn’t his own.

Maybe it doesn’t matter, what body he’s in. Maybe he’s still just happy to see his brother.

“It’s – it’s okay,” Jake assures him, lifting his head to look at him, and it’s clear to Riki that he really means it. “I forgive you. For all of it.”

“Me, too,” Jungwon says softly. “And – I know I probably shouldn’t say this, but… I’d do it all again. Because you’re – you’re going to be just fine, Jake. You’re going to be okay. I can feel it.”

Jake sniffles, and smiles, but it’s a smile that contains more heartache than Riki thought possible. “So are you,” he tells him, cupping his face with his hands, pressing their foreheads together, like they were trying to share the feelings – the visions – that they were having about what lies in store for them. “You’re – going to a good place. A better place.”

Jungwon nods, and tears spill over onto his cheeks, and Riki can feel it, too, their acceptance, their understanding, of each other, of everything.

And then Heeseung says, gently, carefully, “We have to start the spell. I’m sorry,” and Riki thinks he actually sounds a little choked up. Maybe he’s feeling it all, too, somehow.

Jake sniffles again, and nods, taking a step away from Sunoo’s body, from his brother. Their hands stay joined for a long, lingering moment, and then Jungwon lets go, and Jake joins Heeseung where he stands at the outer edge of the circle, leaning into him. This time, Heeseung leans into him too, but he doesn’t wrap an arm around him, or anything of the sort. He keeps both hands on his gun, cocked and ready to take aim if need be.

Riki does the same, but his readied stance falters, just for a moment, when Sunoo – when Jungwon, he reminds himself – looks over at him. He’s started uttering the first words of the spell, but when their eyes meet, he smiles, simple and sweet, and Riki feels his resolve wear itself thin, just a little, just enough.

For a moment, he lets himself imagine what would happen if he interrupted the spell, if he told Jungwon to stay, selfishly keeping Sunoo’s body for his own, or even just sticking around to still be felt, by Jake and Riki. He imagines what it’d be like, to have someone always there, someone that understood him, someone that saw into his mind and didn’t hate him for it, didn’t write him off as a monster.

More people would die. Jungwon’s presence, his mere existence, was a threat in and of itself. But the same could be said for Riki, for the demon blood pumping its way through his veins, couldn’t it? Jungwon has to leave, because he’s a threat, while Riki gets to stay. It doesn’t seem fair, right, but then again – Jungwon is smiling at him. He’s somehow seen it all, looked straight at all the worst parts of Riki, and he’s going willingly, and he’s smiling at Riki like he trusts him to protect the people he loves, now that he won’t be able to.

And, if Riki was a monster, he doesn’t think Jungwon would trust him with that. Because Jungwon is a good person, with good intentions, and he must be going to a better place, even though he’d probably rather stay here, too. Riki shouldn’t waste that trust. He won’t waste his trust, because just by having it, he feels a little more human, a little more good.

He smiles back, and gives Jungwon a simple nod, firm and reassuring. I’ll be good, he thinks, and he knows that Jungwon can hear him, because his bottom lip wobbles a bit as he finishes reciting the incantation.

In the end, for all the trouble it caused, the spell goes out with a whimper, not a bang. There are no hellhounds, barking in the distance, rushing to try and stop them. There’s just a soft glowing aura around Jake, fading just as quickly as it had become visible, and then there’s Jungwon, still in Sunoo, taking one last steadying breath, still smiling as he reaches out and touches the iron bar they’d laid out on the table in front of him.

And then there’s another gasp, this one echoing like it was coming from everywhere at once, and Sunoo slumps to his knees, himself again. Riki can feel Jungwon, still, but he’s weak, and getting weaker by the second, because Heeseung is taking the piece of his hair from the locket in Jake’s hand – carefully, respectfully, two things he almost never is, when it comes to this – and holding it above his already ignited lighter.

It’s over in less than a few seconds, but time seems to slow as Riki watches Jungwon take shape again – more corporeal, more real than he’s ever been before – only to go up in a slow, crawling flame, illuminating his face as it travels up him. He’s looking at Sunoo, and then he’s looking at Jake, and he’s still smiling, apologetic and forgiving all at once, and then he’s gone, nothing more than a wisp of smoke and a feeling, a calm one, an understanding one.

