July 12, 2017, 8:12 PM: Kingman, Arizona
Over the course of the evening, Jae had made something of a game of seeing how much of the loveseat in Alex’s living room he could gradually take up without anyone calling him out on it. Technically it was Alex and Faith’s living room; that was the point of this whole get-together, which Jae had internally dubbed The Great Alex Parker Apology Barbecue: “I’m Getting Married” Edition.
His dad’s side of the family wasn’t as fraught with drama as his mom’s side, but there had been plenty of childish bad blood between Jae and his only older cousin over the years. Alex had always made it known that he didn’t want someone four years younger tagging along whenever their collective parents made him include or look after Jae when they were kids. Jae, in turn, had made it his greatest goal to be as much of a pain in the ass as possible whenever they were together. That dynamic had gradually faded over the years, as they both matured and weren’t forced together as frequently at family gatherings, but they’d never grown close.
Alex had finished high school, gone on to college, met the girl of his dreams, all that good stuff. Jae’s trajectory, obviously, had been different. They’d spoken to each other little in the past few years, but Alex had been quieter, nicer in an awkward way, when they did interact. It felt weird, after the years they’d spent at each other’s throats, but Jae no longer thrived in conflict like he once had. He could appreciate the peace.
Jae could honestly say that he was happy for Alex, because he was an adult and had gone through character development and shit since he was 12. He hadn’t interacted with Faith all that much, but he liked her, and it seemed like Alex really was head over heels for her and was trying to be the kind of guy that he thought Faith deserved. Since they’d gotten engaged, Jae’s aunt and uncle had chipped in so that Alex and Faith could make a down payment on a house of their own. They had apparently made a regular thing of these events to take advantage of the space. It was nice to see.
All of that said, this entire evening had been awkward and uncomfortable as hell. It was nice in theory, Alex reaching out to people that he’d maybe not been on the best terms with over the years and trying to make amends and show everyone a good time. The reality, however, was Alex grilling out back while his buddies drank beer and joked around, and occasionally shot glances at Jae when they remembered he was there and felt the need to gauge his reaction to something they said that might have been slightly off-color. Faith occasionally floated through, and she was the only person who had really tried to make conversation with Jae, but she had mostly stayed in the backyard keeping Alex company. Jae got the impression that she wasn’t especially fond of some of the old high school friends either, judging by the variations in who she spoke to and how.
Jae wasn’t really listening to what anyone was saying and hadn’t been for a while. He had made a point of taking up most of the loveseat to deter anyone from trying to sit near him, and then it had turned into the game of seeing just how much manspreading he could get away with until someone said something. It was that or checking his phone for the ten thousandth time that night.
The shit you did for family. Jae deserved an award for the fact that he was doing this for Alex when there had once been a point where neither of them would ever dream of sitting through an evening of excruciating social discomfort for the other, mandatory family holidays notwithstanding.
The very, very thin silver lining was that Jae wasn’t the only outsider tonight. The one guy who had spent most of the evening perched uncomfortably on the edge of one of the chairs that had been dragged in from the dining room to the living room had occasionally glanced over at Jae, and they had shared a few moments of eye contact in that universal expression of mutual suffering.
Jae vaguely recognized him in the way that said they had to have met properly once or twice before, but in the however many years it had been since, his fellow outlier had changed enough in appearance that Jae wasn’t able to really put an identity to his face and name. His name was Kasey With A K, Jae had caught that much. He was scruffy, with light brown stubble on his cheeks and hair the same shade that was just about reaching the length where it fell into his eyes, making him habitually shake his head to clear his vision. There was a faded purplish tint at the ends of his hair that suggested it had been dyed some time ago, and the way he was dressed - a faded grey t-shirt with the Kingman Regional Medical Center name and logo emblazoned across the front, and equally faded, ratty blue jeans - suggested minimum effort put into his appearance for this little event.
By his own standards, Jae wasn’t doing much better on that front, but by the looks of things, he already put more effort in on the daily than everyone in attendance except maybe Faith, which was probably a gay joke in and of itself, but whatever. Black shirt, dark jeans, boots, piercings, makeup, it was what everyone expected from him. They were lucky he hadn’t decided to wear the shirt Yun-hee had gotten him that read “WORLD’S #1 BASTARD” on the front.
Even though he was fully-dressed, he felt somewhat exposed. Jae had figured out over time that he could get away with wearing gloves frequently and that people would take it as a fashion statement, given the way he dressed. Seoul had hot summers, but every time he came back to Kingman, he was reminded that nowhere he’d been could quite compare to the way Arizona temperatures soared and how the heat lingered even after the sun had gone down. Gloves, even fingerless gloves, were a no-go when it was close to 95 fucking degrees at 8 PM, so he sat with his left arm folded across his abdomen and his hand tucked close to his side, as had become habit. He’d had to forego a jacket as well, though he preferred long sleeves; the new leather jacket his parents had gotten him for his birthday last month was draped over the foot of the bed in his room, still waiting to be properly worn in.
