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hexonthepeach · 2 years

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dark & stormy 1: landfall

summary: you’re a housekeeper in a seedy hotel working through the worst hurricane of the season when you’re invited to spend the evening with your two sexy but enigmatic co-workers. when you accidentally uncover their secret identities you're dragged into a darker world—one you may already know too well

pairing: jaehyun (nct) x johnny (nct) x fem!reader (code name: jenny)

genre: the late-70s/early-80s miami vice/nice guys/secret agent johnjae/reader au no one asked for or: a work of madness inspired by the infamous w korea shoot

word count: 12.8k of 63k+

warnings: explicit sexual content (m/f, m/m, mmf threesome) [see chapters for detailed tags], dark themes, implied murder, drug-use (alcohol, quaaludes), drugging w/o consent, stalking, kidnapping (non-sexual), bondage, minor knifeplay/gunplay, slight age gap [y/n early 20s, jj late 20s/early 30s], y/n implied dark origins/criminal history (OC vibes but history left open for interpretation), sleep paralysis/nightmares, walk-on guest appearances from other nct members inc. sungtaro in later chapters

fic masterlist

chapter warnings: implied sexual content, alcohol consumption, stalker Jaehyun, PTSD related OCD, detailed descriptions of dead bodies, animal death, animal euthanization, non-consensual drugging, inappropriate use of bible verses and old tv show references

recommended listening: romanticist by yves tumor

The hurricane had been downgraded to a tropical storm but the damage was done, long before it hit the coast on a holiday weekend. You could curse all the weathermen predicting its trajectory. They'd all been wrong, and the consequences were being felt most by you and the rest of the staff of the Magic Carpet.

The smarter locals had evacuated while the tourists who’d made no changes to their plans were trapped here without return flights, holed up in their vacation rentals and hotel rooms, requiring all the convenience of services that you, unfortunately, were there to serve.

If only you could have had a job at one of the luxury resorts, where there were multiple staff for each of the floors and a full kitchen for fine dining. But no, you work at the Magic Carpet Ride Hotel—a name cursed by having neither magic nor a decent carpet. The place isn’t even fully Arabian Nights; after a fire in the ‘50s management had remodeled the combination bar and restaurant to be vaguely Tiki-themed.

There’s only a few saving graces to being a housekeeper here (god you hate when people called you a maid) and that’s the inspired decision to put a pool inside. It's a warm and comfortable grotto where you can pretend for a moment that the world isn’t being wrecked by 70 mph winds and your 14-hour shift can melt away into the heated water.

Unfortunately even off-the-clock you’re on call. Your manager shoves one of the few rickety room service carts in front of you the moment you enter the lobby to head downstairs.

“Doll, I need you to make a run up to room 217,” he says, cigarette hanging from his mouth. The front desk phone rings behind him and he exhales a puff of smoke through his nostrils, the dull lights shining on his bald head.

“Isn’t Ruby on night shift?'' You sigh, staring at the sad plate of leftover bar fruit and bottles of RC Cola and Schweppe’s ginger beer. There’s also a bucket of ice and a ridiculous pile of chips and plastic-wrapped snack cakes: Mickey’s Banana Flips and Jim Jams. The order is probably for one of the several families with kids trapped in this hellhole with you.

“Ruby’s got her hands full with towels and turndowns,” he says. “Just do me a solid this time. They said they’d tip good.”

The moment you hear tips your ears perk a little. You weren’t working this job out of love after all, your survival was dependent on leftover pizza and the occasional change left in vacated rooms. You shrug and take the cart, heading towards the elevator to your last call.

The air in the hotel is noticeably more humid and laced with ozone and the same sweat on the chilled glass of the order is dripping down your spine, under the crocheted knit of your swimsuit cover-up. You head towards the gloomy end of the hotel wing, hearing the occasional cough from one of the few occupied rooms. From inside 217 you can hear the faint sounds of Peaches & Herb’s “Reunited'' playing on the radio.

A quick rap on the door gives you no response so you consider leaving the tray but decide to announce yourself instead.

“Room service,” you say.

Come and get your stupid fruit, you think.

The door opens with a rush of cool air and Paco Rabanne aftershave and a sight that turns your mouth dry, the blood rushing to your face.

The bronze-haired man leaning against the doorway is clothed but you feel like you’re glimpsing him nude. His yellow shirt with dyed palm trees is unbuttoned, white shorts slung low enough you can see the trajectory of those perfectly carved abdominal muscles. There’s even a little hair peeking above the brown-leather belt.

You must have been staring because he laughs, and that’s when you realize he’s not a tourist—indeed, you’ve glimpsed this face a thousand times on shift, working behind the bar or passing you in the hallway.

“Hi, Johnny,” you say, looking up (up, up) to meet his warm gaze.

You’d always avoided eye contact before, feeling embarrassingly small and frumpy in your orange uniform. Now your own skin is peeking through the loose knit of your coverup and you feel naked under his gaze. The older man has a cat-in-the-cream expression but there’s a kindness in his brown eyes that makes you feel more at ease.

“What are you doing here?” you try not to stutter, looking past him into the dark of the room.

“It’s my room,” he slings back.

The lights are low and there’s the distinct sound of someone inside. Oddly you feel a twinge of dismay, reminded of the second reason you’d avoided him: the other housekeepers had warned you that he tore through lonely hearts like paper.

You’d seen him talking to guests and front desk girls alike, making them laugh with jokes delivered in that wry, deep tone, and maybe you'd been a little jealous of the attention. It’s not like you wanted to be a notch on anyone’s belt but this man was different. You think you’d give your left pinky finger just to know what his deal was.

“Off shift for the night. Looks like you are too.” He sizes you with a short nod. Suddenly the hallway is much too big.

“Wanna come in?” Johnny asks.

That surprises you.

“I . . . I was gonna go for a swim.” The sensible part of your brain is blaring an emergency siren at the idea of going into a strange man’s hotel room. Especially with someone else in it. But you consider the offer.

“Just for a minute. I left my wallet inside,” he gestures behind him, bringing your attention back to the miles of tanned skin in front of you.

“You don’t have to, really.” Your voice is a murmur.

Johnny grabs the cart across from you, tugging gently to snap you out of it.

“There’s someone else who’d be happy to see your pretty face.” He winks at you, pulling the cart from your limp grasp and leaving the door open.

Your heart is pounding in your chest but you swallow your anxiety and follow him in, closing the door behind you on instinct alone.

You may be shy but you’re not a coward. Even if you’re only just twenty-something you’ve lived on your own long enough to handle yourself. Johnny isn't a challenge . . . you think.

The room is blessedly clean. This is especially nice considering you’re the one who will probably have to clear it once they’ve vacated. There’s a few travel bags on the floor and a number of bottles and empty glasses strewn about, but no crumbs on the carpet or lingering smell in the room.

Except, perhaps, the odor of spearmint and grease you know so well.

217’s other occupant is hitting the side of the TV with his hand, the signal fritzing as the antenna jumps around with the force. You’d recognize that back a mile away, set against the world and you, where you’re frozen in the entry to the room.

“Percussive maintenance,” Johnny jokes quietly, nudging your side as he passes.

“Signal is out.” Jaehyun turns around, catching sight of you.

Any relief you had about finding another man instead of a woman in the room is quashed as you meet those dark-as-night eyes.

It isn’t that you are afraid of him—no it’s much more complicated than that.

Like Johnny, Jaehyun’s also dressed in the hotel regulation tropical shirt and white shorts, meaning he was probably working after his shift as the Magic’s go-to handyman. Sometimes he helped out bar-backing, other times he played the aging grand piano in the lobby.

Whenever you'd heard music drifting from the first floor you’d steal down to your perfect hiding place, tucked behind potted palms, pretending to mop the cracked arabesque tile. You liked the way he played, lost in the moment, his dark hair flopping across his forehead, mouth set in a grim line.

