Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Let’s take it slow together, Bam had told him, and frustratingly this had been in reference to training—because what else was there—and not certain other pursuits. 

Not that Khun had ever alluded toward even the general vicinity of the general vicinity of That Which He Wished Bam Had Been Referring To By That Statement. No, the fact remained that his own mind categorically rejected the idea of—well, he wouldn’t even think it, would he—any variety of charged interaction between them with all the organic violence of white blood cells attacking a foreign object. Still. The idea existed nonetheless, almost stronger for all his denial. Gathering clues to turn to evidence to turn to argument solid enough for even Khun to consider it. A glance here—devoid of context—a touch there—he casually brushes your arm, but in conflict who does he carry in his own?—kind, perhaps suggestive words everywhere—renewed affirmations of friendship, no more—all added up to form the perceived ambiguity of intention requisite for the unconfirmed mutuality of romantic emotion. 

Or, put more simply: the—what the fuck. 

Because at the end of the day that’s what he settled on: what the hell. When his racing thoughts blurred into a tangled web of confusion, apprehension, and, by far the worst: ache. When he laid awake as time meandered past, dragging him with it to mornings where he’d wake bereft of answers, again and again, and again and again. Frustrated, he’d ask of the Tower: What the hell is Bam thinking? Does he feel like this, too? And why do I, in the first place? 

And the Tower would answer back: Everything I am wishes you dead.

Which: fair, and what had he expected of it, really.

Of course, he wasn’t necessarily preoccupied with the subject, either. He wasn’t pining. Khun Aguero Agnis did not pine. 

He only sometimes found himself gazing in a way that might be described by onlookers as “wistful”. He only sometimes sighed “dreamily”. But Bam had no sense for subtlety. No nose for nuance, as it were. And so he did not think anything of Khun’s visible elation each and every time they reunited, of Khun’s perfect balance of concern over and unyielding respect for him. 

If Bam found out that Khun lived in constant fear of holding him back, would he offer comfort? Would someone endowed with near-godlike powers even understand the sentiment? 

And why did Khun ache so, at the prospect that he wouldn’t?

He was lounging on a plush couch, idly browsing the lighthouse when Bam’s sworn enemy walked in. Instantly Khun was on his feet, knife drawn. 

“I’m not here for you,” the fake Jue Viole Grace told him in a voice bereft of irritation, panic. A voice Khun might have mistaken for the real Bam, had he not been blessed with intelligence in abundance. Khun studied the glorified piece of software and marveled at its eerie resemblance to the real thing. Whoever, or whatever, had created him had spared no detail, down to the familiar sheen of his hair, the particular pattern of dark flecks in his big, golden eyes…

A breath hitched in Khun’s chest. He straightened, let his weapon hand fall to his side. 

“Of course not,” he said on an extended exhale. “Bam is my… is my friend. It’s preposterous to think he’d suddenly appear as my sworn enemy.” 

Viole met him with that familiar, infuriatingly impenetrable expression and a silence that offered no further clues as to what he was thinking. If he was thinking. After all, a newborn piece of data programmed solely to track down and eliminate a single person likely wasn’t capable of sentient thought. 

“Where is he?” Viole asked. The uncanny lack of body language he displayed left Khun feeling thoroughly unnerved, if only because it was all too easy to recall the period of time where Bam had acted in the same way. 

“Isn’t it obvious? Bam isn’t here right now,” he told the clone. “Funny, though. I thought they told us you ‘sworn enemy’ folks had the ability to find us no matter where we are.”

If this bothered Viole he did not show it. He turned as if to leave, and Khun tensed as the intoxicatingly familiar scent of Bam’s shampoo wafted down from the long tresses of hair that billowed from Viole’s high ponytail like a dustcloud. The hyperrealistic qualities the clone embodied threatened to pick him apart at the seams; he could already feel some long-coiled thing beginning to unravel within the pit of his stomach. 

Without thinking he reached out and wrapped his fingers around Viole’s wrist (his vision went temporarily slantwise from the sensation of pulse beneath them, of beating heart through digital veins), holding him back.

And the strangest thing.

The strangest thing was that Viole let him.

Jue Viole Grace. FUG Slayer Candidate; pathetic illusion. The last lingering remnant of the life Bam left behind. Stronger in the past than Khun was at this very moment.

He was merely bits and bytes, ones and zeroes. A hollow mirage of Bam’s past memories, past emotions, past fears.

Right?

Yet he permitted Khun to hold him still with the slightest bit of effort.

