* b o t h *

It's midnight now.

The shadows of the two men I used to treasure — no, still treasure despite everything, despite all my desperate urges for my heart to bury those unwanted (dangerous, even) feelings — lurk in every corner I see, taunting me with their crooked smiles and glinting eyes. I shake my head free of my thoughts and push ahead. No one is out at this hour. It's a weekday, and every sensible citizen is resting before the coming sun.

Sungjin told me to not go out so late — I'm only an office worker, he'd reminded me before I left his apartment just this afternoon, I don't know how to protect myself like he and Dowoon do. But I have to clear my head, somehow... There's a flurry of dread taking over the crevices of my mind, and only some air can help me through this. Some air and a good stretch of the legs.

A dark alleyway stretches out into the distance to my right. A spark ignites from its depths, catching my eye.

It's... a lighter??

"Sungjin-hyung?" I whisper out in disbelief. He... he couldn't have followed me, could he have?..

The spark appears once more, as if to confirm my disillusioned thoughts. It comes with a familiar click and fizz. My feet carry me forward before I can right myself.

I stumble into the darkness, a flurry of limbs and whimpers. "S-Sungjin-hyung!!"

A sharp laugh I know all too well stops me in my tracks. A sliver of snakeskin boot and cropped-bottom denim catches in the lone patch of moonlight as a figure, tall and elegant, emerges from alongside the wall to stand in front of me.

Jae.

My knees grow weak at the faint sight of that charming, lazy grin of his. "Miss me?" he whispers into the night, the lighter sparking closer to me, this time. I gulp back a terrified scream. "Sleep tight, babe~" and, with a sear gracing my cheek and a heavenly hand over my mouth to muffle my tortured cries, a blow to the gut from his knee winds me out into oblivion.

Before my mind fully shuts down, I swear I hear Brian's well-known hiss from somewhere above.

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