Those eyes bring back memories he has replayed in his mind too many times to count.

They start with the quickly falling smiles and forced laughs. Sam had had a bright smile and an even brighter mind. A few more weeks and the smiles were cold, he was no longer sure what 'happy' felt like and suddenly life was no longer an interest. Sam stopped functioning like everyone else; something suddenly told him he was not normal. The people that were once a part of his life fell away, and his love for exploration and learning was gone.

This is not what Sam Kim contemplates as he sits exactly three feet and nine inches away from his bus stop. He did not make it to any of his classes. His shaking legs had carried him to the coffee shop on the corner, one street down and one street over from his bus stop, and he hastily ordered some frilly drink he’d never tried but had seen him drinking.

His legs are burning and aching, his chest is heaving, but no one was looking at him and he was okay for now. He sipped at his warm drink and tried to breathe. His heart rate is nearly back to normal when he glances around quickly, and is met with a sweet smile and cold eyes. Katie Bae’s softly curled hair is dancing in the light wind as she turns her back to Sam.

Her straining eyes dart from left to right as she tries to ignore him. She clenches her small fists tightly and turns towards Adam. Sam's turning and his back faces the two as his trembling hand digs through rough denim and brings a dry cigarette to his lips.

"Did you hear about Mark?" The voice was as soft and calm as Sam remembered it to be, and his heart slowed dangerously.

"No. What’s new?" He pulls out a cheap blue lighter from the pocket of his jeans and waits for the voice again.

"He’s run away. He just up and left his house." Slowly and steadily, Sam is pulling his arm up, his sore thumb flicking across the metal round until a flame finally catches. His body breathes in the soft lull of the autumn winds. Sam thinks, for a moment, that he is whole.

"Where did he go? I thought he said he'd made up with his parents..." The flame reaches the end of the cancerous stick hanging from pale lips, and lungs protest as they are sparked to life.

"Yeah, we all did, apparently. Nobody really knows where he is now." Deep breaths in are short breaths out and Sam questions his incentive for smoking in the first place, as his heavy eyes watch another car turn the corner, six feet and four inches to his left.

"I guess an apology couldn't change his entire childhood. You know how much he hated them." The pair continue to ignore him, but Sam is suddenly sure that Adam's voice is his favorite sound in the world.

"Still, I can't help but wonder what happened. He seemed really convinced that it was all going to be fine." Sam is not wondering about Mark. He glances down at his feet and instead, he is wondering what it would feel like to say Adam's name again.

He doesn't really want to find out.

Moments pass as Sam listens. He does not want to breathe but he must. He does not want to blink, but the breeze is heavy against his dry eyes and time is reeling before his eyes again.

"Kaite... He might be imagining it, but Sam swears he can see Adam turn to glance over his shoulder.

"Don't. Don't talk about him, Adam." Adam's bright eyes meet with Sam's own and everything is quiet. In a single moment of silence, his breath is gone.

"Katie, you can't...avoid him forever. I can't avoid him. I don't even want to." The eyes searching Sam's own are warm and vibrant, and his heart is yet again frozen.

"Yes, yes I can. And if I can, then so can you." Adam's breath hitches, but he is all too unwilling to turn from Sam. The voices are suddenly drowning Sam’s mind and everything around him becomes clear and he is involved and Sam thinks it’s too sudden for him.

"I shouldn't have to, Katie!"

"He's not someone you need to be around. He's...sick or something." Sam’s hand is frozen around the ashy stick between his fingers and he wonders why Katie would think such a thing.

"Sick? Is that what you think he is?"

"Just..." Her shoulders lift with a heavy sigh, thick with frustration and she's rubbing at her neck again, "…look at him! He's almost almost six feet tall and probably weighs less than me!"

"Katie! Stop it!" Adam’s usually gentle hands gripped Katie’s wrists tightly as he shook them, “you know how I feel about him!”

Sam watches as a raw wetness gathers in Adam’s eyes, and turns to the pair fully, dropping his cigarette to the ground and stomping it out. He is exactly twelves inches inches away when Adam turns to face him.

“Don’t!” Katie’s rushing forward and her nails scratch against Adam’s skin. Sam can hear a light thud when curved knuckles meet hard bone, and he regrets thinking of the smooth ivory that spans Adam’s narrow, rounded shoulders. “Don’t touch him, Adam! I don’t care how you feel about him! Our parents would kill you!”

Vulnerable is what he feels, but the feeling of damp skin under his fingertips sends tight tremors down his spine and he can’t look Adam in the eyes.