That’s how you feel you know him best, pulling arrangements from thin air on woefully out-of-tune keys. Discordant notes were just color for his songs,

“Hey, Jenny,” he says, face unreadable.

It takes you a few seconds to realize Jaehyun knows who you are, before remembering the nametag you wear every day. It isn’t your real name, of course–but it was one you’d grown used to responding to.

Of course he’d seen it. If it hadn't been in the hallways it might have been when he came into your rooms to do repairs, or when you’d sat beside eachother in silence at the bus stop. The former was already special to you but the latter, the latter was what has you trapped in front of him and feeling so small.

“Baby girl brought us the goods,” Johnny says, popping one of the bottles from the cart. “What would you like to drink: a Cuba Libre or a Dark ‘n’ Stormy? Sorry we just have the rum and a few beers.”

You eye the Havana Club on the nightstand—not a liquor you’re familiar with. You don’t have much experience with drinking beyond the occasional glass of Riunite (on ice!) with the other girls in your co-ed housing.

One drink should be fine, you think. One drink to pretend like you’re cool with these two.

“I don’t know. What’s good?” You look up at him, and he seems to like the uncertainty in your voice.

“I got you,” he says, smirking. “Let me borrow your knife, Jae.”

You watch the other man toss a sheath with a very large looking handle over to his co-worker, and you freeze.

You’d seen him wear it a few times, hooked into his utility belt with his other tools, doing nothing to dispel the allegations he was ex-military.

“They say he did two tours in ‘Nam,” Ruby hisses into your ear as Maeve pulls up the blinds for a better view of the outdoor pool where Jaehyun checks the pump, sweat sticking to his white shirt, his jumpsuit tied at his waist

“He’d have to be over thirty, Rue. He can’t be older than twenty-five, twenty-six?”

“You know they were still terrorizing those poor people over there five years ago. Maybe he was young.” Ruby scoffs. “My brother-in-law came home but he’s got that look, like he’s not all there.”

“It’s a shame what those boys went through,” Maeve sighs, wiping the glass door to the patio with a rag soaked in vinegar. “Such a waste of a good-looking young man.”

Something in your chest had twisted at the older women’s words. Your daddy had been in Korea before you were born, and while he’d been distant and prone to bouts of violence it wasn’t like he was missing something. He certainly hadn't been a waste, whatever people said about him.

You knew all about the mean things people had to say, you’d experienced it yourself, so you didn’t give much thought to why their words had made you so angry at the time. Thinking about it now it’s absurd, but the effect Jaehyun has on you has always been out of the ordinary.

“Late night swim, huh?” Johnny says. “You could just go outside for second.”

A dark laugh follows, but nothing else. You look over your shoulder to find Jaehyun turning the TV off.

“It’s better at night.” You explain. You watch as Johnny cuts limes with the six-inch, black blade. There’s an oddly familiar prickling on the back of your neck, and you fidget waiting for the conversation to continue.

“You shouldn’t go alone,” Johnny says.

“I’m used to it,” you respond, quietly. Johnny looks over your shoulder, meeting the eyes of the man behind you in a way you don’t think you could ever do.

As much as you’ve watched Jaehyun, you think, there'd been more times you’d caught him watching you. You'd felt him staring at you from across the laundry where you folded towels, or in the smoky break-room where you made your approximation of cafe con leche with microwaved milk and staff coffee so strong it could strip paint.

The Y-100 late night radio DJ is giving an update on the storm and location of emergency shelters. Without the music you can hear the dull roar of the wind outside the closed blinds. The hotel is far enough from the beach there’s no surf to crash over the walls but the occasional crack of lightning through the shuttered window makes your heart race.

“You wanna find another station?” Johnny asks.

You nod, going to the clock radio, planning to switch to the classical music station you sometimes listened to while working, the one you leave on for night check-ins and turndowns. You're surprised by the hand on the dial that's there before you.

Jaehyun looks up at you from where he’s crouching next to the bed.

“What do you like to listen to?” He asks.

Your throat clenches up, sure that’s the most he’s said to you in the three months you’ve known him.

“What . . . Whatever you like,” the words slip out unplanned.

A cloud passes over Jaehyun’s face—gone in an instant, replaced by a tired, closed-mouth smile.

“Whatever you like,” he repeats, taking your hand and placing it on the knob.

Your mind is blank; you don’t even know what station you turn to, just finding the first with music without words. Johnny starts laughing immediately, shaking you out of your stupor.

“Didn’t know you liked Beautiful music,” he says.

“What?” You hold the hand that Jaehyun had touched as if you’d been burnt—but not by heat, you think. Like touching a wall in the restaurant walk-in.

“Easy listening,” Johnny explains. He passes you a Collins glass filled halfway with pale ginger beer, the rest a dark rum float. “Let’s find something with less ads.”

Indeed, the next song is a too-loud announcer selling an event that’s either used cars or a dance night. Johnny reaches beside you to flick the dial to a much-more tolerable soul music station.

“This alright?” he asks, suddenly so close his breath is fanning the hair on your forehead.

“Sure.” You agree immediately, backing away. “Thank you.”

You sit on the edge of the bed. You're unsure of what to do next. It feels like you’ll drop your glass to flee at the first sign of trouble. Johnny sits beside you, sprawled on the white sheets. He’s stripped the comforter and it makes you relax a little—management wouldn’t let you wash them unless they had what they described as a “visible stain”.

“Do you like it?”

You’re confused until you realize his eyes are flicking to the glass in your hands, yet untouched.

“Oh,” you say. You take a deep swallow, almost choking when the rum burns down your throat. After the initial numbness and sweetness from the alcohol dies the ginger and lime come through. You find yourself enjoying the bite of it. “It’s really good. What is it?”

Johnny shrugs. “Rum and ginger beer. Come over after your shift tomorrow, I’ll make you something even better.”

“Sure,” you say, knowing already you won’t go.

‘I’m surprised you’ve never come in before.”

“I have to work, usually,” you explain, your tongue looser after your second sip.

"Oh, I know," he says. "You don't hang out much."

"No," you admit.

You've never been to the hotel bar off-hours. When school is in session you work doubles on the weekends, sometimes missing the last bus and having to walk with your fist wrapped in-between your keys for comfort in the late hours. Thankfully no one’s ever bothered you.

“Well, I know I’d love to see more of you. Ruby comes in all the time.”

Of course Ruby does, you think. She’d described her multiple attempts to get Johnny into bed to you as you'd helped her finish cleaning her rooms, including graphic details about fellating him in one of the linen closets. The words “soup can” had haunted you every time you saw him after that, the Campbell’s jingle playing in your head.

The grimace on your face must be noticeable because Johnny is smiling in that cat-like way again, eyes narrowed. He takes a drink from his rum and coke, throwing his neck back. Sweat glistens on his tanned skin.

You’ve managed to distract yourself from the gloom sitting in the wicker chair across from you, but it’s taking a lot more willpower to not let your eyes wander down Johnny’s bare chest.

“Are you both staying in here?” you ask, turning to where Jaehyun is stripping the label off a beer bottle.

“Jae’s up in 310," Johnny says. "But there’s a leak. Hasn't had the time to fix it in off-hours, you know."

He sits up straighter, dipping the bed beside you. "Which room did Old Chromedome give you?”

You know exactly who he's talking about: the day manager. Lavinsky had always had it out for you, mostly because he liked it when female staff mouthed off at him, and you never have. Your overnight room was just a consequence.

“114. The pool view,” you sigh. “It’s wet, too.”

Water is seeping in through the sliding-glass door of your room and there aren’t enough towels in the hotel to keep it contained. Worse, the not-so-magic carpet is beginning to smell of mildew. Even a bath of industrial strength deodorizer isn’t enough to drown it.