Whatever could the reason for that be?

“I’m sorry,” Khun said, releasing him. He folded his hands into his pockets and rocked back on the heels of his dress shoes. “It’s easy to forget you’re not the real thing. Just a tired ghost…” 

But he hadn’t forgotten. Khun Aguero Agnis would not simply forget something so consequential. 

This they both knew.

For a moment they stood frozen in time, Viole with his back turned and his fists clenched at his sides, and Khun a portrait of thinly-concealed mischief.

Then Khun broke the silence. “Well?” he prompted. “He’s not here. Aren’t you going after him?”

From behind Khun watched the exaggerated rise and fall of Viole’s shoulders as he sucked in measured breaths. “You always… chase,” he said, and the words were strained as though he’d returned from a grueling battle, devoid of even the strength necessary for proper speech. Or as if they belonged to someone else, but he was obligated to say them. “But you never ask me to stay.” 

Khun felt his eyes grow wide. He gritted his teeth, glared at a mote of dust suspended above the shards of dying light scattered across the floor of Eduan’s residence. 

“I won’t take criticism from a phantom. You’re not him,” he scoffed, but couldn’t make himself believe it. 

Viole turned to face him, golden eyes half-obscured by dark locks of hair that had grown too long to be considered a fringe. 

“You’re right,” he said. He studied the lines of his own palms, curling and uncurling his fingers like a child learning how to fit the contours of their body. “I don’t know what I am.”

“You’re a phantom,” Khun repeated. “Run along after him. I’m not going to ask you to stay.” 

“I don’t understand,” Viole said, still mesmerized by his own hands as though he’d just discovered them. “I have to defeat him. That other ‘me’. It’s why I was created. But… part of me also wants to stay here. Just for a little while.” 

Khun’s heart skipped a beat. He swallowed the heat rising in his esophagus and tried not to look at Viole straight on, because that seemed to worsen the base, desperate hunger that even now turned his stomach claws. “What, is there a flaw in your code?” he asked, but the question died in his throat. 

Viole frowned at that. “That’s impossible,” he said. “I’m a perfect replica… every painful feeling…” Then he looked up sharply, a volatile amalgamation of shock and acceptance masked across his features. “You…” he continued, and his voice continued to shake. “I think—I miss you… I’ve missed you for such a long time. Even when we’re together, I miss—why… does it hurt to say that? I’m not… supposed to… No…”

Something pricked at the corners of Khun’s eyes. He ignored it, refused it. Before him Viole shuddered, dragging his fingers down his cheeks, covering his face. 

“What are you talking about?” Khun said. “In any case, this is probably a good thing. For me, I mean. If you’re malfunctioning that means there’s one less obstacle in our way.” 

Viole shook his head. “No, I know what I have to do—I can’t ignore my fate. I won’t let anything hold me back, not even—“

He stopped short, searched for answers hidden in the lofted ceilings. 

And Khun stepped forward against every instinct that begged him not to. But he could not stand by. He could not stand by while Bam—while someone who resembled Bam—suffered. He crossed over to where Viole stood and, with a shaky breath, pressed the palm of his hand to Viole’s cheek. Viole blinked but did not flinch or move to stop him, merely looked into him with a muted curiosity that stung Khun’s insides and made his ribs feel all bruised. 

Khun brushed a finger over the replica’s soft skin (fake), smoothed away the salty damp of a single tear (fake), marveled at the tenderness of his lips (fake), the way the light slept deep within his irises (FAKE). Khun Aguero Agnis did not forget that this man was not Bam in the slightest, could not feel, could not think, had no more agency than a worker bee designed to carry out a single task and then cease to exist, but he could see how it would be easy to slip into a state, not of denial, but of intentional ignorance as to the true nature of the body before him. 

For in a sense he had already slipped into that state, because when would he ever allow himself to be this close to the real thing? When had he ever offered Bam comfort beyond a few meager words, encouragement beyond a hoarse shout of his name? Khun Aguero Agnis was not a sentimental man. He did not care much for the theatrics of compassion. He found himself disgusted by blatant displays of affection, platonic or otherwise. Found himself downright repulsed by sappy speeches, by forced optimism, by anything verging on intimacy, emotional or otherwise. 

But the warmth of Bam’s—no, of Viole’s, he reminded himself—face beneath his palm felt right. It felt right in a way he had never really experienced. Like the final piece of a puzzle had snapped into place. Like his arduous trek up the Tower’s center had prepared him not to reach Ranker status, and certainly not to rule, but to simply exist beside Bam. To offer him comfort. 