“Stay away from him. Please, Adam. I’m tired of this, we fight over this everyday and I’m so sick of-”

“Excuse me? You’re sick of what? Are you sick of denying me my freedom? Or are you sick of being denied yours?”

A loud, sharp sound rings through the breeze and Sam can’t feel his legs but they are moving and he can feel is heart racing to the beat of Adam’s name.

“Katie.” Sam has to breathe in deeply before he can force the sound of his own voice out over the thumping in his chest, “You…did you…lie to me ?”

The disgust was written clearly across her delicate features. Many pairs of eyes watched the loud display, but Sam couldn’t feel them anymore. He wasn’t sure what it was but something was bubbling up inside him and words began to tumble over his trembling lips and his breath was gone.

“Katie, you told me that your father went back to Bangkok. I thought you were safe!” Sam’s heart was loud and Katie’s eyes were fierce as she waited for his words to come sputtering out. “Why would you lie about that?”

“Our father hates you. And he hates Adam. But we’re not stuck in a small little village anymore and all we can do is be happy with what we’ve got now.”

“I’d happily go back to Thailand, Katie. I know you can cope, you have no problem keeping the boys close to your hip,” Adam’s bright eyes were clouded and dark as Sam’s own scaled down to watch a leaf trail the pavement, riding on the wind that gently whirled around them, “but I can’t do that, Katie. I don’t want to do that. I want to know what it feels like to smile because I want to. We’ve been here for three years and I have never been able to make friends, but you get to go out with all the boys you like. I can’t play in the arcade because I could put us “in danger”, as if we’re here illegally. What is it that you’re so afraid of? My god, Katie, we’re in high school! I’m a sophomore and I’ve never had a single friend because of y-”

“You know why I do this!” Her voice was shrill but weak as she clenched her fists and raised her hand again.

“I’ve never even been allowed to leave the house on my own because you think I’ll steal the money from you! I’ll steal the attention!” Sam wasn’t sure he wanted to remember the stories he’d been told when he’d asked how Adam could suddenly afford a new ipod last Summer. “I don’t want the attention, Katie! I want friends, and I want to go to coffee shops with cute boys, and I want… Jesus, I want a life. Is that such a crime?” Adam’s voice had started to break and he had to lean on Sam’s thick shoulder to steady his shaking legs.

Sam is quiet through this, a strong sense of displacement hanging over him but Adam is as warm as he remembers and he worries over just how reassuring that fact is.

“This is as close to living as we can get. If you can’t handle that, take it up with our parents, or go find Mark. Real life isn’t like your stupid dramas, Adam. We have to make money to survive and we survive to make money. Did you forget that?” It was hard for Sam to think about anything other than Adam’s skin against his, but in this moment he forced himself to breathe. He could feel Adam’s muscles clenching, he was breaking into a cold sweat and the stinging voice echoing in Sam’s mind was telling him to just go.

For the first time in almost two years, Sam listened.

With his arm around Adam tightly, he pulled him away, step by step. There was a bus nearing the stop, and many of the passersby finally pulled their eyes away from the scene. His palms were damp as he held tightly onto the smaller boy, as if he would disappear.

That might just be it, Sam thinks. Maybe he is afraid everything will disappear, just like that. It’s the first time in two years that Sam Kim willingly touched another person, willingly initiated contact.

It was very much new and frightening and suffocating but Adam was warm and familiar and comforting and Sam decided he’d be okay.

The burning feeling in his chest was back, and Sam was at a loss. He had long since given up on trying to figure out what this aching was. It could have been the passion he once had, trying to remind him that he was in fact, still alive, and still human. Sam hadn’t wanted to know.

The burn was different, now. With Adam’s heat and disrupted tranquility shaking in his arms, the burn was starting to feel more like the rocks of ice sitting in his chest were melting. It was too much and not enough and his arms only squeeze tighter around Adam as Katie continues to shout at him. He doesn’t hear a word she says, all he hears is Adam’s quaint whispers in his ear; he doesn’t feel the cold wind that’s picked up around them, he feels Adam’s hot breath on his neck and smooth skin against his clammy palms.

“Sam,” the soft, gentle tone of Adam’s voice was reassuring and comforting as it wrapped around Sam and held him tightly, “I missed you.”

For two years, Sam had locked himself inside his weakening shell and waited patiently. He wasn’t waiting for anything in particular, he’d thought. He was just waiting until his head would stop spinning, and he could see the world clearly again.

He didn’t know he was really only waiting for this moment.