“I’ll fix it when you’re working tomorrow,” Jaehyun says quietly. It would be inaudible if you weren't hyperfocused on what he had to say from the moment you'd entered the room.

“Oh you don’t have to,” you rush to answer, shaking your head. The ice clinks in your glass as you swirl it. “I don’t want to bother you.”

He looks up, smiling in a way that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“It’s my job," he says.

The words are hardly a comfort–the opposite, actually.

Jaehyun takes another drink from his beer before standing up to pace around the room. That’s another thing you’ve noticed—for someone capable of such stillness he has a tendency to fidget when left to his own devices.

You clear your throat, tapping your glass.

“Let’s play a game,” Johnny says brightly, breaking the tension. “Poker?”

Neither of you answer affirmatively.

“Strip poker?” He offers.

“No,” you and Jaehyun say the word at the same time, and you smile a little at Johnny's offended expression.

“Rummy? Crazy Eights?”

“No cards,” Jaehyun says. He collapses on the opposite side of the bed, his skull colliding with the wood paneling in a way that makes you want to check if he’s alright before you watch him readjust.

“A drinking game, then,” Johnny says.

“Don’t know any.” You decline.

“Oh but I bet you know this one. Truth or Dare. If you don’t want to do something or say something you just take a drink.”

Before you can protest Johnny gets up to fetch the rum bottle, pouring a few fingers each into styrofoam cups usually reserved for the hotel coffee service. He hands them out with the gravitas of serving the finest vintage.

“This is stupid.” Jaehyun says from where he’s sitting, eyes on the popcorn ceiling.

“How about . . . Never Have I Ever?” you ask softly. You're remembering a preteen slumber party where you’d ended up winning while the others put all ten fingers down. They’d called you a square, but then you’d never shared your secrets with them, knowing they'd probably call you worse.

“See I knew Jenny knew how to have fun,” Johnny says, plucking the empty glass from your hand only to fill it more and hand it back to you.

You don’t remember finishing the first drink but you look down at the warm rum and feel a glimmer of satisfaction in knowing you’ll be able to sate your curiosity about the two men. There’s not much they’ll be able to throw your way–how much could they know? This is your first real conversation with either of them.

“I’ll get us started,” Johnny says, sitting on the bed again in the best place to triangulate with you and Jaehyun.

You ease your way onto the mattress, taking off your wedge sandals so the straps don’t dig in, letting them fall to the green rug below. When you look up Jaehyun’s eyes are resting on your ankles and you instinctively pull your legs under you.

“Never have I ever . . .” Johnny begins, looking around the room for inspiration, gaze falling on the rotary phone. “Listened in on a conversation on a party line.”

“Liar,” Jaehyun says, drinking.

You tilt your head in a nod and toast him, drinking as well.

Johnny guffaws at you in a way you recognize, his mouth half-open as his head dips down in return. “You’re not as innocent as I thought.”

“I’m from a town of about 500 people,” you say once the burn of the rum is gone. “You hear a lot of things.”

Perhaps they think you mean listening in on a negotiation of a refund on a pig who turned out to be a boar instead of a sow but no, you’re thinking about the time you and your roommates voyeured on phone sex between a 3rd floor girl and her boyfriend in the early hours of the morning. You’d wrapped the receiver in a hair towel so they couldn’t hear the giggling, entranced by the description of things you hadn’t even read in books.

“I see, I see. Jae, you go.”

“Never have I ever . . . hitch-hiked.”

Both Johnny and you raise your cups at the same time, and you have to blink away the tears as the swallow affects you just as much as the first. Jaehyun stares at you curiously.

“Cross-country buses are expensive.” You shrug. It isn’t like you're Sissy Hankshaw. Everyone did their turn on the highway, you were lucky yours was short.

You look at the man beside you for reassurance.

“Oh, I just did it for fun,” Johnny laughs. “Your turn.”

“Never have I ever . . .”

You don’t want to spook them into not playing so you figure you’ll start with a softball. “Never have I been overseas.”

You’re rewarded when they both drink.

“You’re lucky we have another bottle with us,” Johnny says, reaching over with a long arm to fill your glass. The bottle of rum is still mostly full, you think, but the buzz makes you feel a little bold, the question tumbling off your lips.

“Where’ve you been? Overseas?”

“We don’t have enough liquor for that conversation,” Johnny jokes. Jaehyun swirls his cup, running his other hand through dark hair touched gold by the sun.

“Born overseas.” Jaehyun says, looking up at you. He recognizes the question in your eyes. “Dual citizenship.”

You want to ask him where but you save it, knowing it annoyed you to no end when you'd heard the same question countless times before.

“Never have I ever milked a cow,” Johnny interrupts. You’re the only one who drinks, and the men slap hands across the head of the bed, as if they'd won a sports match.

“You don’t have much of an accent,” Johnny says. “Where’s that tiny town at? The Midwest?”

“The South,” you quip, making them both laugh. You’re surprised by the sound of Jaehyun’s laughter, like it originated deep inside of him.

“Well, you got us there,” Johnny says, tipping his blonde head.

“Never have I ever . . .” Jaehyun pauses, a bit of pink creeping into his cheeks and ears. “Worn women’s underwear.”

“That’s cheating,” Johnny exclaims before drinking. You sputter rum out of your mouth, wiping it away as you laugh at his sour expression.

“I looked good in them, too,” he continues and soon you are curled over on the bed, laughing more than you think you have in years. It isn’t just the drinks, this is the first time you’ve had actual fun in as long as you can remember.

“Never have I ever kissed a boy,” you say, intending it as a joke to move the game along. The silence that settles over the room is so dense it seems to absorb even the soft music from the radio, the swish of rain against the side of the hotel growing unbearable.

“I meant girl . . .” you lie, poorly, words dying on your tongue as they both drink. Jaehyun sips but Johnny clears his whole coffee cup, placing it on the nightstand as a finale.

“Oh.” You hiccup.

Suddenly things are becoming a little more clear in the light of intoxication: the shared room with the one king-sized bed, the articles of clothing draped across the unused desk.

"'S cool," you offer, feeling stupid upon saying it.

You consider yourself an open-minded person—your peers in college and on the way to it are more diverse than you could have possibly imagined. It had changed your outlook on a lot of things that growing up in nowhere never dared touch. But you can’t help but feel a small twinge of disappointment, like something just within reach has slipped out of your grasp.

“Don’t,” Jaehyun says suddenly, looking at Johnny with a dangerous look on his face. Your head snaps up to find the other man leaning towards you on the bed, hands raising to cup your cheeks.

“Baby girl.” You can smell the cane sugar on Johnny’s breath, his face inches away from you. Your eyes focus and unfocus on his perfect Cupid’s Bow lips. “Are you telling me you’ve never been kissed?”

You feel like a deer poised to flee on a nighttime highway.

“I . . . I’ve . . . Been kissed." You move to pull away but his large hands are now on your shoulders—not gripping, just holding you still as your body tremors beneath the touch.

“Really?” He asks, gently.

“Ye . . .Yes.” Your voice is so quiet you can barely hear yourself, your eyes fixed on the olive green crochet of your dress. “I’ve just. Never kissed.”

“Never kissed someone?" The room in the air seems to go even more still. "Do you want to try kissing someone you like?”

Your skin is aflame, hands crushing the cup you’re still holding onto. You can’t look up, you can only focus on your own knee dipping into the white topsheet.

“Leave her alone,” Jaehyun’s voice is barely audible over the rapid breaths coming out of your mouth.

Johnny releases you to lean back and sit down on the bed beside you, legs folded.

“She’s fine. Aren't you, Jenny?" The question isn’t demanding as much as offering reassurance.

And that's when you realize that you are fine, that even with the tension that sings like a taut wire around you, you have control. Your eyes flick up to where Jaehyun is sitting, afraid to look at his face lest your own body betray you. You watch him pull his bottom lip between his teeth, jaw shifting as he worries at it.