Khun closed his eyes and leaned forward so that their foreheads met.

“I’m sorry,” he said when he opened them again. Viole stared at him, all aglow with that same tentative hope. 

And when it was clear he had nothing to say, Khun kissed him.

He hadn’t planned on kissing him.

In fact he’d spent the vast majority of his time around Bam actively trying not to. 

But his body moved before his brain could protest, broke the failsafes he’d spent years creating, blew a hole straight through the hundreds of layers of walls and fences and locks and vaults he’d carefully constructed to suppress his secret longing, that cavernous, ruinous thing that would eat him alive if he did not keep it properly sedated, and threatened to regardless.

At least he wasn’t kissing Bam. 

He was sure this was nothing like kissing Bam.

Kissing Bam would feel wrong. They were friends. Nothing more. Why sully that with the red tape of romantic involvement? 

Kissing Bam would feel forced. Something Khun would do because he believed he himself wanted to. Something Bam would do for him even though he knew he himself didn’t.

But kissing Viole. 

There was no risk, right? No strings. The near future was sunny with no chance of stilted conversations, awkward silences, sideways glances, forced laughs. The replica would be gone soon anyway. Wiped from existence. Erased like the ghost that he was. And the world would be right again in his absence.

But kissing Viole.

Khun pulled away first to murmur another sorry, but the replica shook his head. 

“Khun,” he breathed. 

Khun shuddered. “Stay,” he whispered. 

“I will stay.” 

“Good.” 

Under shattered light Khun backed him up against the wall. In a haze he wondered what kind of shoddy coding The Hidden Floor employed to generate a piece of data that would allow itself to be placed in such a compromising position without the slightest bit of protest, but in the moment his overwhelming emotion was namely gratitude, less genuine concern for the integrity of the program. 

“I miss you all the time,” Khun mouthed against the bare skin of Viole’s neck. All the unsaid words he’d kept under pressure for so long sensed the hairline crack in his defenses and burst through, sliding off his tongue in a stream of inarticulate expressions of feelings both vague and sinfully specific. Between open-mouthed kisses he whispered to the fake Viole of sleepless nights he’d spent thinking of him (not of him, of Bam), of unspoken fondness and how he cherished every single moment they spent in each other’s presence, how he’d always yearned for intimacy but never been able to admit it to himself, much less to Bam. How when he’d thought Bam dead he’d had to face the climb with drowned lungs and a sadness far too heavy to carry, had to weigh his own mounting emptiness against the need to fulfill Bam’s dying wish. How he’d become something not unlike this false Viole, a sham, a hollow replica of a person he’d once been.

Viole responded by way of soft moans and gentle touches that suggested Khun come closer, impossibly closer. Would Bam sound like that, if Khun touched him like this? That was the thing, wasn’t it? Their voices were indistinguishable. Perfect copies. Sounds with which to augment the already colorful fantasies in which Khun had absolutely never indulged—

Viole’s fingernails dug into Khun’s back, inducing a moan of his own. Khun’s interest in carnal pleasures had always been low, almost to the point of nonexistence; if given the choice, he derived far more enjoyment from intellectual pursuits. He struggled to remember the last time he’d yielded to physical desire, as it was so rare he felt it at all. All he knew for certain was that it had been long before he’d even entered the Tower, and since that time any desire he had experienced had centered around a certain Irregular… 

But where the mind hesitated, the body remembered. His greedy hands found their way beneath Viole’s Slayer coat, beneath the hem of his shirt where his taut stomach radiated heat, and this would be how Bam’s body felt, too, wouldn’t it—developed, unapologetic musculature, all the firm warmth of his midriff resting just above sharp hipbones, which in turn rested just above—

Viole let out a sharp whine, and Khun quickly retracted his wandering touch. 

“I’m sorry,” Khun sighed for the thousandth time. He leaned back to survey Viole’s face and furrowed his brow when he found the replica sheet-white, staring over Khun’s shoulder at something behind him. Khun whipped around, a defensive arsenal poised and ready to rain down upon whatever unsuspecting intruder dared interrupt them—

But in the mouth of the hall stood Bam, jaw slightly agape, and myriad realizations dawning across his features all at once. 

“Bam,” Khun pleaded. He shoved Viole away with all the violence of a child discarding a broken toy and strode down the hall to where Bam looked as though he might scream, cry, or potentially both. 

