Luca is covered in sweat by the time he gets home and steps into his much cooler home. He intended to make his way straight to the shower but those plans are immediately stalled by the surprise he finds at the door.

There’s a visitor.

He stares at the coat and shoes that are definitely not his or Rico’s. Neither of them have such a pompous style that they will casually wear Oxfords, or wear a coat like that as the weather comes into spring. Mostly, he’s a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy. Well, T-shirt and gym shorts kind of guy if he can help it, and he usually can.

Who the hell is even allowed to visit?

“Nonna?” he calls, unsure who else would be home.

His dad had mentioned appointments today with clients, and knowing that, Luca knows he won’t be getting in until late at night. Usually his dad is like that every Saturday, in the mad rush to get enough work done to take Sundays off for church and dinner. That Pino, such a family man.

“Rico?” he calls next when he gets no response. He’s pretty sure his brother is out with friends, but who the hell knows how long that will take? From experience, Luca doesn’t actually know. He keeps no friends, mostly ‘cause no one ever really approaches him and if they do, they’re girls who are quickly dissuaded when he can’t get any words out of his mouth.

Luca’s well-aware he’s a bit of a loser. An intimidating loser.

It’s a good thing he doesn’t give a rat’s ass what other people think about him.

“Nonna?” Luca calls again when continues to get no reply, his voice echoing in the hall as he takes hesitant steps into his home which has the distinct feeling of being invaded. His skin crawls at the thought of some random asshole waltzing around the place without him knowing, and by the time he gets to the stairs that lead to the bedrooms, his stomach begins to sink.

He hears laughter.

Luca’s stomach twists. He doesn’t often hear laughter these days and it hurts his ears, the excitable pitch his brother’s voice is taking on. At least he can say he recognizes his own brother’s laugher—would have been depressing otherwise.

He can also hear the distinct cackle of his grandmother’s—as well as...

As well as one of the most...

Luca steps up the stairs, his heart beating faster, beating faster than when he’d been on a run with Mrs. Grayson’s Vizsla dog named Chewie earlier that day. And Chewie covers a mile on a football field in what feels like minutes.

He takes a deep calming breath, closing in on the enlivened conversation taking place a couple feet away. More laughter—more of that sound.

He comes to Rico’s door, pushing the crack in the door further open with the tip of his foot, and raises a brow as the three of them halt in motion instantly. His brow raises further as he takes in the scene he’s walked into.

“It’s not even close to Halloween,” he informs them, watching his brother hastily tug off his Flash mask and rush to smooth out his dark blond hair. At this, Sofia pulls back the hood of her black cloak and grins big enough to show off the gaps in her teeth.

“How’re the dogs?” Rico asks, gaze darting nervously between Luca and Junho.

“Fine,” he mutters, distracted.

Crossing his arms over his middle, he surveys the mess of Rico’s room and is reminded again why he doesn’t spend any time in it. Luca can clean it one day, and it’ll be dirty again in thirty minutes, like some sort of dark evil super power. Nowadays, he doesn’t bother getting on Rico’s case about cleaning, refusing to take on the headache that it involves. Instead, he opts to take an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality about it all, which has spared him much stress.

“What’s he doing here?” Luca finally decides to ask when the silence lingers too long in the room to be comfortable.

Junho juts out his chin, looking as proud as a peacock—which is a fitting analogy, given how impressively he maintains his image of posh excellence. Luca has never met a person who holds themselves with so much dignity, even dressed the way he is.

He’s donned the cheap pirate costume of Luca’s dark past. Everything, from the fake-boot coverings, the loose and billowing white shirt, the scratchy black pants, the assorted fake jewelry that dangle off him with surprising class, and the pirate hat that Luca is honestly surprised has survived the years since he last wore it, is elevated on him. As if aware of this, Junho is smiling, coyly so.

Which is nothing short of unsettling, to say the least.

“We were creating a movie script together,” Junho explains while Sofia just cackles and Rico breaks into cheeky giggles. “Now, the genre is yet to be determined. But we figured that a pirate, a witch, and a DC superhero is just the recipe needed to rescue great cinema.”

“Right...” Luca says, having no idea how the fuck to respond to the string of gibberish he’s just heard. “But why are you here?”

“He wants into Ciana’s room, but you’re the one with the key,” Rico explains, reaching around to his back to unzip his Flash costume. When he begins to struggle with it, Junho steps forward to help out, irritating Luca as he watches them.

It’s unsettling seeing Rico be so casual with someone else, less the tentative and shy person he behaves in any other setting. More himself, when he’s not self-conscious.

But more importantly, Luca finally registers what his brother has said.

He snaps, keeping his tone quiet, almost polite as he asks, “Why the fuck would I let him into her room?”

“Bada a come parli, ragazzo!” Sofia cries with a scowl.

Luca grunts, taking a step back as he realizes the obvious mistake in cursing in front of his nonna.

He tries again. “Excuse me—but why, please tell me, would I let him into her room?”

Junho steps forward, extending his hands like he’s bading off a wild mutt, that coy, confident smile transformed into something else, something that pulls at Luca’s guts, noting the flicker of fear in his gaze. “She’s my best friend.”

“So?”

That response comes too quickly, and Luca instantly regrets it.

Junho looks like a puppy that's been kicked and the very fact of it twists Luca’s insides to an uncomfortable degree, to the point that he almost lets loose an apology he will have actually meant. Yet his tongue is suddenly too unwieldy in his mouth to use as he stutters out a breath to say something—

He hadn’t been thinking when he said that, but he knows instantly why what he’d said is wrong.

If anyone else had said that to him, he would have punched their teeth down their throat.

Junho merely purses his lips, defiantly cocks his hip, and says, free of malice, after a full second of studying Luca’s face, “What if you supervise me? It makes you uncomfortable, right? Not knowing what I’ll do?”

“Well,” Luca scrambles for words weakly, “yeah.”

“So, just watch me.”

Luca still hesitates, unable to mask his suspicion. Definitely not wanting to be in a room alone with him. “Why do you even want so badly inside anyway?”

Junho’s expression shifts, his eyes looking glassy, lips pulling up into a wan smile. 

“Wouldn’t you like to solve a mystery you’ve been wondering for years? I don’t know whether or not Ciana didn’t trust me enough to let me in, but that girl practically lived at my place sometimes, and I’ve never gotten so much of a glimpse of her room.” He shrugs weakly. “I just want to feel close to my best friend again.”

At this, Luca swallows thickly. For a long moment, he’s afraid to speak.

Then, with a long drawn sigh, he says gruffly, “Don’t touch anything, not without permission.”

He’s pretty sure the only reason he relented at all is because of the guilt. That awning hole in the pit of his stomach, the cause of his breathlessness and aching heart, and the questions that keep him up at night, wondering.

The insufferable guilt for a lot of things.

Yeah, he only relents because of that.

Not at all because of the hopeful look in Junho’s eyes that remind him of Chewie begging for a bone.

(And definitely, definitely, not because Junho’s charming laughter is still echoing in his head.)