(Its predecessor had sat untouched in his closet for going on two years now, stains on the inner lining and flower pin still attached to the lapel and all. Even knowing that he was never going to wear it again, he was never going to let anyone throw it out.)
Anyway, Jae’s patience predictably wore thin not long after the food had actually been served. He was willing to suffer for a free meal, and admittedly, Alex wasn’t bad at grilling. But he figured he’d about paid his family dues once they got through dinner. He hadn’t had anything to drink; Alex had relegated him to soda because he was still underage in the US, and Jae hadn’t felt the need to argue despite the fact that they both definitely knew he had been drinking recreationally since he was 16. Let Alex get his responsible adult points. That left Jae facing the prospect of being sober while enduring Alex’s increasingly drunk friends, and so he instead opted for the escape.
Some of these people had known Jae, or at least known of him, since he was in middle school or younger. There was something pettily satisfying about seeing one or two of them do a double-take when he got up off the loveseat and unfolded into his full height. He’d topped out at around 6’1” when his growth spurt finally ended sometime after his 18th birthday, leaving him with the lanky and sharp-angled figure of someone whose bulk would never quite fill out their height, but there were still moments when he could tell that someone found him imposing. He’d be lying if he tried to say that it didn’t please him a little bit.
“I’m going out for a smoke,” he announced to the room at large, though he only waited to be sure that Alex had heard and acknowledged him.
“Oh- okay! Sure thing, dude.” Alex looked faintly relieved that Jae was excusing himself.
As he turned to go, Kasey With A K spoke up with his first sentence of the night that was more than a couple words in answer to some question. “Mind if I come with?”
“Yeah, sure.” Jae pointedly ignored the glances a couple of the other guys exchanged and continued on his way, out of the living room and to the front hall as Kasey stood and followed. Jae took just enough care not to slam the front door behind them as they made their underwhelming escape and then made a beeline for his car to retrieve his cigarettes and lighter. The car was another gift from his parents for when he came back home to visit, clunky and nearly as old as he was. But hey, it ran.
He’d quit smoking at the beginning of the year, for a few months. He was probably going to “quit” again soon. Jae leaned between the car and the open door as he pulled one cigarette out of the pack and stuck it between his teeth, cupping his hand around the end of it and the lighter to shield the flame from the light evening breeze.
When he offered the pack to Kasey, Kasey shook his head. “I don’t actually smoke. I just needed a reason to get out of there.” He half-grinned sheepishly, sticking his hands in his pockets.
Jae made a wordless noise of agreement and understanding and stuck the pack of smokes and the lighter in his pants pocket instead of throwing them in the car. He stepped back, slamming the door, and then winding his way between the other vehicles crowding the driveway, down to the sidewalk. Kasey tailed him, and they ended up walking side by side, though not in step as Kasey had to pick up the pace to keep up with Jae’s long strides. The neighborhood was quiet as night began to properly settle over Kingman. Thankfully, there seemed to be no one setting off leftover fireworks, as they had been for the past week or so since the Fourth. The noise still made Jae flinch when he wasn’t expecting it.
“So,” Kasey said before long, “what’d they do to you, for you to show up to one of these things?” He’d evidently worked out the olive-branch-via-barbecue strategy that Alex was going for, and Jae snorted.
“We’re related, and I guess someone should be sorry for that.” Jae left it open-ended as to which of them had it worse in the genetic lottery.
Kasey exhaled softly, not quite laughing. “Guess so. I remember how it was.”
Jae glanced at him, trying to figure out which adolescent escapade they’d bumped into each other on before. He’d been pretty set on making himself a nuisance to Alex and Co. whenever their parents had made Alex let him tag along as kids and had never gotten to know any of Alex’s friends beyond the small parts they had in that.
Kasey was still half-smiling at him, like he knew what Jae was trying to puzzle out. “We hung out a lot, before they stopped talking to me. You broke your wrist that time in the skatepark when I let you try my board, remember?”
“Oh- oh shit!” Jae paused in his steps with his cigarette half-lifted for a drag to look Kasey over again and confirm his foggy memory. He remembered that Thanksgiving well enough. “Yeah, damn. I fucked up your skateboard and never said sorry.” A pause. “Sorry.”
Kasey laughed for real then. His eyes scrunched at the corners, making the shadows underneath them stand out more starkly under the streetlamps and faint starlight. KRMC work schedule, Jae figured. “It survived. I was more worried someone’s parents were going to kill me for breaking your arm.”