“Khun…” Bam clenched his jaw shut and wrapped his fingers around the wrist of his opposite arm until the knuckles went white. “What are you doing…?” 

Chapter Text

The ensuing fight had at least relieved Khun of the burden of spinning a believable excuse. With the real Bam in attendance Khun no longer had any qualms about turning his full strength on the new one, but Bam’s frustrating desire to refrain from harming his data doppelgänger had made the fight much longer and more tedious than it had any right to be. Hours (and one massive renovation to Eduan’s residence that mostly involved the demolition of an entire wing) later, Bam’s sworn enemy was once again temporarily rendered out of commission, and Khun was finally able to indulge in the luxury of sinking into his bed.

For the duration of the battle Khun hadn’t had the time to sort out how to respond to Bam’s inevitable questions. Now, alone in the dark of the room they shared, he could no longer run from the unavoidable tension. With a groan he slung an arm over his eyes and willed his way into a partial dream-state, but before he could cross the divide into sleep the door creaked open, and a shaft of light from the outside hallway fell across the floor in a long, pale ribbon.

“Khun?” Bam whispered, shuffling in and shutting the door behind him. “Are you awake?”

It wasn’t that Bam was particularly adept at seeing through Khun’s bluffs; on the contrary, for all his natural predisposition toward accurate predictions of people’s actions in the heat of battle, he had a tendency to be just as naive to their inner workings outside of it, Khun’s especially. It was just that, more often than not, Khun found he could not hide much from his best friend simply due to the overwhelming guilt that plagued him when he did so. 

“I’m awake, Bam,” he grumbled. 

A few seconds later Khun rolled over in alarm as the mattress dipped to accommodate Bam’s weight. Khun winced internally at the sudden memory of the nights on which his mother used to creep into his room, lower herself down onto his bed, and smooth his hair back as she reminded him that he was her good little boy, her good little boy who trusted no one; how smart he was for knowing not to!

Bam shifted, pulled his knees to his chest and rested his chin atop them.

“I don’t understand,” he said at last, with a gravity that implied that he did. “Before we started fighting. That other ‘me’... my sworn enemy... did he hurt you?”

Khun grew smaller by the second. Couldn’t logic his way out of this one. There was no rational explanation for what Bam had witnessed, no lie to which Khun was willing to commit. Perhaps with anyone else he might have been able to form a silent pact, pretend it had never happened, but Bam had a knack for pressing for answers, and Khun had a knack for giving them to him. Realistically Khun knew he wouldn’t be able to tolerate Bam distancing himself, however unintentionally, as he quietly internalized what he’d witnessed. 

So it was good that they were having this talk. 

But that didn’t stop him from wishing the Tower would, for once in its long and violent history, show mercy and allow him to surreptitiously blink out of existence.

“If that’s what you think, then I’m not going to correct you,” Khun said. He propped himself upright on his elbows. In the dark he could just make out the shadows in the vague shape of his friend, the edges of Bam’s silhouette soft and gentle and heartbreakingly beautiful. “Grace” suits him, Khun thought.

“It’s not what I think,” Bam admitted. “You’re right, Khun. I wasn’t afraid of him hurting you, because I wouldn’t. But...” He trailed off, ran his fingers back through cropped brown hair. “Maybe he is capable of doing things I can’t do. Maybe he is his own person...”

So long as even a molecule of hope existed it could be crushed. And the size of that crushed hope, whether as small as an atom or as large as a star, does not directly correlate to the ensuing pain. So Khun felt his chest collapsing, his lungs struggling for air, and a great anvil crushing his skull, pushing him deep down, as though his body had suddenly decided to crumble under the pressure of the shinsu atop it.. Here, at last, was empirical evidence that Khun’s unrequited feelings were just that: unrequited. Because that’s what Bam was doing here, right? Subtly distancing himself from the clone’s actions. Bam was telling him that he did not feel for Khun what Khun felt for him.

But Khun had to be sure. Beyond the shadow of a doubt.

He had to be sure the hope died a swift death before it had the chance to regroup and turn to denial, to outright delusion.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked. The words fell hollow from his mouth, an off-key music box.

“I’m not really sure myself,” Bam confessed. “But I think… I think he can say things I’m not capable of saying. So we’re different.”

“Like what?” Khun said. “Huh? Do you have some dark inner world I don’t know about? Was the whole ‘save everyone’ thing just an act? Maybe you’re really a monster, secretly plotting against us all…”

Bam laughed, and the sound formed a spear that pierced straight through the center of Khun’s ribcage. Bullseye.

