[yoochun/changmin] the boy with a permanent hangover
title : the boy with a permanent hangover
pairing : changmin/yoochun
rating : pg-13
words : 3325
summary : yoochun's diagnosed with a disorder likened to living with a permanent hangover
a/n : first time trying yoomin so it'll probably come out a little something like a homin story. anyway, meant to be in the same vein as jigsaw boy but not directly related. once again, based off the real life story of reuben grainger-mead and dedicated to whom it's always dedicated to, yuxo
At the age of two, Park Yoochun was diagnosed with a medical condition so rare that it didn't even have a name. Instead the doctors had likened his illness with the effects of having a "permanent hangover".
He suffered from low red blood cell count and by the time he was three, had gone through more blood transfusions in a year of his short life than most people would need in a lifetime (Yoochun had twelve per year, at least once a month) and all this left him with an immune system so weak that all he was allowed were glimpses of the real world through a glass pane from his hospital room. Bedridden through most of his younger years and confined to his private room, Yoochun's childhood was atypical to say the least. Instead of attending pre-school with other children his own age, Yoochun was taugh his ABCs from the nurses that came to check on him daily and played patty-cake with the interns that gave him his shots and medicine.
The memories Yoochun has of his childhood aren't of idle days spent in the park with his younger brother Ricky and they're not of peaceful naps after snacktime either. They're of weeks spent lying on a hospital bed, staring at the clear packets of red liquid as they filtered in through tiny lines into his body or nights in which he'd cried hard to his mom and dad, clutching onto his teddy as the doctors inserted an eight inch biopsy needle into him to gather bone marrow fluid.
By the time he was five, the doctors had given up hope. At this rate Yoochun wasn't going to live past the age of ten. A blood marrow transplant was their last choice and in all likelihood, he wouldn't survive it because he was too ill to battle the drugs that he would need to take. It's the age old belief that in order to fight an illness, you take more and more drugs that'll make you sicker in hopes of fighting the disease but for a child of his age, there's only so much there to fight with.
It was then that his parents decided to start him on alternative therapies. Chinese acupuncture was both the first and last. Yoochun had cried through the entire process, sobbing as quietly as he could as he watched needle after needle being poked into him, the lightly reflecting off them so brightly that even his brother thought he was glowing. These were also the times in which his parents had started to argue. Money was an issue like it always was and alternative therapies weren't covered by the insurance companies. Unproven and with little to no proof of being effective, his parents had no choice but to pay out of their pockets for the costly treatments.
He still remembers the days leading up to what he thought would be his death, happy gatherings with his cousins and family members, all of them bringing over gifts for him and plenty of popcorn and soda because he liked salty kettle popcorn and cold ginger ale the best. His mother got along with his father then, the two of them kissing and laughing on the couch with Yoochun curled between them, a hand in each of their own. Nowadays they don't talk and Yoochun doesn't blame them for it.
Death to a six year old isn't nearly as scary as it is to a twenty-six or thirty-six year old. There isn't have a future to look forward to and he didn't know how to regret a life yet to be lived. Death to him was just a prolonged period of sleep in which he wouldn't have to hurt anymore. The doctor with the pretty long red hair had told him there wouldn't be any pain and there'd be no more needles. And he was told that for children his age, heaven was a vast playground with a bright Sun always in the sky and plenty of other children for him to play hide and seek with. The only thing was that he would no longer be with his family. But for a child that spent most of his years in the hospital room isolated from his mother and father, having to spend forever away wasn't that horrible of an alternative to his reality.
The week after his death sentence was passed down from his doctors to his parents, his mother began to get desperate. It started with even more alternative therapies, hundreds of thousands year old ginseng boiled down to a tiny cup of liquid he was forced to drink along with miracle pills that frankly tasted like spinach and bitter melon mixed together. None of it worked.
Curiously, like all other medical miracles, Yoochun was saved by the simplest of things : tofu.
Two weeks before his parents officially were ready to give up and take him away to the beach for the rest of his short life, the team of doctors especially on Yoochun's case had come into the room with a memo pad in hand and in hushed whispers had told his parents about the lack of two very special things in his diet, proteins and amino acids. A nutritionist was then brought in and after months of eating nothing but chicken, fresh sardines along with tofu and yogurt, Yoochun's healed.