“It’s your turn,” you say, straining a smile as you look back at Johnny. His whiskey-colored eyes are dancing, the concern brushed away.

“Never have I ever—“

“Game’s over,” Jaehyun says. You don't see as much as feel him get up and blow past you both to the bathroom, watching his back as the door slams shut behind him. The noise makes you jump.

“He’s like that,” Johnny says, reaching for the rum bottle and pouring himself another dram. You shake your head when he offers you more, drinking what’s left and enjoying the warmth that spreads through you.

“Are you two . . .” You begin to ask, stopping when you see Johnny look bemused, and then actually amused. “S’okay! I don’t mind, it’s none of my—“

“Do you think he’s jealous of you?” Johnny laughs. “Oh no. No, it’s not like that.”

Your thoughts were already going a mile-a-minute, the sound of the shower starting in the next room putting everything on pause. It takes a moment to process what Johnny just said, and your body unwinds a bit as you realize the implication.

“You’re cute, do you know that?” Johnny ruffles your hair above your ear, fingers just as warm as when he held you a minute ago. Suddenly you're alone with him, and much more close.

He’s as friendly as if he were an older brother, or the kind of male friend you’d always wanted, but there’s something in his look that sets your heart racing. If he asked you again if you wanted to be kissed—instead of kiss someone you liked—you think you’d say yes just to see how it felt.

“Thank you for the drinks,” you say, biting the inside of your cheek. “I’m sor—sorry.”

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, doll.” He moves back, propped up against the low headboard, perfectly-muscled legs so long they’re practically in your lap. “You leaving?”

“I think I should go,” you say, hearing the slur of tiredness and alcohol twisting your tongue. “Could you . . . Could you tell him I’m sorry?”

Johnny opens one of the eyes he had closed, face shaded in the wall light.

“Don’t tempt him to give you something you might actually be sorry for.”

You don’t know what he means but his delivery is dry. Just another joke at your expense, you think. You nod and retrieve your shoes and the vinyl tote bag you brought with you, flashing Johnny a smile.

Your eyes never stray from the light shining through the gap under the bathroom door, not until the hotel door clicks shut behind you.

You're thinking about the movie your roommate dragged you to recently, the one where William Hurt turned into a caveman after spending too much time in an isolation tank, as you float in the liminal blue of the pool you'd been dreaming of all day.

You can’t even remember the name of the film—Altered something—exhaustion setting in the moment your body touched the water. You work your way to the surface in the relative darkness and float face-up, tracking the glimmers of the underwater lighting on the faux stone ceiling.

The water feature at the end of the pool provides a soothing white noise and the emptiness surrounding you makes you feel like you’re in your own vacuum chamber.

You’d thought about going back to your swampy room but the lure of that late night swim was too powerful. Instead you had snuck past the unmanned front desk to the dark glass doors at the end of the hallway, your housekeeper’s keys clutched to keep from alerting whomever was on duty.

You’re bobbing on the surface, chlorine burning your nose and ears immersed, when you feel it again—needles scraping over your exposed skin, chilling everywhere not touched by the water.

You resist the urge to panic, or even to respond visibly. Something tells you to go gently, the way you used to lure abandoned feral cats out of the woods with a plate of food and patience.

You swim to the far edge of the pool and then back again, body weightless as you go under. You’d caught the shadow that didn’t match after the first few breaths but any fear you have is locked away where you’d stored other, worser things. Only a few people have the key to this space, even fewer know you’re here.

When you feel the time is right you swim to the edge and place your elbows on the concrete, reaching out in the dark. You take a moment to remove your swimming cap, unsurprised when there's no movement from your peripheral vision.

“Hand me my towel?” you ask.

It’s like asking the night for comfort. An eternity seems to pass before that smudge of darkness breaks away from the farthest corner to pick up the towel and drop it just out of reach. He sits down on one of the deck chairs, the weight as palpable as if he’d sat down on the ground next to you.

Jaehyun is as unreadable as the day you met him, something you'd grown to appreciate in the short time since.

You want to ask if he’s here to swim but you know he isn’t, and he might even take it personally if you alluded to him joining you. So you dry your face while clinging to the edge of the pool and rest your head on the folded towel when you're done.

You feel like a siren born without a song as you wait for him to speak. The quiet returns, that comfortable weight you’ve found in his presence returning with it.

“I’m sorry.” he says. The words are low, just carrying over the rush of water.

You toss your head a little in answer, fingers trailing circles in the water that dripped from your arm over the gritty floor.

“Don’t be.”

“I went to your room,” he says, after a beat. “It stinks. You can have mine tonight.”

“Thank you. You. You don’t . . .”

“I moved your stuff already.”

Oh.

Another automatic "thank you" dies on your lips. Heat suffuses your face, the air feeling even more thick than it already did with the humidity.

Of course he has access to your room, he has the same skeleton key you do. If you’re surprised you don’t show it, grateful you always keep things neat. You’ve seen the mess of other people’s lives during mid-stay linen changes and it’s made you even more tidy.

You must have paused a little too long because he speaks again.

“Are you afraid of me?” Jaehyun asks.

You let the question hang, considering. Are you afraid of him? The more appropriate thing to ask yourself, you think, is whether or not you mind it.

There was a time not long ago that whenever you entered a room he'd been working in earlier you found a tip on the nightstand. Not just the checkouts but rooms that had been empty for days, always in the same book left on the nightstand.

At some point you’d understood that the crisp, yellow-green bills hanging out of the Bible were laid flat to highlight a passage, stuck in the book of Proverbs.

Proverbs 17:28. Proverbs 18:13. Proverbs 19:20. Proverbs 21:23. Words you knew all too well.

You’d caught him out by leaving a message in return. You’d snuck into an unused room stripped for repair work on a morning you knew he was on shift, the $20 you’d collected over that month placed around Proverbs 16:19. It was possible someone else had taken the money but the tips had stopped appearing in your rooms after that.

Even if the cash wasn’t easy to part with, you had your pride. And you’d never known exactly what he wanted in return.

Any other man might have broken the act then, but whatever space existed between you remained as airtight as ever. He’d still just been around, drifting through your periphery as impenetrable as a safe you didn’t have the combination for.

So no, you think. You aren’t afraid of him.

No, you don't mind.

You pull yourself up out of the water with the last strength you think you have left, your arms strained by a day’s work punching pillows and pushing carts. Sitting on the edge of the pool you wrap the towel tight around you, hiding the sunflower yellow bikini you’re wearing.

There’s a steel in your spine as you move, the kind of posture you know you’ve taken on when you’ve felt his eyes. Instead of ignoring it, you stand up to move right in front of him.

Reaching out, you lift his right hand from where it rests on the striped deck chair. He lets you hold it, arm limp and heavy.

There’s calluses on his fingers like yours, bone-white knuckles and veins showing through his skin. His hand is much too big to hold firmly in both of yours but you squeeze it and feel the sweat on his palms.

“Do you want me to be?” Afraid of you? The unasked question is answered.

You don’t know where these words come from, out of your mouth like water running over smooth stone, but you relish the way his eyes go glassy and his full bottom lip thins. He looks down, hand pulling from yours to rub on top of his knees.

“Maybe.” His voice cracks.

Your heart is in your throat, the chill of condensation drying on your bare skin making you shiver. You sit down across from him, plastic slats buckling beneath you.

“I don’t know why . . . I just . . . feel safe.” When you’re around, you think.

Maybe it's the way he reminds you of your father, silentium est aurum wrought in flesh, the kind of man who could tell you a story without saying a word. Now that you've seen Jaehyun with Johnny you can see that it's not that he doesn't talk. No, you think, he's always just been that way for you.

He looks up, a flash of white teeth and dimples appearing under his otherwise hollow cheekbones before both disappear again.