“I hope not,” said Bam. “I don’t think I am. If I am, I hope I never find out. So it’s not that. It’s just…” He gestured something Khun couldn’t even begin to interpret, then sighed. “Khun, what did he say to you?” 

Khun tucked a pesky lock of blue hair behind his ear. He mirrored Bam’s pose, curled into himself with his legs squeezed tight to his chest. “It was nothing. Just sworn enemy stuff. You know, ’I hate Bam so much’ and the like.” 

Another laugh. “You’re a bad liar, Khun.” 

“I don’t want to hear that from you,” Khun told him. “I still can’t believe you managed to trick us into believing you were a Regular for as long as you did.”

“It was really hard,” Bam said. “It’s not like Rach—it’s not like anyone taught me how to lie!”

“But it’s a useful skill to have! Here, practice on me. Tell me something untrue.” 

“Um, alright. You’re, ah, really annoying me right now?”

“Hey! I said ‘untrue’, Bam.”

At that Bam reached over and gave him a gentle shove, and Khun had to pretend that the touch hadn’t sent his heart accelerating into orbit around the Tower. He forced a laugh and wrapped his arms around his legs more tightly, lest he lose control and wrap them around Bam’s neck instead. 

Even in the darkness he could sense the way Bam’s face fell when the playful gesture wasn’t returned.

“Ah, I’m sorry,” Bam said hastily. “Did I hurt you? Sometimes I forget my own strength—“

“You didn’t hurt me,” was Khun’s curt reply. 

“Khun.” Bam had reverted back to his usual earnest demeanor. “Is everything alright?” 

“Bam, you don’t have to pretend you didn’t see what you saw.” Khun’s voice was rough. His eyelids still hung heavy—the fight, coupled with their recent training, had taken its toll on his body—but he refused to allow himself the refuge of sleep before they reached some kind of resolution. 

At the end of the bed, Bam cleared his throat and shifted yet again so that his legs were beneath him. He leaned back to rest his head against the wall and stared up into the dark with his hands laid flat atop his thighs. 

“What did he say to you?” he asked again.

“What do you think he said?” Khun challenged. Both of them could be almost comically stubborn at times, but Khun liked to believe he came out on top in that sense. He could out-stubborn Bam any day of the week. It was just a matter of endurance. 

“I don’t know,” said Bam. “I just know that he must be lonely. If he is the ‘me’ of back then, then he must be in so much pain… that’s why I can’t defeat him, Khun. Not in battle, anyway.” 

“Oh,” was all Khun had to offer. He chewed at his bottom lip like a petulant child, grateful for the gloom that obscured his anxious habits. 

“If he is the ‘me’ of back then… he misses you a lot.” Bam’s words were slow, calculated. Much like the false Jue Viole Grace had when he’d let slip the a similar sentiment, Bam sounded winded, exhausted, as though he’d fought a thousand battles without stopping. 

“Is that so.”

“Mm-hmm… it’s strange. All this time, I’ve been chasing after Rachel. And I still care about her; she was my family, my star. She was… everything. My entire world, just her and that dark, dark place. That doesn’t just go away. But the closer I got to her, the farther away from me she became, until she turned into someone I hardly recognize anymore. And then I thought to myself, why am I still running after her? When all my friends are already beside me, where they belong… Even if she’s no longer a part of my life, I’m no longer lonely without her. I have everyone who’s gone up the Tower with me. All my friends, all my teammates. And”—he paused, as if contemplating someone, then continued—“I have you.”

“You have me.” Khun’s voice was little more than a hoarse whisper now. He wanted to ask Bam exactly what he meant by that. In what way did they have each other? His rational brain screamed that he should be grateful Bam even bothered to include him amongst his friends, but the raw, tender side of him that selfishly yearned for more ached for Bam to view him as special even amongst those close companions. To adore him the way he adored Bam.

Hey, Bam—

I think I might be falling in love with you—

I think I might have loved you before I even met you—

I think my soul knows the shape of yours—

But Khun Aguero Agnis, of all people, did not believe in soulmates. 

In fact it was difficult to say whether he beloved in love at all. At least, of the romantic sort. Really, it was overrated. Such saccharine sensibilities were unhealthy at best. And he wouldn’t be caught dead taking part in such trite activities as dating, holding hands, or warm, extended embraces… If you asked him, people who flaunted their relationships were a blight on the Tower’s population. 

So why, when it came to Bam, were things different? Why was Bam the exception to his distaste for romance? 

Because Bam was the one thing he couldn’t have. 