-----
At the age of twenty-three, Park Yoochun is now a healthy young adult and you wouldn't even know he had once been so sick that his parents already had a funeral and subsequent wake planned. Unless of course you've attended one of his seminars before. Because you see, Park Yoochun is somewhat of a medical marvel and because he's so special, hospitals and medical schools alike continuously request appearances from him. It never seems to matter that he had been all of two when everything happened or that he barely remembers anything but the long needles and countless bags of blood he had been given, he's asked time and again if he remembers the symptoms or the side effects.
He discovers early on that telling the truth isn't nearly as interesting as if he makes it up, so he begins to lie. Except Yoochun calls it improvising.
In the beginning all he does is exaggerate a little, telling the medical students of the numbing pain he'd experience as a child and of the frequent blood transfusions and how his heart had beat so fast the it was at least thrice the normal rate. Of course like all liars though, Yoochun's outed by someone smarter, except he had never expected it to be someone younger as well.
Shim Changmin, age twenty-one and somewhat of a boy genius. He's what the other medical students label a six-year kid, having only spent two years in the undergraduate program instead of the typical four.
The first words Changmin had said to him had been, "You're a liar you know that? But you're pretty good at it." And after much gaping and denying, Yoochun invites Changmin out for coffee. One thing that he also learned early on from his seminar giving experiences, chicks and dicks alike are rather attracted to a medical marvel like him. And trust Yoochun to take full advantage of that fact.
But Yoochun discovers that things don't work quite the same way with Changmin like they work with other people. The younger man may be a genius but he's also terribly socially awkward. In fact both Yoochun's first, second and sixth invite out for a cup of coffee is refused until finally Yoochun stops asking. And it isn't until they actually bump into each other at a local coffeehouse that Yoochun gets the chance to buy Changmin a cup of coffee like he had wanted all along.
"I was only six," Yoochun says in reply to the question in Changmin's eyes, "and no, I don't actually remember what happened to me. You'd be surprised how useful the internet and Google are. What can I say? Wikipedia comes in handy sometimes."
After that was a pause lengthy enough for Yoochun to actually consider just diving under the table and crawl away until Changmin turns to face him and like all the hundred of other men and women before him, Yoochun was captivated with one look of Changmin's eyes. Large and impossibly doe-like with lashes that even the prettiest girls would envy, it was hard to see why Changmin was still single...of course unless he wasn't. And this is Yoochun also assuming that Changmin is into men. A lot of assumptions and he knows what they say about people who assume.
"Wouldn't it just be easier to tell the truth then? Tell them that you were two and that you don't remember anything that happened. It's better than lying."
Yoochun wonders briefly if Changmin is judging him because it's so hard to tell what the younger man is thinking when his expressions are so hard to read. He shrugs and thumbs at the paper napkins, "Yeah, but wouldn't it be easier if they just left me alone? I didn't ask to be sick and I certainly never asked to be flown around the country to give speeches. Just last week I was a guest at Harvard and you know the irony in that is they rejected me because I wasn't well-rounded enough. But I'm good enough to give a speech to hundreds of medical students, just not good enough to be a student there myself."
He's never been the bitter type because what exactly does Yoochun have to hate about his life when he wasn't even supposed to live past ten? It's hard to hold a grudge against something that is basically a gift. He's told every day by his mother and father that he should thank God for gifting him with a life and for giving him a second chance, a real miracle. Yoochun wonders sometimes though if living like this would be better than death.
"All they see is miracle boy or the kid who survived a permanent hangover," Yoochun says with a shrug, "no one even asks my name anymore. And no one asks how I'm doing now or whether I'm happy with my life. All they care about is how much tofu I ate or if the cottage cheese I had for a snack each day was all natural. It's not my life anymore."
It's not like Yoochun expects sympathy from Changmin but he doesn't expect the laughter either. "What?"
"Poor little boy who doesn't get enough attention," Changmin says softly, twirling his pen around and smiling in amusement, "would you like it better if I coddled you right now? Or gave you a hug?"
Yoochun's grip on his coffee cup tightens and he doesn't understand why he's here in the first place. Not until Changmin leans a little closer to whisper into his ear, "I was seventeen when my boyfriend was run over by a car and I was the one who tugged him out from under the engine. Maybe you should save the hug for me."
And for the first time, Yoochun meets someone he might actually pity more than himself.