“You don’t even know me,” he says.

“What if . . . I wanted to?”

He laughs softly, arms crossing as if to say he’s sizing you up.

“I have questions.” You’re back to having to deliberately form the words in your mouth before you speak again, and your breath shudders in your chest. Surely his patience will run out, he’ll leave before you can get out what you need to say.

“Shoot.” Jaehyun says.

“You. You don’t have to answer.” If you don’t want to.

You fix your eyes on his clothed shoulder. He’s in work coveralls again, the navy blue appearing black in the lowlight. You laugh silently when you see the name embroidered in red on white on his chest: Jeffrey. He doesn’t look like one, much less a Jeff.

“I . . . I want to know . . .” You ball your fists in the rough towel wrapped around your knees. “Do you . . . Are you . . . ?"

You shake your head, eyes stinging. Each breath you're unable to speak feels like an agony.

“Would it be easier if we just went back to how we were last week? Pretend like we’re sitting on a bench?” He offers, surprising you. The anxiety attack that had been building in your chest dissolves. You nod, swallowing.

You hear a creak as he lies down in the dark, hands reaching behind his head resting on the angled third of the chair. You follow suit, negotiating the sagging plastic slats and keeping your towel on, arms tight across your chest.

“Thank you,” you say, once the quiet returns.

“Hmm.” He assents.

You give it a little time, listening to his breathing deepen.

“Why were you upset?” you ask.

He doesn’t answer, and it takes awhile for you to realize he doesn’t intend to.

“Was it something I did?”

“No.”

“Why are you here?”

Again, silence. Your mouth opens to ask another question but he speaks again, suddenly. “I was worried about you.”

Warmth blooms in your chest. No one has ever been worried about you, or at least they hadn’t said so aloud since you were a child.

“I know how to swim,” you chase away the feeling of vulnerability by scolding him, tone playful.

“We got you drunk.”

”Not that drunk,” you scoff.

“You were crying.”

That stops you in your tracks.

“It . . . I was . . .”

“You were embarrassed.” Jaehyun says, flatly.

“Yes.” A sigh escapes you as you burrow into the chair.

“I know you better than you think I do.”

“I know,” you whisper. “I know. More.”

You can hear him roll onto his side, facing you. Your heart skips beats but you turn over, too, fists curled under your chin as you search for the side of his face, illuminated by the radiant blue light of the pool.

“Do you now?” He sounds humored, and it reminds you of the way Johnny had spoken to you before—as if privy to a secret you weren’t capable of understanding.

You feel your weak interrogation slipping away from you, so you circle back. “You have a car . . . Right?”

“Yes.”

“Why . . . Why do you ride the bus?”

You already know the answer but you need to hear it.

He’d never boarded the same bus, and you’d never seen him get on one that arrived before yours. You’d even memorized his handwritten shift where it hung on the board above yours, knowing he should have been off hours ago. And still he’d been there, no matter the sudden change in Florida summer weather.

“To make sure you get home safely.”

He says it like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

You suck your breath in through your teeth, knees curling up to your chest. It feels like if you were to say the wrong thing right now you’d be breaking a magic spell. That this whole strange dream would collapse into a nightmare. But you have to ask.

“Do you . . . Have you ever followed me home?”

Jaehyun shifts further into the chair.

“Only when you walk.” There’s no shame in his tone, just what you think might be a little sadness. The pool's water feature sputters as you find your response.

“Does that frighten you?” he asks.

You shake your head, slowly.

It had been worse wondering if you were going crazy the first few times your instincts had screamed at you that you were being followed.

A little paranoia didn’t hurt in the neighborhood you lived in, Lord knows the city had experienced a decline in the last decade that had made people harder. But for all your experiences avoiding intoxicated teens or even the one time you’d been mugged for the precious few quarters you carried, you’d never felt like this.

You’d been on the other side of a bow and a gun before when your daddy taught you how to hunt, but you’d never felt like you could understand the creature in the crosshairs.

Not until this.

Not until him.

The adrenaline high had persisted for hours after you’d made it home, like honeybees buzzing in your head. You’d stood in front of the window in your shared room, lights off so as not to disturb your roommate, staring down at the filthy alleyway below for signs of movement in the sodium orange streetlights.

“No,” you say. You can’t tell him the rest, one of the things you’d locked away. You’d liked it.

“Maybe . . . next time . . . drive me?”

You get up to leave before the echo of your question can fade. You don’t want to hear him say no. But he grabs your arm, still seated on the chair, touch warmer than before.

“I’m not going to be here much longer,” he says. “The job’s ending.”

“Oh.” Your heart sinks. Summer’s already over and the main school year starting again meant you wouldn't be working as much anyhow, maybe it was the same for him. But you'd grown used to the little match spark of excitement you'd get whenever he was around. It's only natural you'd miss it.

All good things come to an end, after all. You swallow the knot in your throat.

There’s one thing at least—if he’s gone you won’t feel bad asking him for another favor. Something not yourself makes you ask, hand floating in his grasp.

“Can I kiss you?”

How you wished you could have asked that confidently, but at least there’s a power that you’re standing over him.

He nods, swallowing, gaze distant but soft. You lean in and his eyes close automatically, lashes brushing your nose. You tilt his chin up gently with both hands to kiss the smoothness of his cheek, smelling the shaving cream he must have used earlier—you know the kind, a green-and-white striped can. And then he tilts his face towards you, like a question. Your lips brush against his and it’s like clinging to a live power line.

There’s the softness and warmth of his lips, but you can feel him fighting to stay still, mouth closed. You don’t know if he thought he’d get what he wanted coming down to the pool to watch you but you know he wasn’t expecting this, his toothpaste-mentholated breath stuttering against your chin when you pull away.

“Did you like it?” Jaehyun asks, brows lowered in much-too-serious of an expression for not even kissing you in return. His pupils are dilated so wide in the dark you’re reminded of a nocturnal animal.

You nod, gripping the towel around you and shivering despite the heat.

“I need you to do something for me,” he says, voice low.

“What?”

“Do you trust me?”

Again, you're lost with regard to any double-meaning. His voice is so gentle and pleading you feel like there’s no artifice there.

“Yes,” you say.

“Go back to the room. Wait a few minutes after I leave to go up. If I see the night manager first I’ll take care of him.”

The way he says take care of him sends a chill up your spine, but then you remember you’re not starring in Mission: Impossible or another dumb television show, you’re just sneaking through the hotel after midnight with a coworker.

“Okay. 310?”

“No, go back to 217,” he says, standing up. He’s not as tall as Johnny but he towers over you in a different way, posture naturally intimidating.

“See you there,” you say as he leaves.

He doesn’t respond, disappearing out the glass doors to leave you dripping water down your legs and questioning everything that just happened.

Curiosity gets to you and you go back to your room, finding it even worse than you’d left it. The world beyond the scratchy curtains paints a picture straight out of Genesis Chapter 6.

Though this side of the hotel is opposite of the ocean and the wind, water sluices down from the top of the building in waterfalls. The drained pool is already full again, violently overflowing in the outdoor lighting. The smell of mildew is everywhere, like a used sock stamping out a decaying joint.

The patio door’s weather stripping was no match for the elements outside and you shudder at the thought of all the first floor rooms that are experiencing the same.

You take a few minutes to rinse the pool chemicals off your skin in the shower, liberally applying the cheap hotel soap while leaving the shampoo and conditioner untouched for the next guests. You’d brought your own but that, too, had been packed away. The room is as empty as if you’d never been there at all.

You slip the Do Not Disturb sign on the door with the "Maid Welcome'' facing outward as you leave. No one will come to clean the room until you're off shift but you feel like it’s a secret signal, a code just in case you don’t come back.

The thought that you are playing a dangerous game doesn’t escape you. Your buzz had worn down from the swim and while you should be tired the thrill of being hunted down in the night just so you could plant a kiss on the predator's lips has your head electric.