Maybe that was it. Maybe he coveted that which he could not possess. The proverbial forbidden fruit. Because Bam would never see him in that light. 

Khun had expended a lifetime’s worth of luck already simply by befriending him. He wouldn’t be so fortunate as to have the object of his affections return them. He wouldn’t ask that much of fate. So he’d have to invent ways to be content with his lot in life, or at least induce in himself such a state of abject denial that would allow him to live a life mostly devoid of unrequited longing’s requisite misery. 

So it was settled, then. He’d learn to be grateful for what he had, a place at Bam’s side, and—

“Khun,” Bam said, and Khun’s runaway train of thought skidded to an abrupt halt. “Why did you kiss Viole?” 

By now Khun had lost track of how many times within the past five minutes it had felt as though the Tower had shifted beneath their feet, the floor pulled out from underneath; his stomach bottomed out. Khun’s head swam with a sort of fever. For once in his life, Khun found his silver tongue tarnished. 

“It was an accident,” he blurted out. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, you know.”

“Then… do you wish it hadn’t?”

Khun snorted. “Someone’s persistent tonight.”

“What else am I supposed to be?” 

Let’s try “quiet”, Khun thought, but there was a part of him too deep-rooted to ignore that secretly appreciated Bam’s incessant questioning. It was so Bam to not give up. This was how it always was: Khun frantically constructed roadblocks, and Bam appeared in the nick of time to knock them down again.

“What you’re supposed to be is asleep,” he told Bam. “Eduan’s going to be upset if we show up exhausted for training again. Not that I care what he thinks, but still.” 

To Khun’s surprise, Bam said, “You’re right. We should sleep. He’s kind of scary when he’s mad.” 

“Yeah.” 

For a moment they sat in silence. Bam made no move to get up or even change positions. The lingering apprehension held them both still, Bam with his chin aloft and Khun with his tucked against his clavicle like a child. 

When he was unable to bear the tension any longer, Khun said, “Shouldn’t you go get ready?” 

But Bam shook his head. “I can’t get up. I think… part of me wants to stay here just a little while longer.”

“Are you waiting for something?” 

“Am I?” 

The portion of Khun not melting under the weight of secret things almost propelled him forward to kiss Bam right then and there, but he managed to refrain. He slid back down into the mattress and wrapped himself in the comforter in the hopes that that would be enough of a hint for Bam to finally up and leave. But either the hint was lost on Bam, or else he had chosen to ignore it. 

“I’ve never kissed anyone before,” Bam said after awhile, and Khun wasn’t entirely sure how he was alive, anymore; hadn’t his heart skipped altogether too many beats tonight to continue performing its basic function? 

“And where’s this coming from?” Khun muttered. 

“It’s weird to think the other ‘me’ has gotten to do something I haven’t. I guess it’s not something I worry about a lot though, since I have so many other important things I’ve got to do…”

“If you ask me, it’s overrated anyway. I mean, I’m not really sure what’s so great about it.”

“That’s easy for you to say!”

“Besides, it’s better to wait for someone you actually. Want to. Do that with. To come along.” 

“But what if there’s already someone?” Bam pressed. “How do you even ask for that? How would you know if they wanted to, too? Climbing up the Tower has just shown me how much Rachel didn’t teach me. Even about things like that.” 

Khun groaned, rolled over and covered his ears with the pillow. “You can just ask, Bam.”

“Then would you kiss me?” 

Khun froze because there was absolutely no way in the Hell… Train that Bam had just asked Khun if he’d kiss him. He’d misheard, misinterpreted, something, what with the pillow muffling all noise from the outside world, and that was all there was to it. Warily, he peeked out from under the blankets before pushing himself up again. 

“That’s… a great example of how someone might ask, yeah,” he said tentatively. 

“Khun, I am asking.” 

“If I would? Well, let me think… under the right circumstances it’s not like I’d say no. But I could probably kiss anyone—and for reference, that includes Yu Hansung—under the right circumstances—“

Without warning Bam pushed himself across the bed, stopping just short of Khun’s lap. He interrupted Khun with a coy peck to the cheek that threatened to send Khun spiraling into the depths of the Tower, perhaps all the way down into the dark hole from whence Bam came. Khun’s breath came in shallow pants. His thoughts shattered, disintegrated. He poured every ounce of self-control into not wrapping his arms around Bam’s torso and pulling him closer, as he’d done with Viole mere hours ago. But of the two, who did Khun actually want? The one he refused to mar with his dirty hands. 