-----
They reach an unspoken agreement after that and the coffeehouse meetings start to become a weekly thing. Yoochun shows up at a quarter to six each Thursday to find Changmin seated by the booth closest to the window, a bookbag on the empty seat reserved for him only. There's always two mugs on the table by the time he gets there, a cup of coffee and a cup of green tea.
Sometimes there aren't even words exchanged between them and sometimes they'll converse for so long that the baristas kick them out right before closing time. Yoochun finds that it's easy to talk to Changmin about just anything. It can be sometimes as simple as eating a turkey or ham sandwich or something complex like whether President Obama is a better leader than President Bush before him. More often than not though, Yoochun loses the arguments when it's about something serious but wins the ones about whether that cloud in the sky is shaped more like an elephant or a wombat (he hadn't even known what a wombat looks like).
Yoochun also learns that Changmin's boyfriend is dead and has been dead for the past couple of years. He had survived the car crash but he hadn't survived the operation afterwards and it's the primary reason why Changmin is studying medicine now. He would never admit it but Yoochun can tell how much he loved, or still loves, his ex and it's almost as if he tries so hard and studies so much to make up for not being able to save him then. Guilt is as grand a motivator as anything.
But as serious and book-oriented Changmin is, he's also just a twenty-one year old underneath it all. Yoochun sometimes drags him out of the coffeehouse and they'll watch a movie together, the two whispering back forth during the Twilight movie with plenty of mocking and teasing to go around.
"Oh! Oh, Edward! I love you!" Yoochun mouths along with Bella, watching with amusement as the girls around him float on cloud nine when the so-called handsome vampire appears on screen. And sometimes if Changmin is in the mood, he'll play around just the same and sometimes if he's not in the mood, he'll just roll his eyes and continue eating his popcorn.
-----
Yoochun invites the younger man home exactly five months after they meet and it's not as if he's in love already but he finds that he's close enough to it.
"So..."
"It's never something good when you start a conversation with the world so," Changmin cuts in to say, sipping on his tea with an eyebrow raised.
"So..." Yoochun says again just to be annoying that way, "Mom and Dad says to bring you home for dinner."
Changmin crosses his legs and Yoochun starts to get that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, preparing himself for rejection already.
"Mom and Dad, huh?" Changmin says with a knowing smile and the very same unimpressed stare Yoochun had gotten the first time he was caught lying, "I can't refuse an invitation from the parents."
Yoochun shifts uncomfortably at that and he opens his mouth, maybe to tell the truth or maybe to say thanks but he doesn't get the words out before Changmin's there with his lips pressed to Yoochun's. It's not really a kiss because Changmin pulls away before Yoochun gets to actually do anything about it and by the time he tries, Changmin's already sitting back in his seat, face red and hiding behind his ceramic mug.
"I'll see you next week," the younger man scrambles to say and a blink of the eye later, Changmin's gone, bag slung across a shoulder as he basically flees.
And so Yoochun wonders if he missed something because Changmin's never shown interest in him before and because he clearly hadn't been expecting the kiss.
The next week Changmin doesn't show and he doesn't show the week after that either. The fourth week after Yoochun finds himself sitting alone in the coffeehouse, he decides to stop going. He knows when he's been rejected and these are the classic signs of it. He's being avoided and his calls are going unanswered, as are his emails and even his knocks on Changmin's dorm are ignored. Yoochun's in love but he's not desperate.
A month after that, Yoochun is forwarded something in the good old fashioned mailbox in the form of a thick manilla envelope with a copy of a newly printed medical journal in it.
There's no return address and the handwriting is unfamiliar to him. But he's got a hunch nonetheless and he flips through it, finding a Shim Changmin listed under an article as one of the medical intern researchers. He doesn't need to read it to know what the subject of the article is about. The main reason that he's been invited all along to these famed medical schools and hospitals is because there are many that believe a change in diet might actually be the key to curing a vast amount of diseases and since Yoochun is basically the only subject in which this has successfully occurred, he's brought on to be a study subject.
And now Yoochun finally understands what all those conversations in the coffee house about alternative treatments had been about. He throws the magazine away without reading the article and he completely misses the footnote at the bottom, printed in the tiniest of fonts, Shim Changmin is responsible solely for the lab research portion of said experiment and resigned as of halfway.
-----
It's by pure luck that Yoochun bumps into Changmin and it's not even at the coffeehouse but at the bookshop a block from his house. He's turning the corner when he catches sight of the dark brown hair and long, long limbs that he recognizes anywhere.