Jae unconsciously flexed his left hand in his pocket, feeling the expected twinge up to his elbow, its impact dulled with time and familiarity. “It survived.” They resumed walking, the quiet between them a bit more companionable until Jae’s thoughts caught up with what Kasey had said before.
“They stopped hanging out with you in school, huh?”
“Ah,” Kasey said, in a tone that indicated that he’d overshared. Then again, maybe he’d intended to, given that he’d turned the conversation in that direction. “Yeah. Came out of the closet, lost all my friends. You know.”
Jae didn’t know, not in the way Kasey was saying, but he made a noise of assent anyway. Kasey’s expression had twisted as he looked ahead down the darkened street. Jae didn’t have to guess that there was much more to the story; there always was. He wasn’t going to question the coincidence that was probably more design on Alex’s part, either, inviting the both of them to the same event and presumably hoping that it would send some kind of signal. It wasn’t a real conversation that he’d had with his family yet, but he’d mostly made his peace with the fact that everyone knew by now.
Kasey wasn’t trying to pry information out of him, despite the fact that he had to recognize Jae as more than just Alex’s kid cousin. It was an irritating thing to have to be thankful for, but it was a relief all the same. Jae could return the favor.
(And there were still days now where he couldn’t even think of getting out of bed. But there were also days, sometimes, where he didn’t think about it at all. Where he felt like he was just a person, doing an okay job of just living. And when he did think about it, he felt guilty for forgetting, even for a little while, but it didn’t devastate him as completely as it once had when it all came rushing back in. Even that little bit of recovery had seemed impossible not so long ago.)
“Do you forgive them?” Jae asked, the sound of his own voice almost startling him as much as the actual words.
Kasey was the one to pause this time, and Jae came to a stop next to him, watching the way he rubbed the back of his neck before rolling his head side to side, eyes closing briefly.
“No.” He dropped his hands to his sides. Jae took another silent drag of the cigarette, letting the burn settle into his lungs and then escape into the night in thin, ghostly wisps of smoke. After another few moments of the both of them waiting for the other to say something, Kasey spoke again. “Maybe if they apologized and tried to make up like, five years ago. But- nah. Not now. I made other friends, anyway.” He didn’t comment on what had made him accept the invitation in the first place.
“Yeah,” Jae said, mostly just to say something. He got it, though. Knives in your heart, in your back, literal or not - there were some things you couldn’t ever bring yourself to forgive. Not when someone else had cut away some part of you, big or small.
(And that was why he’d run, one of many reasons why. Because in some ways, Isaac got the last laugh with how his words would never completely leave Jae. Because there were too many people who could still want something that he couldn’t give back, no matter how much he wanted to as well.
You can’t ever take anything back.)
They stayed standing in the dark until Jae’s cigarette burned the rest of the way down, and he dropped the stub onto the sidewalk to grind it out with the heel of his boot.
“You wanna go do something kind of illegal?”
Kasey turned back to him, head tilting inquisitively. “Depends. I have to get drug tested at work.” He tugged at the hem of his t-shirt as though to punctuate his point.
“It’s not drugs.”
“Well if it’s only ‘kind of’ illegal, then sure.”
Jae began walking back the way they had come, and Kasey curiously trailed along behind him once more until they got back to the house and the cars spilling out of the driveway and the side of the street. Jae once again went to his car, this time opening one of the back doors to root around beneath the seat. Kasey stood by and watched, eyebrows raising slightly when Jae came up with a large shoebox and then more when he opened it. A printed yearbook portrait gazed out at them.
“So you’re one of the people who keeps putting these up around town every few months, huh?” Kasey reached into the box to flip the corners of the pages that were stacked inside. Each one a face, a name. Souls gone into the ever-turning wheel of the universe. Jae’s instinct was to pull them out of Kasey’s reach, but he resisted the urge.
“Guess I should be glad I’m not the only one,” he remarked, closing the box. He was glad, actually, an unexpected tightness seizing his chest. “Haven’t gotten caught yet, though.” Even if at least a few people had to know that it was sometimes his doing.
“Is it cool if I follow?” Kasey nodded towards a small, rusty red pickup truck parked on the curb.
“Sure, yeah. Just like… try not to look suspicious.” Jae was aware of the irony of him saying that, and Kasey was too, from the way he grinned again.
Suspicious was fine. Sometimes the best he could do with himself was to think that there were worse things to be than whatever he was.
July 13, 2017, 1:30 AM: Mojave Desert
It didn’t take that long to pass from the outskirts of town into the desert proper. When crime, such as it was, was through being committed, neither of them had wanted to go back to what might be left of the barbecue, so they had taken the road out of town instead. Jae had sent a quick text to his parents to let them know that he was out and about with someone instead of still at Alex and Faith’s place; he could practically feel their unasked questions through the phone, but his mom had just responded with the usual sentiments of have fun, be safe.