You’re nervous, but you’re not scared. The fact that Jaehyun likes you even after seeing you at your worst, hauling trash down hallways with sweat pouring down your face, gives you a fledgling feeling of hope. Like maybe in the gravitational shift that occurred tonight there’s a brighter path ahead.

He isn’t in 217, although your single suitcase is on the bed, along with Johnny. The older man's arm is flung over his face but the flatness of his belly is exposed in the yellow light, tattoos on his arms peeking out from under his short shirt sleeves. It's a strange sight to behold, him looking this vulnerable.

The more you watch him sleep the more you think how silly it was of Ruby to throw herself at him like a dog in heat. He’s a gentle giant, yes, and he’s got a childishness to him that makes him seem easy. But all you see is another fortress, as tightly guarded as the one whose walls you ran up against in the basement grotto.

Unlike Jaehyun, you think, Johnny doesn’t chase. He’s probably never needed to.

You can’t pull a sheet up over him as he’s lying on it but the air is on the lowest setting and the power is still going to keep it kicking. You grab a blanket from the nearby closet, giving it a careful sniff before tucking him in. Johnny remains pacific, only moving to turn into the pillow once you've shut the light off next to the bed.

After changing out of your wet swimsuit and into your junior college sweatshirt and athletic shorts you sit in one of the cushioned rattan chairs, tired but unable to sleep.

The TV is back on with no volume, just the familiar black-and-white circular geometrics of a test pattern broadcast. The faint buzzing of the television is eventually surpassed by the hurricane outside, shrieking as the wind moves through small crevices. You’re not afraid of the dark, or the weather, but the oppressive smallness of the hotel room has you feeling like you’ll never leave.

Within a half-an-hour, unable to stop your mind, you quietly set to work clearing empty bottles and stray pieces of paper. You make a game of picking up the room without waking the sleeping bear inside it. You even use one of the washcloths in the room to wipe down the surfaces, preparing it for the eventual exit of its inhabitants.

Why are you cleaning a hotel room in the middle of the night? The answer seems to lie in memories better left unseen, like the wriggling things under a rock turned over. Each bottle dumped out is a reminder of broken glass on mud-caked linoleum, the hum of the television just like flies buzzing in black blood. All of these horrors wiped away by your efforts.

One of the small luxuries afforded to you in this shit-labor job is combing through the personal belongings of people with more money than you. You know better than to move anything a millimeter but you've learned to observe an object's rightful place and where to return it to once you've cleaned, and your memory is a steel trap.

It’s gotten to the point where you can feel a room: the occupants' hair, their skin, where they slept and what they ate, drank, and expelled out—none of it sacred. You’d stopped working in the smoking wing a few months ago not because you minded the smell but because you were tired of cleaning the remnants of cocaine and hash out of surfaces you didn’t even know could be used for the intake of either. The Gideon bibles were getting more use over there.

You were happy to be stuck in the kiddie section vacuuming sand out of the low pile carpet, but sometimes you missed the allure of figuring out the people by their belongings. You used to look up their fashion in the magazines your roommates collected. Although you have only dreamt of wearing Chloe or Chanel you know how to recognize someone who can afford their clothing vs. someone gifted a knock-off.

It’s why the more you observe the more you get a feel that something is off.

You’ve never seen Johnny or Jaehyun in street clothes but there aren’t any in this room besides replacement slacks and shirts for work, underwear and socks hanging off the back of the chairs. There’s a few well-tailored suits in the closet, big enough a fit you think they must be Johnny’s but some of them are in a color and the right fit for Jaehyun, the sizing of the shoulders on the hangers and the arm-length confirmation enough.

The bags when you lift them up are heavy, and not in the way clothes feel. But the thing that nags at you the most is the watch: an Omega Speedmaster on the desk, hidden beneath a pile of empty junk wrappers and scribbled notes.

If you'd been back in your old life that would have been a tell not because it meant the person wearing it was rich but that they'd left it as a gamble to see if you stole and pawned it overnight.

You don’t pick it up. As cheap as it might be to a higher clientele, the kind of money that could afford it would stay in a far better place than this. The idea that it was purchased by someone working for a hotel is a laughing-stock.

It’s this nagging in the back of your mind that finds you carefully unzipping one of the bags, the most expensive one made of leather and weather-proofed canvas, movements timed to Johnny's deepest snores. You peer inside in the soft light of the bathroom overhead. What you find makes your mouth go dry and your pulse pick up. You close the bag as quietly as possible, unable to unsee what you’ve seen.

You're in deeper than you thought. Puzzle pieces click into place as you watch the palm trees bend through the slats in the shutters, as lightning illuminates the room and its secrets.

And still, Jaehyun doesn't come back.

It’s like sleep-walking how you find yourself out of the room to head up the stairs to the third floor, remembering you’re only wearing socks when you feel the dampness in the carpet under the leaking stairwell window. If you stand there in the flickering fluorescent lights to gather your courage, no one has to know.

Room 310 is in Ruby’s section. You don’t spend much time up here anymore, unless you’re helping her finish her checkouts when she’s slammed. The air is heavy with cigarette smoke, the occasional cough of a guest beyond the dark wood doors speaking to whatever crimes you'd left them to.

Did you forget to knock? Or did you unlatch the lock on muscle memory, quietly slipping in and closing the door behind you?

There’s no lights on at all in the room, just darkness palpated by the exterior red lighting of the hotel sign flickering through the blinds. The only thing you can see as you walk in is a slim wedge of illumination from where the door of the adjoining room is ajar. You smell marijuana smoke and perfume, something floral.

He's not here. In fact the silence under the roar outside is overwhelming. Your gut tells you to turn and go but you’re unable to shy away from that open door, your curiosity getting the better of you.

The first thing you see when you peer into the suite is the utter disarray of the common area and dining room: multiple plates of the hotel’s subpar burgers and breakfasts only partially touched, cigarette butts floating in a half-empty carafe of what looks like lemonade but is probably separated orange juice.

A woman’s wardrobe has imploded far from the bedroom, shoes and lingerie on the floor. You note the leather-bound luggage on the couch and also the relative silence as you step around it, sure the occupants of the room either heard you and are in hiding or are down at the bar below, running up as much of a tab there as you are sure they have here.

And so you go deeper.

Not unexpectedly the glass dining room table is being used for coke, a rolled $20 bill next to where the drawn lines have disappeared. There’s jewelry and high-limit credit cards on every surface. A bouquet of burgundy roses wilts on the bar top, the water in the vase gone green.

And then there are the bottles: all red wine, empty except for one that’s been knocked over, turning the green carpet black. There hadn’t been much left of the contents but the violence of the spill tells you it either fell or was thrown. The stain on one of the walls and a shattered wine glass confirm an altercation.

The wrongness that you feel intensifies as you head towards the lit bedroom—not sure what you’ll find.

The possibility of catching Jaehyun in a passionate tryst feels like it would be a thrill if purely on the basis of knowing he had it in him, but you're prepared for anything, and nothing. Quietly you steal to the doorway, hearing little over the rain.

The first thing you notice in the bedroom is a man on the bed, his hairy legs akimbo, robe half-off. You're hit with a sudden rush of shame that you hadn’t even considered the suite was still occupied, that this might be off-limits. That's when you catch a glimpse of the bathroom beyond the bed, door wide open.

The woman’s leg hanging over the edge of the tub is unnaturally still.

You don’t need to move any closer to know. You know what a corpse looks like–the blood pooling in the feet until they're dark, the skin unnaturally mottled.

And still, you're pulled into the room, half-hypnotized with shock. The man on the bed is just as frozen in time, you realize, lips blue and parted beneath his mustache, a needle stuck in the meat of his arm like a flagpole. His chest doesn’t move. He isn’t ever waking up again.