"So, was I a part of the research? Get close to the Park boy and gain ten points on your GPA?"
Changmin's obviously startled but as befitting of a boy genius, he recovers quickly, "A perfect GPA is a 4."
Yoochun nods at that, of course a perfect is 4.0 and of course Shim Changmin would know.
"I was fucking six," he hisses, eyes unforgiving and more tired that he'd admit, "all I remember is the needle. You know the one, eight inches long and thicker than most IV tubes. All I remember was my younger brother crying because I was going to die and all I remember was my parents divorce five years later because they never got over the fact that I almost died and that my father hadn't wanted to try anymore alternative treatments. That's what I remember, Changmin. And if you want to publish it, then go ahead. I don't know why I expected better or why I thought you actually cared but I did. Thanks for proving me wrong, boy wonder."
He leaves without another word and Changmin doesn't follow.
That night he doesn't leave his room for dinner, locking himself into his room and staring at the desktop computer. Curiosity killed the cat and Changmin's eyes, still as round and as large as when they first met had bored into his own and no matter how many times he tells himself that he hates the younger man, he doesn't.
He finds the article with ease, searching under Google with Changmin's named and published articles. This time he reads the entire article over and catches the footnote, tapping on the down key over and over until he gets to the end and finds Changmin's name absent from the article after all.
-----
It's not by luck this time that Yoochun finds Changmin. He goes after the younger man. Yoochun announces privately that this last seminar at John Hopkins will be his last and as he's accepting questions from the full-house of students, his eyes catches on a hand from the far corner.
"Yes?" he says with a small smile.
"How are you doing Mr. Park? Happy? And if you're free, there's a coffeehouse around the corner that serves a pretty good cup of coffee."
Yoochun shrugs on his blazer and gestures towards the exit closest to Changmin, "Doing just fine, thank you for asking and I'm sure after a cup of coffee, I'll be even better."
This time Yoochun's the one who leans in first and he stays long enough to give Changmin a chance to respond, lacing their hands together and going back home for that meal his parents always have waiting.
"Somehow I don't think you'll be too surprised, but we're having tofu tonight."
"Cottage cheese on the side? Sounds perfect."
pairing : changmin/yoochun
rating : pg-13
words : 3325
summary : yoochun's diagnosed with a disorder likened to living with a permanent hangover
a/n : first time trying yoomin so it'll probably come out a little something like a homin story. anyway, meant to be in the same vein as jigsaw boy but not directly related. once again, based off the real life story of reuben grainger-mead and dedicated to whom it's always dedicated to, yuxo
At the age of two, Park Yoochun was diagnosed with a medical condition so rare that it didn't even have a name. Instead the doctors had likened his illness with the effects of having a "permanent hangover".
He suffered from low red blood cell count and by the time he was three, had gone through more blood transfusions in a year of his short life than most people would need in a lifetime (Yoochun had twelve per year, at least once a month) and all this left him with an immune system so weak that all he was allowed were glimpses of the real world through a glass pane from his hospital room. Bedridden through most of his younger years and confined to his private room, Yoochun's childhood was atypical to say the least. Instead of attending pre-school with other children his own age, Yoochun was taugh his ABCs from the nurses that came to check on him daily and played patty-cake with the interns that gave him his shots and medicine.
The memories Yoochun has of his childhood aren't of idle days spent in the park with his younger brother Ricky and they're not of peaceful naps after snacktime either. They're of weeks spent lying on a hospital bed, staring at the clear packets of red liquid as they filtered in through tiny lines into his body or nights in which he'd cried hard to his mom and dad, clutching onto his teddy as the doctors inserted an eight inch biopsy needle into him to gather bone marrow fluid.
By the time he was five, the doctors had given up hope. At this rate Yoochun wasn't going to live past the age of ten. A blood marrow transplant was their last choice and in all likelihood, he wouldn't survive it because he was too ill to battle the drugs that he would need to take. It's the age old belief that in order to fight an illness, you take more and more drugs that'll make you sicker in hopes of fighting the disease but for a child of his age, there's only so much there to fight with.
