For a moment, Lee freezes. Sinks like a stone. Cracks open and falls apart like fragments of shattered glass.

Then the rational part of him takes over: Nah. This is a joke. Allie's always loved kidding around. She always used to joke around with me last time, and I guess she's picking up right where she left off. A strange sort of calm settles over him, peppering every pore with the jagged shards of broken beer bottles. Lee forces himself to think clearly, to think everything through for once in his stupid fucking life. That's right. It's just a joke. A cruel, sick joke, but a joke nevertheless.

"Wow, Allie," he replies dryly, the words bitter on his tongue, lemon juice and battery acid diluting his bloodstream and pooling in the tips of his fingers. "Very original. Got to admit, you really got me there for a moment. When did your jokes get so bad?"

It's a joke. It has to be. Because his mother's not dead. She's in Spain, still carrying the face Lee wears, all starry dark eyes and ebony curls borne along by will-o-wisps and the autumn wind. She still holds dreams in the nightlife of her blood, dopamine under her skin, flirting with the flighty, fragile chase for happiness she'd always insisted on following.

His mother can't be dead. She's too alive to be dead.

"Lee," Allie gasps out. He can practically feel the pounding of her racing heart, thudding through the ancient receiver like a whipcrack of lightning. Something curls in the bottom of his belly, a dark, festering thing that sinks into his stomach and roots his organs in place. "I'm not---"

Frustration smacks Lee in the back of the head, fogging up his mind with water and wind, the wind his mother loves so much. If she were here, she'd kiss him on the forehead, tell him to hunt the unknown before it hunts him, to keep up the grand chase---it's a mystery, my darling boy, she'd say in response to Allie's jokes, one tanned, slender hand pressed to her thin lips. It's a mystery, and you've got to solve it. Think of finding me as an adventure. A treasure hunt. Allie's just giving you the clues.

But she's not here, because she didn't want him. Not because she's dead.

His mother can't be dead. She's too alive to be dead.

"This is fucking sick, Allie," Lee growls into the phone, letting the dark, angry thing in him decay and grow, infecting every vein with rage and liquid heroin the way it had when he'd seen the burn Danny had tattooed onto Jack's skin. At his side, his fist curls itself into a ball, an electric shock against the xylophone of his ribs, the water in his lungs burning his throat. He's tired of playing games. Tired of looking for answers. Tired of dreaming. "There are other things to joke about other than my fucking mom. Where is she? If she told you to never talk about her again to me, then just tell me! You don't have to fucking joke about her being dead---"

"Lee, she's---"

And maybe I AM angry, Lee thinks. Maybe I'm angry and the therapist was really right. Maybe I'm angry because Dad can't even stand to look at me, and Mom left me behind to find a dream that'll never become real, and Allie is so fucking annoying with her sick jokes, and Jack, fuck it, Jack... "I just want to speak to her, Allie. Just one sentence. I just want to know why she stopped picking up my calls! Please!"

"Lee, listen---"

"You said I used to be a lot more fun. You know what? Fine! I'm not fun anymore, okay? I know I haven't called in years, but please! Can't we have a serious conversation for once?"

"Can't you ever take anything seriously for once in your fucking life?" Jack had yelled. Lee supposes Jack's rubbing off on him more than he'd like to admit. And maybe he's angry, too. Because fuck it, he's got so much to be angry about. The scorch mark on his elbow. The scar curling over his knuckles like a rat's tail. The open wounds---here, there, everywhere---his parents keep leaving on his porcelain heart, the way he runs after a car that always drives away, how he keeps trying and trying and trying but his Midas touch turns everything to dust, and he's tired, so tired, so fucking tired---

"Lee." Allie's voice is soft now. Quiet. Cautious. "I'm not kidding."

His mother can't be dead. She's too alive to be dead.

"She didn't move to Spain because she didn't want you anymore, or because she didn't love your dad anymore," Allie continues. Her words are whispers now, but to Lee's ears, they sound like steel slicing through bone. His bones. "She moved because she was diagnosed with cancer."