Riki thinks it’ll stay with him for quite a while, even if Jungwon can’t, not anymore.

For several long, heavy seconds, there’s nothing but eerily, almost unnatural silence. And then, softly, with a shaky voice, there’s Jake, saying, “He’s gone. I can’t – I can’t feel him anymore.”

And then Sunoo lets out a quiet, weak sob, and curls in on himself, and Jake moves to wrap his arms around him, the two of them leaning into each other until it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Riki can’t feel him anymore either, not really, but he thinks that, as his brother and his best friend hold each other and cry for him, Jungwon’s still there, even though he isn’t. He thinks that, regardless of where he is now, whether it’s a good or bad place, he’ll never really stop being here, with them, in their love for him and for each other.

Jungwon will still be Jungwon, even if it’s only in their memories of him. And, Riki thinks, there are far worse fates than that.

⛥⛥⛥

“Now, listen,” Heeseung says, slapping a hand down on Sunoo’s shoulder, ignoring the mildly irritated glare it gets him. “You turned out to be alright, but if we hear any mutterings of a witch in town, we’ll be knocking at your door again, got it?”

“Trust me when I say that’s not going to be a problem,” Sunoo starts, interrupted briefly by a quick shudder, “I hope I never have to see either of you ever again. No offense.”

“None taken,” Heeseung quips. “The feeling is very mutual.”

Riki snorts, and it’s enough to tear Heeseung’s gaze away from where he was staring Sunoo down with narrowed, ideally threatening eyes. His little brother is being pulled into a half hug by Jake, who hasn’t spoken a word since they left the lighthouse, hovering near his own car as Heeseung and Riki load theirs back up, getting ready to get back on the road just as the morning light starts to peek over the water in the distance.

But he’s saying something to Riki, now, and Heeseung only catches a few moments of it, of their moment – take care of yourself and the meaningful tap of Jake’s index finger against Riki’s forehead, the small laugh that follows it – but it’s enough to have something warm, something fond, but a little bittersweet, spread from the middle of his chest.

Jake pulls away from Riki entirely after that, and looks at Heeseung without hesitation, like he could already feel his eyes on him, like he couldn’t help but meet them. He smiles, and that’s bittersweet, too, and then he’s walking over, and Heeseung meets him in the middle, in the space between the two cars, one of them ready to go a lot farther than the other one will be.

Jake’s smiling softly, when he reaches up and pulls Heeseung into a tight embrace, but there’s something else there, too, something Heeseung only catches a glimpse of, but recognizes instantly. It’s pure determination, and that’s why he’s not surprised in the slightest at his next words, the ones he whispers against the shell of his ear.

“I want to go with you,” Jake says, simple and sure. “I want to help.”

“No,” Heeseung says automatically, even as his arms wrap around Jake, even as he pulls him closer. “No. I’m sorry.”

Jake, despite Heeseung’s grip, pulls away enough to look at him, and raises his voice enough to be heard by Sunoo and Riki when he insists, “I can help. I can learn. I want – I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. I want to stop it from happening to anyone else.”

“Jake,” Riki starts, from where he’s leaning against the hood of the Impala – Heeseung’s a little too caught up in Jake, in the fiery, impassioned look in his eyes, to scold him for it.

“No,” Jake interrupts, taking a step away from Heeseung entirely but keeping his grip on his jacket, turning to shoot that fiery glare in Riki’s direction, too. “You don’t understand. I don’t – I can’t stay here. Even if you won’t teach me how to hunt, then – just let me come with you. Please.”

“He does, though,” Heeseung says gently. “You really think we don’t understand, Jake? You think we aren’t running from things, too?”

“I’m not –” Jake starts, but cuts himself off, likely because he knows he can’t deny that that’s exactly what he’d be doing, if he came with them. “I can do this. I know I can do this.”

“You could,” Heeseung assures him. “But you don’t have to, and that’s – that’s a good thing, Jake. You get to have a normal life. I’d – kill for that.”