It was then that his parents decided to start him on alternative therapies. Chinese acupuncture was both the first and last. Yoochun had cried through the entire process, sobbing as quietly as he could as he watched needle after needle being poked into him, the lightly reflecting off them so brightly that even his brother thought he was glowing. These were also the times in which his parents had started to argue. Money was an issue like it always was and alternative therapies weren't covered by the insurance companies. Unproven and with little to no proof of being effective, his parents had no choice but to pay out of their pockets for the costly treatments.
He still remembers the days leading up to what he thought would be his death, happy gatherings with his cousins and family members, all of them bringing over gifts for him and plenty of popcorn and soda because he liked salty kettle popcorn and cold ginger ale the best. His mother got along with his father then, the two of them kissing and laughing on the couch with Yoochun curled between them, a hand in each of their own. Nowadays they don't talk and Yoochun doesn't blame them for it.
Death to a six year old isn't nearly as scary as it is to a twenty-six or thirty-six year old. There isn't have a future to look forward to and he didn't know how to regret a life yet to be lived. Death to him was just a prolonged period of sleep in which he wouldn't have to hurt anymore. The doctor with the pretty long red hair had told him there wouldn't be any pain and there'd be no more needles. And he was told that for children his age, heaven was a vast playground with a bright Sun always in the sky and plenty of other children for him to play hide and seek with. The only thing was that he would no longer be with his family. But for a child that spent most of his years in the hospital room isolated from his mother and father, having to spend forever away wasn't that horrible of an alternative to his reality.
The week after his death sentence was passed down from his doctors to his parents, his mother began to get desperate. It started with even more alternative therapies, hundreds of thousands year old ginseng boiled down to a tiny cup of liquid he was forced to drink along with miracle pills that frankly tasted like spinach and bitter melon mixed together. None of it worked.
Curiously, like all other medical miracles, Yoochun was saved by the simplest of things : tofu.
Two weeks before his parents officially were ready to give up and take him away to the beach for the rest of his short life, the team of doctors especially on Yoochun's case had come into the room with a memo pad in hand and in hushed whispers had told his parents about the lack of two very special things in his diet, proteins and amino acids. A nutritionist was then brought in and after months of eating nothing but chicken, fresh sardines along with tofu and yogurt, Yoochun's healed.
-----
At the age of twenty-three, Park Yoochun is now a healthy young adult and you wouldn't even know he had once been so sick that his parents already had a funeral and subsequent wake planned. Unless of course you've attended one of his seminars before. Because you see, Park Yoochun is somewhat of a medical marvel and because he's so special, hospitals and medical schools alike continuously request appearances from him. It never seems to matter that he had been all of two when everything happened or that he barely remembers anything but the long needles and countless bags of blood he had been given, he's asked time and again if he remembers the symptoms or the side effects.
He discovers early on that telling the truth isn't nearly as interesting as if he makes it up, so he begins to lie. Except Yoochun calls it improvising.
In the beginning all he does is exaggerate a little, telling the medical students of the numbing pain he'd experience as a child and of the frequent blood transfusions and how his heart had beat so fast the it was at least thrice the normal rate. Of course like all liars though, Yoochun's outed by someone smarter, except he had never expected it to be someone younger as well.
Shim Changmin, age twenty-one and somewhat of a boy genius. He's what the other medical students label a six-year kid, having only spent two years in the undergraduate program instead of the typical four.
The first words Changmin had said to him had been, "You're a liar you know that? But you're pretty good at it." And after much gaping and denying, Yoochun invites Changmin out for coffee. One thing that he also learned early on from his seminar giving experiences, chicks and dicks alike are rather attracted to a medical marvel like him. And trust Yoochun to take full advantage of that fact.
But Yoochun discovers that things don't work quite the same way with Changmin like they work with other people. The younger man may be a genius but he's also terribly socially awkward. In fact both Yoochun's first, second and sixth invite out for a cup of coffee is refused until finally Yoochun stops asking. And it isn't until they actually bump into each other at a local coffeehouse that Yoochun gets the chance to buy Changmin a cup of coffee like he had wanted all along.
"I was only six," Yoochun says in reply to the question in Changmin's eyes, "and no, I don't actually remember what happened to me. You'd be surprised how useful the internet and Google are. What can I say? Wikipedia comes in handy sometimes."
After that was a pause lengthy enough for Yoochun to actually consider just diving under the table and crawl away until Changmin turns to face him and like all the hundred of other men and women before him, Yoochun was captivated with one look of Changmin's eyes. Large and impossibly doe-like with lashes that even the prettiest girls would envy, it was hard to see why Changmin was still single...of course unless he wasn't. And this is Yoochun also assuming that Changmin is into men. A lot of assumptions and he knows what they say about people who assume.