The one he couldn’t touch.

“That’s not what I meant,” Bam said softly. “Khun. Why did you kiss Viole?”

Tomorrow, when Bam brought it up again, Khun could blame it on his exhaustion. He could blame it on his scattered brain, worn out from constant training, the constant fighting, the constant threat of death—his, or worse: Bam’s.

He could blame it on a trick of the light.

Excuses were tomorrow’s domain.

But tonight, Bam had worn him down. He was good at that. There’s just no arguing with him.

Tonight, for once in his life, Khun would choose to tell the truth. 

Tonight he would choose to take a leap of faith.

Tonight Khun would choose to trust.

Might as well.

“Because he looks like you,” Khun breathed. “Because he sounds like you. Because he was lonely, and he was you.” 

When Bam exhaled Khun felt the hot, moist air of his breath slide down his neck, and he shuddered. 

“You never told me—“

“Well, you never asked—” 

“No, let me finish. You never told me, but Khun, it was obvious… You think you’re really good at hiding how you feel, but you’re not.”

“Then tell me, Bam: how do I feel?”

What weak light leaked in through the big picture window was enough to illuminate the faint edges of the uncharacteristically devious smile that alighted on Bam’s lips. The tips of their noses mere inches away each other, Khun held his breath as Bam studied him closely.

“Warm,” Bam said at last. 

“That’s a new one. You know I’m an ice spear bearer, right?” 

Bam laughed. “But no one’s ever seen you use an ice spear.” 

“Low blow!” Khun exclaimed. “I was only trying to do it for your sake, anyway! You and that alligator can train by yourselves from now on, Mr. Shinsu Genius!”

“No! Khun, you can’t! You’ll fall behind!” 

I’ll fall behind no matter what, Khun thought. A shark can’t swim with minnows forever…

But he would swim with Bam for as long as he possibly could.

“Don’t worry,” he said. With each inhale he couldn’t quite gather enough air to fill his lungs; it was difficult to breathe with Bam in such close proximity. “I’ll keep climbing with you, even if it means I have to throw a spear...”

“I don’t want to run so fast you can’t catch up,” Bam told him softly. “I want to reach the top together. I don’t want anyone else left behind.”

“It’s okay. If you get too far ahead, I’ll just keep chasing after you.”

“Is that a promise, Khun?

“It’s a threat.”

He had to stop making Bam laugh. Khun’s heart was a ghost pumping blood through dried veins. With Bam this near, with those gentle laughs that curled into the shell of his ear, Khun marveled at his own restraint. Not that it was really restraint if he had no choice, but he gave himself due credit regardless.

In the following lull he remembered where they had started, before the conversation had flowed into spears and promises, and his buzzing anxiety short-circuited and turned to numbness. 

It was possible Bam had already forgotten, or perhaps quickly regretted what he had asked for only moments prior. Possible, but, knowing Bam, improbable.

“Khun,” Bam murmured. Right on cue. “What would you do if you knew you were going to die tomorrow?”

Khun blinked at him but said nothing.

Bam continued, “Because if I die tomorrow—fighting Jahad’s data—I think I’d be sad that I didn’t get to tell you how much you mean to me.”

“You won’t die tomorrow.” Khun was almost chuckling, his brain rebelling against even the vague notion of Bam not returning from the battlefield. “So don’t worry about it.”

“You’re right... at least, I’m not planning on it. But then, why do we have to wait until there’s a chance we might die before we tell the ones we care about that we care about them? There are still so many people I wish I’d been able to say ‘thank you’ to.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about that with me. I know how you feel—“

“No, I know how you feel, Khun. And I want you to know I feel the same... that’s what my sworn enemy told you, wasn’t it? That’s why you were kissing him, right? Because he told you he wanted to... because he’s capable of saying things I can’t say.”

“I’m... not sure I follow—“

But before Khun could attempt to follow, Bam lurched forward and Bam was kissing him and Khun did not have time to react because before he could process let alone enjoy that Bam was kissing him Bam was pulling back and staring into him with years’ worth of hopes and questions in his eyes.

“You’re a bad liar, Khun,” Bam told him for the second time that night. 

Wide-eyed and on the brink of quiet hyperventilation, Khun reached up to run a finger across his own lips, which tingled where Bam’s had been. The kiss had been clumsy—far more awkward than the one he’d given Viole—but that made it endearing; it was so painfully, thoroughly Bam.

He had been right. Kissing Bam was nothing like kissing Viole.