You should turn around and leave, right now.

You should run.

Call an ambulance. Call the police.

Instead you feel compelled to witness the horror before you, to see it face-to-face. You move to stand beside the large jacuzzi tub inset into the floor, eyes never leaving the manicured toenails and their perfect shade of flamingo pink.

Out from under the still water the woman’s eyes are half-lidded, mouth half-open, hair floating around her face. She’s fully nude. She looks like she might have been beautiful if not for the distortion of the water. The hand thrown over the edge (matching nails) drips, drips, drips onto the faux granite tile—reminding you of something.

That’s when the corner of your vision goes black, wet leather slamming down over your mouth.

Your first instinct is to scream, but that's killed by the gloved hand tight over your mouth. Instead you struggle, nails digging into the canvas-like cloth of the arm pinning your chest to the stranger behind you.

“Shhh.”

Your feet kick in the air as you're pulled up, heels fumbling against steel-toed work boots.

"Quiet, quiet now," he says. You know that voice.

There’s a familiarity so inherent in the smell of mint and WD-40 that you stop struggling. You look beside you, muscles twitching under the wet grip. In your peripheral vision in the mirror you catch a glimpse of a dark blue jumpsuit, a pale profile tucked next to your ear.

You freeze, panicked breaths escaping from your uncovered nose, mind unable to grasp on any plan of escape or comfort.

“You weren’t supposed to see this,” Jaehyun says hoarsely. You don't need to see his expression to sense the excitement in his tone as he pins you in place to witness the body before you. “Don’t fight. Just listen.”

You relax, limp as a ragdoll.

“You remember the pelican?”

It takes what feels like an eternity for your brain to catch up with the reference, vision flashing red.

The pelican, yes.

Three months ago.

No one had known what to do when the large brown bird had flopped onto the pool deck, choking on a fish still attached to a length of fishing line, hook lodged in its throat. You'd watched the wretched thing as it managed to tangle itself further, upsetting chairs and smearing blood and feathers across the concrete.

Maeve had ushered the screaming and crying kids playing unsupervised in the pool away on your order, and when you'd felt you were finally alone you'd used the net to knock it in the water and hold it down until it stopped fighting. Maeve had returned with Jaehyun, finding you as you pretended to fish the bird out, feigning disgust.

As always, as before, as now, you’d felt nothing except maybe that it had been the right thing to do.

“They were already dead,“ Jaehyun says softly. His arm loosens slightly, letting you get air in your lungs, but he still holds you tight, body tense beneath the layers of clothes between you. “Think of this as the same. A mercy.”

When you don’t respond he runs his free hand soothingly up your side. You shudder, eyes closing, the dull black of the corpse’s gaze still burnt into your eyelids.

“They were bad people. Someone else would have gotten them eventually. Tortured them, made them suffer. You don’t like watching things suffer, do you?”

Tears leak from the corner of your eyes but you shake your head under his grip.

“It was painless for them.” He explains, more to himself than you, you think. His lips brush the back of your ear. “Do you understand me?”

You nod.

“I’m going to let you go if you can promise me that you won’t scream.”

You nod again.

His hand releases your face, dropping down to your throat, leather sliding across over-sensitive skin. You suck in a deep breath, expecting the worse. Within seconds you're back on the floor, unable to pull away from the loose hold he has on you.

“Are you . . . going to kill me?” You find it easier to ask the question when you aren’t facing him, as dampness trails over your throat. You jump as his other hand runs under your shirt, cool on your belly.

“Why would I do that?”

“Keep me quiet,” you whisper.

“I don’t need to,” he says.

His fingers drag across your ribs, coming to rest over your breastbone. You don’t have a bra on but it doesn’t feel sexual as much as comforting, leather warming with your skin. He holds it there, keeping you still, until your heartbeat slows.

Drip. Drip.

Drip.

“Are you afraid of me now?”

“I . . . I don’t . . .” You clench your eyes shut tighter. “No.”

He pauses before pulling you closer, a second before you realize your knees are giving out.

“When I saw you with that bird I knew you were special,” he says into your neck. “You’re a smart girl. You know how to survive.”

You think there’s a little bit of a threat there but it’s hard to pay attention to as his lips press against your jaw, down to graze your pulse, brushing through beads of cold sweat drying on your skin. A whimper stays trapped in your throat, electricity arcing in your core. You feel soaked, well above where the heels of your socks rest against his boot tops.

“Were they really bad?” you ask, as if you don't already know.

There’s no reason you should believe his answer, no reason at all. You have a moral sense even if you know it wouldn’t survive scrutiny, tarnished black as it is. You're just looking for empty reassurance, the guilt of not being able to do anything gnawing at you.

“Yes.” There’s no hesitation in his answer. “You’ll see.”

“I won’t say anything,” you promise, eyes still closed.

You wouldn’t even know who to tell, after all. Who would believe you?

“No, you won’t,” he assures. “They’ll find them. After the storm.”

Nausea creeps up the back of your throat at the thought of the bodies lying there for days, already decaying. The tremor in your body starts and grows more intense, uncontrollable shaking. It prompts him to pick you up, carrying you out and past the threshold in a damned reversal of a wedding night, placing you on one of the untouched beds in the adjacent room.

You're left to stare at the water-stained ceiling of 310 as he closes the doors between you and death, veiling you both in darkness.

“I can’t sleep here,” you say, the words airy with adrenaline. It’s so much easier to speak not seeing his face, but you feel him watching in the faint light.

He has the audacity to laugh. “You don't have to sleep here.”

The drip, drip, drip persists in your mind, lifeless faces floating in front of you. You won’t be able to stop thinking about them for the rest of your life. You’ll just have to store them in that hidden place you’d built when you were six and found your mother. She hadn’t had much of a face to remember her by then.

“Do you trust me?”

It’s the second time he’s asked you tonight and the sea change that occurred in between has your head spinning, tears sliding down as you weep unconsciously. The tightness in your throat keeps you silent, so you nod instead.

Jaehyun pulls you into a sitting position, making you look up at him. Even in the red, slatted light he looks no different than before. The kind of man you’d see in an advertisement or in a professional business photo, if it wasn’t for the eyes. Any gleam there has disappeared so that they’re shark-like, absorbing rather than reflecting.

"Go back to Johnny’s room,” he instructs. “Don't say anything about this to him.”

You nod into his hand as it holds your face, relishing the way his fingers tighten on your chin as you feign control.

“You’ll wait for me,” he says.

An eternity passes as you search his expression and find no comfort there, but also no immediate threat.

"Wait for me." This time it's a plea.

“Yes,” you say, finally. Jaehyun pulls you up. Your body shakes but you manage to keep your footing. You're only off-balance when he drags you into another hold that has your face pressed into the zippered front of his coveralls, a leatherbound hand slipping over your hair to rest against your shoulder blades.

“Good girl,” he soothes, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. You hate the way your body responds to the gesture, stoking the fire in your belly. You’d felt his response too, when he was holding you in the bathroom, and it both sickened and intrigued you. He wanted you, you think, possibly more in that moment than before.

If there was a God he’d be the only one to witness the smile that’s crimping your mouth. You smooth your face and pull away before the Devil can see it too.

“What’s wrong, babydoll?” Johnny asks, voice thick with sleep.

You don’t know how you found your way back, to the room or from your fugue state. The clock on the radio has the hour well past three in the morning, your shift starts again in a scant four hours, and the tears won’t stop streaming down your face.

You sit on the edge of the bed and finally inhale, but it’s like there's not enough oxygen in the room. You wish you could open a window. The panic attack hits.

Waves of repressed emotion come one by one—you imagine the Atlantic Ocean looks more peaceful torn into white surf by the storm. You can’t speak–you wouldn’t want to even if you could–but the breath in your lungs isn’t coming in deep enough.

“There, there,” he says, sitting up to touch you. The contact of his hand on your shoulder startles you, making you wheeze even more.