His mother can't be dead. She's too alive to be dead.

"Pancreatic cancer, Lee," Allie says, voice breaking. "She told me and my parents because we were already living in Spain by then and she knew she'd be able to stay with us, but she didn't tell anyone else. She divorced your dad and left you behind because she didn't want you to know she was sick."

"I'd never let people see me die," his mother had once claimed, laughing as she flung her dark curls over her shoulder.

"There was never any boyfriend like she said there was. And she never fell out of love with your dad like I know she told you she did. She wasn't feeling well, and---and---when she went to the hospital, the doctors gave her three years to live. So she---left and came to stay with us. She...she called you until she knew she was too weak to be able to hide the cancer anymore, Lee. She..." Allie's words crack, splitting apart at the seams, falling apart like Lee's done so often, does now.

"I'd hide myself away like Peter did and pretend I was never sick in the first place," his mother had said too, laughing that same laugh, smiling that same smile, chasing that same dream. Always, forever. Lee's never even considered the possibility that she would die---that she could die. She had seemed immortal.

His mother's not dead. She's too alive to die.

But Allie's not kidding.

And it's been four hundred and twelve days since his mother's last call.

"But why---" Lee swallows. His tongue is dry. His voice is a croak. He can't feel his fingers. Everything is numb numb numb. "Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"She didn't want us to tell you," Allie admits, words shaking. "I tried, but she---she didn't want you to know she was sick. She didn't want anyone to see her sick. She barely even interacted with us in her final days. This stays between the four of us even after I'm dead, she told us. Don't tell anyone. Not even my ex-husband. And especially not my darling boy." Allie sniffles, drawing an uneven breath that rattles her ribcage like the world's most morbid echo chamber. "You were her darling boy. Even until the end, Lee."

Every ounce of water's evaporated from Lee's being, but he feels it---the unfamiliar prickling at his eyes, the tears he hasn't cried in years. "But if I was her darling boy, why didn't she tell me she was sick? I wouldn't have seen her any differently. I wouldn't have stopped loving her. Why didn't she let me see her? Why did I have to wait a year to know?" His voice sounds faraway to his own ears, set adrift in the eternal sea pulling him under. "Why did she leave? If she loved me so much, why didn't she spend her last days loving me?" And oh fuck, it's running down his cheeks like liquid silver and mass destruction, the calamity of the stars crashing down among his ears. He wants to punch something and beat the whole world to ashes and just fucking die too. "Why was her pride more important than me?"

The dam breaks. The little glass fragments that comprise Lee's entire being shatter on the ground and crumble into dust.

Allie is silent. For a second, there's nothing save for Lee's echoing cries, sobs that draw the ocean from the sky and shove saltwater down Lee's throat. It stains every inch of the phone booth with all the wild, futile dreams he'd always thought his mother had been pursuing when she'd really been rotting away in her bed, colouring the fragmented glass blue. Blue, like the mourning teal-grey lining Lee's hair. Blue, like his fissured fantasies and crushed hopes. Blue, like the sea inside his chest, spilling molten starlight through the melancholy of Lee's void as it pours from the corners of his Sahara-dry eyes, accompanied by the tender hum of Beethoven on the world's saddest violin string---one that always snaps in two, snapping Lee in half too.

He can't breathe.

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?" Lee whispers.

"She didn't want us to---"

"She was my fucking mom, Allie!" Lee screams, slamming his head against the shaky confines of the phone booth. His free hand fists itself in his hair, and he wonders if he could bash himself against the glass until it breaks and slices him to pieces. Perhaps it's already broken, and he just doesn't know it yet. "I'm her fucking son! Don't I deserve to know that she fucking died?" The words come out as sobs, punctuated with the tears rolling down his cheeks and smashing---crack, crack, crack---on the floor. They take his heart with them.