"Wouldn't it just be easier to tell the truth then? Tell them that you were two and that you don't remember anything that happened. It's better than lying."
Yoochun wonders briefly if Changmin is judging him because it's so hard to tell what the younger man is thinking when his expressions are so hard to read. He shrugs and thumbs at the paper napkins, "Yeah, but wouldn't it be easier if they just left me alone? I didn't ask to be sick and I certainly never asked to be flown around the country to give speeches. Just last week I was a guest at Harvard and you know the irony in that is they rejected me because I wasn't well-rounded enough. But I'm good enough to give a speech to hundreds of medical students, just not good enough to be a student there myself."
He's never been the bitter type because what exactly does Yoochun have to hate about his life when he wasn't even supposed to live past ten? It's hard to hold a grudge against something that is basically a gift. He's told every day by his mother and father that he should thank God for gifting him with a life and for giving him a second chance, a real miracle. Yoochun wonders sometimes though if living like this would be better than death.
"All they see is miracle boy or the kid who survived a permanent hangover," Yoochun says with a shrug, "no one even asks my name anymore. And no one asks how I'm doing now or whether I'm happy with my life. All they care about is how much tofu I ate or if the cottage cheese I had for a snack each day was all natural. It's not my life anymore."
It's not like Yoochun expects sympathy from Changmin but he doesn't expect the laughter either. "What?"
"Poor little boy who doesn't get enough attention," Changmin says softly, twirling his pen around and smiling in amusement, "would you like it better if I coddled you right now? Or gave you a hug?"
Yoochun's grip on his coffee cup tightens and he doesn't understand why he's here in the first place. Not until Changmin leans a little closer to whisper into his ear, "I was seventeen when my boyfriend was run over by a car and I was the one who tugged him out from under the engine. Maybe you should save the hug for me."
And for the first time, Yoochun meets someone he might actually pity more than himself.
-----
They reach an unspoken agreement after that and the coffeehouse meetings start to become a weekly thing. Yoochun shows up at a quarter to six each Thursday to find Changmin seated by the booth closest to the window, a bookbag on the empty seat reserved for him only. There's always two mugs on the table by the time he gets there, a cup of coffee and a cup of green tea.
Sometimes there aren't even words exchanged between them and sometimes they'll converse for so long that the baristas kick them out right before closing time. Yoochun finds that it's easy to talk to Changmin about just anything. It can be sometimes as simple as eating a turkey or ham sandwich or something complex like whether President Obama is a better leader than President Bush before him. More often than not though, Yoochun loses the arguments when it's about something serious but wins the ones about whether that cloud in the sky is shaped more like an elephant or a wombat (he hadn't even known what a wombat looks like).
Yoochun also learns that Changmin's boyfriend is dead and has been dead for the past couple of years. He had survived the car crash but he hadn't survived the operation afterwards and it's the primary reason why Changmin is studying medicine now. He would never admit it but Yoochun can tell how much he loved, or still loves, his ex and it's almost as if he tries so hard and studies so much to make up for not being able to save him then. Guilt is as grand a motivator as anything.
But as serious and book-oriented Changmin is, he's also just a twenty-one year old underneath it all. Yoochun sometimes drags him out of the coffeehouse and they'll watch a movie together, the two whispering back forth during the Twilight movie with plenty of mocking and teasing to go around.
"Oh! Oh, Edward! I love you!" Yoochun mouths along with Bella, watching with amusement as the girls around him float on cloud nine when the so-called handsome vampire appears on screen. And sometimes if Changmin is in the mood, he'll play around just the same and sometimes if he's not in the mood, he'll just roll his eyes and continue eating his popcorn.
-----
Yoochun invites the younger man home exactly five months after they meet and it's not as if he's in love already but he finds that he's close enough to it.
"So..."
"It's never something good when you start a conversation with the world so," Changmin cuts in to say, sipping on his tea with an eyebrow raised.
"So..." Yoochun says again just to be annoying that way, "Mom and Dad says to bring you home for dinner."
Changmin crosses his legs and Yoochun starts to get that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, preparing himself for rejection already.
"Mom and Dad, huh?" Changmin says with a knowing smile and the very same unimpressed stare Yoochun had gotten the first time he was caught lying, "I can't refuse an invitation from the parents."