Johnny grabs a glass from the nightstand and rushes to the bathroom to rinse it out. You can hear the rattle of items on the counter as he knocks them around clumsily. You cover your eyes shut to focus on the whistle of the wind outside.

One. Two. Three. Breathe in, breathe out.

It’s not fear; it’s never been fear. Just an autonomic response outside of your control, exacerbated when anyone’s observed you. And so you’d made do with hiding, with learning how to disappear. Back in this shared hotel room there is no such shelter.

“Drink,” Johnny says.

You open your eyes to the smoky yellow-brown glass, seeing he’s dropped ice in it from what’s left in the bucket. Tap water here tastes like the subterranean swamp it’s piped up through and this is no different, bitter on your tongue once you’ve finished the glass.

Johnny paces the room, turning the TV off, turning the radio on. You don’t know the song but it’s a welcome distraction, soft piano and strings floating over a full band.

“You don’t have to tell me what happened,” he says, kneeling in front of you. “But you can if you want to.”

You hiccup, face hot as you wipe the tears away. His strong but slender fingers take over yours, soothing you and you focus on that touch to ground you. A few minutes pass as your breathing slows, still shaky.

Would it be easier if you told him? If you tried to find the words? Would that put him in danger, too? All the adrenaline coursing through you has left you hollow, wiped clean.

“Nothing. Bad. Not too bad,” you say, rolling the glass in hands that begin tingling as the shock wears off. Johnny takes it from you, wrapping you in the thin fleece of the blanket you’d tucked around him earlier in the night.

“Jae,” you say. That’s all that comes out. You've never called him that outside of what you’ve whispered in your mind, and your stomach rolls at the thought of what it means to know him better now.

"Listen to me," Johnny says, holding your arms. "You're gonna be alright."

You think you believe him, looking up into his warm brown eyes. They crinkle at the corner when he smiles genuinely, but there’s just the ghost of that now. It’s almost soothing to see him look worried but the cringing little voice in the back of your head tells you that he can’t really care–why would he care about little old you.

"Tell me what happened," he says.

You shake your head, sniffling.

“It’s alright,” he says. “You’re safe here.”

What's happening to you, you wonder? The more you look into his searching gaze, the more you want to wrap your arms around his neck.

Maybe he'll wrap his arms around you, too? Wouldn't that feel nice?

His hands drift down to your wrists, grasping the bones where your pulse beats through. You hope he doesn't feel the fear in you. The tremble there finally stops, but the urge to be held continues. You want him to swallow you up and never let you go.

"Hold me," you say. Johnny looks at you quizzically, mouth parted.

You try lifting your arms, but they feel heavy. You look down at the brace of his hands on yours where they rest in your lap, where your thin red shorts with their white lining meets your thighs, and you laugh.

You remind yourself that laughing isn’t appropriate right now, but you can feel the grin twist your mouth.

"It's gold. Cold." You reach to take off your socks, aware that they're wet and clinging to your feet. A giggle escapes you when you realize that you can't even do that, then at remembering how they got that way. It feels like a distant dream, something you saw in a movie that you couldn't remember right.

“Shh,” Johnny says, and that makes you laugh harder, holding your sides as he unrolls the tube socks from below your knees to reveal your unpainted toenails. You collapse on the bed, the room spinning.

“Just go to sleep, baby girl.”

“Good girl,” you correct, words slurring. “‘Mm a good girl.”

“Yes you are,” Johnny says, not without some exasperation, moving your body with an ease that makes you even more dizzy. He’s so big and strong, you think, watching his forearms flex as he brings you to the head of the bed and lays you down.

He's held you, you think. Not him but him. You're falling fast away from that memory, just not fast enough.

The pillows beneath your head, the ones you know are yellow with nicotine-stained slobber beneath the thin cotton, have never felt so good. You feign sleep with eyes half open, the nightmare cocktail of anxiety keeping you from going fully unconscious.

When the door of the room opens, you imagine that Death himself has stepped in to help you go down.

The bed sinks beside you. You smell bleach and that pretty green Barbisol shaving cream from the skin you’d kissed earlier. Your right eyelid is opened by a calloused thumb lifting it to your eyebrow.

"Y/N," he says. Oh, you think. That's your name. Not the one on a tag but the one written on your birth certificate.

You fight against the unwelcome rays of the wall light, weak as a milk-starved kitten. The hand on your face brushes across your cheek, cracking the salt stains from your previous tears.

“What did you do to her?”

Jaehyun’s voice sends a distant rush of terror through you, the feeling laced with a different kind of thrill you can’t place.

“She was hysterical,” Johnny says, calmly. “I gave her a Quaalude.”

That’s it, you think. You’d heard about luding out, about disco biscuits. You weren't that much of a square. Like everything else you’d never tried it until today.

Cuban rum, kissing a stalker, finding a stash of guns, drugs and money. Stumbling into a murder scene. Now roofies. You were certainly racking up an impressive list of Never Have I Ever failures. Very unsquarelike.

“You drugged her?!”

“I didn’t have—“

You feel the weight leaving the bed, hear the dull thud of skin against skin and the thump of a body against a wall. The scuffle is brief by the sounds of it. You know who won when Johnny speaks.

"Knock it off. You’re the one who got us into this mess, asshole.” You’ve never heard Johnny sound like that, the order carrying a credible threat.

“You’re the one who told her that room number like a fucking moron," Jaehyun says, voice level.

“If we’re talking unplanned variables your little obsession here is now threatening this entire op—"

“It’s done.”

"Done done? You got the bugs? Stashed the goods?"

"I know how to do my job."

"I don't know man. From over here it looks like you keep forgetting. What are we doing with her?"

"She won't talk."

"You don't know that. She wakes up, has a change of conscience. It's too risky."

"She trusts me."

"You think that's reassuring?"

There's more shuffling of bodies and fabric, more quiet response from the shadow that keeps falling over you, adjusting the pillows and blankets, hot hand under your cheek as he makes sure you're on your side.

"Is that why you like her? Found yourself another headcase?" Johnny says, cracking a bottletop.

"Fuck off."

A bark of a laugh filters through the euphoria dissolving your consciousness. You can’t keep following the conversation, the quiet bickering drifting in and out, but you hear more words. Keep. Alibi. Timetable. Extraction. DEA. Useful. Honeypot.

Maybe it's the Quaaludes but everything feels natural, like you'd fallen through that Twilight Zone door into a primetime television show. One where your storyline was written by more compelling and generous authors than the one who'd written your real life. No, your real life was a lot more gritty and a lot less glossy. A little Southern gothic, a little nightly news.

If you could choose you'd be in LA where they shoot all the pictures, with title cards to say they're set somewhere else. Of course there's a car chase intro complete with brassy music, a yellow font title card, and voice-over narration.

"Fresh co-ed Y/N is plunged into the seedy underbelly of Miami's South Beach, recruited by a federal vice squad to fight against drug kingpins and corrupt developers alike. Join us next week for an explosive pilot episode featuring special guest stars . . ."

You picture yourself like Angie Dickinson's character in Police Woman, respected by your peers, always ready to go into the lion's den undercover and trick the unsuspecting criminals into revealing their secrets. Every episode ending with you in a shootout, surviving by the skin of your teeth. The viewers are hooked weekly by the subtle flirtation with your partner, or maybe even your superior, a will-they-won't-they over the course of endless seasons.

You're the biggest hit since color TV. That's not Farrah on the wall, that's you in your yellow swimsuit, smiling brightly. You never stop smiling, making sure to shine it into the cameras as Johnny Carson interviews you about your newest movie deal, which you ace without one stumble in your speech. The audience applauds. You're featured in all the magazines: the new face of Virginia Slims. You've come a long way, baby.

No shark-jumping for you, you’re eternal.

You've come a long way.

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