Kasey did this often, going by the blanket that he kept in his truck to spread out in the bed and lay back on, looking up at the night sky. They made idle, meaningless conversation while they watched the stars inch their way across the velvety blackness.
“What did you say you were doing now?” Kasey asked, though Jae didn’t think he’d said anything before about what he was doing, in general. Kasey had spared him trying to do the mental math to figure out if he was a doctor or what; he was a paramedic. Ambulance duty, most of the time that he was on call. Jae could name about five dozen things he’d rather do than anything in the medical field, but Kasey at least seemed like he cared about his work.
“College, I guess. I got into Cooper Union.” Mrs. Libermann’s recommendation had come through; the school’s generous scholarship policy had helped Jae not have to wonder so much if it was really the quality of his art that had gotten him in instead of some form of publicity.
(Even if he’d always wonder and always know that for some people, that’s all he ever would be no matter how much he railed against it.)
“Where’s that?”
“New York. Manhattan.”
“Oh, nice!” Though Jae had kept his gaze skyward, he could hear the lift of excitement in Kasey’s voice, and yeah, it felt good for someone besides his family to be impressed. “What’s Manhattan like?”
“Dunno. I haven’t started yet,” Jae admitted. “I’m going in September.”
“Nice, anyway,” Kasey said, settling down. “It’s good to, you know, take some time before committing to school, I think. Lots of people burn out.” And he said that like they both didn’t know exactly why Jae had waited after high school, but Jae wasn’t going to call him out on it. It had been good for him, that was true. Spending time away from Kingman, doing mostly nothing in his aunt and uncle’s house, having his weekly video sessions with Dr. Peralta and figuring out how to be a person again. He’d be going back to Seoul between semesters except for during the winter holidays, they’d decided. Maybe he would come back to Kingman for his birthday next year, but that wasn’t set in stone.
Jae let his eyes fall closed and the quiet of the desert settle over them like a shroud. He pretended that he didn’t feel Kasey’s hand inching closer, like he had pretended not to notice the way they had casually invaded each others’ space over the course of the night, because it had been so long since he’d let anyone other than his family be near him like that. Someone’s touch being casual and friendly had become foreign to him, and he was having to reintroduce himself to it like an animal being brought back into its natural habitat or some shit.
He wasn’t completely okay with himself yet. He didn’t know when he would be. But a year ago, he wouldn’t have let anyone close except for a select few relatives. He would have barely been able to carry on an actual conversation with someone that he didn’t know well. Maybe in another year, he’d be a rational human being that didn’t check all the exits in every room and watch everyone’s hands in case they were reaching for a weapon. He had mostly managed not to do that tonight.
He could question himself in so many ways, and he would. Tomorrow. The next day. Forever, maybe. Tonight, he didn’t feel terrible, and he was going to let that last as long as it wanted to.
(And maybe he’d never truly be whole again, but he was existing with the missing pieces. With the things that his logical mind said were hallucinations and nightmares but his heart told him were ghosts. They had good reasons for wanting to haunt him, even if it would be better for everyone that they moved on. Everything came full circle eventually.)
“You know,” Kasey murmured, fingers just brushing Jae’s arm, “you’re-”
“Don’t,” Jae interrupted him clearly, but not sharply.
The hand lightly touching him drew away. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t tell me that.”
“You don’t know what I was going to say.” There was a note of bemusement in Kasey’s voice, but not annoyance.
Jae grunted concession at him, but kept his eyes closed. He swore he could feel the stars beating down on him just as much as the rays of the sun during the day. He didn’t want to look at them, or at Kasey, and ruin whatever this moment was. His fingers twisted in the fabric of his shirt, against his ribs.
(He was going to get birds tattooed there. Black silhouettes with watercolor wings. They wouldn’t have names, but he would know. A small piece of the past, of love that he hadn’t known how to express, for the people he’d cared for that hadn’t made it home. He resented it less over time, the idea of having something of them to carry with him always.)
“What do you want me to tell you?” Kasey asked.
Jae finally opened his eyes again, unsurprised when the night sky blurred into a swirl of silver and black, the stars losing their definition and melting together.
“Tell me I’m alive,” he said softly. His voice went thick and wavered, but for the moment, he was unashamed.
Maybe it would never feel like enough.
The world wasn’t getting rid of him that easily, though.
Kasey’s fingers curled over Jae’s wrist, a small spot of warmth and reality stronger than the feeling of the truck bed under his back or the faint nighttime sounds on the air. He felt like he could have gone spiraling off into the night without it, choking on the thought of how excruciatingly endless it was, without that touch tethering him to Earth. He was here, and he wasn’t alone.
“You’re alive, Jae.”
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST VERSION 6: CONCLUDED