Jake looks at him again, holds his gaze for a long moment, and then says, his voice even and calm, “No, you wouldn’t. You’d hate it, if you had it, if you were stuck with it. I don’t want a normal life. I want to help people.”

“Help yourself, first,” Heeseung says, maybe a bit too harshly, but Jake doesn’t even flinch. “Because if you don’t, you’ll be helping people from a place of anger, or revenge, and that’s not… that’s not going to make you feel any better. Trust me.”

He can’t take his eyes off Jake, for more reasons than one. He doesn’t have much time left to look at him, to see the furrow in his brow, the frown on his lips, and he hopes that they’ll be temporary, that Jake will be smiling again, someday soon, even if Heeseung won’t be around to see it.

But he also can’t look away from Jake, because that would mean looking at Riki, seeing his reaction to Heeseung’s inadvertent admission, to the revelation that he wasn’t such a perfect, well-trained soldier after all, that he hates this life sometimes, enough to warn against it.

“Please,” Jake tries again, increasingly desperate, increasingly heartbroken. Heeseung’s chest aches, sharp and throbbing. “I don’t know what else to do.”

Heeseung pauses for a moment, taking a deep breath through his nose. He finally glances over at his brother, sees the small shake of his head, like he was worried Heeseung might have a moment of weakness to follow his admission of feeling weakness, that he might cave, and quietly tell Jake to get in the car.

He doesn’t, not really, at least. He takes Jake by the shoulders, forces him to look at him, and says, each word feeling like a knife has plunged through his chest, “You’re going to be just fine, Jake. That’s what Jungwon said, right? You’re going to figure it out. And – you can’t come with us, but if you want… we can drop you off somewhere. Anywhere you wanna go. You can start over, but – not like this,” he says, gesturing behind him, at Riki and the car. “Not out of anger.”

Jake, for a while, just stares at Heeseung, his bottom lip pulled between his teeth, holding him together at the seams, his jaw clenching and unclenching. He takes a shaky breath, lets a few tears slip down his cheeks, and nods.

“Okay,” he says, and then, to Heeseung’s surprise – although, maybe he shouldn’t be surprised by Jake surprising him, not anymore – a bit of that anger in his expression fades, and hope overtakes it, lighting him up like a beacon, like he can suddenly see the way forward. “And you’ll… you’ll visit me there, right?”

And, the thing is, Heeseung doesn’t have to be careful with Jake anymore, doesn’t have to avoid hurting him, now that Jungwon’s gone, now that the spell is broken.

He still doesn’t want to hurt him, but he knows that he has to, that he’s going to, and that it starts here, and now, as he breaks his trust with this empty promise. Because, sometimes, protecting someone and hurting them feel like the same thing.

“Yeah,” he says, with a small nod and an even smaller smile, watching the hope fade out of Jake’s eyes, as the rising sun takes its place and lights him up in a more unnatural way. He hopes it’ll be enough, to get him through this, to get both of them through this, through driving away from Jake after they drop him off at his new beginning and pretending he’ll ever find his way back. “Yeah, Jake. We’ll visit.”

It’s all Heeseung knows how to do, pretending, protecting, helping, hurting. It’s his job, and he’s good at his job, and he knows when it’s time to do it, even in the moments where some sense of normalcy is right in front of him, still in reach, if he was brave enough to take it.

But Heeseung isn’t brave. He’s just a well-trained soldier, one that never looks in his rearview mirror for too long, no matter how good, how tempting the view he’s leaving behind may be.

He just keeps driving.

ONE YEAR LATER

They’re somewhere in Massachusetts – only a stone’s throw from Boston, but thankfully, not actually in the city, because that’d be getting a little too close for comfort to the person they dropped off there, almost exactly a year ago – and Heeseung is seriously starting to question exactly when werewolves got so smart, so good at staying hidden.

He was also starting to question, with all the whispered rumours they’d caught wind of leading up to this case, whether or not the mysterious new hunter they’d heard so much about was going to show their face and make themselves useful. It’s not often that Heeseung accepts help from other hunters, but after what feels like hours of him and Riki wandering around the eerily repetitive stretch of forest that makes it feel like they’re going in circles even when he swears they’re not, he’ll take whatever he can get.