"Lee, I'm so sorry---"

"I waited for four hundred and twelve days!" Lee shrieks, wailing now, his anguish reverberating around his transparent prison and stabbing him in the heart. "Four hundred and twelve fucking days, Allie! Just to find out that my mom's fucking dead! And that she divorced my dad and left me all alone because she was too fucking proud to let us see her sick! She was my fucking mom, Allie! She was my mom!"

"Lee---"

He ends the call. His legs give up from under him, sending him crashing to the ground. The payphone slips from his hands, its cord yanking it up before gravity can dash it against the floor. There are a million meteors above him, smashing into his head no matter how hard he tries to shield himself with his hands, and they bring the storm, a storm of tears that never seems to end. And for once, Lee wishes the waves would drown him in their eternal sea.

The door of the phone booth slams open. Jack. His broad shoulders fill the cramped space with warmth, but even he can't cure the neverending chill in Lee's veins this time.

"Lee?" Jack asks---hesitant, a beacon through the hurricane, a blinding light guiding the way Lee's tears fall like rain.

And maybe Lee is more like his mother than he'd like to admit, because he tries for a smile---tries, feeling it fall off his face the same way a drowning man falls into the sea. "Hey, man...I didn't want..." His voice catches in the back of his throat, the invisible knife digging deeper into his ribs. He's dying---dying, dying, dying, arteries rupturing, lungs failing, neck punctuating itself with a million sapphire bruises.  "Didn't want you to see me like this..."

He gets it now.

Sometimes, dying's easier than living.

٩( ᐛ )و

The reflection in the mirror seems blurrier now.

It's not because of his tears---Lee's already stopped crying. He'd thought he never would, but when Jack had scooped him up in his sturdy arms, hugged him close to his broad chest, and whispered, "Let's go home, Lee," the waterworks had halted, even if only for a moment. He'd let Jack take him home, even if he doesn't know where home is anymore. Home is not in the mansion too big for a boy and his dog. Home is not in Jack's house, where Lee overstays his welcome. And home is not in his mother, because she's dead.

And so he stands---here, there, everywhere, bullets shredding his glass skin to dust, pieces of him everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. One in the father who can't even bear to look at him anymore. One in the mother who lived her last years like a lie. And one in the mirror.

It's the mirror that undoes him.

It's a small one, nestled on Jack's side table because he claims he's too broke to afford an actual vanity (and he probably is), but it reflects everything all the same. It reflects dark eyes, thin lips, tanned skin. It reflects burning stars and gasoline dreams. It reflects a carbon copy of the face Lee knows he'll never see again. And it reflects his tears when he lets them fall once more, diamond tracks gleaming on his cheeks as he sobs into his already-damp palms.

It's too cold.

A rap on the door frame interrupts his thoughts, and Lee hastily swipes the back of his palm over his eyes. "I swear I wasn't crying," he fibs.

Jack stands in the doorway, brow furrowed in concern. "You've got to eat something," he says. "You haven't had anything all day."

Lee shakes his head. "I'm not hungry," he mumbles. How could I be, he thinks, when Mom's never going to eat again?

Jack stares at him for a long while, before sighing. "Alright. Come on. Let's go."

And because Lee is so numb, so cold, lost in his eternal sea, he doesn't ask where to. He just goes.

There's so much white noise in his head as he follows Jack outside, the stars a blanket over their heads. Lee thinks about how things would be different, normally---he drifts where the wind takes him, and Jack trails behind, complaining all the while. But there's nowhere for Lee to drift, now. The space around him is too empty, all the dreams he'd once chased buried in his mother's grave.

"Come on," cuts through the ringing in his ears, and Lee jumps. Jack peers down at him from the roof---the roof!---pointing at the ladder propped against the side of the house. And Lee shouldn't---but he wants to, so he scrambles up the ladder and settles on the roof next to Jack. The stars stare down at them, and Lee feels the drying tear tracks on his face run cold.

"You're fucking freezing," Jack mutters, pressing his palm against Lee's bare arm. Before Lee can deny the fact, Jack's lifting his white sweater over his head and tossing it to Lee. "Put this on. This is not up for debate."