Yoochun shifts uncomfortably at that and he opens his mouth, maybe to tell the truth or maybe to say thanks but he doesn't get the words out before Changmin's there with his lips pressed to Yoochun's. It's not really a kiss because Changmin pulls away before Yoochun gets to actually do anything about it and by the time he tries, Changmin's already sitting back in his seat, face red and hiding behind his ceramic mug.
"I'll see you next week," the younger man scrambles to say and a blink of the eye later, Changmin's gone, bag slung across a shoulder as he basically flees.
And so Yoochun wonders if he missed something because Changmin's never shown interest in him before and because he clearly hadn't been expecting the kiss.
The next week Changmin doesn't show and he doesn't show the week after that either. The fourth week after Yoochun finds himself sitting alone in the coffeehouse, he decides to stop going. He knows when he's been rejected and these are the classic signs of it. He's being avoided and his calls are going unanswered, as are his emails and even his knocks on Changmin's dorm are ignored. Yoochun's in love but he's not desperate.
A month after that, Yoochun is forwarded something in the good old fashioned mailbox in the form of a thick manilla envelope with a copy of a newly printed medical journal in it.
There's no return address and the handwriting is unfamiliar to him. But he's got a hunch nonetheless and he flips through it, finding a Shim Changmin listed under an article as one of the medical intern researchers. He doesn't need to read it to know what the subject of the article is about. The main reason that he's been invited all along to these famed medical schools and hospitals is because there are many that believe a change in diet might actually be the key to curing a vast amount of diseases and since Yoochun is basically the only subject in which this has successfully occurred, he's brought on to be a study subject.
And now Yoochun finally understands what all those conversations in the coffee house about alternative treatments had been about. He throws the magazine away without reading the article and he completely misses the footnote at the bottom, printed in the tiniest of fonts, Shim Changmin is responsible solely for the lab research portion of said experiment and resigned as of halfway.
-----
It's by pure luck that Yoochun bumps into Changmin and it's not even at the coffeehouse but at the bookshop a block from his house. He's turning the corner when he catches sight of the dark brown hair and long, long limbs that he recognizes anywhere.
"So, was I a part of the research? Get close to the Park boy and gain ten points on your GPA?"
Changmin's obviously startled but as befitting of a boy genius, he recovers quickly, "A perfect GPA is a 4."
Yoochun nods at that, of course a perfect is 4.0 and of course Shim Changmin would know.
"I was fucking six," he hisses, eyes unforgiving and more tired that he'd admit, "all I remember is the needle. You know the one, eight inches long and thicker than most IV tubes. All I remember was my younger brother crying because I was going to die and all I remember was my parents divorce five years later because they never got over the fact that I almost died and that my father hadn't wanted to try anymore alternative treatments. That's what I remember, Changmin. And if you want to publish it, then go ahead. I don't know why I expected better or why I thought you actually cared but I did. Thanks for proving me wrong, boy wonder."
He leaves without another word and Changmin doesn't follow.
That night he doesn't leave his room for dinner, locking himself into his room and staring at the desktop computer. Curiosity killed the cat and Changmin's eyes, still as round and as large as when they first met had bored into his own and no matter how many times he tells himself that he hates the younger man, he doesn't.
He finds the article with ease, searching under Google with Changmin's named and published articles. This time he reads the entire article over and catches the footnote, tapping on the down key over and over until he gets to the end and finds Changmin's name absent from the article after all.
-----
It's not by luck this time that Yoochun finds Changmin. He goes after the younger man. Yoochun announces privately that this last seminar at John Hopkins will be his last and as he's accepting questions from the full-house of students, his eyes catches on a hand from the far corner.
"Yes?" he says with a small smile.
"How are you doing Mr. Park? Happy? And if you're free, there's a coffeehouse around the corner that serves a pretty good cup of coffee."
Yoochun shrugs on his blazer and gestures towards the exit closest to Changmin, "Doing just fine, thank you for asking and I'm sure after a cup of coffee, I'll be even better."
This time Yoochun's the one who leans in first and he stays long enough to give Changmin a chance to respond, lacing their hands together and going back home for that meal his parents always have waiting.
"Somehow I don't think you'll be too surprised, but we're having tofu tonight."
"Cottage cheese on the side? Sounds perfect."