And, besides. This hunter, according to Jay, when he gave them the information on this case and asked for their help, is pretty damn good. Messy, a little amateur, but good. They’ve stayed fairly local, and fairly anonymous, and Heeseung just – he doesn’t like that. He likes to be in the know.

“We should just head back,” Riki sighs, turning to face Heeseung from where he’d been inspecting a tree, one he was sure they’d already passed three times. “I’ll do some digging, see if we can’t find a better map.”

Heeseung doesn’t argue, because he’s letting Riki call the shots every once in a while. He just follows him, shotgun still cocked just in case, because he’s pretty sure they’re going the wrong way, and deeper into the forest. But he trusts his brother, trusts his gut, and he wants him to know that, even if Heeseung still can’t bring himself to say it all that often. So he just follows him.

It takes a while, but they do make it to the edge, and back to the empty highway they’d pulled onto the shoulder of. Heeseung’s relief, once they’re finally out of the maze-like, clearly enchanted forest, is short lived – because there’s someone sitting on the hood of their car.

He raises his shotgun, taking a quick step in front of Riki, and barks out, “Don’t move. Hands where I can see them.”

“Which one is it? You don’t want me to move, or you wanna see my hands?” The mostly-shadowed figure asks, and Heeseung, before he can even process how familiar the voice is, finds himself lowering his gun, just for a brief moment, like he’s the one considering surrender.

Without an answer from either of them, the shadow moves anyway, sliding off the car and to their feet, taking slow steps towards them until they’re in the beam of Riki’s flashlight, lit up just enough to see properly.

“Well, shit,” Riki mutters through a small, surprised laugh.

Heeseung doesn’t look at him, keeping his eyes fixed on the potential threat – because even though the person looks like Jake, sounds like him, moves like him, it can’t be him. It’s a trick of the light, or a shapeshifter, or Heeseung’s hopeful, foolish imagination.

“It’s him,” Riki says, before Heeseung has even had a chance to interrogate the cruel, imitative creature.

“We don’t know that,” Heeseung snaps.

“I do,” Riki insists, and, out of the corner of his eye, he sees him tap his forehead, once, the way Jake had when they parted ways, and he understands. Freaky psychic kinship shit.

He takes a step closer, and keeps his eyes fixed on the thing’s – on Jake’s – face, and as soon as he comes into proper focus, as soon as he can really see him, he lowers his gun for good. It’s Jake. He’s got a few small, relatively fresh scars on his face, and bags under his eyes, but he’s holding Heeseung’s knife in his hand as he raises both in surrender, and he’s smiling, and – he’s real.

“How –?” Heeseung starts, unable to even force out the rest, unable to finish asking how Jake found them, because he’s too caught up in the fact that he did, that even though Heeseung tried to leave him behind for good, he caught up to him again anyway.

“I figured wherever there’s weird, unexplainable deaths, there’ll be you two. So I asked around, went to the closest motel, asked the lady at the check-in if there were any freaks staying here,” Jake answers anyway. “She said there were just a couple of nice boys, so I thought – couldn’t be you, right? But here you are.”

“Here we are,” Riki confirms.

Jake laughs, and takes a few steps away from them, closer to the car he’d parked behind theirs. He opens the trunk, and pulls out a gun of his own, one that he loads with a few silver bullets as they watch, Heeseung stunned speechless, Riki scoffing out an amused, entirely proud laugh. And then he cocks his gun, tilting his head towards the woods in a way that’s deceptively innocent, in a way that feels like an I told you so, one Heeseung knows he deserves, one that already has him on the verge of retracting all the words he’d said to him a year prior, before he’s even gotten a chance to see the hunter he’s become, the hunter he tried to tell him he couldn’t be.

“Well,” Jake sighs, as he starts in the direction of the treeline they’d just emerged from. “You’re welcome to tag along, but I’ve just about got this case handled.”

“Do you?” Heeseung asks, his tone challenging, in a way he knows Jake won’t be able to back down from.

“Of course,” Jake says easily, looking at them over his shoulder as he disappears into shadow again. And, as he goes, as they blindly follow, without any real discussion or hesitation, he calls out, “But it was so nice of you to finally visit.”