Kissing Bam was so much better. 

Even if the action itself was shy, almost childlike in its timidity, it was good because it was Bam. And not only was it Bam, but it was an action born of Bam’s initiative, his decision. The resolution to a desire Khun hadn’t voiced, never asked for, never even alluded to. 

Khun swallowed. “You really haven’t kissed anyone before,” he observed helpfully.

“Was it that bad?”

“No! Just—here, let me...”

Khun extended his arms, stiff from being all but locked into place for so long, and ran the fingers of one hand through the tufts of hair that sprouted from the back of Khun’s head, while using the other he gently caressed the hardened line of Bam’s jaw. Bam looked to him expectantly, but complied without an ounce of hesitation. When Khun kissed him it was delicate, as though Bam was a fragile ornament and not a rapidly growing, borderline monstrous threat to the integrity of Jahad‘s regime. But when, after a moment, Bam began to kiss back, it was with a primal hunger that forced Khun to pull away and examine his features.

“Did I do something wrong?” Bam asked with an expression of genuine concern.

“N-no,” Khun said hastily. “You’re just, how do I put this—more receptive than I thought you’d be...?”

“So you’ve thought about this?”

“Hey Bam?”

“Khun?”

“Shut up.”

Khun leaned back in and he was dizzy now but at least he had the intoxicating contrast of hard enamel and soft, wet tongue to use as an anchor point; if his head spun it didn’t matter so long as their lips were the axis—was a real thought he’d just had, and, by the mystic power of Jahad’s stupid three-eyed symbol, he must be pretty far down the proverbial Headon-hole if he was waxing poetic about someone’s teeth.

Much like with shinsu moves, Bam seemed to pick up Khun’s technical kissing prowess simply by exposure, and soon Bam was running his fingers through Khun’s hair as Khun did the same to him. Khun led them to maintain a slow pace so he could savor the moment, allowing himself to leisurely explore how their bodies behaved together in such close quarters. Bam’s enthusiasm released a cloud of butterflies that began in his stomach before migrating up his spine, until his every nerve ending was aglow. 

He moaned a muted yes between kisses, and thereafter melted at the sensation of the grin that had curved itself into Bam’s lips. 

Eventually, however, he had to break away again.

“Bam,” he said abruptly. “We should get some sleep.”

Bam quirked an eyebrow. “What’s...?”

In response, Khun gathered the blankets around his waist and turned his sheepish gaze toward a nondescript spot on the floor. “It’s not my fault you’re immediately talented at everything you do.”

Bam sat back on his heels. “It’s not my fault either!” he protested. “Did I do something wrong?!”

“What? No! Bam. We just need to rest for tomorrow.”

“I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were—sorry. If we keep going, I don’t know what will happen. That’s not the kind of thing I do right out of the gate, you know.”

“I’m not asking for anything… like that,” Bam reassured him. “But kissing you is nice.”

“…Kissing you is nice, too,” Khun forced himself to say, not because he didn’t mean it, but because there were certain sentiments Khun Aguero Agnis simply did not express aloud or even to himself in his deepest, most private thoughts. “But sleep is also… nice,” he added weakly.

Bam tilted forward to rest his forehead on Khun’s shoulder. “After I battle Jahad’s data,” he said, voice muffled against Khun’s shirt, “kiss me again.” 

“You know I don’t take orders from anyone. You’re not an exception just because I… just because you’re you.”

“Then it’s a suggestion.” 

“Let’s make it a deal instead. Come back safely and I’ll kiss you again.” 

Bam’s fingers curled, nails digging into Khun’s back in a way that Khun found not entirely unpleasant.

“It’s a promise, then. Do you mind if I… ?”

In response Khun only nodded and drew the blankets aside to make space for Bam to lie down beside him. 

“Don’t get used to it,” he teased. “You kick in your sleep.”

“At least I don’t snore.”

“Goodnight, Khun.”

“…’Night.”

DAYS LATER 

Bam stood beside the glass casket.

In death Khun looked so peaceful.

Perhaps more peaceful than he’d ever looked alive.

He looked like he was sleeping.

He wasn’t sleeping.

Khun snored when he slept.

Now his chest didn’t even rise. His chest didn’t even fall. 

There is something I fear more than death, Bam often reminded himself. Said it over and over again in his head.

Like a prayer.

Like a promise.

Take care of Khun for me, he’d told Hwaryun. Would she make good on that promise? He had no choice but to believe that she would. 

Because there was no guarantee that he would ever find out one way or another.