Lee's too tired to debate anyway, so he slips the sweater on without any fuss. It smells like sea salt and laundry detergent and hot chocolate, a firework in his chest, something to numb the pain, to kill the cold. And it is there, that lingering melancholy, kissing his neck and his wrists, infecting every thread of Jack's sweater with his pain.

He stretches his arms behind his head, spine popping, and---oh. It's not going to work. He's not going to get any taller. And his mother is not going to become any less dead. So Lee drops his hands and pulls his legs to his chest instead, so close his knees dig into his ribs. The sleeves of Jack's sweater travel past his palms and rest against his thighs. It feels---detached, somehow. As if he's leaving his mother and all her funny little sayings behind the same way she left him behind.

(Not in the way he'd always thought she had, though.)

Lee feels an arm wrap itself around his shoulder. Against the midnight chill, Jack is blazingly warm despite only having on a thin t-shirt. Lee wonders if he could reach out---if he could get closer, over and over again. The want in his chest flickers to life, a flame of hot desire, and the thought makes him ashamed. The idea of craving that beautiful heat, the notion of feeling something---it seems so selfish, wanting to be warm while his mother lies cold in her grave. A grave he's never seen, never knew existed until today.

"Is this okay?" Jack asks.

Lee leans his head against Jack's shoulder, sinking into his broad chest. "Yeah," he murmurs, so soft he's sure Jack can't hear him.

"Okay. Let me know if it's ever...you know. Not okay."

"Okay."

Jack switches his gaze to the stars, brown eyes silver in the moonlight. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Lee pulls his knees closer to his chest. The tears seem to come easier than before.

"Sorry. I was---"

"My mom died," Lee blurts out.

Jack instantly falls silent. His grip around Lee seems to tighten, pulling him a little closer, hugging him a little tighter. "I'm sorry. Fuck, Lee, I'm so sorry."

Lee drops his head down, burying his face in his knees. "She died last year. I didn't know. No one told me." He slams his palm against his thigh, feeling hot liquid begin its rapid descent down his cheeks. He hasn't cried in so long---but now that he's started, the tears won't stop. It's like years of bottled-up emotions spill out of him in a neverending waterfall, and he's just---cold. Numb, almost. "She was my fucking mom, and she died, and no one fucking told me! Do you know she didn't leave me and Dad because she fell out of love with him? No! She left because she got fucking cancer! And she didn't want us to fucking know she had fucking cancer! So she fucking..." A sob escapes his lips, drowned by the fuzz on Jack's sweater and the denim of his jeans. "Left us. Left me."

He's not sure how to feel anymore. Angry, maybe, no matter how self-centered the notion is. But mostly just---sad. Like sad can't even begin to sum everything up, but it's the only word he can think of, so: sad it is. It's the catalyst in his chest, the hurricane in his head, the molten silver leaving diamond tracks down his cheeks. It's everything and nothing all at once, and he's so cold it burns.

He lifts his tear-stained face, ever so slightly. Jack brushes away a lock of blue-grey that's fallen into Lee's face, his gentle touch a tender wildfire that scorches away all Lee's defences, and Lee cries harder.

"And I know I shouldn't be angry, because she didn't want us to see her sick, and she didn't want people to cry over her, and that's why she didn't tell us, but---" Lee shakes his head furiously. "Can't she see I'm crying over her now? That I've cried over her so many times in my head since she stopped picking up my calls, even though I haven't been able to actually cry in years? Four hundred and twelve days, Jack! That's how long I thought she hated me for! And Dad's hated me too ever since she left! Couldn't she fucking see that?" His words come out as sobs. He knows it's selfish, so fucking selfish, but Lee supposes he's a rather selfish person after all. "Couldn't she see that after she left, no one fucking wanted me?"

The silence is loud. Lee's anguish is louder, stabbing the night with raw, pained whimpers as he cries into Jack's sweater.

"I'm sorry," Lee sobs, swiping tears away from his eyes. "You must think I'm a fucking mess. I just found out that my mom died and here I am whining about how no one wants me anymore. Wow, priorities. Fucking hell. What's wrong with me?" Everything, maybe. Everything, definitely. "I'm such a---such a fucking bastard. My mom just died, for fucks sakes! Why can't I stop being selfish? Why can't I---" Lee drops his head down again. "Fuck. I can't fucking do this shit anymore. I'm such a trainwreck."

"Hey. Come here." And then Lee's being pulled into a crushing hug that layers itself over the frost spreading through his bones, melting away the ice. Neither of them speak for at least a full minute, and Lee just---stays. Lingers in Jack's blazing embrace, feels every inch of his defined muscles against Lee's more slender form, breathes in salt water and laundry detergent.

"We're all trainwrecks, sometimes," Jack whispers, cheek pressed into the top of Lee's head. "And it's okay, you know. It's okay to be sad. And to cry. And to be selfish sometimes. I'm not good with words and shit, but like...I'm really sorry. About your mom, I mean. I'm really, really sorry. So sorry, Lee." He touches his lips to the thin strands of Lee's hair, almost as if murmuring a silent prayer. "And I know this isn't a good time, but for what it's worth, not everyone doesn't want you. A lot of people want you. Jon and Cory want you. Yumeko wants you. Socks wants you." Jack hesitates, and then, caramel flowing from his tongue like gossamer and silk, "I want you."

Lee chokes on his tears. "Oh," he replies, suddenly feeling very small. Because this is Jack. Jack, who swears off-duty and treats his uniform like a war veteran's medal. Jack, who tells Lee he doesn't even like him but hugs him anyway. Jack, who Lee keeps falling in love with no matter how hard he tries not to. Jack---infinite like the stars.

He's so solid, so warm, so close. And Lee craves it, so desperately, that beautiful urge to feel something, to distract him from the demons running wild in his mind, to keep his gasping head above water, to stop the cold that turns his bones to ice in his porcelain form.

So he swivels around and presses their lips together.

In the embrace of the night, with Jack Sang's perfect mouth flush against his, everything is right with the world. His mother is alive, his father loves him, Jack is kissing him. So Lee draws himself closer, nestles himself against Jack's pulse, listens to the thrum of his heartbeat oscillate from his fingertips to his gorgeous mouth. He bridges the gap between them for the first time, reaching for more of that sweet, sweet comfort, and for a moment, his blood runs warm in his veins.

Then Jack pulls away.

Lee's left in the empty space between them---alone, confused, a little scared. His heartbeat races in his ears, a rushing river through his entire being. He is no longer feeling, no longer warm, no longer sensing anything except the anger and the sadness and all the other shit inside.

"I'm so sorry," Jack says, and it's those three words that snaps Lee out of it.

"Oh, fuck---" Lee blurts. "Oh, fuck. I didn't mean to---I'm so sorry---I'm just a fucking---fucking---" His voice breaks, and he feels tears prick his eyes again. The tap's so fucking hard to turn off, and again and again, Lee keeps falling for the ocean's allure like the mindless prey he is. He probably doesn't even like you that way, you dumb fuck! And you just kissed him to distract you from thinking about your fucking dead mom! What the fuck have you done? What the fuck are you doing? "Fucking trainwreck---right now---"

Lee feels himself crumple, paper burned by moonlight through the magnifying glass of his own feelings. A sob escapes his lips despite how hard he's biting it, and all he can think about is how he'd just used those lips to violate Jack's mouth barely two seconds ago. How he'd finally had something good, something real---and with the stark foolishness of rusted mortality, he'd fucked it all up. Like he always does.

"No no no no no---that wasn't what I meant," Jack interjects quickly. "Look, it's not...it's not about the kiss, okay? It's just that you're not thinking straight right now, and I don't think we should do anything while you're like this. Because you're not in your right mind." Jack wipes the tears from Lee's lashes with the tip of his finger, brow furrowed with concern---so cautious, so careful, as if Lee's entire being's constructed out of the glass that keeps shattering inside him. "Not because I didn't want you to kiss me. I mean..." He pauses. "I do kind of want you to kiss me. But it's just...I don't think it's the right time for you right now."

A single ray of clarity pierces Lee's fucked-up mind, and he looks down, ashamed. "Yeah. It isn't. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Listen, we can talk about this...some other time, okay? When you're ready to...you know. Talk about us." Us. It's an easy word, the simpleness of it hardly even beginning to cover the multitudes it contains. Jack touches Lee's cheek---softly, delicately. "But not now. I don't think you want to have that conversation right now."

Jack knows him well. Better than he knows himself, sometimes. Because right now, Lee is lost, drifting across the endless sea, drowning, drowning, drowning. And in Jack's arms, he feels a little surer, less lost, less sad, but---he knows it's not the time.

He wishes he could say that they've got forever to talk about it, to think about the paradoxical conundrum that is y-o-u and m-e. But he knows they don't.

(If his mother didn't have forever, who does?)

But still, Lee waits, as he's done all along. Waiting for a father to look at him. Waiting for a mother who'll never come back. Waiting for a boy, the boy, to burn the bridges between them and close the gap.

So he waits, crying until his chest hurts. Jack hugs him tighter and wipes the tears from Lee's cheeks whenever they fall, a rock in the storm as Lee watches his universe crash and burn. There is something on Lee's shoulders, heavier than the world could ever be, and he's so sad he could die.

Jack stays with him through it all. He's warm and sturdy against Lee's back, voice echoing in Lee's ears---once, twice, a million times---It's okay to cry, Lee, and he holds him like he'll disappear if he lets go.

The sun's already kissing the stars goodbye when Lee's eyelids finally flutter shut.

i would recommend listening to the Glassy Sky Emotional Cover by Samuel Kim while reading this!

so anygays after i finished writing this chapter, i learned some choreo! (Girls by aespa) and then i ate a huge plate of pasta! and then i took a nap •w• it was such a nice day uwu

'give the people what they want'
what the people want: a kiss
normal authors: let the characters kiss
me: ok you get your kiss but ykw? you also get character death, suicidal ideation, AND rejection in the same chapter. enjoy!

no but in all seriousness, this was legit a crazy tough chapter to write. it's probably the hardest chapter i've written so far in this book, and i slept for 3 hours after writing the ROUGH DRAFT because it was actually so emotionally draining. because there's like, so much going on, and it was a very fine line between 'looking for comfort' and 'asshole who kisses guys right after learning about his mom's death'. like, it's like, 'my mom died, and i'm in pain, and i just wanna do something to stop the pain, because i don't wanna be in pain like this anymore'. not 'ah yes my mom died time to go kiss people like an asshole'. so i had to rewrite that scene many times to make sure my intention of having Lee look for comfort in Jack came across. (did it? i'm not sure T_T)

Lee's mental breakdown was also a very tough scene that hits a bit too close to home. it's hard because although he's been portrayed as being kind of 'on the edge' the whole book (and we all know he's quite unpredictable in an emotional sense), he's also a rather 'happy' character, but he's been on the edge the whole book, so it had to be a massive switch and a fast drop into complete mental breakdown. i really struggled with this, especially since i wasn't sure if him being 'selfish' was realistic, or if it would just paint him in a negative light.

the thing is, Lee is a flawed character. i don't write perfect characters. and to me, sometimes my characters are selfish, and i mean. i don't know whether it's realistic, or if i've just accidentally written my MC into a massive dick.

i rewrote this chapter many times because it's a really emotional chapter for me, and there's so many little things that i have to get right. honestly, i don't know if i'm doing it right. if i've done it right. writing is hard, and this chapter was especially hard for me, especially since Lee is...well, my child, and it's so hard for me to see him suffer :,(

so as usual, lmk what you think of this chapter! i'd love to hear any feedback or constructive criticism, or just any thoughts in general! (please ahahahaha i'm so unsure about this chapter pls send help and thots and prayers)

stay safe, stay healthy, and ily guys sm <333

xoxo, Alex